Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
“There are people inside?”
Lin Jie probed his head in and saw that six monsters were surrounding two players. From their dressing, these two players seemed to be Paladins. One of them held a pair of hammers in his hands, and Holy Light circled his palms. This was the Holy Blessings Skill and could cause an additional 10 damage to Dark-type monsters.
The other person was holding an extraordinary Long Spear. This was a piece of equipment unique to Forward Charge Paladin jobs. Forward Charge Paladin was the only job who could ride mounts in the beginning stages of the game. After they changeδ their jobs at Level 10, they would be given horses for free. Though their movement speed was not fast, they could utilize a lot of Mount-type Skills.
As both of them were in battle mode, their names were exposed, Wine God Elder and Wine God Youngster.
‘It’s them!’
In Lin Jie’s previous life, there had been a lot of strong solo players in the game. They did not stay at constant areas and enjoyed wandering lifestyles, but they had abilities that were comparable to players who occupied long-term spots on the Experts Leaderboard. Within that group of players, there would be some who offered a variety of services in exchange for money. Those players had been known as Mercenaries in the game. In fact, there was a Mercenary Association set up by the system for those solo players. The Wine God Brothers frequented at the Mercenary Association, and had been nicknamed as the Most Powerful Mercenaries of The New Age!
No matter if it had been to kill Bosses, break records or hire them as bounty hunters, there had been nothing they could not do. The most famous incident had been one which involved Dominance. Dominance had wanted to snatch a girl from a vice chairman of some guild, and thus had paid huge sums of money to employ them for the task. It had been completed by the next day… That incident had made them appear more mystical, even though the nature of that story had not been very moral.
Wine God Elder was a Retribution Paladin, while Wine God Youngster was a Forward Charge Paladin. Both of them held the aggro of the six monsters together. Wine God Elder consecrated the land beneath him, causing 30 plus damage to the believers per second. The ground surface looked as if it was flooded with magma caused by Holy Light, while he kept the aggro of the monsters to himself. Meanwhile, Wine God Youngster used the Long Spear to keep half of the monsters at bay, and at the same time, he made consecutive strikes at their throats, thighs, and collarbones which basically made movement for the monsters impossible.
“Die!” shouted Wine God Elder. Holy Light erupted and finished off all the believers.
“Awesome!” exclaimed Lin Jie. Those two were experts that everyone would want to befriend.
Wine God Elder had messy hair and sparse stubs on his face, giving off unconstrained vibes. He stared coldly at Lin Jie and scrutinized him briskly, taking note of his levels and basic Stats.
“Hello.” Wine God Youngster was a middle-aged man around 30 plus years old with closely-cropped hair.
“Boy, are you lost?”
Lin Jie touched his face. His body had developed slower than others of the same age, and though his voice, Adam’s apple, height, and physical strength had already reached maturity, his face still looked rather kiddish. He shook his head and said, “My name is Fu Sheng, I am happy to meet…”
“I have no interest in knowing you,” Wine God Elder dismissed his introduction with a wave of his hands. “Leave this place as fast as possible, I don’t like people to watch me when I am killing monsters.”
Wine God Elder’s EXP was already at 85% of Level 7 and was about to reach Level 8 soon. To him, the idea of being spied on or training newbies was just plain irritating.
“My elder brother has a rather foul temper, I suggest you should leave first.” Wine God Youngster took out a returning scroll. “Nah, here’s one for you, do you want it?”
At that point in time, another round of monsters was refreshed, and it was still six monsters in total. The two of them cooperated flawlessly and finished off the monsters again.
“We can form a team, ” Lin Jie suggested after taking a look at the monsters’ Stats. The refreshed monsters were all Berserker Believers and were Dark-type creatures. They would be weakened significantly should they face someone with the ‘Imperial Sergeant’ alias.
Moreover, his Light Empathy skill could help to stop their attacks. After all, the most formidable part of any sort of Berserker lied in its ability to activate ‘Berserk’ state, which could help them to increase 30% damage and overpower their opponents’ defense capabilities.
“No need. Just scram,” Wine God Elder remarked impatiently.
Lin Jie shrugged his shoulders and walked towards the interior of the Weaponry Hall.
Wine God Youngster could not help but comment, “Elder Brother, don’t you think it’s not that good to flare up at kids?”
“Kid?” Wine God Elder rubbed against his stubs briefly. “A kid can enter the Dark Monastery? Forget your teacherly manners in the game and stay alert towards all other players. You never know who they are.”
“What about this boy then?” Wine God Youngster nodded his chin in Lin Jie’s direction and asked uncertainly.
“Him? I can’t see through him.”
As Wine God Brothers had cleared off most of the monsters along the way, Lin Jie had an effortless time on his way into the Weaponry Hall.
The interior of the Weaponry Hall seemed like a mini prayer church. There were carvings of different types of weapons on the wall, for example, Axes with Runes, Sabre with Runes, etc… All those were types of equipment of the Dark Gold grade. The Dark Monastery had various mission lines, and one could get Dark Gold equipment as rewards for completing them.
There was a great coffin hanging on top of Lin Jie’s head. The overhead beams in this hall seemed like a cross which withstood the whole weight of the coffin.
As the legends said, the Sub-Legendary equipment of the Dark Monastery lied in the coffin.
After making sure that there were no believers around the area, Lin Jie creased his forehead slightly and activated the Feather Drop skill. No matter what, it was best to just get the equipment out of the coffin first.
The internal structure of the Weaponry Hall was very complicated. The hanging lamps, overhead crossbeams, and grooves in the walls were the major spots and only gripping holds for the climbing process. If one got slightly distracted along the way, they would fall down and have to start all over again.
Activating the Feather Drop skill, Lin Jie was able to leap to a few meters high above the ground. He put his foot into the climbing spot on the wall. For safety reasons, he waited for the Feather Drop skill effects to cool down fully before he started climbing again.
Lin Jie climbed swiftly up and was about tens of body-length high up from his original spot when he finally reached one of the ceiling’s crossbeam. The coffin was about 600 plus meters away. He hung onto the crossbeam and moved along agilely like an ape. The heavy metal armor made loud clanking sounds as he climbed along.
Creak-
Lin Jie made another grip onto the crossbeam with his right hand. However, he did not expect that the part of the crossbeam had rotted away. Just like a fragile bubble. It dissolved away into wood dust once Lin Jie grabbed hold of it.
“My goodness!”
Bang!
Lin Jie fell heavily down to the ground, and his health points were depleted by half. The heavy armor he wore banged painfully against his body, making him almost unable to breathe. However, what’s most frustrating was that this crossbeam was ruined thoroughly! To get to the coffin, Lin Jie would have to climb at least 1000 meters higher and reach it by another crossbeam from another side of the hall.
He took a deep breath, and made another leap! This time round, Lin Jie learned his lesson. He removed all his armor and stored them away in his backpack, before climbing along the middle of all the crossbeams. Climbing 1000 plus meters high up was a great challenge to one’s Grip Strength. Even for a Warrior who had achieved full Stats, it would be an impossible feat to achieve—unless that warrior changed job and upgraded himself to a Berserker and increased his arm strength.
It was lucky that Lin Jie had chosen Grip Strength Multiplier as his talent. Although his wrists hurt like crazy, he was still able to hold on to the crossbeam.
After a while, he neared the coffin for the second time! As long as he could find a chance to make another leap to close the distance…
As he moved his hands, he grabbed onto another handful of wood dust. With a loud thud, he fell down once again!
Two of the four crossbeams that surrounded the coffin were broken.
Out of the two crossbeams that remained, one of them was 2000 plus meters high up, while the other one would require Lin Jie to make a huge turnabout around the whole weaponry hall before he could reach the coffin…
“Heck, just climb!” Lin Jie gritted his teeth, activated the Feather Drop skill and crawled on the wall again.
Two hours later, Lin Jie neared the coffin once again from the third route. He predicted that he would grip onto wood dust again with his next grip, and inched his body forward carefully, preparing to jump to the next section of the beam, skipping the segment in between. He thought this was a clever ploy to avoid falling down once again.
‘Leap!’
Lin Jie grabbed accurately to a piece of wood and crumbled it to dust! This time round, his head touched the ground first. He felt as if he could hear a buzzing sound inside his head.
——’You made an accomplishment [Falling from Great Heights]. You have fallen three times from high areas without dying. You are rewarded with 5 Accomplishment Reward Points.’
Lin Jie laughed bitterly. This accomplishment was perhaps one of the hardest to achieve among the Normal Accomplishment? After all, which fool would jump down from great heights consecutive three times?
“The fourth route…” Lin Jie raised his head.
——————————
At Hotel Rhun…
With a flawless jade table, an elegant table lamp decorated with expensive dragon tooth, coupled with a group of cute and pretty elven bunny girl maids which would make any man’s blood boil with desire—all these hinted at the extraordinariness of this place.
“Do consider,” said a noble-looking man. With a thick beard and a head of somewhat whitish hair, this man gave off the vibes of someone not to be trifled with, even though he was just sitting casually on a bench.
His fingers tapped lightly on the table, and he seemed to be indulging in the nice music from the background.
There was a set of contract placed on the table. Omitting the incomprehensible details, the series of figures on the paper was the most eye-catching—seven zeros followed behind the figure ‘1’, it was a sum of $10,000,000!
“Wow, such a great sum.” The person who was supposed to be reading the contract carefully was instead, acting most strangely—he was focusing mainly on piling all the food to the plate in front of him. These were all exotic and expensive food such as Roasted Dragon Meat, Tiger Shark Caviar, Temmoku Shark’s Fin and so on. One would not be able to see such food in the current market. If it had not been the fact that the system kindly allowed rich players to pay using cash at the shops, this food would only be revealed to the players at a much later stage of the game.
The person gorging down the food had a squarish face which stood out from the masses. He looked ugly, and acted in an ugly manner too, especially with regards to his table manners. He seemed like he couldn’t have enough and was about to devour the plates in front of him.
Until he finished the caviar, he finally heaved a sigh of satisfaction and said smilingly, “Number one, I actually get to see the true looks of the known expert Eighteen Massacres, who had never revealed his appearance to anyone; number two, I was offered with such a luxurious contract. Wow, indeed, I should feel super honored today!”
“Indeed,” Eighteen Massacres nodded his head. He was only in his thirties, but there was this sense that he was the mastermind behind every kind of important decisions to be made, not to mention that he appeared prominently matured for one at his age. He pushed the contract towards The Heavenly Shield.
“This price is way above your befitting status. I know how you are like as a person—money-minded, tendency to forget honor in pursuit of profit… Join the Kingdom of Glory today with the rest of your members. I will also buy the Guild Base Token from you.”
“Hehe, Eighteen Massacres Guild Leader, you sure do know me well.” The Heavenly Shield resumed eating again. Wiping his oily mouth, he remarked, “Yes, I am money-minded, I do forget honor in pursuit of profit, and I admit that I am a shameless and despicable man through and through. But there was one thing you forgot to mention about me… I will always be wary of the strong and pick on the weak.”
“You. You are what I consider as the weak.” The Heavenly Shield grinned widely and tore the contract in front of him into halves. After that, as if thinking that was not enough, he even threw the torn pieces into his red wine and drank it.
“You will rather cooperate with that nameless small fry?” There was no sign of anger on Eighteen Massacres’ face. It seemed like he was always as cool as the cold expression he wore.
“Oh, no no no, not that. I just felt…” The Heavenly Shield considered seriously for a moment before giving his answer, “that it felt so good to be trusted for once.”
——————
Lin Jie panted heavily, while drops of perspiration dripped down from his forehead.
The coffin had fallen down in front of him, after all the four crossbeams supporting it broke.
Boom-
Boom-
As if someone knocking a door from inside, after a loud motion, the coffin’s top was being broken apart.
