D.I.O

“Ugh!”

Sungmuk’s sword soared upward, creating a fatal gap in his defenses for a brief moment. Yet, the Purple Mist Singular Qi emanating from his body blocked all of Lancelot’s spear attacks.

Moreover, Sungmuk’s left hand, which clashed with Lancelot’s spear, was fully functional. This was because Sungmuk was utilizing a defensive martial arts move called Chilling Plum Blossom.

By enveloping his body and sword with Singular Qi, Sungmuk could endure Lancelot’s continuous assault.

Drip, drip….

Blood dripped onto the floor. His entire body was ravaged, bearing significant physical injuries.

And who was wounded like this?

It was Lancelot.

“Damn, Lancelot! Are you okay!?”

Cruze jumped in front of Lancelot, started by the state he was in. It was risky intervening in such a high-level fight, but fortunately, Sungmuk sheathed Divine Red Sparrow as if he had no intention of continuing the spar. Then, he circulated his internal energy to heal his right arm.

The fight was already over. Sungmuk had a resounding victory.

If the two continued to fight for ten more seconds, Sungmuk might’ve sustained a more severe injury, but Lancelot would have surely died.

However, Sungmuk had an unsatisfied expression as he soon spoke up.

“… What the hell is up with you? Why weren’t you defending yourself?”

It was a short confrontation, but Sungmuk had gone all out, and his sword attacks were fatal; even just one of his strikes would've been terrifying and deadly to any lesser being.

Yet, Sungmuk found it strange that Lancelot suffered considerable injury despite blocking all of Sungmuk’s attacks. Moreover, Lancelot’s wounds weren’t just moderate grazes - they could cause excessive bleeding if left unchecked.

‘What is up with this guy? While he intercepted my attacks, I still injured him… Whenever we clashed, the shockwaves alone wounded him….’

Although Sungmuk was an internal energy user, he knew that aura power users could protect themselves by covering their entire bodies with aura power.

That sort of defense likely couldn’t stand against Sungmuk’s sword strikes, but at the very least, the defendant shouldn’t be severely injured from the shockwaves of a parried attack.

Of course, if ordinary people were near the two fighters, they would have been swept away by the constant backlash, but how could Lancelot, one of the principal forces responsible for the shockwaves, allow himself to be hit?

Lancelot shook his head.

“It’s not that I didn’t try.”

“No? If you tried, then that means… wait, no way….”

Sungmuk, a warrior at the peak of his field, quickly grasped the situation. He realized that the way Lancelot manipulated his aura power had been exceedingly awkward and deformed for someone at that level.

Lancelot’s attacks were flawless. In fact, when Lancelot held his spear, even Sungmuk momentarily thought that there was a chance he’d be [defeated]. Lancelot had projected an incredibly intimidating aura and momentum.

However, the problem was that such aura and momentum were only present when Lancelot attacked.

“You can’t… defend?”

“Well, it’s not as if I’m not trying.”

As he saw Lancelot’s wry yet defeated smile, Yongno narrowed his eyes.

“It’s the same as not defending. This is truly abnormal. With your ability to accelerate your body to such an extent and fire such rapid, fast attacks… Why are you so slow and uncoordinated at switching between attack and defense? At your level, how can it take you two whole seconds to switch between the two?”

That’s right… It took Lancelot two whole seconds to go from attacking to defending and vice versa. For someone who was Level 19, this speed was unacceptable.

Two seconds at Level 19 was no different than taking ten years to reload a machine gun in the middle of a battle.

“Can you lower your attack power and increase your defense? You can just let some minor attacks through and take the least amount of damage possible.”

“In my current state, if I increase my defense by ten percent, my attack power will decrease by 20 percent.”

“… That’s a really extreme battle pattern. Why the hell did you decide to go down that route?”

In truth, Lancelot’s defenses weren’t weak. If it were to be compared, Lancelot’s current defense could block rifle bullets without difficulty.

However, that was Lancelot’s objective defensive ability. When considering Lancelot’s tremendous offensive power, it was more practical to state that his defense was virtually non-existent.

“Um, hey, Merlin. What do you mean?” Miho asked.

“Hmm. I can’t estimate someone else’s aura power to its exact value, but if Dongsoo hyung’s defense is about ten right now, his attack is around 300. However, he’s saying that if he increases his defense to 11, his attack power will decrease to 240. And if he tried to raise his defense a little more… well, the result would be a no-brainer.”

“Exactly.”

In other words, if Lancelot raised his defense by only five to 15, his attack power would drop by 100 to 200. This sort of unbalanced and deformed growth and development was something that Yongno couldn’t understand. Why would anyone choose such a weird path?

What sort of cultivation and training would one even carry out to obtain such a result? How could Lancelot get to Level 19 using such an unbalanced and deformed approach?

Clap. Clap.

As Yongno clapped, the distant tables gathered again in the center of the dining room, and Yongno sat down first before speaking to Lancelot.

“Well, if it’s not a secret, can I hear your explanation? How did you get to Level 19?”

“In essence, I used a bug.”

Everyone paused after hearing Lancelot’s calm response. Thoroughly dumbfounded, Cruze spoke up.

“DIO has a bug?”

It was a natural reaction, but Yongno responded differently.

“Shall we move to a different location to speak privately?”

In this era, the value of high-level users was increasing. It was to the degree that the number of Masters in a country ultimately determined that nation’s international status.

Wasn’t this why the small, relatively obscure Republic of Korea became famous? Due to the two superpower Masters, Yongno and Seyoung?

Even Yongno, the operator of DIO, couldn’t arbitrarily adjust a user’s level.

However, what if Lancelot’s words were true? What if Lancelot truly did exploit a bug in the system to reach Level 19, a level on the cusp of the transcendence realm?

As far as Yongno was concerned, Dongsoo was a ubiquitous and common user; if Dongsoo could use a ‘bug,’ virtually anyone could do the same.

In other words, if Dongsoo could do something like that, eventually, others would as well.

‘And level correction isn’t something that would be considered a light patch.’

Even for users in the same realm, such as the Master level, the difference in combat power between the body of a Level 10 user and one at Level 19 exceeded a hundred times. No, apart from that, the gap that a Level 10 Master held over a Level 9 player was as far and wide as the heavens and the earth. After all, that Master had the ability to manifest - the Level 9 player didn't.

Therefore, if a bug that allowed users to level up existed in DIO, the value of that information would be priceless.

It was a situation where Yongno, unaware of such a bug, had to protect his system operation rights, but Lancelot shook his head.

“It’s not so incredible that I need to keep it a secret. It’s just mindless, repetitive training, a form of skill training.”

After hearing Lancelot’s calm response, the thoroughly confused Cruze tilted her head.

“No, wait. What does that even mean? You just raised your skill rank by filling up your skill training points?”

“… What kind of bug is that? Is that even a bug?”

The fact that a user’s skill level rose as they accumulated skill training points was basic information, something constantly repeated to users during the initial tutorial missions.

“Well, it’s a bug because it can be exploited to go beyond the developer’s intentions. The developers wouldn’t have thought that users would rise to Level 19 solely through successfully training a skill repeatedly and accumulating success training points like that.”

After hearing Lancelot, Snowflake Flower sighed with an exasperated expression.

“There’s no way a human being can go to such extremes during training… Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Mary. That sounds about right.”

Everyone implicitly acknowledged that it was impossible to become a Master purely through gathering success training points.

When a player’s skill was Rank 9, often called the rank of the outsider who had just obtained a new skill, the rank automatically rose after 100 successful skill attempts. So, anyone could develop a skill to Rank 8. Additionally, players only needed to perform 1,000 successful skill attempts to reach Rank 7.

However, if one made a mistake or performed the skill insincerely, the success training point value wouldn’t increase. Thus, players needed to be persistent and constantly focused, but as long as they attempted the skill earnestly and successfully, they could easily accomplish 1,000 successes in a day or two. Users did not have to endure too much to raise a skill rank to Rank 7.

However, as a skill ranked up, the successful training value increased by ten times.

That meant 10,000 successes to reach Rank 6, 100,000 successes to go from Rank 6 to Rank 5, and one million successes for Rank 4. Then, 10 million, 100 million, one billion, and finally, in order to become a Master in a skill, the A rank and often called the character rank, one needed to gain ten billion successful training points.

“I’ve never even heard or seen a being who reached a Master rank in a skill after accumulating the necessary success training points….”

Ten billion. Sure, it was a number that was finite, but still… ten billion. This was the number of units often seen in the news in terms of money being splashed around in a market.

However, in terms of doing something, an [act], ten billion times, the situation and comprehension of such a number were completely different.

One minute was 60 seconds, and one hour was 3,600 seconds. And a day had 86,400 seconds, and a year had 31,536,000 seconds.