A bow and arrow appeared in front of Sungchul.
They were ordinary bow and arrow made of wood from a Cherry tree.
[Grab your weapon.]
A loud shout-like instructions were blasted from beyond the wilderness sowhere.
Sungchul picked up the bow and arrow without hesitation.
It was a common occurrence. The quests created specific scenarios and evaluated the challenger based on how he overca the predicant.
But these were all out of fashion nowadays.
The mont the ‘right answer’ becos known, these fixed requirent quests lose all initial difficulty, transforming into a re rite of passage that grants free rewards.
But with the absence of prior knowledge, these type of quests are able to fully function as a test as they were intended.
‘Not easy.’
This was the most difficult type of quest for soone with god-like power like Sungchul to deal with.
Sungchul, for the second ti after eting Aegehios, waited nervously for the ssage that was to appear.
Soon, a bright light burst from behind Sungchul.
The culprit were several bags full of tokens that also had bumps that resembled eyes nose and lips and even made laughing sounds.
“There’s a ton of stuff that you like.”
Bertelgia said with a grin.
There were nine money bags in total.
They ford a line a set distance away from Sungchul with uniform distance between each other.
‘What are they trying to do?’
Sungchul stared out into the wilderness at the twinkling sources of light that could be seen from within darkness.
[The condition is as follows]
A voice shouted from sowhere beyond the wilderness.
[On the other side is a single archer, and behind you stands nine money bags that hold between 10,000 to 100,000 Tokens each.]
“Hu…Hundred thousand?”
Bertelgia flew out of the pocket to go check the money bags. And promised, each of the money bags seed to be filled to the brim with tokens each worth between 1,000 to 10,000. One of the heftier looking bags full of giant tokens stood directly to Sungchul’s left, making bizarre laughing noises.
After a brief silence, the shouting voice resud speaking.
[The archer will shoot down the money bags one by one, and the last arrow will be aid at you before it dissapears.]
[Your task is as follows.]
[You are allowed to use only a single arrow to hit the archer. If you hit the archer, the trial ends in success. And if you fail, then the trial ends here.]
[Note that the mont you complete this trial, tokens inside all surviving Money Bags is yours to keep]
Sungchul’s eyes flickered for a mont with greed.
He estimated that the total value of tokens behind him were around 300,000.
It was an absurd amount.
Assuming every bag survives, that challenger would be able to buy enough Essence of Spirits to reach 999 on every stat and obtain almost every high value item in the shop, such as the Second Inner Fla.
It ant a single success here had the potential to transform a powerful individual into an immortal being. And for if they were already in the sa class as Immortals like Sungchul…
Nothing else mattered. If he could salvage just one of those 100,000 token bag, Sungchul could beco vastly stronger.
‘So this is the Hidden Trial? Marakia, that guy. He reeled in sothing huge.’
Sungchul thought of all sorts of old folklore about various birds that repaid their debts like ravens, crows, cranes, and swallows as he lifted up his bow and arrow.
[Hear ye. You are only permitted to use your head, body, and the provided bow and arrow. The use of anything else is forbidden.]
[Now then, we shall begin the Hidden Trial.]
Ssst.
Even before the shouting finished, an arrow ca flying from the other side.
For a brief mont, Sungchul used his senses to search among the thousands of star-like glistening lights in the distance to locate the archer. But he found that the archer was too far away.
‘Attacking as soon as we start. Not bad.’
As Sungchul readied himself for his next opportunity, the fired arrow flew past Sungchul and landed squarely on the face of the laughing money bag.
“Uwah ha ha ha! Ten thousand! Ten thousand is evaporating~!”
The money bag hit by the arrow spoke for the first ti as it fell to the ground, spilling the countless tokens contained within onto the floor.
Clang.
Thousands of Dungeon Tokens let out a clattering noise as they rolled around the floor before they popped out of existence with a faint light that also swallowed up the remains of the fallen money bag.
Just like that, ten thousand tokens evaporated before their eyes.
“Ugh… what a waste.”
Bertelgia muttered to herself before she turned to Sungchul and shivered as she tried to encourage him.
“Try your best on the next opportunity.”
“… Of course.”
Sungchul quickly returned his full attention back on the task at hand. Only one had been lost so far after all.
Though it was not a weapon Sungchul often used, Sungchul was a master in every weapon and could utilize the bow as if it was an extension of his body.
It would be no difficulty to put an arrow through a target once it was located.
Sungchul held the bow half drawn and focused all of his senses as he glared in the direction of the horizon.
‘Is there more than one archer?’
There were many beings hidden in the darkness beyond.
One among them made a move.
“?!”
Lasers seed to shoot out of Sungchul’s eyes as he visually chased the moving target like an eagle. But once he recognized what the creature was, he laughed out loud.
“Do you want , Mr. Sterile?”
It was the self-proclaid Idol Master of the dungeon, Succubus.
In fact, aside from her, this pitch-black wilderness was hiding all sorts of bosses Sungchul had defeated throughout his quests here.
They were likely present as a sort of a cao, but their presence successfully served as a minor distraction to Sungchul.
Ffft.
An arrow ca flying from within the crowd of diverse monsters arranged below.
Sungchul montarily realized the location of the archer but didn’t manage to let loose the arrow in ti.
‘Damn.’
The fact that there was only one arrow granted to him made him hesitate and stay his hands.
The arrow flew past Sungchul who resigned himself to his fate and pierced through yet another money bag.
“Uwa ha ha ha! Fifty thousand! Fifty thousand is flying away~”
Ching Clang
The loss this ti was rather severe. It bit deep into the bone.
Ssst.
A look of madness settled into Sungchul’s expressions.
Another arrow ca flying in, but he was completely unable to respond to it, because it had co flying not from the front but from the back.
As Sungchul drew the bow tight and turned around behind him, he could still feel the presence of sothing lting into the darkness beyond the collapsing bonus reward money bag.
He might have been able to hit it if he were to shoot now.
But he could miss.
His instincts as an archer whispered to him,
‘Don’t make such high-risk gamble.’
Sungchul loosened his grip on the bow again and look onward.
“Ooh hyo hyo hyo! Twenty thousand! Twenty thousand tokens are lost~!”
In just a few monts, three of the bonus reward money bags were already gone.
The sense of loss and urgency started to make Sungchul feel anxious.
‘I cannot lose any more of them. I must succeed on the next opportunity.
Sungchul changed his strategy.
Instead of responding to the enemy after seeing it, he would keep his bow drawn and ready to fire the instant he felt the archer’s presence.
Sungchul’s dynamic visual acuity along with his senses as an archer would make it possible for him to respond instantaneously no matter where the enemy were to appear.
The only real problem he had was the many monsters that moved about in his field of view. Sungchul looked upon these obstacles and thought to himself,
‘Perhaps that is the true objective behind this Hidden Trial.’
The quests that have the participant assu a specific role to carry out necessarily cos with a specific intent of the quest maker.
The Pinnacle of Culinary Arts quest he recently completed was the sa.
It carried a clearly defined intent, and rewarded those who figured it out with the sweet prize called success.
The quest Sungchul was currently undergoing must necessarily, therefore, likewise contain a similar objective.
It occurred to Sungchul at so point of what Aegehios had said, that the Dungeon of the Gods exists to test the will.
Sparks flew out of Sungchul’s eyes like a flash of lightening.
‘I see. This Hidden Trial… must have direct connections to yet another trial.’
In other words, the purpose of these trials was to test the will of the challenger.
The intentions of the quest maker must be to see if the challenger possesses an unbreakable will, one akin to a tree standing tall at the top of a treacherous mountain.
Sungchul felt a calm settle over his heart.
His mind that was shaken by the loss of so many dungeon tokens was pacified by sothing deep within, by so powerful source of will that quietly took up the mantle in his stead after he had let himself down.
‘Co, archer.”
“…”
The many distractions on the field now no longer held sway over Sungchul. Shout and move about they may try to grab his attention, Sungchul’s unbreakable will rendered them nonexistent.
Sungchul now had enough calm to isolate his enemy from the world around them.
And such an internal transformation was best recognized by Bertelgia who was the closest one to his heart.
‘He finally found his path.’
She felt a heavy burden lift off of her shoulders.
There were still plenty of Dungeon Tokens remaining, and the bag containing a hundred thousand token was still alive.
Ping.
A faint nearly inaudible sound could be heard from the darkness abroad.
It was the sound of the arrow being let loose, heard for the first ti since the trial began. But Sungchul’s expression did not ease up one bit.
‘How can this be?’
It was too far, the originating point of the sound.
And his concern soon manifested into reality.
Ssssht-
The arrow released from ultra-long range drew a very high arc in the sky and pierced through one bonus reward bag nearly vertically from above.
“Uwa ha ha ha~ Ten Thousand! Ten Thousand is gone~!”
The loss of ten thousand Dungeon Token was indeed a grave loss. But what troubled Sungchul was the reality that retaliation was impossible.
It didn’t matter if Sungchul himself possessed powers that rival the gods. The limitation on the power and effectiveness of the arrow was limited by the bow, and more specifically, it was determined by the elastic potential.
Therefore, no matter how alert and ready Sungchul himself was, if Sungchul wanted to launch a retaliatory attack for such a long distance, he would likewise have to mimic the archer hiding in the shadows and point his bow high up in the sky and have the arrow follow a similar elliptical trajectory.
Yes, it was certainly possible for him to do so.
However, the archer was aiming at a stationary target, and Sungchul had to hit a moving one.
The difference in the nature of their respective targets resulted in the grim reality that it was not possible for Sungchul to fight back.
Shht-
Another bonus reward bag disappeared after being pierced by yet another arrow.
The archer seed determined to turn Sungchul into a living manifestation of despair, releasing a hail of arrows to erase Sungchul’s shares.
Sungchul’s mind that had been brought to a state of calm was now being rocked violently by a hurricane by the na of wrath.
‘This son of a…’
Seething anger raged like an inferno in Sungchul’s eyes.
“Calm down. You still have the one containing a hundred thousand left alive.”
Bertelgia surmised what Sungchul must be feeling right now and turned around to count real quick to let him know this important fact.
‘Hundred thousand. If I can just manage to protect a hundred thousand then it’s still good enough.’
For a while, there was no sign of the archer hiding in the shadows as if it was taking a quick breather.
Within the brief mont of peace, Sungchul redoubled his determination to protect the surviving hundred thousand reward bag at any cost.
No, he had initially thought that.
Wrath and calm, hot and cold, as Sungchul repeatedly entered the two extres of his emotions, a question suddenly popped into his head.
‘Wait. Am I seriously misunderstanding sothing?’
Sshht
Another arrow ca flying.
“Uwah ha ha! Fifty thousand! Fifty thousand is evaporating~!”
One of the last two remaining reward bag was destroyed.
If it was like before, he would have felt soul crushing sense of loss. But it was no longer the case.
‘I see.’
What appeared at the corner of Sungchul’s lips was a faint smile.
The bowstring he had held taut went loose. Sungchul lowered his bow and gazed out into the darkness beyond.
“Wh… What are you doing? Are you really going to give up on it? It’s a hundred thousand!”
Bertelgia was absolutely stunned at Sungchul’s apparent resignnt to his fate.
Sungchul remained non-responsive.
“…”
A figure erged from the darkness.
It was not a human.
It was a weakest and the most pathetic enemy even a beginner adventurer could defeat, a singular goblin archer.
The one responsible for driving Sungchul, the Enemy of the world, into fit of rage and despair was but a re goblin.
“I… I can kill sothing like that with a smash with the corner of my covers!”
Bertelgia was enraged as if she was going to go fly down to the arrogantly laughing goblin and kill it herself, but Sungchul instead felt at peace.
‘So that’s how it is.’
The Goblin nocked an arrow and drew the bow towards Sungchul.
Sungchul did not react.
Ping~
The goblin let loose an arrow, and the arrow flew in a near straight line to pierce through the hundred thousand token b ag.
Several thousand tokens clattered and clanged against the floor as it rained down spectacularly.
The goblin gave Sungchul a rotten smile.
Sungchul imdiately raised his bow and drew the bowstring.
The goblin looked terrified and surprised.
Goblin hastely nocked another arrow onto the bow and aid towards Sungchul.
“T… That little!”
Bertelgia showed intense animosity. But in an unexpected and spontaneous motion, Sungchul spun around to face behind him and showed his back to the Goblin.
“My purpose here…”
Sungchul’s calm voice echoed through the air.
Sungchul’s eyes were scanning the darkness where seemingly nothing and no one remained.
His eyes were as serene as the waves of the ocean, but he could sohow tell. His eyes could see things seen only by those who possess will as stubborn as the lone tree standing atop a lonely mountain; the archer he was ant to defeat.
“…Is but one. The completion of this trial.”
Sungchul released the arrow and let fly.
Ping~
Finally, his one and only arrow left his bow and landed on the unseen enemy below.
[Excellent]
A bellowing voice echoed from beyond the fields.
Sungchul let out a sigh and put down his bow.
The darkness covering the fields beyond began to dissipate.
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