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The Stone Henge hunting area of the England server was infamous for having death knights which boasted high attack power and strong defense, as well as liches that had near overpowered levels of magic power, making it the worst place to go hunting. Even websites that deal with putting up guides for the Blue Sky game only mention the area, putting it on the lowest tier of hunting grounds to make use of.

The reason is as aforementioned, the combination of Death Knights and Liches were so powerful that it was difficult to handle. Not only would you throw out the idea of hunting alone over there, even experienced hunting parties would end up getting wiped out if the main tanking user was focused on by the enemies to the point that the damage they suffered outpaced the amount of healing they were getting.

Although mid to low level users would still take the risk of hunting here if the EXP they gave was plenty enough, the fact that you had to be at least high level with equally high tier equipment to even stand a chance in this place meant that it was a hunting ground only befit for high tier users. But as those high level players are sensitive about losing their EXP as well as the penalty when dying, they would end up not willing to go to this hunting ground, meaning that the number of ranking players that visited this hunting ground decreased quickly.

However, this didn’t apply to every single person. I just meant that it is usually like that. It was actually a highly sought-out place for certain ranking players who still didn’t join any guild. When users usually go hunting, they would often pick out a dungeon for that purpose, but often case the dungeon would end up being a property of certain high level guilds. It meant that the best dungeons were monopolized by guilds that have power and money, not allowing average users to make use of those dungeons. As those guilds are the ones risking their lives defending the nation during siege attacks, average users end up having to accept that this was the norm.

Public dungeons were even worse off. As way too many users crowd up in them, not only would you have to give up on trying to level up in there due to the amount of competition, you’d often end up in fights with one another in anger, making it a very crowded and crime-ridden place.

Therefore there were quite a number of ranked users who would take the risk of hunting in Stone Henge to get EXP. These two users, male and female, also belonged to those kinds of users, as they hunted in the hilly parts of the outermost area of Stone Henge.

“Lis. A Death Knight appeared in the vicinity!”

A typical tanking type user with a set of pitch-black full plate armor with close helm, wielding a sword and shield as their main weapon, yelled at the female user who was wearing a priest’s outfit.

“I see it as well! I’ll cast a support blessing to you first.”
“Roger.”

The two quickly moved into a battle stance, showing their experience in handling this kind of situation. Though the priest was backing away as far as possible while casting blessing onto the main tank.

With [Life Blessing] spell that increases max health by 5% as well as [Protection of Aegis] that increases the target’s defense, the priest quickly cast a number of blessings on the tanker.

“I’m out of mana. Gonna rest now, so do your DPS while you protect me, okay~?”

As soon as the female priest finished talking, she immediately knelt down onto the ground. It was a brave thing to do while facing a Death Knight that is slowly approaching them. As these two users try to make sure not to use potions as often as possible, the only way for them to make sure she has enough mana later on to heal him was for her to kneel down and recover her mana as fast as possible.

Although sitting down helps in quick health and mana recovery, it meant that whenever a monster attacks you, you’d be hit with the full force of the attack without any regard to your dodge or defense stat with 100% probability, so it was a very dangerous act to do on a hunting ground.

Perhaps due to that fact, the tanker increased the Death Knight’s aggression towards himself by attempting a provoking skill against it.

Due to his skill, the Death Knight turned its attack towards him, and ended up in a one-on-one fight with the two of them.

Usually a character with sword and shield is specialized in tanking. They are not specialized in dealing damage as a striker. Therefore the fight between the two lasted a long time, going back and forth.

“Ugh. You’re taking so damn long for just a single Death Knight.”

The female priest with the ID “Lis” stood back up after a while and complained under her breath.
“Argh! Hey, your husband is being beaten up like this, stop saying that and help out!”

“Husband? You’re just a slave, you know!”
“What? Slave?”

The tanker finally defeated the Death Knight, turning himself around to stare at the female priest as he replied.

However, the female priest also shot back a glare at him as if she won’t be giving up her position either. After a long quiet staredown, the tanker let out a sigh before dropping his gaze low.

“Sigh… Fine. Yeah, it’s my fault. It’s my fault.”
“Of course it is! Since you realized it was your fault, I’ll forgive you this time.”
“Sure you do.”

The tanker replied back with a sarcastic voice.

“Setton, if you don’t want to die, then stop right there. Okay?”

Lis made a frightening expression as she threatened the tanker.

“Okay.”

As Setton knew that there would be nothing good coming out of angering her, he ended up just agreeing to whatever she says no matter the situation.

This was the usual so-called lover’s quarrel between users in relationships, but these two were actually quite high ranking users in the England server.

As they both have quite self-esteem for their own skills, they would often end up quarreling like this.

Although they didn’t join any guild for various reasons, they still did pretty well so far without any problems, and because they first met together at low level, they had built up a lot of trust over time. Though that trust may have also helped them become lovers and eventually get married together…

In the earlier days they thought they were in roughly the same leveled field as those that joined guilds, but as time went on they found themselves more and more powerless against giant guilds and guilds formed by real-life companies.

To become top-ranking players they would need to participate in battles against guilds as well as donate hefty amounts of supplies, which with just the two of them was impossible to do. They also received pressure from others wanting them to join a guild, and they were also increasingly being targeted by users who aim to kill other users due to the fact that the competitive high ranking player market is getting more crowded every day.

Then they suddenly realized that they were visiting hunting grounds that were devoid of people or pick dungeons that are not recommended by many people.

Of course, they did consider joining a guild together once. But considering that they had just began to earnestly earn their living through this game, it would be too much to end up giving up most of the profit as tax to the guild if they were to join one. Most guilds were already set up in such a way that either founding members or guild leaders would take the majority of profit from the guild tax, making them unable to consider joining them at all.

Considering the amount of money they were making, it was best for them to actually not join a guild. If they joined a guild and became unlucky, they may be targeted by the higher ups in the guild to make sure that most or all their profit would be taken by them, so the two ended up arriving at the Stone Henge.

They were able to come this far thanks to their reliance and trust on each other.

“Hm?”

It was Setton who first noticed this strange phenomenon. After picking up the loot the Death Knights dropped, his gaze unconsciously went past on the lowlands below the hill they were standing on.

And then he fixed his eyes on the said phenomenon.

“Lis, come over here!”

Setton called for Lis who was preparing the spell ‘Memorize’, and Lis came over to him asking what’s the problem.

“Why, did you get a great item? What is it?”

Lis made a hopeful expression as she went next to Setton peering over the hill onto the lowlands below.

Lis turned towards the direction that Seeton was pointing at.

Finally, they were able to directly witness a massacre that a single player was acting out in the lowlands below. The player was twirling around a giant sword with effortless ease as they killed whole groups of Death Knights, even though the two can barely handle killing one.

Although the two definitely saw many different users in their playtime, they never heard of anyone being skillful in control enough to massacre groups of Death Knights alone, let alone be able to deal out that much damage to kill a Death Knight in a single blow on their own. Not only that, just watching them using their skill from afar was enough to confirm that what they were using were at least P tier skills.

“It’s Artoria. Yeah, it’s Artoria!”

Setton, who had been staring in a daze quietly for a while, suddenly got worked up as he started yelling.

“Artoria?”

Only then was Lis convinced enough to actually inspect the user named Artoria.

As a skill given to any player who reaches level 100, it allows them to identify personnel or objects from afar as an active skill.

Armor of silver sheen as well as a sleek and long two-handed sword. With a black cape on top of that. Since the name Artoria was famous, there were many users who imitated their looks, but there were definitely not many users who could carry out the powerful appearance of wielding a two-handed sword gracefully on top of that.

And the two knew just as much as everyone else that the user was exhibiting skills and power rare to see even among high ranking users.

“Let’s record this as video, okay?”

Hearing Lis, Setton immediately shook his head crazily. It seemed that he was already completely entranced by Artoria’s movements. As Lis was not as smitten with Artoria as Setton was, she sighed and started recording a video.

Even though any information about Artoria was valuable as they were still shrouded in mystery, it didn’t mean that you’d be instantly famous for capturing some video of them. However, not only was Lis recording footage of seeing Artoria, but she was also recording Artoria displaying their skill and amazing control which was obvious at a glance to have been honed over a long time of practice and experience.

If Lis was to sell this video to different major video game focused broadcasting companies, she may receive quite a good amount of money for it.¹

Of course, even Lis didn’t know that this video would end up even more unique and valuable considering what would happen soon in the future.²

1. Robinxen: Plot twist, imouto recognises the style!
2. Silva: Uh oh… would they sell the video… will they not? Or will they join Artoria’s party? Find out soon, in the next episode of… oh, sorry, this isn’t K-drama.