Chapter 177: Episode 35_A Feint in the East, a Strike in the West (5)
7.
Thunder slamd into Han Simin.
A bolt from the blue!
The one actually getting hit didn’t even realize he had been struck by lightning.
Several seconds passed before he noticed his HP bar plumting toward zero.
“Arghhh!”
’You crazy fucking lizard!’
[You have taken a critical hit!]
[You are afflicted with Status Ailnt: Stun.]
He had almost died.
It wouldn’t have been strange if he had died.
It was a miracle.
The mont he saw his HP dropping, his survival instinct made him trigger the heal on his Beginner’s Dagger. That reflex had created a miracle.
He was too stunned to speak.
He was so dumbfounded and outraged that he couldn’t even speak.
He glared at Kardian, but she only folded her arms and lifted her chin with brazen composure.
“My apologies. A mistake, human.”
“You little—”
“It has been far too long since I last used magic. It couldn’t be helped. You must understand.”
“If you make a mistake like that again, you’ll be attending your own funeral.”
’Kill her or spare her?’
Unfortunately, the trembling, furious Han Simin wasn’t given ti to decide such an important question.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE—
“Ppaeaaek!”
Her magic hadn’t been a one-off just to get revenge on her master.
It was only the beginning.
The ground split open, and lightning crashed down.
The first bolt had been nothing more than a warning shot to herald the coming catastrophe, and now the storm poured down even more violently.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
“Gyaaaah!”
“Run!”
A Dragon Raid?
In this situation, no one was thinking about anything like that.
All that mattered was survival.
They devoted themselves solely to staying alive amid the sudden natural disaster.
The players who had co together in unity scattered in all directions as if that had never happened.
As they ran, they fell into the fissures opening in the ground and were vaporized by lightning strikes.
The calamity continued for quite so ti.
Even after the survivors had fled beyond its range.
Even as they tried to regroup and prepare for the final day.
* * *
The area where the chaos had erupted was now a forbidden zone.
They had taken heavy losses and failed to kill the dragon.
Even so, they couldn’t give up on the last day.
They had to raise their score by even one point.
The very top rankers did so to eliminate any variables.
The upper rankers, to sohow overturn the subtle gaps in score.
There was no need to even ntion those fighting for a spot in the top 100.
Of course, closing the score gap in a single day would not be easy.
It was practically impossible.
The current scores were the result of nearly every guild grinding all night, every night. Would tacking on a single extra day really change anything?
There might be so variance depending on how badly each guild had been hit by the dragon, but that kind of luck was rare and impossible to verify in just one day. Besides, no one was about to publicly disclose how much damage they had taken.
That left only one viable strategy to turn the tables.
Cut down the other guilds’ scores.
Or force them to drop out.
The top guilds knew a bloodbath would only be self-destructive, so they held their positions. But the fight around the 100th-place cutoff was brutal beyond words.
“Kill them!”
“It’s you or !”
As a result, the rankings were fluctuating more than ever.
NPCs and players alike attacked each other on sight, no questions asked.
The Specialists and the Kenji Guild were no exception.
“Wow. They just keep coming.”
“Well, everyone’s clustered around this area.”
“Can’t we go sowhere else?”
“There’s no ti.”
The dragon’s aggro had forced every guild in the Cliffs of Fall to converge on one area. Even if they tried to spread out now, how far could they possibly get?
At best, they could move an hour or two away.
This ant that, on average, half their encounters were with monsters and the other half with other players.
Han Simin’s mind started racing.
’What should I do?’
If he had never aid for the top, that would be one thing, but the mont he decided he wanted first place, he had to get it.
It wasn’t as if it was completely impossible, either.
“If we wipe out every monster in the mountain range today...”
“Co on. How is that even remotely realistic?”
The Specialists were currently ranked sowhere in the forties.
This was because Kardian, while in their party, had cast a spell that not only killed other players but also wiped out every monster in the vicinity. For whatever reason, the system had apparently judged her as temporarily bound to Han Simin. In any case, it had lit a tiny spark of hope for the Specialists.
Han Simin’s brain spun faster.
’How can I squeeze a little more out of the Emperor? Where’s my path to first place?’
“Ah!”
Just before his head exploded from the effort, he ca up with a plan.
’What a stroke of genius.’
“Why? Did you think of sothing?”
“Yeah. And it’s all thanks to our Dian here.”
Kardian remained silent.
He pulled Kardian into his arms. She wore a sour expression, her mana once again completely drained.
“Hey, isn’t that so shaless favoritism? When Seolah or I do well, you barely even complint us, but you’re fawning all over her. Are you playing favorites?”
“You can be my pet too, then.”
“No thanks. Who knows what’ll happen to
if I beco your pet.”
He ignored Kang Yeseul’s light protest and locked eyes with Kardian.
Even at such a close distance, his gaze was bold and desperate.
Kardian’s pupils trembled.
“A-again? What now! What are you trying to make
do this ti!”
He didn’t even need to say it.
The artificial smile plastered on his face to “reassure” her and the greedy glint in his eyes were enough to make her uneasy.
She was already on edge, and now, at such a critical mont, he was hugging her and laying on the kindness way too thick.
There was no way a dragon could fail to understand what that ant.
“You’ll do it for , right?”
Kardian didn’t answer imdiately.
She understood, but there was no way to escape.
There was the unspoken pact between them, not to ntion Han Simin’s hands gripping her shoulders.
’So that’s why he suddenly ca over and gave
that out-of-the-blue hug.’
’As expected of a demon.’
The resentful glare in the beautiful woman’s eyes would have been unbearable for most n.
Han Simin didn’t even flinch.
“You’ll do it, right?”
She stayed silent.
“Thanks.”
The Specialists’ schedule for the final day was decided.
* * *
8.
The Land of Calamity.
That was the na given to the land of thunder and earthquakes that Kardian had created.
It was a place so terrifying that people were afraid to even set foot there. Even though not a single living creature remained, the ground continued to split open and lightning continued to crash down.
Naturally, no one wanted to go anywhere near it, but most guilds still sent at least one mber as a scout to watch over the area.
The reason was simple.
Just in case.
The Dragon Raid had failed, but the dragon was dying.
Only a handful of people, Kenji among them, knew the truth of that last unsettling scene. Everyone else simply assud it had been the dying dragon’s final, desperate thrash.
If that was the case, what would happen when the calamity ended?
The dragon hadn’t committed suicide, so there had to be a dying dragon sowhere.
No—even if it was already dead, they could at least recover the corpse.
That was why they had stationed scouts there.
If need be, they would explore the land once the calamity subsided, even after the selection event was over.
“Let’s not overdo it.”
“We’re out of the running for the selection event anyway. There’s no point stirring up trouble before the calamity is even over. Let’s just keep it calm and stick to scouting.”
And so, the scouts kept their distance and avoided fighting one another.
Sotis they shared food, sotis they patrolled the vast area together, and sotis they tead up to take down approaching monsters.
That was just the way of the world.
One mont you could be at each other’s throats; the next, you’d be working together for a common goal.
After several hours of this, they saw sothing strange.
“Huh?”
“What the...?”
“Are those people?”
That part wasn’t strange in and of itself.
The figures approaching from the distance were clearly human.
Humans weren’t strange.
In a world filled with impossibly shaped monsters, anyone who found a human strange had a problem with their head.
What was strange was the situation.
“Eh?”
“They’re going in?”
“What the hell?”
Three people walked straight into the Land of Calamity without a mont’s hesitation.
It happened so fast there was no ti to stop them.
The scouts looked at each other in confusion.
’Did I see that wrong?’
“You saw that, right?”
“Definitely.”
They confird what they had seen and nodded.
It wasn’t an illusion or a trick of the eye.
They fell silent.
Once they were certain, goosebumps broke out on their skin.
“What are they doing?”
“Committing suicide?”
Of course, stepping into the Land of Calamity didn’t an instant death.
The fissures and the lightning strikes had their own cycles and ranges.
After all, thousands of people had managed to survive and flee a considerable distance from the magic’s origin.
But to go ’back’ in there?
Into a zone with no discernible pattern and a random area of effect?
The scouts hurried toward the spot where the trio had entered.
By then, the ones who had gone into the Land of Calamity were already out of sight.
The scouts rushed to report back to their guilds.
“Watch for anyone coming out!”
Every scout received a new order.
Their gazes tangled in a complicated web.
A new mission ant a new dynamic.
’What should we do?’
After a mont’s thought, the scouts held out their hands to each other.
“Let’s share information.”
It wouldn’t harm their respective guilds, and it was sothing they would all have to report anyway.
Everyone nodded and scattered.
A few hours later, one of them shouted.
“Over here! Over here!”
The three people who had gone into the Land of Calamity had co back out alive.
Their entire bodies were scorched and caked in dirt.
The scouts quickly converged on them.
* * *
The major guilds, and any other guild that had stationed scouts around the Land of Calamity, went on high alert.
Officers and leaders who had been out hunting rushed toward the afflicted zone.
Those urgent movents naturally sparked rumors.
Once again, all eyes turned to the Land of Calamity.
“You’re saying you really found this in there?”
“Yes. It’s the last day, and we wanted to turn our ranking around, but we don’t have the numbers or the strength. We were about to give up, but then we decided to risk our lives one last ti. We went in, and after walking for about thirty minutes, we found this.”
“...A dragon scale.”
“Well, it’s not that we didn’t want to explore further, but since we found this, we figured we didn’t need to risk our lives for a better rank anymore. So we ca out.”
The crowd fell silent.
Though only one representative from each guild had co, dozens of people were gathered. In front of them all, Kang Yeseul lied through her teeth without batting an eye.
What she held in her hand was unmistakably a jet-black dragon scale.
“May I take a look?”
“Hey! Just because you’re from a big guild doesn’t an you can be so shaless! Are you trying to steal it?”
“My apologies.”
Greed flashed in everyone’s eyes, but no one dared to make a rash move.
They weren’t the only ones here.
Pretty much every major guild was present.
Acting thoughtlessly in a place like this would only give the other guilds an excuse to pounce.
Matching the tense mood, Kang Yeseul feigned fright and hid behind Jeong Hyeonsu’s back.
“Hyeonsu, Seolah, let’s go. I’m too scared to stay here any longer.”
“Yeah. Let’s call it a day for the guild selection. A dragon scale more than makes up for the ti we invested.”
“It is a sha, though. If we’d gone a little farther in, we could’ve picked up a few more. But of course, an earthquake had to split the ground right then.”
With that, they casually strolled away.
They had just tossed out a massive piece of bait.
Everyone gasped.
No fish could resist.
The bait the Specialists had dangled at the risk of their lives was sothing no one, not even the major guilds, could afford to ignore.
A dragon.
A dragon whose whereabouts—no, whose very life or death—were unknown.
The clue to that mystery had just co from the Specialists’ mouths.
The scouts who had ford temporary alliances scattered as if nothing had happened and rejoined their guild leaders.
Simultaneously, a ga of reading the room and frantic guild chats began.
It was a race against ti.
“You know, if I play this ga with Simin for just three years, I feel like I could inherit my dad’s company and turn it into a global corporation.”
Jeong Hyeonsu didn’t respond.
Watching the scene, Kang Yeseul shook her head.
They had used this bait before. It was an old scam.
And yet, here they were, rushing in without a shred of suspicion.
“Humans really are devious.”
“You dove in there ready to die the mont he said he’d give you a dragon scale.”
“Shh. Hyeonsu, you don’t have to bring that up.”
They sat down, opened a bag of popcorn, and watched people crawl into the Land of Calamity of their own free will.
So far, the plan was a success.
The rest was up to Han Simin.
But not a single one of them doubted he would pull it off.
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