One Man Army

Chapter 12. Secret Dungeons (1)

You have defeated 100 malefactors for the first time and have stolen their black karma. You are worthy of praise for doing something that no one in Treenark has ever done yet.

You have acquired the unique-grade title [First Malefactor Hunter].

Sanghyuk could acquire what he wanted after killing the 100th malefactor. Since this was something he had acquired after a week of hard work, this felt more valuable to him.

“This isn’t good. I’m too rusty.”

A normal person would have been satisfied with killing 100 malefactors in one week, but Sanghyuk was dissatisfied instead.

He had experienced many PvP while hunting down 100 malefactors and did not make a single mistake if you look at the results. However, Sanghyuk didn’t really like his own movements that he felt at that time.

Sanghyuk felt that his condition was around 70% of when he was at his peak. Even with all that effort until now, his senses had dulled due to living a life of a cripple for so many years, so it could only take time to recover his full ability at his peak.

Sanghyuk thought that he had to put in more effort as he checked the details on the title First Malefactor Hunter. He did know that it was good, but didn’t know the specific effects, so he opened the window in expectation.

Title – ‘First Malefactor Hunter’

Grade – Unique

Description – A special power can be felt from you, who has defeated 100 malefactors for the first time.

Effects [Prefix: 30% increase in movement speed when facing malefactors] [Postfix: 30% increase in health recovery speed when facing malefactors.] [Constant effect: All abilities increases by 7% when facing malefactors.]

“Oh! This had a percentage increase effect.”

Although this was obvious, percentage increase effects were always good. Sanghyuk could finally understand why he thought that the First Malefactor Hunter was an awesome title.

“Against malefactors, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything better than this.”

Personally, he really liked the movement speed increase option so he was more and more delighted with this title.

‘I leveled up quite a lot through this hunt and recovered enough of my PvP senses to not lose to anyone so I guess it’s a satisfying result? Oh, I earned tons of money so I can say it’s a serious profit.’

Sanghyuk nodded his head while evaluating the malefactor hunt this time. Looking at the results, everything was good. What he liked the most was the fact that he could level himself up to 24, and although this wasn’t accurate, the top-tier characters had levels around 27 to 30.

The vast majority of them were One Soul. There may be Double Souls, but there were absolutely no Triple Souls over level 25.

‘Now, those highest-ranking users should be getting ready for hunting malefactors right? It’s not so bad to hunt malefactors like this, but I don’t need to compete with them. Besides, I still have a lot left to earn so I guess I should put off the malefactor hunt for a while.’

Everything had their own time. In that sense, Sanghyuk had sucked all the juice out of hunting the malefactors early and turned his head around to somewhere else when the others were just about to come.

***

There were countless dungeons in the planet of Treenark. Dungeons were mainly split into ‘public dungeons’ and ‘secret dungeons’, and public dungeons were literally just a dungeon that was revealed for all users to enter.

There might be some restrictions on entering the dungeon according to the dungeons themselves, but anyone fulfilling their requirements could enter.

On the other hand, secret dungeons, like their name, wasn’t a dungeon that anyone could enter.

Secret dungeons were bound to the user that discovered it, and the public dungeon belonged to the Creator God that created the world of EL, so there could only be stark contrasts between the two.

There were countless secret dungeons in the planet of Treenark. Due to the characteristics of secret dungeons, there were countless generation and destruction of them so the exact number could not be counted. Instead, the number of public dungeons could be counted since they were permanent.

Public dungeons were usually those that could only be cleared in teams, so Sanghyuk couldn’t try those yet.

However, secret dungeons were different. The majority of secret dungeons were of the small scale, and just discovering those dungeons would give the user a considerable bonus, so it was correct to focus on secret dungeons right now.

While the other users were killing monsters in fields without even knowing the existence of secret dungeons, Sanghyuk was planning to level up rapidly by looking for secret dungeons and getting bonus karma.

‘Even I don’t know when the first secret dungeon was discovered. However, I do know two secret dungeons that became a hot topic later!’

Even Sanghyuk could not know everything about all secret dungeons even if he came back from the future. Secret dungeons, like their names implied, were secretive in about everything that they had so there were more SangHyuk didn’t know than he did.

However, just the information on the dungeons he knew wasn’t at a level that an ordinary user would know. It was just that the pool of information on secret dungeons was so large that he had more things that he didn’t know.

First off, Sanghyuk had the information on two secret dungeons that were super good for leveling up at the beginning. Those two secret dungeons were monopolized by a group of people and the reason this was revealed to the public was that those users boasted to the public on TV a few years later.

Sanghyuk was also deeply impressed by that program, so he remembered those two dungeons.

The dungeon that was discovered before the other was the ‘Merlog dungeon’ which was hidden in the ‘Abandoned Fishing Village’.

Merlog Dungeon was only a D-rank dungeon, but the bonus karma was 40% and with a small size and easy monsters, ‘merlogs’, in the mix, it was extremely easy to gather karma in this place.

This Merlog dungeon was known to be discovered very early on, so Sanghyuk had already come to the ‘Abandoned Fishing Village’ in order to discover it first.

‘After hunting all 16 types of monsters, I need to dive into the sea in the fishing village with the different-colored pearls I get from each species. There’s an old stone tablet at the bottom of the sea, and putting the 16 types of pearls into those holes can open the secret dungeon. That’s as far as I know…….’

Such a complex process was required to open the secret dungeon. Sanghyuk was someone who already knew the answer, so he could approach the secret dungeon easily, but other users would have to acquire hints from various places and put them together to find out.

Perhaps Sanghyuk was cheating, but playing fairly after coming to the past was funny in itself.

Sanghyuk had already purchased all 16 types of pearls from the commissioned sales store. Since no one knew that the pearls held such a secret, he could get them at a very low price.

It was obviously more efficient to buy them with gold. Since the chances of the monsters dropping the pearls wasn’t 100%, hunting around the fishing village was too inefficient.

Since he had acquired the pearls and knew the location of the dungeon, Sanghyuk didn’t hesitate to swim in the sea in front of the village. Now, he just had to look for the old tablet that seemed to be below the sea.

Sanghyuk found the tablet after 3 hours of searching underwater. In that process, a normal skill, and a life skill, ‘swimming’ was created, but this was a skill that was crucial later on, so it wasn’t a bad result.

A hidden place within the sea, the place of Merlogs.

The secret dungeon ‘Merlog’s Treasury’ has been opened.

Merlog’s Treasury will be bound to the Dimensional Traveler ‘Immortal’.

Up to three users can be registered for this dungeon.

Sanghyuk immediately entered the dungeon after it was bound to him. This wasn’t deep sea or anything, but it was quite painful to keep his breath in so he was planning to get some breaths by entering the dungeon.

Having entered the dungeon, Sanghyuk first looked at the information on ‘Merog’s Treasury’.

Secret Dungeon [Merlog’s Treasury]

– Bound to the Dimensional Traveler ‘Immortal’

– Registered Dimensional Travelers [Immortal], [N/A], N/A]

: A small storehouse where merlogs gather their treasures. There are many merlogs that protect the treasures, but they don’t look threatening.

– Bonus karma : +40%

– Rewards for clearing the dungeon : One of the shiny treasures that merlogs had gathered

– Time to reactivate the dungeon after it’s cleared : 1 hour

– Dungeon duration time : Infinite

– Maximum number of clears : 100 times

The dungeon was exactly like how he knew it. First, there were no registered Dimensional Travellers, and the bonus karma was indeed 40%. Considering how secret dungeons normally had 10~20% increase, it was a considerably high number.

Merlog’s Treasury was a one-way path and had three small chambers mid-way and the boss room was at the end where the boss ‘Blue-horned Merlog’ would come out.

The clear condition of this dungeon was to kill the blue-horned merlog, and the rewards could be received by clearing the dungeon.

Shiny things collected by merlogs didn’t have any good things in it, but there might be some useful stuff among them.

And once cleared, the dungeon reactivated after 1 hour. Merlog’s Treasury had limitless duration, but there were secret dungeons with extremely short durations as well.

And the most important thing was the maximum number of clears. This meant that the secret dungeon would be destroyed once the dungeon was cleared 100 times.

“It definitely is awesome.”

Sanghyuk had experienced numerous secret dungeons in his previous life as well, but this dungeon could be considered top-tier in the beginning stages. The fact that merlogs were one of the five easiest monsters to kill was very important here.

That meant that the dungeon could be cleared repeatedly in a short time, and whether it was a game or real-life, time was money.

‘The dungeon duration time is infinite so let’s go look for the other secret dungeon now that I bound this place.’

Once bound, secret dungeons could not be entered by anyone else unless the master of the dungeon, in this case, Sanghyuk, registered them.

In fact, no one was talking about secret dungeons because they weren’t revealed yet, but in the future, there would be websites specifically for trading the secret dungeons so the importance of secret dungeons could be seen.

Sanghyuk knew that there would come a world where secret dungeons were money, but he didn’t plan to sell this Merlog’s Treasury to someone else.

He was going to monopolize it since it contained all the good stuff.

“But since I’m here anyway, should I clear it once? Well, let’s do it to see how my clear time is.”

Originally, Sanghyuk was going to leave the dungeon again, but changed his mind to clear the dungeon once.

*Srrrrr*

Sanghyuk pulled out the Traveler’s Treasure Sword on his back and looked ahead. In front of him was a small cave. This was the entrance to the secret dungeon ‘Merlog’s Treasury’.