Chapter 66. Provocation (2)

Channel one became the single best channel, just like its name, ‘One’. The viewers discussed about the Heroic Lands and its contents that Gale had shown them even after the broadcast was over, and claimed that they needed to get through the Path to Death as soon as possible.

However, it wasn’t like the Path to Death became easier just because they wanted to. Thanks to Gale’s broadcast, the guilds with enough power started to attack the Path to Death, but it still did not allow a single user to pass again.

“One guild? Was there such a guild?”

Seo Wontae tilted his head and checked the report again.

“It’s a small, elite-force guild, that is wrapped in mysteriousness, but and they’re quite famous. BJ Gale, that we reported to you last time, is the guild master of this guild.”

“Ah! The solo play user from the Cave of Giants?”

“Yes, that is him.”

Thanks to Gale’s solo play on the Cave of Giants, Raonsoft had a very hard time.

“That user called Gale…… he’s not using a hack. How can he progress at such a fast rate?”

“It is impossible to find out about the details, and according to Chaos’s reply he’s a quadra-soul user, and has an extremely normal set of ancient knowledge.”

“A quadra soul? Is that even possible? It’s not like we sell karma coupons for cash…….”

“I also find it curious, but I cannot find about anymore.”

“Whoa…… that’s an interesting user.”

“He is classified as an attentive user in our team and is under our monitoring.”

“How about the other members of the One guild?”

“The thing is…… we aren’t aware of all the members of the One guild just yet. It’s so secretive that the only known ones are BJ Gale and the PvP user Blake. The rest are not even known yet. We don’t even know how many members there are in the guild either.”

“The guild is just as mysterious as this Gale user.”

“It seems like it’s a gathering of special, and extremely elite users.’

“This guild is also under monitoring, correct?”

“Yes. They’re targets of monitoring along with Gale. However…… there isn’t any information about them whether it’s online or offline, so there aren’t many things we can find about about them.”

“Keep up your monitoring just in case. Oh! The proposal to lower the difficulty of Path of Despair will not be accepted. No matter how I think about it, lowering the difficulty now feels as though we’re forgetting about the future because of our immediate losses. The difficulty will not be increased or decreased. It will stay as it is.”

Due to the complaints from the users, the operation team proposed to nerf the Path of Despair (aka Path to Death), but Seo Wontae felt that this would be too much interference into the game and put down the proposal.

“Understood, sir.”

The operation team leader also nodded without saying anything back. Actually, he only proposed it just in case, and didn’t actually think that there was a need for it to be nerfed. EL was a world that was highly completed, so it would be better not to touch it as much as possible.

Even after the operation team leader left, Seo Wontae tapped on his desk for quite a while with a bitter smile on his face.

‘The game was designed under the assumption that there may be a total freak that may surpass everyone’s imaginations…… but to think there is even more of a freak than what I could imagine……. So, the world is wide and there are a lot of freaks out there?’

Seo Wontae could only bitterly laugh at the appearance of Gale and the One guild that completely surpassed his imaginations.

Though, he didn’t even know in his dreams that the user that surpassed his imagination was only a single person, and that person had returned from the future.

***

‘We’ll pop One guild’s bubble!’

This was Crusader’s declaration.

They declared that on various EL forum sites and said that they’ll boldly challenge the One guild on tomorrow’s Live Channel regular broadcast.

At the same time, they also threatened by saying that they’ll give orders to kill on sight any members of the One guild if they did not accept the war.

Crusader thought that this daring provocation was definitely going to profit them whether One guild accepted or not.

Mutou believed that his one move would resuscitate the completely screwed channel Crusader, and also raise the popularity of their guild.

Of course, the reactions weren’t that positive. Their intentions were obvious, so the majority of users criticized them instead.

Although some of the Japanese users spoke up for them, but negative reactions were the majority even within Japan.

However, Mutou had already expected this reaction. The reason he still did it was because noise marketing was also a marketing strategy and they may receive great effects.

The noise would disappear soon anyway, and their popularity would remain behind. That’s how it worked around here.

‘Pah! Crusader? A guild war?”

Sanghyuk, who received a report from Ilya, laughed the moment the guild war notification popped up.

‘Crusader…… How long were these guys able to keep the live channel again?’

Sanghyuk combed through his memories and tried hard to think about what information he had about Crusader, but he couldn’t think up of that much.

In the first place, Crusader was outside of his interest.

In his previous life, Crusader was also one of the first 30 guilds to win a live channel, but they were also the guild that gave up the channel and disappeared without a sound.

“A guild war, huh……. It does make me feel ridiculous.”

Muttered Sanghyuk in a small voice and had called out various menus related to the guild.

Crusader’s declaration of war.

If Sanghyuk accepted this guild war, then a two-way guild war would be established. Of course, there was no need to accept it either. However, if he didn’t accept, his guild reputation would fall a little.

Guild reputation decided the level of the guild, so refusing the guild war several times may actually result in a decrease of guild level.

Of course, it wasn’t like one or two rejections had much effect. And right now, Sanghyuk wasn’t planning to level up his guild either. The most important reason for leveling up a guild was to raise the number of members limitation and accept more members, but the One guild was a 1-man guild, so that kind of thing meant nothing.

‘So, they want to gain some attention by using the One guild, huh?’

Sanghyuk naturally knew what they were thinking. Actually, this was obvious in anyone’s eyes.

“Ilya, there’s some work to do.”

Sanghyuk was planning to use the ‘Gather Information’ skill from the Hiddenline and get the information he wanted.

“Gather information about the Crusader guild. I especially need information on their core guild members. Give me the first, simple report in around 4 hours. And give me the secondary detailed report in 24 hours.”

“Understood. I’ll immediately utilize all the information network of the Hiddenline to gather information.”

“Oh, and let’s manipulate something while we’re at it. Leak the information that One guild is going to aim for the guild house of the Crusader guild. Don’t be too blatant about it, and be very secretive…… make it so that the other part would have to spend some effort to find this out. Is that possible?”

“Yes, it is.”

Sanghyuk used both Gather information and Manipulate information before standing up.

‘If you want a fight, I’ll give you one.’

Sanghyuk had a smile on his face.

In the first place, there was no reason for him to avoid this guild war. It may look on the surface like a 1 vs many and was disadvantageous to Sanghyuk in every way…… but that was only in a simple calculation that did not consider Sanghyuk’s overwhelming skills.

In fact, there were more things Sanghyuk could do precisely because he was alone.

“For now…… let’s give them a simple greeting, eh?”

He wouldn’t decline a fight that walked into him. That was his way.

The Crusader guild was at level 5, and the number of members they had was nearly 400, which was the limit on the number of members at level 5.

They did declare war on the One guild, but didn’t show any movement just yet. It wasn’t like the One guild was something they could find just because they looked for it.

As they were known to have gone to the Heroic Lands, it would be practically impossible for them to find them in the Land of Dusk or the Hellfire Desert.

In any case, the Crusaders were planning to look for One guild in their broadcast 12 hours later along with a large-scale hunt-to-kill order.

Even if they did not manage to find him, they had to make a large commotion in order to attract attention, and also claim that the One guild had run due to fear.

However, that was just what they thought.

They thought that they were the ones on top of this war…… but that was a big mistake.

‘The main playing field of the Crusaders is the western city of the Hellfire Desert, Moongram……. Their guild house is still in the Land of Dusk since they hadn’t transferred yet, but the majority of the Crusader members act with here as the base, huh?’

Ilya’s first report had some simple pieces of information, but the quality of that information was in no way low.

Sanghyuk closed the report window and had a look around. Moongram was the coolest place in Hellfire Desert, so the heat of the desert could barely be felt. Since it was night right now, the heat couldn’t be felt at all.

Perhaps due to that, the users preferred Moongram the most out of all the cities in Hellfire Desert.

Before Sanghyuk entered Moongram, he first changed some of the recording settings.

‘Set it to night mode…… and if the resolution is lacking, I can just enhance it later, right?’

If the Crusaders were preparing for tomorrow’s broadcast, Sanghyuk was planning to create a video today and broadcast it tomorrow.

‘Let’s see…… in a situation like this, Blake should be the one appearing, right?’

Sanghyuk equipped the Shadow Duke of Falcon title on the postfix position and called out the avatar ‘Blake’.

Paah!

Sanghyuk disappeared in an instant and Blake replaced him.

‘Well, then. Shall I start?’

Sanghyuk opened the guild management window and accepted the declaration of war from Crusader.

You have accepted the guild, Crusader’s, declaration of war.

Starting now, guild, One, and guild, Crusader, will be in a hostile relationship and free battle mode will be enabled between the two.

With that, Mutou, the guild master of Crusader, would have been notified that he had accepted the guild war, but the problem was that it wasn’t transmitted to all the guild members.

***

The users of Crusader enjoyed their game like they always did. Although a declaration of war was given, the management-level personnel had said that there was no need to be nervous since it wasn’t like the One guild had accepted it anyway.

They judged that they only needed to be nervous about tomorrow’s regular broadcast and get ready for that.

As such, the guild members were walking around the city streets of Moongram very freely.

“Since we’re never going to hunt anymore starting tomorrow once the hunt-to-kill order is out, so let’s just level up today.”

A normal member of the Crusader guild, Izumi, was close to leveling up, and asked another ordinary member of the guild, Asano, who was also a friend in real life, to carry him a little.

“How much do you have left? I need to leave later.”

“I think 30 minutes in the cactus forest will be enough.”

“Hmm……. Okay. Then it’s just 30 minutes, okay?”

“Thanks, you’re my best friend.”

“Then treat me to something later.”

Izumi was able to enter the Crusader guild that he dreamed of, thanks to Asano’s recommendation, as he had a much higher level. Thanks to that, he focused on the game a lot nowadays, and tried his best to become a user fit to become a Crusader.

Though, the only thing he could do was to level up, but in any case, Izumi was trying his best.

“Then let’s go right n-“

Spah! Slice!

Asano was about to turn around and leave Moongram. However, not only was he not able to turn around, he couldn’t even finish his words.

Asano suddenly collapsed sideways. At that moment, Izumi was about to scream due to the sudden turn of events, but a sword pierced his mouth before he could.

Paah, ruch!”

“Krrrrgh!”

Asano was sliced in two by a single slash, while Izumi was decapitated by a simple stab.

The sword that suddenly came from the darkness defeated the two users with two simple actions.

‘Blake’ of One guild has defeated ‘Lone Wolf’ of Crusader guild.

‘Blake’ of One guild has defeated ‘Samuraizumi’ of Crusader guild.

Two members of Crusader died in the alleys of Moongram, but no one saw what killed them.

Only a single sword suddenly appeared from the darkness, erased the two of them, and disappeared back into the darkness.

A monster walked inside the darks of Moongram.

that monster quickly and accurately devoured the members of Crusader.

Before Crusader could even react properly, they were bitten to death.

That monster was planning to turn Moongram into a gigantic graveyard tonight.