Only I’m the solo player

Chapter 41 – The Unknown

—–CROW—– 

Even the least intelligent beast learns to correct its behavior after being beaten enough.

Choi Gilhyun, the Spear Technician, after being thoroughly pummeled with the Mithril Wand, no longer charged at me.

“Fuck, fuck…”

However, he glared at me with bloodshot eyes and gritted his teeth.

“You, you bastard, what are you… Do you think you can handle this?  Do you know who my father is?”

Choi Gilhyun was now saying things like this.  It’s astonishing that this guy has backing upon backing.

But no matter how much I think about it, I don’t see how his backing could affect me.

Frankly, what can his backing do to me?

Once the event is over, I’ll return to the Trial Tower on server 2661, and I won’t see another challenger for the next three years.

Even if he tries to threaten me on the festival map, I’m not desperate for this event, so I can just return to the tower.

I have no connections in the outside world, so even if he tries to harm someone close to me outside, it won’t work.

Whether his backing is the chairman of a large corporation, the president of South Korea, or God in heaven, it won’t work on me.

“Why, didn’t your mother tell you?”

So, I confidently returned the insults I had received to them.

“Y-you fucking bastard!”

Choi Gilhyun, who couldn’t stand being insulted after dishing it out himself, flared up and tried to attack me.

However, perhaps due to the trauma of being beaten by me, he flinched as soon as I slightly raised the Mithril Wand.

– *Snort.*

Seeing that, one of the onlookers, unable to hold back any longer, burst out laughing.

“Who was it? Who laughed!”

Choi Gilhyun’s face turned bright red as he yelled. Despite his pathetic appearance, perhaps because he was a Ranker, the surroundings quickly fell silent.

“Who the fuck just laughed! Come out, come out, you fucker!”

– *Clang!*

“I laughed, asshole.”

I gave Choi Gilhyun one last whack with the Mithril Wand, then left him crumpled on the ground and pushed through the crowd.

Thanks to the commotion attracting everyone’s attention, there was no one standing in front of the portal I originally intended to enter.

“Shall we go back to the dungeon?”

“Huh?  Ah, well, about that.”

As I approached, putting away the Mithril Wand, Kim Jinah fidgeted with a pale face.

Not only Kim Jinah, but Kim Minhyung and Kim Jinseok also looked uncomfortable.  Well, Kim Minhyung had a slightly wry smile.

Is it because he realized he almost got beaten up like that too?

“With the atmosphere like this, I think it’s better to… let’s go next time, next time.”

Kim Jinah shook her head and walked away from me with hesitant steps.

It seemed like it wasn’t the right time to casually enter the dungeon with the atmosphere like this.

I nodded in agreement and left for now.

**

Kim Jinah sent me a message through the friend chat, suggesting that we take a break today.

I replied that I understood, but I felt strange when I actually thought about taking a break.

Since entering the Trial Tower and vowing to never stop, I haven’t rested once.

Every day was a series of challenges and growth, and every moment was accompanied by blood and blades.

The same applied to sleeping and eating.

I minimized my sleep time to the bare minimum my body could handle and consciously avoided comfortable beds.

I always ate only White Troll meat, which was so sweet it numbed my tongue, and a certain amount of poison.

Except for the gukbap I bought, swept up in the festive atmosphere, it had been a long time since I had eaten anything resembling a proper meal.

I did this because I believed that if I lost the dopamine from the sense of accomplishment of growth, it would be the end, and if I lost momentum, I would slack off.

I lived each day pushing myself without stopping for a single moment.

However, the serotonin I tasted yesterday – the sense of stability that made me think, “This is okay once in a while,” didn’t ruin me.

Rather, after a light change of pace, I feel like my condition has improved.

In workout communities, they say that even eating and resting are part of the workout.

I’m starting to think that I also need to take a break and regroup.

“But, what should I actually do?”

The problem is, although I feel the need for rest, I don’t know what to actually do to rest.

Should I just lie down and browse the community?

But that’s not rest, it’s just wasting time.

There are different kinds of rest. Shouldn’t I at least do something productive while resting?

“Hmm…”

I pondered and opened the open community.  And I looked for a list of events I could participate in on the festival map.

Besides clearing mini-dungeons, there were only simple mini-games and quests that challengers could enjoy together.

None of them appealed to me, and they weren’t things I could do alone anyway.

As I scrolled down, a particular schedule caught my eye.

[Trial Tower’s Strongest Challenger Tournament – Preliminaries]

Today was the preliminary round of the tournament, one of the main events of the festival.

Of course, I had no intention of participating in the tournament from the beginning, so I didn’t apply for the preliminaries.

It’s obvious that there’s no way I could compete in a tournament where prominent Rankers and high-level challengers compete.

But events like this are as much fun to watch as they are to participate in.

It seems like the perfect content to broaden my horizons by watching the skills of high-level Rankers and rest at the same time.

I’ll go watch this today.

**

I bought popcorn and soda from a stall and took a seat in the stands.

Despite it being the preliminaries, a large number of challengers came to watch.  It was almost like a professional baseball game.

Well, it makes sense if you think of it as a sporting event that only happens once every three years.

There’s probably no more stimulating content in the world of the Trial Tower, which already lacks entertainment.

The tournament preliminaries are battle royale style matches with five participants per group.

Since the matches are held simultaneously in four arenas located east, west, south, and north, the popularity varies significantly depending on the level of the challengers.

Judging by the large audience, it seems like a highly anticipated match is scheduled for the preliminaries.

“Who’s in this group?  Is there anything worth watching?”

“Kang Taejin and Lee Youngwon are in the same group. It’s almost like the finals.”

“Really? Those two are facing each other in the preliminaries?”

Listening to the challengers in the next seat, I heard names I had seen in the community.

I don’t know who Lee Youngwon is, but Kang Taejin is a strategist who started gaining fame in the community around last year.

He’s an aspiring Hunter with an amateur boxing background and possesses a unique class called [Storm Striker], a Fighter-type.

If he stood out too much, the match would end quickly, but it seems there’s another prominent challenger in the same group.

[The match will begin shortly.]

“Ah, it’s starting.”

While listening to the chatter of the challengers next to me, the preliminary match quickly began.

All five challengers who appeared in the arena were men. I could immediately tell who Kang Taejin was.

The short-haired man with a confident expression, equipped with gauntlets and no other weapons. That must be him.

And the challenger named Lee Youngwon… is that him?  The warrior with a hefty build, holding a greatsword as tall as himself.

I could easily guess based on the fact that the other three challengers were either terrified or holding their heads in their hands as if in despair.

So, what kind of fight will they show?

**

The three challengers who were unlucky enough to be in the same group as the strong contenders declared forfeiture as soon as the match started.

Although injuries sustained during the match are all healed, they probably didn’t think they could compete against Ranker-level challengers.

Thus, the match immediately turned into a one-on-one fight between Kang Taejin and Lee Youngwon, and the flow of the match was, how should I put it…

“Man, they’re fighting like pussies.”

Yeah, that’s it.

The spectator next to me expressed exactly what I was thinking.  Kang Taejin, who was supposedly a promising challenger, was fighting like a pussy.

The beginning of the match was watchable.  Kang Taejin boldly closed the distance against Lee Youngwon, who boasted high defense and powerful attacks.

And true to the name [Storm Striker], he unleashed attacks so fast that even I could barely follow them.

However, after allowing one attack to land from Lee Youngwon’s greatsword, he abruptly changed his stance.

– *Woosh, Bang!*

A wind projectile shot from Kang Taejin’s fist and struck Lee Youngwon.

Unique classes are indeed different.  Kang Taejin, despite being a Fighter, had a ranged attack skill.

But it didn’t seem very powerful, and Kang Taejin continued to attack only from a distance, maintaining his distance.

He dodged the hefty melee warrior Lee Youngwon’s approach using movement skills and his high agility stat, and just kept spamming ranged attacks from afar.

You could call it a strategy utilizing their opposing characteristics, but for a fight between a rising star and a Ranker, the level was too low.

[Match End]

[Due to the time limit, the challenger with more remaining HP wins.]

[Winner: Kang Taejin]

The result was Kang Taejin’s automatic victory due to the time limit.  It was only natural since he kept firing projectiles from a distance without getting hit once.

“Damn it, what a waste of time. Why did he even bother coming out if he was going to fight like that?”

“Watch your mouth, someone might hear you.”

The muttering of the spectator next to me, leaving the arena, once again spoke my mind.

Instead of showing great technique or skill, he just showed a pathetic display of relying on his class abilities.

Choi Gilhyun, who I couldn’t tell whether he was using a spear or a toothpick, and now this… Did I expect too much from other challengers?

The reality seems quite different from how challengers on the same server evaluate them in the community.

– *Ding.*

As I was waiting for the next match with disappointment, the notification sound of the friend chat rang in my ears.

[Kim Jinah: Jinhyuk, are you free later?]

Ah, perfect timing.

—–CROW—–