CH 175

‘Ah… No wonder my luck has been so good these days…’ Siegfried grumbled inwardly while gnashing his teeth.

It was often said that unlucky people would somehow break their noses even if they fell backward, and it seemed that he was unlucky enough to be like that.

He had intentionally picked a not-so-famous hunting ground so that he could avoid running into the Genesis Guild, but who could have known that he was going to run into them here?

‘Let’s just stay still for now. I’m not their target,’ he thought as he took a step back and decided to watch the situation unfold.

However, someone pointed at Siegfried and shouted, “Who’s that bastard? Kill him!”

“Who are you?!”

“Fuck off! You bastard!”

The Genesis Guild members charged toward Siegfried.

“Hey! W-Wait a second! Let’s talk things out! Let’s be civilized!” Siegfried exclaimed. He tried his best to avoid any conflict with them because he couldn’t see any point in fighting them right now.

However, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

“Did word already spread so far that these kinds of losers are already showing up?”

“Ha! He must be trying to strike it big!”

The Genesis Guild members said a bunch of things that made no sense to Siegfried before attacking him.

Bam!

Siegfried smashed his hammer into the ground.

Whoosh!

The fifty Genesis Guild members were flung into the air.

Splitting Heaven and Earth decimated everything as far as Siegfried could see, thanks to the Quad-Turbo Set.

Fwaaah! Fwaaaaaah!

Siegfried cast Blaze Field as a follow-up.

Whooosh… Chwaaak! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

Then, he used Lightning Flying Spur and hurled his hammer. The hammer unleashed a current of electricity that jumped from one Genesis Guild member to another.

[Alert: You have gained experience points!]

[Alert: You have gained experience points!]

[Alert: You have gained experience points!]

[Alert: Your infamy will not rise upon killing an opponent if the opponent attacked first!]

He gained a ton of experience points and—

Thud…! Thud…! Thud…!

—dozens of items fell to the ground…

“You said you wanted to talk things out! I knew it, you’re a psychopath! Kyu!” Hamchi exclaimed and shook his head in disbelief.

“They didn’t want to talk, and I can’t just drop dead because they want me to, right?” Siegfried replied with a shrug.

“You’re right, kyu!”

“But what’s wrong with these guys? I mean, they’re quite the delinquents, but as far as I can remember, they weren’t so bad that they’ll attack others on sight…”

The Genesis Guild was one of the top ten guilds, and it was rare for them to arbitrarily kill Adventurers without asking any questions.

Naturally, it was all for the sake of their public image as a renowned guild. Not only that, but it would be quite troublesome if their members suddenly attacked someone and that someone turned out to be a High Ranker affiliated with one of the top ten guilds.

“Hmm… I wonder what’s going on…” Siegfried muttered. He turned his gaze toward the escaping Adventurer. More accurately, he used his Rune of Insight on the thing that the Adventurer was carrying on his back.

[Ark of the Ancient God]

[An ark containing the authority of an ancient god.]

[The Class Change Scroll: Hidden Class 009 will appear once the seal is broken.]

[Rating: Epic]

[Weight: 50kg (This item is extremely heavy!)]

[Remarks: Cannot Be Transported, Cannot Be Soulbound, Sealed.]

[Cannot Be Transported: This item cannot be transported through Teleport, Warp, Warp Gate, etc…

[Cannot Be Soulbound: This item cannot be stored in the Inventory.]

[Sealed: To unseal this item, A skilled magician has to perform a special rite.]

Siegfried’s following words were…

“Hey, Hamchi.”

“Kyu?”

“I think… I think we have to catch that Adventurer…”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain later. Go pick those items up for now and catch up to me.”

“All right, owner p—”

Whooosh!

Siegfried ran away before Hamchi could even finish replying.

***

In Siegfried’s eyes, the obvious choice was to try and catch the running Adventurer.

“Excuse me!” Siegfried shouted after managing to overtake the Adventurer. “Wait a moment! Let’s talk!”

“Fuck off!”

“Just a moment will do, so let’s talk. I’m not trying to steal that thing from you, so just give me a minute of your time.”

Siegfried had no plans of stealing the Ark of the Ancient God.

Well, it was true that his greed was piqued when he saw the description of the Ark. After all, the Soul Separation Device that he had obtained from the World’s Greatest Survival Tournament was still sitting in his Inventory, and it allowed the user to possess two classes at the same time.

If he managed to get his hands on the ark, Siegfried would become the very first and only person with two hidden classes.

However, Siegfried wasn’t the type of person that would blindly steal someone else’s belongings. No, what he had in mind was far more important than him obtaining the ark.

‘I can’t let those Genesis Guild bastards get their hands on that—over my dead body!’ 

Siegfried gnashed his teeth.

What would happen if Chae Hyung-Seok got his hands on a hidden class? The answer was quite obvious. Siegfried’s revenge would become much more difficult.

‘Never! I should either help this guy escape with that thing, or I’ll take it for myself. There’s no other choice aside from those.’ Siegfried concluded that it would be better if a random person obtained a hidden class as long as they weren’t Chae Hyung-Seok.

Therefore, Siegfried decided to talk with the Adventurer.

“I will help you, so—” he said.

However, the Adventurer snapped back even before Siegfried could complete his sentence. “Shut up! Do you know how hard I worked to steal this from under their noses?!”

“Huh? You stole it…?” Siegfried muttered and tilted his head in confusion.

“Those damned executives… They always take everything for themselves! They can’t roll the dice and share something like this with the rest of us, right? Those bastards… they only know how to order us around…!” the Adventurer grumbled.

“Erm… You’re a Genesis Guild member?” Siegfried asked as his eyes landed on the Adventurer’s chest. He saw the symbol of the Genesis Guild on the Adventurer’s chest.

Siegfried still didn’t have a complete grasp of what was going on, but it seemed that a Genesis Guild member stole what belonged to the Genesis Guild. This meant that the Ark of the Ancient God was as good as an ownerless item in Siegfried’s eyes.

In short, finder’s keepers...

‘Excellent,’ Siegfried smiled. He decided to take the Ark of the Ancient God for himself.

Shwik!

Someone suddenly appeared behind the Adventurer carrying the ark.

Puuuk!

A sword was thrust into the Adventurer’s head.

Siegfried was certain that the perpetrator was an Adventurer with an assassin-type class.

Thud… Booom…!

A random item dropped from the Adventurer’s corpses, and the Ark of the Ancient God also fell to the floor with a loud bang.

“Excuse me,” the assassin said. He carried the ark on his back and started running away. The assassin also had the Genesis Guild badge on his chest.

“What a mess…” Siegfried muttered in disbelief. He was rendered speechless. Who could have known that the guild members of one of the top ten guilds would kill each other over an item?

However, what they were doing wasn’t that unreasonable in Siegfried’s eyes. It was well worth killing a guildmate if an unknown hidden class was on the line.

Siegfried considered himself the prime example of what a hidden class was capable of doing. His life had taken a complete turn after he got a hidden class, and he was now going around hunting other Adventurers whose levels were higher.

‘Do you really think that I’ll let you get away?’ 

Siegfried decided to take the Ark of the Ancient God for himself. After all, he had never been able to find a suitable class that was also worthy of the Soul Separation Device.

However, the same wasn’t true for a hidden class. A hidden class was definitely worthy of being his second class.

Whoooosh!

Siegfried threw his hammer, and the hammer flew at breakneck speeds toward the assassin’s head.

Tak! Whoosh!

However, the assassin simply leaped into the air and twisted to avoid Siegfried’s hammer.

“Ha! Dumbass! Do you really think that an attack like that will work—”

Whoosh… Pukeok!

The hammer turned back and smashed the assassin’s head.

Thud…!

The assassin collapsed to the ground and muttered, “It worked…”

He couldn’t get up anymore.

Unfortunately, the hammer dealt a critical hit, killing him instantly.

Thud… Boom!

A random item dropped, and the Ark of the Ancient God also dropped to the ground with a loud bang.

‘Let’s hurry up and pick that up.’ Siegfried ran toward the two items.

“Finder’s keepers!”

However, a dark-skinned Adventurer suddenly appeared and picked up the Ark of the Ancient God before making a run for it.

“Hey! You…!” Siegfried shouted and ran after the dark-skinned Adventurer. It was the start of the bloody battle royale for the chest containing a hidden class.

***

Meanwhile, Desire was at the raid dungeon—Dimensional Rift: Devil’s Forest, Chernoba—with his guild members.

He logged out from the game to take a break.

Desire—Chae Hyung-Seok—received an unexpected call.

“What did you just say? The Ruin of Madness? What did you say was found there?” Chae Hyung-Seok doubted his ears.

The report he had just heard from a guild executive could only be described as shocking.

— The Ark of the Ancient God. We don’t know for sure what’s inside it, but the item description says that a class change scroll for a hidden class is inside it.

“Do you have a screenshot?”

— I do.

“Send it to me.”

— Give me a second.

Chae Hyung-Seok anxiously waited for around ten seconds before an image arrived on his mobile messenger application.

[Ark of the Ancient God]

This novel is available on bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

[An ark containing the authority of an ancient god.]

[The Class Change Scroll: Hidden Class 009 will appear once the seal is broken.]

Chae Hyung-Seok was certain—the Ark of the Ancient God—was an item that would allow someone to change into a hidden class.

“So, did you secure it? Who has it right now?” Chae Hyung-Seok asked with a hint of urgency in his voice.

— That’s…

“Don’t tell me… Someone ran away with it?”

— Yeah…

“Which crazy bastard dared to do that?” Chae Hyung-Seok asked furiously. His logic was that whenever a guild member found a valuable item, they had to hand it over to him—the guild master.

“Which bastard is it? Which crazy bastard dares to covet my item?!”

— Well…

“…?”

— It’s not just one person.

“Not just one person? What?”

— Everyone aside from those who are loyal to the guild is going nuts over the item.

“So, who has it right now?”

— …

“Don’t tell me… You have no idea…?”

— The item keeps changing hands. I think this is the twentieth time that it changed hands…

“This is crazy…” Chae Hyung-Seok covered his face with both hands.

He finally realized what was going on, but it wasn’t really that uncommon. It would happen once in a while. There were some extremely valuable items in BNW that couldn’t be transported and couldn’t be soulbound, and a fight would always break out over the ownership of such items.

“Hey, Min-Woo…”

— Yeah, hyung?

“I’m currently in Chernoba, so I can’t go there. Going there will take me a day at least.”

Chernoba was a very massive forest, and the only way to leave the forest was to clear at least three sectors in it. In short, Chae Hyung-Seok wouldn’t be able to join the fight for the ark.

— I know...

“Please find a way to secure the item. I’m counting on you.”

— Don’t worry about that. I’m currently doing my best. But the problem is… I can’t trust anyone here…

“Why is it now of all times… haa…” Chae Hyung-Seok sighed.

He couldn’t believe his luck—to think that he would be stuck in a dungeon when a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change into a hidden class had appeared.

— Hyung, don’t worry about it and trust me. I’ll find a way to get that item. I’ll make sure you’ll change into a hidden class.

“Thank you, I’ll be counting on you.”

— All right.

“And make sure that this doesn’t leak out. You know that, right? The whole server could come running if word got out.”

— Don’t worry about that.

“I’m going back to the game now. I’ll try to clear this dungeon as soon as possible, so keep me posted.”

— Sure.

Chae Hyung-Seok ended the call.

“Let’s see…” he muttered while going through his contacts.

Then, he dialed one of the numbers, “Hello? Hi, hyung, it’s me. Do you remember one of my close brothers, Min-Woo? Yeah, that guy. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ll send you his address, so can you send a few of your guys to his place? Just ask them to stand by there for two to three days. Hmm? What is it about? Well…”

Chae Hyung-Seok immediately called a hyung-nim[1] right after he was done talking with Min-Woo. He asked the hyung-nim to send a few guys to Min-Woo’s house.

Why?

It was just in case Min-Woo had any funny ideas about the Ark of the Ancient God.

Chae Hyung-Seok trusted no one.

1. A hyung-nim is an older brother, but it can also be used for gangster boss or mob bosses. ☜