The Wyvern's Nest
The Wyvern's Nest was the highest-difficulty hunting ground in the Twilight Lands, yet at present, its very existence remained completely unknown to the player base. Normally, reaching it required completing a prerequisite quest.
More specifically, the quest was the only way to uncover its hidden coordinates. Because that prerequisite sat at the tail end of an agonizingly complex quest chain, however, not a single player had managed to unlock even the opening stages. Sanghyuk, of course, had not received the quest either. In fact, he hadn't bothered touching the chain at all. To him, the endeavor was entirely meaningless.
He had already run that quest line in his past life. He knew precisely where the Wyvern's Nest was hidden.
Accepting the quest would have granted the benefit of system navigation to make pathfinding effortless, but to a veteran weathered by years within the world of EL, finding his way was child's play.
It should be somewhere around here...
Arriving at the Eastern Cliff Region on the easternmost edge of the Twilight Lands, Sanghyuk relied on his practiced mountaineering skills, leaping and scaling across the sheer rock faces as he searched for the ascent to the nest. Had he come with the prerequisite quest, a clear path would have revealed itself without requiring him to scale a single cliffside. Still, expecting zero hardship while armed with the ultimate cheat of regression was nothing short of greed.
After several hours spent combing through the jagged crags of the Eastern Cliff Region, Sanghyuk finally uncovered the concealed route: a massive beanstalk-like vine, cleverly hidden along the face of a towering precipice. Reaching the summit of that cliff would bring him straight to the Wyvern's Nest.
The Wyvern's Nest functioned essentially as an open-air dungeon. Vast vines spanned the yawning chasms between sheer spires, serving as bridges. A single careless step meant plunging into the abyss to a fatal splatter, demanding absolute concentration.
Sanghyuk grabbed hold of the thick vine and began his steady climb. After roughly fifteen minutes of grueling ascent, the Green Wyvern's Nest—the famed dungeon suspended above the clouds—finally came into view.
"Long time no see."
In his past life, Sanghyuk had been forced to camp here for four agonizing months. Back then, other workers from the sweatshop syndicate merely ferried supplies up to him and hauled his gathered loot down, forbidding him from ever descending the cliffs.
Throughout those four months, Sanghyuk had slaughtered countless wyverns. Scaled for parties of at least three players between levels 43 and 45, wyverns were high-tier monsters that could not be taken down by a haphazard party. The composition had to be meticulous.
At bare minimum, a group required the holy trinity of party play: a dedicated tank, a damage dealer, and a healer. That alone proved how treacherous these beasts were.
Yet there was one saving grace: wyverns were strictly solitary creatures. Each beast laid claim to its own nest atop one of the many cliff peaks interconnected by giant vines, and the wide distance separating each peak allowed players to engage them one by one.
Sanghyuk pulled out his Marking Book and registered the coordinates. Once inside the Wyvern's Nest proper, spatial registration was blocked by the system, making this threshold the ideal spot to mark.
The layout here is far more labyrinthine than it looks. Almost every first-timer got hopelessly lost. I still remember cursing this place out, wondering what kind of bastard designed such a wretched dungeon.
Memories of his bitter past resurfaced as he inked his coordinates into the book. Calling them fond memories felt like a stretch given the grim reality of those days, yet faint traces of nostalgia lingered all the same.
Man, I thought I'd forgotten the way, but the paths are coming right back to me... I really did spend an eternity camping up here.
He had worried his recollection of the layout might have faded, but standing here proved that concern unfounded.
Alright. No reason to hesitate—let's get straight to hunting.
With both the geography and raid mechanics crystal clear in his mind, there was no point in waiting.
Buffs first!
Before stepping forward, Sanghyuk drew a combined card. Blending the Spirit Cards he had recently crafted with several cheap material cards had produced this specific combination: Blessing of Fire and Wind.
Formed by fusing a low-grade fire spirit card, a low-grade wind spirit card, and three bottom-tier catalyst cards, its effect granted an increase to basic attack power and movement speed. Because it was one of the few viable buff-type combination cards craftable with low-grade spirit cards, he had made sure to stockpile a generous reserve of one hundred.
Basic Attack Power and Movement Speed Increased
Duration: 30 Minutes
A soft hiss echoed as the combination card dissolved, its power soaking directly into his flesh. In the upper-right corner of his peripheral vision, the number '30' appeared, indicating the remaining duration in minutes.
Back when we had wyvern hunting down to an exact science, a three-man party took about five minutes per kill, didn't it? Hmm. For a solo run, aiming for ten minutes sounds reasonable.
While wyverns demanded a considerable time investment, the Karma and loot they yielded were immense. Best of all, with zero competition around, he was free to hop between nests and farm uninterrupted, reaping catastrophic profits.
Ch-ch-ch-crack! Clank!
Sanghyuk unfurled the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Bone Whip and locked his gaze forward. Perched ahead was a solitary emerald reptile. In the grand hierarchy of wyverns, the Green Wyvern was the weakest variant, yet within the Twilight Lands, nothing alive surpassed its power.
"Let's do this!"
Fully prepped, Sanghyuk sprinted across the massive vine bridge without a shred of hesitation.
The single most critical rule of fighting a wyvern was never letting it take flight. To achieve this, a raider had to constantly harass the wyvern egg that was guaranteed to sit in every nest.
In his past life, players had dubbed this mechanic the Egg Taunt. Only by continually threatening the egg could one prevent the wyvern from ascending into the sky and unleashing its devastating party-wipe breath attack across the nest.
An intriguing piece of lore accompanied this ecosystem: across this entire sprawling colony of peaks, there was only ever a single male wyvern. Every other beast nesting here was female.
In a standard three-man party, the duty of egg-taunting fell to the damage dealer rather than the tank. Maintaining ironclad aggro on the wyvern already consumed all of a tank's focus, making it virtually impossible for them to simultaneously babysit the egg. The damage dealer would slip away whenever an opening appeared, tapping the egg just enough to keep the mother grounded.
Once the beast was pinned to the floor of its nest, conquering it was simply a matter of mastering its telegraphs. The attack pattern itself was straightforward enough; so long as one steered clear of its melee snapping bite and tail swipe, the fight held few surprises.
Sanghyuk had felt a twinge of tension at first given how long it had been, but the moment combat began, his body adapted with frightening fluidity. The brutal, endless repetition of his past life was etched indelibly into his muscle memory, resurfacing the instant blood was drawn.
Furthermore, his weapon of choice—the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Bone Whip—was tailor-made for maintaining the Egg Taunt. With the nest forming a circular platform roughly ten meters across, positioning himself near the center allowed him to reach the egg from anywhere in the arena.
Crack—ting!
With a flick of his wrist, Sanghyuk snapped the tip of the whip against the shell. The crux of the Egg Taunt lay in never actually cracking it. If a player grew careless and broke the shell, the Green Wyvern would immediately plunge into an uncontrollable frenzy. Against a berserk wyvern, even Sanghyuk would be torn to shreds.
Kraaa-oohhh!
The female wyvern grew increasingly frantic with every tap against her brood. Battered and bleeding, she fought with desperate ferocity to protect her unhatched young.
Tch. Even a virtual monster fights this hard for family...
A sudden pang of bitterness struck Sanghyuk as thoughts of his own real-world family surfaced, but his stance did not waver in the slightest.
In the end, everyone walks this life alone.
Ever since his regression, Sanghyuk had held firmly to the belief that every person was ultimately on their own. That conviction remained unshakeable. Shaking off the fleeting distraction, he cracked the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Bone Whip through the air.
Whiiiip—crunch!
Having interrupted another attempted takeoff with a strike to the egg, Sanghyuk transitioned seamlessly, coiling the golden bone segments tightly around the wyvern's thick neck. Yanking the whip with vicious force, he vaulted cleanly onto the creature's back.
Mounting the wyvern meant the execution phase had begun.
Screeech!
The wyvern thrashed wildly, bucking its massive frame in a frantic bid to dislodge the invader. Yet Sanghyuk balanced atop its scales like a veteran rodeo cowboy riding a bull, tightening his grip on the whip wrapped around its throat. Then, with raw leverage, he wrenched back.
Crunch, grind!
The jagged golden bone segments bit deep into the soft tissue of the wyvern's throat. Planting his feet, Sanghyuk gripped the whip with both hands and pulled with every ounce of strength in his body.
Having dumped the vast majority of his bonus stat points into Strength and Agility throughout his rapid leveling, his physical power was staggering. When he committed his full weight to strangling the beast, the wyvern—already clinging to the dregs of its health bar—could endure no longer.
Craaack—thud!
With a sickening snap, the Green Wyvern's neck bent into a sharp right angle. A broken neck signaled that its health had hit absolute zero. The massive reptile collapsed lifelessly onto the floor of the nest.
The instant the beast fell, Sanghyuk checked his buff timer.
Twenty-two minutes left... So that took about eight minutes? Better than expected.
Shaving two full minutes off his initial ten-minute target was an excellent result. He had been plagued by uncertainties before the fight, but clashing with the monster in the flesh had fully reignited his combat instincts.
If I keep this rhythm up, I can probably push it down to five minutes flat.
His confidence surged. Countless memories from his previous life flooded back in vivid detail—what tells to watch out for, how to optimize his positioning, and precisely where to strike to bleed the monster dry.
"Alright! Time to set up camp."
Just as he had milked the Snake Cave dry over a month of continuous farming, Sanghyuk intended to reap every scrap of value from this aerial nest.
With the stage set and his rotation established, Sanghyuk turned his gaze toward the horizon. In his eyes, every Green Wyvern perched among the distant peaks looked like nothing more than a walking mountain of Karma and rare loot.
"You honestly expect me to believe that garbage?"
The man listening across the table stared at Killing Machine with utter incredulity etched across his face.
"I swear to God, it's the absolute truth! Hyung, how could I ever lie to you?"
"Hmm..."
It was true: Killing Machine would never dare lie to his face. Five years ago, during an indiscriminate player-killing spree in another virtual reality game, the man had crossed paths with Killing Machine, who possessed a similar penchant for violence.
Of course, compared to the man's terrifying natural talent for PvP, Killing Machine was merely an obedient lackey. Still, over their five years of gaming together, they had met up in the real world on occasion to share drinks.
In reality, Killing Machine was an even more pathetic loser than his virtual persona, making him the perpetual target of the man's verbal abuse. Had Killing Machine dared utter a falsehood, the retribution awaiting him in the real world would have been far worse than anything in-game.
"So you're saying you got wiped out in ten seconds flat?"
"Yes! The guy was a complete monster!"
"Is that so..."
No matter how pathetic Killing Machine was, ten seconds defied reason. Even if the man stepped in personally, subduing Killing Machine would take at least a minute under the most optimal conditions.
"I've put out secret feelers to track him down, but the bastard has vanished into thin air. Should I hit you up the second we locate him?"
What Killing Machine hungered for was blood. And the man he had come running to was, without question, the greatest PvP specialist he had ever known. On top of unmatched skill, the man harbored an obsessive competitive drive, living for the thrill of crushing formidable opponents.
His name was Dark Dragon—widely known as DD. Long before EL launched, he had reigned supreme at the absolute apex of the PvP scene across multiple virtual reality titles.
"Damn it, I've got way too much on my plate to become an Outlaw right now... My Dark Karma is already hovering near the danger line. If I butcher that guy, my status will flip to villain for sure."
"Then just beat him within an inch of his life and don't deliver the killing blow, Hyung! Let me take the final hit."
"You idiot, do you think EL's criminal flag system is that primitive? Even if you deliver the final blow, the system will recognize that my suppression was the primary cause of his death. The penalty will stick to me regardless."
"Ugh... Then how about you grind your Dark Karma down as much as possible while I hunt for him?"
"Guess that's our only option... Fine. Put out the search. And listen to me, you dumbass—didn't I explicitly warn you that Outlaws can't survive in the current meta and told you to grind quietly? You refused to listen, went strutting around playing the big bad PKer, and ended up getting your teeth kicked in. If you don't have the brains to assess a situation, at least clean out your ears and listen to what I tell you."
"Well, I just... you know..."
Whenever he stood before DD, Killing Machine shrank into a trembling wreck.
He had broken away to carve his own path as an independent villain precisely because he despised being treated like dirt. Yet when humiliated and desperate for revenge, he had no choice but to crawl right back to DD's feet.