Chapter 69. Top Ranker (1)

The sword reached. No, it just grazed past.

However, the result was…….

*Slash, crunch!*

Another elite member of the Crusader guild collapsed with his body split into two.

There were no exceptions. The moment any of them touched Blake’s sword, their bodies were blown into smithereens.

It was an insanely destructive power! Although none of them knew how he did it, every time Blake swung his sword, a Crusader guild member collapsed on the ground.

Blake took care of the 10 elite users in front of him in mere 20 seconds before crushing the gates of the guild house and entering.

Of course, Crusader didn’t stay still. 20 more elite users immediately surrounded Blake and attacked him.

However, Blake evaded all of those attacks with nonsensical movements. He moved around as though he knew the dead angle of all of those attacks and evaded almost all of the attacks just by twisting his body.

Some attacks did land on him, but Blake’s defense seemed to be insanely high, or he seemed to dodge all the fatal ones, or in any case, he endured like it was nothing.

He evaded or parried the stronger attacks while just ignoring the small ones, and every single one of his strikes kills one enemy.

This sounded somewhat nonsensical at a glance, but Blake made such a thing a reality.

He was like a wolf, no, a dragon, in a flock of sheep.

He was in a completely different league of his own.

The elites of Crusader were all high-level users in their late 40s (in level), but the results didn’t change that much.

Once the Ogreslayer moved, one Crusader member fell down without exception. The users of Crusader guild kept coming back to the guild house using the guild skill ‘return to guild house’, but what awaited them was the fatal ‘first strike’.

The members of Crusader fell down the moment came back…… Blake became a mad grim reaper and reaped all of their lives.

“How many are there?”

Mutou had appeared in front of the guild warehouse in the 2nd basement floor and asked Hinaoka.

He exited the game to get some sleep and had hurriedly come back after Hinaoka contacted him.

“There’s…… one.”

“What? One? What bullshit are you saying!”

“I’m sorry, but it is indeed just one person.”

“And we’re being smashed by that single person? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“It may be hard to believe, but it is the truth.”

“That’s bullshit…….”

Mutou could not believe any of Hinaoka’s words. What guild was Crusader? It was the guild he had invested a lot of time and money into since the public launching of EL.

It had many skilled users and was enough to be called the greatest guild in Japan.

And the same guild…… was being smashed to pieces by a single user. This was definitely a hard fact to believe.

However, he now had to believe in it even if he didn’t want to. That was because it was happening in front of his eyes.

*Boooom!*

Blake smashed the door to the basement 2nd floor and quietly climbed down the stairs.

The moment he appeared, Mutou stopped speaking and stared at him.

“No way…….”

Mutou thought that this was all a dream. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

“The guild master mark……. Crusader’s Musashi, no, should I call you Mutou? Anyway, we finally meet.”

Mutou’s game ID was Musashi.

He was a fan of Miyamoto Musashi from a young age and named his character Musashi as well.

He was actually quite a skilled swordsman in the game as well.

Besides Mutou were Hinaoka and 13 other elite users of the guild.

In headcount, it was 1 versus 15, but as for the morale, the 1 was overwhelming the 15.

“You bastard…….”

Mutou couldn’t say anything properly. He still could not believe the fact that nearly 200 guild members of Crusader had fallen without much resistance. He was a person who believed in the power of the majority. As such, he could not accept the fact that his guild was falling down.

“Well, we aren’t that close to each other, so I’ll just state my business here.”

Blake continued speaking as he watched the agitated Mutou.

“This is the first time. If you do not surrender, we will keep looking for you a 2nd time, a 3rd time…… forever. It may be me, or it may be someone else, but what’s for sure is that it will turn out the same as it is today.”

This was no threat.

Blake was stating the truth. As soon as he spoke, he continued to walk forward.

*Screeech*

Blake dragged the Ogreslayer on the ground as he approached the 15 people, but the pressure felt from him was immense. It was as though Blake’s side had the 15 people instead of Mutou’s.

Even Mutou felt that way. Perhaps due to that, he panicked as he spoke.

“Ki, kill him!”

The moment Mutou shouted that Blake rushed forward a beat ahead.

Naturally, Crusader didn’t stay still and tried to defend against Blake in their own ways. However, Blake was faster than all of them.

*Screeeech, slash!*

When Blake slashed out with his Ogreslayer from long range, the blade brushed past Mutou’s body.

Mutou didn’t think that Blake would attack from such a long range. So he ended up getting brushed by the attack.

‘It’s fine, it’s just a scra…….’

Mutou was attacked first, but the opponent’s attack was very light and thought that he would endure this. No, he tried to think that.

However, he couldn’t finish his thought.

*Slick, crunch!*

“*Gasssssp!*”

The attack was definitely shallow; Mutou definitely felt that the attack barely grazed past his body, and remembered that the sword indeed just brushed past his body.

However, the moment the sword went past him, the wound that he thought was nothing felt immensely unfamiliar and his body was twisted as well.

At the same time, Mutou’s health also fell from 100% to 0%.

‘What the?’

Mutou couldn’t understand. According to what he knew, the attack that grazed past his body just now was not a solid hit.

At most, it was a ‘graze’ that would only amount to 10% of a solid hit. However, that graze blew away all of his health.

Mutou had purely offensive classes without any defense capabilities.

His class ‘Two blade style(Nitoryu) swordsman’ was definitely weak in regards to its defense. However, he still could not understand how his health fell down all the way to zero with what was practically a miss.

*Thud!*

Mutou collapsed onto the ground. He had the expression of disbelief until the end of his life.

An insane critical-hit equipment setup as well as the passive ability ‘Those who strike first wins’.

Actually, it was quite nonsensical that such a combination existed at all. And anyway, Musashi, the guild master of Crusader, equipped with top-tier items, died a vain death.

As the guild master was like a symbol of the guild. His death triggered two fatal penalties.

One was that the guild warehouse, which should stay closed, was going to open, and the other was that unlike normal guild members, the guild master could not log back into the game for the next 24 hours.

At this moment, Mutou should be venting his rage on the innocent game capsule right now, but in any case, he would not be allowed back into the game for the next 24 hours.

This meant…… that Crusader practically became a snake without a head.

With Mutou down, there were 14 elite users of Crusader left. Right now, they still overwhelmed Blake in terms of headcount.

However, it could be seen at a glance that the 14 was scared of the 1. Especially after Mutou collapsed down in vain.

The 14 were completely overwhelmed. And naturally, their chances of defeating Blake in this situation was infinitely near zero.

***

Thud.

It took merely a minute for Blake to take care of the remaining users of Crusader.

They weren’t a match for him in the first place.

To fight against him properly, they needed to be able to endure Sanghyuk’s first strike.

To endure the insane critical hit on the first strike, they either had to have items that lowered critical hits, either in rates or in damage. Or, there was also the option of going with insane defense options and endure the full blow.

Both of these cases were impossible for Crusader. At the current point in time, the only ones that had the qualifications to endure Sanghuk’s first strike were the ones that people called ‘rankers’.

Only at their level would they be able to endure the first strike and continue with a normal fight.

Crusader didn’t have any rankers.

Rankers were slightly different to pro gamers.

EL didn’t have any official pro gamers as of yet.

In the first place, all of the competitive contents were in the Heroic Lands, so EL would only become a proper e-sports once users started arriving in the Heroic Lands.

As such, the users with pro gamer-skills were called ‘rankers’ right now. Though this title would still be there once pro gamers came out, but in any case, the only term to call the top-class players right now was the term ‘ranker’.

And the easiest method to differentiate rankers and non-rankers was surprisingly not by level.

In fact, many people said that levels were very inaccurate.

As such, people added several other standards with levels as the base and decided on rankers. As these ‘rankers’ weren’t officially picked by Raonsoft themselves and were updated weekly on various forums, it couldn’t be trusted 100%.

‘Whew, these guys have gathered quite a lot.’

Having ground apart all the users of Crusader that blocked his way, Blake entered their guild warehouse and made a satisfied smile.

There were surprisingly many items of value in their warehouse.

First, Blake opened his emptied spatial expansion bag and started to rake all the items in without hesitation.

Since he had come here to do exactly this today, he had completely emptied an extra-large-sized spatial expansion bag. Blake’s bag started devouring the guild warehouse like a black hole.

Of course, it wasn’t like he put in everything in his sight. Blake was calmly evaluating them one by one.

“Huh?”

Meanwhile, one of the ‘jackpots’ he was expecting, finally came to him.

‘The key to the Temple of the Seven Dragons!’

What caught Blake’s eye was a rather crude-looking dagger.

Anyone would think of a dagger when they saw this. And the item information also said ‘Universe dagger’ (T/N: ‘Qiankun’ dagger for some CN readers.) as well.

However, Blake knew the true identity of this dagger very well. After all, this was an item that top-tier players would buy for hundreds of millions of gold in around 5 years.

Though, this was just an ordinary unique-grade dagger since it would take at least 4 years for people to find out that this dagger is the key to that place.