Chapter 335: Episode 335_OP (5)
7.
The absence of a Main Quest.
The greatest and most spectacular tectonic shift the continent had seen in a year and a half.
And the lingering aftertaste.
Now that even that aftertaste had faded, the continent entered a new phase.
People who had been living in constant anxiety, convinced the continent might collapse at any moment, returned to their daily routines. Life became so lively that you could say they had completely forgotten the Demon King or Heavenly King had ever even crossed over.
If anything, things were brighter than before.
It couldn’t be helped. More than 70% of the continent’s population had never actually witnessed the events with their own eyes; they had only heard the stories. But the clear fact was that it had all happened while they were awake and breathing. For the sake of the continent’s peace, they had worked hard, prepared to deal with demons they had never seen, and generously supported the armies that fought them. Besides that, plenty of people had suffered direct damage at the hands of the Warlock.
In any case, the fact that they had survived a crisis that would go down as a Chapter in the continent’s history gave them immense pride and became a driving force in their lives.
And the users returned to their own routines as well.
Nothing special. The only difference was that, instead of scrambling to pick up the scraps falling off the Main Quest, they were now leveling up, exploring dungeons, hunting Named Monsters, and going on expeditions to farm rare items.
With peace returning to the continent and even the afterglow of the great war fading—in novel terms, with the open ending and even the epilogue wrapped up—users’ attention naturally shifted to boss raids, the one thing no ordinary RPG could avoid.
This didn’t happen all of a sudden; it was just that people’s attention had been abnormally fixated on the Main Quest due to the sheer scale of the events. Most users—and viewers who didn’t even play the game—preferred flashy combat scenes and coordinated raids against monsters with absurd patterns, attack power, and HP, rather than the broad strokes of continental history or the details of ongoing quests.
Dino was no different.
After spending a long time roaming the continent to level up and trigger Awakenings, he finally turned his stream back on.
Kenji’s official channel.
Viewers flocked to the broadcast, which had gone live for the first time in ages. Their conscious interest had faded after such a long absence, but deep in their subconscious, their expectations and hopes for Kenji still remained. Even after a year or two, the imprint he had left on their minds was too strong to be erased. Especially for viewers who watched streams for the thrill of seeing someone else blow ridiculous amounts of money, there was no greater potential idol.
Standing before the gathering viewers, Dino showed off the most spectacular, most crowd-pleasing side of himself yet.
He was the textbook example of the mage archetype that Han Simin had always wanted. He didn’t have the grimoire, but after repeated Awakenings, he could freely use four different spells at once, and a dazzling array of magic poured from his hands.
—Wow.
—Please show us some raids too.
—Insane. I didn’t know you could play a mage like this.
“From now on, aside from rest periods, the stream will be on every day, and I plan to focus on raid-centered gameplay. Also, if there are any users over level 80, or anyone with a Special-grade class or a Unique-grade or higher class that would be useful in war, the Kenji Guild is actively recruiting.”
A new trend, suited to the new era, was beginning.
*
The Four Forbidden Zones.
Once users had the breathing room to think about war and raids, and once they reached the levels to back that up, the places that had once seemed utterly unreachable slowly began to show traces of human footsteps.
They were still locations where even rankers would often go in only to come back out dead, but once it was proven that the rewards were worth the risk, parties of users who had just broken past level 100 began to slowly move toward the Four Forbidden Zones.
Even the hunting grounds that formed the borders of the Forbidden Zones, the areas that blocked direct access, were spewing out countless types of monsters the continent’s users had never seen before. Their patterns were so unpredictable that users couldn’t even begin to get a read on them, leaving them in utter confusion.
But the more confused they were, the more the scene buzzed with energy.
Stronger monsters.
Stronger rewards.
For users, there was nothing more motivating in a game than that.
The spark that truly lit the fuse was when one well-known streamer, after forming a party of rankers, challenged a Named Monster near the western Forbidden Zone border. After dying multiple times, they finally took it down. When the news that a level 110 Legendary-grade item had dropped there spread worldwide through his stream, the fire truly caught.
It wasn’t the first Legendary ever, but it was a top-tier item at a level that rankers would soon be able to reach.
The price?
It wasn’t even a discussion.
It was a piece of glove-type gear, a slot players didn’t particularly favor, and yet Dino laughed in the face of community chatter that it wouldn’t fetch much and slapped down a price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy it.
Users who were high enough level and met the conditions to reach the Forbidden Zones or their borders began moving their hunting grounds there, one after another. It went even further: there were countless people who pulled out their real-world rental deposits, sold their cars, and even sold their homes just to gear up enough to hunt there.
It was only natural.
A single item could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course, Legendary items only dropped if you were lucky, but the fact that ranker-level Legendary items could drop there meant that lower-tier items would also drop. Given that Fantastic World’s popularity was punching through the ceiling with no end in sight, it was a gamble well worth staking your life on.
Just getting one would pay back your investment.
If you got two or three, you could become richer in real life than the amount you had put in. And when it felt like the well was about to run dry, you could sell the gear you had put together and still not take a loss.
There wasn’t a single user who geared up thinking they were going to lose money.
It was a world where even users who weren’t high enough level were scrambling to get their hands on items.
—These days, instead of real estate—where insane land prices could crash at any moment—the hot thing is “Fan-vesting”: buying Fantastic World gear that only ever goes up in value.
—For real. My dad doesn’t know jack about Fantastic World, but he sold one of his buildings and bought gear. He gave me a $500 allowance, and I stayed up all night feeding him the info I’d collected.
—Is it true that there aren’t any Unique items above level 70 on the continent right now because they’re all sold out? I heard even the NPCs are dragging out old stock they’d been sitting on.
Another layer of reality.
And a life that was becoming more and more intertwined with the NPCs.
People were diving headfirst into a world where, as always, money flowed without end.
The age of raids had dawned, and streaming, naturally, thrived right alongside it.
Kenji’s guild, known for sweeping up every rare listing and high-grade item the moment they hit the auction house, grew more dazzling by the day.
Now, that very guild stood before Dragonia.
Estimated level: 150.
It was a Named Monster discovered on the border of the Northern Unknown Land.
It looked just like a dragon, only slightly smaller.
They had gathered to take down this very monster.
Their numbers had grown; this was no longer a small elite squad. Breaking from their old habit of hunting with a fixed roster, Kenji’s guild had assembled an expedition of diverse members and classes.
As if to prove the confidence on expedition leader Dino’s face was not mere bravado, the barrage of magic and skills that erupted the moment Dragonia appeared was enough to draw a whistle of admiration from any onlooker.
There were numerous high-level rankers.
With what seemed like every Unique- and Special-grade user they could muster, the expedition boasted such a varied lineup of classes that it seemed they might actually stand a chance against Dragonia—a raid on a Special-grade Named Monster, to be precise.
As always, this was what mattered.
Variables.
A wide range of cards you could play.
Card Masters, Shapeshifters, Bomb Makers, and more.
It was an expedition where every class under the sun had gathered, and Dino—a tactical genius—finally had a stage to showcase his previously overlooked talents, leading the raid with maximum efficiency.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
While commanding the raid, he unleashed his own powerful magic as well.
At a glance, the raid seemed to be cluttered with "janky" skills that could easily get in the way. Yet, when used at the right place and time, these skills—despite causing some collateral damage—allowed Dino to minimize casualties from Dragonia’s attacks.
Naturally, the one who stood out most was Dino himself.
From the very beginning, he had been pitifully revealed as a Legendary-grade Archmage, yet instead of being remembered as a flashy Legendary mage, he had long been branded as the scrub who got his skill book stolen and was ruined by Han Simin. Now, his spells were loaded with all the pent-up frustration from that history.
They were so powerful that no one would dare speak of him that way again.
His spells weren’t just powerful; they were strategically invaluable to the raid.
GRAAAAH!
The raid dragged on for hours.
Dragonia grew exhausted, and the expedition’s firepower gradually waned.
But in the end, the victors were the expedition led by Dino.
By the time the raid concluded, the number of viewers watching Dino’s stream had quietly surpassed two million.
If the pay-per-view scene belonged to Han Simin, then the free-to-watch scene belonged to Kenji’s channel; the numbers drove that point home.
It was the cincher.
A declaration that the rivals of Han Simin, the Specialists, had regrouped and returned.
“Kenji Guild’s final target is the Demon King. If you want to have it all, do not hesitate to contact us.”
And with that, it was a declaration of war.
*
Han Simin also watched the Dragonia raid live.
It wasn’t out of any particular wariness toward a competitor.
He was just bored while power-leveling Han Yeori.
He would rather die than watch a stream that charged a viewing fee, but Kenji’s channel had always been more about promotion than direct moization, so it was open to everyone. That was why he could watch it.
Watching the stream, he clapped his hands.
It was applause from the heart.
“Wow. Holy shit, that’s what a Legendary class looks like.”
Even as he was constantly thinking that, among Legendary-grade classes, Buffers were the most broken, he couldn’t hide his envy as he watched the stream.
Personal judgment aside, he couldn’t deny his own preferences.
Colossal spells rained down from the sky.
Dragonia’s HP was shaved away in great chunks.
The ground was scorched into a wasteland.
These were things one simply could not do with buffs, enhancements, or tricks for controlling monsters.
He didn’t pay much attention to the statement that was basically a declaration of war.
“They’re still making a fuss about killing the Demon King, huh.”
From his perspective, it was a statement that completely missed the mark.
“Man, the Main Quest isn’t even active right now, and he’s out there trying to create a Main Quest. I’ll give him points for effort.”
And the goal was obvious.
“I wonder if Kenji made it safely to Heaven with the Heavenly King. Looks like things are going well for him.”
Their objective was obvious, so there was no reason to be scared.
“I should just focus on making a ton of money. Yeori, starting today, we’re cutting your break time by thirty minutes. We’ll level you up fast and then go rake in the profits.”
His goal was still money, and so was the goal of the party, which now had one more member.
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