Chapter 240

From a gamer’s perspective, very few things are as exciting as getting to farm for free. Do-Jin put in a ridiculous amount of effort to make that happen.

The first thing he did was look for decent terrain. Unfortunately, there was nothing that really hit the sweet spot. So Do-Jin decided to make what he needed himself. He found a narrow opening first, then used Melting to liquefy the rock, widening both the entrance and the interior space. He also roughed up the floor a bit to make it uneven.

It was a job that burned through a ton of mana and time, but Do-Jin stuck with it like a possessed man. Eventually, he carved out a tunnel that was perfect for setting up a kill zone. After extending it quite a bit, the tunnel turned into a straight-up death corridor.

Once the tunnel was ready, Theresa was sent outside to round up a nearby pack of monsters and drag them straight into the tunnel. When the Dimensional Fragments followed her in, they were greeted with Tanto’s poison traps. The widely spreading poison was a neurotoxin designed to slow movement rather than deal heavy damage.

It wasn’t meant to kill anything, but it was perfect for stacking the curse effect from Tanto’s relic dagger, Excavating Curse. While the Fragments were packed together at the tunnel entrance in disgusting numbers, they soaked in the curse.

Slowed by poison and weakened by stacked curses, the next thing they ran into was the sea of fire Do-Jin had laid out. With no intelligence or proper senses, the Dimensional Fragments shoved themselves straight into the flame zone that would become their grave. Heat damage worsened the longer it lasted.

A brief brush with fire might only burn the surface, but staying in it meant being roasted through. Do-Jin had designed the tunnel to abuse that property to the absolute limit. It was a perfectly engineered execution chamber.

As the Dimensional Fragments crossed the burning tunnel, they started detonating one by one just past the halfway point. At first, the explosions were spaced out, but the gaps grew shorter and shorter. Before long, the tunnel was filled with rapid, popping blasts like someone was microwaving popcorn at full blast.

“This makes no sense at all,” Theresa muttered as she watched.

To make things even more ridiculous, the noise and shockwaves from the monsters exploding drew in even more monsters from far away, to the point where the entrance was completely clogged.

Every time the one at the front died, the ones waiting behind it slid forward to fill the gap and died in turn, creating a situation that made absolutely no sense. There wasn’t even enough space between them to call it a gap. The density was so high that they entered packed together, died packed together, and got converted into EXP as a solid mass.

“This is playing out exactly how I imagined!” Do-Jin looked at the execution ground he had built with smug satisfaction.

The free-farm highway he had designed to maximize kills was showing truly absurd hunting efficiency.

As monsters died nonstop, their EXP skyrocketed, and loot stacked up in front of Do-Jin’s party like a small mountain. The efficiency of this automated slaughter was so insane that before long, it became visibly obvious that the number of monsters entering the tunnel had dropped. Their kill speed had surpassed even the infamous regeneration rate of a Rift Dungeon filled with Dimensional Fragments.

Looking at the now-cleared entrance, Theresa clapped her hands in genuine admiration. “Do-Jin, you are actually unbelievable... Honestly, even the biggest mass murderers in human history probably didn’t kill as efficiently as you. You are a demon. A literal demon.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” He raised an eyebrow.

“It is the highest praise.” Theresa grunted as she stood up. “Want me to go lure more in?”

“It’s ok. There’s no need. They will respawn soon anyway. We should take a breather.”

Just as Do-Jin said, after a short while, Dimensional Fragments began spawning again and flooding in. The EXP party continued. After some time passed like that, Theresa received a message from outside.

“Huh? I just got a message.”

Unlike the other three who were extreme loners even by gamer standards, she actually had contacts outside the party.

“How did a message get through? Does that mean it works now?” Theresa asked.

“It works.” Do-Jin checked immediately the moment she spoke. Sure enough, all previously blocked connections to the outside world, including messaging, had returned to normal.

“The Rift has weakened now. It’s not like it has infinite power, and we’ve been killing monsters nonstop, so it has been pouring everything it has into maintaining monster numbers. It probably doesn’t have the spare capacity to keep the outside sealed off anymore.”

A Rift was like the human body. When one organ works itself to death, blood flow concentrates there and other functions suffer. Right now, this Rift was dumping all its resources into monster reproduction.

At this rate, I don’t even need to worry about corruption.

As Do-Jin was thinking that, Theresa said, “Do-Jin, it looks like streaming might work now. Can I turn it on?”

“Well, I did promise.”

Normally, he avoided streaming because it was distracting and messy, especially during hunts, but he had said earlier that he would update people as soon as possible. And it wasn’t a situation that demanded intense focus.

As Do-Jin, Theresa, and Tanto turned on their streams at the same time, viewers flooded into all three channels instantly.

└ So what happened?

└ Is Tanto alive?

└ Holy shit, all four of them are alive.

└ I wasn’t even worried. That party dying in a Rift Dungeon is not fucking happening. LOL

Plenty of people had been sitting there with notifications on, worried sick about what happened to the group that went in to rescue Tanto. Seeing all of them standing there just fine on screen finally let them breathe again.

[ゆうき has donated 100,000 yen.]

[Thank you for saving Tanto.]

One of Tanto’s fans started throwing massive donations across all the streams.

“Oh man, you really didn’t have to do this. Thank you, seriously, thank you.” Theresa beamed as she spoke, then even went as far as banging her hammer against her shield like a gong for a full reaction.

└ So what kind of monsters are in that Rift Dungeon anyway?

└ If Tanto got trapped there, it has to be insanely dangerous. Is it really okay to just chill like that?

└ You still haven’t cleared it, right? Show us the fight too!

Requests flooded in from viewers. Every Rift Dungeon spawned wildly different monsters, so their curiosity was only natural.

“Oh, the fighting? There is nothing to fight right now... Oh. Looks like something just spawned. Yeah, they are coming in now.”

Theresa rotated the camera. The angle followed her gaze and captured the entrance of the tunnel Do-Jin had built. The stream showed Dimensional Fragments stepping into poison traps, getting infected by the spreading toxin, flailing around in a sea of fire, and then exploding en masse with loud pops.

└ The fuck am I looking at?

└ Nah, are these guys insane? You can actually herd Rift monsters and blow them up like that?

└ LOOOOL how high does your attack power have to be to pull shit like this? What kind of busted-ass class are mages supposed to be?

The moment viewers saw that, everything they had been worrying about until then vanished from their minds. Watching monsters get melted down in LOST like it was some kind of tower defense game could indeed make one go crazy.

└ Every other stream is full of people screaming and crying. What the hell is this bullshit?

└ I went into a Rift and died instantly. I can’t even log back in right now. Fuck.

└ Wait, but can we do this too? If we find a similar Rift and bring a few mages, would it work?

Among the people venting their frustration, there were also those who immediately started seeing this as an opportunity.

└ You think that would work? Other mages cannot even mimic a fraction of this.

└ Do you have any idea how disgusting this guy’s setup is?

└ You idiots always start by assuming it is impossible. Just bring more mages.

The mage forums exploded. People rushed in, desperately trying to recruit mage players around their own level. Mages, who had been treated like leftovers for about ninety-nine percent of LOST’s service life, were confused but also thrilled by the sudden attention.

Not long after, parties that tried to imitate the strategy in monster-dense areas began posting wipe confirmations one after another. They had even targeted places where the regeneration rates were nowhere near as absurd as the Dimensional Fragments’.

└ Don’t fucking do this.

└ Mages are fucking idiots.

└ Bringing multiple mages and stacking attack power doesn’t magically solve it. These fuckers blow their load instantly and turn into dead weight. How do I know? Don’t ask me, you assholes.

Simple mob pulling was one thing, but camping in a place with no escape route while monsters poured in nonstop was a completely different beast. The people who had copied it because it looked easy finally understood why this kind of hunting style, common in other games, felt so unfamiliar in LOST. Unless the mage had sustain and wide-area firepower on the same level as Do-Jin, the only possible ending was a full party wipe.

└ So what the fuck is this stream now? Is this a hunting stream or one of those watch the campfire and dissociate streams?

└ Fuck my life. I died and I can’t even log in for days. I guess I am just going to rot here watching this.

The people who had gotten themselves killed through sheer stupidity and were now sitting around regretting every bad decision they had made slowly crawled back to Do-Jin’s stream.

Meanwhile, the man himself kept hunting in exactly the same way as before. Whenever he needed rest, he retreated into a tunnel he had deliberately carved deep and narrow enough that monsters physically couldn’t enter. It wasn’t comfort. It was survival.

Days passed like that. Then, suddenly, something began approaching Do-Jin’s position, radiating a pressure so heavy it was impossible to ignore. A Dimensional Fragment of overwhelming size appeared, slamming into the entrance where other fragments were packed together.

This was unmistakably the boss. Something that should have remained deep within the core of the Rift had come all the way out here, and there was only one reason it would do that. If things continued like this, the trash mobs would keep getting ground down nonstop, and the Rift itself would take irreversible damage.

The boss had realized that far too late and came charging over in a panic. As it desperately tried to widen the entrance, crushing other Dimensional Fragments under its own bulk, the thing practically reeked of desperation. Fear and raw survival instinct were written all over its movements.

└ It’s insane that I’m saying this, but I actually feel bad for the dungeon boss.

└ Look at it panic. Its entire house is about to collapse and it knows it.

└ These people are fucking monsters. Just kill it already and end this. You have farmed enough.

└ I’d like to apologize on behalf of humanity.

After watching this for days, even the viewers had started sympathizing with the monster. Do-Jin’s response absolutely didn’t match that sentiment.

“If we kill that thing, the Rift closes. Push past it and let’s go dig another hole somewhere else,” Do-Jin said matter-of-factly.

Instead of fighting the boss, he straight-up ignored it and created a new slaughter zone in a different location.

Why the fuck would I leave when the key is not even half charged yet...

He had no intention of stopping. As long as monsters kept regenerating, he planned to squeeze every last drop out of this place. Unless the regeneration stopped entirely, he was going to keep milking it until there was nothing left but bone and dust.

In the end, Do-Jin spent almost the entire remainder of the Dimensional Link Event dragging the Rift Boss from one slaughter zone to another while stripping the dungeon bare like an insane person.

[The Empty Key has been fully charged.]

At the end, the key was filled completely, and the entire party received an amount of EXP that could only be described as obscene.

└ Okay. I admit it. Sleeping two hours a day and grinding like a psychopath does explain that growth.

└ This dude was 100% doing this even when he wasn’t streaming. I could never.

└ Did anyone notice Theresa around day ten? Her eyes were completely dead. Do-Jin still looked fine though. They say geniuses are all insane, and yeah, this guy is genuinely fucked in the head.

By the final stretch of the chaos-filled Dimensional Link Event, no one argued about Do-Jin’s growth anymore. Everyone accepted the reality.

“Whew... looks like the event is finally ending. I’ll take care of the boss before that and then go rest. I pushed myself a bit harder than usual, so I’m pretty exhausted.”

└ A bit harder????

└ Bro you said you were going to sleep a WEEK ago.

└ Go to bed motherfucker. We are genuinely scared you are going to die on stream.

The same viewers who used to sit around refreshing the page waiting for his stream to go live were now actively bullying him into logging off.

Do-Jin finally killed the Rift Boss he had been avoiding the entire time and ended the stream. The moment he returned to reality, he completely conked out. His manager sounded extremely pissed as always, but Do-Jin didn’t have the energy to process a single word.

A few hours later, the Dimensional Link Event officially ended. Not long after that, new Rifts began erupting across Lostania at an alarming rate. There were more of them than during the event, and they tore into the world even faster. The event was over, but the real disaster was just getting started.