But they didn’t realize that the added tension along with these thoughts would stiffen them further mid battle.
They could not drink the drink, because they were already tension filled.
In combat, just as stats and skills, having morale was just as important.
With so many people gathered together to fight, they could not ignore the psychological factors of the group.
‘Everybody seems to be nervous.’
Maylon shot a question towards Weed to try to boost their morale.
“Weed nim, I’ve been curious about something. Do you mind if I ask?”
“No.”
“It’s about back then in CoM, the Ibanpolten Island’s labyrinth.”
Weed somewhat vaguely remembered.
‘It was the sealing place of an Archdemon.’
It was a very famous place in Continent of Magic.
It was the nastiest of labyrinths that remained undefeated until Weed!
It was an incomprehensible maze that wouldn’t allow Weed another attempt at it after he had finished exploring it.
“So, how did you break into it?”
Maylon was expecting a great answer.
She figured if they listened to Weed’s adventure for a bit, it’d calm the mood of the party.
Weed had a simple answer.
“Did you know that that labyrinth had many sewer rats in the basement?”
“Yes. It was infested with large ra…no way?”
“I entered it through those sewers.”
“……”
The answer was too simple!
That was too much of a simple solution to come to.
Maylon had to throw in another question.
“Do you remember the Inferno Skeleton King?”
Skeleton King!
A monster with a body of bones and smoldering flames encompassed him.
“That was another monster that Weed nim killed. Great physical attacks, as well as magic defense so great that it was expected to be at the level of dragons, it was considered as the worse of monsters; how would you handle him?”
“I would immerse him in water to kill him.”
“…………”
Maylon drooped tremendously after her useless attempts.
However, if she had known of the situations behind them, she wouldn’t think it could be so negligible.
He had to make detailed mapping of everywhere, all to predict where the Archdemon was sealed.
Just to locate the nearest entrance to that location, and it was a sewer entrance no less!
The Skeleton King too, after a dozen deaths or so to figured out his weakness, and was finally able to drag him to the lake.
The reasons for Weed’s successes were through thorough investigation and preparation.
Although it was easy to give an immediate answer while leaving out plenty of the intermediate steps; in actuality, he suffered a lot throughout the process.
‘Regardless, it was much easier than trying to earn a living in real life.’
To Weed, any quests given weren’t that hard.
They were much easier comparing to him being a high school dropout trying to take care of his sickly grandmother and younger sister.
With no education degree, his payroll wasn’t much.
The workload, the risks, and being dirty; his pay would get cut immediately from any one of these simple reasons!
He even had to compete with foreign workers.
Quests are just simple comparing to that of the job market!
Maybe if it was a grade Special S difficulty quest! (dunno if SS is a real grade or not in this game, no1 achieved it yet.)
Comparing to real life, doing quests was a relatively simple shift.
Breakfast was over.
Weed stood up from his spot.
“Are you all ready?”
“Yeah.”
The party nodded slowly. Regardless of their confidence level, they cannot not go.
“Now let’s move. Everyone are to take care of yourselves.”
At last, Weed led the tension filled party through the gates.
Within the expanses of the collective castles in Todeum, the Unicorns and Pegasus were in flight.
They would romp from roof to roof, and sometimes they would whiz by on the plaza.
“I’m prepared for this.”
Geomchi2 solidly said.
He saw the abundance of monsters, but his aim was to pounce them all anyway.
This was the reason why the party, more than before, culminated themselves to the utmost.
To go against what could be called the ultimate power.
Having just seeing what he visualized as objects of terror before him; at last, it was the moment to fight.
But Weed shook his head.
“This isn’t it. There’s a better hunting ground.”
“Where at?”
“You’ll know when we get there.”
Weed crouched closely to the earth, and crept on all fours.
Therefore, his party did the same thing. More than 300 people, moving in unison, crawled on the ground.
Ppalppalppalppal!
All were crawling at formidable speed.
It used twice the amount of Stamina comparing to running, but everyone tried their best to keep up.
“Heokheok! Well Weed nim.”
Mapan was struggling onward, because he was the Merchant, really weak when it comes to combat abilities.
It was a steep price to pay for his high amount of Wisdom.
In the first place, other than Knowledge, Wisdom, and Charisma, most of his stats were waived.
But since he gained a bit of Stamina from the meal, he was barely able to keep up zigzagging around.
Mapan asked while relaxed.
“I don’t know why we have to zigzag from alley to alley.”
Weed absolutely did not take the main street.
As soon as they past the gate, he passed through an alleyway where there were plenty of empty boxes stacked on one another.
He only used the extremely narrow alleyways among those were there.
Weed spoke in a low voice.
“If you look carefully at the behavior of animals, there are a lot to learn.”
“Huh?”
“They know many laws of survival to live a long life, so they have a lot more advantages over you.”
“So now, what kind of animal are we going to copy for survival?”
“Cockroach.”
“……”
Not a lion or a tiger, Weed was going to learn from a cockroach!
Thus they were moving like the insect with the highest rate of survivability.
Syaysyasyaysyasyak.
The two arms and legs moved very quickly.
His head moved violently from side to side, as if it was a moving antenna.
His rolling eyes moved constantly to determine of there was an oncoming monster.
Fortunately, thanks to effort put into this, they did not encounter any monster and were able to arrive to their destination.
The first destination was the vampire Tori’s black castle!
The party entered the castle and made it safely to the basement.
With the tension dwindled down a bit, Pale asked as he took a relaxed breath.
“Whew, what is this castle?”
Weed replied simply.
“This is where I found Tori, and this is also his home. Our first battle is here. Sahyeongs, please take out your bows.”
Geomchi, the instructors, and all the practitioners took out the overly large bows they received from Weed.
“You’re talking about this?”
Geomchi had the biggest bow.
Then from Geomchi2, Geomchi3, the size, in increments, got smaller and smaller.
Even the bows had rankings!
Only after then that Pale and Maylon understood why.
The bows seemed to be too big and sluggish, making them difficult to use; but that would not matter since they were going to fight within a castle.
It’d be an inconvenience to use during combat, but along with a shield, they will be able to survive.
Weed looked at his dirt covered body, then removed his Talroke’s Armor, Lott Sword, Ancient Shield and cleaned them at lightning speed.
“Ah so. Please take out your shields.”
The Geomchis each removed the shields that could cover their entire body that they have equipped.
It was hard to say whether the shields’ form and usage were good or not.
It can deflect oncoming arrows from their enemies when equipped, also increased their defense by at least 50%.
Problem was they were two-handed weapons; along with the inability to equip swords, their Agility reduced dramatically.
“Sword go, shine armor, shine shield!”
Exercised the Blacksmith skill!
Geomchis and other colleagues’ weapons were grinded and armors wiped; albeit temporarily, stats increased through these means.
“It’s over. Then Irene nim, please bless the group.”
“Yes. To fight against the wicked and evil, please let his strength reach its peak, Bless!”
Weed and the Geomchis’ bodies were covered in slight divine radiance.
The Unicorns and Pegasus broke their ways into the cellar through the door.
Due to the fact they were creatures made from divine magic, they could sense whenever divine magic was used within a certain range.