Chapter 186
The final roster settled at a little over a hundred and fifty people. The original plan had aimed for a hundred, but the number climbed on its own as Do-Jin kept filtering applicants and saw no reason to cut off capable people just to stick to a clean figure. Recruitment itself ended in less than a day, and that same ruthless tempo carried straight into the next phase without delay.
[Title: Recruitment Closed Notice]
[All slots for the quest participation have now been filled.]
Following the announcement post, an email went out to everyone selected as a raid member. The message listed the assembly location and clearly stated that anyone who failed to respond within thirty minutes would lose their spot to the next person on the list.
Do-Jin barely had time to look away before the replies flooded back, and it took only nineteen minutes for every response to come in. By then, high-level players were already converging on the Valis Mountain Range, and the air around the place was starting to feel heavy with intent.
***
It took time for the entire raid force to gather in the Valis Mountain Range. A few of them were close enough to arrive quickly, but others had to chain teleports across long distances just to make it in. Do-Jin used the downtime to tighten the plan and push the success rate as high as he could.
LoadedAlton: We've secured one additional access route.
The message came from a spiritualist who’d dumped everything he had into earth spirits and made it to the area early. He was one of the players Do-Jin had sent out to scout around the Cult of Ruin’s hidden base.
Prickly: Someone in a white robe just went in and came back out through one of the routes.
This time, the update came from a ranger. While the scouts kept their eyes on the area in real time, the Cult of Ruin bastards were showing their faces more often than expected.
They are jumpy because of the ones I killed.
Two people who were supposed to come back with victims never returned, so of course, their nerves were shot. There was even a good chance they already knew those two were dead.
Do-Jin had wiped most of the traces, but he hadn’t bothered to spend forever cleaning up. If they found the spot, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out that someone had hit them. Even so, knowing that didn’t mean they could suddenly do anything about it.
Hiding in a cave while plotting their evil schemes doesn't seem easy.
People with things to hide couldn’t afford to be loud or reckless. They’d try something eventually, but by the time they finished arguing and settled on a plan, Do-Jin’s side would already be prepared. After that, they wouldn’t even get the chance to choose their next move.
“Do-Jin, five more just got here. That’s everyone.”
Theresa walked over as she spoke. She’d been helping Do-Jin keep the scouting teams in check while messages kept pouring in. Her eyes flicked to the boy glued to Do-Jin’s side, the weird kid who never answered anyone, no matter who tried talking to him. She’d asked about him earlier and gotten nothing useful, so she assumed he was some quest NPC and let it go.
He knows what he’s doing anyway.
Do-Jin turned toward her. “Everyone’s here? Good. We can start right away.”
Right then, a small hand grabbed at his clothes. Do-Jin looked down at Orfen, rested his hand on the boy’s head, and spoke quietly. “The guys who hurt you are our problem now. We’ll deal with them, so stay here and wait.”
Orfen, or rather the children within him, didn’t say a word. They just stared at Do-Jin and the nearby players with a flat expression.
Do-Jin gave their heads one last pat and said, “Let’s begin.”
The moment he spoke, the livestream went live. The staff waiting outside triggered the broadcast exactly on cue.
└ Yo, it’s live, it’s live!
└ Holy shit, I thought my neck was gonna snap from waiting.
└ Nah, but actually, what the fuck is this pacing? Dude posts a notice, and less than a day later, we’re already full send.
└ This feels illegal, like, the server admins should be asking questions. LOL
The viewer count blasted past 100,000 in an instant and kept climbing without slowing down. At this rate, it was impossible to tell how high it would go. However, Do-Jin didn’t spare the chat a single thought. In this moment, he poured all his focus into wiping the Cult of Ruin off the map.
“Everyone who went out scouting made it back, right?” Do-Jin asked, his attention fully locked on the operation in front of him. “I’ll start by handing out the consumables we’ll be using for this quest.”
He began distributing supplies to the gathered raid members. Blessing Scrolls went out first, followed by Magic Scrolls, mana stone bombs, and potions packed with all kinds of effects. Each player received so many that it stopped feeling generous and bordered on excessive. They honestly wondered if it was even possible to use all of it in one day.
A rough estimate put the cost of consumables around ten million won per person. These were high-level players who were used to spending serious money and were still investing heavily into their builds, yet even they looked caught off guard.
“Uh... do we really need this much?” one of them asked.
└ Holy shit! Just getting to play with Do-Jin already feels insane, and now he’s handing out loot like some deranged person hosting a giveaway stream.
└ Did you not hear him? He said it’s for the quest. Something in there’s about to get deleted.
└ How the hell do you even use all that? Are we killing a dragon or what lol.
└ Look at the mana stone bombs. They’re sparkling like museum pieces. People would hesitate to use that for crafting, and he turned them into explosives.
People who actually knew about items weren’t just shocked by the sheer amount. They knew that an absurd sum of cash had clearly gone into picking out the cream of the crop. And since everything had been bought in bulk straight from Elthomagia, all the magic-related items came out top-tier without exception.
└ How much money do you think he burned on a single quest? That’s easily over 1.5 billion won.
└ Money’s not the issue. The stream’s only been live for a few minutes and it’s already past 250,000 viewers.
└ Exactly. If you think of it as content budget, that’s more than worth it. Look at how many subs this channel has.
The resupply wrapped up almost instantly, leaving both the players receiving them and the viewers watching completely stunned.
“No one knows what kind of situation we’ll run into once we go inside. We don’t have time to carefully plan things out on the spot. That’s why we’re going to push through with overwhelming firepower, enough that it won’t matter what happens.”
Do-Jin shared the entry route locations marked by the scouting teams with the raid.
“These points you’re seeing now are the secured access routes. We’re not entering through narrow paths. Those will just get blocked off. We’ll push in through the three widest routes. If you encounter the enemy, don’t hold back. Use everything you’ve got today without saving anything.”
Then, he quickly split the players into raid teams. Melee, ranged, and support classes were mixed at proper ratios and sent to their positions immediately.
—Squad 1 in position.
—Squad 2 has arrived.
—Squad 3 ready.
—Demolition team ready. Give the signal to blow it and we’ll move in.
Everyone moved with quick, practiced precision. It was the kind of speed belonging to players who’d been living in the endgame for ages. With every last piece in place, the signal was sent out to all players.
Do-Jin: Begin.
Almost immediately, a massive explosion thundered through a remote corner of the Valis Mountain Range.
***
The priests of the Cult of Ruin froze in shock. It hadn’t been long since the two who went out to buy supplies failed to return. After a search began and their deaths were confirmed, the cultists reported the situation to the main sect. They were tightening security while waiting for instructions when explosions suddenly erupted from two of the passages leading outside.
“What’s going on?!”
At the senior priest’s shout, the lower-ranking members scrambled into motion. “We’ll check immediately!”
The priests of Laves and the Holy Knights moved toward the direction of the explosions.
“Th-there are intruders!” A frantic shout burst out from the opposite side.
Then, another voice followed from a different direction. “There are enemies in this passage too!”
“Wh-what is happening all of a sudden?!”
For countless years, the Cult of Ruin had operated in the shadows, dreaming of Ruin and scheming in the dark, which also meant they had gone just as long without real combat experience. They had never needed to fight bloody, drawn-out battles, and because of that, they never truly learned how to use the power they had. To put it bluntly, their organization was closer to a sloppy mob than a disciplined force.
“You ignorant trash. How dare you drag your filthy feet into the place where our great purpose is to be fulfilled!”
Even so, levels were no joke. The priests of the Cult of Ruin were Empowered by Laves, and each possessed considerable strength. They raised their shields and tried to spam curses and attack spells on the vicious nonbelievers pushing forward.
“Throw it, throw it, throw it!”
“They’re casting. Throw now!”
“Grenades inside the barrier!”
No matter how fast a spellcaster was, chanting and casting always took longer than throwing something by hand. The moment the front-line tanks and melees saw the priests begin casting, they reacted on instinct and hurled mana stone bombs, causing a roaring blast to engulf the entire hall.
The price of mana stone bombs had dropped recently, and Do-Jin had acquired them from Elthomagia by paying only the material costs. Despite each one still costing several hundred thousand won, it was more than worth the price.
“AHHHH! Where are the Holy Knights?! What is the Holy Knight order doing?!”
“They moved toward the location of the first explosion!”
“Call them back!”
The priests who survived the blast had avoided instant death, but they were in no position to cast anything. They were pushed into total collapse.
Having arrived late, a senior priest took one look at the scene and felt his eyes bulging with rage. “You worthless maggots! You cannot even handle a handful of unbelievers, and you dare bring shame upon Lord Laves!”
The senior priest reached into his robes and pulled out a sacred relic. At the same time, a surge of vile energy burst outward from his body. The relic wrapped him in a curse-laden aura.
Inside this hideout, currently classified as a hidden dungeon, his assigned level exceeded two hundred. From the raid’s perspective, where fewer than ten members, including Do-Jin, had surpassed Level 150, that number was absurd.
“That’s the boss!” one of the players exclaimed.
The moment the priest appeared with his sinister aura, the entire raid converged on him. Mana stone bombs, expensive scrolls, and dozens of instant-cast spells tore through the air and slammed into his body.
“W-wait, what is this...” the priest stammered in vain.
Even by LOST’s standards, the raid was stacked with players who had real combat experience. Endgame addicts and hardened veterans filled the group, and on top of that, obscene amounts of money had been invested to crank their firepower to a grotesque level. The results blew past expectations.
If this worked during world boss events, there’s no way it wouldn’t work here, Do-Jin thought.
The Cult of Ruin members technically had higher levels than those event monsters, but numbers always came with situational modifiers. Monsters designed for large-scale events assumed hundreds or even thousands of participants, which meant their health pools were absurdly massive. Even those monsters crumbled under concentrated group magic. Enemies with human bodies never stood a chance.
Priests were casters, after all. Until a spell was fully formed, they remained just as exposed as any mage.
If we bombard them with instant bombs and scroll magic while pushing forward, they can’t do shit about it.
When groups collided head-on, weaknesses and bad matchups surfaced with brutal clarity. Do-Jin had built his strategy around tearing into those weaknesses without mercy, and in the end, the plan was executed perfectly.
“This is easy... way too easy,” someone muttered in awe.
“What are these guys even supposed to be?” asked another.
“No idea. Just keep throwing.”
Fueled by the one-sided slaughter, the raid members pressed even harder.
Do-Jin stepped in before everyone had a chance to get sloppy. “Don’t drop your guard. We’ve only broken through a small section near the entrance. We have no idea what’s deeper inside, so stay sharp.”
That was the truth. The Cult of Ruin might be third-rate in group combat, but when it came to causing disasters, they were second to none. On top of that, this was the same region where Galante had once revived. A place tied to such a figure would never be this easy to conquer. At least, that was how Do-Jin saw it.