Chapter 19. Golden Skeleton Knight (2)

Sanghyuk was already preparing for the Golden Skeleton Knight’s second phase when it was the first phase. He had utilized the Golden Bolts to create a piece of art on the floor.

In Sanghyuk’s past, this was called the ‘pitworking’. The better the pitworking, the easier it would be to overcome the Golden Skeleton Knight’s second phase.

Of course, after the levels of the users rose, there were many cases where they just brute-forced the second phase, but that only came much later.

This was why Sanghyuk could calmly approach the boss with the web-like pits on the ground.

The Golden Skeleton Knight released an electric storm in all directions every 3 seconds, but could not do a single damage to Sanghyuk who was hiding in a pit.

Sanghyuk used these pits to approach the Golden Skeleton Knight, little by little. Since the Golden Skeleton Knight was already on its last breath, he just had to be careful about the electric storm and nothing else.

In fact, the Golden Skeleton Knight right now was immune to all long-range attacks, but was weak to melee. In other words, once he dealt a proper strike up close, then the Golden Skeleton Knight may fall.

Sanghyuk knew this fact through his numerous experiences in his previous life, so he had diligently pitworked these pits, and as a result, could approach right next to the boss.

Now, he just had to deal a proper strike to end this Golden Skeleton Knight hunt for real.

*Flash, pzzzzzzzzzzt!*

*Bbbbbboooooooooom!*

After another round of electric storm brushed past, Sanghyuk immediately stood up and struck down with his Traveler’s Treasure Sword to the Golden Skeleton Knight’s foot.

*Swooosh, crunch! Crrrrrack!*

It didn’t matter where he struck. The important thing was to just attack directly.

The crack that started from the foot that was pierced by the Traveler’s Treasure Sword spread out to the whole body of the boss.

This was the end. The Golden Skeleton Knight had already reached its limit, so it was natural for it to not be able to endure any more damage.

*Crumble*

The Golden Skeleton Knight collapsed down into fragments.

This was the end of the over 2-hour-long battle between Sanghyuk and the Golden Skeleton Knight.

You have defeated the Field Boss monster ‘Golden Skeleton Knight’.

You have hunted a Field Boss monster for the first time and achieved something that no Dimensional Traveler has yet to do. This will become your achievement and be eternally remembered.

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

You have defeated the first Golden Skeleton Knight, and have received all 71 items that could be gotten from the Golden Skeleton Knight due to the first kill bonus.

Congratulations. The gathered karma has broken through the limit and you have leveled up.

He couldn’t get tired of this kind of system messages no matter how many times he heard them. He felt happy just by listening to them and nodded his head with a smile.

He was happy that he had acquired the ‘First Field Boss Hunter’ title, and was also very happy that he had acquired all 71 items through the first kill bonus.

First kill bonus.

This was a system that was only applied to named-tier monsters that were greater or equal to field bosses. To put it simply, killing the first named monster of its kind would give the killer all the items that could be gotten from that named monster.

There were no exceptions. The named monster just dropped every single possible loot.

Thanks to this system, all users of EL were very focused towards to the ‘first’ conquers.

To understand it better, the Golden Skeleton Knight Sanghyuk just had defeated dropped an item called the ‘Ten Millennia Goldbone’, also known as the golden skeleton lottery, at a nearly 0.01% chance.

In other words, this could be gotten around once every 10,000 of these Golden Skeleton Knights, and killing it for the first time would give him this item at a 100% chance.

Like this, conquering a named monster first didn’t just give you fame, but a lot of benefits as well.

‘First kill is the best.’

Sanghyuk nodded his head while looking at the items piled up in front of him. Sanghyuk’s dimensional expansion bag was too small, so he even had to make some into cards to carry them.

***

Sanghyuk had an uncountable number of profits through this hunt in the Ancient Castle of Ghosts. However, three big profits outshined others.

First up was the Golden Skeleton Knight’s Ten Millennia Goldbone, which was basically a winning lottery.

Ten Millennia Goldbone, as its name suggested, was just a big piece of bone that was gold.

This was a crafting item, and making an item out of this would fix the item’s grade to unique. After a lot of time, the number of unique items would increase in the market, but right now, there weren’t even any rare items on the market not to mention unique.

The current situation was that magic grade items were being exchanged at a high price, so acquiring a unique grade item was a great feat.

The crafted items from the Ten Millennia Goldbone was famed to be very good in quality as well. Thanks to that, even after the users’ general levels increased and there was no more meaning to killing Golden Skeleton Knights, numerous users still kept a lookout for these Golden Skeleton Knights.

Actually, the other items from the Golden Skeleton Knight weren’t anything special. The only lottery was the Ten Millennia Goldbone. The drop rate of other items was just normal. Even the lowest after that had drop rate around 5%. The Ten Millennia Goldbone was just special.

Acquiring a Ten Millennia Goldbone was akin to winning a lottery in the game.

There were 24 types of items that could be made from this Ten Millennia Goldbone, and Sanghyuk had used around 10 out of those 24 in his previous life.

Of course, when he was using those items, there were many higher grade items on the market, so the Ten Millennia Goldbone crafts had become much cheaper.

At that time, he was using those items since he had to use a cheap, but still good quality equipment. However, what he could say for sure was that he was quite satisfied with them.

The second was the ‘First Field Boss Hunter’ title. The effects of this title were…….

Title – ‘First Field Boss Hunter’

Grade – Unique

Description – You have proven your strength by defeating a Field Boss Monster earlier than anyone.

Effects – [Prefix: Attack power increases against field boss monsters] [Postfix: Defense increases against field boss monsters] [Constant effect: >Kneel!(A) : Critical hit rate increases by 7% and critical damage increases by 15% against field boss monsters<]

…… as such. The unfortunate point was that the effects were limited to field bosses, but the basic effects were quite good and it was a title that would help Sanghyuk out a lot.

The final profit was the immense amount of karma after hogging the bonus field and the field boss.

Sanghyuk’s current level was 37.

Until now, the highest-leveled user in EL known to the community was the Chinese user ‘Zhang Ze’, who had reached level 40 yesterday.

However, this man was a One-soul user. Sanghyuk’s memory also didn’t contain the information about a ranker named Zhang Ze. What this meant was that Zhang Ze was a clueless user that went with One-soul and was eventually left behind.

What was important was not Zhang Ze’s future, but was that Sanghyuk had overcome the innate limit from being a Quadra-soul, and was almost keeping up with a One-soul user.

Other than that, there were quite a few useful items among the things the Golden Skeleton Knight had dropped. Sanghyuk left those useful items behind and commissioned all the other items. A few of the crafting materials he had made into cards were going to be used later, so he just put them in the bank.

Since Sanghyuk now properly walked on the path of the Card User, he would need a lot of gold in the future. Card Fusion was practically a skill that consumed money as fuel so he might go bankrupt if he combined cards here and there.

Of course, just because he had money didn’t mean that he could store an infinite amount of cards.

The first fusion card that Sanghyuk had made before, the Flame stone, was a low-rank fusion card that had a ‘cost’ of 0, so he could infinitely store those card, but later, once fusion cards appeared with ‘costs’, he had to possess or use fusion cards according to the calculation formulae of ‘costs’, the sole disadvantage of being a Card User.

Having commissioned all the useless items, Sanghyuk moved to the 41st street of Falcon City, also known as the Artisans’ Street. This place had various workshops, and the one Sanghyuk was heading to was the most famous smithy of them all, named ‘The Golden Anvil’.

The Golden Anvil was the largest smithy in all of Falcon City. To be exact, it was the biggest smithy in the 7 cities that were in the ‘Land of Dusk’, the beginner-level playing area.

The owner of The Golden Anvil was a dwarf named ‘Tokan’, who was also known as the Red Hammer.

Actually, Tokan wasn’t just any ordinary NPC he could meet.

Although this backstory was unknown right now, he was actually the king of dwarves. As for why such a figure was running a smithy in Falcon City, that would be revealed through one of the main story quests later.

Main story quests, unlike the common sub-quests, were unique and important quests, so Sanghyuk also knew the details.

In any case, it wouldn’t make any sense for Sanghyuk, who had just peeled the beginner badge off him, to meet this Tokan.

EL’s familiarity system was very dynamically related to each other so he had to raise his familiarity with another NPC or a group of NPCs before meeting Tokan.

This process was definitely not easy. This was why some users in Sanghyuk’s previous life said that it was harder to raise familiarity with high-ranked NPCs than raising levels in the hell zone.

Especially with special NPCs like Tokan, just meeting him required a ridiculously complex process.

To put it simply, it was basically saying ‘Put in some effort if you want to meet the king!’.

‘However, I currently have a cheat key that will allow me to meet Tokan in one go.’

The cheat key that could skip all that process and allow him to meet Tokan directly…… was, of course, the Ten Millennia Goldbone.

***

“Oooooh.”

Tokan picked up the Ten Millennia Goldbone with a blissful face. He seemed already enchanted by the Ten Millennia Goldbone.

It was a well-known fact that Tokan was in love with the Ten Millennia Goldbone in Sanghyuk’s previous life. And it was also known that it was possible to meet him directly with the Ten Millennia Goldbone.

Tokan had a background setting that he really loved ‘gold’, so it was natural for him to be charmed by the golden bone.

The Ten Millennia Goldbone was especially a high-quality item, so Tokan could not help but want to make something with this material. It was like an instinct for dwarves.

“Ehem, so you have quite an interesting item.”

Tokan pretended to be calm, but Sanghyuk already knew that he had fallen in love with this Ten Millennia Goldbone.

“I acquired it due to chance. I thought of Sir Tokan as soon as I acquired it. Who else, other than the great artisan of the race of the land, and the successor of the flame spirit, Sir Tokan, could use it?”

Sanghyuk utilized all the information he knew in order to flatter him.

NPCs of EL couldn’t just be considered as simple computer programs. Although not completely perfect, they were state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that had similar thought processes as humans. Especially in the case of special NPCs like Tokan, they had greater artificial intelligence.

So, the NPCs liked to hear flattery as well. Of course, different NPCs had different preferences, so not all of them liked to be flattered, but most of the time, this would work.

Especially in the case of Tokan, he was weak to flattery unlike what he looked like, so Sanghyuk’s approach definitely did work.

“Hahahaha, that’s true. I’m not sure about anything else, but I can make use of this better than anyone else in the world!”

Feeling better, Tokan smiled and nodded his head continuously.

The Red Hammer Tokan’s mood has risen.

Familiarity with Tokan increases by a large amount.

The familiarity that rose from the moment he took out the Ten Millennia Goldbone rose once again by a large amount. The Ten Millennia Goldbone was an OP cheat key in regards to Tokan.

“So, what do you want to make? A sword? Armor? Shield? Spear? Say anything. I’ll make you a great one.”

Sudden quest ‘Tokan’s Good Will’ has activated.

Before Sanghyuk could say it, Tokan asked him first about what to make and that triggered a sudden quest. Really, everything was going in Sanghyuk’s favor.

“I…….”

Sanghyuk had already thought of what to make with the Ten Millennia Goldbone before he had come here. The item that was most necessary for him and had great performance that was made out of Ten Millennia Goldbone……. Making that out of the Ten Millennia Goldbone was a great choice.