Debuff Master

Chapter 1184

Siegfried spent the entire day scouring every corner of the continent in search of Legendary-rated items, and he bought every single one of them.

And that was not all…

He also bought every single item he found listed on the trading platforms in the real world.

Siegfried dedicated nearly two full days to buying as many Legendary-rated items as he possibly could. He kept buying, buying, and buying until he had nearly run out of gold.

Of course, Siegfried hadn’t gone all in with his entire fortune.

As the Emperor of the Proatine Empire, Siegfried was obscenely wealthy. However, the funds he used for the gold shopping spree came strictly from his personal stash of gold, not from the Proatine Empire’s treasury.

The money he used for this shopping spree was nothing more than pocket change, as he wasn’t really using the empire’s funds. Of course, the words “pocket change” were misleading, as he had already spent several hundred billion won.

After buying as many Legendary-rated items as he could, Siegfried took a step back and observed how the market would react.

Exactly three days later…

“Wow…”

After logging out and getting a good night’s sleep, Tae-Sung woke up early in the morning and checked the trading sites before anything else.

He was stunned.

Just as expected, the prices of Legendary-rated items were skyrocketing to absurd levels.

The Mercedes Workshop and Autonika Workshop had revealed information on how to craft Transcendent and Sanctified-rated items. Some of the Adventurers who were quick on their feet scrambled to get in on the hoarding frenzy, but it was already too late.

Tae-Sung had already bought nearly all of the Legendary-rated items on the market, leaving not a single listing available.

As a result, the price of Legendary-rated items surged to double or triple their original value.

Naturally, this meant that Tae-Sung had ended up making a handsome profit.

“I guess… I don’t really need to be obsessed with money anymore…”

After seeing the profits he made from his hoarding spree, Tae-Sung decided that he would not engage in aggressive money-making schemes from now on.

His net worth had already exceeded the one trillion won mark a long time ago.

But that was not all…

He never seemed to run out of money, no matter how much he spent.

In fact, his net worth would actually increase regardless of whether he spent money or not.

Thanks to his continuous investments in both stocks and real estate, Tae-Sung’s income was multiplying at a pace that far outpaced his spending. It had reached a point where he was now the highest-earning pro gamer in the history of the world.

The amount of money he had accumulated so far surpassed that of professional athletes in well-established sports such as soccer, basketball, football, or even F1 racing.

The fact that he was a South Korean yet owned several private jets was a testament to his wealth.[1]

He had succeeded in building a vast fortune that he still would not go broke, even with several private jets burning through money like crazy.

“Don’t sell them at too high a price. Just sell it for a reasonable price.”

Tae-Sung gave instructions to his employees to sell off the useful Legendary-rated items. Since he had spent his valuable time purchasing the items in order to maintain secrecy, he decided he could leave the selling to his employees now that the truth was no longer a secret.

With that, he decided to focus on the game once again and logged in.

Once he descended onto the continent, Siegfried went straight to the new disassembler and loaded it with the Legendary-rated items he had set aside, which were the ones he planned to disassemble rather than sell for a profit.

Whiiiirrr!

The new disassembler whirred to life and got to work.

[Alert: You have obtained Legendary Fragment!]

[Alert: You have obtained Legendary Fragment!]

[Alert: You have obtained Legendary Fragment!]

(omitted…)

[Alert: You have obtained Legendary Fragment!]

[Alert: You have obtained Legendary Fragment!]

In just an hour, Siegfried had not only gathered all the Legendary Fragments he needed, but he also ended up with almost twenty thousand in excess.

‘I should share these,’ he thought, planning to distribute the excess Legendary Fragments to his comrades.

But before that, he met with Quandt and Yong Seol-Hwa and handed over the Legendary Fragments necessary to craft his new gear.

[Alert: You have cleared the Quest — Innovation Costs Money!]

A quest that would normally take a long time for an ordinary Adventurer to complete was completed in just a few days by Siegfried. Not to mention, most would suffer immense stress while doing this quest, but he cleared it so effortlessly.

‘Damn… I guess I can consider myself a whale,’ he thought.

“Now you just need to find a Relic-rated weapon, oppa. Meanwhile, I’ll work with Quandt and start crafting your armor,” Yong Seol-Hwa said.

“Okay. Thanks,” Siegfried replied with a nod.

“Why are you thanking me? It’s only right that I’m the one who should be making the armor you’re going to use, no?”

Yong Seol-Hwa seemed genuinely happy at the thought of crafting the new armor set that Siegfried would be using.

As his girlfriend, she found joy in personally crafting items for her dear boyfriend.

***

After commissioning the crafting of his new armor set, Siegfried headed to the Ancient Goblin Empire dungeon once again.

“Ughhh!”

“Bah! Ptooey! This damn dungeon is so annoying. I can’t do this anymore!”

“Screw this place!”

The entrance to the Ancient Goblin Empire dungeon was filled with frustrated Adventurers. Evidently, they failed their dungeon raid and were grumbling as a result of it.

‘I can’t blame them,’ Siegfried thought, understanding their frustrations. Their reaction was perfectly natural. As always, the first ones to challenge a newly opened dungeon would have the roughest time.

Monsters in new dungeons were not only stronger than the existing ones, but their attack patterns tended to be nastier, too. This meant that taking heavy losses was to be expected when raiding such dungeons, and sacrifices were inevitable until people started developing strategies to tackle them.

“Huh? It’s Siegfried!”

“Siegfried!”

The Adventurers welcomed Siegfried’s arrival as if the promised savior had appeared.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll be going solo today,” Siegfried said, respectfully declining the numerous party requests.

It was not that he wanted to go solo. No matter how strong he was, it was obvious that raiding with a party would be far more efficient.

However, this wasn’t the time for efficiency.

‘I can barely manage to keep myself alive, so how am I supposed to carry a whole party and keep everyone else alive? Forget about it. No way that’s gonna end well,’ he thought.

The Ancient Goblin Empire dungeon was challenging enough that even Siegfried had his hands full just taking care of himself.

If he tried to protect his party members on top of that, then that would only make things far less efficient rather than efficient.

Thus, Siegfried decided to take it slow and raid the dungeon alone.

Siegfried used his Dark Abyss: Necklace of Greed and Betrayal to summon his slave.

A portal opened, and Chae Hyung-Seok stepped out of it.

Even if Siegfried was raiding the Ancient Goblin Empire dungeon solo, he intended to bring along his personal buff slave, Chae Hyung-Seok.

“Huh? What the hell happened to you?” Siegfried asked, tilting his head in confusion.

Chae Hyung-Seok was an absolute wreck. His HP was at ten percent, and his mana was almost completely drained.

Not only that, his gears were heavily worn down and in dire need of repairs.

“Did you get your crap beaten out of you or something?”

“Ugh! Don’t even talk to me about it! Just don’t!”

“Eh?”

“My blood pressure’s spiking just thinking about it! Goddammit!”

Chae Hyung-Seok grabbed the back of his neck, looking visibly in pain. It seemed that something annoyed him so much that his previous health issues were coming back.

“What the hell? Hey, calm down and tell me what happened,” Siegfried said, trying his best to calm him down.

“I joined a party for the Ancient Dungeon. And those bastards… they just—damn it!”

“Huh?”

“They were absolute trash! Those morons shared a damnedsingle brain cell! They were total garbage!”

“What are you even talking about…?”

“I get that it’s hard to clear a brand-new dungeon. I know everyone’s struggling with the new dungeon mechanics. But if you’re gonna be that bad, then at least be decently bad. Not a single one of them had any common sense!”

From the sounds of it, it seemed that his party members must have driven him insane with their incompetence.

Siegfried had utterly crushed Chae Hyung-Seok, but the latter was still a top-tier gamer. He was widely recognized to be at the pinnacle of his class, even among those with support-type classes.

An average gamer’s performance was nowhere near enough to satisfy his standards.

“Why did you join a random party and get yourself beaten up? We raided this Ancient Dungeon a few days ago with the others, you know that, right? You should’ve just come with us then.”

“I know… But I just didn’t feel like it, so I joined another party. Why? Got a problem with that?”

“Hmm?”

“I just—It just felt a bit… uncomfortable.”

Even though Siegfried had forgiven him completely and was now even working out together with him, Chae Hyung-Seok still found Siegfried’s comrades to be uncomfortable to stay around with.

Why?

It was all because they were also still uncomfortable and awkward around Chae Hyung-Seok.

He was not exactly the warm and fuzzy type to apologize to others first, so he hadn’t been able to get along with them.

While their relationship wasn’t bad, it was still an awkward one.

“Why are you feeling so uncomfortable about them? They’re all good people. You’re just feeling guilty, that’s all.”

“What did you say, asshole?”

“Maybe try being a decent human being for once? That might help.”

“Y-You little!”

“Okay. Enough yapping and let’s go.”

Siegfried grabbed Chae Hyung-Seok by his collar and dragged him toward the dungeon entrance.

“Let go of me. I can walk on my own,” Chae Hyung-Seok grumbled, slapping the hand away.

He was already mentally and physically drained from dealing with utterly incompetent fools, so it was actually a relief that Siegfried had summoned him to go hunting.

Both Siegfried and Chae Hyung-Seok had long acknowledged each other as the best in their respective class, and they knew just how powerful their synergy was when they were together.

Thus, neither had any complaints about raiding this insanely difficult dungeon, even if it was just the two of them.

***

Siegfried began his second attempt at raiding the Ancient Goblin Empire dungeon with Chae Hyung-Seok by his side, and things went very smoothly.

Armed with Chae Hyung-Seok’s buffs, Siegfried struck down goblin after goblin with ease.

Unfortunately, the insanely high HP of the goblins made it difficult to pick up the pace, so there was no helping the slow pace of the raid.

Still, this was what could be considered a normal pace for others. The only reason Siegfried had been able to clear other dungeons so far before was that he was too powerful for the dungeons.

As a result—

[Alert: You have reached Level 506!]

[Alert: You have reached Level 507!]

[Alert: You have reached Level 508!]

He gained a whopping three levels in just ten hours. The goblins in the Ancient Goblin Empire gave a ridiculous amount of experience points, and that wasn’t the only thing they dropped.

As expected of an Ancient Dungeon, they also dropped all kinds of Relic and Legendary items.

However, none of them was a suitable weapon for Siegfried.

“Let’s take a break. I’m dying here, man. It’s been ten hours already,” Chae Hyung-Seok complained.

“Just a little more. Let’s hunt a bit more, man.”

“What?!”

“Just up to over there,” Siegfried said, pointing at a structure in the distance.

The structure was surrounded by wooden palisades and seemed to be a goblin fortress.

A watchtower stood high above the palisades, and a goblin with a spyglass in hand was scanning the surroundings from atop.

Clearly, this was some sort of military outpost used by the goblins.

“Don’t you think there’s bound to be a champion monster in there?” Siegfried asked.

“Well, it is a common pattern found in dungeons,” Chae Hyung-Seok replied.

“And judging by its size, how many goblins could really be in there? Let’s clear that up and take a break, what do you say?”

The goblin fortress was indeed small and could perhaps house a few hundred goblins.

“Fine. Just that one spot, then we’re taking a break.”

“Awesome.”

As soon as he got Chae Hyung-Seok on board, Siegfried charged toward the fortress.

Bwooooooh!

The goblin sentry spotted Siegfried and immediately blew a horn, warning the goblins inside the fortress.

The gate opened, and goblins began sallying out, but…

“Huh…?”

Siegfried stopped in his tracks and tilted his head in confusion when he saw the goblins sallying out of the fortress.

Then, he slowly began to backpedal.

Why?

Because—

“Kiki!”

“Keehee!”

“Kieeeek! Kreeek!”

“Kiki! Kikiki!”

The number of goblins pouring out of that tiny fortress easily numbered in the thousands.

1. Private jets are insanely expensive to own and maintain in South Korea. Also, the country is small, so there’s really no need for one unless the owner travels overseas frequently. ☜