Chapter 51 - Chapter 51 (1/2)

The reason for searching for the mages was quite simple.

'If my thoughts are correct....'

And that was to confirm whether the supposition he made back in the Penalty Zone was correct or not.

Meanwhile, the knights all began rushing violently towards him.

Jin-Woo calmly jumped and stepped on the shoulder of the knight closest to him, and leapt up into the air. That allowed him to take in the interior of the boss room in one go.

'Where are the mages?'

…...Found one!

Not too far from him, he spotted a lone mage.

'As I thought!'

What he witnessed back then was right.

Indeed, he didn't see wrong.

Back then, when he was being squeezed tight by the group of knights and only his arm could flail about helplessly, Jin-Woo spotted something through the narrow gaps he couldn't quite understand at the time.

'…....'

And that was a mage continuously chanting a spell.

A mage busy chanting a spell... at a casual glance, that wouldn't be something out of place. However, Jin-Woo still felt a strong sense of discord from that.

'If that's the case, then how come....'

How come he saw not one single spell flying at him?

Every attack he received came from the knights. Mages continued to chant, yet not once did they complete their spells and display their might.

No, there was that one time.

Back when one of them used something called Eyes of Detection and undid his Stealth. And when that was happening, for some reason, all the knights nearby stopped moving.

At first, he thought they only stopped because they had lost their target.

However, while he was hunting down the giant centipedes in the Penalty Zone, he belatedly realised something quite important.

Was it around the eighth centipede he killed? The level up message popped up and he clenched his fist tightly.

[Level up!]

His spent HP and MP were restored to full. After the short period of elation, a weird incongruency rushed in right afterwards.

'My level can rise this easily, yet why didn't I level up once in that place?'

The System said that his health wouldn't recover through level up, but crucially, it said nothing about him being unable to level up.

Indeed, his level rose up by 5 on his way towards the boss room, too. However, only during the Class Change Quest, he didn't level up once. Even though he endured for over six minutes and killed a hundred plus knights.

Mages busy chanting but not casting any spells.

Knights that apparently didn't give out any experience points.

When he took these actions of the two separate groups that puzzled him so much and combined them into one singular puzzle….

A new possibility formed in Jin-Woo's head.

'It could be....'

It was possible that all of the knights there were fake.

The reason why all those knights stopped moving when the mage used Eyes of Detection could be that... it wasn't because he had vanished, but because the mage had stopped casting.

'If my guess is correct...!!'

He needed to confirm it right now.

Jin-Woo ignored the knights reaching out to grab him and ran towards the mage while using their shoulders and heads as his footholds.

'….!'

He sensed the mage panicking after spotting his approach. And its casting speed had increased. Suddenly, the knights no longer attacked him without a plan and tried to gather around the mage to protect it.

With that, Jin-Woo was convinced now.

Tap!

He landed in front of the mage. Without a moment of hesitation, the dagger held in his right hand accurately pierced the mage's heart.

'Vital Points Targetting!'

Stab!

The mage soundlessly turned into a wisp of black smoke and disappeared from the view.

[You defeated a mage.]

And at the same time-!

Tumble!!!

Hundreds of knights rushing in to attack Jin-Woo all collapsed at the same time. It was as if they were puppets with their strings cut.

The knights collapsed on the floor were now, more or less, empty suits of armour.

'This was my answer!'

Jin-Woo cried out inwardly in elation.

He had to go through several near-death situations just to get to this conclusion.

Knights were nothing to worry about. No, it was the mages that controlled these knights.

The real goal was to kill them, instead.

'The first target my Knight Killer killed was a mage.....'

Jin-Woo couldn't help but chuckle as he looked down at the empty robe discarded on the floor. He had that much leeway now.

Of course, he couldn't continue to stand around doing nothing forever. After all, his quest hadn't ended yet.

Rumble...

The ground shook again.

Jin-Woo turned around and saw that the knights had him surrounded from almost all sides with no gaps to speak of.

Meaning, there were other mages controlling these batches of knights hidden somewhere.

Knights pounced on him. Jin-Woo's right hand moved so fast that naked eyes couldn't even see its shape.

Slice!!

The knights standing in front of him all got cut in half.

Jin-Woo's eyes opened real wide after witnessing that.

'Wow!'

It was worth investing 2.8 million Gold on this dagger. The blade of his Knight Killer pierced and sliced open the knights' armour as if they were made of paper.

It didn't seem that the saw-like blade was the only reason for this.

Just as the item description, 'dagger designed for use against knights' said, he could sense a strong magic-like power emanating from this Knight Killer.

'A weapon from the Store is actually pretty good, isn't it?'

There was a slight deviation from the accepted norm here. Normally, most people would think of weapons sold in stores as something one would use in a pinch when there was no better alternative.

'I shouldn't be dismissing Gold from now, huh....?'

At a bare minimum, this dagger seemed a lot more useful than weapons designed for a Hunter. He even thought that, if he sold weapons from the Store to other Hunters, he would become rich in no time at all.

Well, he didn't see any restrictions on the weapon descriptions that he couldn't give one to someone else, which was different from 'consumable' type items.

'Concentrate, man. Concentrate!'

Now wasn't the time to get distracted. Knights were still tirelessly rushing at him.

Swish! Slice!!

Jin-Woo dodged this way and that while cutting them down.

However....

'This will go on forever.'

When he shifted his gaze away just for a brief moment, far more knights than he had cut down appeared out of seemingly nowhere to fill the gap.

Slice!!

One more knight lost its head.

'I gotta find the mages.'

Jin-Woo utilised the shoulders of the headless knight and leapt up before the creature collapsed to the floor.

'Stealth!'

Jin-Woo's form blurred in an instant. Of course, he wasn't trying to hide via Stealth. What he was aiming for was....

[The mage has used 'Skill: Eyes of Detection'.]

[The mage has used 'Skill: Eyes of Detection'.]

[The mage has used 'Skill: Eyes of Detection'.]

….The ear-piercing mechanical beeps rang out from several directions.

Jin-Woo ran on top of the knights and quickly confirmed the positions of the eye-like symbols.

'There are a total of five mages!'

Jin-Woo targetted the closest mage to him.

'…...!'

The mage hurriedly gathered knights around it the moment Jin-Woo turned to stare at it, but....

Swish-!!

The Poison Fang of Kasaka flew out of his left hand in a straight line and stabbed accurately in the middle of the mage's forehead.

Stab!

[You've acquired 'Skill: Dagger Throw'.]