"I didn't cheat," Ning shouted at the people. "I only got lucky. I will put up a record of how it happened online after I'm done with the dungeon."
He immediately returned back to the dungeon and took his time this time around. He focused more on just fighting and nothing else.
After two more clears, he reached level 20. While he could enter again, he chose not to. There simply was no point in doing that.
When he came out, there were significantly fewer people around that hounded him for answers.
There were still a few that desperately wanted to know how it was done, so Ning promised to put up the video as soon as he was done selling his items back in the city.
Hearing that, the people finally let him be and went on their way.
Ning returned back to the city and sold all he could, including the pieces of equipment which he was sure no one would buy if he were to sell it on the market.
Once done, Ning started looking for how the video format was done.
To his surprise, the game recorded every instance of his gameplay and was free for him to use however he wanted.
It was also segmented into parts, and one of those parts was the dungeon clear that they required from him.
He watched the video for a while and saw that it wasn't that bad. It was quite short too/.
"Okay, now I need to upload this," he thought. After a bit of playing around, he found the option that allowed him to upload the run where he cleared it.
"Uhh… upload… username? Let's just use Immortal Energy so people can know it's me, and then… right, name."
Ning thought about what to name the video but it was too much work. "Let's just say 'Vileshroom Dungeon, WaterFort City, Solo Clear Record - 5:42'. That should work right?" he thought and uploaded the video.
Once done, he forgot about it.
Ning then went on his way to find the old man who he took the quest from. He pulled out the Poison Spore and handed it to him.
"Here, I did your job," he said.
The old man looked with a hint of surprise. "Not bad. I expected you to fail, but you came back successful," he said.
[Quest Complete]
[You have received 10 Silver coins and 12000 Exp]
[You have leveled up]
Ning was level 21 now, and he had successfully earned over 220 Silver coins, or 2 Gold coins and 20 Silver coins for himself.
'I can't enter the dungeon now, and the Vileshrooms are too weak for me,' he thought. 'I should leave the city now.'
"Do you know where I should go from here?" he asked the shopkeeper, hoping to get an answer.
"Hmm, everyone is going to the north to prepare for an assault on the forts there. You should join them too," the shopkeeper said.
"An assault?" Ning looked surprised. "Are there still humans in the north?'
"Yeah," the shopkeeper said. "We launched an assault here 2 months ago, but we didn't have many numbers at the time. However, our number is steadily growing and as such we are ready to go further. You should join them too."
Ning nodded. "Okay. Thanks for the information," he said and left.
Ning thought to himself as he walked. 'So the game only started two months ago huh? Did the people really help the demons invade?' he wondered.
Ning walked towards the gate, and he saw a clear path leading north that was some distance away from the path that led to the forest.
He looked around for some carriage or a cart or anything, but with the demons invading, there was nothing for him to ride in.
He saw people walking down the road with nothing, and Ning soon realized that was what he was supposed to do.
He was supposed to walk his way through the entire continent as he made his way to the north.
'You must be fucking kidding me, right?' he thought to himself. In the end, he couldn't change the reality… or he could, but chose not to, and started walking down the line.
He opened his map and it showed him moving away from the waterfort city, going towards another city about 10 kilometers away in the same Ghalian Empire.
'Well, I can only hope that the next city has carriages and carts,' he thought to himself and continued.
That pathway was rather smooth and he didn't find it hard to continue walking. He did come across a few Vileshrooms that spawned around the road, which he killed.
There was no one around him for a good long distance, so Ning was alone on his travel. Fortunately, this was a game and thus he could just go online and check what was happening while he walked.
He saw that his video was picking up in views. It had about 2000 impressions by now, with a few comments that said that he was a cheater, while someone else called him lucky.
If only they knew that he was both.
Ning then saw some other videos about people fighting different monsters, but he didn't watch them. What was the point of watching other people do stuff when you were playing the same game?
So, he wanted to go fight on his own. He wanted to fight everything.
Ning pulled out cards once in a while to see if he could perhaps improve his movement speed so he could run, but despite his improvement in luck, it wasn't any better.
'99 more Legendary cards and I improve my luck stat, was it? Sigh, talk about something being impossible,' he thought to himself. If only he could go back to the beginner's city and hunt for those rabbits for their feet. He could improve his luck so much.
Just as Ning was thinking that something suddenly flew out of the bushes and struck Ning on his head. Before he could do anything, he lost his vision, and then all of his senses.
