Chapter 77. Auction (2)

***

Terriculum’s proposal wasn’t a fake one. This could be discerned from the item list of their warehouse.

After being messaged, Terriculum replied that they wanted to proceed with the trade as soon as possible.

After reading the reply, Sanghyuk sent an e-mail using his Large Gold Mountain account. He sent a list of three, one being the Yin-Yang Bronze Mirror, one being the Sky Levitation Crystal, and the other being a random item that looked very expensive.

The third one was of course a distraction. It was to make them care less about the Sky Levitation Crystal or the Yin-Yang Bronze Mirror. Since he chose one of the most expensive items currently, Terriculum should accept his proposal.

The trade was held the next day. Kun came as the representative of Terriculum, and Sanghyuk met him in his Large Gold Mountain avatar. After that, everything progressed smoothly.

Sanghyuk received his 3 items and 2 million gold soon, and gave the Wyvern Blood over. Kun looked very happy receiving that item.

However, Sanghyuk wanted to rejoice even more. After all, he got the Sky Levitation Crystal.

A Sky-grade skyship could be made with the Sky Levitation Crystal. Of course, many other materials were necessary, but the core of them all was the Sky Levitation Crystal.

Also, Sky-grade ships were worth a minimum of 5 billion won (5 million USD) in cash no matter how crap they were.

‘But it can’t be made right now.’

Sanghyuk put the Sky Levitation Crystal inside his warehouse with a smile.

‘I have so much stuff to do.’

He had caused so many things to happen, and he had to take care of all of them by himself. So, even though he was sleeping only 4 hours a day, he had practically no rest.

He had to appraise high-value rare items, manage NPCs of the Golden Mountain Merchant guild, as well as the Hiddenline through Ilya.

Not only that, he had to visit the Rainstorm Castle for his broadcast, and he also had to clear the Swordking’s Tomb to gather spiritual pills.

Since he exercised in reality for a couple hours every day nowadays, he lacked even more time for everything.

Sanghyuk perfectly took care of everything that he had to do. When he had even the slightest bit of time left, he hunted Stone Giants to get high-grade cube fragments as well as karma.

2 weeks passed by in a flash.

Many things happened in the world of EL during the past 2 weeks. The hottest issue was that Line Alliance ‘Twilight’ had broken through the Road to Death.

To be exact, Twilight’s core guilds, Terriculum and Red Line, had focused all of their power into breaking through to the Heroic Lands, and what was important that someone else other than One guild had finally come to the Heroic Lands.

Their success became a guidepost for other guilds and alliances. Soon, many high-ranked guilds would break through the path in succession, and once that happened, the perfect route through the Path to Death would be revealed, and conquering the path would become even easier.

Although it would still take a lot of time for normal users to arrive at the Heroic Lands, now that the aura system was updated prematurely, they would be able to come over in 4 months at the latest.

Sanghyuk had predicted this to happen ever since he saw that the aura system had been updated, so he had prepared many things to counter them.

He sold the map of the Heroic Lands, and slowly prepared for Lone King’s debut, setting up items for the avatar.

He planned to play Lone King in a different style to Blake.

The Hall of Gladiators and the Hall of Mortality weren’t simply PvP and raid. there were differences to fighting in the Hall of Gladiators and fighting other users on the field, and the Hall of Mortality was also a lot different to ordinary raid dungeons.

This was why he created an entirely new identity for the two. “Lone King”.

Sanghyuk was planning to equip Lone King with skills and items that were designed to win in competitions.

‘Let’s combine a few of the card combinations and my insane pre-emptive attack boost to create an ambush-specialized character.’

Sanghyuk planned to make Lone King the greatest hunter, whether it was hunting users or monsters. He thought that he would be able to easily win both the halls if he did so.

To do so, he first had to upgrade his ‘Blade Knight’, his first ancient knowledge, to ‘shadow knight’. He had fulfilled all the requirements as well, and had acquired the ancient knowledge ‘shadow thief’.

What was left now was to combine Blade Knight with Shadow Thief, but there was a reason he hadn’t done so yet.

Combining the ancient knowledges Blade Knight and Shadow Thief would create ‘Shadow Knight’ a class-3 ancient knowledge, and he would gain new soul skills suited to that job.

However, there was an interesting catch here. Fulfilling a special condition would allow him to choose three skills of the Blade Knight and make them remain through the class fusion.

The special condition was to raise the proficiency of Blade Knight to MAX, before combining with Shadow Thief.

This secret wasn’t revealed for quite a long while in Sanghyuk’s previous life as practically no one had regrets about Blade Knight when there was a better option for them.

Since Shadow Thief was easy to acquire as well, many people abandoned Blade Knight and hopped onto the Shadow Knight train.

So, no one saw the need to raise Blade Knight’s proficiency to the max.

Like Sanghyuk’s previous life, there was a post around 5 months ago about ‘10 useful class-3 ancient knowledge you can get your hands on pretty easily’, on several community forums, and it explained in detail about how to get the ancient knowledge Shadow Knight.

With this being the case, Shadow Knight was one of the most common ancient knowledges out there.

If Sanghyuk wished to, he would have been able to become a Shadow Knight earlier than anyone, but he didn’t.

The reason he did so was to choose 3 Blade Knight skills to keep when he became a Shadow Knight by raising Blade Knight’s proficiency to the max.

(T/N: STOP EXPLAINING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER DAMMIT.)

As a class-2 ancient knowledge, Blade Knight had many deficiencies compared to the class-3 ancient knowledge Shadow Knight, but its skill compositions were quite decent.

There were a few that Sanghyuk liked to use the most, and one of them was ‘Marginal Steps’ that increased his dodge rate for 1 second, and the other was ‘Sixth sense Amplification’, which amplified his senses to be as sharp as a blade, so these two were a must.

Sanghyuk was planning to choose ‘Blade Sharpening’, a passive skill unique to Blade Knights, on top of the other two skills.

Blade Sharpening was a passive skill that raised critical hit rate by 10%, so this worked very well in his favor as well.

‘99.4…… Looks like I’ll hit max in a few days.’

Sanghyuk checked on his proficiency of the Blade Knight and nodded his head.

Lone King’s equipment began from getting a Shadow Knight.

***

“Then, as per our negotiations, we’ll take the Hall of Gladiators, while Terriculum takes the Hall of Mortality.”

Red Sun did the final negotiations with Kun.

Although they received a lot of damage while breaking through the Path to Death, both Red Line and Terriculum had around 10 elite users left when they entered the Heroic Lands.

The first thing they did at the Heroic Lands was to occupy the halls. After they found out about the two halls through Gale, they forced themselves to come here to monopolize these two game contents.

“The first-user title is still there for both the Hall of Gladiators and the Hall of Mortality. If we can get them, we’ll be able to cover for our losses in the Path to Death in an instant.”

“But is it really true that One guild wasn’t able to get the first-user titles?”

Kun tilted his head and asked.

“Gale revealed that there hasn’t been a single league in the Hall of Mortality and the Hall of Gladiators yet. I think users belonging to one guild cannot create a league due to abusing issues.”

“There should have been ways if they looked into it…….”

“I don’t know why, but they decided to not to look for any loopholes. For us, that’s a good thing. Looks like their pride as the top guild is shooting through the skies, so…… this is a good opportunity for us.”

“Well, if One guild really intends to sleep in the shade…… it would only be proper for us to overtake them and finish the race first.” (T/N: Tortoise and the hare reference.)

Kun thought the same as Red Sun. The fact that One guild didn’t take over the halls was an opportunity for them.

The highest-ranking users knew about the first-user titles. To be exact, most of them couldn’t get the first-user title since ‘a certain someone’ took them.

They all thought that ‘someone else probably took it first’, but never did they imagine that it was swiped clean by a single individual.

As the highest-ranking users all had one or two first-user titles, they desired for even more.

“Since we’re here for that, we’ll do exactly that.”

The conclusive reason why Red Sun and Kun could join hands was because there was content to share. Terriculum, with their raid-specialized team, would take the Hall of Mortality, while Red Sun had confidence in PvP rather than raids, so they would take the Hall of Gladiators.

The two guilds aimed for similar objectives. They had confident expressions as they were reading the expensive map that Sanghyuk had put up for sale.

‘They took the bait.’

Sanghyuk was secretly observing the users of Red Line and Terriculum. When they moved towards the halls, he realized that the bait he had scattered since a few weeks ago was finally being taken by Red Line and Terriculum.

The first-user titles that was still not taken.

This was the bait that Sanghyuk had prepared for them. It wasn’t fake though, as the first-user titles were indeed still there.

The reason Sanghyuk induced them to go there was to activate the two halls as soon as possible.

It was impossible to create a league by himself no matter what he did. Red Sun and Kun thought that Sanghyuk, no, One guild was being arrogant, but in truth, this was beyond Sanghyuk’s control.

‘I’ll get the first-user titles through them.’

Sanghyuk’s plans were simple. He threw the bait, and once someone took that bait, he would compete with them to get his hands on the stuff he wanted.

The reason he could think in such a simple manner was because he had complete confidence in his skills.

Sanghyuk had finally gotten the ancient knowledge’ Shadow Knight’ yesterday and had finished equipping Lone King’s items.

From skills to items, Lone King was, as Sanghyuk had intended, an assassin-style hunter.

Lone King hunts everything.

And the first prey was Red Line and Terriculum.