Chapter 35. Cave of Giants(2)

Shadow Cloak [Unique ++]

-A cloak with the power of shadow that the rare monster Ghost Knight drops at a very low chance. It is considered more special since it’s the first Shadow Cloak in existence.

[Basic stats] All stats +5(+1)

[Special stats] Concealment effect + 20(+4)%, resistance to all attributes +10(+2)%

[Special effects] 〉I can see in the dark (A) : Darkvision increases by a large amount.〈, 〉 Hide’n’seek : Concealment effect increases.〈

[Item skill] Shadow Curse : Curses the target’s shadow to make the opponent unable to move for one second and decrease target’s movement speed by 30% for 5 seconds after that. However, named monsters and users with a higher level than the caster will only be affected by 15% for 3 seconds. [Cooldown time 1 minute]

[Bonus effect] HP +10, Intelligence +15

‘This is a double plus too……. I see so many plusses nowadays that I think plusses on items are natural.’

Checking the Shadow Cloak, Sanghyuk laughed. Of course, plusses on the item was a good thing.

However, it was in fact very rare for plusses on an item to take the item to a godly level.

Nowadays, the items Sanghyuk acquired were normally double plus items, and there were even some triple plus items as well, but they weren’t things that were easy to acquire.

‘It definitely is an item that Thunderbolt should have regrets about. This Shadow Curse especially, isn’t this considered as one of the top-tier item skills among the rankers? So it was here.’

Sanghyuk liked the Shadow Cloak a lot.

‘There aren’t many good things among the other things. Then……. I guess I’ll sell them.’

If Sanghyuk put all the items on sale in the auction, then the users that died that day would notice that someone had picked up their items.

However, there was nothing they could do just because they noticed. It was impossible to trace the auction, and it wasn’t like there were any witnesses that day.

Everything was perfect.

‘Well, the ones with enough money will buy their own stuff back.’

He didn’t feel sorry for them at all. After all, it was due to their own greed that they became like that.

He might have felt guilty in his previous life, but in this life, he wasn’t so considerate that he would feel sorry for any of them.

Having put up all the items on the auction, Sanghyuk started focusing on his last objective in the Land of Dusk; the Cave of Giants.

The Cave of Giants itself was like a public dungeon, and it was simultaneously the pathway to another continent.

‘The Cave of Giants isn’t an easy place to break through. Especially by myself……. that will be even more difficult.’

In his previous life, Sanghyuk had cleared the Cave of Giantswith 6 other high-level users of the workshop. They went as a party of 7 since the limitation on the Cave of Giants was 7, but even when they were the most powerful 7 of the workshop, they had trouble getting through.

At the time, Sanghyuk had also suffered a lot, so he remembered the Cave of Giants relatively clearly.

‘If it was me of before, I would have never dared to think about going there alone, would I? However, I can do it right now!’

Sanghyuk was trying to clear the Cave of Giants solo when other people wouldn’t even dare to try even with a full party of 7.

He put on the Shadow Cloak and stood up from his seat.

His preparations were almost done.

What was left now was to challenge.

***

The Cave of Giants was split into four floors.

The 1st underground floor was the floor of ogres. Ogres were considerably strong monsters, albeit not as much as wyverns.

To rank them, it would be around the 2nd or 3rd strongest beings in the Land of Dusk.

The twin-headed ogre at the doorway to the 2nd underground floor was a pseudo-named monster, and he might fail if he made a slight mistake since its attack power was very high.

Even a full party of 7 with all the members at level 45 might fail if they have no senses for battle, or take the wrong composing members, or if they had bad equipment.

Going beyond the twin-headed ogre and into the 2nd floor, large stone golems would meet the users. Stone golems were almost on par with wyverns.

Stone golems had very high defense power so users couldn’t advance if they lacked damage dealing power. The last stone golem of the 2nd floor, mithril golem, was a pseudo-named monster like the twin-headed ogre and had an even higher defense than stone golems.

According to Sanghyuk’s memory, the majority of users despaired because they couldn’t get past the mithril golem.

Going past the 2nd floor and to the 3rd floor, this time, it wasn’t the monsters but various traps and confusing mazes that stumped the users.

However, this was easily conquered once information about this floor spread around. The monsters appearing on the 3rd floor were giant skeleton soldiers, and they were even weaker than ogres.

There wasn’t a pseudo-named monster blocking the way to the 4th floor either.

Going past the 3rd floor was the fourth and final floor.

Unlike the previous three floors, the fourth floor was very short and simple corridor. There were no normal monsters either and just a few traps.

Instead, the one that blocked the exit on the 4th floor……. was quite the thing.

Special named monster ‘Sky Giant’.

Actually, there weren’t that many named-tier giant-type monsters. The famous ones were ‘Lava Giant’ in the Heroic Lands and the ‘Brilliance Giant’ from the Solar Continent, and they were bosses that boasted insane difficulty, so users had to raise their characters for around two years before they dared to challenge those two.

Named-tier giant-type monsters all had incredibly high difficulty, and the reason was a common feature among all of them.

‘Endurance of the Giant’

The effects of this ability that made the users call them ‘disgusting giants’, decreased all damage dealt to them by 30%, and at the same time, recover half of the decreased damage as health.

In other words, the damage was practically reduced by 45%.

Thanks to this passive ability possessed by giants, the users always lacked damage when they fought against named-tier giant monsters. Not only that, named-tier giant monsters all had frightening attack power and insane HP.

Their defense was considerably lower than named monsters of similar level, but that didn’t show much due to the Endurance of the Giant.

In the users’ perspective, such a passive ability attached to a monster was just hellish.

With that being the case, named-tier giant monsters placed 1st in in monsters that users didn’t want to hunt.

It was always the named-tier giant monsters that took first when a survey was carried out through users in his previous life.

At first glance, dragon-type monsters may seem like the hardest to hunt, but anyone with experience hunting both would say the contrary.

Named-tier dragon monsters possessed a clear weakness in terms of attributes most of the time, but giant-type monsters were attribute-less, so it was impossible to find a shortcut.

Sanghyuk was challenging a mission with the difficulty of ‘Insane Nightmare’. However, his expression was full of confidence. He had already challenged the Cave of Giants around 1,000 times in his previous life, so it was no wonder that was the case.

The easiest way to kill the twin-headed ogre was to focus on the two eyes on its right head to take away its sight for a brief time while severing the left head.

Once the eyesight on its right head was gone, there would be a dead angle in its vision, and the angle was much wider than when the eyes on the left head were taken away, and it would become easier to kill the other head.

Of course, this may sound simple but was difficult in practice. However, Sanghyuk wasn’t so weak that he was stumped by a mere twin-headed ogre.

He broke through the 1st floor in moments and went to the 2nd floor. He also broke through the 2nd floor in a similar manner.

Then he was met with the mithril golem.

Normally, he would have been stumped here once, but Sanghyuk knew that the attribute of the mithril golem was weak towards was electricity.

This was why he easily defeated the mithril golem using the cost-3 Fusion Card ‘Spear of Zeus’ he had prepared beforehand.

Of course, he had to use up 14 Spears of Zeus, but the important thing was that he succeeded.

And the third floor was even easier than the two prior floors. Sanghyuk already had experience wandering on the 3rd floor hundreds of times. So, not only the traps, the maze-like paths didn’t hinder him either.

He learned ‘Trap technique(general)’ on one of his basic skill slots in order to disarm a few of the traps, but he could just use some karma to erase them later.

Sanghyuk could arrive at the 4th floor after clearing the 3rd floor easily.

There were marking zones at the entrances of each floor, so Sanghyuk marked the 4th floor.

Later, there would be high-level users who acted as ‘marking busses’ and help low-level users mark these places for money, but that was much later into the future.

Not to mention marking busses, no one had even broken through the 1st floor yet.

*Shhhhhh, flash!*

After he marked the place in his marking book, he looked up ahead. The path that made him repeat the same thing again in his previous life to the point of vomiting had appeared in front of him.

‘How much would it take this time…….? At least ten times, right?’

What was fortunate was that the penalty for death differed according to time and situation.

Being killed by a monster would take 1% of total karma and restrict access for 2 hours while being killed by users would restrict access for 12 hours, but did not take any karma.

However, dying inside the dungeon was slightly different, and as long as the user wasn’t killed by another user, the access restriction was only 10 minutes, and no karma was consumed. This was why it was possible to repeatedly go against a dungeon boss.

In one word, dungeons had a lower penalty to compensate for its higher difficulty. Of course, in the case of malefactors, they would lose 20% of their black karma no matter where they died in compensation for the ability to acquire black karma through killing other users.

‘Twenty tries! I’ll definitely do it within that number!’

Even Sanghyuk seemed to need 20 tries to defeat the Sky Giant.

It was the greatest named monster in the game right now.

Having finished marking, Sanghyuk returned to Falcon City and restocked his Fusion Cards since he used almost all of them against the mithril golem.

He had prepared a total of four types of Fusion Cards to fight against the Sky Giant, and Sanghyuk’s current cost limit was 55.

Sanghyuk estimated the number of cards he would need against the Sky Giant and filled his maximum cost limit accordingly. He also didn’t forget to bring some cost 0 cards.

What was left now was to just clash against the boss.

If users with a lot of raid experience were asked if there was any trick to conquering named monsters, they would all reply that the trick was to keep challenging.

Challenge and challenge again.

That was the only trick to a successful raid.