Afterlife Dream

I was exhausted beyond measure after that first failed raid. I dragged my ass back to the safe map in Lava County, went into my home, and slept. I only woke up hours later to the annoying dinging sound from my user interface screen. It was DragonTalon who was asking me to do Love Dungeon with him.

I yawned, got off my home, and went to the Cupid Kingdom. After that first bad experience, both DragonTalon and I had become quite smart and cautious in selecting dungeon mates. We quickly put up a list of people who were nice and considerate, and a list of people who we would never run with again.

That day, I met with HinoKun and his wife, SakuraChan again. DragonTalon blacklisted every single person from that first run we had, but I disagreed. HinoKun was pretty fair to me, and SakuraChan did not say a single word in the argument. We did not go together, but I noticed something different about HinoKun. Hmm, did he get new armors?

"I am not running with them, if that's what you have in mind," DragonTalon reminded me.

"That's not it. Don't you think that he looks a little different?" I asked him.

"Different?"

DragonTalon squinted at him, then he checked HinoKun's character info. His discovery made him whistle in admiration.

"Woaw. Antares, look at this."

The first thing that I saw was HinoKun's level.

Dude.

He got twenty levels in a week! HinoKun was already 123, and he had finished the Fourth Job Advancement Quest. He was no longer a Sword Master but a Musashi, the fourth job designation for a swordsman.

That was a remarkable feat because leveling up was a pain in the ass at his level! I seriously did not know how he did that.

But that was not what made DragonTalon whistle. He pointed at HinoKun's gears on the screen and tapped at his end-game equipment.

Fire Golem Helmet - check.

Queen Spider Boots - check.

Dark Fairy Gloves - check.

Ice Dragon Cloak - check.

...

HinoKun had managed to get Ice Dragon Cloak. The level 110 raid, "The Woe of The Ice Dragon" was done together with the Domination and Adventurers guild every Thursday. In our guild, only BlackPuma had the cloak so far.

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"So they succeeded again last Thursday?"

"Yup, didn't you see the announcement?"

"There was an announcement?"

"Of course! It was the same congratulatory banner after every successful job advancement quest."

Oh, I must have missed it.

"But why did HinoKun get the cloak and none from our guild did?"

DragonTalon shrugged.

"Domination is the strongest guild after Twelve. Now their guild leader also got the cloak. Their members will be more and more arrogant. Oh God, he's heading over here!"

DragonTalon shut down his user interface screen and looked away.

I forced myself to smile at the two players who were slowly walking in our direction.

"Hey, Antares, long time no see."

"Hey, HinoKun."

"DragonTalon too, hi," HinoKun nodded at him with a smile. DragonTalon managed to grunt as a greeting. That was already quite an achievement, because he barely stopped himself from spitting at Ninja and PrecisionShot whenever he came across them.

"Congratulations," I blurted out.

"For?"

"Your new cloak. Ice Dragon Cloak." I nodded at his light blue, velvety cloak. At first, I thought that the cloak was made of soft light blue fur. I was wondering what animal had such beautiful fur, but then upon more careful observation, I realized that it was not beautiful fur at all. The cloak was made from tiny ice crystals that were sewn together to a flexible, metallic frame.

"Ah."

"Thanks," he beamed with a smile. "Listen, BlackPuma asked me to talk to you directly about this matter. I heard that you were supposed to loot the Fire Golem Helmet tomorrow with another guildmate, correct?"

"Mhm?"

Why were we talking about my Fire Golem Helmet? I disliked the direction of this talk.

"Do you know that raids come with level restriction? Meaning that level 50 raid can only be accessed by players from level 50 to 89? As soon as players hit level 90, then they can only access the level 70 and 90 raids. Of course, we are speaking about the loot raids and not the precursor raids."

By precursor raids he meant the level 60, 80, and 100 raids.

"Okay?"

Well, I did not know that. In the original Afterlife Dream, the fourth jobs could all solo the level 50 raid. Of course, the drops were useless for them but I guess at that time they did it more for the thrill and less for the drops.

"I have two friends at level 89, who unfortunately still have no helmets to date. I am willing to pay for them to be able to loot helmets from tomorrow's Twelve run if you don't mind. Of course the gold will be distributed to everyone who join the run."

I pursed my lips. I knew that these two players at level 89 could not wait any longer, but I also was dying to get my own helmet!

"Why don't you let them loot in Domination's run?"

"I would, but we no longer run level 50 raids. Everyone is running level 70 above raids now."

"Waaaait a moment," DragonTalon pushed me aside. "There are not many players left in Twelve that are below 90. If Antares waits another week, is there even a guarantee that there will be a level 50 raid run next week?"

HinoKun laughed.

"No, there is not."

"Then, no," I answered resolutely.

"But wait, wait, don't reject me so quickly. Let me just check the levels. You can run again the next day, what about that? I will additionally give everyone Fire Orbs to enter the Lair. What about that?"

"And what if we fail?" I asked.

I had just failed a run that day so it was normal for me to be a little pessimistic.

"You won't. Look. I guarantee you and your guildmate helmets. I will keep sponsoring your runs until you get to loot helmets."

DragonTalon scoffed.

"You talk big, HinoKun. How much are you even willing to pay?"

HinoKun smiled confidently. He seemed to have no single doubt that he could win us over with money.

"What about 30,000,000 gold, split among 30 people?"

Both DragonTalon and I gulped.

That was 1,000,000 gold for a person. And the run took maximum 2 hours.

"More for each person if you run with fewer people," HinoKun pointed out.

"I don't think I will be running with less," I said with a frown.

Both HinoKun and SakuraChan laughed.

"So do you agree?"

"I don't know. What did Laz say? My guildmate that is supposed to loot the helmet with me?"

"He agreed already."

"... I need some time to think."

"Ok, let's all meet at the entrance cave tomorrow at 9 AM to finalize the squad formation."

HinoKun and SakuraChan left, and I furiously went to type a message to Lazarus.

"Yoo, Laz my man, why did you agree to sell your Fire Golem Helmet away???"

I did not get any answer from him until after I finished my Love Dungeon run.

"Sorry for the late answer, Antares," he typed. "I need the money. Don't you also? We leveled up very quickly, we did not have enough money to fund our equipment."

...

I looked down at my shabby, level 50 gears. Okay, I got his point. None of my gears were enchanted or enhanced. I was a weakling. I was in the middle of making a lot of potions to sell, but they were not going to give me a net profit of 1,000,000 gold a day.

The only reason why I thrived as a Healer was because I depended on my teammates to kill for me. All I had to do was heal around, give them Divine Guard, and give them Heavenly Blessing. It was different for Lazarus. He was a bowman, so naturally he had to be strong. There were only two ways to get strong in a game. You either worked hard or you paid a lot. In this version of Afterlife Dream, paying a lot was not an option. The only remaining option was to work hard.

"Besides, HinoKun will pay us for every run until we succeed in looting our helmet. Is that not a good deal?"

"Are you talking about 1,000,000 gold every person, every run until we both get our helmets?"

"Yupp."

...

The gears in my brain started to move and churn the numbers in my head.

Okay, now it started to make sense. Next week, I could be doing the Fire Golem raid every day. Then I would possibly not only earn my helmet, but also cash in 7,000,000 gold for the week!!

I checked my inventory. I only had 150,000 gold currently. 7,000,000 was definitely a huge, huge sum of money. I wiped the imaginary saliva off the corner of my lips and typed back excitedly.

"Okay, it sounds great. Let's sell those helmets then."