Two messages popped up in front of his eyes.
[Alert: Your companion, the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi, has been afflicted by the Curse of Decay!]
[Alert: Use the cure in your possession to cure the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
The second message was like a ray of light descending down from the heavens for Siegfried.
“C-Cure?! I had the cure with me?!”
He sprung back to his feet and opened his Inventory to look for the cure.
[Dimensional Inventory]
- Weapons (31)
- Armor (171)
- Accessories (210)
- Consumables (1,443)
- Materials (32,123)
- Misc. (1,221)
- Gold (315,431G)
However, Siegfried had collected a jaw-dropping 34,787 items, excluding his equipment.
It was the price he had to pay for being a scavenging hoarder.
‘What is it? Is it an antidote? Where is it? Where?!’ Siegfried rummaged through his inventory with fire in his eyes.
Every second counted, and he had to move fast.
“O… Owner punk… Grr…! Grrrk!”
Hamchi was soon going to become a ghoul, and it would be goodbye if Siegfried failed to find the cure in time.
“Wait! Just wait! There’s a cure! Hang in there!”
“Ky… Kyuggrr…! Grrraaak!”
“You’ll die if you become a ghoul! Fight it!” Siegfried screamed while frantically scrolling through his Inventory.
However, he had too many miscellaneous items in his Inventory. He could not find anything that remotely resembled a cure, no matter how much he scrolled down.
‘I have to find it… I must find it quickly…’
When he was starting to get desperate, something caught his eye.
‘Huh?’
Flash! Flash!
Two items were flashing in pink as if they were calling out to him, saying—I’m the cure!
The two items were…
- Type I Elixir × 10
- Type II Elixir × 3
It was the potions he had picked up while scavenging around the laboratory in that mansion.
“Who knows? Maybe I could sell them for a gold coin or something.”
These potions that looked like a bunch of trash that he had collected in hopes of selling them for a gold coin each turned out to be the cure for the Curse of Decay!
“Oh! I knew it! They’re useful!” Siegfried exclaimed in delight after realizing that he had made the right call.
However, his joy lasted only for a few seconds.
‘But which one is the cure? There are two potions…?’
Siegfried pondered for a short while as he did not have the luxury of time before he opened the Type I Elixir, which he had ten pieces of, and fed it to Hamchi.
[Alert: You have fed the Type I Elixir: Vaccine to the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
[Alert: Side-Effect! The decaying process has accelerated!]
[Alert: A vaccine is used to build resistance. It is not a cure! Please be careful!]
Indeed, a vaccine wasn’t a cure. Vaccines granted immunity against the virus, but it was not effective if administered to patients who were already infected. In fact, it would only aggravate the patient’s condition.
Perhaps that was why Hamchi started screaming like a wounded beast.
“Graaa! GRWAAAAK!”
“S-Sorry! Drink this! This is the cure!” Siegfried exclaimed as he pinned Hamchi down, took out the other bottle, the Type II Elixir, and poured it into Hamchi’s mouth.
[Alert: You have fed the Type II Elixir: Cure Serum to the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
[Alert: You have administered the proper cure!]
[Alert: The Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi has stopped turning into a ghoul!]
[Alert: The Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi is recovering! (Time Remaining: 60 minutes)]
“Kyuuu…”
Hamchi let out a familiar cry as his body started to recover.
“Alright! Fuck yeah! I saved him! I SAVED HIM!” Siegfried screamed at the top of his lungs after confirming that Hamchi was recovering.
“Kyuu… Hamchi is not going to become a ghoul, owner punk?”
“Ha! No way! Did you really think I’d let you turn into a ghoul? No way!”
“Kyu… Thank you, owner punk…”
“See! I told you we will find a use for it, right? I told you it would be worth something, yes or no?!”
“Kyu?”
“It’s useful! Hahaha!”
“I-I agree… Kyu!”
“Get on my back if you agree. Kekeke!” Siegfried let out a laugh before he squatted down in front of Hamchi.
“Kyu? Are you going to give Hamchi a piggyback ride?”
“It will take an hour for you to fully recover, so get on. We need to go hide somewhere for now.”
“T-Thank you, owner punk…”
Siegfried carried Hamchi and rushed over to seek refuge at a safe place.
***
Meanwhile, the Adventurers were engaged in a fierce battle against the boss monster of the City of the Dead in the Decayed Castle.
The boss monster, which was also known as the Dungeon Master, was an extremely powerful monster.
[Leper King Balduinus]
[A tyrant that sacrificed numerous people to find a cure for his leprosy. He ended up getting involved in black magic.]
[He instructed the court physicians to find a cure using a ghoul’s body after seeing it repeatedly decay and regenerate.]
[He was contaminated by the ghoul in the process and spread the Curse of Decay to his entire kingdom.]
[The Curse of Decay the Leper King possesses is far stronger than the ones the ghouls possess.]
[Type: Monster]
[Rating: Boss]
[Race: Ghoul]
[Level: 330]
[Class: Lord of Ghouls]
[Titles: Decayed One, Cursed Eternal Hunger, Cannibal Connoisseur, Cannot Live or Die, Flesh Eating Monster]
The Leper King, Balduinus, was Level 330, and he was lower than the average level of boss monster usually found in Raid Dungeons, which was around Level 400.
Nevertheless, the City of the Dead was still considered the most difficult Raid Dungeon in the history of BNW.
Why?
Because the Leper King was a humanoid-type monster.
A beast-type monster was easy to raid no matter how high its level was as these monsters usually had a set attack pattern, and a big raid party could eventually learn that pattern to deal with it, but that wasn’t the case for humanoid-type monsters.
Moreover, the monster’s Level was above Level 300, which meant the boss monster was a Master.
To make things worse, Balduinus had reached the pinnacle of black magic, and his racial trait as a ghoul meant that he had unlimited Stamina as a Battle Dark Mage.
It was a well-established fact that fighting against humanoid-type monsters was bound to be tricky, and this was all the more true in the Raid Dungeon.
Perhaps that was the reason, but the first party, third party, and the stragglers remaining from the decimated parties were having a tough time against the Leper King.
The boss battle had been going on for five hours now.
“Ack!”
“H-His pattern is changing too often!”
“Damn it!”
The Banquet of Evil finally started.
—O, you living beings! I shall decay not only your bodies but your minds… for eternity!
The Leper King unleashed all sorts of black magic at the Adventurers and swept them away, and it seemed that the boss monster was trying to prove that he was indeed a Master.
The one standing at the forefront to stop Balduinus was none other than the legendary pro gamer Yong Tae-Pung. He was being supported by Taycan and Chae Hyung-Seok.
Fwaaaa! Fwaaaaah!
Yong Tae-Pung’s +15 Hwaryongdo burned brightly in his hand.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Taycan, the Descendant of Thunder God Vajra, shot out his lightning all over the place.
These two attributes, fire and lightning, were extremely effective against monsters possessing dark attributes. Of course, that did not mean that they could defeat a boss monster in the realm of a Master just because they held the superior attribute.
But what if god was on their side?
It might just be possible with that.
Chae Hyung-Seok was close to a god that could make the lame walk and the blind see, and in this case, he allowed Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan to fight on equal footing with the Leper King.
But that was not the end of it, as Chae Hyung-Seok was capable of far more than simply buffing his allies.
Yes, he always enjoyed the privilege of being treated as a noble simply because he was a Buffer, but there was one stark difference between him and the other Buffers who only knew how to buff.
Click… Clack!
Chae Hyung-Seok used one hand to cast different buffs on his allies while holding a small crossbow called Crossbow of the Hell’s Leech in his other hand.
This was the sister equipment of the Bavarian Workshop’s Spear of the Hell’s Leech, and it stopped the Leper King from regenerating his HP.
Chae Hyung-Seok would also join the battle from time to time to block the boss monster’s attacks with his body while stopping the boss monster’s movement with his crossbow bolts.
He was not only a Buffer but was also an Off-Tank who specialized in immobilizing the enemy.
Chae Hyung-Seok’s skills and talent were the only things that stopped him from being shunned from the BNW community, as nobody could argue that he was indeed a top-tier Buffer whom all parties would clamor for.
“Hey, young man! Just a bit more!” Yong Tae-Pung shouted.
“Yes, sir!” Taycan replied.
Chae Hyung-Seok’s support allowed Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan to fight the Leper King on equal footing, and it seemed that they were soon going to achieve victory against the boss monster.
[Balduinus]
[HP: ??????????]
The Leper King only had twenty percent of his HP remaining.
“Oh!”
“Just a bit more!”
“Fighting! Drive him to a corner!”
The raid party members’ faces brightened as a light at the end of the tunnel finally came into sight after five long hours of battling the boss monster.
However, one person seemed to have a problem with how things were going.
‘I can’t let it end like this.’
Chae Hyung-Seok wasn’t smiling.
***
It was at that moment that the raid clear was right in front of their eyes.
‘I don’t like this.’
Chae Hyung-Seok was not happy with how things were.
‘There are too many mouths to feed. Fifteen? Does this even make sense? Too many people are still alive. I’m going to get peanuts at this rate even if we clear this Raid Dungeon!’
He needed money—a lot of money. He couldn’t afford to share his pie with fifteen people.
‘Should we balance things out a bit? I’m the one controlling the balance of this battle, after all. Kekeke!’
Chae Hyung-Seok continued casting buffs on Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan while reducing the buffs cast on the others.
—You insolent fools dare to stand up against me?!
The Leper King prepared to unleash an area of effect magic.
Fwoooosh!
The raid party was reduced by half in an instant.
‘Excellent,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought as he flashed an evil smile.
“B-Buff, please!”
“Hyung-Seok hyung! What happened to the buffs? Ack!”
The raid party members cried out to Chae Hyung-Seok.
“Sorry! My skills are on cooldown, and I’m almost out of mana! Please hang in there!” Chae Hyung-Seok brazenly lied to their faces.
[Balduinus]
[HP: ??????????]
Meanwhile, Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan did their best to reduce the Leper King’s HP down to ten percent.
‘Those two are getting on my nerves as well. That old fossil and that arrogant NPC… I need to get rid of them,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought as he lowered his stance.
Nobody was looking at him right now.
Everyone was focused on raiding the boss monster.
“Ack!”
“Hang in there!”
“We’re almost there!”
There was no way anyone was going to look back at the Buffer when the boss monster was about to die.
‘Good, no one is looking,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought. He smiled sinisterly as he took out three silver bolts and dragged them on the ground.
Then, the bolts were tainted with the Leper King’s rotten blood.
‘This will be enough to turn them into ghouls,’ he thought as he loaded a bolt onto the Crossbow of the Hell’s Leech.
“We’re almost there! Keep attacking! Hahaha!” Yong Tae-Pung rallied the raid party members.
‘You’re going first, you fucking annoying old fossil.’ Chae Hyung-Seok smirked as he aimed his crossbow at Yong Tae-Pung. He recalled how the old pro gamer kept siding with Siegfried just to spite him before pulling the trigger.
Shwik!
The silver bolt contaminated with the Curse of Decay flew toward Yong Tae-Pung’s waist.
Two messages popped up in front of his eyes.
[Alert: Your companion, the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi, has been afflicted by the Curse of Decay!]
[Alert: Use the cure in your possession to cure the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
The second message was like a ray of light descending down from the heavens for Siegfried.
“C-Cure?! I had the cure with me?!”
He sprung back to his feet and opened his Inventory to look for the cure.
[Dimensional Inventory]
- Weapons (31)
- Armor (171)
- Accessories (210)
- Consumables (1,443)
- Materials (32,123)
- Misc. (1,221)
- Gold (315,431G)
However, Siegfried had collected a jaw-dropping 34,787 items, excluding his equipment.
It was the price he had to pay for being a scavenging hoarder.
‘What is it? Is it an antidote? Where is it? Where?!’ Siegfried rummaged through his inventory with fire in his eyes.
Every second counted, and he had to move fast.
“O… Owner punk… Grr…! Grrrk!”
Hamchi was soon going to become a ghoul, and it would be goodbye if Siegfried failed to find the cure in time.
“Wait! Just wait! There’s a cure! Hang in there!”
“Ky… Kyuggrr…! Grrraaak!”
“You’ll die if you become a ghoul! Fight it!” Siegfried screamed while frantically scrolling through his Inventory.
However, he had too many miscellaneous items in his Inventory. He could not find anything that remotely resembled a cure, no matter how much he scrolled down.
‘I have to find it… I must find it quickly…’
When he was starting to get desperate, something caught his eye.
‘Huh?’
Flash! Flash!
Two items were flashing in pink as if they were calling out to him, saying—I’m the cure!
The two items were…
- Type I Elixir × 10
- Type II Elixir × 3
It was the potions he had picked up while scavenging around the laboratory in that mansion.
“Who knows? Maybe I could sell them for a gold coin or something.”
These potions that looked like a bunch of trash that he had collected in hopes of selling them for a gold coin each turned out to be the cure for the Curse of Decay!
“Oh! I knew it! They’re useful!” Siegfried exclaimed in delight after realizing that he had made the right call.
However, his joy lasted only for a few seconds.
‘But which one is the cure? There are two potions…?’
Siegfried pondered for a short while as he did not have the luxury of time before he opened the Type I Elixir, which he had ten pieces of, and fed it to Hamchi.
[Alert: You have fed the Type I Elixir: Vaccine to the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
[Alert: Side-Effect! The decaying process has accelerated!]
[Alert: A vaccine is used to build resistance. It is not a cure! Please be careful!]
Indeed, a vaccine wasn’t a cure. Vaccines granted immunity against the virus, but it was not effective if administered to patients who were already infected. In fact, it would only aggravate the patient’s condition.
Perhaps that was why Hamchi started screaming like a wounded beast.
“Graaa! GRWAAAAK!”
“S-Sorry! Drink this! This is the cure!” Siegfried exclaimed as he pinned Hamchi down, took out the other bottle, the Type II Elixir, and poured it into Hamchi’s mouth.
[Alert: You have fed the Type II Elixir: Cure Serum to the Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi!]
[Alert: You have administered the proper cure!]
[Alert: The Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi has stopped turning into a ghoul!]
[Alert: The Great Spirit of the Forest, Hamchi is recovering! (Time Remaining: 60 minutes)]
“Kyuuu…”
Hamchi let out a familiar cry as his body started to recover.
“Alright! Fuck yeah! I saved him! I SAVED HIM!” Siegfried screamed at the top of his lungs after confirming that Hamchi was recovering.
“Kyuu… Hamchi is not going to become a ghoul, owner punk?”
“Ha! No way! Did you really think I’d let you turn into a ghoul? No way!”
“Kyu… Thank you, owner punk…”
“See! I told you we will find a use for it, right? I told you it would be worth something, yes or no?!”
“Kyu?”
“It’s useful! Hahaha!”
“I-I agree… Kyu!”
“Get on my back if you agree. Kekeke!” Siegfried let out a laugh before he squatted down in front of Hamchi.
“Kyu? Are you going to give Hamchi a piggyback ride?”
“It will take an hour for you to fully recover, so get on. We need to go hide somewhere for now.”
“T-Thank you, owner punk…”
Siegfried carried Hamchi and rushed over to seek refuge at a safe place.
***
Meanwhile, the Adventurers were engaged in a fierce battle against the boss monster of the City of the Dead in the Decayed Castle.
The boss monster, which was also known as the Dungeon Master, was an extremely powerful monster.
[Leper King Balduinus]
[A tyrant that sacrificed numerous people to find a cure for his leprosy. He ended up getting involved in black magic.]
[He instructed the court physicians to find a cure using a ghoul’s body after seeing it repeatedly decay and regenerate.]
[He was contaminated by the ghoul in the process and spread the Curse of Decay to his entire kingdom.]
[The Curse of Decay the Leper King possesses is far stronger than the ones the ghouls possess.]
[Type: Monster]
[Rating: Boss]
[Race: Ghoul]
[Level: 330]
[Class: Lord of Ghouls]
[Titles: Decayed One, Cursed Eternal Hunger, Cannibal Connoisseur, Cannot Live or Die, Flesh Eating Monster]
The Leper King, Balduinus, was Level 330, and he was lower than the average level of boss monster usually found in Raid Dungeons, which was around Level 400.
Nevertheless, the City of the Dead was still considered the most difficult Raid Dungeon in the history of BNW.
Why?
Because the Leper King was a humanoid-type monster.
A beast-type monster was easy to raid no matter how high its level was as these monsters usually had a set attack pattern, and a big raid party could eventually learn that pattern to deal with it, but that wasn’t the case for humanoid-type monsters.
Moreover, the monster’s Level was above Level 300, which meant the boss monster was a Master.
To make things worse, Balduinus had reached the pinnacle of black magic, and his racial trait as a ghoul meant that he had unlimited Stamina as a Battle Dark Mage.
It was a well-established fact that fighting against humanoid-type monsters was bound to be tricky, and this was all the more true in the Raid Dungeon.
Perhaps that was the reason, but the first party, third party, and the stragglers remaining from the decimated parties were having a tough time against the Leper King.
The boss battle had been going on for five hours now.
“Ack!”
“H-His pattern is changing too often!”
“Damn it!”
The Banquet of Evil finally started.
—O, you living beings! I shall decay not only your bodies but your minds… for eternity!
The Leper King unleashed all sorts of black magic at the Adventurers and swept them away, and it seemed that the boss monster was trying to prove that he was indeed a Master.
The one standing at the forefront to stop Balduinus was none other than the legendary pro gamer Yong Tae-Pung. He was being supported by Taycan and Chae Hyung-Seok.
Fwaaaa! Fwaaaaah!
Yong Tae-Pung’s +15 Hwaryongdo burned brightly in his hand.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Taycan, the Descendant of Thunder God Vajra, shot out his lightning all over the place.
These two attributes, fire and lightning, were extremely effective against monsters possessing dark attributes. Of course, that did not mean that they could defeat a boss monster in the realm of a Master just because they held the superior attribute.
But what if god was on their side?
It might just be possible with that.
Chae Hyung-Seok was close to a god that could make the lame walk and the blind see, and in this case, he allowed Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan to fight on equal footing with the Leper King.
But that was not the end of it, as Chae Hyung-Seok was capable of far more than simply buffing his allies.
Yes, he always enjoyed the privilege of being treated as a noble simply because he was a Buffer, but there was one stark difference between him and the other Buffers who only knew how to buff.
Click… Clack!
Chae Hyung-Seok used one hand to cast different buffs on his allies while holding a small crossbow called Crossbow of the Hell’s Leech in his other hand.
This was the sister equipment of the Bavarian Workshop’s Spear of the Hell’s Leech, and it stopped the Leper King from regenerating his HP.
Chae Hyung-Seok would also join the battle from time to time to block the boss monster’s attacks with his body while stopping the boss monster’s movement with his crossbow bolts.
He was not only a Buffer but was also an Off-Tank who specialized in immobilizing the enemy.
Chae Hyung-Seok’s skills and talent were the only things that stopped him from being shunned from the BNW community, as nobody could argue that he was indeed a top-tier Buffer whom all parties would clamor for.
“Hey, young man! Just a bit more!” Yong Tae-Pung shouted.
“Yes, sir!” Taycan replied.
Chae Hyung-Seok’s support allowed Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan to fight the Leper King on equal footing, and it seemed that they were soon going to achieve victory against the boss monster.
[Balduinus]
[HP: ??????????]
The Leper King only had twenty percent of his HP remaining.
“Oh!”
“Just a bit more!”
“Fighting! Drive him to a corner!”
The raid party members’ faces brightened as a light at the end of the tunnel finally came into sight after five long hours of battling the boss monster.
However, one person seemed to have a problem with how things were going.
‘I can’t let it end like this.’
Chae Hyung-Seok wasn’t smiling.
***
It was at that moment that the raid clear was right in front of their eyes.
‘I don’t like this.’
Chae Hyung-Seok was not happy with how things were.
‘There are too many mouths to feed. Fifteen? Does this even make sense? Too many people are still alive. I’m going to get peanuts at this rate even if we clear this Raid Dungeon!’
He needed money—a lot of money. He couldn’t afford to share his pie with fifteen people.
‘Should we balance things out a bit? I’m the one controlling the balance of this battle, after all. Kekeke!’
Chae Hyung-Seok continued casting buffs on Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan while reducing the buffs cast on the others.
—You insolent fools dare to stand up against me?!
The Leper King prepared to unleash an area of effect magic.
Fwoooosh!
The raid party was reduced by half in an instant.
‘Excellent,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought as he flashed an evil smile.
“B-Buff, please!”
“Hyung-Seok hyung! What happened to the buffs? Ack!”
The raid party members cried out to Chae Hyung-Seok.
“Sorry! My skills are on cooldown, and I’m almost out of mana! Please hang in there!” Chae Hyung-Seok brazenly lied to their faces.
[Balduinus]
[HP: ??????????]
Meanwhile, Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan did their best to reduce the Leper King’s HP down to ten percent.
‘Those two are getting on my nerves as well. That old fossil and that arrogant NPC… I need to get rid of them,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought as he lowered his stance.
Nobody was looking at him right now.
Everyone was focused on raiding the boss monster.
“Ack!”
“Hang in there!”
“We’re almost there!”
There was no way anyone was going to look back at the Buffer when the boss monster was about to die.
‘Good, no one is looking,’ Chae Hyung-Seok thought. He smiled sinisterly as he took out three silver bolts and dragged them on the ground.
Then, the bolts were tainted with the Leper King’s rotten blood.
‘This will be enough to turn them into ghouls,’ he thought as he loaded a bolt onto the Crossbow of the Hell’s Leech.
“We’re almost there! Keep attacking! Hahaha!” Yong Tae-Pung rallied the raid party members.
‘You’re going first, you fucking annoying old fossil.’ Chae Hyung-Seok smirked as he aimed his crossbow at Yong Tae-Pung. He recalled how the old pro gamer kept siding with Siegfried just to spite him before pulling the trigger.
Shwik!
The silver bolt contaminated with the Curse of Decay flew toward Yong Tae-Pung’s waist.
