Chapter 24
— The Bounty —
Six months had already passed since the World Tournament happened. After that Event, Yuki became more popular than he already is. And by being popular means, being chased by more Players that want to do nothing but kill him.
Usually, while Yuki is in the middle of grinding, a group of Players will always pop out of nowhere and start throwing hands at him without saying anything. Though Yuki always wins with ease. That's right. This is a normal event for Yuki's life in YGGDRASIL.
Normally, this kind of thing happens for at least once, twice, or rarely thrice a week, but ever since the World Tournament, Yuki had to face this kind of thing every single day. Sometimes, he even had to deal with two groups of Players that wants to kill him at the same time. And unless he chooses to hide, this won't stop.
Yuki became something that many players like to call, a "Bountied Player". A player that if killed, the Killer will receive something great. No, the word great is an understatement already.
720 million Gold, A Unique Job Class, a total of 558 unknown Items, and a 100% Inventory Item Drop rate. That's Yuki's current bounty.
Yuki is known for his cruelty, especially to his hunters. It is rumored that he won't let someone go until they're stripped naked, which is true. This fact scared most of the Players that wants to go after him, but the bounty changed it all. Many had become crazy enough and decided to just risk it all.
For the Gold part of Yuki's bounty, it is a growth type. At first, it's just at 20 million, but as time goes by, it reached its current amount. The Unique Job class is unknown, but many guessed that this is very great. For the enormous amount of Items, no one knows what is that but many had thought that it's just a bunch of basic and common items. It's such a great number to have something great in there, it just sounds too good to be true.
The Gold, Class, and a bunch of items are great, but what drives everyone crazy is the 100% Inventory item drop. In YGGDRASIL's community, Yuki has different titles that every Players likes to call him. Each differs based on the Topic he's in. One of those titles is where he's known as 'The Hoarder'.
As the title suggests, he likes to take everything for himself and it has to be in large quantity as much as possible, and since this is his title in the Market Section means, everything that the Market offers, he probably has it in his inventory already.
But what came out of the Market is just a tiny part. What Yuki can offer is much more than that.
It is already a piece of known information that Yuki is a World Item holder. He holds multiple World Item. No one knows the exact number but it has to be more than one.
This very fact made every Players thirsty for Yuki's head. No homo.
A 100% Inventory item drop rate to a Player that holds multiple World Items? Yuki just became a walking fortune for most of the Players. A fortune for both in-game and real life.
So for the next months after the World Tournament, Yuki experienced a non-stop hunting galore. If a normal Player had been put in this kind of situation, they will surely choose to just quit the game. But Yuki isn't a normal Player.
Despite his situation, Yuki is still logging-in in YGGDRASIL for every single day with a full smile on his face, welcoming all the Players that came for his head with an open arms.
For some reason, he is very glad about his situation.
A void might ask, why is that?
Well, that's because, the bounty that Yuki has, is his own doing in the first place.
Yuki's bounty, as many had thought that this is a punishment, is actually a feature that was given to him by the game system itself. Though it was given to him, it was originally his idea. He's the one who suggested it. Of course, through his own connection inside the game itself.
Even though the bounty looks like a one-sided thing, this is actually a challenge. Not only his killer, but he himself will also benefit something from this.
Yuki's bounty for others is a quest type. They have to accept a certain 'quest' first before trying to kill Yuki because if they did not, even if they managed to kill Yuki, they won't receive the bounty price.
For Yuki on the other hand, it's more complex.
First, he can actually remove his bounty whenever he wants. It's not a permanent thing. As it was described, his bounty is a feature. But if he chooses to remove it, the bounty feature will be gone forever. It's only a one-time thing.
Second, for Yuki, his Bounty is an All-rounder. If someone accepted the 'quest' for killing Yuki, they will become a 'quest holder' until they choose to give up on the quest, at least that's what it is to them. But from Yuki's perspective, he doesn't see the Quest holders as a 'Quest Holder' but... a Bountied Player. Someone who also has a bounty in their heads.
In short, Yuki too became a Bounty Hunter from every Quest Holder's perspective but the difference is, they don't know that.
What's actually happening is, whenever Yuki kills a Bountied Player/Quest Holder, he will receive their bounties, and the bounties he received are adding up to his own bounty. That's the reason why Yuki's bounty is growing so big as time goes by.
So the Gold on Yuki's bounty is actually a sum of his and the bounties he had received so far, and the 528 Items are the Items that each Bountied Player/Quest Holder had dropped whenever they're killed by him.
Third. Yuki received a quest. A quest that involves killing a certain amount of Human and Demi-Human Players. An amount that will take him too much time unless he roams in different worlds and start genociding the sh*t out of every Players he encounters.
The quest is a class quest, and a quest that was given to him by his 'Origin' class itself, so Yuki can't say no to this unless he wants to have some punishments he wouldn't want to have.
So the reason why Yuki thought that his current situation is very favorable to him and why he has yet to remove his bounty even though his life is becoming more stressful is because of these facts. And he is getting some handsome amount of rewards and accomplishing some things along the way so he's actually the one who's getting the most out of this.
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Back then, before Yuki had even begun playing YGGDRASIL, he already made some plans that he'll do once he's finally inside the game.
He already thought about it carefully. About what are the steps he'll make, or paths he needs to take. All of it is based on the knowledge he has in this world.
But once he finally got inside the game, he found out that, he actually need to be more careful about what he's trying to do since he realized that even though he has a lot of knowledge about this world, there are many unknown variables to him. Some things that he needs to be cautious of.
For example, the crucial events that happened in the Original story of Overlord. He knows the majority of it, but the problem is, he doesn't know when it all exactly happened. He's sure about some of the things, but some of the most important ones happen to be included in the 'He doesn't know' part.
If Yuki holds something very important, then that is his knowledge of the future. It might be something that he should not worry about since it's not like he'll put himself in danger if the future has been changed. But just like his original intention for choosing this world, he has a lot of things he wanted to do, but he only wants to do all of it in the future he knows and grown to like.
So after knowing that the plan he made will greatly disturb the timeline, he decided to just postpone it. If someone knows these reasons, then they will surely understand why throughout the years that Yuki played the game, he only stayed in Niflheim. He made himself known in YGGDRASIL, but he's not affecting the flow of the original timeline inside the game.
At least it's not affected up to the point that Yuki wouldn't be so sure anymore if the Events he knows will still happen in the future.
In other terms, it will be like this... The whole timeline is like a room full of quiet people, and Yuki's plan is similar to shouting out loud. He can't do that because he will be kicked out of the room. It's just too quiet for him to start something.
But actually, there's a point within the timeline where even if he shouted at the top of his lungs, it wouldn't matter any longer since at that moment, everyone became so noisy and the loudest people had already arrived inside the room.
Yuki likes to call this part as the Goldilocks Point. A time where he can finally start rolling out his Original Plans without worrying too much about everything... or anyone.
The Goldilocks Point that Yuki likes to call is known by many people as, The World Tournament. And since this event already happened quite a while ago means, Yuki can now start doing his long-awaited plan.
The go signal has been fired and Yuki bursted out without any hesitation. All the things he had done throughout these years are nothing but a preparation for this very day.
The day where he can finally take off the chains that are holding him back and run free.
But of course, it's not like he can actually just run off like that, because the first step of his plans is going towards the World of Helheim. He needs to do something and find someone in that world.
But going there means, he will need to leave his turf. The Niflheim.
But leaving Niflheim all of a sudden is like, going on a one-year trip in another country while leaving your house wide open.
Niflheim for Yuki is like a home. He grew up in that place. He loves that cold, freezing, and snowy world where anywhere you look you'll see nothing but ice. He's the first Player that steps foot on its land, he is its World Guardian, he is the first Player that managed to completely explore it, and most importantly, he's its King. Officially.
So it's not that wrong to say that Yuki owns Niflheim.
Though he doesn't govern it like an actual King, he still has a sense of responsibility. To protect the Players that dwell within his turf? Well, that's just a part of it but It's actually to drive the garbages out of his land.
If the news about him going to another World and leaving Niflheim has been circulated throughout the community, a massive group of PKers will surely pay a visit. Yuki doesn't want to be bothered by that, so he decided to get some dogs that will guard his home while he is not around. By dogs means his Friends.
Unlike the other Worlds, Yuki "protected" Niflheim, or at least that's how it looks like, from PKers. Though he's not 100% successful, he still drove out the majority of them. It's not like someone will blame a single person for missing some groups that entered in some part of the whole WORLD.
But thanks to Yuki, compare to others, the Players in Niflheim or the Heteromorphics in general, are much stronger cause they managed to focus themselves on Hunting and Gaining rather than worrying about the PKers.
And fortunately, the Majority of these Players are Yuki's friends. Though fighting and pushing PKers out of Niflheim is pretty much what they're doing already, since all of them became strong a long time ago and decided to help Yuki out, Yuki still asked them about it personally.
Nonetheless, all of them promised to do what Yuki asked them to do, especially about the specific area that only Yuki's close friends knows about.
But of course, Yuki still made something that sealed the deal. Dogs need a reward so they can be loyal after all. So Yuki didn't ask them this as a favor, but as a job. He paid some of them with Money and some are some things inside the Game.
So in the end, everyone gets to gain something out from this and Yuki can finally go on with his business with ease on his mind.
And at that moment, after all that, Yuki finally took his first step.
A step where the actual story begins.
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