Debuff Master

Chapter 587

“Han Tae-Sung, that slippery little rat... All of this will be for nothing at this rate...” Chae Hyung-Seok gnashed his teeth and growled in anger. He looked very serious right now, as he knew Siegfried very well.

In other words, he knew that Siegfried was very adept at these kinds of situations, and he was a very shrewd and cunning person who would do whatever it took to survive.

“It’s highly possible he hid somewhere and logged out...” Guderian chimed in.

Guderian was an Adventurer, so he understood an Adventurer's line of thinking.

“You’re right, Chae Hyung-Seok. This could be all for nothing at this rate. If he hid and logged out then, we failed the request.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“So we just wasted our time.”

Vladimir overheard their conversation and asked, “What do you mean by that? Are you saying we lost him?”

“I’m saying there’s a possibility we did,” Chae Hyung-Seok replied.

“How can we lose him in this kind of situation?”

“He probably crossed over to the other world, so how can we catch him? Do you have a method to forcefully summon him from the other world?”

It went without saying that an NPC had no way to forcefully make an Adventurer log into the game.

“And do you think he’s just going to sit around and do nothing in the other world?”

“What can he do?”

“He’s going to call his comrades,” Chae Hyung-Seok said. Then, he grimaced and continued, “He will share his current location with his comrades, and reinforcements will come to save him.”

“...!”

“Once the reinforcements are here, then an opening for him to escape will present itself,” Chae Hyung-Seok explained from an Adventurer’s point of view.

He knew very well what Siegfried was going to do in the real world, as he was also an Adventurer himself.

“It will be difficult to kill him once his reinforcements arrive, which means it will be impossible for us to stop him from reaching a temple of the Martial God.”

“I see...” Vladimir muttered, looking displeased by their current situation.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it. It was not like Chae Hyung-Seok would magically come up with a solution or cross over to the other world and do something about it.

“So what do we do?” Vladimir asked.

“We will fight them head-on,” Chae Hyung-Seok replied without any hesitation. Then, he added, “We will crush the reinforcements together with him once they come.”

“A head-on confrontation...”

“We can’t afford to lose him this time. This is the perfect opportunity to squeeze the life out of him, so we must kill him no matter how many casualties we will suffer.”

“I agree,” Vladimir replied with a nod. Then, he continued, “I will go request reinforcements from the church.”

“That’s a good choice.”

“How long will it take for his reinforcements to arrive?”

“It will take a long time for them. We have a warp gate, but they don’t, so it’s going to take more than four hours for them to come here, even with their fastest method of transportation.”

The Church of Osric had seized control of every Warp Gate in the Tundra Forest, and they made sure to destroy every Warp Gate that Siegfried could use to escape. Thus, it would take extremely long for Siegfried’s allies to come and help him.

But that was not the end of it...

The Church of Osric set up a special device across the Tundra Forest. This device emitted a certain wave that prevented teleportation magic from working, and they prepared this just in case Siegfried decided to use a Teleportation Scroll to escape.

“So our reinforcements will arrive quicker.”

“Exactly.”

“So we will search for Siegfried van Proa while bolstering our forces with our reinforcements and prepare to face those who will come to save him.”

“That’s the best course of action.”

Chae Hyung-Seok and Vladimir came to an agreement that preparing their forces to clash against the enemy reinforcement was the best they could do right now, as they had lost track of Siegfried.

***

Tae-Sung was starting to get anxious.

– The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep.

Both Seung-Gu and Cheon Woo-Jin couldn't be reached at all.

“We went to their houses, but there was no response from either of them.”

His bodyguards even sent people to Seung-Gu and Cheon Woo-Jin’s houses, but they could not be reached even with that.

“They must be playing the game then...” Tae-Sung muttered anxiously.

He knew the only reason neither of them could be contacted was if both of them were playing the game. One of the issues with virtual reality games was that the player could not be contacted once they logged into the game, even if someone visited their house.

“What should I do...? I need help right now...”

Tae-Sung started to rack his brains, trying to come up with a solution.

Then, his eyes suddenly lit up after an idea popped into his head.

“Ah! There was that solution!”

He hurriedly ran to the room where he set up his computer, and he immediately booted his computer up. The computer only took a few seconds to boot up, and he hurriedly opened G-Tube and started live streaming.

Of course, he turned his webcam around, as he did not want to expose his face yet.

“That’s right! I can just ask the viewers to contact them for me!”

This was the idea Tae-Sung came up with. He planned to ask his viewers to relay the news to the Proatine Kingdom or come to the Tundra Forest to assist him.

It went without saying that this was an excellent idea.

– [mnibjb] has entered the livestream!

– [MusclePig] has entered the livestream!

– [ii111ii] has entered the livestream!

– [CurlyNoodles] has entered the livestream!

Viewers started flooding his stream the moment he started it. It felt like everyone had been waiting for him to start streaming; the number of viewers ballooned to fifty thousand viewers in just ten minutes.

But that was not all...

– [parksh2666] has donated 50,000 won!

– [RevolutionIsTheAnswer] has donated 1,500,000 won!

– [Jseew] has donated 300,000 won!

Donations from a few thousand won to millions of won started flooding in from the viewers, and Tae-Sung earned more than ten million won in the blink of an eye.

“T-This is not why I started this livestream... Haha... Hahaha...” Tae-Sung laughed awkwardly after seeing the donations. It was normal for him to be in disbelief, as he merely started livestreaming to ask for help, but he ended up pocketing more than forty million won.

‘No, this isn’t the time for that!’ Tae-Sung reminded himself. Then, he blocked all donations and froze the chat for now.

It would be impossible for him to get his message across if tens of thousands of viewers were typing and donations were popping up left and right on the screen.

“Hello, everyone. I would like to first apologize to all of you. I started this livestream because I needed to ask a favor from you, so I will be freezing all chats and donations for now. I apologize once again,” Tae-Sung asked for his viewers’ consideration. Then, he went straight to the main point, “I’m in a bit of danger, and what happened was...”

He proceeded to explain his current predicament to his viewers and sought their help.

***

Tae-Sung went back to his VR capsule and booted up the BNW client.

The reason he was logging back into the game was very simple. The news of his current situation would reach the Proatine Kingdom soon and even the viewers were going to come to his aid.

However, it did not mean he could just sit back and relax.

‘Chae Hyung-Seok probably knows my intention. He’s going to expect the reinforcements and start preparing traps for them. I need to take the risk and do something.’

Siegfried knew what Chae Hyung-Seok would do, as he knew him very well.

‘I have to go.’

He took out Inzaghi’s Clairvoyance and activated its ability. The Inzaghi’s Clairvoyance scanned the entire Tundra Forest, and then a minimap of the entire area popped up in front of Siegfried’s eyes with markers for everything in it.

He could see that the enemy had already started looking for him judging by how they were spread all over the map, but what caught his eyes were not the enemies searching for him but the objects spread all over the field.

“Those crazy bastards...” he growled under his breath and gnashed his teeth.

There were tens of thousands of landmines and boobytraps all over the Tundra Forest, and there were even spatial distorting devices erected that could interfere with teleportation spells.

To make matters worse, the one and only working Warp Gate had a huge red dot on it with the word Vladimir above it, which meant that the Red Cardinal himself was protecting it.

‘Should I just make a run for it...?’ Siegfried contemplated after seeing the minimap.

He checked the minimap and tried to find any openings he could exploit to break through the encirclement, but every possible route had alarm systems installed on it, making it impossible for him to escape even if he had the power of something similar to a map hack.

In other words, it would be impossible for him to escape from the Tundra Forest even if he had a maphack on his side.

‘So I can freely move around but I can’t leave...’ He understood what he could and could not do in his current situation.

Then, his only option was to...

‘Let’s get moving,’ Siegfried got out from his hideout with Inzaghi’s Clairvoyance on his eye.

Whoosh!

A blizzard was raging across the Tundra Forest, and darkness had fallen upon it. The faint glow of the moon could be seen in the sky, but it was so negligible that it could not illuminate the ground.

“Arise,” Siegfried commanded and used Summon Darkness.

[Summon Darkness]

[Allows the user to summon a Night Stalker.]

[The Night Stalkers may not be summoned in daylight, but they are extremely versatile units.]

[They can be used to scout or attack your enemies.]

[The stats of the Night Stalkers will depend on the user’s level, and they may be upgraded later on.]

“Secure and scout the perimeter. Kill them if you can, but don’t do anything rash. Just observe them from a distance if you can’t kill them.”

The Night Stalkers blended into the darkness and spread across the forest the moment Siegfried gave his commands.

“Let’s see...” Siegfried muttered, checking his surroundings after sending the Night Stalkers out. He spotted a landmine buried just ten meters away from him. “That’s it.”

He flew with his Black Crow Wingsuit to avoid leaving any tracks behind and reached the landmine. Then, he carefully dug out the landmine and covered the hole with snow before planting the landmine thirty meters away from its original location.

“Someone’s bound to step on it,” Siegfried muttered before quickly climbing up a tree like a monkey.

It was then.

“Search thoroughly!”

“The bastard is cunning! Make sure you’re alert at all times!”

“Shoot the flare the moment you spot him!”

Siegfried revealed an insidious smirk after seeing three zealots pass right under him. Coincidentally, there were no other red dots on the minimap one hundred meters around them.

What did that mean?

‘Time to die,’ Siegfried thought, spreading his Black Crow Wingsuit and throwing projectiles at the zealots.

Shwik!

The projectiles penetrated their skulls before flying back to Siegfried.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

All three fell dead on the snowy ground without being able to make a single sound.

‘Let’s put them away quickly,’ Siegfried jumped down and transformed his +13 Vanquisher’s Grasp into a shovel.

The snowy ground was frozen solid, but using mana allowed the +13 Vanquisher’s Grasp to dig through it like a hot knife going through butter. Of course, he did not forget to rummage through their pockets and loot whatever valuable before burying them.

He brought the snow piled on the tree tops and covered the traces of blood.

Whiiiiing!

Fortunately, the blizzard was still raging, so all tracks of him digging and burying the bodies would disappear in just five minutes.

"Heh." Siegfried revealed a cold smirk and muttered, “It’s my turn now, you bastards...”

He planned to show off his guerilla tactics to the Church of Osric and annoy them as much as he could while waiting for his reinforcements.