Chapter 40 040

Rogue assassin Lian had been sitting near the entrance of the ant cave in Erzebet for around nine hours, watching the crowds.

'He's not out yet… is he really going to clear it by himself?'

Lian was waiting for Seojin under the orders of Henrite, the guild master of the 7th Knight. He had waited a long time for a suspicious person to appear at the Erzebet vigilance committee's headquarters once he arrived had arrived in this settlement. Finally, he spotted Seojin, who had failed to receive an irregular request before going for the official ones instead.

Lian had not been convinced up until then. However, he knew he had found the right guy when Seojin was promoted after solving only one Rank F request. That man was Henrite's target.

'He seems quite capable… is he really a hidden class?'

Lian had no idea as Seojin was still in the dungeon. It would be possible to evaluate Seojin's capabilities if he was out on the field, however, there was no other way to do so unless he formed a party with him. Given that Seojin rejected all player invitations, he wouldn't party up with Lian no matter how hard he tried.

'I need further instructions…'

Henrite's orders were to find Seojin, and he had done just that. He had noticed the suspicious figure and reported it to the guild master via chat.

Purple hair and narrow eyes. Seojin looked the same as when he was in Berne, so he must have still been using a makeup pack.

'He's a clever one… he knows that he's done for once we see his true identity. He must be planning to hide once the time comes, huh?'

Lian knew that talent was always bound to reveal itself. Even if he kept a low profile, the Ironbloods would find him eventually.

Just then, he heard a ding, indicating a notification. It was a direct message from Henrite.

-Just observe him for now… don't be hasty, okay?

"I'm screwed."

It was decided. Seojin would still be able to enjoy the game to his heart's content, but as for Lian? His job was to watch over Seojin's every move as an assassin that specialized in stealth.

'Goodbye, my good night's sleep…'

Lian had to keep up with Seojin, who was so crazy about the game that he rarely logged out. He felt the bags under his eyes becoming heavier, but he had no other choice.

"Well… orders are orders."

Muttering to himself with a melancholic look in his eyes, Lian melted into the darkness once again.

* * *

The Black Forest, the second Rank C dungeon, was no different from the previous one. All he had to do was to charm a monster and have it fight it out with the rest of them. Seojin stepped back and calculated the cooldown period, trying to make the gaps in between as short as possible. However, he had a bad feeling as he wandered deeper into the forest that even sunlight couldn't penetrate.

'…What the?'

Intact Squirmshroom (48)

* The Squirmshroom is a parasitic plant. A fully grown squirmshroom takes complete control of its host. Used as a rare material for alchemy.

That bad feeling had crept up on Seojin after he read the item description of the loot that the Parastocks dropped. Just as the name of the quest suggested, the squirmshrooms that were now wriggling around in his inventory were the real monsters here.

'Maybe that's why the monsters around here don't seem motivated at all.'

Skeletons and ogres were practically the same: they were ferocious beasts when they were not charmed by Seojin. Seojin had gotten himself into somewhat of a predicament a couple of times in the ogre dungeon.

Compared to that, parastocks—crabs with mushrooms clinging to them—didn't look as threatening. It seemed more like they were fighting simply because they were told to as they swung their claws half-heartedly.

'It seems like there's a catch here…'

Seojin didn't think that because the fight was too easy, the previous dungeons were not that difficult either. Thanks to his immense stat difference, any dungeon in Erzebet would be a walk in the park for him. Seojin felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. He couldn't quite pinpoint it, but he'd had a similar experience before.

'I must be missing something. Let me think about it… what's the problem? The fight is easy, and I can waltz to the end of the quest at this rate, so why do I feel so uneasy?'

Seojin nodded after taking a moment to think.

'It means that I shouldn't end the quest like that… I'll be able to complete the Rank C quest but I'm sure that the devs didn't create this dungeon for that purpose only.'

Seojin had felt like something was wrong since the first battle. Of course, it was natural to feel wrong when crabs as big as humans swung their claws helplessly with wide eyes. However, a strong sense of déjà vu overcame him during the final battle.

'A battle against a lethargic enemy. The monsters at least acted as if they were attacking me, and the difficulty was pretty high, yet there were no intense feelings. But… when was that?'

Seojin pondered deep and hard. The conclusion came out quickly.

'Asgard is the only place I'd have felt such a thing.'

After all, in real life, Seojin had never punched anything except his own keyboard.

* * *

"He was amazing! I'm not just sugarcoating my words. Normies would ask what's so great about being good at a game, but they forgot one thing, the NPCs were created using real artificial intelligence. Who are they to belittle that?"

"I agree with you, we looked at the logs and came to the same conclusion."

"Yeah, no shit."

Minhyuk grinned. It was early in the morning, and he was usually busy running raids around this time. However, right now, he was sitting face-to-face with an office worker in a cafe.

"There's one thing that comes to mind. Have you ever heard of the Hellfire Peninsula? It was in Asgard."

"Of course."

"You saw the logs too, right? About what he did there."

The woman nodded. "There was no way I couldn't have seen it, I've analyzed and memorized all the logs that my bosses shoved at me."

It seemed as if it had been worth it, at least.

"He saved the demons… for the first time since the launch twelve years ago."

That wasn't supposed to be possible. Hellfire Peninsula was an extremely difficult hunting ground filled with demon-like monsters, even endgame spec players barely could stand toe to toe with them. However, Seojin, being a relatively low-level player compared to the others, did something that nobody could have expected.

"He came up with the idea after realizing that the demon lord in the lore was a fallen angel. Do you know what he said back then?"

"I don't, there wasn't much in the chat logs."

"He asked me how I would've felt to have a boss that landed his job through nepotism. He also said that the demons must have felt the same way. In the end, he perceived the demons as creatures that needed to be saved, not exterminated."

Everyone believed that the demon lord had only existed in lore, yet Seojin had explored not only the Hellfire Peninsula, but the surrounding fields in search of him. As a result of that, he discovered that the Arch Inquisitor of the Grand Temple was the demon lord in disguise, and received tremendous benefits for killing him.

"He earned a ridiculous amount of rewards at the cost of keeping his mouth shut, and the demons on Hellfire Peninsula returned to hell. He received so much EXP it was as if he'd killed all of the monsters on the peninsula."

"…He was also offered the Paladin class, right?"

"Yeah, he was. That event surprises me to this day. Not only did he receive a class quest for a class that wasn't even implemented, he even rejected it on the spot!"

"You must be sad that you lost contact with him."

"I am, sometimes I even dream of receiving a message from him. Though, it's been years… so maybe it's a bit too late."

Minhyuk muttered as he glanced at the woman. She looked confident for some reason. It was as though she only asked Minhyuk that out of formality.

'…?'

Minhyuk lowered his head to hide his expression.

Now looking like he was full of regret again, he asked, "I guess Hailstorm is not that different, am I right? You must be wondering whether he's even playing the game right now."

"He is."

"Yeah, I kn… what?"

"We're monitoring Mr. Seojin in real-time."

"…Really?"

Minhyuk pretended to be shocked. Seojin had already told him that a staff member from Hailstorm was following him around.

'I didn't think they'd be so open about it.'

"I'm afraid I can't tell you the details, but the situation is already comparable to Asgard."

"So he's playing…"

Minhyuk hid the fact that he was caught off guard with a smile.

"Come to think of it, I guess the devs can monitor anyone at any time."

"We have to follow internal regulations, so we had to plant one of our men."

"Men? You mean a player?"

This was even more strange. Seojin said that he would drop that BunnyRabbit, or whatever she was called.

'They said they're monitoring him… are they talking about contacting each other via chat? There's no way these guys are that stupid…'

"The Strategic Planning Department is very interested in not only Mr. Seojin but you too. Mr. Minhyuk, we believe that special people deserve special treatment…"

Kim Joohee, the assistant manager at the Strategic Planning Department, slid a paper bag over to Minhyuk.

"If you sign this, we'll do our best to help you get back in contact with Seojin. Of course, we promise a variety of other benefits on top of that… excuse me for a moment."

Kim paused as she suddenly received a phone call. It was clearly a very important person considering she cut her conversation with Minhyuk short like that.

"Yes, sir, I'm with h… sir?"

Her expression hardened as she excused herself from the table with her eyes and got up from her seat.

'Did something happen?'

It seemed as if it was pretty serious. Minhyuk, who had been biting his lips for a while, took out his cell phone to check out Midgard's community pages. A short while later, he realized why Kim looked serious.

Anti-Mainstream here. I'm gonna tell you how to clear the Dungeons in Erzebet "properly."

"…Oh, he just did his thing again."

* * *

Rewinding back to around seven hours ago.

Seojin had scanned every inch of the dungeon from top to bottom and came up with his own conclusion.

'The structural design is missing something, I have no idea how I didn't realize earlier.'

One of the main characteristics of a dungeon was that it was a closed system. If it was a field, adjusting the spec of each monster would be enough to balance the difficulty. However, designing dungeons required more than that since every little factor, such as the strength of each monster, the quantity, the terrain, and the environment defined the difficulty.

'The balance itself isn't too bad. It's a little too easy for a Rank C dungeon… but that's not the problem. The map is strangely large.'

The area was too expansive compared to the number of monsters there and that lead Seojin to an obvious conclusion. There must have been a hidden area somewhere inside the Black Forest, and the forest itself was merely a ruse. On top of that, there was one more thing that stood out about this clumsy design.

-Killing parastocks is such a juicy quest.

-The biggest disappointment of all is that I can't replay the request, if I was able to grind here, I would reach Level 50 in no time.

-I've never seen a dungeon where the boss kills itself. The mobs are weak too.

The boss, which should be the most difficult challenge in the dungeon, committed suicide. That was the decisive factor that lowered the overall difficulty of the dungeon.

'And yet, not a single one of them thought it was strange…'

The other players were treating the quest like it was an easy job, but of course, that was natural. They only cared about speedrunning to Level 50 and getting out of the Erzebet, and there were guidelines for that in the first place.

'Well, I'm about to hit the jackpot thanks to them.'

This well-aged goldmine now belonged to Seojin.