Chapter 88: Promotion Failed

Days have a way of slipping by unseen when one is grinding near the forgotten castle.

Because the sun could not be seen in that area, there was no way to tell the passage of time by the sky. Before long, I had naturally crossed into seventeenth level, and the quest item, the Necromancer's Tome, was also in hand.

Barely more than an hour had passed.

And that was only because, midway through, I had suddenly remembered to improve the skill proficiency of my bow warrior, and began practicing the two skills Long Shot and Swift Step. Otherwise, just by hunting at a pace of less than half a minute per skeleton mage, I could have earned well over twenty-four thousand experience in an hour, enough to reach eighteenth level with room to spare.

Even so, despite wasting quite a bit of time resting along the way, that pace was still astonishing.

Take the archers not far away, for instance. They fought much the same way I did, but their arrow accuracy was atrocious.

They wasted at least a full quiver before the skeleton mage would seriously summon its bone beast; after that, things became even more outrageous. Under the combined pressure of the bone beast and the skeleton mage, they activated Swift Step, and their accuracy dropped even further.

If not for their fairly decent ability to evade the skeleton mage, bone beast, and skeleton soldiers, they would have been sent back to town for free long ago.

It took them more than two minutes, start to finish, to deal with a single skeleton mage. In the end they would trot over joyfully to pick up the drops, then sit there for several more minutes, and I was sweating just watching them.

Half an hour passed.

Long Shot had risen to two hundred and thirty-seven points; Swift Step had risen to three hundred and fourteen.

My arrows were also beginning to run low. Even with a backpack stuffed full of bundled quivers, that kind of consumption was hard to sustain.

Just as I was preparing to kill one more and then return to town for supplies, I suddenly saw a familiar burly figure sprinting toward me from the direction of the maple forest behind us.

Hawk!

I stared in surprise.

When had he gone back?

As he drew near, I could see that his expression was terrible, looking somewhat battered and forlorn. On closer inspection, I suddenly realized that the armor he wore did not seem to be the one he had before. The one on him now should be the level twenty-five silver armor he had replaced, intending to sell.

Something stirred in me, and I immediately guessed that Hawk had probably just been killed.

Sure enough, once Hawk got close enough, his face fell instantly. “Damn it, the mission failed again!”

“Huh? What mission?”

“What else? The third-rank advancement mission, of course!” Hawk said miserably, dropping down beside me. “This damned advancement mission is just not something humans are meant to do! The setup is downright inhuman! Can you believe it? The third-rank advancement mission actually has us bow warriors taking on a level thirty-five demon stone statue one on one. Damn it, that thing is just too much to handle! How high is its physical defense? Forget us level twenty-nine bow warriors, even a level twenty-nine lightning swordman might not be able to take it down!”

He looked as though he had suffered terribly at the hands of that demon stone statue.

Sure enough. Before I even had a chance to ask, he was already slapping his forehead in misery and pouring out his grievances.

“Ahhh! Damn it all! Do you think leveling is easy for me? This is the fourth time I’ve dropped from level twenty-nine back to twenty-eight, and this time it even exploded some of my equipment. I’ve lost big this time!”

I was sweating. Four failed advancement attempts...

I began to feel a little sympathy for Hawk. Four failures meant he had already reached level twenty-nine four times, only to fall back to twenty-eight, and he had even lost gear several times. This advancement mission really was excessive.

But...

Was the advancement mission involving the demon stone statue really that difficult?

After thinking it over, I asked Hawk, “Is the demon stone statue really that hard to deal with?”

Hawk rolled his eyes and said irritably, “Nonsense! I reached level twenty-nine a week ago, and now I’m back down to twenty-eight. Do you think I enjoy dying for fun?” Realizing perhaps that his tone had been too sharp, he softened a little. “Sorry. I’m in a terrible mood right now. When you get to where I am, you’ll understand why, despite hundreds of millions of players, fewer than ten million have managed to break into the third rank.”

Of course I did not take offense at Hawk’s irritated words. Smiling, I said, “No problem. By the way, tell me more about how formidable this demon stone statue really is, and about the advancement requirements. Maybe I can help you.”

Hawk seemed momentarily taken aback by my boldness. He looked at me strangely, then suddenly showed an expression of shock.

“Wait, level seventeen? You leveled twice here just now?”

“Yeah. I was already almost level sixteen when I got here!”

Yet those words seemed to register with Hawk as mere modesty. He kept staring, then seized my arm and asked anxiously, “How did you do that? Even going from sixteen to seventeen couldn’t possibly be this fast. You really only came in yesterday?”

I rolled my eyes and said, “I can tell you, but first explain your advancement mission and the details about the demon stone statue.”

“Deal!”

Hawk’s face brightened at once, and he immediately laid out the third-rank mission for bow warriors in full detail.

All advancement missions for every profession are enormous challenges.

Only by passing the challenge and meeting the requirements of the class-change NPC are you deemed qualified to rise to a higher rank.

The third-rank advancement mission for bow warriors had three choices:

Kill the level twenty boss of Black Wind Forest, the Black Wind Demon Wolf King.

Kill the high-level summoned beast left behind in the Forgotten Castle by a necromancer from the Necromancer Empire, the level thirty-five Demon Stone Statue.

Obtain the Crystal Orb from the level thirty-five Dark Wizard at the Sunset Altar.

Any level twenty-nine bow warrior who met the advancement requirements could freely choose one of the three missions. So long as it was judged valid during solo completion, the mission counted as passed.

In other words, solo-kill the Black Wind Demon Wolf King, solo-kill the Demon Stone Statue, or kill the Dark Wizard and seize the Crystal Orb from its hands, and the advancement mission would be considered complete.

Hearing that, I immediately ruled out the Black Wind Demon Wolf King.