Debuff Master-Chapter 865

[+99 Worn Parchment]

[A tattered ancient parchment.]

[It was once part of something important, but now, it is nothing more than a piece of parchment.]

[Type: Miscellaneous]

[Rating: Common]

[Durability: 2/5]

[Note: Enhanced 99 times.]

‘What’s up with the enhancement?’ Siegfried grumbled after examining the +99 Worn Parchment.

Everyone knew that a low-value item's enhancement success rate was exponentially higher compared to valuable items. On top of that, the cost to enhance low-value items was negligible, as the risks were almost nonexistent even if the enhancement ended up failing.

According to an experiment conducted by someone in the past, worthless items like this Worn Parchment could be easily enhanced up to +30 without any trouble.

However, +99 was a completely different story. In the entire history of BNW, had there ever been an item enhanced to such an absurd level?

Siegfried could confidently say "no" to that question.

Regardless of its enhancement level, the Worn Parchment was still just a parchment, a piece of paper made from animal hide, with no value other than the enhancement level prefixed to its name—mere numbers, nothing more, nothing less.

‘It doesn’t look useful for anything, but... who knows, right? It might come in handy someday,’ Siegfried thought as he stashed the +99 Worn Parchment into his Inventory.

He had a habit of picking up even the trash lying on the roadside, so there was no reason to discard the +99 Worn Parchment. After all, he even had items like Used Linen Underpants in his Inventory, so why not this?

‘Maybe I’ll sacrifice it as fodder to enhance something else later. Anyway, I’ve made enough here, so it’s time to leave,’ Siegfried muttered to himself before stepping into the portal to exit the dungeon.

“Oh, wait...”

He still had one last thing left to do.

He put on his Metamorphosis Mask and deliberately smeared himself with blood. He even cut himself a few times to create the appearance of someone who barely survived an ordeal of life and death.

He had to look and act like he had gone through hell and managed to be the lone survivor to fool the other Execution Guild members waiting outside and make a clean getaway.

Thus, Siegfried exited from the dungeon and set his next plan in motion.

“Hey! What happened in there?”

“Why are you the only one coming out? Where is everyone else?”

The Execution Guild members waiting outside the dungeon were clueless about what transpired inside and proceeded to bombard Siegfried with question after question.

“...We got wiped out. They’re all dead. I was just lucky enough to survive,” Siegfried said with his head low and his voice burdened with sorrow.

The Execution Guild members believed Siegfried’s words.

“What...?”

“Was this rift that tough?”

“This is bad news...”

While the guild members were distracted by the grim news, Siegfried discreetly slipped away and successfully escaped from enemy territory without any problems.

Kaching!

A title shone brightly above his head as he ran away.

"I Am Backstabbing."

***

While Siegfried was busy dealing massive blows to the Execution Guild...

“All the envoys were... killed?”

“Y-Yes, Your Majesty!”

“Are you telling me that... Siegfried van Proa... that insolent brat has killed the envoys I sent?”

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“AGAIN?!”

The messenger prostrated himself on the ground, pleading desperately, “M-Mercy, Your Majesty!”

“HOW DARE HE!” Queen Rosenn shrieked, unable to contain her fury.

The nobles and officials in the hall trembled in terror before their enraged queen.

Queen Rosenn was the ruler of a mighty kingdom, so she knew all too well why Siegfried hadn't hesitated to commit such reckless acts.

Unfortunately, knowing his intention only made her anger burn even more.

She wanted to crush the Proatine Kingdom without mercy and raze it to the ground, but the harsh reality was that it wasn't physically possible for her to do so.

Unfortunately, that wasn't even the main problem.

“Y-Your Majesty! The Green Isles has declared war on our kingdom!”

“What?!”

The Green Isles, which had vowed to abandon its culture as a pirate nation and be reborn as a proud maritime kingdom, had just decided to invade them.

However, this didn't mean that they had returned to their old ways of piracy and plundering. They had actually declared the Palom Kingdom as their sole enemy and began raiding its territories ceaselessly.

The Palom Kingdom was situated at the easternmost edge of the continent, so half of its borders were coastal.

In other words, the declaration of war and subsequent attacks from the Green Isles threatened half of their kingdom.

The Palom Kingdom possessed a formidable navy feared by most, which was only normal for a mighty kingdom with extensive coastlines.

In fact, their navy was so formidable that Queen Rosenn even considered the idea of using the navy to cross the great ocean and land on the western shores of the continent just to invade the Proatine Kingdom.

Unfortunately, that plan was no longer an option, as the Green Isles had declared war on them, threatening their coastal cities.

The Green Isles had grown immensely powerful after the dissolution of the Naval Alliance. They had grown so powerful that they could devour even the strongest of nations as long as they fought on the open waters. Ignoring their hostile acts and deploying the navy against the Proatine Kingdom would leave the kingdom ripe for plundering to the ex-pirates.

In other words, the Palom Kingdom had lost its last viable option to invade the Proatine Kingdom.

“Battles are breaking out all over the seas, Your Majesty!”

“T-This is...!”

Queen Rosenn gnashed her teeth in frustration, unable to suppress her rage. It was infuriating enough that she could not teach the upstart lowly Adventurer a lesson, but to suffer repeated setbacks and be unable to do anything about it made her feel humiliated.

“Commit more men to the upcoming battle,” Queen Rosenn growled, her tone sharp and decisive.

However, her ministers immediately objected to her command.

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“Our borders could be greatly weakened if we commit more troops to this war!”

“This is a war between Adventurers, Your Majesty!”

“It is far too risky to divert men under the current circumstances!”

But Queen Rosenn would hear none of it...

“SILENCE!” she roared at them like a lioness with her face flushed with rage. “Are you telling me to endure this humiliation?! To let that lowly Adventurer brat toy with me again and again?! I have suffered enough disgrace as a queen! I will not let that filthy upstart mock me any longer!”

The hall fell dead silent.

Everyone present knew from experience that when the queen was this enraged, at least one person’s head was likely to roll. She tended to literally execute her officials on the spot when her patience was pushed to the limits, after all.

“Summon... Duke Kagon,” Queen Rosenn said.

Several high-ranking nobles gasped in reaction to the name she had just uttered.

“D-Duke Kagon, Your Majesty?!”

“Yes, I will deploy Duke Kagon in this war,” Queen Rosenn declared. Then, she flashed a sinister smile and thought, ‘Yes... If it’s Kagon, he will bring me that lowly Adventurer alive and broken. Hohoho!’

She was confident, without a shred of doubt, that Duke Kagon, the kingdom’s secret weapon, would succeed in capturing Siegfried van Proa and tearing him apart limb for limb while keeping him alive.

***

Meanwhile, Alexei was suffering from a complete mental breakdown. He had lost six levels after dying twice at Siegfried’s hands, and to make matters worse, he had ended up dropping his prized weapon, the +17 Frozen Rapier.

It was indeed a big blow.

The +17 Frozen Rapier alone accounted for thirty percent of Alexei’s total assets, and losing it as a random drop item was a catastrophic blow.

He could not sleep for two straight days, and he tormented himself day and night by tearing at his hair in frustration. He suffered bursts of rage and uncontrollable sobbing as his mental state deteriorated from bad to worse.

“Han Tae-Sung... Hehe... That bastard... Bwahaha!’

The more he wallowed in his despair, the greater his hatred for Siegfried grew.

However, he could not afford to wallow in it forever.

Forty-nine hours after his death, Alexei gathered every last gold he had to purchase a replacement weapon, the +15 Frozen Rapier. He would have loved to have another +17 primary weapon, but that was impossible.

Weapons at +16 were not only ridiculously expensive but exceedingly rare as well. It was not an item that he could simply buy off the market just because he was willing to throw money at it.

There were indeed a few +16 weapons on the market, up for sale at exorbitant prices, but none of them matched Alexei’s class, forcing him to settle for the +15 Frozen Rapier.

After arming himself with new gear, Alexei abandoned the idea of grinding for levels entirely.

No amount of grinding would let him recover the levels he had lost in time. Instead, he shifted his focus to strategizing alongside his guild executives and the military officials from the Palom Kingdom.

While they were busy preparing for the war...

“His Grace, Duke Kagon, has arrived!”

A lieutenant announced the arrival of the Palom Kingdom’s most powerful warrior, Duke Kagon.

‘An NPC? What’s the best he can do? He can’t be that strong, no matter how high his level is. He’s probably Level 299 at best,’ Alexei thought, not having any expectations as he was introduced to the duke.

The moment he met Duke Kagon, however, his mind changed instantly.

‘L-Level 350?!’

Alexei’s eyes grew wide, and his faith in their victory grew drastically.

Siegfried’s level was estimated to be somewhere between Level 300 and Level 310, so Duke Kagon was forty levels above the highest estimate. Even if Siegfried was a Master, the sheer difference in their levels was surely insurmountable.

‘You’ve overextended your hand, Han Tae-Sung. This is karma for all your arrogance. Serves you right! Hahaha!’ Alexei cackled inwardly.

The thought of Kagon destroying Siegfried rekindled Alexei’s fighting spirit and lifted him from his despair.

“The name is Kagon,” the duke greeted Alexei with an outstretched hand.

“Alexei,” he replied, shaking it firmly.

“I’ve heard of your troubles.”

“Ah, yes...”

“It is quite unfortunate,” Duke Kagon offered a short word of comfort. Then, he took his seat and announced, “I shall now convene the meeting.”

With Duke Kagon’s arrival, the once-gloomy atmosphere of the Execution Guild shifted, allowing them to focus fully on preparing for the upcoming battle.

***

Meanwhile, Siegfried, too, was busy preparing for the upcoming battle.

‘They must be absolutely enraged by now,’ he thought.

He was aware of just how much damage he had inflicted on them. He knew that his actions would drive both the Execution Guild and the Palom Kingdom into a frenzy.

How?

It was all because he understood better than anyone just how good he was when it came to driving his enemies crazy.

‘I’ll need to crush them thoroughly this time,’ he resolved to completely overwhelm his enemies in the upcoming battle.

His goal was clear—minimize losses on his side and deliver a dominating display of power that would leave no room for resistance or even the thought of going up against him in the future.

‘Oh well, they say that things might end up getting spoiled if you keep saving it for a rainy day. I guess it’s time to call in the big guns for this,’ Siegfried thought with a faint smile.

With that decision in mind, Siegfried set his next plan into motion.

He was confident that the Palom Kingdom would bolster its forces by sending in even stronger personnel. To counter that, he prepared to reinforce his own side with the best weapon at his disposal.