Giant's Cave (1)
By the time Sanghyuk arrived, the six-guild coalition had already cut down the sentries, battered down the gates of the inner castle, and poured inside.
A few players had already acquired the status of Villain after slaying the gatekeepers. Even so, everyone who took part in the assault had prepared themselves for that eventuality from the start. Even those who hadn't yet crossed into full villainy were marked as Criminals, needing only a slight nudge down the wrongful path to fall completely.
That they went to such reckless extremes proved just how fixated they were on the fabled treasures supposedly hidden inside. Yet the truth was far less glamorous: there was no treasure in the inner castle.
The only thing awaiting them was Falcon City’s terrifying Typhoon Knights—and their commander, Gale Parayan, was a Master Knight.
A Master Knight at Level 100.
Even if NPCs generally benefited less from raw level scaling than players did, the sheer majesty and terrifying stat pool of Level 100 remained monumental. It was a realm that even the highest-ranking players would need more than a year of grueling, life-and-death grinding to even approximate. In short, at this stage of the game, not a single player alive could stand against him.
“Who dares incite chaos in this sacred keep!”
Rumble!
True to his moniker, Parayan arrived like a gale-force storm. Leveling his cherished weapon, the Storm Spear, he charged headlong into the insects crawling through his gates.
K-baaaang!
Parayan charged single-handedly into the ranks of over four hundred and fifty players. Knights of the order stood flanked around him, their strength far eclipsing that of ordinary guards. While ordinary city sentries averaged Level 50, the Typhoon Knights averaged Level 65—a fifteen-level difference that represented an insurmountable gulf in combat prowess.
Yet those elite knights didn’t lift a finger to join the fray. They merely filed past the players with absolute indifference and formed an iron blockade across the shattered gates. Their sole duty was containment—to ensure not another soul set foot into the keep. A fair number of regular players who didn’t even belong to the six-guild coalition had rushed through the broken gate out of curiosity or greed. Unfortunately, they too were destined to be pulverized by the living meat grinder.
‘Hmm, so the Typhoon Knights sealed the breach... That explains why everyone in my past life called this an unreachable feast.’
Sanghyuk hadn't entered the inner keep. To be precise, he could have slipped through with the initial rush, but chose not to. Stepping in right now would mean being torn to ribbons by Parayan.
Sanghyuk had witnessed Parayan in battle once before from up close, and the sheer memory of it was breathtaking awe.
Nearly every NPC in Eternal Life could be hired as a mercenary. Of course, it wasn't something anyone could do on a whim; hiring required a complex calculation factoring in affinity, exorbitant hiring fees, and the contractor's own standing and capabilities. High-tier NPCs in particular demanded astronomic sums alongside stringent prerequisite conditions.
In that sense, the sweatshop syndicate that had enslaved Sanghyuk in his past life possessed truly absurd resourcefulness. They had once managed to hire Gale Parayan and his entire Typhoon Knights order as mercenaries. Back when they were bashing their heads against an impossibly ferocious named monster in the Continent of Heroes, the syndicate's managers brought in Parayan and the knights to obliterate the boss for them. However, virtually all the raid spoils had been promptly "appropriated" by Parayan as compensation, after which the syndicate never bothered attempting such an extravagant hire again.
K-baaaang!
The shredding had begun. Within ten minutes, every last player would be hacked to pieces, dissolving into showers of glittering light.
‘I have to get in there somehow...’
Though the slaughter inside was hidden from view, the horrific acoustics carried out with vivid clarity.
“Aaaargh! Help me!”
“He’s a monster! A monster!”
“Run! Fall back! You can't beat him!”
Sanghyuk stood outside in silence, listening to the despair-drenched screams.
‘A way to slip past them unnoticed... A way... Ah, that’s it!’
An inspired idea struck him.
‘The prefix effect of the Shadow Duke of Falcon City title... That gives me a real shot!’
Sanghyuk resolved to turn that unattainable pie in the sky into a real feast.
‘Once Parayan’s slaughter wraps up... I’ll erase my presence and slip past the cordon into the inner keep.’
Blending into the crowd of onlookers clustered near the gates, Sanghyuk waited patiently for the storm to settle.
The cleanup was over in an eyeblink. Parayan delivered a masterclass in overwhelming force, demonstrating precisely what it meant to inhabit the realm of a Master. Four hundred and fifty—no, over five hundred players failed to inflict even a scratch upon him. Instead, razor-sharp gales unleashed from his spear sheared through them, reducing scores to bloody chunks in seconds. Dissolving into dense plumes of sparkling particles, they cemented this day in history as Bloody Monday.
It took barely five minutes for Parayan to reduce five hundred players to pools of crimson light.
“S-Sweet mother of... We shouldn't have underestimated the NPCs.”
“Holy crap! I saw that guy walking around the city before—who knew he had that kind of insane power?”
“How do you build affinity with him? Man, if someone could hire an NPC like that as a mercenary, they’d rule the game!”
The spectators exchanged breathless murmurs as they reeled from the spectacle.
Fwoooosh...
Only after every last invader fell did the violent winds subside. Recovering his Storm Spear, Gale Parayan surveyed the carnage with a thunderous scowl.
With that booming proclamation aimed at the onlookers outside, Parayan turned on his heel and strode back into the castle depths. The Typhoon Knights withdrew in orderly fashion behind him. Yet their departure did not open the gates for the players. The moment the knights stepped down, Falcon City's standard guard garrison stepped in, forming a dense wall across the gate to bar all entry.
“Ah... what a waste. If only we could slip inside, it’d be a goldmine.”
“No kidding. Whether there was treasure originally or not, there's definitely a mountain of treasure piled in there today.”
The players lamented with good reason: over four hundred and fifty combatants had just perished, dumping a staggering trove of dropped equipment. Having met their ends flagged as Criminals or Villains, the death penalties were severe, forcing them to shed larger quantities of high-value gear. All of it now lay scattered across the inner courtyard.
Under the rules of Eternal Life, dropped items persisted on the ground for twenty-four hours before despawning if left unlooted. And because NPCs never looted player drops, the inner bailey was literally carpeted in gear. That was why players in Sanghyuk’s past life had bitterly labeled it an unreachable feast.
‘Except this time, things are different.’
Stationed among the wistful onlookers, Sanghyuk intended to bide his time until the perfect opening presented itself.
As hours ticked by, the spectators gradually drifted away. A few lingering hopefuls paced the plaza, unable to abandon their greed, but there was simply no way through. The heavy oak gates had been splintered, but the phalanx of city guards remained unbroken.
No matter how voracious one’s appetite, brute-forcing through the guards was out of the question. Having just watched hundreds of players get turned into mincemeat hours ago, nobody was foolish enough to throw their lives away.
Eventually, the remaining players dispersed with sullen sighs.
Night settled over Falcon City, yet the guards stood firm like stone statues, clearly stationed there until the gates could be fully restored.
Seven hours had elapsed since the five hundred players were wiped out. By now, the area was practically deserted, save for a handful of low-level beginners loitering aimlessly with nothing better to do.
‘Time to get moving.’
Waiting any longer risked the city initiating repairs on the gate. With deep shadows blanketing the square and player curiosity long dissipated, the timing was immaculate.
Sanghyuk shifted his Shadow Duke of Falcon City title from the suffix slot to the prefix slot. The suffix buff instantly converted to its prefix properties, undoing his transformation and restoring his original appearance.
From there, Sanghyuk drew the Silver Sword and Moon Saber—the paired blades of the Silver Crescent Fragment—and quietly dissolved into the gloom. Aided by the unique stealth-enhancing properties of the Silver Crescent Fragment, Sanghyuk melted into the shadows and began his advance toward the inner keep.
Under normal circumstances, simply creeping through shadows would never evade the vigilant eyes of Level 50 guards. Yet not a single guard detected him. The reason was straightforward: the prefix effect of the Shadow Duke of Falcon City title.
Had he faced Parayan—or even the elite Moonlight Knights—Sanghyuk would likely have been exposed regardless of title effects. But against ordinary city sentries, the scaling disparity favored him, allowing the presence-erasing aura of the title to take full effect.
The guards remained completely oblivious as Sanghyuk slipped right between them. Even the few beginner players hanging around failed to notice a thing. The passive presence-blurring aura worked against players to a degree as well, and paired with low-level perception and active concealment in the shadows, Sanghyuk was a phantom.
‘Even with my presence masked, I can't afford to be careless.’
Sticking strictly to the deepest shadows and treading with absolute care, Sanghyuk spent twenty cautious minutes working his way across the threshold and into the courtyard.
‘Whoa!’
Stepping fully into the inner bailey, he marvelled at the breathtaking sight before him.
Mountains of glittering equipment. In place of corpses, five hundred players had left behind a field of lost possessions. Because the NPC guards acted as though the items didn't exist, the drops remained undisturbed on the flagstones.
Magic-grade items were too numerous to count, interspersed with gleams of Rare-grade gear. With high-level crafters becoming more common recently, average player gear had sharply improved, meaning the drops here were of unexpectedly fine quality.
‘Somewhere in here, there should be a Unique-grade item...’
What Sanghyuk sought above all was the Shadow Cloak, dropped by Thunderbolt, the guildmaster of the Lightning Guild who had spearheaded the raid.
The post hadn't gone up yet, but within days, Thunderbolt would publish a lengthy confessional on InGames detailing his bitter regrets over the raid—specifically lamenting the loss of the Shadow Cloak. A prized cloak he had purchased with cold cash for thirty million won. Devastated by the loss, Thunderbolt had even begged in his post that anyone possessing the identical item sell it to him for another thirty million won.
Sanghyuk had read that post in his past life, and the astronomical price tag had burned the memory permanently into his brain.
‘Shadow Cloak... Shadow Cloak... Ah! Found it!’
Buried beneath a heap of lower-tier gear, the dark fabric gleamed faintly. Sanghyuk stowed it into his Spatial Expansion Bag before methodically collecting every Rare-grade item within reach.
His Spatial Expansion Bag boasted the highest capacity multiplier available in Falcon City, and he had emptied it completely in anticipation of this haul. Even so, the sheer volume of gear in the courtyard filled the bag to maximum capacity. Nearly ten percent of the loot had to be left behind.
Yet the uncollected items were of negligible market value, hardly worth mourning.
‘This is more than enough!’
There was no reason to risk discovery by making a second trip for scrap.
With his bag packed to the brim, Sanghyuk slipped back into the shadows and began his quiet retreat from the inner keep. Against all odds, the unreachable feast had become his alone.