“Did you like our holiday?”
Ji Soo smiled at Ji Song’s question.
“Of course I did! We didn’t have to prepare anything, so we could just enjoy the holiday!”
“Same! I also liked that we didn’t have to book anything.”
Soo Hyuk thought as he looked at his excitable parents.
‘It was considerably more comfortable than the previous holidays.’
Pangea was convenient as you didn’t have to prepare for a trip or book a hotel. One of the reasons Pangea was becoming so popular was because of this.
‘If it wasn’t for those Demon guild bastards.’
Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. His parents had been killed once by the Demon guild. If it weren’t for them, this holiday would’ve been perfect.
‘What kind of people would chase people down instead of apologising after that?’
His anger grew every time he thought of them. Suppressing his anger in front of his parents, Soo Hyuk concentrated on eating his apple.
“Then I’ll go first.”
Soo Hyuk finished his apple a few minutes later and stood up after speaking to his parents. He then went to his room and checked the time.
‘3 hours. Hmm, what should I do?’
Soo Hyuk thought as he stared at his capsule. He still had 3 hours left until his normal log out time, so he was contemplating whether he should connect to Pangea now.
‘Mmm…okay.’
He came to a decision after a few seconds. He reached out to his capsule.
Shuaak!
When Soo Hyuk connected to Pangea, he could see the sea with the brilliant night sky hanging over the waves.
“Wow, to think I would be able to see a sight like this…”
“I know right?”
There were still a lot of people left on the beach. They were all sitting or lying on the sand with their partners and their families, looking at the stars. Of course, his aim today wasn’t to see the ocean at night.
Glancing at the calm waves one last time, Soo Hyuk then turned around and started trudging towards the warp gates. As he was heading towards the warp gates, he opened his inventory and took out a mask.
‘I’ll use this mask this time.’
The mask depicted a fierce bear, with glaring eyes and sword-like fangs. He had previously bought different kind of masks to keep the Demon guild from recognising him. He was going to use a bear mask instead of a fox mask, as the Demon guild was going to be valiant against a fox mask.
Soo Hyuk smoothly donned the bear mask and soon arrived at the warp gates. Was it to look at the famous night sky of Hedlin? Whatever the reason, there were lots ofusers arriving from other places and less people using the warp gates to travel to other places.
“Hey, have you heard?”
“What is it?”
“The Solitude guild!”
The conversations of other users made its way to Soo Hyuk, who was lining up to use the warp gates.
“Ah! Weren’t they appointed as the representative guild?”
“It’s got to be because they stopped the Demon guild’s massacre last time.”
“Apart from that, they apparently threw around a lot of gold as well.”
As he listened to the conversations of users around him, he thought,
‘So, they became the representative guild of Hedlin.’
It was an interesting piece of news, but it had no relation to Soo Hyuk as of now. Then, he heard another interesting piece of news straight after.
“Then have you heard of the other rumour?”
“What rumour?”
“That the Solitude guild was the one who hired the Demon guild in the first place!”
“Hey, that’s going to far. Do you actually think that the Solitude guild is that crazy?”
“Well, your word also make sense…”
‘If Solitude was the one that hired the Demon guild…’
Soo Hyuk was troubled by the possibility. He wasn’t feeling guilty about his revenge on the Demon guild, as they still were the ones that carried out the deed, but because of the Solitude guild’s strength. That strength would get in his way of revenge.
‘What should I do?’
It went without saying that he would also get revenge on the true conspirers however, harassing the Solitude guild was on a different dimension than harassing the Demon guild. The Solitude guild was founded by a former member of the number 1 guild, Desolate. This kind of background made it so that all sorts of users were attracted by Solitude. As a result, the size of Solitude outgrew the Demon guild until it was incomparable to the Demon guild.
‘My infamy score will rise like a rocket.’
Another problem was that members of Solitude didn’t have a high infamy score. In the situation where he killed them, his infamy would rise without end.
‘But the worst problem is that Solitude was appointed as the representative guild of Hedlin.’
This meant that Hedlin would be supporting the Solitude guild as Solitude was now the face of Hedlin, at least in terms of guilds. Consequently, him going against Solitude was equivalent to going against Hedlin itself.
‘But it’s not confirmed yet.’
These were all mere possibilities currently. This rumour could always turn out to be false, and Soo Hyuk wasn’t a person that would act recklessly without evidence.
“Where are you heading to?”
Soon, it was Soo Hyuk’s turn. After replying, he stood on the magic circle and was teleported to Hadrac.
“Did you hear about the Demon guild?”
“The thing that happened yesterday?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Apparently ‘all hell broke loose’ at their front gates, at least according to my friend. Keke, those dogs. Didn’t I say that something would happen to them eventually?”
The conversations of users around him reached his ears as he made his way to the Demon guild’s guild house. Unlike Hedlin, the users here were all talking about the Demon guild and the incident yesterday. It seemed he attracted the attention of other users as well as the Demon guild.
‘Well, I expected it.’
The Demon guild was one of the top guilds in Hadrac, and that meant anything that happened in the open would be instantly known to users who stayed in Hadrac.
“This bastard! Don’t wear the fox mask!”
“This crazy person! Why do you care!”
While heading to the Demon guild’s base, Soo Hyuk found two users fighting over a mask. The users around him had already noticed the commotion and they were surrounding the scene.
‘Demon guild?’
One of the users fighting belonged to the Demon guild, while the other was trying to wear the fox mask that he wore yesterday. Normally, he wouldn’t care about this sort of brawl, but the Demon guild’s reaction to the mask made him halt his steps.
“What? Don’t you know we announced not to wear this mask?”
“And why should I listen your guild’s ramblings?”
“This bastard can’t listen to reason.”
“Eihh? Since when was your guild reasonable?!”
After a fierce argument, the Demon guild member and the unknown started fighting each other with the intent to kill. The fight didn’t last long however, as one collapsed under the other’s wild flurry of strikes.
“This son of a bitch dared to yell at me while being all bark no bite?”
The Demon guild member spat at the corpse of the unknown user and looked around at the whispering users. At his murderous glare, the rabble of users quieten down and slowly retreat. Meanwhile, Soo Hyuk gave him an indifference glance and went on his way. Of course, he wasn’t just walking away.
“Inferno.”
[You have attacked user ‘Daredevil’.]
[You have entered an ‘enemy’ state with user ‘Daredevil’.]
[User ‘Daredevil’ has a high infamy score.]
[Your infamy score will not rise.]
He had stealthily cast Inferno at Daredevil before walking away.
“Ah?”
Daredevil exclaimed with surprise. Soo Hyuk wasn’t the only one the messages appeared for, as Daredevil had also seen the messages. Daredevil’s health was low from his previous fight so as a result, he had fallen with black light shining around in under 3 seconds.
“Hmm?”
“What? Black light?”
“How did he die?”
The retreating users murmured with surprise when they noticed the state of Daredevil. As for Soo Hyuk, he was pushing past the gathering users as he quickened his pace towards the Demon guild’s base.
‘I can’t let him tell the Demon guild first…’
He thought as he quickened his pace. Daredevil had been logged out of Pangea however, contacting the Demon guild was still possible even when he was offline. That meant that Daredevil could notify the Demon guild before Soo Hyuk could arrive first, and that was precisely what Soo Hyuk was also trying to prevent.
“Poison fog.”
Soo Hyuk soon reached the Demon guild’s guild house and cast poison fog immediately. And the result…
[You have attacked user…]
[You have attacked…]
[You have entered an ‘enemy’…]
[You have…]
[User ‘Kaz’ has a high…]
[User…]
[Your infamy will…]
[…]
Soo Hyuk briefly glanced at the message out of the corner of his eye, then payed them no more attention.
“Poison Sphere, Poison Chain, Firebolt.”
The densely clustered spells flew out of the poison fog and assaulted the guild house, killing multiple users in the process.
‘Let’s keep going for 1 month.’
He thought as Demon guild members collapsed again and again inside the dense green fog.
‘Yeah, I’m just messing around for around 10 minutes at most. I can’t be lenient with these kinds of bastards.’
He had considered forgive and forgetting, but every time he saw or even heard the words ‘Demon guild’ it was as though his parents’ dead bodies were right in front of him again. And every time that happened, anger like nothing he had felt before would rise from inside him. So just by investing 10 minutes of his time, he believed that he was helping other people avoid what he had gone through.
‘That much should keep them in control.’
The Demon guild’s hirer. Soo Hyuk often wondered who was behind the massacre that day, but it was just easier to point his anger and pain at a tangible enemy, unlike a mystery enemy that he didn’t know the identity of. He had interrogated Demon guild members in the past, but all he got out of them was the fact that their mouth was tight.
‘This much should do it…’
After killing a few more users, Soo Hyuk ran around a corner again and teleported to his subspace again.
“Archmage’s Subspace.”
[Warping to Archmage’s Subspace.]
The distorted space was repaired, and the familiar sight of the chamber filled his eyes again. Ignoring the doors to his front, he instead turned to his right and walked through the tunnel.
The reason Soo Hyuk logged in wasn’t to just get revenge. Soo Hyuk stood on the warp circle as it lit up, and soon he was at the Matab Library again.
“Hello.”
“Oh! It’s been a while.”
After exchanging greeting with the librarian NPC, he handed in his token and headed to the bookshelves.
* * *
Bang!
“This crazy f*cker! Dog bastard! Motherf*cker!”
Haggis cursed crazily as he threw his desk around the room. Baal, who was sitting opposite of him, was wearing a heavy expression. It wasn’t because of Haggis’ harsh swear words.
‘XXX.’
It was because he was also swearing under his breath.
“Soo Hyuk that bastard! F*ck! AAAAHH!”
Meanwhile, Haggis was expressing his emotions through his entire body. He stomped around the room, smashing vase and throwing chairs. Obviously avoiding Baal.
“It’s the tenth day already!”
Haggis shouted with frustration. The entire guild thought that he was insane after he had come to attack the first time. But after the tenth attack, they were genuinely convinced that…
“There’s something wrong with his head! He’s crazy, I tell you! CRAZY!”
And he wasn’t a normal crazy person. He was like the culmination of crazy. The apex. Wait, no. Crazy wasn’t enough to describe him, not by a mile. The current Soo Hyuk was so crazy that they couldn’t accurately describe him with the language known to man.
Soo Hyuk was using hit and run against them every day, but the problem was that they couldn’t do anything about it. He always came at a random time, so they were always caught unaware, and he was also strong enough to get away without a scratch.
“Are we just going to let him do as he likes?”
Haggis asked Baal.
“And because of that crazy bastards, users are wearing more masks now! They’re f*cking ignoring us!”
Fox mask, then a bear mask, then a sheep mask, and so on. Soo Hyuk was switching masks every time he appeared. And as a result, the guilds with grudges against the Demon guild had started to wear masks as well.
But as if that wasn’t enough, because of the continuous surprise attacks, members were starting to leave, and the guild’s jobs were also decreasing.
“I want to catch him as well.”
Baal opened his mouth. Of course Baal wanted to catch him. From his position as the guild master, Soo Hyuk was akin to his worst enemy.
“But how?”
How could they stop him? Haggis fell silent at Baal’s question.
“We don’t have any information on that XXX.”
Baal raised his voice, which was filled with frustration. They didn’t have any plausible information on him; he had no guild, no fame, no known connections etc. All knew were his name and finding someone in Pangea just through just their name was almost impossible.
However, there were still two people who knew his appearance: Loken and Haiden. The problem was their memory. The two of them remembered Soo Hyuk’s face incorrectly, and as a result, they were almost driven mad trying to draw a montage while listening to their arguments.
“I want to hire top rankers, but we have no information on him! We’re going to have to give them something to work towards!”
Baal had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Demon guild couldn’t stop Soo Hyuk on their own. His solution: hire top rankers to hunt Soo Hyuk in this his place. However, because they had no leads on him, even the top rankers wouldn’t be able to hunt him.
At that moment.
“…This f*cking XXX! RAARGH!”
Baal screamed as he jumped up from his seat and bolted out of the room. Haggis, who was left alone, stared dumbfoundedly at Baal’s sudden outburst, then hurriedly chased after him. When Haggis finally caught up to Baal outside the guild house and followed Baal’s gaze, he could see a mass of green rising up from the front gates.
Thank for the chapter!