God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 151: Episode 30_My Person—No, My Otter (2)

3.

They were on a roll.

A headlong charge to wipe away all the frustration and helplessness they had endured.

Of course, the monsters’ levels were still far above the expedition’s average, so it wasn’t as if they were taking no losses. But compared to the near-month when they hadn’t even been able to approach the range, it was fair to say the situation had flipped.

Naturally, the players’ morale soared.

Even though the rewards they could personally obtain were extremely limited.

Such was the frightening power of atmosphere.

If they looked at reality with a cool head, they all knew that in the end, the Kenji Guild would monopolize everything.

Still, they couldn’t help thinking, ’Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be standing right next to the boss when it dies and can snatch a reward.’

Like dreaming about winning the lottery without even buying a ticket, everyone nursed that hope.

Or maybe they had no choice.

Most of the people here had never even managed to get their hands on a B-rank quest, let alone the Main Quest.

When else would they ever get to be part of the Main Quest like this?

Even if they didn’t win the lottery, having this kind of experience—something you could proudly put on a Fantastic World résumé—was hardly a loss.

“Sudal is running away!”

“Spread out and pursue! Victory is right in front of us! Just a little more effort!”

“Wooooo!”

Above all, there was the thrill of victory.

That sense of achievement, something modern people rarely get to feel, was the biggest reason of all.

As a result, the expedition managed to wipe out almost all the monsters around Sudal and reverse the situation into one where they were chasing it down.

“Kku-eooong...”

Even when driven to the brink, Sudal didn’t pull any more tricks.

That was the brand of victory.

Proof that its attack patterns were exhausted.

All they had to do was close in and kill Sudal, and they would clear the Main Quest.

Players who no longer felt any tension began to run wild all over the range.

The few remaining monsters posed no threat at all.

Drunk on the taste of victory, they failed to notice the dark shadow creeping over them. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

* * *

The change started in a very small way.

“Guild Master, Party 2-1 has been wiped.”

“Wiped? Party 2-1 isn’t exactly a bunch of random scrubs, are they?”

“No, sir. It’s a group made up of only players level 50 and above.”

“Hm. I suppose they got careless. There are still monsters around, after all.”

“That seems to be the case.”

At the report, Kenji frowned.

Losses like this, just when things were finally going well.

Technically, it wasn’t his guild, so he had no reason to care, but now that he had formed this expedition and begun to earn the players’ trust, it would be better for his future prospects if the raid ended as cleanly as possible.

So he didn’t welcome casualties at the very moment when all that was left was to run down a fleeing Sudal.

“Put out a general notice telling everyone to be careful.”

“Yes, sir.”

Still, he didn’t take it too seriously.

In his mind, he was already watching the end of the raid.

They would kill Sudal, take the rewards, and find and destroy whatever served as the clue to the Main Quest.

Then the picture that had shown him chasing the Specialists’ backs all through Act 2 would flip completely.

One more step.

The moment he caught up to them and took one step ahead, it would begin.

’I’ll open up a gap they can never close.’

So wide they would never catch up.

That day, a half-hearted warning went out.

But as if to mock that flimsy caution, the same kind of report came in the next day.

“Parties 1-10, 2-5, and 3-11 have all been wiped.”

The guild master remained silent.

This was now too much damage to ignore.

More importantly, the "1-series" parties were made up of Kenji Guild members.

Those players had been roaming around and gotten taken out by the regular monsters of the Unknown Mountains?

That was absurd.

“What happened?” Kenji asked, his expression turning grave.

This was no longer something he could just gloss over.

’If this is a sign of yet another phase...’

As unreasonable as that sounded, when had games ever been bound by common sense?

If they wanted to write in a setting where a cornered Sudal sacrificed its own life to unleash a curse, they could do it a hundred times over in this world of zeroes and ones.

So he tensed.

Fortunately for him, his guess was completely off the mark.

“...They say that player, Simin, attacked with his rabbits.”

Instead, it was the beginning of a different kind of disaster.

4.

Han Simin did not hold back.

“We’re not losing our otter.”

This was no time to be worrying about business ethics.

Every time he watched Sudal being pitifully chased in real time, it felt like his own heart was being torn apart. He fed Squeaker gold and flew at full speed.

The raid had started sooner than he expected, so it was a close call, but he made it.

He wasn’t too late, and that meant it was time for a new beginning.

“Sorry, but...”

He had absolutely no intention of sabotaging their raid or blocking the Main Quest.

He was only here to protect something.

The goose that laid golden eggs.

No—Sudal, who could turn into a mine.

Once he threw away what little conscience he had left—about the size of a rabbit’s claw—the true nature of Han Simin came out.

He swept through the range, searching for Sudal and attacking every player he ran into along the way.

Without so much as a hello.

Before the other side could even ask who he was, his hammer was already swinging. That was his style.

Of course, they didn’t just stand there and take it.

They were fairly high-level themselves, and while their gear was far inferior, they had numbers on their side.

“Kill every player you see first. We’ll talk later.”

“Kkyu kkyu!”

But even that advantage was overturned by the sheer number of rabbits joining the fight.

There was nowhere to run, and the rabbits, with their gleaming crimson and emerald teeth and armor, were utterly overwhelming.

“See? Investment always pays off.”

This was the only reason Han Simin could smile through his tears after giving up hundreds of thousands of gold coins.

The moment he saw the stream and realized he had to rescue Sudal, he had decided to upgrade the rabbits’ specs.

No matter how strong Han Simin was, and even with the Specialists at his back, there was no way he could stop an expeditionary force numbering in the thousands.

Worse, if he blatantly ignored them to search for Sudal, the fallout would be severe.

So, he had no choice.

The only consolation was that as long as he rescued Sudal, the loss was something he could recoup someday.

’There are plenty of scenic, empty lands out there. I just have to make it build, what, twenty mines there?’

He was sure at least one chunk of Mithriltein would come out of that.

Every time his nerves began to fray, he clung to that thought and ran even harder.

“Who goes th—”

“Get ’em!”

“Kkyu kkyu kkyu kkyu!”

Thanks to this cycle, the same scene played out several times a day.

Naturally, his face was exposed, and posts about him started popping up on the community forums.

At the same time, Kenji made an announcement.

[We hereby officially issue a kill-on-sight order for the Specialists, who are deliberately attacking players to obstruct the Main Quest.]

A guild war and a kill-on-sight order sound similar, but they mean very different things.

The former was a matter for the hundred or so members of the Kenji Guild. The latter was an open invitation: ’Let’s bring in thousands of players to beat the Specialists into the ground together!’

Obviously, the latter carried far less personal risk and a much higher chance of victory. There had also been plenty of innocent players who had suffered unfair losses at the Specialists’ hands, so the justification was more than sufficient.

Players backed Kenji up in the comments as well.

Everything else aside, random, unprovoked PK was something they simply could not condone.

As public opinion turned against him, Han Simin posted, too.

[I have no idea where this ridiculous rumor started, but the “Sudal” you’re all trying to raid, thinking it’s a boss monster, is not a boss. It’s a pet I’ve been preparing to tame.]

He attached a screenshot of the Main Quest hologram for Act 2.

[Source of the Curse]

Grade: Main

Description: The slowly emerging root of evil. Investigate and destroy the remnants of the gate that formed when the demons invaded the continent hundreds of years ago!

Requirement: Complete the quest “The Aide’s Trust.”

Reward: Clear the Act 2 Scenario Main Quest.

—Huh?

—Wait, what? Is this for real?

A single hard fact, thrown into a sea of propaganda and fabrications, pushed the situation into a new phase.

* * *

Kenji was speechless for a while.

He had nothing to refute the claim with.

—So if that’s the Main Quest, then what is Sudal?

—It still feels like a boss monster, though.

—They call it a boss, but isn’t it just a monster blocking the Main Quest?

—Same difference.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. Strictly speaking, even if a quest didn’t explicitly require killing a monster, any creature that guarded the objective of a Main Quest was generally called a boss.

The part that sparked controversy was this:

—He talked like we’d all kill the boss and share the Main Quest clear rewards.

—Turns out he was planning to hog everything from the start.

The handful of players who had uncovered this hidden truth were offended. Most people, however, didn’t really care. They had only joined on the off chance something good might happen; the majority were there for small, incidental gains anyway.

But that minority was the problem.

They were players of a decent level with some clout in-game—the type who had weighed the pros and cons of Kenji’s sweet talk about sharing the Main Quest rewards before deciding to join.

From their perspective, this was a scam.

Naturally, a backlash was inevitable.

Given time, it would blow over, and he could smooth things out with money. But there was one reason this situation gave Kenji a major headache.

—After appropriate coordination, I will hand over the map to the Main Quest’s completion point to the expedition leader, Kenji. However, if you lay a single hand on Sudal, I will consider it a declaration of war against me and the Specialists, and we will commence infinite PK.

Han Simin’s actions were no longer just indiscriminate rebellion or petty spite. It still wasn’t exactly admirable behavior—more like throwing his weight around and abusing his power—but the way players perceived it was on a completely different level now.

It was hard to fully accept, but if a monster someone had spent months trying to tame was attacked, then drawing a sword against the attackers was exactly the mindset a Tamer ought to have.

And he had the power to back it up.

There was absolutely nothing to be gained for ordinary players by making an enemy of Han Simin, so they quietly began to withdraw.

That, in turn, meant things were becoming unfavorable for Kenji.

If he stubbornly clung to the position that Sudal had to die, people might start to suspect he was just using the players to vent his personal grudge against the Specialists.

He needed to make a decision.

While he was agonizing over what to do...

“Hey.”

...Han Simin finally came face-to-face with Sudal again.

* * *

“Let’s forget our rocky past and look forward to a rosy future together!”

“Kku-eong.”

Han Simin extended his hand with a smile dripping with insincerity. Sudal backed away. Surrounded on all sides by ninety rabbits, it had no escape and trembled pitifully.

“Sorry about raiding your mine. I had a lot of use for that stuff. But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll build you hundreds of mines in a really nice place, and I’ll make sure no one ever robs them again. Okay?”

“Kkwooong.”

Clutching the last remaining chunk of ore, which shimmered with a strange, indescribable color, Sudal made its final stand. Its will was fierce: ’I will never submit to you, even if it kills me!’

It was a fitting sight for the monster guarding the end of the Main Quest for Act 2.

On top of that, a very personal grudge was layered in.

The smile on Han Simin’s lips twisted slightly.

“Come on, I’m telling you I’ll treat you right.”

“Kku-eong.”

“You see those rabbits over there? They didn’t like me much at first either, but look how much they love me now. We can be a family, too!”

“Kku-eong.”

“Don’t wander around alone like some loser. Come with me. I’ll make sure your path is paved with ore.”

“Kku-eong.”

“Okay, okay. Now hand over what you’re holding.”

Naturally, Sudal did not.

“Haah.”

A deep sigh escaped Han Simin.

“I really didn’t want to do this by force.”

He let out a lie that didn’t come from the heart as his fingers twitched.

“Guys. Hold our little Sudal down for me.”

“Kkyu!”

And just like that, Sudal gained a new family.

Or so he thought.