Debuff Master

Chapter 356

‘They're already here?’ Chae Hyung-Seok was surprised.

The Adventurer whom Chae Hyung-Seok had agreed to purchase the item from walked over to the knight captain and smirked before asking, “See? It’s Desire, right?”

“Yes, your report was accurate.”

“Then please give me my reward.”

“They will give you the bounty if you bring this proof to an Embassy of the Marchioni Empire,” the knight captain said as he gave a paper stamped with the seal of the empire.

“Yahoo! Easy money, baby! I hit the jackpot!” the Adventurer exclaimed out of joy after receiving the paper.

He felt like he hit the lottery. He wanted to convert his item to cash and was looking for a buyer, but he chanced upon a buyer named Desire.

Of course, he was already aware that Desire was wanted by the Marchioni Empire, so he reported the matter to the empire’s embassy, which resulted in him receiving the bounty of one hundred thousand gold.

“Wow! I reported this just in case it was actually you, but—Thank you, Hyung-Seok hyung! Thanks for the gold! Hahaha!”

“Hey! You fucking son of a bitch! What the fuck are you doing?! You bastard… I’m going to report you…” Chae Hyung-Seok lashed out.

The Adventurer cut him off and asked, “Report? To who? Pfft! I didn’t scam anyone here~ We haven’t even traded yet, so I can just cancel our trade~”

“Y-You…!”

“Besides, did I even scam you? Did I take your money and refuse to give you the item? This is force majeure, I tell you~ Go ahead and try reporting me~ See if it sticks! Kekeke!”

Chae Hyung-Seok suddenly felt the urge to stab the Adventurer to death. He never imagined in his wildest dreams that he would have to report him instead of selling him the item.

“Then, I’ll be on my way now~ Good luck~” the Adventurer sneered one last time before he ran away and disappeared into the alley, leaving behind Chae Hyung-Seok with the knights.

“Fuck….” Chae Hyung-Seok cursed after realizing that he had been scammed. However, what pissed him off the most was the fact that an insect that would not even be able to look him in the eye in the past had dared to make fun of him.

“Today’s quite fucked up…” Chae Hyung-Seok muttered under his breath as the imperial knights started walking toward him.

There was nothing he could do against these knights as they were not ordinary knights but rather Knights of Retribution.

The Knights of Retribution was a knight order specifically formed to catch Adventurers who had committed a crime on the continent, and these knights were at least Level 270.

To make matters worse, the knight captain currently standing in Chae Hyung-Seok’s way was a whopping Level 299 and was on the cusp of becoming a Master.

Chae Hyung-Seok was practically a sitting duck as he was a non-combatant whose main gears had gotten scammed out of him by Siegfried.

“Kill me,” Chae Hyung-Seok said before he flashed an arrogant grin and added, “I can just come back to life.”

The knight captain replied, “We will not kill you now.”

“What?”

“Put the criminal in restraints!”

The knights took out a magical rope and bound Chae Hyung-Seok before forcing him to his knees.

“Keuk…!”

“The sins you have committed against His Imperial Majesty are not something that can be resolved by death.”

“What are you planning to do to me?” Chae Hyung-Seok gritted his teeth and asked.

This time, it was the knight captain who grinned and replied, “You will find out soon.”

***

While Chae Hyung-Seok was being arrested thanks to the tip-off by an Adventurer…

“Why was he here? Was he trying to buy an artifact?” Siegfried tilted his head in confusion and asked.

“He was looking for quite the high-spec artifact.”

“So, did you sell one to him?” Siegfried asked before he narrowed his eyes and questioned, “Don’t tell me, did you sell one to him?”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Really?”

“Yes! Believe me!”

“If you’re lying, then…”

“I swear! Do you think I’m crazy? Why would I sell an artifact to your enemy?!” Quandt retorted while profusely sweating. Indeed, the way he was acting right now was the complete opposite of how he had treated Chae Hyung-Seok.

“Besides, the Marchioni Empire has set a bounty on him! Do you think I’ll be crazy enough to sell an artifact to someone like him?! Who knows what the emperor is going to do to me if he found out that I sold an artifact to someone he had branded a criminal? It’s not going to stop at having all of our branches on the Marchioni Empire getting shuttered overnight!”

“Hmm…”

“Regardless of your relationship with him, doing business with that Adventurer is akin to turning the entire Marchioni Empire into our enemy for a few spare coins!

"Then, those Autonika and Mercedes bastards are going to fill the void and take most of our market share!”

“I guess you’re right…”

It was only after Quandt gave a bunch of reasons that Siegfried finally stopped suspecting him.

“Bah! Why are you so suspicious? Don’t tell me you can’t trust me! I’ll be very sad if you do!”

“N-No…”

“Have you forgotten how dedicated we have been to you? Kuheok…!”

“Hey, don’t start crying now…”

The roles were suddenly reversed. Siegfried was the one profusely sweating right now.

‘Damn it! How am I supposed to placate a crying muscular dwarf?!’

In the end, it took quite a while before he managed to calm the crying dwarf.

“Alright, alright! So stop crying!”

“O-Okay…”

“I won’t suspect you ever again, and thank you for now selling any artifact to him.”

“You have always been our main priority…”

“Alright! I got it already!” Siegfried exclaimed to make sure that the dwarf would not start crying once again.

“It will take me a week to finish your weapon.”

“I will see you then. Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Siegfried turned around and looked at Hamchi.

“Let’s go, Hamchi!”

“Kyu! Let’s go!”

He finally left the Bavarian Workshop after successfully commissioning his soon-to-be main weapon, the Vanquisher’s Grasp, but…

Murmur… Murmur…

He noticed a crowd gathered at the city square on his way to the Warp Gate.

‘Did something happen again?’ he wondered as he approached the crowd and took a peek.

“Huh?”

A man was hanging on a cross at the center of the square.

“What the hell? Isn’t that Chae Hyung-Seok?”

The man hanging on the cross was none other than Chae Hyung-Seok, who had been refused any service by the Bavarian Workshop just now.

***

“I would like to express my gratitude to His Majesty, the King, and His Excellency, the Mayor, for allowing us, the empire, to execute a wanted criminal in this city!”

The knight captain who had arrested Chae Hyung-Seok a while ago announced to the crowd gathered at the square.

“This Adventurer right here! He dared to commit Lese-Majeste by insulting His Imperial Majesty! Therefore, I, the Captain of the Knights of Retribution of the Marchioni Empire, will hereby publicly execute this criminal!”

Then, the crowd loudly cheered in response.

“Good!”

“Those Adventurers deserve to be publicly executed!”

“Serves them right!”

“They think they can do whatever they want in our lands!”

The reaction of the crowd was a testament to how much the gamers mistreated the NPCs on the continent.

The NPCs were no longer as welcoming as they once were toward the Adventurers. These immortal beings were nothing more than nuisances from another world, and they were being treated as a bunch of out-of-control hooligans.

This was something the Adventurers had brought upon themselves. They felt no guilt in causing trouble left and right as this was just a game for them, and the fact that there were some Adventurers who would seduce innocent NPC girls just to film adult content with them before abandoning them once they got pregnant had further enraged the NPCs.

It was so bad that the NPCs on the continent made sure to educate their daughters to stay away from Adventurers.

“Everyone! You may stone this Adventurer if you wish!” the knight captain shouted.

The NPCs threw stones, food, bottles, and a bunch of other stuff at Chae Hyung-Seok.

“Die! Go to hell!”

“You filthy bastard!”

“Kyaaaak ptooey!”

There were some NPCs that spat at Chae Hyung-Seok’s face.

This was the method chosen by the Marchioni Empire when it came to punishing the Adventurers. They would turn them into a public spectacle first before executing them in front of a crowd.

‘Fuck this…! You bunch of pixels dares to…!’ Chae Hyung-Seok gnashed his teeth in anger.

However, someone in the crowd lit the fuse that made his anger explode.

“Bwahahaha!”

It was none other than Siegfried.

“Eat this! Stone pitch!”

“Kyu! Throw it! Throw it!”

Siegfried was having the time of his life pretending to be a pitcher pitching stones at Chae Hyung-Seok.

“Han Tae-Sung, you son of a—Ack!” Chae Hyung-Seok was about to curse when he screamed in agony.

Pukeok!

A stone thrown by Siegfried hit him smack center on the face.

“Hey, you’re looking good, Hyung-Seok! Hang in there, buddy!”

“Kyu! Serves you right, Chae Hyung-Seok! Kyuuuu!”

As despicable as it may sound, Siegfried and Hamchi mocked Chae Hyung-Seok one last time before disappearing into the crowd. This was a classic case of mocking someone and quickly running away, not giving them the chance to retort.

C-Crack…!

Chae Hyung-Seok gnashed his teeth, and he started trembling in rage.

‘Revenge… Almost… I need to endure this… I can’t go down like this…!’ He mustered superhuman self-control to suppress his anger for fear of suffering another stroke.

He had fallen so far down that he was not even allowed to get mad anymore.

***

Right after Siegfried returned to the Proatine Kingdom…

‘Ah, I think the bounty placed by the empire is a bit too big…’

He thought while mechanically signing the stack of documents on his table.

‘Those Genesis bastards are definitely going to report him just to get their hands on the bounty…’

Siegfried’s goal was to destroy every single one of the Genesis Guild members rather than just Chae Hyung-Seok. However, it was going to be difficult for him to achieve his goal at this rate.

‘Hmm… I guess I have no choice. I’ll need the emperor to cooperate with me,’ he decided to request help from Emperor Stuttgart.

He was planning to request that the emperor remove the bounty and just continue to hunt Chae Hyung-Seok down so that he could destroy the Genesis Guild.

How was this going to help?

If the empire continued to pressure Chae Hyung-Seok by hunting him down, then it was highly likely that he would sell everything he had in the game to repay his debt to Ma Dong-Po and just quit the game.

What Siegfried wanted was for Chae Hyung-Seok to become so broke that he would have to live a miserable life, and this wasn't the time to pressure him into a corner just yet.

“Ah, I have no idea why I’m so nice… I’m actually writing an appeal to the emperor on behalf of my beloved Hyung-Seok~ Hehe~” Siegfried said while grinning from ear to ear.

It was quite ironic how he was calling himself nice when he was planning to make Chae Hyung-Seok’s life more miserable than it already was.

Knock! Knock!

It was then that somebody knocked on Siegfried’s office door.

“Who is it?”

“Your Majesty! It is I, Decimato! I have returned for a while from my training, and I dropped by to greet Your Majesty!”

“Oh! Come on in!”

Siegfried warmly welcomed Decimato.

Decimato was a Great Wizard, and he was arguably the most powerful weapon of the Proatine Kingdom. However, he was currently studying magic under the guidance of Daode Tianzun, so it was quite difficult to see him these days.

“I, Decimato, greet His Majesty, the King.”

“Welcome! How is your training coming along?”

“It is truly difficult. Elder Daode Tianzun’s teachings are quite tough, so…”

“But you still have to do your best,” Siegfried warmly encouraged him.

The two chatted about various things when Decimato suddenly changed the subject.

“Your Majesty, may I ask you something.”

“Of course, what is it?”

“That is…”

“…?”

“Did you hire Carlisle by any chance?”

“Who’s that?” Siegfried tilted his head in confusion.

To be honest, he looked quite stupid right now…