It’s been 10 days since I first set foot on the level 1600 hunting ground. And it’s been exactly 9 hours since I started hunting here today.
In other words, I could go straight to the level 1700 hunting ground if I held out for one more hour.
So I kept hunting harder because once I went to the level 1700 and level 1800 hunting grounds, I would not be coming back here unless I really needed to.
Anyway, I spent the remaining hour hunting hard, and soon I heard a message.
[You have met the conditions for moving to the 1700 level hunting ground.
: Maintain connection for at least 10 days at least 10 hours a day in the level 1600 hunting ground – Success.
: Defeat 10,000 monsters in the level 1600 hunting ground – Success.]
As soon as I saw the message, I immediately left because I could move to the level 1800 hunting ground as quickly as possible by staying connected 10 hours a day in the level 1700 hunting ground, starting from now . If I started now, I would stay connected to Revival Legend for more than 20 hours, but it didn’t matter.
In the past, I stayed logged in for more than 22 hours, just 2 hours shy of a full day.
Anyway, I arrived at the level 1700 hunting ground.
Wheeeeeeeeng.
It was empty. Of course, it didn’t mean there were none there.
Compared to those who appeared in the level 1600 hunting ground, there were only a few around here. So, I passed by them and took my position at the forefront of the level 1700 hunting ground.
[You have 3 hours 59 minutes 11 seconds left until the 1700 level hunting ground opens.]
It seemed to open with exactly 10 hours left for the day.
So I left and opened my mouth silently.
“Log out.”
I decided to take a break of about 4 hours in advance, so I could hunt hard for the remaining 10 hours of the day.
About 4 hours later.
In front of the 1700 level hunting ground.
There were more people here than there were 4 hours ago. Of course, I could understand why. When they hunted by forming a party, any member would be treated equally regardless of the number of monsters they hunted. In other words, it was not difficult for them to set foot on the level 1700 hunting ground in 10 days.
However, they will never win 1st place in the upcoming event because the number of monsters I have already hunted in the level 1500 and level 1600 hunting grounds was so huge.
Even if they formed a party to hunt monsters, only the person who actually killed the monsters would have it added to his kill total.
So I was on standby there, then the moment the level 1700 hunting ground started emitting a bright light, I immediately moved toward it and entered without any difficulty.
Then a message rang.
[You have ‘All Buffs, All Debuffs’.
-You are now in the Land of Death, but it doesn’t affect you.]
Of course, the debuffs didn’t work on me. But the others besides me were different. They were definitely affected as soon as they entered the hunting grounds.
“Well, I received debuffs because I was not an undead.”
“My health and mana will decrease? Man, because of the damage over time, my health and mana will decrease dramatically in this hunting ground!”
“Damn it! What if debuffs like this are all over the hunting ground?”
Of course, health and mana reduction was not a great debuff. It didn’t affect actual combat power. However, no matter how low its effect was, it was really annoying as a debuff was still a debuff. Besides, given that the debuff would sap more health and mana over time, they had no choice but to feel even more frustrated. In other words, they were in big trouble unlike me.
So I passed by them and penetrated deep into the hunting ground using Blink with zero cooldown.
***
At dinner time in the Myongjin Shelter.
“All of them?”
“Yep,” she replied, nodding at my question.
Then she continued, “Gosh, they are making such a big fuss right now. It’s not only the fact that they are suffering sustained damage, but the damage keeps increasing over time. They feel it’s hard to hunt there even one hour, or less than one hour.”
“…”
The name of the 1700 level hunting ground I entered was the Land of Death.
Perhaps that’s why the monsters that appeared there were also the undead.
Moreover, unless they were undead, everybody would be affected by the debuffs that would reduce their health and mana in the entire hunting ground.
Of course, the debuffs wouldn’t have been a big deal if their health and mana were reduced at a constant rate per minute or per second. There were already precedents for that in ‘Revival Legend’.
According to my sister, however, those in the hunting ground found it so hard to hunt even one hour because of the cumulative drastic decrease in health. So much so that their healers could barely catch up with restoring the decreasing health.
Because of that, the healers who were supposed to replenish the health of the party members were busy healing themselves, but the problem was compounded by the fact that they didn’t even have sufficient mana for healing.
Of course, I didn’t just nod at my sister’s words because they could find a way to solve their problem.
“Then why don’t they just go hunt for 30-40 minutes, exit, then come back?”
The damage per second increased the longer they stayed in there.
In that case, they could get out of the hunting ground, reset the damage rate of the debuff, and then enter again to hunt. Of course, they might think it’s a big nuisance.
But my sister wagged her finger left to right, and said, “The cumulative debuffs they get afflicted with from the 1700 level hunting ground are not the kind of debuffs that deactivate upon leaving the area. They need exactly three times their hunting time for it to reset. In other words, if they hunt there for 1 hour, they have to be outside the hunting ground for 3 hours for the debuff to fully go away.”
“…”
Since I had never suffered from the debuffs, I didn’t know about it. Besides, I usually went deep inside the hunting ground so I would not be disturbed by others.
This time my brother responded to my sister.
“In other places of the Land of Death, there were areas where not only did their health and mana decrease, but even their attack power and defense power decreased. There was even an area which increased the consumption of mana drastically. According to them, even after an hour, the mana required to use one level 1 skill increased by dozens of times. So they could hardly hunt there.”
My sister added, “That’s right. It looks like the level 1700 hunting ground is full of debuffs that increase dramatically over time as if it doesn’t want to make passage to the level 1800 hunting ground easy. Of course, Juyoung, you…”
She didn’t finish her words, but I knew what she was going to say like everyone else here because they all knew I had the trait, ‘All Buffs, All Debuffs.’
Anyway, we had dinner talking about the level 1700 hunting ground. After that, I accessed ‘Revival Legend’ right away.
Even though lots of participants in the ‘Reach the Level 1800 Hunting Ground First’ event were eliminated because of the cumulative debuffs in the level 1700 hunting ground, I could not afford to slack off and hunt in a sloppy manner.
Besides, I had to finish imprinting the traits of the monsters here, too.