Debuff Master

Chapter 314

Stomping noises echoed behind them…

“Gwak! Gwaaak!”

“Gwuu Oooh!”

Vicious roars pervaded the streets.

“H-Help me! Aaack!”

The screams of their comrades getting caught and mauled by the Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls sounded terrifying.

Munch! Munch!

Crunch!

Crunch!

Slurp!

To top it off, the sound of the ghouls feasting on live human flesh sent chills down everyone’s spine, and the entire remaining party felt fear down to the pits of their stomachs.

Siegfried and the remaining party members gathered the very last ounce of their strength to run as fast as they could.

‘Fuck! We’re fucked!’

‘Aaack! What the fuck is this?!’

‘Fuck this shiiiit!’

Everyone thought of the exact same word while running away—the F word.

“Kyuuuu! Owner punk! Do something! Hamchi’s scared! Run faster! Faster! Faster! Kyuuu!”

“Shut up! I’m trying!”

“Run, owner punk, run!”

“Why don’t you run yourself?!” Siegfried screamed at the giant hamster, leisurely chatting away while perched on his shoulders.

‘What should I do? We’re going to get caught sooner or later if this keeps on…’ he tried to rack his brain to come up with a solution. Three of the party members had already been devoured by the Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls.

These ghouls possessed thirty percent faster Movement Speed and unlimited Stamina compared to a normal Adventurer, and the party was definitely going to get picked off one by one until they were annihilated at this rate.

The party members were definitely not going to last any longer as even Siegfried, the Stamina King, was starting to get tired from running.

‘I need a solution…’ He restlessly looked around when a cluster of buildings caught his eye.

This place, the City of the Dead, was built in a circular shape, so it was densely packed with buildings. It had so many buildings that it looked like London, and each block was crowded with buildings divided by narrow alleys.

‘That’s it!’

“The buildings!” Siegfried shouted after coming up with an idea to shake off the ghouls. We need to make use of the buildings! We’re going to get caught if we only run on the main roads! Break the windows, jump in, pop out from the other side, scale the building walls, and use the alleyways! Do whatever you can with the terrain!”

“B-But! We’re going to get separated if we do that…!” the party leader retorted.

“Then do you want to die together?!”

“…!”

“We need to scatter and survive! Survive! Use the buildings to your advantage!”

“Okay!”

The party members agreed to Siegfried’s idea and ran toward the buildings.

“I will hold them back!” Siegfried stayed behind to buy time for the party members.

He could tell that the others were running low on Stamina while he still had quite a decent amount left. He had to buy time for them to increase their chances of survival.

Thud!

He swept away the incoming Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls with Splitting Heaven and Earth, but he didn’t expect the skill to kill them. After all, these ghouls were all Adventurers who were of equal or greater level than him in the first place, and they were probably using better gears than him.

[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]

[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]

[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]

In fact, only three Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls died from Splitting Heaven and Earth.

However, Siegfried’s main objective in using the skill was to hamper the ghouls’ movements, and he succeeded.

‘Next is slow!’

He activated Discharge and placed down two Shadow Swamps to cover a massive area, and the debuff field’s effect slowed the ghouls down while the shadows from the ground immobilized them.

Shwaaa!

The shadows did what they did best—they clung to the ghouls to stop them from moving.

“Let’s run!”

“Kyu! Run, owner punk, run! Kyuuuu!”

Siegfried used this chance to make a run himself.

“Gwuaaaak!”

There were some Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls that tried to catch him, but there was no way Siegfried was going to get caught by a handful of ghouls.

Whooosh!

Bam! Pukeok!

Siegfried used Flying Sword to control his +15 Gaia’s Fist and smash the heads of the ghouls coming after him. Then, he smashed a window on the second floor of a building and jumped into it.

He did not stop there. He smashed the windows again and jumped into the building beside it, and then he rushed to the rooftop to jump from rooftop to rooftop.

Tak!

Siegfried jumped over three buildings in just a short amount of time. He ran on the rooftops and got as far away as he could, and there were only two ghouls chasing after him at the moment.

‘I can easily take care of two,’ Siegfried smirked and waited for the right timing before throwing his +15 Gaia’s Fist just when the ghouls were about to jump onto the next building.

Bam! Bam!

The +15 Gaia’s Fist struck the first ghoul before ricocheting to the other and then finally flying back to Siegfried’s hand like a boomerang.

Splat! Splat!

The two ghouls in mid-air fell eight meters and became a puddle of rot.

Squirm…! Squirm…!

As disgusting as it sounded, the two continued to squirm despite looking like rotting pancakes. They were probably not going to be able to move until their body recovered from the fall, which was definitely going to take a while.

“Nice shot, owner punk!”

“Let’s run!”

Siegfried did not even have the time to admire his work as he immediately started running once more.

“Gwuak!”

“Gwuaaak!”

This place was still teeming with the Dimensional Adventurer Ghouls hunting for the living, so he had to be always on the move.

***

Thirty minutes later, Siegfried hid in the basement of an old commercial building that was a bit distant from the danger zone teeming with ghouls.

“Huff…! Huff…! I’m gonna die…! Ack!”

“Good job, owner punk!” Hamchi said as he took out a handkerchief with a pink heart embroidered on it and wiped Siegfried’s sweat.

“Ah, that was fucking scary… I thought I was in a horror movie…”

It was then.

Step!

Siegfried grabbed his +15 Gaia’s Fist after hearing the sound of footsteps.

“Siegfried-nim!”

Fortunately, the owner of the footsteps weren’t enemies.

“Here you are!”

“See! I told you I saw him come in here!”

It turned out that the party leader and two other party members coincidentally saw Siegfried enter this building.

“Thank you, Siegfried-nim. We didn’t get annihilated, thanks to you.”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Siegfried shook his head in response to the party leader’s praises. “It was a narrow escape…”

“But we would’ve been annihilated if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Haha…”

“Haa… I have no idea what we’re supposed to do now. The raid party seems to have been decimated, and our party members are scattered all over the place…”

“Let us focus on resting for now while trying to come up with a plan,” Siegfried said as he leaned on a wall and sat down.

‘Haa… We’re really fucked…’

He said that they ought to think of a plan while resting, but Siegfried knew that they were in an extremely bad situation.

The City of the Dead was proving itself worthy of being a Raid Dungeon, and Siegfried could not help but feel that the Raid Dungeon’s difficulty was simply bizarre.

Who would imagine that the game would not only split the entry of the parties at different times but also turn them into undead monsters?

“Are raids always… this difficult?” Siegfried asked.

“It’s not usually this difficult… I think this Raid Dungeon is one of the most difficult ones so far… Splitting the raid party and turning the party members into monsters… This is something unprecedented even for me, and I’ve raided the Raid Dungeon more than a hundred times,” the party leader replied.

“My luck must be quite rotten for this to happen on my first raid…” Siegfried grumbled.

“I-I guess you’re not wrong… Hahaha…”

The party leader could not help but agree with Siegfried. It was definitely bizarre for a newbie to enter such a dungeon on their first time raiding when even a veteran who had raided it hundreds of times hadn’t experienced it even once.

‘Ah… How should we clear this? The other parties are annihilated while our party members are scattered all over the place. Even if we reach the boss room, it’s questionable if we can even hold a candle against the boss.

Argh…! I don’t think we can even reach the boss room! Are we going to be stuck here and eventually turn into ghouls?’

He would lose control of his character for many days or until a different raid party entered and cleared the Raid Dungeon. Of course, he would resurrect forty-nine hours after his death as a ghoul, but it meant suffering the penalty from death, which was quite painful at his level.

Regardless of what happened, he was bound to suffer quite a significant loss.

‘I came to screw Chae Hyung-Seok, but it seems like I’m going to get screwed as well… Tsk… Is he already a ghoul?’ Siegfried thought of his original target, Chae Hyung-Seok.

It was highly likely Chae Hyung-Seok had already turned into a ghoul and was wandering the city right now, but Siegfried was more concerned about his own well-being for the moment, so he stopped thinking of Chae Hyung-Seok.

‘I wonder if the old man and Taycan are safe…? It’s fine since the old man is an Adventurer, but Taycan is going to be unstoppable if he becomes a ghoul…’

Unfortunately, there was no way to tell if Yong Tae-Pung and Taycan were still human.

Siegfried stood up after recovering his Stamina.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” asked the party leader.

“We’ll have to go to the boss room, anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right…”

“Alright, everyone, time to get up. Let’s take it slow. There aren’t that many of us, so it’s unlikely that we’ll get caught.”

Siegfried was right. There was a vast difference between a group of twenty to thirty people moving at once and a group of four or five people. In other words, they would have an easier time sneaking into the boss room.

After all, there was a reason most covert operations were conducted by a select few elites, even in real life, right?

“All right, let’s go,” the party leader said and followed Siegfried.

***

Perhaps it was because only a few of them were moving, but they didn’t run into any ghouls on the way.

Of course, Hamchi’s skill Meerkat~! and Siegfried’s Inzaghi’s Compass played a huge role in letting them move safely.

“Sniff! Sniff! I smell danger over there, owner punk!”

“Really? I guess we should backtrack then.”

Siegfried relied on Hamchi to steer them clear of troubles, and the party was able to easily avoid the ghouls thanks to that.

“Hmm… This place is no good. I think there’s something over there,” Siegfried muttered while looking at his compass.

The Inzaghi’s Compass could detect the ghouls in hiding and the traps to ensure the safety of the party. It was surprising how this compass was still working when the other normal compasses brought by the party members were spinning in circles, but they were able to easily reach the boss room thanks to it.

“It is quite amazing how you have that compass and your pet,” said the party leader in awe.

“Haha, it is not that amazing,” Siegfried replied as he awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

“Kyu! Owner punk! Someone’s coming!”

“Enemy?”

“No! It’s a human!”

The party waited for the human to emerge from the fog.

“Huh? Isn’t he one of the scouts? Supreme Thief-nim! Over here!” the party leader waved his hand and called out to the Adventurer who had emerged from the fog.

The ID of the Adventurer was Supreme Thief.

Why was his ID so chuuni?

You’re just jealous, that’s why.