Chapter 69

Jun-sang’s Power Surge and a New Challenge

“Hmm…” The 200% increased damage to facilities immediately confirmed the purpose of this set item for Jun-sang. He nodded and checked the Shatter effect.

Shatter: Beyond simply dealing damage to enemies, it causes secondary damage that pulverizes their skin, armor, or defensive gear.

• Recovering from Shatter damage requires more effort than regular damage.
• Armor destroyed by Shatter cannot be fully restored.

“Hmm…” Jun-sang unconsciously rubbed the area where he had been injured earlier. His body, usually resistant to even scratches due to its high defense and physical resistance, had been instantly torn, undoubtedly due to the effect of this Shatter ability.

Jun-sang picked up the two maces, one in each hand. “Ugh…” Just holding them made his arms tremble. He wondered how much strength it would take to wield such weapons with one hand, let alone two. As a test, he lifted the iron ball in his right hand above his head and swung it down.

“Ugh!” A twisting pain shot through his arm muscles, and his waist swayed, his body being pulled in the direction of the iron ball’s swing. “This is no joke.” Jun-sang barely regained his balance and put the two maces back into his inventory. They would be perfect for training, but for now, he still needed to collect seeds from the defeated enemies.

He first approached Langdajal’s massive corpse, smashed its head, and extracted the seed. “Hmm…” Once extracted, it felt different from any other seeds he had seen. Instead of the dark aura of other dark seeds, this one emitted a faint, rainbow-colored glow. Jun-sang immediately examined this unusual seed.

Item Info

Name: Giant’s Tenacity

Level Requirement: 15

Type: Seed

Grade: Rare

Effect:

1. Strength +10%
2. Stamina +6%
3. Physical Attack Amplification +7% Description: A special seed held by Vanguard Leader Langdajal. Can be equipped into items or cards with Seed slots to enhance abilities. Separating an equipped seed requires the special ability ‘Separate’. [Click here to equip this seed to an item or card.]

“Huh!” He had thought it was unusual, but a Rare seed! Moreover, it had options for Strength Increase and Stamina Increase, which he had never seen before. Each option was top-tier, and to get all these effects from just one seed slot was incredible!

Jun-sang pondered for a moment, then decided to equip this special seed to his Rampage card. Rampage was the only card common to his three combos: Mad Dog, Blood Lord, and Martial Artist. As he equipped the seed to the Rampage card via his wrist interface, Jun-sang felt a surge of power within his body.

“Ohh!” He tested it by taking out an iron ball from his inventory and grasping it in his right hand. He lifted it overhead and swung it down, but this time, his entire body didn’t get pulled and sway as it did before. “This is truly amazing!” Jun-sang immediately held the iron ball with both hands and began to curl and extend his arms as if lifting a dumbbell. Even with his strength improved by the seed from Langdajal’s head, his arms and lower back muscles still felt stiff, but unlike before, it was a pleasant stiffness, indicating that his muscles were activating and getting stronger.

“Huuuh…” Soon, a hazy shimmer began to emanate from Jun-sang’s body. It was a sign that his overheated muscles were entering regeneration, becoming tougher and more resilient. Once his entire body’s muscles had swelled up firmly to a certain extent, Jun-sang put the iron balls back into his inventory and acquired the seeds held by Langdajal’s subordinates. The subordinates’ seeds also had higher average stats than the ordinary seeds obtainable from zombies.

Jun-sang took a short break, unequipped his currently active seeds, and then equipped the newly acquired ones to his cards and items. Only then did he pick up the iron balls again and resume his training. Jun-sang continued his simple exercises until the wolves had fully recovered, and with his eyes, he checked the newly leveled-up cards from the recent battle. All the wolves had gained one level, and three cards—Rampage Rare, Blood-Soaked Super Rare, and Boar’s Soul—had also leveled up. Despite the considerable struggle, he had gained more from this battle than from the boss of an average quest.

“Wolf Pack.” Jun-sang summoned his wolves, then took out a cabinet and threw each of them a boar bone with plenty of meat still attached. He then continued his exercise with the iron balls until the wolves finished their meal. His upper body muscles swelled, looking as if they might burst.

“Hmm…” He felt that perhaps, this time, he could truly give it a try. Since he had already defeated Langdajal, the target of the hidden quest, he had been considering leaving the numerous, annoying zombies to wander for now and moving on to the next hidden quest. Killing them all at once was frustrating due to the continuous after-effects of the Heavy Blow skill, but taking them down one by one would take two to three hours, even if he killed one every second.

But what if he used these two iron balls? Zombie hunting would be as easy as spraying mosquito repellent on mayflies clinging to a screen door.

“Let’s do it.” Jun-sang made his decision and descended into the forest, where the zombies, having lost their leader, were now aimlessly wandering. He began to smash them with the two iron balls.

CRACK!

As Jun-sang lightly swung the iron balls with both hands, the zombies hit by them burst apart with popping sounds. This was a result of the Shatter effect, one of the set item’s abilities.

“Good.” His arm and lower back muscles ached with each swing, but this was nothing compared to the side effects of Bloodsucker. Once he got into a rhythm, Jun-sang ordered the wolves to round up the scattered zombies, then began to obliterate the zombies swarming towards him like moths to a flame with the two iron balls.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Two or three zombies per swing were common, and sometimes even four or five were annihilated. And with each swing, Jun-sang’s body gradually became accustomed to the weight of the iron balls. The only downside was that the bursting zombie bodies sprayed putrid bodily fluids, quickly drenching the iron balls and Jun-sang himself. Of course, this wasn’t entirely bad given the increased regeneration rate from the Blood Lord combo, but drenching oneself in putrid fluids was still not pleasant.

As Jun-sang continued to pulverize the zombies, he noticed the cards in his card slots at the bottom of his vision began to shimmer. This indicated that the cards had leveled up.

“Oh!” Although the zombies weren’t very helpful for Jun-sang’s own level, they were sufficient for leveling up the cards he had recently acquired. Realizing that this seemingly pointless zombie slaughter was surprisingly effective for leveling up skill cards, Jun-sang enthusiastically began to rotate cards and smash zombies.

Finally, after about an hour, when all ten thousand zombies of the vanguard had been obliterated, Jun-sang had managed to raise most of his cards, excluding ones like Sprint, Leap, and Bite, to level 3. The only regret was that he couldn’t raise them any higher, likely due to the zombies’ low level.

“Huuuh…” Jun-sang put the iron balls back into his inventory, then walked through the forest, littered with shattered zombie bodies, and began to collect the seeds. The grotesque sight of scattered limbs, as if a bomb had gone off, was unsettling, but what annoyed Jun-sang more was that when the zombies’ bodies exploded, their seeds were also scattered in all directions.

“Nothing’s perfect, I guess.” Jun-sang clicked his tongue and spent considerable time collecting all the seeds. Then, following the quest marker on his mini-map, he began to move towards his next objective.

As he turned all the enemies of the vanguard into mincemeat and moved to the next location, Im Seo-yoon and his companions had arrived at the first village on the road from Iberia to the northern gate. They should have already passed the second village and nearly reached the gate by this time, but they were struggling against an unexpected adversary: motion sickness.

“Ughh…” The sight of four beautiful women scattered about, vomiting, was not pleasant, especially for the person who had caused it. Their confident departure had gone well enough. The guards at the city gates were startled by the bizarre steel vehicle and even more so by the precious daughter of the Brea family inside, prompting them to open the gate. The problems began as soon as they left the city and drove down the road. While civilian Hummer models were somewhat better, the Humvee Seo-yoon had brought was merely a slightly modified military version, and its ride quality was terribly bad. This, combined with Iberia’s poorly paved roads, caused their excitedly pounding hearts to churn with the vibrations.

To make matters worse, they had just finished dinner. Despite their best efforts to endure, they finally couldn’t take it anymore upon reaching the first village and ordered Seo-yoon to stop the car. Since then, this scene had been continuously unfolding.

“Ahem… Are you alright?” Seo-yoon stood awkwardly beside the car, unable to pat their backs or simply ignore them. He managed to ask Jin Se-ah, who had finally stopped vomiting and returned with a sour smell around her mouth.

But then, “Do I look alright right now?”

“…” Seo-yoon was struck dumb by Jin Se-ah’s sharp retort. Jin Se-ah rinsed her mouth with the bottled water Seo-yoon silently offered, then spoke again. “Seo-yoon.”

“Yes?”

“If possible… change the car.”

“Yes…”

He had spent so much money acquiring that vehicle. He even had plans to add reinforced armor and mount an MG50 as a turret! Seo-yoon managed to suppress these thoughts that reached his throat and let out a long sigh. After a short while, the other women also returned to the car, one by one.

“Anyway… I thought they’d be right on our heels, but they haven’t chased us, surprisingly.”

“I know, right.” Only after leaving the city gates did they realize that the “father” the maids had mentioned was none other than Jester, the current highest authority in Iberia. They had frowned, feeling like they had stepped in something unpleasant, but despite spending considerable time here due to motion sickness, there was no sign of a pursuit team.

Of course, there was a reason for this. The first reason was that Jester, upon hearing about Heness from the maids, had clutched the back of his neck and collapsed, not yet having recovered. The second reason was that the Union’s key figures had strongly refused to pursue Heness. Key figures of the Union, including Kim Seong-jin and Kwon Hyeong-sik, had no intention of wasting forces on an ignorant girl when their resources were already scarce. When they took this stance, the members of the Elder Council, with Jester absent, grew suspicious of the Union’s attitude and were reluctant to further divide their already limited security personnel.

Seo-yoon and his companions got back into the car, and this time, they began to drive a little slower. Heness desperately wanted to reach Jun-sang as quickly as possible, but unfortunately, her body wouldn’t cooperate. Ultimately, it was several hours later that they arrived at the gate.

The gate was already empty. There was no point in trying to hold back ten thousand enemies with fewer than ten soldiers, and it would be foolish to waste their limited forces in such a way, so a retreat order had been issued early. Seo-yoon got out of the car, opened the closed gate, and then carefully drove the car outside. Since it was already pitch black, they couldn’t drive fast even if they wanted to.

They slowly advanced, scanning their surroundings with tense eyes, when they suddenly discovered the corpses of hyenas strewn along the roadside.

“Hmm… Stay put. I’ll go check.”

“Okay.”

Seo-yoon cautiously moved forward and examined the hyena corpses. All of them were smashed and broken in various places, and he could easily imagine a single person’s combat style from the scene. “It seems he did come here after all.” After confirming the bodies, Seo-yoon returned to the car and said, “It seems to be Jun-sang’s trail. Destroying beasts like that isn’t something just anyone can do.”

Having started the conversation, Seo-yoon looked at Heness again and said, “We’ll proceed further in, but it’s difficult to gain speed at night in this terrain. Please bear with us if we go a bit slower.”

“Yes.” Heness nodded, and Seo-yoon carefully began to advance the Humvee again. However, while they were slowly progressing, Jun-sang had already encountered his next enemy.

“Hmm…” Jun-sang frowned. It was hard to discern clearly in the darkness, but a group of enemies was slowly passing below his hiding spot. The numbers were not as large as he had expected; perhaps only about a hundred. Of course, that wasn’t a small number, but perhaps because he had just literally pulverized ten thousand zombies, this number didn’t seem particularly formidable.

However, Jun-sang did not move recklessly. The reason was that among this small group, there were no less than eleven quest markers gathered. He carefully observed the enemies first. It was easy to tell from their appearance that ten of the quest markers indicated skeleton mages. Therefore, by process of elimination, the waddling, pot-bellied monster with a toad’s head, swaggering at the back, must be Supply Captain Bukail. His Insight ability showed a yellow flag above that monster’s head. This indicated that the ridiculous-looking mid-boss’s abilities were roughly on par with Jun-sang’s own. While this was only a reference and not an absolute standard, it warranted caution given that Langdajal’s abilities had also been marked with a yellow flag.

As Jun-sang meticulously examined the supply unit, one question arose: Shouldn’t a supply unit be transporting something? But he soon remembered the existence of his own inventory. Perhaps this Bukail character also possessed an inventory. It was entirely possible. An inventory was, after all, a personal sub-space. There was no law stating that only players could possess such a thing.

Jun-sang slowly regulated his breathing, then retrieved the two iron balls named “Langdajal’s Fury” from his inventory and held them in his hands. The Blood Lord combo card was already equipped in his card slot. Confirming that all preparations were complete, he silently activated Invisibility and moved towards the supply unit led by Bukail, hidden in the darkness.