Post by Wing on Nov 15, 2014 10:31:48 GMT
Detailed summary by iheartz
Chapter 1 - 6 + more
Last time, on Dragon Ba-err I mean Moonlight Sculptor:
Weed was on a secret engraving quest line that’s beyond the normal mastery quests in order to discover the “final sculpting skill.” He is currently participating in a quest that involves him sailing in the ocean, being constantly plagued by high waves and storms. In order to stay afloat, he must use his Lumin Sculpting skill (the one which currently sends sparrows of light shooting at the opponent, a sword skill that fixes the weakness of range that most sword users have (they can’t hit stuff from far away and are vulnerable to archers and mages)) Finally, he leveled his Lumin fencing skill to Advanced and returned back to land
This is where Volume 32 begins.
Note: I am going to give only semi-brief summary of the first 1/5 of the volume as there’s not that much action.
The influence of the Arpen kingdom is shown to be rising. It is mentioned how when users from the Arpen kingdom visit other towns, the townspeople actively ran up to them and offered them quests to bring Arpen craftsmanship (ex: pottery, sculpture, paintings) to the town. It then shows how many other small villages in the Northern continent are joining Arpen kingdom (fishing villages, woodcutter villages, etc.) and how users were actually very popular with the villagers. There were 2 players talking about how, in the past, villagers were unfriendly towards strangers, but now they were extremely accepting towards others. Also, another on mentioned how a little girl ran up to him and gave him a flower. Then it shows how tons of knights, lords, and nobles were joining the Arpen Kingdom and how the entire Northern continent was essentially undergoing a Renaissance of sorts.
Scene then shifts to Weed who is trying to find a place to complete the other quest in his quest chain (he was given 2 quests simultaneously and he had to complete both of them to move on. The first quest was the “Train in the Stormy Sea” one and the other one was a quest where he had to essentially terraform a place and create “natural beauty.” Weed eventually establishes a place away from all the developing cities (because terraforming a city would be bad).
The story then mentions how in addition to the cities, Arpen’s military was developing far quicker than most people expected. First of all, it is due to the dissolution of the Brent Kindom. After the destruction of Brent, there were many high level knights left without a King. Drawn by the stories of Weed, the great and honorable (Editor: lol) king, these knights flocked to Arpen, significantly increasing Arpen’s army. The other reason is because of the many subjugation quests (ex: think the Lair of Litvart quest in Volume 1). With the help of the player characters the NPC soldiers quickly gained levels.
Scene changes to Rabah Seu (the land in the sky populated by Aves). Golden Bird and Esuna (platinum/mithril bird) is surrounded by the inhabitants of floating land. He convinces the inhabitants to move to Arpen. The Aves’ decision was helped by the fact that Golden Bird is technically their great-great-great-etc grand-uncle. Note: the Aves were originally created by the Emperor, who also sculpted Golden Bird. In addition, the Embinyu denomination was stirring up a lot of trouble and Mora was described as a place of plentiful grain, etc. So, the entire island, with all of its dungeons, shops, roads, and hunting grounds were being moved to Mora.
Meanwhile, Weed goes to the Rhodes stadium to turn in his “ Train in the Stormy Sea” quest, increasing his reputation by 850, leveling up once, +5 speed, +6 power, +3 something (not sure what). He then goes back to pondering what he should create as a natural sculpture and decides to create a swamp; a place where many animals would live. He uses natural disaster sculpting to shatter the land (lamenting at how he was destroying what could have been acres of farmland). Rivers begin to flow and ponds form through his disaster sculpting. He then sprinkles seeds everywhere as well as remains of ground-up fruits and trees for fertilizer(Rover asks Weed whether this counts as cannibalism). After planting, he uses his earth elementals to shift sandstone and rock, creating hills and valleys. Lastly, he follows the hints of the questgiver (one of the head sculptors in the sculpting guild at Rhodes stadium) and attracts fairies over with fish and honey. Many fairies come and they eat and play. The swamp was then designated a “playground for fairies” which accelerates the effect of nature (making the swamp go through about approximately 200 normal years of change). Suddenly, Weed and Rover are now in a true swamp complete with vegetation, animals, fish, birds, etc. Weed is asked to name the sculpture and he initially decides to name it “Land of Mourning, regret and despair” (because he sacrificed all of that farmland to make a swamp) but when asked for comfirmation, he decides to change it to “Wet Earth” (google trans: Wet ground) instead.
Wet Earth (his first natural sculpture):
Artistic Value 8142
Effects:
Due to the vitality generated by the birth of many species all health and mana will increase by 50%
+19 (not sure what. May be all stats? Or +19 permanent Art stats)
Resistance to plague and poison will permanently increase by 1%
Increase growth rate of all animals in the surrounding area
Weed’s rewards:
Carving skill up
Dexterity (aka Handicraft) skill up
Fame increases by 4093
+19 Art
+7 Wisdom
+9 Intellect
+3 containter (idk what this was, I think fortitude?)
+49 affinity with nature
+3 stat increases (these can be distributed into any stat by Weed I believe)
Increased friendliness with Fairies and Elves
Weed then goes to Rhodes and turns in the quest. The carving guild leader praises Weed as a genius and Weed’s reputation increases by 1,600, carving skill increases, and the influence of the Engraving Guild also increases.
The leader begins to tell Weed about the next quest, first asking if he had heard of the Devil Labyrinth of the crazy Arcmage, Rodeurik. Weed immediately replied that he had and recalls the information that he read online. The Labyrinth was known since the earliest days of the game. However it had always been associated with instant death, with both NPCs and players trying to clear it, but all failing. The first attempt to clear the dungeon happened when a group of lvl 200 adventurers attempted to enter the labyrinth. It was a massacre, with everybody dying even before they reached the entrance of the Labyrinth (note: the Labyrinth is set in the basement floor of Rodeurik’s castle/house). As time passed and the user’s levels continued to rise, new parties intent on challenging the Labyrinth appeared. Level 300s, Level 400s, but they all failed. In addition to the abnormal number of traps, the levels of the monsters in the dungeon were absurdly high. A well-known guild called Morningstar was the most recent attemptee, but their hopes were crushed by the dungeon. The leader of the engraving guild then says how the Archmage Rodrick was fond of art and a genius. He intently studied how to express the Radiant Beauty (note: this entire quest-chain is to discover the skill that allowed engravers to express the Radiant Beauty of the world). In addition to being brilliant, the archmage was also a very curious man. As so, he summoned many beings attempting to quench his curiosity. But, because of his arrogance, he lost control of one of his summons. Weed then thinks in his head how he understands Rodrick, remembering the time where he bought the 200 won (17 cents) salt (Editor’s note: Lol, this happened almost 20 Volumes ago and Weed still remembers this). Weed is then treated to a cutscene of an old wizard and a demon battling (and soldiers and minor demons fighting in the background). The demons were gaining the upper hand, and in a desperate attempt Rodrick sacrificed his life to distort the space around the dungeon, essentially sealing the dungeon.
After the cutscene, Weed is pondering the greatest difficulty of the dungeon: the fact that nobody could find an exit. If Weed due to the Radiant Beauty quests, then he automatically abandons the Radiant Beauty questline. However, the Labyrinth was worse. If Weed brought a living sculpture into the labyrinth, it too would die once Weed died (because it can’t find its way out of the labyrinth). As such, any sculpture that Weed brings into the Labyrinth may be gone forever. Weed frowns and then asks if it is essential to go into Labyrinth to which the elder/leader replies it is. The quest is then offered, with the objective to conquer the Labyrinth and obtain Rodrick’s research (also, death will result in failure of quest-chain).
Quest Accepted
END OF PREVIOUS SUMMARY
CURRENT SUMMARY BEGINS HERE
Weed walks down the streets of Rhodium, deep in thought. Until now, the previous quests in the Last-Sculpting quest-chain were not that difficult. But suddenly, this overwhelmingly difficult quest appeared. However, he thinks about all of the “impossible” accomplishments he has achieved, both in Royal Road and the Continent of Magic. Inspired again, Weed decides he’s going to have to have to start immediately, and finish the quest before the wars in the center of the continent spill over to the North.
Weed walks to the Church of Freya and makes small talk with the High Priest before requesting to get all the Paladins and Priests as his Contribution value allows him to. The High Priest tells Weed that the church can only mobilize 240 Paladins (~300 lvl?) and 120 priests (~310 lvl?) for Weed because everybody else is busy dealing with the Embinyu Sect. Weed accepts the help and finds out that Alberon is also accompanying him. He then heads to Lou’s Church and obtains 400 paladins, including the strongest paladin in Lou’s Church, Derry, (and possibly one of the NPC swordmasters? Not sure) wielding Lou’s holy sword (the sword that was stuck in the Lich Bar Khan and sealing a part of his powers before Weed killed Bar Khan).
After Weed logs out, he goes and cleans his yard; one of his hobbies is doing housework because it was inexpensive. However, he then notices that his dog is gone (it notes here that the dog was supposed to be food but then Weed feared that complaints from animal protection organizations may come and he may be fined a “whopping” 20,000 Won aka 17.68 USD). Not finding the dog anywhere in his garden, Weed decides to head to Seoyun’s place next door, and finds Seoyun in shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt washing the happy dog. To remind the dog (Mombosin is the name I think?) of who’s the master, Weed gives the dog a series of commands: Sit! The dog attaches his rear onto the ground. Lie down! Thudding noise Breathe! Pant pant pant.
Weed then sits on a chair nearby and looks up on the sky, thinking about his financial accomplishments the past year (tv contracts, item selling, etc) and thinks about what would happen if the Arpen Kingdom was destroyed by the Hermes Guild (essentially the worst case scenario to his finances). His thoughts then wander to his current quest and its difficulty before being interrupted by Seoyun’s invitation to make lunch for him.
After going back to Mora, Weed heads to a shabby pub where he searches for, and finds a white-haired old man. This man turns out to be Jaden (?), one of the most famous NPC thieves in the Northern region. Weed wants to hire Jaden in order to deal with the dangerous traps in the Roderick labyrinth. Although Weed had dealt with traps before by either just taking the damage or using Van Hawke as a living sacrifice (lol, poor guy) it was different in the Roderick labyrinth, which has traps that would result in the death of many people if they were set off. Jaden says he’s willing to be hired for 5000 gold per day, but instead of answering the offer, Weed pulls out a bottle of wine, and eventually haggles down the price down to 3900 gold a day. However, the NPCs around the pub notice Weed and instantly drop to their knees. They then begin to badmouth Jayden who eventually gets pressured into joining Weed (not sure for how much, presumably very cheap or even for free). It also notes here that Weed could have just ordered Jaden to come with him using the authority of the King but that would’ve lowered loyalty and worsened his relationship with the mercenaries. Weed then considers who else to bring with him to the Labyrinth and rules out of his living sculptures besides Bach (The guardian of the previous Arpen Kingdom, created by Geihar Von Arpen, which Weed obtained from the last quest in the sculptural mastery quest chain) due to the fact that being both a warrior and a barbarian, Bach as significantly more health and vitality (health regeneration) then everybody else.
Marfan (also translated as Mapan depending on which translation/text is used) receives a whisper (gaming term. Essentially a way of privately communicating that can be done from anywhere between friends/guild members/etc.) from Weed asking Marfan to bring over 22 carts (70,000 gold) of top quality supplies towards a certain meeting place. Despite of Marfan’s unease over the bandits and monsters roaming the lands (he has hired lots of mercenaries to guard his supplies) he safely reaches the meeting point. He is astounded by the large crowd of paladins and priests gathered before him and asks Weed why the Paladins are there. Weed simply replies that it is for a quest. Marfan wonders if it’s for the Master Sculpting quest but Weed replies that it’s for a quest chain above the level of the Master Sculpting chain (Not sure about this, may be wrong). Marfan then looks around more closely and notes that Alberon and Derry are both present, with Alberon wearing the Crown of Fargo. Weed then yells out how they are going to clear Roderick’s Labyrinth in order to preserve the peace of the continent. Marfan immediately turns pale, thinking about how nobody has ever came out alive from Roderick’s labyrinth. After giving out his speech and raising the Paladins’ morale, Weed starts heading into to the basement (summarizer’s note: I believe that the labyrinth is located under basements of a ruin. I may be wrong though), which has an eerie chill even in the middle of summer.
Chapter 2. Roderick’s Labyrinth. Note: Because the text didn’t come with a table of contents, I’m not sure if this is the actual chapter 2 or if I missed a chapter title somewhere.
Weed gets noticed by a demon and he immediately uses the Splendorous Sword skill (which he learned from Zahab, which turned out to be a Master Swordsman in addition to a Master Engraver) sending seven eagles of light flying out of his sword to hit the demon. However, the skill does insignificant damage (240 hp, 267 hp, etc.) It is then explained that the demons cannot exist (or are severely weakened) on the surface of Versailles (name of the continent) where the Gods hold reign. The only way for them to manifest is to either create a contract with somebody like a warlock or possess a body. However, in the depths of the earth, they are able to exert considerable power. The demon lashes out its whip at Weed which he avoids, noting how the whip had a large attack range, was fast, and difficult to avoid. Furthermore, there was a type of a sharp needle coated with scorpion poison (either that or a scorpion like creature from hell that was attached to the whip) so if an attack lands, Weed would be left open to further hits. Although he dodged the attack, he still took 532 damage just from the collateral damage. Also, he became more vulnerable to illness and had reduced healing. The rest of the paladins have managed to come down the stair by now and they charge at the demon while the priests cast recovery spells on him. Weed notices how although divine powers are extremely effective against demonic beings, the demon has a level around the 500s. The demon uses Unholy Corruption (google trans name: Holy corruption) to reduce the effectiveness of divine power and the physical force of those with divine power (it notes that if somebody’s faith stat and level is low, they may betray their comrades due to this ability). The demon then proceeds to use Hand of Oppression, holds its left hand into the air, and clenches it (its right hand is still brandishing the whip). However, a Paladin was suddenly lifted by what seems to be an invisible giant hand, his armor and shield distorted under strong pressure. The demon then uses Fragments of a Corrupted Soul and sends out a black explosion in all directions. Because 2 people have already died, Weed decides to summon Van Hawk and Tori. He originally didn’t want to summon them because the morale of the Paladin’s and Priests may drop more quickly if they are fighting with a death knight and vampire. With everybody’s help, they eventually manage to overwhelm the demon and everybody’s reputation rises by 140. In the end, 3 people died. Weed then recalls how the Morningstar’s raid group was eventually wiped out in a battle against 13 demons at once, and notes how he must be careful (?). Weed then takes care of the sword and armor of his group before heading into the labyrinth.
Weed orders Bach to take the vanguard, to which Bach agrees to before Bach uses Warcry (idk what this actually is, I just made this up). This increases the max health, max mana, damage, critical strike damage, fighting spirit and ability (idk what this is), of the party. After a fight where 2 people died, Weed began to stop and carefully consider his strategies, seeing as a total of 11 people have already died even though they were fighting defensively (?). They reach a crossroad in the labyrinth, and Weed turns left (it turns out that Weed has been choosing to go left at every crossroad). It mentions how due to space expansion, space distortion, and illusion magics, this labyrinth is immensely difficult. Furthermore, the spatial distortion will only get worse once they get deeper into the labyrinth, resulting in endless waves of battles with demons (because they can approach a raiding party from almost anywhere quickly due to the large amount of spatial distortion). This is the Roderick Labyrinth.
Yu Byeon Jun (creator of Royal Road) is watching his screen delightedly, enjoying Weed’s struggles. The A.I. Versailles speaks up and a state how there is only a 0.2% chance of the group of paladins and priests clearing the dungeon. Even if Weed’s fighting ability was included, that would only increase the odds to .23%. Finally, even if the living sculptures were included, the odds will be at most 5%. The director considers Weed foolish and reckless for not bringing the sculptures with him. He continues watching a fight Weed was having (3 people died), and finds it a little bit boring because Weed’s only fighting 1 or 2 demons at a time. Versailles then speaks up and says that she has calculated Weed’s chances of success of clearing the dungeon, which turns out to be 46.7%. Shocked, the creator asks if she thinks she calculated it wrong. However, Versailles has stated that she calculated it 316,820 times. Because of this new fact, Yu Byeong Jun’s (note: Google trans interprets his name into Yubyeongjun. I just split it up because it sounds better imo) mood fell quickly.
Scene switches to Bach, who is taunting the demons to attack him (he has high magic and curse resistance as well as the best armor Emperor Arpen can give him). While Bach is tanking the damage, Derry who is wielding Lou’s sword, attack the demons from the side. Weed is staying in the back of the devoting all of his attention to conducting the fight. His conducting has changed drastically compared to before, with him now telling each and every group of paladins exactly what to do (it compares him directing them to a conductor conducting an orchestra). However, he was still losing a couple units to demons every time. This is because the demons have extremely high defense and vitality. Furthermore, when they were about to die, they choose to give up their defense and engage in a relentless assault. When ~30 units have been lost, he stopped the group and started making food for the group as well. Although this means that the Paladins are in perfect condition before every fight, this also slowed down their rate of exploration. Weed then continues on, thinking how they must fight as much as possible because there must be a clue somewhere in the labyrinth about how to navigate it. The group then stops to sleep (they take shifts so they aren’t left unguarded) and Jaden goes ahead to dismantle to the traps.
The scene shifts to Arpen, with villages developing so fast that players who have come back after a month are unsure if they’re in the right town or not. Also, Mora is so prosperous now that it has become the obvious choice if one wanted to start in the north. In addition, Bent Castle (the castle full of Niflheim knights) has pledged its allegiance to Mora. This means that it was possible for people to now learn horseback combat techniques of the Niflheim Empire as well as other knight skills. Another large change is the appearance of Lavias above Mora. After some discussion among the Porridge cult, they decided to include the Avians in their group. The discussion then turned how Weed hasn’t been heard from since the hummingbird travels and Splendorous Fencing quest, and how Weed has went to the church to recruit a large number of paladins and priests. One person asks if they think Weed will succeed, to which another replied “Of course, he’s Weed!”
Scene shifts once more to a Hermes guild meeting where they are talking about the integration of the captured kingdoms into their, the development of their military, and the construction of the Imperial Palace (it was mentioned there was a delay because they didn’t have the much artists/architects because all of the great ones have all left to go to Mora). We also find out that Hermes campaign to conquer the entire continent will start the day that the palace is complete. The discussion then shifts to Weed, and one person says that Weed has left for Roderick’s Labyrinth. Rafael (Hermes guild commander/leader) wonders at how ridiculously hard the Master quests are for Sculptors but then dismisses that thought, judging that Weed will lose a significant amount of carving skill from dying in the labyrinth. One of the subordinates asks if they should do anything about Weed but Rafael shakes his head, thinking about how Roderick’s Labyrinth has defeated anybody who tried to challenge it. Even the elite Morningstar guild was annihilated by the combination of monsters, traps and the maze. Rafael then says that Weed will die in Roderick’s Labyrinth.
Chapter 3 (idk, maybe another chapter). Loss of Paladins.
Weed has been fighting the demons for 2 days now. So far, 54 people have died (Weed originally entered with 680 people). However, the formations of the party as well as the strategies to deal with the demons have been continuously improved. In addition, Weed has also obtained rare leather from the monsters as well as found rare herbs on the wall. Besides the normal loot, Weed also found several items left behind by some of the first people that went into the dungeon (around 200 level). Because of Weeds high charisma and leadership the morale of the party remained fairly high. The priests and paladins believed it was their holy goal to exterminate demons, Bach didn’t give a damn, and Jaden was given sake to drink when he freaked out. Due to their constant combat against the enemies, the levels of the entire party rose, but there wasn’t that big of a difference to their combat ability (Weed’s current level is 429; he’s been sitting in the back and grinding up his Splendorous fencing skill). They face a group of 4 (?) demons and Weed immediately orders the party into battle, telling Alberon to protect Weed as the number one priority and telling the priests to constantly help the paladins even if the paladins are only cursed, not hurt (I really don’t know that google trans is trying to say here. This is just an assumption). When the demonss’ life were low, they used wide area of effect attack damage, instantly killing the paladin (s?) that was currently tanking. Weed immediately orders Alberon to blind them-Alberon creates a bright explosion of holy light- and then Derry uses Lou’s Miracle in order to significantly increase his abilities and finishes off the demons (?). (Note: This entire fight section is kinda confusing, it’s possible that I’m reading the google trans wrong). After the enemies are defeated Weed analyzes the battle. As it turns out, without the support of Weed’s Blacksmithing and Cooking skills, a significantly larger amount of paladins would have died. Weed also notices that the demon’s magical attacks are several times stronger than their physical ones, so they must be interrupted or prevented whenever the demon tries to use them. Also, it turns out that a purely static defense (ex: same people doing same stuff, not moving, etc) can’t be used and if a Paladin tanks for too long (?) he’ll be killed quickly. So far, a total of 71 people have died.
Weed orders Bach to lead the way and unfortunately, they run into a group of 7 demons (usual battles are against 3 or 4). Weed orders everybody into defensive position with the paladins that aren’t tanking shooting crossbows at the demons. In his head, he assesses the current situation and realizes that things will be extremely grave for him if the priests run out of mana. Essentially, even losing one battle will prove to be the end of the raid. In normal raids, people can just gather back together after a wipe. However, in Roderick’s labyrinth, it’s nearly impossible to regroup. As such, if too much of the group’s combat ability is lost, everybody else is essentially as good as dead.
Weed attacks a demons side but barely does any damage to it. Deciding that he’s going to need more damage, Weed uses sculptural destruction to convert his art stats into strength stats. As it turns out, his art stat is so much higher than his strength stat the stats don’t fully convert over. Instead, Weed gets the skills:
Devastating Blow advanced level 8: causes enemies to become disoriented upon hit (presumably does more damage as well?)
Piercing Thrust (note: the google trans used here was “window” which means spear) advanced level 7: powerful attack that penetrates (maybe breaks?) enemy armor and shields
Incredible Moment advanced 9: where the user can exert 3 times their normal power at the costs of enormous amounts of stamina for a short time
Skilled Attacker Advanced 3: Increases attack damage
Weed then uses Heraim fencing on one of the demons, managing to actually deal damage (thanks to sculptural destruction). They have managed to dispatch 4 of the demons but the paladins are starting to lose their morale (there have been many injuries and deaths). Weed then uses his Yell skill (morale rises by 200%, removes the confusion in the battlefield , and leadership is at 300% its original value temporarily). Finally, the battle is eventually finished, with 22 paladins killed. It was mentioned that it was a miracle that Weed managed to pull this victory off (apparently Weed’s commanding ability and faith/piety of the paladins helped a lot). Despite of this miracle, Weeds expression was grim, because it was likely that they may face who knows how many ffights like that in the future.
They continued on and fought dozens of battles. In the end, the death toll climbed up to 163 people. After finishing a difficult battle against 9 demons, Weed starts thinking about the quest. At first, he regrets not bringing more troops with him (he said he should’ve hired mercenaries) and then he wonders if the quest is unbeatable. He immediately shoots that thought down, saying the quest is not over yet, and even if he wanted to run away, he can’t because of the magical labyrinth. He starts analyzing the quest and realizes that clearing the dungeon should be related to sculpting in some way. He starts going through the sculptural related items and experiences in his head and remembers the Queen’s Hand Mirror which he got from completing The Sculptor’s Heart (the level A quest he got in the beginning of the series. Note: it was originally an item for dancers/bards/priests that increased wisdom, intelligence/knowledge, attractiveness, mana, and faith. However, it had a strange description of “Will reveal ones path in certain places” ). He then takes out the hand mirror and notices a line of text saying additional powers/information have been revealed. He identifies the mirror again and learns more background information on the mirror (something about it being used to help the poor, having sacred magic, and showing the true path. Google trans is kinda gibberish again). In addition, he finds that all previous stats bonuses have been increased (magic resist and a rare chance of reflecting magic is also added) and the ability to illuminate’s the path through a maze (it can only be used twice though). Weed uses The True Path effect of the mirror and a stream of light pours out from the mirror, illuminating a path for Weed.
Scene switches to Weed’s house where agents from many of the media stations (CTS, LK,KMC, etc) have been continuously ringing his door bell. It turns out that Weed’s adventures always attract significantly more viewers than any other programs. That combined with the growing interest in Royal Road overseas has meant that the media is extremely interested in Weed. They discuss how Lee Hyun (Weed) hasn’t answered the door despite their constant ringing and the phone has not been answered. They guess that Lee Hyun has probably went out. In reality, what’s actually happening is Lee Hyun is drinking miso soup while browsing the Dark Gamer’s website. After he finishes the soup, he opens the door and is mobbed by a bunch of agents giving him free stuff (power tool set, giseng, beef ribs, chinaware, etc. Note: KMC brought the power tools). Lee Hyun invites the people inside and offers them drinks. He then asks what they are here for and one of the people says that there have been rumors of him attempting to clear the Roderick Labyrinth with a large group of paladins. The person then chuckles and says that it’s not that important and he just wanted to say hello to Lee Hyun after a long time. Lee Hyun confirms the rumors and says that he is trying to clear the Roderick Labyrinth. Upon hearing this, the people from the various media groups immediately begin their efforts to try to form a contract with Weed and one-up the other stations (an exclusive contract would result in huge amounts of revenue). The CTS agent offers to give Lee Hyun a luxury car as an added incentive for signing an exclusive contract (apparently, this is enough for most people to agree), but Lee Hyun immediately refuses. Why? Because luxury cars require large amounts of money in the forms of taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Weed then announces that he prefers hard cash in lieu of gifts (I may be completely wrong about this line).
Chapter 4: The Coming of the Proprietor (Google trans: the appearance of the landlord)
Weed is continuing through the labyrinth and notices how sometimes, the light splits into two or even three beams at some crossroads. This is because space has been distorted so no matter which way they go, they’ll still arrive at the destination. Unfortunately, the mirror does not only show the shortest way to the destination so choosing a path is still partly dependent on Weed’s luck. Also, because they are going deeper into the dungeon, the group’s encounters with demons are increasing in difficulty and frequency. Weed uses Sculptural Shapeshifting and transform into the Chaos Warrior that was wielding the dragon sword Red Star (google trans is giving me gibberish for the name of the warrior). He then equips Red Star and armor that he gathered (he is unable to equip some of his armor that his original form wears because the Chaos Warriors are relatively large compared to humans.) in preparation for this quest. Weed blinks to one of the demons and starts attacking the demons. Apparently, although attacks with Red Star are of the fire attribute as opposed to the light attribute attacks of the Splendorous Sword skill, the flames caused by attacks with the Red Star continue to burn which causes an enormous amount of damage when compared to Weed’s normal attacks (the high base attack of Red Star doesn’t hurt either). Also, it turns out that demons are fairly fire resistant. However, the unquenchable fires of the Red Star cannot be so easily countered. Because of his damage (and presumably appearance) appearance, Weed aggroes 2-3 of the demons. But with his innate racial Blink (short ranged teleport) ability, Weed evades the demon’s physical attacks with ease. They manage to win the fight with only two people dying (it says that they fought against 23 demons but I’m pretty sure that’s just a mistake on Google Tran’s part because there’s no way only 2 people would have died against a fight with 23 people). Weed notes how he ended the battle with 25,000 health. Although it was fairly decent for a human being, it was on the low side for a Chaos Warrior (it’s still above the safety margin though). This is mostly thanks to Weed’s dodging of attacks using Blink, the Priests healing him, and most of all, Red Star’s ability to restore the wielder’s health and mana when enemies are afflicted with the flams of the Red Star (TL note: Kinda think of them as vampiric flames I guess?). Weed continues to press on, and then next 3 battles play out similarly, with Weed aggroing the demons with his Yell ability and then having the entire party attacking them. There were some times where Weed was close to dying. Once, he got hit with a kick (or is it a whip) so hard that he was unable to move his left shoulder. Also, he was getting constantly targeted by 5 or 6 demons at once, which resulted in him relying on Seoyun to transfer life to him through the Marriage Ring (Weed deliberately carved the statue with tapered fingers so he could wear the ring). Everything was going fairly well when suddenly, that incident occurred.
Jaden was dismantling one of the traps (the traps are getting harder the deeper they go into the labyrinth) when he set of the trap and was crushed under a pile of stones (something about a red line or a yellow line to disable the trap but Jaden choses the wrong one). Now, although the group can fight the demons, they’ll suffer irreparable damage from traps. Weed starts thinking and realizes that the deeper he get, the more traps and demons he’ll face. At last, Weed admitted that the quest is a failure. Although it was possible for him to hire mercenaries and soldiers, he chose the most gold-effective way only took the paladins. Weed considers if his other sculpting skills can help him but rejects each of them (Sculptural Catastrophe is extremely difficult to control and may kill the low-health priests, Sculptural Animation may help but the loss in stats and the possibility of the demons killing the sculpture are too high, and I don’t even think that Weed thought of the Elemental Creation sculpturing skill). Suddenly, he remembers the block of wood infused with Freya’s divine power he received from the Archpriest (note: for those who didn’t know, the reward of finishing the sculptural master quest chain is the ability to create your own sculpting skill. After he finished the sculpting quest chain, he went to Freya’s cathedral/church and received a block of wood infused with divine power). Weed turns off his Sculptural Shapeshifting Skill and pulls out the wooden block he received from Freya. He knows that he’s going to have only one chance to create a skill that can both solve the current problem and still be useful in the future. After some thinking, he begins carving.
Weed is slowly carving at the wood, trying to etch every detail into it. It mentions that he’s as nervous as he was when he made the money deposit to buy the house (note: I believe this was back when he had 3.9 billion won. Looking back in Volume 1, he paid 50 million won for the house deposit, just 1.28% of his total cash back then. -.-).
Summarizer Note: Because this is a pretty important moment and actually fairly legible, I’ll try to translate this section
(note: lines in apostrophes are thoughts)
(Warning: I made arrange/change sentences so they read like a story rather than blocks of words)
‘The skill can’t be too good, or else it would come with a severe penalty. Hm… Anyways, this face should have more wrinkles in order to fit the expression I saw. ‘
Currently, in Weed’s hand is a carving of an old man. Bearing deep wisdom in his eyes and wrinkles on his forehead, the figure is dressed in a wizard’s robe. On his head, an elongated, wide-brimmed hat was worn.
‘Hm..he should have a magic staff in his hand. And maybe a cape? No, it’s probably better without.’
The sculpture in Weeds hand was Archmage Roderick; the one who fought the demons tooth and nail before sealing them within his dungeon. Although Weed saw Roderick with his eyes, he wondered if he could reproduce Roderick’s image intact.
After seven hours, the sculpture was complete
|With the help of Freya’s divine powers, you have created a new sculptural skill. Please decide on the name of the sculpting skill. |
“Sculptural Resurrection”
|-Sculptural Resurrection-. Is that correct?|
“Yes”
|Please set the definition of the skill|
Weed spoke out in a deep voice.
“In this land, there were as many heroes as stars in the sky. Emperor of the Arpen Empire, Geihar Von Arpen . Archmage of the Dream Kingdom, Roderick. King of Rosenheim, Theodarren. “
It was a little difficult to compare Theodarren to the others, but including Theodarren also subtly brought to mind the pyramids. This was very common action in shows and movies. Sponsorship!
“This is a skill that can bring back these dead, historical figures”
|Because of the nature of the skill, a severe penalty will be added. Do you still want to proceed?|
“I’ve already decided”
Although the penalties are high, a weak skill that isn’t useful would be even worse.
|Engraving skill is completed. Because the goddess Freya does not want you to violate the law of causality, there is a large penalty each time this skill is used|
|Wooden Sculpture. Strength: 1|
|The skill created by Weed is engrained within this sculpture|
|This is a skill that can bring back the historical dead|
|Advanced Sculpture is required to learn this skill|
|Sculptural Resurrection 1 (0%): Create sculptures that can bring back the dead|
|Advanced Sculpting is required|
|With each use, the following figures will drop: Art: -45, Faith:-10, Level: -3|
|The sculpture must look exactly like the desired historical figure in order to revive said figure|
|The time the dead are resurrected for depend on the level of the skill. Current time: 21 hours|
|(TL note: Idk what this is. Something about only one skill at a time)|
|Only beings similar to the human race can be resurrected. Monsters will not answer your call|
|The resurrected being shall possess their memories and abilities of when they were alive|
|The resurrected being shall act according to their own will. They cannot be controlled|
|(Something about damage reduced, Freya|
|A being cannot be resurrected twice|
|This skill can only be re-casted after one month passes from the previous use of this skill|
-Engraving Skill has increased
-Because of the invention of a new sculpting skill, fame has risen by 2430.
Weed is somewhat disheartened by the skill costing 3 levels to cast but casts the spell anyways. Weed uses Sculptural Resurrection and loses the stats/levels that casting the skill costs (not going to bother retyping it seeing as you can just see it in the previous skill description). Apparently there is a significant difference between this skill and necromancy seeing as people summoned by this skill come back “fully” from the dead (their appearance, memories, skills, etc.). A white glow fills the room, and as it fades, Archmage Roderick is revealed. Roderick looks at his surroundings, muttering to himself how he had obviously died fighting demons in his residence, concluding that he has been resurrected into the future (idk about the resurrection part. However that’s the only thing that made sense). Weed goes up to Roderick, telling Roderick how it was such a great honor to meet him etc. However, Roderick is unaffected by Weed’s flattery and simply asks Weed who he is. Weed answers that he’s a master engraver but (surprise, surprise) Roderick has never heard of Weed (because Roderick is from the past, the effects of Weed’s fame is useless). Weed tells Roderick of what Weed is doing in the dungeon and what happened in the past (more praising about how Roderick saved the continent), and Roderick declares that he’s going to finish the battle with Montereseul (head demon) once and for all. Roderick does it in a flashy way too, summoning a staff and slamming it on the ground (making a large sound. Weed, of course, drools over how much money he may get if he sold such a staff). Weed then sucks up to Roderick more in order to convince Roderick to let Weed tag along (ex: “I want to observe Roderick’s battles so I can tell it to future generations”, etc).
Roderick effortlessly breezes by the traps (because the labyrinth was original his) and they meet a group of 9 demons (one of these demons comment on how Roderick looks familiar). Roderick remarks on how trespassers should just disappear and uses magic to attack the demons with a large ball (?) of compressed air that explodes on impact. He then follows up the attack with Flame Pillar (note: Roderick is able to consecutively cast intermediate leveled spells without any incantation apparently). Weed watching the battle, asks if Roderick needs assistant. Ignoring Roderick’s retort of telling Weed to stay out of the way, Weed wheedles Roderick until he lets Weed help with the fighting. Weed (in his Chaos warrior form) blinks in attacking the demons (the paladins are sitting near the back, shooting the demons with crossbows). They easily finish the fight and Weed acquires some small loot (potion reagents, demon boots, etc) and gets some small increases to agility for fighting so many demons in a row. Roderick then comments on how the group was too slow and Weed orders his group to prioritize speed. While on the move, Weed thinks about how Roderick has 20 hours left and how there they must complete 2 goals in the dungeon (I would presume that’s defeating Montereusel and getting the knowledge about sculpting).
Chapter 5. Demon Slayer.
Although Weed had lost 3 levels using Sculptural Resurrection, his experience bar was quickly getting refilled by their extremely fast rate of demon hunting. After a fight against 7 demons, his fencing skill increases and he gets the title “Demon Slayer” which reduces the effects of diseases and curses from demons as well as the stat decreases from facing a strong demon (TL note: I believe this is the effect that Weed gets against bosses like Bar Khan, Undead dragon, etc. Technically, he’s supposed to also lose stats against higher leveled opponents but Weed has a ridiculously high Fighting Spirit stat). He also has increased respect from all churches, increased chance of a critical strike, an increased drop chance when looting demons, increased curse+black magic resistance of 2%, and the ability to bring out a “higher power” with demon related items (I’m assuming that it just means he can use demon related items more effectively. Ex: Weed’s Demon Sword which he wields in his human form). Apparently, this title was granted because Weed has hunted over 200 demons.
Weed then looks at Roderick and thinks about the surprises which Roderick had. Usually, wizards had to meditate after every battle to regenerate mana (this is apparently only supposed to be common sense). But, Roderick seemed to ignore that rule, consecutively casting high level magics. Curious, Weed asks Roderick his secret behind never running out of mana. Roderick says it’s simple and asks if Weed knows how everything in this world contains mana (or is made of mana, not sure). Weed replies yes and Roderick explains [speculation] that he can uses the mana available in other objects to significantly reduce the mana costs (or restore his mana). Either that, or Roderick is able to store vast amounts of mana in his body [end speculation]. Weed enviously thinks to himself how he wished he could have mastered magic instead (because he would then be the ultimate battle mage). Roderick notes how Weed’s group’s power seemed lacking and casted the buff Giant’s Strength over the group, which increased power by 300% for 3 hours. He also casts Command: Quicken (google trans: quick order) which increases movement speed and decreases skill-cast delay. It notes here how Roderick was an arrogant and stubborn old man, eschewing all help from others. Despite of the quick rate that Roderick moved, there was only 9 hours and 40 minutes remaining until the resurrection skill wore off. Roderick then summons a gigantic fire golem and after fighting some more, they stop to take a break. To date, almost 200 paladins have died and 32 priests have been killed as well. While they were eating, Weed asks about Weed’s research into the beauty of sculpture but Roderick simply says that Weed is annoying and tells him to look at it once he reaches Roderick’s lab. This also dropped Weed’s intimacy levels with Roderick (lol, I’m pretty that’s just the A.I.’s version of telling Weed to go screw himself xD). Their battles continue and Weed wonders who is stronger, Bar Khan or Roderick. After wiping out many groups of demons, they finally arrive at the door leading to Montereseul’s room. In preparation, Weed creates the finest food possible and does all he can to ensure that everybody is at peak condition. After preparations have been completed, they prepare to begin their assault on Montereusel.
The scene transitions to some characters that haven’t appeared in a very long time: the loan sharks (because the author loves putting fillers right after the cliffhanger). Although the demand for loans was skyrocketing, law enforcement has become increasingly vigilant. This means that they are no longer able to take people away as collateral or any similar criminal activities. Because of the increasing risks of getting caught, the loan sharks are starting to shift to Royal Road instead. (I can’t really decipher the book’s explanation of how they are using Royal Road to make money).
Scene shifts once again to the Geomchi (?), who has now achieved Advanced 9 (50%) in the martial artists skill (the dojo students are mostly around advanced 8). Although they were only proficient with a sword at first, they quickly became familiar with bows, spears, hammer, mace, etc. The bigger variety of weapons that was used, the more the Martial Artist skill was increased . The Geomchi group is hard at work training (or fighting monsters). One of the teachers is watching them (possibly Geomchi), but his mind was thinking about how Dr Cha Eunhee is on a date with Geom-4-chi (I think? I forgot which number he was). Most likely because of these thoughts, Geomchi then declares that they will begin the master quest (?) for Martial Artists. The group then begins to head towards the starting questgiver’s (?) location.
Roderick and Montereusel immediately spot each other as Weed’s group bursts into the room, each side vowing to kill the other. Instead of looking at the dramatic confrontation between the two, Weed chooses to scan around the room instead. He spots a shocking 30 demons lurking in the room as well as walls covered with eggs. Weed guesses that they’re the eggs of the Gorontalo. The Gorontalo look like large, misshapen spiders whose venom (?) are extremely hard to counteract and very painful. Fortunately, their incubation periods are extremely long. Their birth usually results from the Gorontalo hatchlings sensing prey nearby, which makes them burst out of their eggs to eat the prey and sate their hunger.
All of the major stations have started broadcasting Weed’s adventures both in Korea and the world as well (with subtitles for foreigners). Although the content of each station is the same, they are competing in video editing, music, commentary, etc. In a house, a child is begging for her mother’s attention (ex: help with homework, reading a book, etc) but the mother just tells the child to be quiet and let her watch the television. Irritated, the child says that her mom is treating her like she’s been picked up under a bridge. Meanwhile, many fast food places/eateries (fast food place for chicken, Chinese restaurant, etc) with delivery are so completely overwhelmed with orders that food has a wait time of 3 hours.
After throwing threats around for a while, Roderick kicks off the battle by using Blizzard Storm, which Montereusel takes head on with very little effect. Weed ignores the two’s clash for now and focuses on the 30 demons (Bach says how he’s fine with living a short life; basically assuming he’s going to die xD). Weed orders the paladins into a formation that maximizes defense with Bach at the head while he Blinks into the eggs to destroy them before the hatchlings can awaken. Using the power of Red Star, he casts Fire Hydra in order to burn all eggs nearby. Although the spell required a constant flow of mana, Weed manages to obtain that mana due to the unique effects of Red Star. He then uses the Splendorous Sword skill which doesn’t shoot out the normal eagles of light, but Thunderbirds instead. The Thunderbirds took longer to emerge from the sword but once they were released, they flew at their target and exploded into lightning and flame. Due to the widespread attacks, Weed manages to gain a level. However, there are still many pillars still covered with eggs remaining. Seeing that he wasn’t going to destroy all of the eggs in time, Weed orders a group of paladins to start destroying the eggs as well. Taking the time to survey the battlefield, Weed’s eyes fall upon Roderick and Montereusel, whose fight is creating shockwaves every time they clash. Weed then decides that the most important goal in the fight would be to help Roderick win his fight as soon as possible, because the paladins are unable to win against the demons and Gorontalos. Even if they did win, the paladins would take massive losses and Weed will lose a lot of contribution and perhaps Bach as well. Weed first concentrates on pushing back the demons attacking the paladin formation, using Heraim fencing to score consecutive attacks on one of the demons. His chained attacks first deal additional damage due to the fire, then ignored the demon’s defense, then the demon’s power and balance were reduced thanks to Weed’s continuous attacks towards his left shoulder, and finally Weed’s attacks caused fire to completely blanket the demon and burn for 3980 damage per second. Weed then finishes of the demon by using Fire Blast, which caused a fireball to detonate on the body of the already-burning demon. Although the demon had more than half of its health left at the beginning of Weed’s attack, the continuous attacks combined with the power of the Red Star and the stats provided by a Chaos Warrior gave Weed the overwhelming power he needed to crush the demon. After killing the demon, Weed obtains some Havana herbs (or learns more information on Havana herbs, idk) and obtains a Greater Mithril Helmet. Although the situation is grim, Weed smiles because the Greater Mithril Helmet is a level 400 item that one of the Morningstar Guild’s members had worn. It has excellent defense, wisdom, and could also increase the effectiveness of combat skills.
Weed notices that 3 demons were heading towards the priest group commanded by Alberon and Blinks in to intercept them. All the while, the paladin groups fighting the other demons as well as the Gorontalo are losing (apparently, the Gorontalo grow extremely quickly, the bigger ones reaching the size of several meters). It had only been 20 minutes since the fight started but the amount of Paladins have already been reduced below 200, the priests reduced by 1/3, and the priests perilously close to running out of mana. Although Weed is desperately fighting, he has still suffered large injuries; despite of having the large amount of sustain provided by the Red Star, he would have died already if he hadn’t received healing from the priests. Weed then uses Yell to increase the morale of the Paladins as well as getting a group of the 5 demons to aggro on him. Weed uses Absolute Incineration (google trans: completely burned down), one of the top ranked Fire spells, and incapacitating (?) 2 of the demons. He notes the quickly approaching 3 un-affected demons and uses the Doppleganger sword technique to split himself into 10. Weed and his clones manage to quickly finish off the 2 incapacitated demons before turning on the remaining ones. Taking advantage of his short break, Weed surveys the battlefield. After taking in the battles, Weed could tell that if they remained in a protracted fight, his side would definitely lose. The group was almost at the limits of their stamina and mana, and the morale of the group was low despite of Weed’s commanding. Furthermore, the longer the fight goes, the more Gorontola would be hatched, and Weed’s group would be overwhelmed. After thinking it through Weed decides to take a gamble and go attack Montereseul. This is because even if he stayed with the Church+Bach group, they would eventually die anyways. So, he’s betting on the probability that they could finish off Montereseul and then have Roderick help clear the rest of the demons.
After telling Alberon to solely concentrate on healing him, Weed Blinks to Montereseul’s wing, and concentrates his attacks on Montereseul’s right wing. Although the damage was small initially (about 500 damage) the damage eventually multiplied due to the fact that 5 times (in the 5th attack, Weed was dealing 916 damage as well as putting a burn effect on Montereseul). Because his 3rd right wing (he has multiple sets of wings I guess?) was almost completely enveloped in flames, Montereseul aggroes onto Weed instead. Weed uses Blink to dodge the blow and move to Montereseul’s opposite side, where he starts attacking Montereseul’s left wings while dodging Montereseul’s blows with Blinks. He noticed that Roderick was chanting a spell when Montereseul uses Frozen Field and a large amount of space around Montereseul suddenly freezes. Although Weed avoids being instantly frozen and dying thanks to Alberon’s treatment as well as the fire properties of the Red Star, he still takes 32,985 damage. (Note: It’s possible that Roderick was the one that casted Frozen Fields. Google trans was unclear) Montereseul then follows up with Totsuka’s Fangs (google trans: Totsuka Gutierrez Teeth), causing large fangs to erupt from the ground and shoot at Weed. Weed Blinks and dodges the fangs but it turns out that the projectiles had homing capabilities. He gets hit by one of the fangs and instantly loses 28,193 health, although that is soon healed by Alberon. Weed uses several consecutive Blinks to avoid most of the Fangs at the last moment, causing them to smash into the walls (I think that Weed got hit by some of them but all of the damage healed by Alberon). Annoyed at how Weed managed to survive his attacks (devils have a lot of pride), Montereseul uses Stigma of Sacrifice on Weed. Golden letters shoot at Weed but Weed blinks out of the way, causing the spell to hit the 3 demon behind Weed, instantly killing them. The reason why Weed is battling against Montereseul, when all of Weed’s attacks are mere scratches and a direct hit from Montereseul means death, is to buy time for Roderick. Because Montereseul is focused on killing Weed, it allows time for Roderick to incant his spells without any interference. Roderick finishes chanting his spell and unleashes Spatial Rend (google trans: space cut). Injured, Montereseul roars at Weed, calling him a coward and saying how honorable warriors fight instead of hit and running. Weed says he’ll take it as a compliment because he wants live a long life and collect a lot of pension funds. Although one of his wings is set on fire and he has also suffered tremendous magic damage, Montereseul still had around half of his life remaining (due to the high magic resistance of the demon race). Enraged, Montereseul gives out a scream which reduces morale and lowers stats. Due to Weed’s high fighting spirit, he is mostly relatively fine, but the priests were heavily disrupted, causing them to fail their healing spells (I think some of the lower health priests may have even died from the scream because the scream reduces health and mana as well?). Weed immediately yells at the group to retreat to a corner in a defensive position, not fighting back and just blocking the attack. Thanks to the innate resistance of the priest and paladin classes, they were only weakened, unlike normal soldiers who may have given up (Bach, who has a lot of fighting spirit as well, was unaffected). Montereseul calls Weed a worm, and says how people like him should just die. Roderick approaches Weed and apologizes for leading Weed into such a difficult a difficult fight. Weed asks if Roderick if he thinks that he (Roderick) can win against. Roderick replies that it would be difficult for him and Weed asks why, given that Roderick had claimed previously that he could fight Montereseul by himself. Roderick says that because Montereseul has been summoned here for so long, his abilities have increased significantly. Weed then asks Roderick where he put his research on sculpting and Roderick replies that is in the lab at the end of the hall. Unfortunately, the demons and Montereseul are between them and the lab, and the lab entrance is covered with Gorontola eggs as well. Weed decides to give up on his plan to retrieve the information before dying and prepares to fight Montereseul once again. He says that even if he fails, it’ll still be beneficial for the world. Because his adventure is broadcasted around the world on several different stations, others will eventually analyze the weaknesses and strengths of Montereseul and eventually come up with a plan for fighting Montereseul. (Something about how even if they can configure a perfect party, they may still be afraid of going into the labyrinth. Also something about how it’s not rare for people to blame Weed for accepting and failing such a hard quest?)
Chapter 6. Colossal Achievement:
Note: I think Spatial Rend may have temporarily blocked off Montereseul or else it’s unlikely that the following could have happened.
Weed tries to convince Roderick to work with him, pointing out how Roderick finally has the chance to fix his mistakes and working together would be better than fighting separately. Roderick finally agrees to work with Weed and begins meditating to accumulate mana. Meanwhile, the paladins and priests are praying in order to lift the curses (?) while Weed just waits, with Red Star restoring his body into an excellent condition (All Bach had to do was apply bandages and eat boiled potatoes to go back to normal because warriors of the Arpent Kingdom have high stamina/resilience). Weed asks if Roderick can concentrate of only using fire-type magic and orders the Paladins to stay at a distance, supporting with crossbows and holy magic. Montereseul charges at Weed (idk how he appeared. The only line is “Ransom is sokgyeol” and I have no idea what that means). Weed Blinks to Montereseul while Roderick casts fire magic at Montereseul. Weed absorbs some of the fire energy, increasing maximum health, mana, stamina, and power). Montereseul consecutively casts several magics (Brand of Oppresion, Daemons of Ice), but thanks to the paladin+priests healing as well as the fact that everybody scattered, the group made it through mostly intact. Weed orders the paladins to continue to shoot their crossbows, and tells the priests to use holy magic attacks rather than healing. Montereseul then targets the priests with Hammer of Anger, wiping out a lot of priests. Weed then orders Bach to intercept any attacks on the priests and then continues to fend Montereseul off. After seeing the priests dying, Roderick can’t restrain his anger (apparently, although he’s arrogant and had bad judgment, he was still kind on the inside) and uses Mana Burn. Mana Burn is an ability that allows a wizard to use up all of the mana in their body to damage the enemy. What usually happens is a large explosion when all of the mana in a person’s body is used to fuel the spell. In Roderick’s case, however, it was like the Sun descended onto the Earth. After the light lessened, Montereseul had suffered a huge wound, with the upper part of his left shoulder essentially gone. After using such an enormous power, Roderick collapsed. Because all of the mana in his body was depleted, he was suffering reflux symptoms and probably couldn’t participate in the battle anymore. Taking advantage of Montereseul’s stunned state, Weed orders the paladins and Bach to attack Montereseul, he himself Blinking in and using Heraim fencing to stab Montereseul in the heart (?) 6 times (max damage was a 24% increase in damage with 2402 fire damage). Montereseul manages to use Flame Blaster and blasts back the paladins and Bach (killing many of the paladins). Weed on the other hand, remained with his attacks becoming 14% stronger due to absorbing the energy of the fire. Weed then uses the Splendorous Sword skill to attack Montereseul. Montereseul staggers due to the accumulated damage from Weed’s attacks, holy magic, and Rodericks’ magic. Weed orders the paladins and priests to continue with their crossbow and holy magic attacks while telling Bach to take a breather and wait. Close to death, Montereseul declares that he’ll take everybody with him, starting a 6 minute countdown until Montereseul sacrifices hiself in order to kill all life in the nearby area. On the description window that popped up, it compares the damage due to the self-destructing to the wizard skill Ultimate Destruction, a spell strong enough to level an entire castle (the reason why Roderick didn’t use this spell was it requires building up a massive amount of time and a medium?). Weed decides to go all out, seeing as if Montereseul wasn’t killed in 6 minutes, the entire labyrinth would be blown away and the notes on sculpting with it. The Weed furiously attacks Montereseul (the rest of the paladins are focusing on holding of the Gorontola), but he is unable to do much damage. Weed was lamenting over the Engraver’s lack of strong attacks when he suddenly is struck by a thought. He yells at Derry to toss him Lou’s sword. Although Derry was fighting to keep the Gorontolas from reaching the priests, he throws Weed his sword without hesitation. Weed ends his shapeshifting skill and turns back into a human. He grabs the sword (status windows pop up saying Weed's recognized by Lou’s church so he can wield the word, how his Faith stat has been tripled, how he can use the skill Lou’s Miracle, how divine power will surpress the opponent’s mana and how his body’s recovery has doubled. Note: there were some other lines in the window but I’m not sure if they were just descriptions or additional effects of the sword). Weed then uses Sculptural destruction to convert his art stats into strength and gain additional skills (see chapter 3 for description of skills) and then stabs at Montereseul. He deals 1469 physical damage with an additional 3921holy damage (because Montereseul is a devil) and seals Montereseul’s ability to use mana. Weed then uses and gets a huge increase in attack speed and power, and also protection by divine forces as well. In addition to Weed’s attacks, Montereseul’s body is also slowly being engulfed by the flames from Red Star (his left wing has almost been melted). With less than one minute remaining before Montereseul self-destructs, Weed uses all of his strength to drive the sword into Montereseul’s heart, killing him.
the rewards thing. Here's a little excerpt of Weed's rewards from killing Montereseul:
After killing Montereseul, Weed gets 4 levels as well as 4190 fame, +8 charisma, +9 determination (I think this is fighting spirit?), and +51 Dignity. Furthermore, he has permanently learned the skill Devastating Blow as well as the skill Accurate Attack. In addition, everybody that participated in the battle gets +3 to all stats. Lastly, he gets a bunch of perks: an improvement to his (or Weed’s commander’s, not sure) teaching skills for training soldiers, the ability to have knights willingly follow him, being respected by all of the continents inhabitants, to have bards everywhere sing his story (every time they sing, Weed’s notoriety goes down a little), becoming an idol for adventurers, and an increase in the amount of (religious?) knights that will follow him.
Weed then stretches his hand forward and loots Montereseul. He gets a helmet, a whip, several huge uncut diamonds, and a jiokgye stone (idk what this is.). Weed uses his identification skill on the helmet:
Demon Helmet: durability 290/290. 161 Defense.
Helmet left behind by the devil Montereseul. It can only be worn by those with absolute strength. Because it is imbued with the forces of evil, it is extremely dangerous to those of weak faith.
Those who lack sufficient faith will take on the Curse of Montereseul and suffer significant health and stat loss.
Requirements: Level 640. 1,700 power. 800 Faith.
Options:
Endless Defense
Enemies quickly engulfed in fear
Combat skills will be enhanced when injured
Increased resistance to black magic
+98 Wisdom
+115 Knowledge (intelligence?)
Black magic skills of the Intermediate Level or lower can be casted with less mana
Smaller casting time is needed for magic
+12% to power of all combat skills
+8000 fame
He then tries to touch the whip, but is rejected, with the window popping up:
“Blood Soaked Whip rejects you
The evil forces within push you back. Health decreases by 3696”
Although blacksmith skills reduce the equipping requirements, Weed is not even able to touch the whip. As such, he puts the whip back. He then turns to survey the battleground. Even though Montereseul has been defeated, there are still huge numbers of Gorontalo that were around. After some strenuous battling, they manage to clear the room of all enemies. This is when (many of?) the priests and paladins suddenly talked about how they have now seen their goals and what their duty were. Weed sees light faintly appearing around them and realizes that they must have reached their class promotion. Because of the battles they went through, everybody’s levels have now exceeded 400. He is still saddened though, because even with the increased contribution he gets from returning them significantly stronger, it still won’t balance out the amount of people that died (there are only 150 people in his group remaining). They go into Roderick’s laboratory where 10 demons are awaiting them. However, because of the increased stats of the party, it was fairly easy to clean them all up. Weed gives a sigh of relief and remarks on how he has finally made it.
.......................................................
its basically about one big battle in an unsolvable labyrinth to battle the Demon Montoos
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the golden bird is the original joinjok aka the eggs weed bought and ate
weed destroyed a future granary area with a natural catastrophe and made rover sow the seeds for nature
Bulreotneun was sent to do heavy lifting in transporting 30000 red/brown stones
weed used nature sculpting to make a large wet lands for the fairy quest and he got some kind of honey to lure some monster away
he gets a quest to conquer the continent's rodeurik labyrinth
buncha freya paladins and priests get dragged along with him
in real world, lee hyun heads to seoyuns house as shes giving a bath to a dog that he gave her, and the dog shows complete obedience to him
they had lunch together
jay, a top lvl thief was in a pub wen weed decided to hire him, price was 5000 gold a day, it went to 4200 and then 3900 due to weeds alcohol drinks, then all the npcs noticed and knelt b4 their king, jay got subjected to their hate and needless to say was hired quite cheaply
bach borg was the only piece of life weed decided to bring along, knights, bulreotneun, the barbarian that served the emperor i think
the disease/bottle devil/demons (some mistranslation im not bothering to figure out atm) wer killing at least a few paladins during each battle
weed started to use the hit and switch approach
in 2 days he already lost 54 paladins out of 680
pagoesul pieces means destruction pieces i believe, weed uses that as the damage to paladins was too high
weed looks for a clue that he may hav missed and learns that queen evanes mirror zahab gave him shows him to the true path in the maze
buncha media stations tried to get a contract with lee hyun and even offered him a car, he refused as car was a money waster
he created resurrection pieces skill, reviving dead ppl
takes 3 lvls 45 art 10 faith, they last only 21 hrs and require one month b4 recasting, extreme penalties as it goes against goddess freya
he brings back archmage rodeurik
he gets demon slayer title
rodeurik gives them super buffs
the loan sharks have moved to royal road as the law was being enforced
geomchis mugisul (weapons mastery) is adv 9 50% disciples around adv 8
they always replace their weapons with watever the monsters drop
chicken house business was booming in delivery service cuz of weeds adventures
thers a big battle with the demons and talrosseui eggs, weed gets a mithril helm with high purity
200 paladins and 2/3 of the priests remained after 20 mins of fighting a group of 30
he used bungeomsul, body splitting into 10
montuseuga is the boss monster with wings and he uses ice magic
he borrows the number 1 paladins divine sword and dual wields it with his red star, then executes pagoesul again and finishing montuseuga off
weed learns the combat skills devastating blow and exact attack
he also gets a devils helm which gives him 12% combat ability and 8k fame, blood soaked whip which rejects him, rough diamonds and hell revelation stones
rodeurik (probably rodrick but meh) gives weed the map of the labyrinth, letting him conquer the labyrinth, he also gets rodeuriks research
all the races congregate at mora, ppl get a country quest for ahreupen kingdom
dejected reformed into the steering committee (i think)
the quest involved building the royal palace
hermes guild is preparing for their conquering expedition that wont stop until they unite the continent (0 guesses as to what will happen to them)
weed gets a quest from rodeuriks research after learning bout how sculpture steadily declined through time, something bout lovers island
he gets a meteor summoning scroll from rodeurik (note rodeurik already passed away but he left his stuff with weed)
not much is known about weeds affairs besides the fact that weed used his personal fortune for the ground work
dark gamers support ahreupen kingdom
he loses buncha public service points from the lou and freya church cuz of all the dead ppl
hermes declared war on the continent and the other guilds created a coalition
everyone in mora started preparing for war against hermes
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time sculpting skill:
From the description of how the skill was inspired it seems more like the ability to stop/freeze time. Of course, after learning this Weed immediatly starts thinking of all the robberies he could commit with such a skill...
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The part where Weed goes over to Seoyoon's house and the dog wouldn't breathe until Weed ordered him to was so messed up. Funny though.
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Chapter 1 - 6 + more
Last time, on Dragon Ba-err I mean Moonlight Sculptor:
Weed was on a secret engraving quest line that’s beyond the normal mastery quests in order to discover the “final sculpting skill.” He is currently participating in a quest that involves him sailing in the ocean, being constantly plagued by high waves and storms. In order to stay afloat, he must use his Lumin Sculpting skill (the one which currently sends sparrows of light shooting at the opponent, a sword skill that fixes the weakness of range that most sword users have (they can’t hit stuff from far away and are vulnerable to archers and mages)) Finally, he leveled his Lumin fencing skill to Advanced and returned back to land
This is where Volume 32 begins.
Note: I am going to give only semi-brief summary of the first 1/5 of the volume as there’s not that much action.
The influence of the Arpen kingdom is shown to be rising. It is mentioned how when users from the Arpen kingdom visit other towns, the townspeople actively ran up to them and offered them quests to bring Arpen craftsmanship (ex: pottery, sculpture, paintings) to the town. It then shows how many other small villages in the Northern continent are joining Arpen kingdom (fishing villages, woodcutter villages, etc.) and how users were actually very popular with the villagers. There were 2 players talking about how, in the past, villagers were unfriendly towards strangers, but now they were extremely accepting towards others. Also, another on mentioned how a little girl ran up to him and gave him a flower. Then it shows how tons of knights, lords, and nobles were joining the Arpen Kingdom and how the entire Northern continent was essentially undergoing a Renaissance of sorts.
Scene then shifts to Weed who is trying to find a place to complete the other quest in his quest chain (he was given 2 quests simultaneously and he had to complete both of them to move on. The first quest was the “Train in the Stormy Sea” one and the other one was a quest where he had to essentially terraform a place and create “natural beauty.” Weed eventually establishes a place away from all the developing cities (because terraforming a city would be bad).
The story then mentions how in addition to the cities, Arpen’s military was developing far quicker than most people expected. First of all, it is due to the dissolution of the Brent Kindom. After the destruction of Brent, there were many high level knights left without a King. Drawn by the stories of Weed, the great and honorable (Editor: lol) king, these knights flocked to Arpen, significantly increasing Arpen’s army. The other reason is because of the many subjugation quests (ex: think the Lair of Litvart quest in Volume 1). With the help of the player characters the NPC soldiers quickly gained levels.
Scene changes to Rabah Seu (the land in the sky populated by Aves). Golden Bird and Esuna (platinum/mithril bird) is surrounded by the inhabitants of floating land. He convinces the inhabitants to move to Arpen. The Aves’ decision was helped by the fact that Golden Bird is technically their great-great-great-etc grand-uncle. Note: the Aves were originally created by the Emperor, who also sculpted Golden Bird. In addition, the Embinyu denomination was stirring up a lot of trouble and Mora was described as a place of plentiful grain, etc. So, the entire island, with all of its dungeons, shops, roads, and hunting grounds were being moved to Mora.
Meanwhile, Weed goes to the Rhodes stadium to turn in his “ Train in the Stormy Sea” quest, increasing his reputation by 850, leveling up once, +5 speed, +6 power, +3 something (not sure what). He then goes back to pondering what he should create as a natural sculpture and decides to create a swamp; a place where many animals would live. He uses natural disaster sculpting to shatter the land (lamenting at how he was destroying what could have been acres of farmland). Rivers begin to flow and ponds form through his disaster sculpting. He then sprinkles seeds everywhere as well as remains of ground-up fruits and trees for fertilizer(Rover asks Weed whether this counts as cannibalism). After planting, he uses his earth elementals to shift sandstone and rock, creating hills and valleys. Lastly, he follows the hints of the questgiver (one of the head sculptors in the sculpting guild at Rhodes stadium) and attracts fairies over with fish and honey. Many fairies come and they eat and play. The swamp was then designated a “playground for fairies” which accelerates the effect of nature (making the swamp go through about approximately 200 normal years of change). Suddenly, Weed and Rover are now in a true swamp complete with vegetation, animals, fish, birds, etc. Weed is asked to name the sculpture and he initially decides to name it “Land of Mourning, regret and despair” (because he sacrificed all of that farmland to make a swamp) but when asked for comfirmation, he decides to change it to “Wet Earth” (google trans: Wet ground) instead.
Wet Earth (his first natural sculpture):
Artistic Value 8142
Effects:
Due to the vitality generated by the birth of many species all health and mana will increase by 50%
+19 (not sure what. May be all stats? Or +19 permanent Art stats)
Resistance to plague and poison will permanently increase by 1%
Increase growth rate of all animals in the surrounding area
Weed’s rewards:
Carving skill up
Dexterity (aka Handicraft) skill up
Fame increases by 4093
+19 Art
+7 Wisdom
+9 Intellect
+3 containter (idk what this was, I think fortitude?)
+49 affinity with nature
+3 stat increases (these can be distributed into any stat by Weed I believe)
Increased friendliness with Fairies and Elves
Weed then goes to Rhodes and turns in the quest. The carving guild leader praises Weed as a genius and Weed’s reputation increases by 1,600, carving skill increases, and the influence of the Engraving Guild also increases.
The leader begins to tell Weed about the next quest, first asking if he had heard of the Devil Labyrinth of the crazy Arcmage, Rodeurik. Weed immediately replied that he had and recalls the information that he read online. The Labyrinth was known since the earliest days of the game. However it had always been associated with instant death, with both NPCs and players trying to clear it, but all failing. The first attempt to clear the dungeon happened when a group of lvl 200 adventurers attempted to enter the labyrinth. It was a massacre, with everybody dying even before they reached the entrance of the Labyrinth (note: the Labyrinth is set in the basement floor of Rodeurik’s castle/house). As time passed and the user’s levels continued to rise, new parties intent on challenging the Labyrinth appeared. Level 300s, Level 400s, but they all failed. In addition to the abnormal number of traps, the levels of the monsters in the dungeon were absurdly high. A well-known guild called Morningstar was the most recent attemptee, but their hopes were crushed by the dungeon. The leader of the engraving guild then says how the Archmage Rodrick was fond of art and a genius. He intently studied how to express the Radiant Beauty (note: this entire quest-chain is to discover the skill that allowed engravers to express the Radiant Beauty of the world). In addition to being brilliant, the archmage was also a very curious man. As so, he summoned many beings attempting to quench his curiosity. But, because of his arrogance, he lost control of one of his summons. Weed then thinks in his head how he understands Rodrick, remembering the time where he bought the 200 won (17 cents) salt (Editor’s note: Lol, this happened almost 20 Volumes ago and Weed still remembers this). Weed is then treated to a cutscene of an old wizard and a demon battling (and soldiers and minor demons fighting in the background). The demons were gaining the upper hand, and in a desperate attempt Rodrick sacrificed his life to distort the space around the dungeon, essentially sealing the dungeon.
After the cutscene, Weed is pondering the greatest difficulty of the dungeon: the fact that nobody could find an exit. If Weed due to the Radiant Beauty quests, then he automatically abandons the Radiant Beauty questline. However, the Labyrinth was worse. If Weed brought a living sculpture into the labyrinth, it too would die once Weed died (because it can’t find its way out of the labyrinth). As such, any sculpture that Weed brings into the Labyrinth may be gone forever. Weed frowns and then asks if it is essential to go into Labyrinth to which the elder/leader replies it is. The quest is then offered, with the objective to conquer the Labyrinth and obtain Rodrick’s research (also, death will result in failure of quest-chain).
Quest Accepted
END OF PREVIOUS SUMMARY
CURRENT SUMMARY BEGINS HERE
Weed walks down the streets of Rhodium, deep in thought. Until now, the previous quests in the Last-Sculpting quest-chain were not that difficult. But suddenly, this overwhelmingly difficult quest appeared. However, he thinks about all of the “impossible” accomplishments he has achieved, both in Royal Road and the Continent of Magic. Inspired again, Weed decides he’s going to have to have to start immediately, and finish the quest before the wars in the center of the continent spill over to the North.
Weed walks to the Church of Freya and makes small talk with the High Priest before requesting to get all the Paladins and Priests as his Contribution value allows him to. The High Priest tells Weed that the church can only mobilize 240 Paladins (~300 lvl?) and 120 priests (~310 lvl?) for Weed because everybody else is busy dealing with the Embinyu Sect. Weed accepts the help and finds out that Alberon is also accompanying him. He then heads to Lou’s Church and obtains 400 paladins, including the strongest paladin in Lou’s Church, Derry, (and possibly one of the NPC swordmasters? Not sure) wielding Lou’s holy sword (the sword that was stuck in the Lich Bar Khan and sealing a part of his powers before Weed killed Bar Khan).
After Weed logs out, he goes and cleans his yard; one of his hobbies is doing housework because it was inexpensive. However, he then notices that his dog is gone (it notes here that the dog was supposed to be food but then Weed feared that complaints from animal protection organizations may come and he may be fined a “whopping” 20,000 Won aka 17.68 USD). Not finding the dog anywhere in his garden, Weed decides to head to Seoyun’s place next door, and finds Seoyun in shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt washing the happy dog. To remind the dog (Mombosin is the name I think?) of who’s the master, Weed gives the dog a series of commands: Sit! The dog attaches his rear onto the ground. Lie down! Thudding noise Breathe! Pant pant pant.
Weed then sits on a chair nearby and looks up on the sky, thinking about his financial accomplishments the past year (tv contracts, item selling, etc) and thinks about what would happen if the Arpen Kingdom was destroyed by the Hermes Guild (essentially the worst case scenario to his finances). His thoughts then wander to his current quest and its difficulty before being interrupted by Seoyun’s invitation to make lunch for him.
After going back to Mora, Weed heads to a shabby pub where he searches for, and finds a white-haired old man. This man turns out to be Jaden (?), one of the most famous NPC thieves in the Northern region. Weed wants to hire Jaden in order to deal with the dangerous traps in the Roderick labyrinth. Although Weed had dealt with traps before by either just taking the damage or using Van Hawke as a living sacrifice (lol, poor guy) it was different in the Roderick labyrinth, which has traps that would result in the death of many people if they were set off. Jaden says he’s willing to be hired for 5000 gold per day, but instead of answering the offer, Weed pulls out a bottle of wine, and eventually haggles down the price down to 3900 gold a day. However, the NPCs around the pub notice Weed and instantly drop to their knees. They then begin to badmouth Jayden who eventually gets pressured into joining Weed (not sure for how much, presumably very cheap or even for free). It also notes here that Weed could have just ordered Jaden to come with him using the authority of the King but that would’ve lowered loyalty and worsened his relationship with the mercenaries. Weed then considers who else to bring with him to the Labyrinth and rules out of his living sculptures besides Bach (The guardian of the previous Arpen Kingdom, created by Geihar Von Arpen, which Weed obtained from the last quest in the sculptural mastery quest chain) due to the fact that being both a warrior and a barbarian, Bach as significantly more health and vitality (health regeneration) then everybody else.
Marfan (also translated as Mapan depending on which translation/text is used) receives a whisper (gaming term. Essentially a way of privately communicating that can be done from anywhere between friends/guild members/etc.) from Weed asking Marfan to bring over 22 carts (70,000 gold) of top quality supplies towards a certain meeting place. Despite of Marfan’s unease over the bandits and monsters roaming the lands (he has hired lots of mercenaries to guard his supplies) he safely reaches the meeting point. He is astounded by the large crowd of paladins and priests gathered before him and asks Weed why the Paladins are there. Weed simply replies that it is for a quest. Marfan wonders if it’s for the Master Sculpting quest but Weed replies that it’s for a quest chain above the level of the Master Sculpting chain (Not sure about this, may be wrong). Marfan then looks around more closely and notes that Alberon and Derry are both present, with Alberon wearing the Crown of Fargo. Weed then yells out how they are going to clear Roderick’s Labyrinth in order to preserve the peace of the continent. Marfan immediately turns pale, thinking about how nobody has ever came out alive from Roderick’s labyrinth. After giving out his speech and raising the Paladins’ morale, Weed starts heading into to the basement (summarizer’s note: I believe that the labyrinth is located under basements of a ruin. I may be wrong though), which has an eerie chill even in the middle of summer.
Chapter 2. Roderick’s Labyrinth. Note: Because the text didn’t come with a table of contents, I’m not sure if this is the actual chapter 2 or if I missed a chapter title somewhere.
Weed gets noticed by a demon and he immediately uses the Splendorous Sword skill (which he learned from Zahab, which turned out to be a Master Swordsman in addition to a Master Engraver) sending seven eagles of light flying out of his sword to hit the demon. However, the skill does insignificant damage (240 hp, 267 hp, etc.) It is then explained that the demons cannot exist (or are severely weakened) on the surface of Versailles (name of the continent) where the Gods hold reign. The only way for them to manifest is to either create a contract with somebody like a warlock or possess a body. However, in the depths of the earth, they are able to exert considerable power. The demon lashes out its whip at Weed which he avoids, noting how the whip had a large attack range, was fast, and difficult to avoid. Furthermore, there was a type of a sharp needle coated with scorpion poison (either that or a scorpion like creature from hell that was attached to the whip) so if an attack lands, Weed would be left open to further hits. Although he dodged the attack, he still took 532 damage just from the collateral damage. Also, he became more vulnerable to illness and had reduced healing. The rest of the paladins have managed to come down the stair by now and they charge at the demon while the priests cast recovery spells on him. Weed notices how although divine powers are extremely effective against demonic beings, the demon has a level around the 500s. The demon uses Unholy Corruption (google trans name: Holy corruption) to reduce the effectiveness of divine power and the physical force of those with divine power (it notes that if somebody’s faith stat and level is low, they may betray their comrades due to this ability). The demon then proceeds to use Hand of Oppression, holds its left hand into the air, and clenches it (its right hand is still brandishing the whip). However, a Paladin was suddenly lifted by what seems to be an invisible giant hand, his armor and shield distorted under strong pressure. The demon then uses Fragments of a Corrupted Soul and sends out a black explosion in all directions. Because 2 people have already died, Weed decides to summon Van Hawk and Tori. He originally didn’t want to summon them because the morale of the Paladin’s and Priests may drop more quickly if they are fighting with a death knight and vampire. With everybody’s help, they eventually manage to overwhelm the demon and everybody’s reputation rises by 140. In the end, 3 people died. Weed then recalls how the Morningstar’s raid group was eventually wiped out in a battle against 13 demons at once, and notes how he must be careful (?). Weed then takes care of the sword and armor of his group before heading into the labyrinth.
Weed orders Bach to take the vanguard, to which Bach agrees to before Bach uses Warcry (idk what this actually is, I just made this up). This increases the max health, max mana, damage, critical strike damage, fighting spirit and ability (idk what this is), of the party. After a fight where 2 people died, Weed began to stop and carefully consider his strategies, seeing as a total of 11 people have already died even though they were fighting defensively (?). They reach a crossroad in the labyrinth, and Weed turns left (it turns out that Weed has been choosing to go left at every crossroad). It mentions how due to space expansion, space distortion, and illusion magics, this labyrinth is immensely difficult. Furthermore, the spatial distortion will only get worse once they get deeper into the labyrinth, resulting in endless waves of battles with demons (because they can approach a raiding party from almost anywhere quickly due to the large amount of spatial distortion). This is the Roderick Labyrinth.
Yu Byeon Jun (creator of Royal Road) is watching his screen delightedly, enjoying Weed’s struggles. The A.I. Versailles speaks up and a state how there is only a 0.2% chance of the group of paladins and priests clearing the dungeon. Even if Weed’s fighting ability was included, that would only increase the odds to .23%. Finally, even if the living sculptures were included, the odds will be at most 5%. The director considers Weed foolish and reckless for not bringing the sculptures with him. He continues watching a fight Weed was having (3 people died), and finds it a little bit boring because Weed’s only fighting 1 or 2 demons at a time. Versailles then speaks up and says that she has calculated Weed’s chances of success of clearing the dungeon, which turns out to be 46.7%. Shocked, the creator asks if she thinks she calculated it wrong. However, Versailles has stated that she calculated it 316,820 times. Because of this new fact, Yu Byeong Jun’s (note: Google trans interprets his name into Yubyeongjun. I just split it up because it sounds better imo) mood fell quickly.
Scene switches to Bach, who is taunting the demons to attack him (he has high magic and curse resistance as well as the best armor Emperor Arpen can give him). While Bach is tanking the damage, Derry who is wielding Lou’s sword, attack the demons from the side. Weed is staying in the back of the devoting all of his attention to conducting the fight. His conducting has changed drastically compared to before, with him now telling each and every group of paladins exactly what to do (it compares him directing them to a conductor conducting an orchestra). However, he was still losing a couple units to demons every time. This is because the demons have extremely high defense and vitality. Furthermore, when they were about to die, they choose to give up their defense and engage in a relentless assault. When ~30 units have been lost, he stopped the group and started making food for the group as well. Although this means that the Paladins are in perfect condition before every fight, this also slowed down their rate of exploration. Weed then continues on, thinking how they must fight as much as possible because there must be a clue somewhere in the labyrinth about how to navigate it. The group then stops to sleep (they take shifts so they aren’t left unguarded) and Jaden goes ahead to dismantle to the traps.
The scene shifts to Arpen, with villages developing so fast that players who have come back after a month are unsure if they’re in the right town or not. Also, Mora is so prosperous now that it has become the obvious choice if one wanted to start in the north. In addition, Bent Castle (the castle full of Niflheim knights) has pledged its allegiance to Mora. This means that it was possible for people to now learn horseback combat techniques of the Niflheim Empire as well as other knight skills. Another large change is the appearance of Lavias above Mora. After some discussion among the Porridge cult, they decided to include the Avians in their group. The discussion then turned how Weed hasn’t been heard from since the hummingbird travels and Splendorous Fencing quest, and how Weed has went to the church to recruit a large number of paladins and priests. One person asks if they think Weed will succeed, to which another replied “Of course, he’s Weed!”
Scene shifts once more to a Hermes guild meeting where they are talking about the integration of the captured kingdoms into their, the development of their military, and the construction of the Imperial Palace (it was mentioned there was a delay because they didn’t have the much artists/architects because all of the great ones have all left to go to Mora). We also find out that Hermes campaign to conquer the entire continent will start the day that the palace is complete. The discussion then shifts to Weed, and one person says that Weed has left for Roderick’s Labyrinth. Rafael (Hermes guild commander/leader) wonders at how ridiculously hard the Master quests are for Sculptors but then dismisses that thought, judging that Weed will lose a significant amount of carving skill from dying in the labyrinth. One of the subordinates asks if they should do anything about Weed but Rafael shakes his head, thinking about how Roderick’s Labyrinth has defeated anybody who tried to challenge it. Even the elite Morningstar guild was annihilated by the combination of monsters, traps and the maze. Rafael then says that Weed will die in Roderick’s Labyrinth.
Chapter 3 (idk, maybe another chapter). Loss of Paladins.
Weed has been fighting the demons for 2 days now. So far, 54 people have died (Weed originally entered with 680 people). However, the formations of the party as well as the strategies to deal with the demons have been continuously improved. In addition, Weed has also obtained rare leather from the monsters as well as found rare herbs on the wall. Besides the normal loot, Weed also found several items left behind by some of the first people that went into the dungeon (around 200 level). Because of Weeds high charisma and leadership the morale of the party remained fairly high. The priests and paladins believed it was their holy goal to exterminate demons, Bach didn’t give a damn, and Jaden was given sake to drink when he freaked out. Due to their constant combat against the enemies, the levels of the entire party rose, but there wasn’t that big of a difference to their combat ability (Weed’s current level is 429; he’s been sitting in the back and grinding up his Splendorous fencing skill). They face a group of 4 (?) demons and Weed immediately orders the party into battle, telling Alberon to protect Weed as the number one priority and telling the priests to constantly help the paladins even if the paladins are only cursed, not hurt (I really don’t know that google trans is trying to say here. This is just an assumption). When the demonss’ life were low, they used wide area of effect attack damage, instantly killing the paladin (s?) that was currently tanking. Weed immediately orders Alberon to blind them-Alberon creates a bright explosion of holy light- and then Derry uses Lou’s Miracle in order to significantly increase his abilities and finishes off the demons (?). (Note: This entire fight section is kinda confusing, it’s possible that I’m reading the google trans wrong). After the enemies are defeated Weed analyzes the battle. As it turns out, without the support of Weed’s Blacksmithing and Cooking skills, a significantly larger amount of paladins would have died. Weed also notices that the demon’s magical attacks are several times stronger than their physical ones, so they must be interrupted or prevented whenever the demon tries to use them. Also, it turns out that a purely static defense (ex: same people doing same stuff, not moving, etc) can’t be used and if a Paladin tanks for too long (?) he’ll be killed quickly. So far, a total of 71 people have died.
Weed orders Bach to lead the way and unfortunately, they run into a group of 7 demons (usual battles are against 3 or 4). Weed orders everybody into defensive position with the paladins that aren’t tanking shooting crossbows at the demons. In his head, he assesses the current situation and realizes that things will be extremely grave for him if the priests run out of mana. Essentially, even losing one battle will prove to be the end of the raid. In normal raids, people can just gather back together after a wipe. However, in Roderick’s labyrinth, it’s nearly impossible to regroup. As such, if too much of the group’s combat ability is lost, everybody else is essentially as good as dead.
Weed attacks a demons side but barely does any damage to it. Deciding that he’s going to need more damage, Weed uses sculptural destruction to convert his art stats into strength stats. As it turns out, his art stat is so much higher than his strength stat the stats don’t fully convert over. Instead, Weed gets the skills:
Devastating Blow advanced level 8: causes enemies to become disoriented upon hit (presumably does more damage as well?)
Piercing Thrust (note: the google trans used here was “window” which means spear) advanced level 7: powerful attack that penetrates (maybe breaks?) enemy armor and shields
Incredible Moment advanced 9: where the user can exert 3 times their normal power at the costs of enormous amounts of stamina for a short time
Skilled Attacker Advanced 3: Increases attack damage
Weed then uses Heraim fencing on one of the demons, managing to actually deal damage (thanks to sculptural destruction). They have managed to dispatch 4 of the demons but the paladins are starting to lose their morale (there have been many injuries and deaths). Weed then uses his Yell skill (morale rises by 200%, removes the confusion in the battlefield , and leadership is at 300% its original value temporarily). Finally, the battle is eventually finished, with 22 paladins killed. It was mentioned that it was a miracle that Weed managed to pull this victory off (apparently Weed’s commanding ability and faith/piety of the paladins helped a lot). Despite of this miracle, Weeds expression was grim, because it was likely that they may face who knows how many ffights like that in the future.
They continued on and fought dozens of battles. In the end, the death toll climbed up to 163 people. After finishing a difficult battle against 9 demons, Weed starts thinking about the quest. At first, he regrets not bringing more troops with him (he said he should’ve hired mercenaries) and then he wonders if the quest is unbeatable. He immediately shoots that thought down, saying the quest is not over yet, and even if he wanted to run away, he can’t because of the magical labyrinth. He starts analyzing the quest and realizes that clearing the dungeon should be related to sculpting in some way. He starts going through the sculptural related items and experiences in his head and remembers the Queen’s Hand Mirror which he got from completing The Sculptor’s Heart (the level A quest he got in the beginning of the series. Note: it was originally an item for dancers/bards/priests that increased wisdom, intelligence/knowledge, attractiveness, mana, and faith. However, it had a strange description of “Will reveal ones path in certain places” ). He then takes out the hand mirror and notices a line of text saying additional powers/information have been revealed. He identifies the mirror again and learns more background information on the mirror (something about it being used to help the poor, having sacred magic, and showing the true path. Google trans is kinda gibberish again). In addition, he finds that all previous stats bonuses have been increased (magic resist and a rare chance of reflecting magic is also added) and the ability to illuminate’s the path through a maze (it can only be used twice though). Weed uses The True Path effect of the mirror and a stream of light pours out from the mirror, illuminating a path for Weed.
Scene switches to Weed’s house where agents from many of the media stations (CTS, LK,KMC, etc) have been continuously ringing his door bell. It turns out that Weed’s adventures always attract significantly more viewers than any other programs. That combined with the growing interest in Royal Road overseas has meant that the media is extremely interested in Weed. They discuss how Lee Hyun (Weed) hasn’t answered the door despite their constant ringing and the phone has not been answered. They guess that Lee Hyun has probably went out. In reality, what’s actually happening is Lee Hyun is drinking miso soup while browsing the Dark Gamer’s website. After he finishes the soup, he opens the door and is mobbed by a bunch of agents giving him free stuff (power tool set, giseng, beef ribs, chinaware, etc. Note: KMC brought the power tools). Lee Hyun invites the people inside and offers them drinks. He then asks what they are here for and one of the people says that there have been rumors of him attempting to clear the Roderick Labyrinth with a large group of paladins. The person then chuckles and says that it’s not that important and he just wanted to say hello to Lee Hyun after a long time. Lee Hyun confirms the rumors and says that he is trying to clear the Roderick Labyrinth. Upon hearing this, the people from the various media groups immediately begin their efforts to try to form a contract with Weed and one-up the other stations (an exclusive contract would result in huge amounts of revenue). The CTS agent offers to give Lee Hyun a luxury car as an added incentive for signing an exclusive contract (apparently, this is enough for most people to agree), but Lee Hyun immediately refuses. Why? Because luxury cars require large amounts of money in the forms of taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Weed then announces that he prefers hard cash in lieu of gifts (I may be completely wrong about this line).
Chapter 4: The Coming of the Proprietor (Google trans: the appearance of the landlord)
Weed is continuing through the labyrinth and notices how sometimes, the light splits into two or even three beams at some crossroads. This is because space has been distorted so no matter which way they go, they’ll still arrive at the destination. Unfortunately, the mirror does not only show the shortest way to the destination so choosing a path is still partly dependent on Weed’s luck. Also, because they are going deeper into the dungeon, the group’s encounters with demons are increasing in difficulty and frequency. Weed uses Sculptural Shapeshifting and transform into the Chaos Warrior that was wielding the dragon sword Red Star (google trans is giving me gibberish for the name of the warrior). He then equips Red Star and armor that he gathered (he is unable to equip some of his armor that his original form wears because the Chaos Warriors are relatively large compared to humans.) in preparation for this quest. Weed blinks to one of the demons and starts attacking the demons. Apparently, although attacks with Red Star are of the fire attribute as opposed to the light attribute attacks of the Splendorous Sword skill, the flames caused by attacks with the Red Star continue to burn which causes an enormous amount of damage when compared to Weed’s normal attacks (the high base attack of Red Star doesn’t hurt either). Also, it turns out that demons are fairly fire resistant. However, the unquenchable fires of the Red Star cannot be so easily countered. Because of his damage (and presumably appearance) appearance, Weed aggroes 2-3 of the demons. But with his innate racial Blink (short ranged teleport) ability, Weed evades the demon’s physical attacks with ease. They manage to win the fight with only two people dying (it says that they fought against 23 demons but I’m pretty sure that’s just a mistake on Google Tran’s part because there’s no way only 2 people would have died against a fight with 23 people). Weed notes how he ended the battle with 25,000 health. Although it was fairly decent for a human being, it was on the low side for a Chaos Warrior (it’s still above the safety margin though). This is mostly thanks to Weed’s dodging of attacks using Blink, the Priests healing him, and most of all, Red Star’s ability to restore the wielder’s health and mana when enemies are afflicted with the flams of the Red Star (TL note: Kinda think of them as vampiric flames I guess?). Weed continues to press on, and then next 3 battles play out similarly, with Weed aggroing the demons with his Yell ability and then having the entire party attacking them. There were some times where Weed was close to dying. Once, he got hit with a kick (or is it a whip) so hard that he was unable to move his left shoulder. Also, he was getting constantly targeted by 5 or 6 demons at once, which resulted in him relying on Seoyun to transfer life to him through the Marriage Ring (Weed deliberately carved the statue with tapered fingers so he could wear the ring). Everything was going fairly well when suddenly, that incident occurred.
Jaden was dismantling one of the traps (the traps are getting harder the deeper they go into the labyrinth) when he set of the trap and was crushed under a pile of stones (something about a red line or a yellow line to disable the trap but Jaden choses the wrong one). Now, although the group can fight the demons, they’ll suffer irreparable damage from traps. Weed starts thinking and realizes that the deeper he get, the more traps and demons he’ll face. At last, Weed admitted that the quest is a failure. Although it was possible for him to hire mercenaries and soldiers, he chose the most gold-effective way only took the paladins. Weed considers if his other sculpting skills can help him but rejects each of them (Sculptural Catastrophe is extremely difficult to control and may kill the low-health priests, Sculptural Animation may help but the loss in stats and the possibility of the demons killing the sculpture are too high, and I don’t even think that Weed thought of the Elemental Creation sculpturing skill). Suddenly, he remembers the block of wood infused with Freya’s divine power he received from the Archpriest (note: for those who didn’t know, the reward of finishing the sculptural master quest chain is the ability to create your own sculpting skill. After he finished the sculpting quest chain, he went to Freya’s cathedral/church and received a block of wood infused with divine power). Weed turns off his Sculptural Shapeshifting Skill and pulls out the wooden block he received from Freya. He knows that he’s going to have only one chance to create a skill that can both solve the current problem and still be useful in the future. After some thinking, he begins carving.
Weed is slowly carving at the wood, trying to etch every detail into it. It mentions that he’s as nervous as he was when he made the money deposit to buy the house (note: I believe this was back when he had 3.9 billion won. Looking back in Volume 1, he paid 50 million won for the house deposit, just 1.28% of his total cash back then. -.-).
Summarizer Note: Because this is a pretty important moment and actually fairly legible, I’ll try to translate this section
(note: lines in apostrophes are thoughts)
(Warning: I made arrange/change sentences so they read like a story rather than blocks of words)
‘The skill can’t be too good, or else it would come with a severe penalty. Hm… Anyways, this face should have more wrinkles in order to fit the expression I saw. ‘
Currently, in Weed’s hand is a carving of an old man. Bearing deep wisdom in his eyes and wrinkles on his forehead, the figure is dressed in a wizard’s robe. On his head, an elongated, wide-brimmed hat was worn.
‘Hm..he should have a magic staff in his hand. And maybe a cape? No, it’s probably better without.’
The sculpture in Weeds hand was Archmage Roderick; the one who fought the demons tooth and nail before sealing them within his dungeon. Although Weed saw Roderick with his eyes, he wondered if he could reproduce Roderick’s image intact.
After seven hours, the sculpture was complete
|With the help of Freya’s divine powers, you have created a new sculptural skill. Please decide on the name of the sculpting skill. |
“Sculptural Resurrection”
|-Sculptural Resurrection-. Is that correct?|
“Yes”
|Please set the definition of the skill|
Weed spoke out in a deep voice.
“In this land, there were as many heroes as stars in the sky. Emperor of the Arpen Empire, Geihar Von Arpen . Archmage of the Dream Kingdom, Roderick. King of Rosenheim, Theodarren. “
It was a little difficult to compare Theodarren to the others, but including Theodarren also subtly brought to mind the pyramids. This was very common action in shows and movies. Sponsorship!
“This is a skill that can bring back these dead, historical figures”
|Because of the nature of the skill, a severe penalty will be added. Do you still want to proceed?|
“I’ve already decided”
Although the penalties are high, a weak skill that isn’t useful would be even worse.
|Engraving skill is completed. Because the goddess Freya does not want you to violate the law of causality, there is a large penalty each time this skill is used|
|Wooden Sculpture. Strength: 1|
|The skill created by Weed is engrained within this sculpture|
|This is a skill that can bring back the historical dead|
|Advanced Sculpture is required to learn this skill|
|Sculptural Resurrection 1 (0%): Create sculptures that can bring back the dead|
|Advanced Sculpting is required|
|With each use, the following figures will drop: Art: -45, Faith:-10, Level: -3|
|The sculpture must look exactly like the desired historical figure in order to revive said figure|
|The time the dead are resurrected for depend on the level of the skill. Current time: 21 hours|
|(TL note: Idk what this is. Something about only one skill at a time)|
|Only beings similar to the human race can be resurrected. Monsters will not answer your call|
|The resurrected being shall possess their memories and abilities of when they were alive|
|The resurrected being shall act according to their own will. They cannot be controlled|
|(Something about damage reduced, Freya|
|A being cannot be resurrected twice|
|This skill can only be re-casted after one month passes from the previous use of this skill|
-Engraving Skill has increased
-Because of the invention of a new sculpting skill, fame has risen by 2430.
Weed is somewhat disheartened by the skill costing 3 levels to cast but casts the spell anyways. Weed uses Sculptural Resurrection and loses the stats/levels that casting the skill costs (not going to bother retyping it seeing as you can just see it in the previous skill description). Apparently there is a significant difference between this skill and necromancy seeing as people summoned by this skill come back “fully” from the dead (their appearance, memories, skills, etc.). A white glow fills the room, and as it fades, Archmage Roderick is revealed. Roderick looks at his surroundings, muttering to himself how he had obviously died fighting demons in his residence, concluding that he has been resurrected into the future (idk about the resurrection part. However that’s the only thing that made sense). Weed goes up to Roderick, telling Roderick how it was such a great honor to meet him etc. However, Roderick is unaffected by Weed’s flattery and simply asks Weed who he is. Weed answers that he’s a master engraver but (surprise, surprise) Roderick has never heard of Weed (because Roderick is from the past, the effects of Weed’s fame is useless). Weed tells Roderick of what Weed is doing in the dungeon and what happened in the past (more praising about how Roderick saved the continent), and Roderick declares that he’s going to finish the battle with Montereseul (head demon) once and for all. Roderick does it in a flashy way too, summoning a staff and slamming it on the ground (making a large sound. Weed, of course, drools over how much money he may get if he sold such a staff). Weed then sucks up to Roderick more in order to convince Roderick to let Weed tag along (ex: “I want to observe Roderick’s battles so I can tell it to future generations”, etc).
Roderick effortlessly breezes by the traps (because the labyrinth was original his) and they meet a group of 9 demons (one of these demons comment on how Roderick looks familiar). Roderick remarks on how trespassers should just disappear and uses magic to attack the demons with a large ball (?) of compressed air that explodes on impact. He then follows up the attack with Flame Pillar (note: Roderick is able to consecutively cast intermediate leveled spells without any incantation apparently). Weed watching the battle, asks if Roderick needs assistant. Ignoring Roderick’s retort of telling Weed to stay out of the way, Weed wheedles Roderick until he lets Weed help with the fighting. Weed (in his Chaos warrior form) blinks in attacking the demons (the paladins are sitting near the back, shooting the demons with crossbows). They easily finish the fight and Weed acquires some small loot (potion reagents, demon boots, etc) and gets some small increases to agility for fighting so many demons in a row. Roderick then comments on how the group was too slow and Weed orders his group to prioritize speed. While on the move, Weed thinks about how Roderick has 20 hours left and how there they must complete 2 goals in the dungeon (I would presume that’s defeating Montereusel and getting the knowledge about sculpting).
Chapter 5. Demon Slayer.
Although Weed had lost 3 levels using Sculptural Resurrection, his experience bar was quickly getting refilled by their extremely fast rate of demon hunting. After a fight against 7 demons, his fencing skill increases and he gets the title “Demon Slayer” which reduces the effects of diseases and curses from demons as well as the stat decreases from facing a strong demon (TL note: I believe this is the effect that Weed gets against bosses like Bar Khan, Undead dragon, etc. Technically, he’s supposed to also lose stats against higher leveled opponents but Weed has a ridiculously high Fighting Spirit stat). He also has increased respect from all churches, increased chance of a critical strike, an increased drop chance when looting demons, increased curse+black magic resistance of 2%, and the ability to bring out a “higher power” with demon related items (I’m assuming that it just means he can use demon related items more effectively. Ex: Weed’s Demon Sword which he wields in his human form). Apparently, this title was granted because Weed has hunted over 200 demons.
Weed then looks at Roderick and thinks about the surprises which Roderick had. Usually, wizards had to meditate after every battle to regenerate mana (this is apparently only supposed to be common sense). But, Roderick seemed to ignore that rule, consecutively casting high level magics. Curious, Weed asks Roderick his secret behind never running out of mana. Roderick says it’s simple and asks if Weed knows how everything in this world contains mana (or is made of mana, not sure). Weed replies yes and Roderick explains [speculation] that he can uses the mana available in other objects to significantly reduce the mana costs (or restore his mana). Either that, or Roderick is able to store vast amounts of mana in his body [end speculation]. Weed enviously thinks to himself how he wished he could have mastered magic instead (because he would then be the ultimate battle mage). Roderick notes how Weed’s group’s power seemed lacking and casted the buff Giant’s Strength over the group, which increased power by 300% for 3 hours. He also casts Command: Quicken (google trans: quick order) which increases movement speed and decreases skill-cast delay. It notes here how Roderick was an arrogant and stubborn old man, eschewing all help from others. Despite of the quick rate that Roderick moved, there was only 9 hours and 40 minutes remaining until the resurrection skill wore off. Roderick then summons a gigantic fire golem and after fighting some more, they stop to take a break. To date, almost 200 paladins have died and 32 priests have been killed as well. While they were eating, Weed asks about Weed’s research into the beauty of sculpture but Roderick simply says that Weed is annoying and tells him to look at it once he reaches Roderick’s lab. This also dropped Weed’s intimacy levels with Roderick (lol, I’m pretty that’s just the A.I.’s version of telling Weed to go screw himself xD). Their battles continue and Weed wonders who is stronger, Bar Khan or Roderick. After wiping out many groups of demons, they finally arrive at the door leading to Montereseul’s room. In preparation, Weed creates the finest food possible and does all he can to ensure that everybody is at peak condition. After preparations have been completed, they prepare to begin their assault on Montereusel.
The scene transitions to some characters that haven’t appeared in a very long time: the loan sharks (because the author loves putting fillers right after the cliffhanger). Although the demand for loans was skyrocketing, law enforcement has become increasingly vigilant. This means that they are no longer able to take people away as collateral or any similar criminal activities. Because of the increasing risks of getting caught, the loan sharks are starting to shift to Royal Road instead. (I can’t really decipher the book’s explanation of how they are using Royal Road to make money).
Scene shifts once again to the Geomchi (?), who has now achieved Advanced 9 (50%) in the martial artists skill (the dojo students are mostly around advanced 8). Although they were only proficient with a sword at first, they quickly became familiar with bows, spears, hammer, mace, etc. The bigger variety of weapons that was used, the more the Martial Artist skill was increased . The Geomchi group is hard at work training (or fighting monsters). One of the teachers is watching them (possibly Geomchi), but his mind was thinking about how Dr Cha Eunhee is on a date with Geom-4-chi (I think? I forgot which number he was). Most likely because of these thoughts, Geomchi then declares that they will begin the master quest (?) for Martial Artists. The group then begins to head towards the starting questgiver’s (?) location.
Roderick and Montereusel immediately spot each other as Weed’s group bursts into the room, each side vowing to kill the other. Instead of looking at the dramatic confrontation between the two, Weed chooses to scan around the room instead. He spots a shocking 30 demons lurking in the room as well as walls covered with eggs. Weed guesses that they’re the eggs of the Gorontalo. The Gorontalo look like large, misshapen spiders whose venom (?) are extremely hard to counteract and very painful. Fortunately, their incubation periods are extremely long. Their birth usually results from the Gorontalo hatchlings sensing prey nearby, which makes them burst out of their eggs to eat the prey and sate their hunger.
All of the major stations have started broadcasting Weed’s adventures both in Korea and the world as well (with subtitles for foreigners). Although the content of each station is the same, they are competing in video editing, music, commentary, etc. In a house, a child is begging for her mother’s attention (ex: help with homework, reading a book, etc) but the mother just tells the child to be quiet and let her watch the television. Irritated, the child says that her mom is treating her like she’s been picked up under a bridge. Meanwhile, many fast food places/eateries (fast food place for chicken, Chinese restaurant, etc) with delivery are so completely overwhelmed with orders that food has a wait time of 3 hours.
After throwing threats around for a while, Roderick kicks off the battle by using Blizzard Storm, which Montereusel takes head on with very little effect. Weed ignores the two’s clash for now and focuses on the 30 demons (Bach says how he’s fine with living a short life; basically assuming he’s going to die xD). Weed orders the paladins into a formation that maximizes defense with Bach at the head while he Blinks into the eggs to destroy them before the hatchlings can awaken. Using the power of Red Star, he casts Fire Hydra in order to burn all eggs nearby. Although the spell required a constant flow of mana, Weed manages to obtain that mana due to the unique effects of Red Star. He then uses the Splendorous Sword skill which doesn’t shoot out the normal eagles of light, but Thunderbirds instead. The Thunderbirds took longer to emerge from the sword but once they were released, they flew at their target and exploded into lightning and flame. Due to the widespread attacks, Weed manages to gain a level. However, there are still many pillars still covered with eggs remaining. Seeing that he wasn’t going to destroy all of the eggs in time, Weed orders a group of paladins to start destroying the eggs as well. Taking the time to survey the battlefield, Weed’s eyes fall upon Roderick and Montereusel, whose fight is creating shockwaves every time they clash. Weed then decides that the most important goal in the fight would be to help Roderick win his fight as soon as possible, because the paladins are unable to win against the demons and Gorontalos. Even if they did win, the paladins would take massive losses and Weed will lose a lot of contribution and perhaps Bach as well. Weed first concentrates on pushing back the demons attacking the paladin formation, using Heraim fencing to score consecutive attacks on one of the demons. His chained attacks first deal additional damage due to the fire, then ignored the demon’s defense, then the demon’s power and balance were reduced thanks to Weed’s continuous attacks towards his left shoulder, and finally Weed’s attacks caused fire to completely blanket the demon and burn for 3980 damage per second. Weed then finishes of the demon by using Fire Blast, which caused a fireball to detonate on the body of the already-burning demon. Although the demon had more than half of its health left at the beginning of Weed’s attack, the continuous attacks combined with the power of the Red Star and the stats provided by a Chaos Warrior gave Weed the overwhelming power he needed to crush the demon. After killing the demon, Weed obtains some Havana herbs (or learns more information on Havana herbs, idk) and obtains a Greater Mithril Helmet. Although the situation is grim, Weed smiles because the Greater Mithril Helmet is a level 400 item that one of the Morningstar Guild’s members had worn. It has excellent defense, wisdom, and could also increase the effectiveness of combat skills.
Weed notices that 3 demons were heading towards the priest group commanded by Alberon and Blinks in to intercept them. All the while, the paladin groups fighting the other demons as well as the Gorontalo are losing (apparently, the Gorontalo grow extremely quickly, the bigger ones reaching the size of several meters). It had only been 20 minutes since the fight started but the amount of Paladins have already been reduced below 200, the priests reduced by 1/3, and the priests perilously close to running out of mana. Although Weed is desperately fighting, he has still suffered large injuries; despite of having the large amount of sustain provided by the Red Star, he would have died already if he hadn’t received healing from the priests. Weed then uses Yell to increase the morale of the Paladins as well as getting a group of the 5 demons to aggro on him. Weed uses Absolute Incineration (google trans: completely burned down), one of the top ranked Fire spells, and incapacitating (?) 2 of the demons. He notes the quickly approaching 3 un-affected demons and uses the Doppleganger sword technique to split himself into 10. Weed and his clones manage to quickly finish off the 2 incapacitated demons before turning on the remaining ones. Taking advantage of his short break, Weed surveys the battlefield. After taking in the battles, Weed could tell that if they remained in a protracted fight, his side would definitely lose. The group was almost at the limits of their stamina and mana, and the morale of the group was low despite of Weed’s commanding. Furthermore, the longer the fight goes, the more Gorontola would be hatched, and Weed’s group would be overwhelmed. After thinking it through Weed decides to take a gamble and go attack Montereseul. This is because even if he stayed with the Church+Bach group, they would eventually die anyways. So, he’s betting on the probability that they could finish off Montereseul and then have Roderick help clear the rest of the demons.
After telling Alberon to solely concentrate on healing him, Weed Blinks to Montereseul’s wing, and concentrates his attacks on Montereseul’s right wing. Although the damage was small initially (about 500 damage) the damage eventually multiplied due to the fact that 5 times (in the 5th attack, Weed was dealing 916 damage as well as putting a burn effect on Montereseul). Because his 3rd right wing (he has multiple sets of wings I guess?) was almost completely enveloped in flames, Montereseul aggroes onto Weed instead. Weed uses Blink to dodge the blow and move to Montereseul’s opposite side, where he starts attacking Montereseul’s left wings while dodging Montereseul’s blows with Blinks. He noticed that Roderick was chanting a spell when Montereseul uses Frozen Field and a large amount of space around Montereseul suddenly freezes. Although Weed avoids being instantly frozen and dying thanks to Alberon’s treatment as well as the fire properties of the Red Star, he still takes 32,985 damage. (Note: It’s possible that Roderick was the one that casted Frozen Fields. Google trans was unclear) Montereseul then follows up with Totsuka’s Fangs (google trans: Totsuka Gutierrez Teeth), causing large fangs to erupt from the ground and shoot at Weed. Weed Blinks and dodges the fangs but it turns out that the projectiles had homing capabilities. He gets hit by one of the fangs and instantly loses 28,193 health, although that is soon healed by Alberon. Weed uses several consecutive Blinks to avoid most of the Fangs at the last moment, causing them to smash into the walls (I think that Weed got hit by some of them but all of the damage healed by Alberon). Annoyed at how Weed managed to survive his attacks (devils have a lot of pride), Montereseul uses Stigma of Sacrifice on Weed. Golden letters shoot at Weed but Weed blinks out of the way, causing the spell to hit the 3 demon behind Weed, instantly killing them. The reason why Weed is battling against Montereseul, when all of Weed’s attacks are mere scratches and a direct hit from Montereseul means death, is to buy time for Roderick. Because Montereseul is focused on killing Weed, it allows time for Roderick to incant his spells without any interference. Roderick finishes chanting his spell and unleashes Spatial Rend (google trans: space cut). Injured, Montereseul roars at Weed, calling him a coward and saying how honorable warriors fight instead of hit and running. Weed says he’ll take it as a compliment because he wants live a long life and collect a lot of pension funds. Although one of his wings is set on fire and he has also suffered tremendous magic damage, Montereseul still had around half of his life remaining (due to the high magic resistance of the demon race). Enraged, Montereseul gives out a scream which reduces morale and lowers stats. Due to Weed’s high fighting spirit, he is mostly relatively fine, but the priests were heavily disrupted, causing them to fail their healing spells (I think some of the lower health priests may have even died from the scream because the scream reduces health and mana as well?). Weed immediately yells at the group to retreat to a corner in a defensive position, not fighting back and just blocking the attack. Thanks to the innate resistance of the priest and paladin classes, they were only weakened, unlike normal soldiers who may have given up (Bach, who has a lot of fighting spirit as well, was unaffected). Montereseul calls Weed a worm, and says how people like him should just die. Roderick approaches Weed and apologizes for leading Weed into such a difficult a difficult fight. Weed asks if Roderick if he thinks that he (Roderick) can win against. Roderick replies that it would be difficult for him and Weed asks why, given that Roderick had claimed previously that he could fight Montereseul by himself. Roderick says that because Montereseul has been summoned here for so long, his abilities have increased significantly. Weed then asks Roderick where he put his research on sculpting and Roderick replies that is in the lab at the end of the hall. Unfortunately, the demons and Montereseul are between them and the lab, and the lab entrance is covered with Gorontola eggs as well. Weed decides to give up on his plan to retrieve the information before dying and prepares to fight Montereseul once again. He says that even if he fails, it’ll still be beneficial for the world. Because his adventure is broadcasted around the world on several different stations, others will eventually analyze the weaknesses and strengths of Montereseul and eventually come up with a plan for fighting Montereseul. (Something about how even if they can configure a perfect party, they may still be afraid of going into the labyrinth. Also something about how it’s not rare for people to blame Weed for accepting and failing such a hard quest?)
Chapter 6. Colossal Achievement:
Note: I think Spatial Rend may have temporarily blocked off Montereseul or else it’s unlikely that the following could have happened.
Weed tries to convince Roderick to work with him, pointing out how Roderick finally has the chance to fix his mistakes and working together would be better than fighting separately. Roderick finally agrees to work with Weed and begins meditating to accumulate mana. Meanwhile, the paladins and priests are praying in order to lift the curses (?) while Weed just waits, with Red Star restoring his body into an excellent condition (All Bach had to do was apply bandages and eat boiled potatoes to go back to normal because warriors of the Arpent Kingdom have high stamina/resilience). Weed asks if Roderick can concentrate of only using fire-type magic and orders the Paladins to stay at a distance, supporting with crossbows and holy magic. Montereseul charges at Weed (idk how he appeared. The only line is “Ransom is sokgyeol” and I have no idea what that means). Weed Blinks to Montereseul while Roderick casts fire magic at Montereseul. Weed absorbs some of the fire energy, increasing maximum health, mana, stamina, and power). Montereseul consecutively casts several magics (Brand of Oppresion, Daemons of Ice), but thanks to the paladin+priests healing as well as the fact that everybody scattered, the group made it through mostly intact. Weed orders the paladins to continue to shoot their crossbows, and tells the priests to use holy magic attacks rather than healing. Montereseul then targets the priests with Hammer of Anger, wiping out a lot of priests. Weed then orders Bach to intercept any attacks on the priests and then continues to fend Montereseul off. After seeing the priests dying, Roderick can’t restrain his anger (apparently, although he’s arrogant and had bad judgment, he was still kind on the inside) and uses Mana Burn. Mana Burn is an ability that allows a wizard to use up all of the mana in their body to damage the enemy. What usually happens is a large explosion when all of the mana in a person’s body is used to fuel the spell. In Roderick’s case, however, it was like the Sun descended onto the Earth. After the light lessened, Montereseul had suffered a huge wound, with the upper part of his left shoulder essentially gone. After using such an enormous power, Roderick collapsed. Because all of the mana in his body was depleted, he was suffering reflux symptoms and probably couldn’t participate in the battle anymore. Taking advantage of Montereseul’s stunned state, Weed orders the paladins and Bach to attack Montereseul, he himself Blinking in and using Heraim fencing to stab Montereseul in the heart (?) 6 times (max damage was a 24% increase in damage with 2402 fire damage). Montereseul manages to use Flame Blaster and blasts back the paladins and Bach (killing many of the paladins). Weed on the other hand, remained with his attacks becoming 14% stronger due to absorbing the energy of the fire. Weed then uses the Splendorous Sword skill to attack Montereseul. Montereseul staggers due to the accumulated damage from Weed’s attacks, holy magic, and Rodericks’ magic. Weed orders the paladins and priests to continue with their crossbow and holy magic attacks while telling Bach to take a breather and wait. Close to death, Montereseul declares that he’ll take everybody with him, starting a 6 minute countdown until Montereseul sacrifices hiself in order to kill all life in the nearby area. On the description window that popped up, it compares the damage due to the self-destructing to the wizard skill Ultimate Destruction, a spell strong enough to level an entire castle (the reason why Roderick didn’t use this spell was it requires building up a massive amount of time and a medium?). Weed decides to go all out, seeing as if Montereseul wasn’t killed in 6 minutes, the entire labyrinth would be blown away and the notes on sculpting with it. The Weed furiously attacks Montereseul (the rest of the paladins are focusing on holding of the Gorontola), but he is unable to do much damage. Weed was lamenting over the Engraver’s lack of strong attacks when he suddenly is struck by a thought. He yells at Derry to toss him Lou’s sword. Although Derry was fighting to keep the Gorontolas from reaching the priests, he throws Weed his sword without hesitation. Weed ends his shapeshifting skill and turns back into a human. He grabs the sword (status windows pop up saying Weed's recognized by Lou’s church so he can wield the word, how his Faith stat has been tripled, how he can use the skill Lou’s Miracle, how divine power will surpress the opponent’s mana and how his body’s recovery has doubled. Note: there were some other lines in the window but I’m not sure if they were just descriptions or additional effects of the sword). Weed then uses Sculptural destruction to convert his art stats into strength and gain additional skills (see chapter 3 for description of skills) and then stabs at Montereseul. He deals 1469 physical damage with an additional 3921holy damage (because Montereseul is a devil) and seals Montereseul’s ability to use mana. Weed then uses and gets a huge increase in attack speed and power, and also protection by divine forces as well. In addition to Weed’s attacks, Montereseul’s body is also slowly being engulfed by the flames from Red Star (his left wing has almost been melted). With less than one minute remaining before Montereseul self-destructs, Weed uses all of his strength to drive the sword into Montereseul’s heart, killing him.
the rewards thing. Here's a little excerpt of Weed's rewards from killing Montereseul:
After killing Montereseul, Weed gets 4 levels as well as 4190 fame, +8 charisma, +9 determination (I think this is fighting spirit?), and +51 Dignity. Furthermore, he has permanently learned the skill Devastating Blow as well as the skill Accurate Attack. In addition, everybody that participated in the battle gets +3 to all stats. Lastly, he gets a bunch of perks: an improvement to his (or Weed’s commander’s, not sure) teaching skills for training soldiers, the ability to have knights willingly follow him, being respected by all of the continents inhabitants, to have bards everywhere sing his story (every time they sing, Weed’s notoriety goes down a little), becoming an idol for adventurers, and an increase in the amount of (religious?) knights that will follow him.
Weed then stretches his hand forward and loots Montereseul. He gets a helmet, a whip, several huge uncut diamonds, and a jiokgye stone (idk what this is.). Weed uses his identification skill on the helmet:
Demon Helmet: durability 290/290. 161 Defense.
Helmet left behind by the devil Montereseul. It can only be worn by those with absolute strength. Because it is imbued with the forces of evil, it is extremely dangerous to those of weak faith.
Those who lack sufficient faith will take on the Curse of Montereseul and suffer significant health and stat loss.
Requirements: Level 640. 1,700 power. 800 Faith.
Options:
Endless Defense
Enemies quickly engulfed in fear
Combat skills will be enhanced when injured
Increased resistance to black magic
+98 Wisdom
+115 Knowledge (intelligence?)
Black magic skills of the Intermediate Level or lower can be casted with less mana
Smaller casting time is needed for magic
+12% to power of all combat skills
+8000 fame
He then tries to touch the whip, but is rejected, with the window popping up:
“Blood Soaked Whip rejects you
The evil forces within push you back. Health decreases by 3696”
Although blacksmith skills reduce the equipping requirements, Weed is not even able to touch the whip. As such, he puts the whip back. He then turns to survey the battleground. Even though Montereseul has been defeated, there are still huge numbers of Gorontalo that were around. After some strenuous battling, they manage to clear the room of all enemies. This is when (many of?) the priests and paladins suddenly talked about how they have now seen their goals and what their duty were. Weed sees light faintly appearing around them and realizes that they must have reached their class promotion. Because of the battles they went through, everybody’s levels have now exceeded 400. He is still saddened though, because even with the increased contribution he gets from returning them significantly stronger, it still won’t balance out the amount of people that died (there are only 150 people in his group remaining). They go into Roderick’s laboratory where 10 demons are awaiting them. However, because of the increased stats of the party, it was fairly easy to clean them all up. Weed gives a sigh of relief and remarks on how he has finally made it.
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its basically about one big battle in an unsolvable labyrinth to battle the Demon Montoos
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the golden bird is the original joinjok aka the eggs weed bought and ate
weed destroyed a future granary area with a natural catastrophe and made rover sow the seeds for nature
Bulreotneun was sent to do heavy lifting in transporting 30000 red/brown stones
weed used nature sculpting to make a large wet lands for the fairy quest and he got some kind of honey to lure some monster away
he gets a quest to conquer the continent's rodeurik labyrinth
buncha freya paladins and priests get dragged along with him
in real world, lee hyun heads to seoyuns house as shes giving a bath to a dog that he gave her, and the dog shows complete obedience to him
they had lunch together
jay, a top lvl thief was in a pub wen weed decided to hire him, price was 5000 gold a day, it went to 4200 and then 3900 due to weeds alcohol drinks, then all the npcs noticed and knelt b4 their king, jay got subjected to their hate and needless to say was hired quite cheaply
bach borg was the only piece of life weed decided to bring along, knights, bulreotneun, the barbarian that served the emperor i think
the disease/bottle devil/demons (some mistranslation im not bothering to figure out atm) wer killing at least a few paladins during each battle
weed started to use the hit and switch approach
in 2 days he already lost 54 paladins out of 680
pagoesul pieces means destruction pieces i believe, weed uses that as the damage to paladins was too high
weed looks for a clue that he may hav missed and learns that queen evanes mirror zahab gave him shows him to the true path in the maze
buncha media stations tried to get a contract with lee hyun and even offered him a car, he refused as car was a money waster
he created resurrection pieces skill, reviving dead ppl
takes 3 lvls 45 art 10 faith, they last only 21 hrs and require one month b4 recasting, extreme penalties as it goes against goddess freya
he brings back archmage rodeurik
he gets demon slayer title
rodeurik gives them super buffs
the loan sharks have moved to royal road as the law was being enforced
geomchis mugisul (weapons mastery) is adv 9 50% disciples around adv 8
they always replace their weapons with watever the monsters drop
chicken house business was booming in delivery service cuz of weeds adventures
thers a big battle with the demons and talrosseui eggs, weed gets a mithril helm with high purity
200 paladins and 2/3 of the priests remained after 20 mins of fighting a group of 30
he used bungeomsul, body splitting into 10
montuseuga is the boss monster with wings and he uses ice magic
he borrows the number 1 paladins divine sword and dual wields it with his red star, then executes pagoesul again and finishing montuseuga off
weed learns the combat skills devastating blow and exact attack
he also gets a devils helm which gives him 12% combat ability and 8k fame, blood soaked whip which rejects him, rough diamonds and hell revelation stones
rodeurik (probably rodrick but meh) gives weed the map of the labyrinth, letting him conquer the labyrinth, he also gets rodeuriks research
all the races congregate at mora, ppl get a country quest for ahreupen kingdom
dejected reformed into the steering committee (i think)
the quest involved building the royal palace
hermes guild is preparing for their conquering expedition that wont stop until they unite the continent (0 guesses as to what will happen to them)
weed gets a quest from rodeuriks research after learning bout how sculpture steadily declined through time, something bout lovers island
he gets a meteor summoning scroll from rodeurik (note rodeurik already passed away but he left his stuff with weed)
not much is known about weeds affairs besides the fact that weed used his personal fortune for the ground work
dark gamers support ahreupen kingdom
he loses buncha public service points from the lou and freya church cuz of all the dead ppl
hermes declared war on the continent and the other guilds created a coalition
everyone in mora started preparing for war against hermes
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time sculpting skill:
From the description of how the skill was inspired it seems more like the ability to stop/freeze time. Of course, after learning this Weed immediatly starts thinking of all the robberies he could commit with such a skill...
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The part where Weed goes over to Seoyoon's house and the dog wouldn't breathe until Weed ordered him to was so messed up. Funny though.
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