Chapter 36. The First Visitor (1)

The Sky Giant used a lot of skills, but excluding the ones that he didn’t need to care about, there were three things he had to be careful of.

‘Lightning Stomp’, ‘Thunderous Roar’, and ‘Eyes of the Dawn’.

These were the three core skills used by the Sky Giant. On top of the Sky Giant’s normal attack which was deadly, the Sky Giant raid became hellish.

‘The core of the Sky Giant raid is about how to deal damage while dodging its normal attacks.’

For reference, traditional tanking wasn’t that effective against the Sky Giant. Being hit by its punches squarely would insta-kill any tanker if hit on the wrong spot, so the only method was to use life-saving skills or dodge-tank.

However, dodge-tanking may sound nice, but there were no users capable of doing such a thing yet.

Dodge-tanking required not only the senses of a good tanker but also high dodge stats.

Later, when information about the Sky Giant spread around to the public, there would be some people who would try to dodge-tank after equipping themselves full of dodge-stat equips, but right now, no such people existed. Of course, Sanghyuk was planning to dodge-tank regardless.

He had swiped all defensive equipment with high dodge stat as well as the accessories. He had also prepared the cost-1 buff Fusion Card, ‘Blessing of Wind’.

The buff duration was 30 minutes, so one card was enough. He decided to trust his senses for the lacking bits. Dodge-tanking wasn’t just done with high dodge stats.

More efficient dodge-tanking was possible with lower dodge stats depending on how the user reacted to a monster’s attack.

In that sense, Sanghyuk, who knew of the Sky Giant’s pattern better than anyone, had the confidence to dodge-tank.

However, leaving aside the defense, the real problem was with the offense. Shaving down the Sky Giant’s insane HP was not so easy.

Normally, a 7-man party for a Sky Giant raid would be composed of four damage dealing specialists. The best combination was 5 damage dealers, one tanker, and one healer; the ‘5+1+1’ combination, and the next best one was the ‘4+1+1+1’ combination, composed of 4 damage dealers, one buffer, one tanker, and one healer.

Parties with 3 damage dealers, or more than one tankers or healers almost always failed in the raid.

If the Sky Giant wasn’t defeated within 30 minutes of the battle, it would cast the buff ‘Sky Giant’s Wrath’ to itself, and once that happened, all of its stats would multiply by 4.

The raid would practically become impossible.

So, they had to defeat the Sky Giant in 30 minutes flat, and to do that, they could only compose the party leaning towards the damage dealers.

All the environmental factors were against him. He had to take care of everything himself, so he naturally couldn’t take care of all the damage using normal methods.

Even though Sanghyuk possessed might incomparable to other users, it was practically impossible to deal 5 people’s worth of damage while also acting as a tanker and a healer.

Of course, what Sanghyuk ultimately wanted was to complete a 1-man assault force that was comparable to the maximum raid unit, ’16-man assault force’, but he had lots of things to do before he achieved that.

Right now, Sanghyuk was at best comparable to a 4-man unit. If that was the case, how was Sanghyuk planning to fill in his lacking damage?

Sanghyuk had one surefire method regarding this.

***

*Flash!*

When a red flash enveloped Sanghyuk, he clenched his teeth and endured. Then, he immediately threw his body to the side and started running away without looking back.

Even while he was running, the red flash seeped into his body. This red flash was called the ‘Burning Madflame Curse’.

A monster that used this skill was the pseudo-named monster ‘immortal firetiger’ that lived in the flaming caves at the southern end of the Land of Dusk.

The monster that looked like a large tiger was one that was of the fire attribute with its body burning in fire, and this monster used the Burning Madflame curse.

To be exact, the immortal firetiger used that skill just before its death as a last resort, , and to kill it required to strike its head accurately while being inflicted by the curse.

As a setting, the immortal firetiger was a monster born from the ashes of a phoenix and had what was known as the low-rank immortality. So, ordinary attacks could not kill it.

Burning Madflame Curse, the effect of this curse was to burn 10 HP every second as well as 1 karma every second.

In other words, once inflicted, it would destroy not only the user’s HP but the user’s karma as well.

The users naturally hated this curse. There was no way anyone would like their karma being shaved alive.

Once inflicted by the Burning Madflame Curse, users became able to ignore all defense-related effects and deal ‘true damage’, and through that, the immortal firetiger’s low-rank immortality was breached. Even if this was the case, there weren’t many people who were willing to risk karma being burned to hunt.

So the firetiger was an unpopular monster.

Then why was Sanghyuk suddenly here hunting these firetigers before the Sky Giant raid? And why was he suddenly running away?

The reason was simple.

Sanghyuk needed this curse.

Burning Madflame Curse……. This possessed the power to nullify all defense skills. Although the price for it was quite big, it was not that big compared to what he could gain as a result.

‘With this…… I can break through the Giant’s Endurance!’

The reason Sanghyuk chose this curse was to break through the Giant’s Endurance passive skill.

The Burning Madflame Curse lasted for exactly 40 minutes.

So, if he ran away from the firetiger and summoned himself in the 4th floor of the Giant’s Cave and arrived in front of the boss, the curse would have around 30 minutes left.

He had to finish the battle within 30 minutes anyway. During the time, he would lose 24,000 HP and 2,400 karma, but HP could be recovered with the cost-0 ‘Root of Recovery’ Fusion Card, and he had prepared himself for the karma loss, so he didn’t think that it was such a waste.

There were no problems since his level wouldn’t drop even if he consumed 2,400 fifteen times.

If he had to do more than 15 times, then he just had to fill up some of his karma.

Actually using an external source of buff(?) was a temporary measure. It would only be possible for two more months.

Two months later, a nameless guild would hunt a considerably strong named monster named ‘Grey Orc Lord’, in which they used an external source of buff, and it would become controversial on the internet.

Naturally, when things blew up, Raonsoft ordered the general management system Chaos to patch it so that all external sources of buff would disappear once the user left the area.

Also, they declared that using the external buff to hunt the Grey Orc Lord was within the limits of the system.

It was quite a generous judgment, but it wasn’t like they used a bug, so it was hard to punish them as well.

In any case, Sanghyuk had to break through the Sky Giant before that happened. Once the external buff was patched, he would need much more time and effort to conquer the Sky Giant by himself. No, perhaps he would fail to do it alone.

*Pa-pa-pah.*

Having arrived at the 4th floor of the Cave of Giants, Sanghyuk started running towards the large clearing in the cave.

His showdown with the Sky Giant, its start was the Burning Madflame Curse.

*Bbbbbooom!*

The moment the Sky Giant used Lightning Stomp, Sanghyuk quickly jumped so that both of his feet weren’t in contact with the ground.

Lightning Stomp made all the users standing on the ground fall down for 3 seconds and weakened them. Once hit, users could immediately become dust thanks to the chained Eyes of the Dawn skill.

*Flash! Ziiiiiiiiiiin!*

As he had expected, the Sky Giant used Eyes of the Dawn after the Lightning Stomp. The red beam of light shot out from the Sky Giant’s two eyes was a strong laser that could burn everything it came to contact with, so it was very dangerous to even be brushed by it.

The Eyes of the Dawn also had its pattern, and Sanghyuk remembered those patterns, so he dodged them without much difficulty.

‘Pattern D……. Right-focused pattern.’

*Pa-pa-pah*

Sanghyuk predicted the exact pattern through the direction the giant was facing in as well as its posture and threw his body to the left accordingly.

*Bbbbbboooom!*

As he had expected, everything right of him was obliterated to smithereens.

Sanghyuk didn’t just dodge, he also threw the Fusion Card ‘Spear of Zeus’ with his left hand as he dodged.

*Flash! Bbboooom!*

The Spear of Zeus accurately stabbed the waist of the Sky Giant.

Sanghyuk had kept dealing damage to the Sky Giant like this.

‘So it’s only 5 minutes left? This is no good…… I lack damage.’

He tried his best to deal damage, but it seemed very insufficient to defeat the Sky Giant.

Since he wasn’t dealing explosive damage while a tanker specialist was taking its agro, he was lacking in damage even after considering that he used the Burning MadFlame Curse to break through the Giant’s Endurance.

The HP of the Sky Giant could be estimated through the number of veins seen on its forehead, and 6 veins could be seen right now.

This meant that the Sky Giant still had around 40% of its HP left.

‘Give up and retry!’

The earlier he gave up, the better. Since his precious was karma was being shaved away even at this moment, it was better to sever it by dying.

*Fwooosh!*

Sanghyuk didn’t dodge the Sky Giant’s normal attack. This meant that he was just going to die.

*Splat!*

Sanghyuk died immediately from a single punch. There was no pain from the death, but he didn’t feel good. However, he had chosen this option in order to challenge again, so he just accepted his death.

***

The Sky Giant was definitely not an easy opponent.

Sanghyuk tried five consecutive times on his first day, but he gave up on all of them midway, judging that his damage wasn’t enough.

He painfully realized that he lacked in damage through the five failures on his first day and judged that he should switch a Fusion Card.

Sanghyuk took out the ‘Wind Shield’ Fusion Card he was planning to use at critical moments such as when he was unable to dodge an attack, and put in the attack-oriented Fusion Card, ‘Dark Flame Dragon’.

Actually, the reason he didn’t put the Dark Flame Dragon card before despite its huge damage was that its enormous cost of 12 and the tricky conditions to use it. It was even very expensive to make as well.

However, right now, tricky usage and cost of manufacture didn’t matter, and he had to raise his damage output using whatever methods possible, so he had to take away some of his cards related to survival and put it into dealing damage.

The cost of Wind Shield was 4, and he had 3 of them, so he could replace them with 1 Dark Flame Dragon card. With that, all of his insurance cards were gone.

Instead, he acquired one of the best damage-dealing card, Dark Flame Dragon. Sanghyuk took out all of the Fusion Cards he could use right now.

If even Dark Flame Dragon card didn’t work, he would really have to plan from scratch.

Fusion Card ‘Dark Flame Dragon’

: It is possible to acquire one Dark Flame Dragon Card by combining low-rank darkness elemental, low-rank fire elemental, giant lizard’s egg, ogre’s blood, and orc berserker’s heart. The moment you release the black dragon twitching in your heart…… you shall acquire the power of a true berserker.

Effects : This card can only be used to yourself, and your own damage will increase by 30%. However, your defense will decrease by 30%, and 30% of your health will disappear once the buff ends.

Duration : 16 minutes [Cooldown time : 4 hours]

Card Proficiency : 0 / 250 [Proficiency Rank D]