Chapter 4 – Greenskin Wildlands (4)

Sungjin took a glance around at the surroundings, still holding his bloody katana. Nothing stood out at the Boss’s hall. It was also improbable that both the boss and the hidden boss were placed in the same location.

Sungjin moved to leave the hall but saw the Black police officer. He turned towards him and asked,

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“Baltren. Gerald Baltren.”

“Good. Listen to me, Baltren. Take the other two and try to search around here. With you three, and with that flaming club, you should be able to handle anything, including a lone Troll. Do you understand?”

The Black police officer nodded quickly.

“And if you find anything out of place, let me know. A hidden location, or a strange looking monster.”

“But... how will we contact you when you’re far away?”

“You can speak with the Operator’s cube and request to communicate with the team members. It functions like a police walkie-talkie. Any other questions?”

“No, I got it.”

Baltren took his club and turned around.

“You heard him, right? Let’s work together.”

Sungjin began to walk out once more when the Asian man tried to ask him a question.

“Hey, how did you find out there are secrets to search for?”

He was shouting and antagonizing Sungjin until just a few minutes ago, Sungjin felt no need to acknowledge that a question was asked.

Once Sungjin left, Baltren took the men and began to move about the Wildlands. After a few minutes,

“Kakaka!”

The men ran into a group of five Goblins.

“Get into a circle!”

Under Baltren’s instructions, the other two men took their place behind him with their backs against each other. Goblins were less than half a human’s height, but they were cooperative with each other.

The Goblins ran in first, swinging their swords. Baltren parried the sword away and landed a shot square on the goblin’s head.

“Kack!”

The goblin who was hit on his head collapsed on the spot. Goblins weren’t hard, as expected. Baltren got more courageous and smashed the head in of two more.

The White and Asian man also took one out each. After all, each one of them had fought against a Troll one on one and had won (despite having used Black Coins to do so).

Even if they were in large groups, the three men could probably overcome anything that wasn’t a Troll. In fact, they could probably beat a lone Troll without many problems.

“This seems... doable.”

The White man standing next to him seemed to have regained some confidence. But the problem was the Asian man as usual.

“Hey... is there really a reason why we need to put ourselves in danger? I thought we already completed our objectives.

“Don’t you remember the sign from the beginning? Stat points and Black Coins per Goblin and etcetera. It’s probably better to kill more monsters.”

“Ah... is that so?”

“Of course. I don’t know how or why we started to ‘hunt’... but we do need Black Coins for later.”

Baltren, who was listening to the conversation, agreed.

“Yes. And that teenager said so himself. We don’t need to help him, so just go around the outskirts and hunt monsters.”

Baltren recalled his words.

‘You don’t need to help me. Just... stick together as a group and carefully hunt Goblins on the outskirts of the wildlands.’

And in the end, he did complete the boss all on his own. Baltren could tell that the teenager wasn’t simply showing off; there was something more. The Asian man stroke his chin while listening and then asked,

“...how do points get divided? It’s not like we can see drops or something.”

Baltren was also curious about this point. He thought for a moment when he noticed the cube floating around. He spoke to the cube.

“Operator.”

The cube responded with the Operator’s voice.

[Yes, how may I help you?]

He carefully asked the question.

“Um... How do stat points and Black Coins get divided?”

[The reward per hunter is based on contribution during the raid.]

“Contribution?”

Baltren asked out of instinct. The Operator answered his question anyways.

[When hunting, points for damage taken, damage done, killing blow, buffs given, debuffs dealt, scouting and spotting are all totalled up and divided accurately.]

The three men looked amongst themselves. Until now, they have done almost nothing. The White man whispered to himself.

“I wonder what’s my contribution...”

And then the cube next to the White man answered.

[Your contribution is 4.3%.]

The Asian man quickly asked his cube.

“What about me? How much is my contribution?”

But the cube did not answer.

“Why? Why aren’t you telling me?”

While the Asian man was freaking out, Baltren calmly asked his cube,

“What is my contribution for this raid?”

[Your contribution is 7.2%.]

It wasn’t much, but it was much higher than the White man. His help in killing the four Trolls in the Boss’s hall had been the cause of the difference in their contribution.

The Asian man took hold of his cube and enunciated each word carefully.

“How much contribution points do I have from this raid?”

[Your contribution is 1.8%]

He jolted in surprise.

“What?!”

He had fewer points than even the White man. Acting cowardly and avoiding action as much as possible was coming back to bite him. The White man sighed in regret.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Ahh, we should have just gone hunting as a group earlier, when that teenager told us to.”

Baltren rallied the men.

“There’s still 10 minutes until the raid ends. It’s not too late to try and hunt and make more points. Let’s go hunting and keep an eye out for anything strange.”

*

Sungjin charged through ‘Greenskin Wildlands’ as he kept searching.

“Eeek!”

“Cough...”

“Kack!”

He didn’t stop and cut anything down that got in his way; Goblins, Orcs, Troll. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since each kill he secured was more stat points and Black Coins later.

The problem was that he could not find any clues as to where the secret boss was located. He had scoured the entire wildlands, searching. But he couldn’t find anything that seemed out of place.

“Operator, remaining time.”

[You will be summoned to the Hunter’s Hall in 6 minutes and 24 seconds.]

“Damn it!”

Sungjin swore out loud as he continued to run without taking a break. But there were more corpses than there were living things. In other words, he had already searched almost the entire map.

“Kurman kao”

One Orc charged at the angry Sungjin. It was his bad luck to run into Sungjin. Before the Orc could even raise his axe, he was stabbed three times in vital points.

The Orc collapsed on the spot, bleeding. Sungjin took a look around at the surroundings. He could not see anything other than corpses now.

“Is there no hidden boss because this is the first raid?”

Once he thought this, he immediately changed his goal.

‘If so, I’ll wipe out the whole map.’

Sungjin now began chasing down every scrap of living thing he could find. Goblins who were trying to hide from him, Orcs who were eating away at the meat by the campfire, Trolls who stupidly stumbled towards him...

Then he ran into the other hunters who were fighting against three Trolls in a close 3v3 match.

Sungjin charged in like a lightning bolt, and beheaded two Trolls, spraying blood everywhere.

“Th...thank you.”

The Black Officer Baltren expressed his gratitude. But Sungjin replied,

“So, were you able to find anything peculiar?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

‘Was there really nothing hidden? No hidden boss, or secret location?”

Sungjin called over the Operator.

“Operator, what is the raid progress?”

[95% complete.]

95%. Only the 5% reserved for the secret boss was remaining. Since no more monsters could be found anywhere, it was certain that the hidden boss existed. Sungjin wanted to move on to search again, but Baltren stopped him.

“But...”

It irritated Sungjin that Baltren was dragging out his thoughts, so he urged him on.

“Yes? Please speak your mind.”

Baltren pointed towards somewhere with his club.

“About the Palisade that surrounds the Wildlands, isn’t that area a bit weird?”

Sungjin looked to the area pointed out by the club.

“I had worked on traffic control before and had to put up roadblocks. The fact that those wooden barricades there overlap... seems inefficient somehow.”

Sungjin immediately headed towards the wooden roadblocks to check. Now that he got a closer look at it, it definitely seemed strange. The rest of the wooden palisade were more or less perfectly circular in arrangement. But a portion of the wall here was indented inward. Sticking out from the wood was also something like a metal rod.

Although it looked extremely crude, Sungjin thought,

‘It looks just like a lever!’

Sungjin checked behind him. The three men were watching him from a distance. Once he checked this, Sungjin pulled the lever.

‘Rattle rattle’

A sound could be heard as if something was spinning, and the palisade in front of him was lifted up.

Sungjin decided to go in.

Inside was a small area surrounded by more palisades, but it resembled the insides of a castle. And deeper inside was a dark red Orc chained up to the wall.

The fiery red skin somehow clashed with the image of “Greenskin Wildlands”. Sungjin was filled with certainty that this was it.

“Grrrrrr”

The thing was emitting a deep growl while still chained. When Sungjin took one more step to check on the boss’s stats, he heard a warning come out of the cube.

[Caution! ‘Mad Orc Ruark’ Hidden boss has appeared.]

Sungjin gripped his katana tightly and prepared for battle. Then, he heard voices of the three men.

“Where is...”

“What’s that?”

Sungjin quickly shouted looking back at them.

“Go back! You’ll die!”

And as if on cue,

“Gragh!”

Sungjin heard a powerful roar behind him. By the time he turned around, the Orc had already cut the chains and was charging towards Sungjin.