Muran suddenly gave out a hidden quest .
Rather than a hidden quest, the quest Muran gave was more like a hidden land mine .
And Ian was the one who would step foot on that land mine .
If Ian decided to take his foot off, that mine would end up making a huge explosion .
Ian read the quest window once again not being able to understand what he had gotten himself into .
'What the h.e.l.l is this crazy penalty…?'
Among the hidden quests which had great rewards, there often were cases that came with penalties for the failures .
However, its penalties were only a cut of experience points, fame loss, or a decline of affinity with the NPC that gave the quest .
The quest's penalty of being dropped a tier in the hidden cla.s.s for not clearing it was borderline robbery .
No kind of effort could recover that .
A user had to put a lot of effort into gaining that tier . Also, many things were needed in order to succeed in gaining a tier .
Ian was stunned .
On the other hand, Muran—who wasn't aware of how overwhelmed Ian was—spoke to him with a very satisfied expression .
“I didn't know my arrangements were fine . If I knew that there was going to be a strong hero as such in the future, I would've taken rest with a calm heart . ”
Muran's encouragement was continuing to burn Ian's heart furthermore, and Elcarix was about to pour gasoline over it .
“Woah! My dad is so awesome!”
Elcarix was laughing at Ian while hanging on his back .
Even the cute voice of Elcarix couldn't raise Ian's spirit
“Heuu…”
Ian took a deep breath to regain his cool .
Due to the sudden outbreak of an insane quest, he was in a situation where he had to revise all the plans he made for the future .
'It looks like I'll have to put off conquering the Elrika Kingdom as of the moment . I should ask for the understanding of our guild members, and I need to go to the Ulphir Mountains to upgrade the troops as soon as possible . I'll be needing to make the most out of my ranker friends…'
Ian's head was working and working .
It was clear that it was a quest with the highest level of difficulty, and it was also clear that it was impossible to avoid such a quest .
The only thing he could do at least was to increase the success rate of the quest as much as he could .
Things like giving up weren't Ian's style .
When Ian's head was going through a trauma of its own, it wasn't Ian who was in trouble .
Ian shared the quest with his party members too .
The other members of his party were reading the quest window of a weird quest very cautiously .
Their rewards and penalties were all entirely different from Ian, but the rest of the content of the quest was similar .
Ian's party members suddenly noticed him .
After a while, Remir spoke with a lot of cautiousness .
“Ian-ah, can you not share this quest?”
Levya and Yu s.h.i.+n then said,
“Ian, I will take a break . Thank you very much for sharing the hidden quest, but I don't think this…”
“I'm sorry bro, Ian . I can't do it . ”
Three lines of message suddenly emerged before Ian's eyes .
[Party member 'Remir' has refused to accept the shared quest . ]
[Party member 'Levya' has refused to accept the shared quest . ]
[Party member 'Yu s.h.i.+n' has refused to accept the shared quest . ]
Ian was struck with the feeling of betrayal .
“Noona, Levya, Yu s.h.i.+n!”
However, the three simply avoided eye contact with Ian .
“Keu…”
Ian looked completely devastated .
He suddenly felt a hand that seemed to be comforting him .
Ian then heard a voice saying the thing he needed the most from an unlikely person .
“Hyung, I'll follow you hyung!”
Everyone's gaze went in the direction of that person's voice .
There was Hoonie standing with a confident look .
The other party members were shocked at Hoonie's att.i.tude .
“Oh, Hoonie…?”
“Hoonie get your mind straight! Aren't you overwhelmed with the stress of excessive hunting?”
Unlike his party members, Ian wasn't surprised at all .
Ian knew exactly why Hoonie decided to do such a thing .
“Don't overdo it, man . You're in the same boat as me anyway, right?”
He did .
Hoonie was already in a situation where he needed to kill the Lich King for his 4th tier quest to be completed .
Even the time limit of the two was the same .
Unlike Ian though, Hoonie's quest didn't have such ridiculously unfair penalty for failing the quest .
“Huu, you don't know me at all . You're so mean…”
Hoonie was displaying a sad face, but that wasn't what he was feeling . His expression changed right away .
“Noisy . Let's clear the dungeon as quickly as possible . ”
Ian looked at all of his party members while he talked slowly to Hoonie .
Though he spoke calmly, he hadn't forgotten the terrible thing that they did awhile ago .
“If you guys want to rest early, then go ahead . I'll somehow manage . ”
Ian's tone was rather threatening, and his party members were obviously feeling it .
“Wow! That's crazy . Why didn't he do the play in a normal way?”
Seeing the decision that Ian took, Na Ji-chan couldn't help but feel ridiculous .
Ian who was playing very well took a decision that no one would have even chose to opt for .
'I'm going to 'give up' a 4th tier hidden cla.s.s . ' was what Ian said .
No one including Na Ji-chan would have guessed that .
“Not that… this is…”
Na Ji-chan was pacing back and forth in the monitoring room restlessly .
The unprecedented choice of Ian was going to bring in heaps of work for the planning team .
Honestly, since they wanted to delay users from exhausting the new episode's content as much as possible, Ian's choice would greatly benefit them .
Apart from being a 4th tier hidden cla.s.s, the 'Summoner Knight' contained a very important piece of the puzzle in dealing with the Richie King .
Without that piece, it would be hard to get rid of Richie King even if it was Ian .
That being said, the Richie King episode was going to last longer .
However, there was another problem .
The problem was the 'Hero's Responsibility', the hidden quest that Ian got from the unexpected choice that he made .
It wasn't a quest that the planning team had even designed .
The quest didn't even exist in the first place .
'Hu, I knew that we were going to have a problem…'
As Ian had taken a choice that the planning team wasn't even considering to be in the option, a random quest got activated .
Kailan's system was designed to cope with situations by judging its own algorithm if the situation wasn't designed by the planning team .
So Muran used his own AI to make his own decision, and the quest was the result of his judgment .
'Hu, if you're going to make quests that you wish, at least make some sensible ones…'
Na Ji-chan held his head as it was beginning to hurt .
The quest had fatal problems in it .
The most lethal problem was the 'Unique Dual Cla.s.s' .
The reward that Muran's quest offered was the 'Unique Dual Cla.s.s' .
It was as if the quest was giving out a cla.s.s that never existed .
'This is going to hurt us a lot . Just because of Ian, we will now have to make this unique dual-cla.s.s thing?'
Adding a new cla.s.s wasn't an easy task .
A new hidden cla.s.s always called for the addition of a few new skills and a special trait to the existing planned base .
“Hu…”
Na Ji-chan had already been working for Kailan's planning team for 5 years now .
Na Ji-chan who had worked long before the opening of Kailan was always confident that his mind was as strong as a diamond .
However, all thanks to Ian, he was having his second mental breakdown in the middle of the night .
The first one was when Ian was close to clearing the Dragon's Altar time attack dungeon and almost opened the Door of Dimension . The current one was this crisis Ian just brought in .
“Phew… let's just hold that thought, maybe Ian will fail the quest?”
According to what Na Ji-chan was thinking, without the Summoner Knight cla.s.s, the possibility of Ian clearing the quest was below 10% .
Which was why it could be seen as a good gamble .
If Ian failed the quest, then they could go back to the point where nothing had happened .
Taking off a tier from the Taming Master cla.s.s was a bit too much of a penalty .
However, they could just give Ian an opportunity in the future to raise his tier again .
Na Ji-chan knew very well that Ian would fail this quest .
If Ian's chances of success were even at 10% and he did finish the quest successfully, it was the end of the story .
Without taking his eyes off the monitor, Na Ji-chan mumbled and mumbled,
“10% success rate… I'll have to spend the night here to see what's gonna happen . ”
Ian's quest was limited to 30 days, but the time limit for the planning team was much shorter .
Ian wasn't going to complete the quest right away, but he would surely challenge the Richie King in the days that were going to come .
'27 days, no, maybe 25 days…? We'll have to make a thorough plan within those days . '
Even though Na Ji-chan enjoyed working in the night s.h.i.+ft, he was now at a point where he couldn't work happily at all .
Rather than the night s.h.i.+ft, it was now a torture s.h.i.+ft .
His cup ramen turned soggy and could now be mistaken for udon .
Hrrr-!
Na Ji-chan immediately dug into his cup ramen, but he couldn't taste anything from it .
His eyes just kept moving .
“The Dual Cla.s.s shouldn't overlap with the planning… I need to think of how I'm going to connect it to the main cla.s.s…”
The moment Ian refused the hidden cla.s.s, Na Ji-chan felt like he aged for 10 years .
Na Ji-chan opened the door of the monitoring room and stared at the monitors one last time before leaving the room .
Ian's figure that was on the screen came into his mind .
“Keu, does Ian G.o.d even know what he is doing now?”
At this very moment, at least for today, Na Ji-chan was an anti of Ian G.o.d