Drilling four soul holes was practically the same as declaring that he would go down a path that other users could not even imagine. Of course, even if the required EXP was reduced to 4x instead of 8x thanks to the 'Challenger who never gives up', growing up was by no means easy.
In the beginning, there might not be a big difference from users who have drilled a single soul hole, but as the level goes over 40, it is common to enter the Hell section and regret having drilled a lot of real soul holes.
I had to break through all of this to become a true top user, but it wasn't easy. Of course, there were many ways to break through.
The easiest way was to borrow the power of 'money' in reality, and the most common way was to climb up by trying hard enough not to die.
No matter which method you choose, once you can break through and go up, clearing a lot of soul holes will definitely show great power.
Just looking at the pro gamers who were active when Sanghyuk made his name as a manager, more than 80% were double souls and the remaining 20% were triple souls. There was not a single One Soul.
And if you break it down a bit more here, more than 70% of pro gamers who were considered the best among pro gamers had a triple soul. It meant that the potential of Triple Soul was outstanding.
In such a situation, Sanghyeok chose the quadra soul that no one else had completed. This meant that if you grow up properly, you can become a truly unique existence.
"Is it the fourth day since the server opened? It's time for word of mouth to start spreading here and there."
EL's overwhelming game quality was rumored in earnest about a week after EL's open beta started.
Of course, it took several months for the rumor to become a box office success, as the game itself was not very accessible.
'Actually, even the famous rankers in their previous lives, who are known by everyone by name, are just starting the game, or even if they just started playing, they don't even know what it is yet.'
The fact that you have to find all the information directly in the game made users quite tired. Nonetheless, Raonsoft never cared about the convenience of users, saying that it was an unavoidable choice for game quality.
This part worked very well for Sanghyuk.
"Thanks to this, I, who know a lot of important information, had the opportunity to eat a lot of things to myself."
Sanghyuk murmured very quietly and smiled pleasantly. The things that came to his mind were often things that were rated as the best among users.
Of course, not all of those who preoccupied it became top users, but at least the top users had something that was evaluated as 'the best'. Moreover, Sanghyeok was aiming for things that were evaluated as the best of the best.
And the most important thing was that they were things that Sang-hyeok could get at this point.
"I guess I'll have to give up sleeping for a while."
To be honest, even Sanghyuk couldn't know everything. So little did he know who got what he knew and when.
That meant that I had to move quickly in order to win first place, so for a while I thought I would be content with just two hours of sleep a day.
For this, I have been building my body and taking a break, so it didn't seem like it would be too much for me to sleep for two hours a day and play games for at least a month or two.
'First of all... the first mountaineer!'
Sanghyuk turned his head and looked at Puyan, the holy mountain standing tall behind Falcon City, and nodded slowly.
Puyan was one of the five mountains representing the planet Trinak. The height was the lowest among the five mountains, but it was included in the five mountains because it had the highest symbolic meaning.
It doesn't matter which of these five mountains, once you climbed to the top of the mountain for the first time, you got one special title.
First Mountaineer! This was a one-of-a-kind title.
Although there was no prefix or suffix effect, there was a permanent effect attached instead, which was an effect that increased acquired karma by 20%.
Originally, this title was known to have been obtained by a top ranker called 'Climber' in Sanghyeok's previous life, but according to rumors, he was known to have obtained it by climbing to the top of a mountain other than Puyan.
The reason Sang-hyeok knew this information was because the pro gamers he was with had talked a lot about old information like this in private.
Really important information was not often shared even among the same team members, but information that had no big impact even if it was known was often discussed privately, and thanks to that, Sang-hyeok picked up a lot of information.
In a normal case, even if he knew that he would get a special title when he climbed to the top of the mountain, he would never have taken on the challenge easily, but Sang-hyeok, who had already traveled around the steep cliffs for more than half a year and picked herbs through Sword & Magic, had a hard time climbing Puyan Mountain. It wasn't that difficult.
And crucially, since he was still level 10 and had no experience points (karma) gained from coming over to Trinach, he had nothing to lose even if he died.
Just in case, the traveler's treasured sword was stored in the fourth-dimensional sub-space provided to Sang-hyeok, or the 'immortal', a dimensional traveler in the public bank of Falcon City, in advance, so there were no items to lose.
In addition, Mount Puyan was the most sacred mountain in Trinac, which harbored a sleeping god, so it was a mountain without even beasts, let alone monsters.
Literally, it was said that no mischievous beings could live on the sacred mountain where the gods slept, and thanks to that, Sanghyeok was able to attempt climbing Mt. Puyan even though he was only level 10.
Because there was no burden, Sanghyeok was able to climb Mt. Puyan boldly. Sang-hyeok invested all 10 growth points he had accumulated in strength to climb Mt. Puyan.
This kind of investment was unavoidable because I had to have a lot of strength to climb up the cliff.
In the end, after many efforts, Sang-hyeok was able to reach the top of Mt. Puyan without dying once. It was a valuable result obtained after continuously climbing for 20 hours without stopping.
I was the first to climb to the top of Mount Puyan, one of the five representative mountains of Trinakh. Your challenging spirit to be the first to reach a place no one has conquered is worthy of an example to all travelers.
Acquired the only rank title [First Mountaineer].
I heard the voice of the god sleeping in the holy mountain. This is a piece that can be obtained in a Legendary Quest.
"Huh, a legendary grade quest? Was something like this hidden here?"
Sang-hyeok, who gained an unexpected income, quickly opened the quest window with a startled look on his face.
Quest, ??? [Legend]
- Mountain where God sleeps (see details)
- ???
- ???
- ???
"Legendary Grade Fragment Quest..."
The fragment quest, which requires collecting all the pieces to activate the quest, was a quest with a very high level of difficulty and a huge reward. Sanghyuk never expected that he would get it at this timing.
"I never thought I'd get this at this timing..."
This was a really unexpected bonus. Although it was not a quest he knew about, the value of a legendary quest was infinite, so of course it could be said to be a great benefit.
"Well, I'll keep it for now and try it when I have more energy."
It was crazy to challenge the legendary grade piece quest right now.
Title - 'First Mountaineer'
Rating - Unique (唯一)
Description – Your challenging spirit as the first to reach unconquered lands is an example to all travelers.
Effect - [Prefix: None] [Suffix: None] [Continuous effect:
Sang-hyeok opened the title window to confirm the effect of 'the first mountaineer' and smiled with satisfaction. Even though it had the same unique grade, it had an effect that was slightly inferior to the never giving up challenger obtained in the endless meadow, but in fact, even this much was great enough.
The challenger who never gave up was so great that it just seemed like nothing special.
"Now, with this, I can definitely escape the pressure on the Quadra Soul."
With the first mountain climber, Sang-hyeok can now raise his quadra soul almost like a double soul. Of course, he would have a harder time than those who chose real double souls, but at least he was easier to raise than those who chose triple souls.
It seemed that if Sang-hyeok additionally added a few minor karma-rising titles step by step, he could increase the amount of karma he acquired by almost 30%.
"Phew, going down must be work anyway. Should I just jump off?"
If you jumped down, you could get to the floor the fastest. But I couldn't bear it. Even if it was Sanghyuk, I didn't want to experience death in virtual reality as much as possible, and moreover, since I gained karma through adventure, I shouldn't have jumped even if it was a pity to lose that karma.
Sang-hyeok, who took a moment to breathe and admired the view from the top of Mt. Puyan, started to descend the steep cliff again.
Ordinary people would have used the photo or video recording function to keep this wonderful scene forever, but Sang-hyeok was far from such trivial emotions, so he thought it was enough just to see it with his own eyes.
After descending from Mt. Puyan, Sanghyeok returned to Falcon City. No, he was going back. However, what greeted him first, rather than Falcon City, were three players who looked very dissatisfied with the world.
Karma (up) was required to level up in EL. The interesting thing was that this karma was of two kinds.
One was the karma of the good attribute that could be obtained in a similar way to normal games. This played a similar role to the commonly talked about experience, which was accumulated naturally by catching monsters or solving quests.
However, there was also karma that was completely opposite to this.
It was called bad karma or 'black karma', and this black karma was something that could be obtained by doing all kinds of bad things, such as killing the same user or killing NPCs.
Interestingly, if you accumulate bad karma like this and raise the level by 1 through that bad karma, or if you accumulate more than 10,000 black karma, you become a wicked person.
Of course, there was content for the wicked, and there was a city of only the wicked, and later, the wicked gathered and formed a great power, but anyway, there were more bad things than good things when you became a wicked person.
Once he became a wicked person, the only way to get back to normal was to go to the Hall of Souls, put down everything, give up all his karma to the Earth Mother and the Sky God, and practice repentance.
Usually, no one would do repentance, because not only would their level increase to 10, but they would have to sit still for a long time, doing nothing, just as much as the bad karma they had accumulated.
Not only that, but in the state of evil, he could be freely attacked by non-villain ordinary users, and if he died from being attacked like that, 20% of his total black karma was taken away.
With 20% black karma, it was such a large amount that a single death could cause a number of levels to drop in the case of a high-level villain.
The wicked were most afraid of death because they dropped the items they were carrying at random.
Of course, there were good things about being evil.
That's right... It was possible to attack ordinary users to accumulate bad karma, as well as steal items from ordinary users. On top of that, ordinary users could benefit from attacking the beings who were treated as NPCs.
For example, I was able to hunt special races that interact with normal users like elves, dwarves, and hobbits like monsters. If you catch a normal monster, you only get an item and you don't get karma, but if you catch a special race like this, you can get an item and accumulate bad karma.
The main reason why ordinary people chose the path of the wicked was that they could steal items from other users, and the second was that they could attack not only monsters but also special races.
These two things were the decisive reasons why people became wicked.
And of course, the lower the level, the easier it was to become a villain, so after EL's open beta service started, there was a lot of talk due to the indiscriminate PK of the wicked for a while.
'I forgot that now is the time for the wicked to run around.'
Sanghyuk smiled bitterly as he looked at the three users who stood in his way. The eyes of all three users were dyed red.
Red eyes... This was a clear sign that they were evil.
"I don't even bother talking about it anymore. Just think of the bad weather today."
It looked like they had already killed a lot of other users.
The self-assured appearance of the wicked... However, Sang-hyeok knew very well that such a confident appearance of the wicked would not last long.