Chapter 12

“Following orders.”

After Hundred had five men carry their equipment, he began commanding forty armed soldiers. He assigned roles based on their new weapons and formed simple formations and squads. As knights trained from childhood as war experts, combined with the advantage of having many skilled fighters due to the territory’s history with bandits and mercenaries, Hundred could sense the morale of the previously defeated soldiers gradually rising.

“It’s mealtime!”

“Eat your meat!”

Housekeeper Flower, leading the dozen or so remaining women, loudly gathered everyone together. A large pot containing a meat stew was boiling, while several men tended to a wild boar roasting over an open fire.

Yuck!

I tore into the hind leg of the wild boar.

It’s greasy. And it lacks seasoning…

The meat itself wasn’t bad, but the lack of spices was serious. It would’ve been much better with just some salt, but even though we were on the outskirts, our territory was still hundreds of kilometers away from the sea. Moreover, between here and there lay numerous magic beasts, bandits, and forest dwellers who were no different than bandits themselves. Even as Lord of the territory, I couldn’t easily obtain salt due to these obstacles. Needless to say, securing any while fleeing after losing our land was out of the question.

Speaking of which…

As I sat atop a large rock chewing on the stew and meat brought by my soldiers, a sudden thought crossed my mind.

‘Am I eating data now?’

Items from Earth couldn’t be brought to Ardenia, and likewise, items from Ardenia couldn’t be taken to Earth. Only my body was the connection point between these two worlds. Or rather, it ‘was’ before Revenge intervened.

‘It’s really unbelievable.’

Is it physically possible to fill up in reality by eating a wild boar leg captured with a mouse click?

Moreover, that wasn’t all.

“Log out.”

I returned to Earth and spat out the wild boar meat onto the ground.

Plop.

The wild boar meat fell on the floor. I quietly looked down at it.

Then approximately one minute later:

Zzzt!

The meat on the ground distorted like a damaged display screen. After a moment…

[P-][W-][L-][M-].

Zzzt!

The piece of meat distorted and disappeared, replaced by text fragments. Even these texts soon vanished, leaving behind only a few drops of saliva that had mixed with the meat earlier.

“What…is this really data?” Confused, I chuckled before logging back in to return to Ardenia.

‘Well.’

This situation could be bewildering for some, but I easily shrugged it off.

‘It’s all about the benefits.’

“Would you like more, Lord?”

“Yes.”

The Butcher, who had quit his job as a mercenary and now ran the only restaurant ‘Slaughterer’s Rest’ in the territory, served me well-done sirloin steak.

”…Hm?”

As the herb flavor spread differently than before in my mouth, I turned to see the butcher grinning at me. It seemed he had been saving some special ingredients for occasions like this.

It tastes decent enough. Still, there are limits.

Reflecting on it again, it was quite frustrating. Despite being able to instantly access countless restaurants back on Earth with just a word, I had no choice but to eat every meal in Ardenia.

However, there was nothing I could do about it.

I’m broke.

My entire net worth currently stood at 83,000 won. Even if I chose the cheapest menu items, this amount wouldn’t last more than half a month, let alone a full one. And even worse…

Moreover, I needed to use money for recharging my account.

‘Ah! I should’ve planned better with my purchases!’

With around 40 million won, I could have equipped myself with hero-level gear, skills, gatekeepers, pets, etc., but instead, I wasted it all on legendary classes. And even then, I didn’t obtain any legendary class!

Munching on meat, I returned to my studio apartment after logging out and organized my thoughts.

‘Let’s wait first. Starting September 1st, there will be basic income.’

South Korea was not only wealthy but also had well-established social welfare systems. Every citizen received a monthly basic income of 1,200,000 won regardless of their occupation. Additionally, those who served as soldiers like me receive additional benefits. Having earned a monthly salary of 3,500,000 won during my three years of military service, I am entitled to an extra 1,000,000 won per month for nine months.

In other words, even without working, I would receive 2.2 million won every month.

Additionally, my residence was located in Room Tower, directly managed by the government. Since it belonged to me, barring any wasteful habits, utilities like electricity and water were free of charge.

Food expenses could be problematic, but that issue could potentially be resolved within Ardenia itself.

I’ll focus on Ardenia while managing with minimal expenses for now.

Regardless, due to the need to provide food for myself and the villagers, we couldn’t change hunting grounds yet. Considering the accumulating experience points and gold, which were significant enough not to ignore, it made sense to persevere at Windbreak Plateau.

“And I need to buy some skills.”

Acquiring rare, hero, or legendary-ranked skills seemed out of reach, but general and advanced-level skills could be purchased from the skill shop using gold.

The problem was that skills varied depending on one’s class. A class change would deactivate all skills from a different category. jae-yeon had hoped these limitations might have been lifted when Ardenia became reality, but it seemed they were still subject to the system’s restrictions and thus unusable.

“The Duelist class isn’t bad, but…”

Jobs within the same family shared certain skills. For example, Swordman (Basic) → Skilled Swordsman (Advanced) → Sword Ghost (Rare) → Sword King (Hero) → Sword Saint (Legend) meant sharing identical skills across each tier of progression.

However, once there was a branching point, such as Swordman (Basic) → Panther (Advanced) → Flash Panther (Rare) → Duelist (Hero) → Grand Champion (Legend), skill sharing stopped at the advanced level onward.

This meant that if I bought Panther-related skills and then changed my class chain to another profession, all those related skills would be locked away. Even if Sword Saint appeared later, any purchased skills would become useless!

“If only Sword King had been available, there wouldn’t have been any dilemma…”

It was disappointing that neither the legendary nor hero-tier Sword King class were options. Of course, it wasn’t entirely surprising given the abundance of hero-tier classes, but still, considering how many classes were presented, it was unexpected not to see it among them.

‘Duelist isn’t a bad job either. In Revenge, it’s even rated higher than Sword King.’

However, Duelist skills were primarily focused on one-on-one combat, making them inefficient for situations involving multiple opponents or large-scale battles like mine.

‘Moreover, Duelist is associated with kri. The more skills you master, the greater the disadvantage.’

All their skills increased critical hit chance, such as ‘critical hit chance increase by small/middle/high attack speed’, or ‘critical hit chance increase after successful parry following skill use’… Most of them were useless. Wasn’t my critical hit rate already fixed at 100%? Even if there was a high probability for a critical hit, it wouldn’t occur when striking non-critical areas like arms and legs.

“Still, I can’t be an archer or tank…” It made even less sense to consider mage or priest classes.

In the end, I had no choice but to purchase Duelist skills. However, I couldn’t invest too much, so I bought just one general skill and one advanced skill.

[Flash (General) (Passive)]

Increases critical hit damage by 10%.

[Vow of the Duelist (Advanced) (Active)]

Consumes stamina and mana to increase attack speed by 30%, critical hit damage by 50%.

There were many skills available, but he chose these two because they increased his critical hit chance. The issue was their cost: A basic skill book was priced at 6,500 gold, while an advanced skill book set him back 77,000 gold.

“Insane. That’s more than ten times as much…”

Considering that he averaged eight gold per wild boar kill, it would take approximately eight hundred wild boars to buy one basic skill book and almost ten thousand for an advanced skill book. Given that he hunted around five thousand wild boars daily, excluding occasional breaks to visit villages for maintenance, acquiring an advanced skill meant dedicating forty-eight hours solely to hunting.

At least I can sell the boars’ tusks in shops, but even then, it barely covers the cost of arrows and potions.

[Your inventory weight exceeds 50%!]

[Your inventory weight has exceeded 50%, so health and mana will not naturally recover!]

While I was scribbling figures on Cheeda’s stomach, character Killian’s inventory filled up once again. Of course, it wasn’t completely full but only half-filled. However, with my brute force hunting method that involved one strike for me and one strike for the enemy, losing natural healing abilities meant potion consumption would exceed my income.

“The drop rate is already low enough, I can’t afford to fight at a loss.”

As before, I circled around the hunting grounds, picking up abandoned meat and weapons until my inventory reached 240% capacity, then entered Ardenia.

“Dad…my legs hurt.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll carry you.”

“What are you carrying when you’re barely able to walk yourself? Stop talking nonsense and put your luggage here!”

A thousand villagers were moving north along the mountain path. Despite most of them being sturdy men, their marching speed was incredibly slow, bordering on lethargic.

‘Even with minimal baggage, we’ve been walking for two days and haven’t covered even 30 kilometers…’

During my time in the military, our daily march distance was around 150 kilometers, which was considered low compared to other units.

‘Though, considering I have a low lung capacity affinity for mana, it’s remarkable that I could keep up.’

In specialized training camps, the minimum daily march distance was typically 300 kilometers. Special forces units could reportedly cover over 1,000 kilometers, although this often involved flying or utilizing light movement techniques, making it less conventional marching.

I surveyed the condition of the villagers.

The mood was somber due to losing their territory, and everyone was exhausted from the continuous march.

This isn’t good. If magic beasts attack us now…

Just then…

“My lord! My lord!” A soldier sprinted toward them from the south, shouting at the top of his lungs. He had been stationed on standby with Stealth activated as insurance against potential pursuit.

“What is it? Why such a rush?”

“Behind! Behind us! Huff huff. Orcs…huff…”

“Catch your breath first. Those slow orc bastards can’t keep up. Just tell me where they are, and I’ll go deal with—”

“They—they’ve caught up to us!”

“What do you mean? How could orcs catch up when you were resting and conserving energy?”

As he spoke, jae-yeon heard…

Thud, thud, thud, thud!

Suddenly, I felt the ground vibrating from afar. Startled, I looked up to see orc heads emerging over the distant mountains.

They caught up already?

I couldn’t comprehend the situation as I pulled out the Sword of Beginnings from my Ardenia inventory. Orcs were neither fast nor stealthy; they should have attracted attention from other magic beasts long before reaching our territory’s fastest scout. How could this be happening?

But as soon as the first orc crested the hill, it became clear why:

“Woof! Woof woof!”

“Oooo-rooo-rooo-rooo!”

“Hahaha! Found them! Those human bastards are right there!”

Dozens of orcs appeared over the hill, along with wolves carrying some of them on their backs.

“This is insane… Why are those magic beast wolves transporting orcs?!”

And that wasn’t the only problem.