Chapter 7
TL: Uncle Choi
Editor: Bait
At the Urban Park Gate Entrance, a man appeared from beyond the gate.
“Thank you, Mr. Kim Woo-jin.”
It was Kim Woo-jin.
After the arrival of Kim Woo-jin, the gate distorted then disappeared from the world.
“Wooah!”
“It’s over!”
All the soldiers saw it from a distance, then cheered and applauded.
With the gate gone, their mission was now over.
It was natural for them to be happy.
Therefore, Kim Woo-jin did not put much thought into the looks of admiration and cheers of the soldiers.
In a sense, he was used to receiving cheers more than anyone else.
For the Messiah Guild, every action made under their banner was cheered frantically and whole-heartedly by the whole world.
Unfortunately, not everyone looked at Kim Woo-jin this way.
There were a few people who gave him a distinctly leery stare.
It was Bang Ju-seop and his companions.
‘So he was alive.’
While the soldiers saw Kim Woo-jin as a hero, the four were looking at him like a monster.
It wasn’t odd for them to do so.
‘That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, who is he?’
‘Didn’t they say this was his first dungeon? He still managed to clear it by himself?’
‘I don’t know. I’m scared…’
While they were fighting a few goblins and struggled for two days in vain, the person that they thought was a burdensome leech ended up killing all the goblins on his own.
Of course, to Kim Woo-jin, that kind of rumor was beneficial to his reputation.
However, right now, that wasn’t important.
“Did you hear the report of what happened on the other side?”
Kim Woo-jin asked Koo Sung-hoon, a member of the support team, who replied after a nod. “I heard about it. They just said the dungeon was suddenly cleared…”
Koo Seong-hoon’s expression was not good.
“How did you do it?”
As a member of the support team, it was his duty to write a report on how the dungeon was cleared. For him to write such a report, the players in the dungeon had to explain how it was done.
After crossing the gate, however, Bang Ju-seop and his party only said that the dungeon was suddenly cleared.
Furthermore, they didn’t say anything about what happened in the dungeon.
It was hard to understand from the perspective of Koo Sung-hoon.
‘Based on the current condition of Bang Ju-seop’s party, they probably weren’t able to fight properly.’
In everyone’s view, Bang Ju-seop and his companions were the main players in the attack.
Kim Woo-jin was just a free gift attached to the group and it was thanks to Bang Ju-seop and his companions’ presence that the Phoenix Guild even permitted Kim Woo-jin to partic.i.p.ate in the attack.
However, given the present condition of the party, it was hard to say whether they played a part in the attack.
‘But that would mean that Kim Woo-jin had to eliminate all the monsters on his own…’
In other words, Kim Woo-jin cleared the dungeon by himself.
Kim Woo-jin explained his strategy to Koo Seong-hoon.
“By doing well.”
“Yes?”
Koo Seong-hoon was perplexed by Kim Woo-jin’s explanation.
‘What do you…’
He couldn’t help but panic.
At this rate, wasn’t he about to write that Kim Woo-jin caught the goblins “by doing well” in his report?
Kim Woo-jin, however, didn’t seem to care much about Koo Sung-hoon’s circ.u.mstances.
“I pretty much caught them all. So please tell them to deposit 90% of this dungeon clear rewards into my account.”
While talking, Kim Woo-jin gazed at Bang Ju-seop’s party.
Koo Sung-hoon’s gaze followed Kim Woo-jin.
Bang Ju-seop and his party instinctively avoided his gaze and looked away.
“If they object to my request, please prepare a room where I can be alone with them for a while.”
Faced with such a spectacle, Koo Seong-hoon did not know what to say.
The man in front of him was so fearsome that even Bang Ju-seop’s party avoided him.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a short break.”
Someone like Koo Sung-hoon would not dare to confront Woo-jin just to get the information out of him.
‘Ah s.h.i.+t, the team leader is going to yell at me again.’
At that moment, Koo Sung-hoon braced himself to be yelled at by his boss.
While looking at Koo Sung-hoon, Kim Woo-jin thought to himself.
‘I can probably talk to the team leader after about 30 minutes.’
Kim Woo-jin pa.s.sed by Koo Sung-hoon and moved toward one of the temporary waiting rooms made of tents.
‘I guess I can look at the catalogue while I wait.’
“Catalogue”
As soon as he shouted the command, a thin booklet appeared in front of Kim Woo-jin.
It was a booklet that was slightly larger than a palm, made up of a material similar to parchment paper, and was about 5 mm thick.
It was an ordinary looking booklet.
However, to players, it was the most precious kind of books in the world.
It was because inside the catalogue were choices for items and skills.
A page in a catalogue literally contained choices for either an item or a skill.
When you tear up a page, you can obtain what you saw on that page.
‘The color is…’
The most important feature of catalogues was that the color of the light emitted by the page. It was what determined the rarity of the item.
Normal grades don’t give off any light but rare grades give off a silver light, unique grades a gold light, and as for legendary or mythical grades the texture of the page itself changes.
Meaning, if one was lucky enough, they would be able to receive a legendary grade item.
‘This catalog only has white colors.’
Of course, miraculous drops would never happen for Kim Woo-jin so easily.
Kim Woo-jin, an Emissary of the Underworld, did not see any light leak out from his catalogue. Kim Woo-jin’s luck with catalogues was not great in his past as well.
Kim perused through the catalogue slowly without giving it much thought.
The catalogue that Kim Woo-jin received had 3 pages in total.
‘It’s all skills.’
All three pages were skill pages.
[Energy Bolt] [Energy Bomb] [Skeleton Soldier]
First two skills weren’t even worth looking at.
The Energy Bolt was a skill used to make magic arrows by consuming mana. Energy Bomb was a basic skill that allowed the user to throw condensed energy bombs.
These skills increase in power as the skill rank increases and more energy or mana is consumed depending on the level of its rank.
These weren’t skills that Kim Woo-jin even needed to consider.
‘Skeleton Soldier…’
However, the Skeleton Soldier skill was different.
‘I’m getting some bad flashbacks.’
It was because one of Johann Georg, the King of the Undead’s signature skills was Skeleton Soldier.
His skeleton soldiers were like a physical manifestation of fear.
The scene of thousands of players rus.h.i.+ng in to fight hundreds of Johann Georg’s skeleton soldiers, only to turn that into thousands of skeleton soldiers; that was something that could not even be seen in h.e.l.l.
‘It was a nightmare.’
Compared to such a scene, Kim Woo-jin’s actions against the goblins was nothing but child’s play.
Of course, there were also disadvantages to the skeleton soldier skill.
‘We would avoid fighting him in areas where corpses remained.’
The Skeleton Soldier skill also only allowed the user to use corpses from ent.i.ties killed by the user.
Above all, skills for summoning Death Warriors, Death Knights, and Liches, which were considered to be better versions of the Skeleton Soldier and could be used at anytime and anywhere. However, the Skeleton Soldier skill always needed a sacrifice to cast.
It was his fatal flaw.
‘Without such a limitation, it would have been impossible to kill him.’
By taking advantage of these weaknesses, Kim Woo-jin fought the King of Undead alone and was ultimately able to kill him.
‘I really was lucky.’
After reminiscing about the day when he fought with the King of Undead, Kim Woo-jin started to ponder.
Right now for Kim Woo-jin, choosing one of the three skills was crucial, and Kim Woo-jin had to focus.
There was actually no need to think about it.
‘I would rather fire an arrow or throw a bomb than use an energy bolt or bomb.’
At this point of time, it was actually more useful and effective for Kim Woo-jin to throw stones than to use energy bolts and bombs.
‘On the other hand, Skeleton Soldier is…’
Unlike the other two skills, the Skeleton Soldier skill could be of some use to Kim Woo-jin.
‘At the very least, it could probably buy some time.’
Of course, he didn’t have much expectations.
The only thing skeleton soldiers could do for Kim Woo-jin was buying him a few seconds.
However, Kim Woo-jin knew better than anyone how important a few seconds was. Also, he had the ability to make the use of those few seconds.
Jjiig!
So Kim Woo-jin tore up the Skeleton Soldier skill page from the catalogue without hesitation.
After he tore up the page, the Skeleton Soldier skill was obtained.
[You Have Learned The Skeleton Soldier Skill]
[Skeleton Soldier]
- Skill Rank: F
- Skill Effect: Using a corpse as a sacrifice, a skeleton soldier is summoned.
- Number of Skeletons That Can Be Summoned: 1
Kim Woo-jin, who finished checking his skills, checked his left wrist.
He was checking his watch.
‘It’s about time for him to come…’
It was at that moment.
“Ex, excuse me…”
Koo Sung-hoon had an apologetic expression. He pa.s.sed his smartphone to Kim Woo-jin then spoke.
“Sorry to bother you but the team leader wanted to talk to you about certain information pertaining to the report…”
Kim Woo-jin smiled at those words.
‘I guess I’m done messing around.’
The dungeon gate is no different from a bomb.
No one in the world knows when the monsters inside will appear.
What was troubling was that humans, the players handling that bomb, were just as volatile as the monsters.
Since the formation of the Phoenix Guild, players often caused incidents near the dungeon gate rather than behaving properly and setting a good example to the people.
The dungeon’s support teams were responsible for clearing up the incidents.
Therefore, Jung Woo-suk, the team leader of the Phoenix Guild’s dungeon support team, was not fl.u.s.tered when he received the dungeon report from Koo Sung-hoon.
‘Another weird crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d must have joined recently.’
He just thought of it as having one more freak to manage.
- I’m on the phone
“Ah, Mr. Kim Woo-jin.”
Of course, he didn’t show his true colors.
“I’m calling about the report. As you know, your cooperation in writing the report is very important. More so since Mr. Kim Woo-jin was the player with the most remarkable and outstanding performance in this dungeon clearance, and we are in desperate need of your account on the matter.”
He skillfully tried to work with the freak.
“I know that it must be very tiring but please cooperate with us. It will also help us evaluate your performance.”
I wheedled it in.
Of course Jung Woo-seok knew.
‘I wouldn’t have to call him in the first place if he can be persuaded with just words.’
He knew that the conversation would not end here.
‘Those who recently became players tend to have s.h.i.+ttier personalities.’
That was what the species known as players were like.
There were players who thought they were chosen by G.o.d, as well as those who viewed ordinary people as plebeians.
They were the type of people who thought that it was only natural that everyone else had show them respect.
‘The a.s.s kissing is complete.’
The reason why Jung Woo-seok spoke in a persuasive manner was to show that he has already done enough to stroke his ego.
‘If he doesn’t want to cooperate, we don’t have any reason to cooperate with him either.’
If Kim Woo-jin ignored this and did not cooperate, Jung Woo-seok was also determined to be uncooperative.
Just when Jung Woo-seok thought Kim Woo-jin would remain being uncooperative…
- Ah, I’m sorry about that.
‘Yes?’
Unexpectedly, Kim Woo-jin’s reaction was not within Jung Woo-seok’s expectations.
- I didn’t know what to do because it was my first time. It seems like I have caused great trouble to the support team for no reason. I will help Mr. Koo Sung-hoon with his report right away.
‘Wha, what the heck?’
It wasn’t just out of his expected range, it was very far removed from it.
- I apologize once again for the inconvenience.
“No, not at all.”
Jung Woo-seok was embarra.s.sed for a moment.
“Thank you for helping me with the report.”
“No, we should help each other. Thanks to the support team, players like me can focus solely on clearing the dungeon.”
Thanks to such words, Jung Woo-seok’s expression eased.
‘He’s an okay guy.’
“It’s nice of you to say so. If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.”
He was more than willing to cooperate with those who were willing to cooperate back.
- Is it possible for you to introduce me to a dungeon level that I want to clear? That is if it’s not too much trouble.
“Of course, it is our job to find the dungeon for players anyway, it’s not difficult at all.”
So when a simple request for cooperation came out, Jung Woo-sung didn’t really worry.
- If there is a 1-story dungeon that appeared recently in a metropolitan area that is permitted to those below Lv 10, around a B difficulty, and related to goblins, I would like to clear it.
Hearing Kim Woo-jin’s request, Jung Woo-seok began to type the keywords using the keyboard in front of him.
Then, one result immediately appeared.
“Oh, there is one in Seongnam. Clearing the Siek Goblin Tribe, below level 10, difficulty level B-rank…”
Jung Woo-seok saw it and replied.
“By the way, you need to get an approval from the guild for a B-Grade difficulty dungeon. Is that alright?”
At such question, Kim Woo-jin replied.
“I guess I’ll have to work even harder on the report to get a signature of approval.”
Jung Woo-seok laughed at his reply.
“Haha, I guess you’re right.”
A player’s evaluations were made in part through the reports.
At this moment, Jung Woo-seok already made up his mind.
‘Looking at the dungeon signup registrations, there are already three decent party applications, so getting the authorization for a run is not a problem. The rest of the members will just be letting him on a bus. It would not be bad for me to let the inexperienced players in and let them gain some experience.’
Jung Woo-seok would gladly give Kim Woo-jin special treatment using his status as the leader of the support team.
“If you just send me the report, I’ll apply for you right away. Though whether you’ll be accepted is not certain,”
Kim Woo-jin answered.
- Thank you. If it all works out well, a meal is on me.
That was the end of the call.
Jeong Woo-seok, who put his smartphone down, smiled with content.
‘I’ve never met such a nice, hard-working, and cooperative player before.’