Chapter 7: Who Must I Kill to Meet That Guy

A sleepy girl woke up and rubbed her eyes softly.

A couple of days earlier, she had been working hard without any rest. The reason for that was her uncle. She didn’t know how he did, but the Hall of Beginnings had become an isolated place because of him. There had been rumors about how you would be killed by an NPC if you’re careless, or about their slogan “We, wise and lovely NPCs, welcome all new players.” is totally fake.

She had to put a lot of effort into bringing players to use the Hall of Beginnings’ services again. She had advertised, cleared works, planned a marketing campaign, and felt so exhausted to the point that she had to secretly take a nap in her player service room.

When she looked around, she was startled that there was a young man sitting in the room. She was shocked because, normally, if she didn’t allow it, no one would be unable to enter this room. This actually was the main reason why she chose to rest in this room.

Soon the young man’s eyes opened.

“Oh, I see that you are awake now, Miss Lucy,” the man in the Beginner’s Clothing greeted her.

‘Hmm? This person knows me?’ Lucy now pondered where she had met him.

Sila saw the woman’s confused reaction and felt unsure if he just mistook someone else for Lucy or not, since he had never met Lucy before.

“Are you not Lucy, Crow’s niece?”

“Oh, sorry. I am Lucy. Are you my uncle’s acquaintance?”

“We once talked when I used this place’s service.”

Sila started telling Lucy on how he met Crow. He also used this chance to ask for information that Crow had irresponsibly told him, “I don’t know either. Go find out about that yourself” with Lucy; which she could answer them perfectly, living up to the title ‘Wise and lovely NPC.’

“I should take my leave now. By the way, how can I get out of this room?” asked Sila.

Lucy waved her hand. Then, the door was opened

“It’s our pleasure to serve you, sir,” said Lucy with a smile.

Sila said thanks and stepped out of the room.

***

Sila slowly walked along the Town of Beginnings’ main road, heading toward the restaurant just as the mysterious message told him.

‘Since I have come to this game, I’ve only acquainted myself with Miss Muay at the Card Shop, Mister Crow, the man in wuxia clothing, and Miss Lucy, didn’t I?’

He began to guess the identity of the sender. Miss Muay was an NPC so she shouldn’t have any reason to send him a message. Crow should have gone back to the Madmen’s Valley already. The man in wuxia clothing was also out of the list since the two didn’t even have a proper conversation. As for Lucy, he had just met her after receiving the message.

‘I’m really clueless.’

Shortly, Sila spotted a group of people tightly gathered on the street, blocking his path. The town only had one main road, so if he planned to visit a restaurant, he would have to go through.

He peeked at the situation over the crowd’s shoulders and found that there were three men cornering a young man and a woman.

Sila had a principle not to interfere with other people’s business. The world is cruel like that. The strong devour the weak, the wolves hunt the rabbits. If you don’t want to be hunted, then don’t be a rabbit. Only strength will make you survive. Moreover, it might be another story if those two in the corner were someone who couldn’t fight. But since they didn’t look weak, Sila had more reason to not intervene. Most importantly, this was just a game’s matter.

Judging by the situation, the incident would come to an end soon. The side with the young man and the woman had them both badly injured. Though the people on the other side were injured too, they were still getting the upper hand since they had more people.

“You two, just give up and hand us the ‘Serpent Heart’ obediently.” The brutal man who seemed to be the boss of the side of the three people said.

“My companions and I hunted for this item ourselves. We even faced a lot of casualties, so I cannot give it to you. Not to mention that we obtained it rightfully,” stated the young man.

“Rightful? You are quite wrong here. The Great White Serpent was a monster that our guild settled on for a long time ago. But since it wasn’t fully mature, its heart wouldn’t contain any special effect. We had patiently waited for it to grow up, but then your party snatched away our prey. We had invested a lot of resources into feeding it, so we are the rightful one here to obtain its heart.”

“But, when we said we were going to hunt it, you guys said we could take anything if we won,” shouted the young woman, “Then what is this? When we actually successfully hunted it down, you guys are trying to plunder our loot. Is this an act of a righteous side!?”

‘A righteous side, huh? Are these bandit-looking guys really being considered as on the side of justice?’

Sila couldn’t imagine these guys to be good men no matter how he looked at them, either appearance-wise or action-wise.

Sila kept waiting but both sides were still shouting at each other, stating they were righteous for various reasons. However, Sila could tell that both sides were trying to recover themselves in secret; they all were looking for an opportunity to strike. Although the conversation was ongoing, if one side scrambled, that side would be attacked immediately.

Since he couldn’t go through this crowd anyway, Sila then inquired about the situation from the man in front of him, “Big Bro, could you please tell me what’s going on here?”

The mob turned their head to Sila. They saw Sila in Beginner’s Clothing and comprehended that Sila wouldn’t have known the stories in this game and about this incident. They then enjoyably explained many things to Sila.

Sila could summarize all gamers’ explanations as followed:

The group of three bandit-looking men had planned to hunt the Great White Serpent together long ago. But since it was still immature, they had decided to feed it. The feeding here meant making it go through fights to increase its abilities and growth. They had let it to fight against several Level 20 Squire Rank wolves by catching the wolves and releasing them into the Great White Serpent’s territory.

Nevertheless, this morning, the party of those two currently cornered people, which their group originally had consisted of seven people before, had traveled to the Great White Serpent’s territory and met with the savage men’s group.

The group of savage men had inspected the newly arrived group’s level and found that all members of this party were only Level 50s Squire Rank. Their group had been so sure that this party couldn’t possibly kill the Great White Serpent, which was a Level 250 Squire Rank monster; so they had let this arrogant group pass through.

However, contrary to the savage men’s group’s expectation, with a well-coordinated fighting method of this team of seven people, the Great White Serpent had been killed. Then, the savage group had rushed into the battlefield to loot items, and been able to slay five people from the opposite team since they had been all exhausted from the previous fight.

The team of seven, which their members had been reduced to two, used Returning Scroll to escape to Town of Beginnings. But the savage gang had gone after them. In the end, the fight continued in this place as Sila now witnessed.

Sila could hear one person saying that the Serpent Heart was an item that can promote one’s rank from Squire to Knight if one’s level reaches 1,000.

About Rank, Sila had heard from Lucy that, in Monster Soul, both players and monsters had rank. The ranks were ranged by strength from Squire, Knight, Marquis, Lord, to Emperor Rank. Each rank had a level cap at 1,000; and when one was promoted, one’s level would be at 1 of the new rank.

With the ability to promote rank, the Serpent Heart was considered a very important item. Its market price was a whopping 30 gold. It was no wonder why both groups tried to claim their right to get it.

Now, Sila was more interested in these onlookers. It was one thing for him that he had a principle not to interfere in others’ affairs, but why did these people just stood still and did nothing? If the Serpent Heart was truly that precious, there should be many people here who wanted to snatch it themselves. In fact, it shouldn’t be weird at all if someone was consumed by greed and shamelessly engaged in the battle.

Sila stated this curious opinion out, and there was someone who answered him.

“Little Bro, it’s normal that no one would dare to interfere in the affairs of the Heavenly Dragon Guild.”

“Heavenly Dragon Guild?” Sila frowned. He thought he had heard this name before.

“Those bandit-looking men are members of the Heavenly Dragon Guild established by Montra, the one who is entitled as the Magic Emperor, one of the Four Emperors.”

Sila’s face changed to an expressionless one. If there’s someone who truly knew him here, one would immediately realize that this was Sila’s symptom of trying to suppress the anger inside of him.

The crowd saw Sila became silent and misunderstood that maybe Sila didn’t know about Montra and the Heavenly Dragon Guild since he was a new player. So they started explaining.

“Montra is held up as the strongest player in the game. Because in the war event last year, Four Emperors; which consist of Montra: Magic Emperor, Lone Wolf: Qi Emperor, Zero: Shadow Emperor, and Cross: Sword Emperor; clashed, and the winner of that event was Montra. Since then, Montra is hailed as the strongest player, and his Heavenly Dragon Guild became a mighty one. The Heavenly Dragon Guild is a large guild with many members; it’s also the most influential guild in the game as of now. It has been claimed as the guild of a righteous side and helps maintain the game’s balance and peace.”

Sila had listened enough. He circulated Qi of Little Fish and magically passed through the crowd as if he was a little fish swimming through a fishnet.

Finally, he entered the battlefield, receiving everyone’s attention.

Sila now was wearing a Chinese style Beginner’s Clothing that had long sleeves down to both hands, covering all his arms to fingertips. If one didn’t look close enough, they wouldn’t notice that his right-hand fingertips weren’t like those of a human.

This outward appearance of Sila now was due to Lucy’s recommendation. He had consulted with Lucy on how to hide his right arm that many people often glanced at.

Lucy told him that although Beginner’s Clothing had a starting form of a short sleeve shirt with long pants; since Monster Soul Online had no occupation system with some players wanting to get a feeling of being a swordsman, mage, priest, etc.; the Beginner’s Clothing then had a trivial feature to change its original form to another three forms: leather clothing for an adventurer, silk cloak for a mage, and long-sleeve cotton clothing for a wuxia; which Sila was now wearing.

Sila turned his back to the man and the woman, gazing longingly to the three savage men.

Now that he was close to them, he could spot that the collars of these men’s clothes were embroidered with the white Chinese dragon, so he assumed that this was a symbol of the Heavenly Dragon Guild.

“Who are you?” asked the boss of the savage men’s group.

“Where is that bastard Montra?”

Sila didn’t answer but asked back in a cold tone.

Those around him panicked, ‘Who is this man to dare to call the Magic Emperor without respect in front of the Heavenly Dragon’s Guild members?’

The leader of the savage men’s group shouted at Sila:

“Kid! Not only are you interfering with our Heavenly Dragon Guild’s matter, but you also called our guild leader without respect. You are done for today.”

And when his subordinate whispered something to him, a brutal smile was formed.

“Hahaha, and you are just a newbie with level 3.”

Sila was a little surprised that his opponent knew his level, but he didn’t change his expression.

Actually, there was a way to inspect another player’s level. In fact, this could be done by upgrading one’s system window. Naturally, Sila’s level had been inspected by most players since he had entered into the battle scene.

Inspecting the other’s level could only be performed when the inspector’s system window grade was higher than the one who was inspected. With Sila’s F Grade system window, anyone could easily inspect his level.

Although level was unimportant in this game, the savage men totally thought that Sila was an easy opponent.

Being level 3 and wearing Beginner’s Clothing, Sila truly looked like a newbie. Not only that, his outward appearance was that of a wuxia who tended to use qi. In this game, the players in qi type could only start training Basic Qi only when their level was above 50. So, with that logic, Sila was only viewed as an easy prey for them.

The cornered young man behind Sila also inspected Sila’s level and concluded the same. He then told Sila with concern.

“Little Bro, this is our matter. I know that you have good intentions, but you shouldn’t be involved in this affair. Please step back.”

Sila didn’t even look back, “I’m not here to help you. I just have my own business with the Heavenly Dragon’s guild members.”

The woman felt angry upon hearing Sila’s conceited voice. Her friend had been trying to help just now, but instead of Sila thanking them, he didn’t even care.

“Hey! You! Big Brother Tiger was trying to help you just now. Not giving a word of thanks was bad enough, but you even rejected his kind deed.”

Tiger saw his friend misbehave so he turned his head to talk to her, “Don’t be like that, Alice.”

While the three of them were busy talking, one of the savage men’s group’s subordinates saw a chance and rushed toward them, his target was Sila. Now many onlookers closed their eyes since they didn’t want to see the scene of someone dying.

“Die! You weakling!”

Sila only glimpsed at the attacker’s assault. Compared to the Level 80 Black Wolf, this attack looked rather slow. He struck his blue-light glowing hand towards his opponent. Although his hand’s movements looked slow, it was actually fast.

In a flash, his opponent was bounced off. He was then caught by his teammate.

‘Unexpectedly, it works. Who knows that Qi of Little Fish can be used offensively as well? I always thought that it could only be used for dodging.’

Sila looked at his left hand while imagining how he could further utilize his qi.

Now, everyone was stunned and stared at Sila… everyone here included the crowd, the trio of savage men, and Tiger and Alice as well.

“... Kill him first.”

The three savage men made eye contact with each other and then attacked Sila simultaneously from three sides. In their hands were thick swords, they were coming at Sila from different directions.

Sila dodged to the left and then hardened his right hand while circulating Qi of Little Tiger into it. Sila used his hand as though it was a sword; he thrust it into the chest of one of his enemies. The palm sword stabbed through the heart, which was undoubtedly a vital point. His opponent couldn’t even scream before he turned into a light and disappeared.

Sila’s two other enemies turned their head to witness the sight of their friend dying. Their anger was more intense than their fear; their boss, who was nearest to Sila, thrust his sword to Sila’s back.

Sila spun his body to the left while concentrating Qi of Little Fish into his left hand. He used it to grab his opponent’s wrist and then harshly twisted it, making his enemy cry in pain.

Sila’s last opponent saw his boss being held tightly. Thus, he immediately cast Lightning Arrow toward Sila. It was one of the low-tier spells that required no cast time.

Sila felt pain as soon as he was hit by lightning arrow. He had learned from Lucy that one can’t evade magic unless one reaches a very high level, uses special item, skill, or card. Thus, magic arrows were very popular among players. Even players that didn’t intend to be magic-type player usually possess some magic skills, especially magic arrows, which didn’t have a cast time.

The system sound suddenly rang.

[Right Arm of the Sealed One has received lightning-element energy, the special skill: Electromagnetic Field is unlocked.]

Sila didn’t listen to the sound of the system. He was busy focusing on circulating Recovering Qi to relieve his pain while putting more force into his grasp to make the thick sword fall out of his enemy’s hand that he’d locked.

Next, he quickly concentrated Qi of Little Tiger into his right foot and used it to kick the dropping sword towards the enemy who just had hit him with magic.

The sword was spinning so fast that Sila’s opponent couldn’t properly react. It soon cut his head off, resulting in the fountain of blood, which was a very terrible sight for all onlookers. Fortunately, a few seconds after, this frightening scene turned to a white light and disappeared.

Meanwhile, Sila hadn’t finished his attack yet. His right foot didn’t stop for just kicking the sword but went further and kicked at his opponent’s knee mercilessly. His opponent screamed in pain and lay down helplessly.

After that, Sila’s figure looked like a grim reaper. He crossed his arms behind his back and stood still as if all of these series of the event weren’t related to him. This was a stance that Sila imitated from Lone Wolf. Sila thought it looked cool so he did the same.

All the events had happened and ended too quickly. Even Tiger who tried to interfere in a helping manner was stunned. No, it’s safe to say that the same thing was applied to the entire crowd as well.

“Where is Montra?” slowly asked Sila.

“I-I don’t know where the leader is, really! He always keeps practicing in secret. I am just an underling so-”

“Then, who knows?”

“T-The Two Monarchs or Five Warlords would know. But except for Sir Black Star Warlord who stations at Alkedia City, I don’t know where the others are.”

Sila listened quietly then spoke in a loud voice.

“Go tell everyone in the Heavenly Dragon Guild this: tell Montra to get his ass out and meet me. If he doesn’t, I will definitely crush everything related to the Heavenly Dragon Guild until he comes out.”

After that declaration, Sila concentrated Qi of Little Tiger on his foot and kicked his opponent’s chest heavily, sending him to the afterlife. He then walked toward a restaurant while the crowd backed off from his path unconsciously.

At that time, Tiger and Alice were still in shock. They could only stare blankly at Sila walking away without anyone daring enough to give him their thanks.