Free Web NovelChapter 16: Who was responsible for this?
Though he had mainly killed people, fellow players like him, to achieve this massive jump in level and gain his current level up, he didn’t really care about the morality of his actions.
The system didn’t discriminate between the souls of monsters and the souls of humans when distributing experience points, and Leon was perfectly willing to use whatever path was available to climb up from the bottom.
However, one wouldn’t get any drops from killing humans unlike with monsters.
Even with monsters, getting a drop was very rare, and only happened to the lucky ones, but with other players, it was impossible.
The items in the inventory would simply be lost to the world upon a player’s death, never to be recovered again.
Unless the player emptied their inventory before dying, no one else could access its content, even by killing them.
The act of killing other players specifically to gain EXP was technically a built-in mechanic of the system, but it wasn’t widely used by many other players in the civilized world.
In the public eye and within the safety of the city walls, it was universally considered an absolute abomination, a taboo act that would turn anyone who practiced it into a hunted criminal.
That public disapproval was only what it seemed like on the outside though, a polite lie maintained for the sake of societal order.
The reality of the world changed entirely once people stepped past the dimensional gates of dungeons.
There, where no one would ever know what really happened, players routinely killed themselves over things like treasure, valuable monster drops, or even petty personal squabbles.
The darkness of human greed was always amplified in those lawless, isolated spaces where the rules did not apply.
If not for the fact that items stored in the inventory didn’t drop upon death, the player to player killings would even be far more worse than it was.
That hidden brutality was the primary reason for the formation of parties and large guilds in the first place, as venturing into a dangerous dungeon completely alone was nothing more than a literal death sentence, leaving an isolated player entirely vulnerable to both the monsters and the knives of their own peers.
Looking down at them, a sudden thought crossed Leon’s mind. He stared at the lifeless bodies and shook his head slightly.
’Perhaps i should have forced them all to empty their inventories before killing them.’ he thought.
If he had done that, he could have walked away with even more fortune.
Instead, he had been too efficient, and now whatever items the rest of the party had in their inventories were lost to the world.
Leon let out a long, heavy exhale. He ran a hand through his hair, looking away from the messy crime scene.
’Well...’ he thought, ’whatever.’
There was no use crying over spilled milk or lost loot. He had already achieved exactly what he came for. The massive jump in his level and the raw experience points he gained from their souls were more than enough compensation for his efforts.
He could feel the new power humming through his veins, and that alone made the entire ambush worth it.
He decided it was best he didn’t waste any more time lingering in this specific area. The scent of blood was strong, and the commotion from the dungeon explosion could easily draw unwanted attention.
If another player or an active hunting party happened to wander down this path and see him standing over a pile of dead humans, it would complicate things quite a bit.
He had no desire to become a hunted criminal outside the dungeon walls just yet. He needed to maintain his public reputation within the safety of the city.
Without a second thought, Leon turned on his heel and walked away.
Minutes after Leon had left the area, a completely different bunch of players arrived at the scene.
They halted in their tracks, their eyes widening as they took in the carnage.
The group gathered around the fresh corpses, the heavy silence broken only by the sound of them sadly shaking their heads.
It was a gruesome sight, making their stomach twist in disgust.
A tall man with spiky black hair separated himself from the rest of the group.
He walked over to the center of the slaughter and bent down towards the cold corpse of Bort.
Bort’s body had been completely split open from the middle of the head all the way down to his pelvis.
The spiky-haired man inspected the clean, terrifying wound closely, noticing the blackened, singed flesh along the edges of the cut.
"This one was killed by some kind of fire blade..." he muttered.
The heat from the weapon had cauterized the wound instantly as it sliced through bone and muscle, indicating a terrifying level of attack power and a highly specialized skill. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
The man then stood up and turned his attention to the other bodies scattered nearby.
He looked at the players who had been cleanly sliced in half directly from the waist, their bodies separated into two distinct pieces.
Finally, his eyes landed on Orat, who was now completely missing a head, the neck cleanly severed by a single strike.
The tall man hissed through his teeth, his face squeezing into a deep, angry frown as the sheer brutality of the attack sank in. He looked back up at his teammates, his expression completely dark.
The exact same thought currently going through his mind was the one going through the minds of all the other players in his group.
They all stared at each other in tense silence, silently asking the same terrifying question. ’Who was responsible for this?’
Before arriving at this exact spot, they had already seen the giant mushroom flames that had completely destroyed the dungeon.
The sheer scale of the magical blast had rewritten the terrain, leaving scorched earth and shattered stone everywhere.
Now, there were player corpses littered recklessly on the floor.
They wondered who would publicly kill players like this without a single worry about the consequences or the law.
Even more than that, they wondered who the hell was it that possessed enough raw destructive power to completely destroy an entire dungeon!
