Chapter 380 (1/2)

The list of rankings floated up.

Sun Wukong, yawning grandly as if he was bored out of his mind, noticed a name on the list, which made his eyes open wider in surprise. “Huh?” He had to doubt his own eyes for a moment there and hurriedly rubbed them. “Huh? Youngest brother?”

“Eh? Did you call for me?”

Another voice came from right next to him. Sun Wukong narrowed his eyes and spun his head to the side in response.

Smack—!

Twinkling stars floated up in front of the monkey next to him. While the poor creature began shielding its aching head with both of its hands, Sun Wukong replied in an irritated voice, “Not you, dumbass.”

“Ouch…But, but! Who else is here beside me?” The monkey sneaked a glance around their vicinity and asked back in protest, “I mean, Lord Great Sage has killed practically everyone else, after all…”

Indeed, corpses littered the vicinity of Sun Wukong and the monkey. Every single one of them used to be other participants that rushed in blindly to steal or rob him of his golden leaves.

Sun Wukong never planned to go easy on the participants that came to attack him. In truth, he was pleased by the fact that he got to fight against so many enemies like this.

Of course, none of the fights lasted for too long.

Sun Wukong explained himself, “Remember I told you some stuff about my youngest brother?”

“Aha! Yes, I remember. You said he’s strong enough to rival you, Lord Great Sage…”

“You see over here, on the message? The second place?”

“You mean, Kim Su-hyeun?”

“That’s the exact same name as my youngest bro.”

The monkey’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor at Sun Wukong’s explanation. “T-then, he’s our youngest brother?”

“Of course he’s ‘our’ youngest. You think he’s ‘your’ youngest?”

“B-but it’s possible that it’s a different person with the same name, you know?”

“Stop saying something unlucky, will ya? Imma just…”

“Heeeek?!”

When Sun Wukong threateningly raised his fist, the monkey quickly crouched while shielding its head with both hands again.

If this was any other time, a fist might have come flying in toward the monkey’s head, but the story was different this time. Sun Wukong muttered while sounding genuinely happy about something, “You know, I just have a good feeling about this.”

* * *

Su-hyeun doubted his own eyes for a moment there.

Sun Wukong?

“Wait, the third brother is here?” he thought.

He certainly didn’t read it wrong.

The message continued to hover in the air. No matter how many times he read it again or rubbed his eyes, the name “Sun Wukong” remained prominently on display on the rankings list.

Could it be someone else with the same name?

“That’s unlikely.”

From the get-go, a name like “Sun Wukong” wouldn’t be that common.

Also, Sun Wukong was currently climbing the tower of trials, according to what the Bull Demon King had said. By borrowing the power of the tower’s system to travel between different dimensions, it shouldn’t be entirely impossible for them to coincidentally run into each other in some dimension or the other.

Finally, he thought that Sun Wukong as the person ahead of him in the rankings despite himself having acquired 13 golden leaves made a lot of sense.

“I mean, he does have his cloning technique, so…”

No matter how strong Su-hyeun was, in the end, he was still only one person.

On the other hand, Sun Wukong possessed a unique skill called cloning technique. Since he could create dozens or hundreds of himself, searching for the golden leaves would be inevitably simpler for him.

Without a doubt, the number of golden leaves Su-hyeun or Luslec managed to find would be nowhere near the total Sun Wukong had in his possession.

In that case…

“It’s the real deal,” Su-hyeun said, the smile on his lips growing wider.

Sun Wukong was really here.

“Eh? What is?” Luslec asked.

“It seems my older brother is also in this place.”

“Excuse me? Your older brother?” Luslec sounded rather puzzled by that. “You have a sibling?”

“Ah, no. He’s not an actual relative but a sworn brother. But we don’t get to see each other often because of how far away he lives from me…”

He did think that they might never see each other again, however.

“It looks like we might run into each other in this place.”

Su-hyeun’s eyes were sparkling several times brighter than usual. He couldn’t help but think that they might get an unexpected but still welcome reunion.

[The next stage will begin in five minutes.]

Only five extra minutes were given, which implied that they would only get that much to rest.

Such a rest period seemed hopelessly inadequate considering that it came at the end of 12 hours of hard labor. To those who had exhausted their magical energy reserve and stamina, five minutes should feel like a mere blink of an eye.

Of course, for Su-hyeun, those five minutes felt like an eternity.

“Hurry up already,” Su-hyeun inwardly said.

He wanted the period to be over already so that they could enter the next stage as soon as possible, especially because he believed he’d get to meet Sun Wukong when that happens.

“Come on, hurry up.”

Minutes ticked by at a crawling pace.

Thanks to his breathing technique, he had plenty of magical energy left, and that rest period of five minutes was more than enough time for him to recover from the negligible level of fatigue he had accumulated so far.

[The second mission will now commence.]

[Survive against the false World Tree’s parasites.]

[Hunt down the false World Tree’s parasites.]

[Acquire 1,000,000 points.]

[In case you knock out or murder another participant, you can acquire half of that participant’s accumulated points.]

[You may escape from the stage by declaring that you surrender.]

[In case you surrender, half of your points will be transferred to the nearest participants.]

[Additional rewards will be granted depending on the number of additional points you acquire.]

[Remaining time: 24:00:00]

At first, it was competition, but now, they would be hunting.

They were indeed simple-enough topics. If there were some things of note here, then it would be that one, the fixed amount of points acted as the qualifications to move on to the next stage, and two, you’d earn extra rewards depending on the additional points you acquired.

Finally, you could also take away half of what the other participants possessed when you murdered them.

“The methods are either surrender or knock the other party out or just outright kill them. Overall, it’ll be a choice between hunting down either the parasites or the participants.”

While Su-hyeun was thinking that, the next set of messages continued.

[The number of golden leaves in your possession will now be tallied.]

[Golden leaves in possession: 13]

[You will earn an additional 10% of points with every extra golden leaf in your possession.]

[Additional acquired points: 120%]