Thumbs Up, Level Up

Chapter 88

Just as humans didn’t forget about their cats, cats also did not forget about their humans.

Ji-Cheok took a moment of silence for the dead Hunters. This was a habit he had since he was a Hunter Assistant.

[You have received 1,100 Likes!]

[You have received 1,100 Likes!]

[You have received 1,100 Likes!]

[You have received 1,100 Likes!]

Considering these hunters came all the way here at such a low level, they probably had lesser Gods as their Patrons. These lesser Gods gave Ji-Cheok Likes as they mourned for their Hunters.

‘Now that we are finished with this, shall we start our stream again?’

After wiping his face with his sleeve, he practiced smiling a little before he turned on the stream.

‘Cheok-Liang, start the stream.’

?Understood, Master.?

“I hope you didn’t wait too long. The preparations are done!”

-You act like you’re going right away, then you just stop the stream for no reason.

-Umji had to recharge his mana. Even Umji has to use skills.

-Hey Umji! You cleaned yourself up!

“Haha, you noticed right away! I had to clean up a little, I was drenched in… body fluids. The stream is for your entertainment and I don’t want you to see dirty things on the stream.”

-Umji is so professional. 乃

‘Alright. Let’s go! Let’s explore the surroundings first!’

He jumped straight up a tree. Instantly, new monsters caught his movement and started to attack him.

Kiieeek!

They were human-shaped monsters made of tree bark. These monsters were the ones that came up every time on the Hunter’s Written Exam and Monster Information Science Exam. They were the Dryads. It was said that they were born under the protection of the Tree Spirits, but they didn’t seem like they had any connection to the kind Tree Spirits. On the contrary, these monsters were evil beings that would attack without so much as a simple greeting.

One of the monsters was on a branch and jumped at Ji-Cheok as he was jumping up. Of course, he immediately swung his twin swords wildly and sliced off its arms.

Kiiek?

‘Welcome to my world. I know it’s your first time, but you are gonna see a lot of this~’

He stabbed one of his swords into the confused monster’s head, twisted his body upside down, and landed head-down on a tree branch. Then, he swung the other sword and neatly separated the head from the body.

Kiieeek!!

It was like opening a can with a can opener. The Dryad screamed. There were holes in its head, which Ji-Cheok guessed were its eyes. He watched the light in the holes gradually fade away.

‘Hm… I guess that one is dead.’

“The one we caught is a monster called the Dryad, which is a great source of fiber.”

?I just put out a short summary of the Dryad on the stream, Master.?

‘You are amazing!’

“As you can see, these monsters have a unique characteristic. When one of them is found, there are usually several others nearby.”

Ji-Cheok was hanging upside down like a bat while chatting with the viewers. The atmosphere of the chat was pretty great. Just then, as Ji-Cheok was talking, the monsters started to pop up around him, climbing the trees around him and moving around like monkeys. It was the pack of Dryads he had just mentioned.

‘This is great. I have the audience, the stage, and the sound effects. I guess it’s time for me to show off my new skill.’

“Alright everyone, do you know a game called freeze tag? I used to play this game with my friends all the time.”

As soon as his feet fell off the branches, he activated the skill.

“Activate Soul Telekinesis!”

As Ji-Cheok activated the skill by deliberately saying the skill name out loud, the power that had evolved from his telekinetic ability once again surrounded his body. He took his feet off the branch, but he was somehow able to stay still in the air.

“Freeze!”

-OMG! He stopped mid-air!

-Is that floating magic? Or one of those anti-gravity skills?

-If that was the case, shouldn’t he be floating around? It looks like he just stopped.

-Anyway, this is what you were hyping all this time? Just hovering mid-air?

“Hahaha, I wouldn’t activate this skill just to play a dangerous game of freeze with the Dryads!”

‘Cheok-Liang, turn on all of the double-strike passive skills.’

Cheok-Liang had once told Ji-Cheok that passive skills had an on/off function. Not a lot of Hunters knew that this function even existed. They didn’t really need it, either. Since passive skills didn’t consume any mana, it was obviously beneficial to always have them on. Only an idiot would turn them off.

‘...And that idiot is me! Even passive skills sometimes need to have a dramatic entrance!’

?I just turned on the skills of [Boots of Double Strike], [Double Attack], [Sword of Illusion], [Second Chance], and [Remnant of the Sword]. With all of them together, you have a one hundred percent chance for a double strike! ?

It was a good thing that Ji-Cheok had scraped the remaining Likes and invested in double-strike skills. The only thing left was for the viewers to see what he was capable of after adding up all his items and skills to hit that one hundred percent.

Ji-Cheok bent his knees slightly, then jumped up like a rocket, from under the branch and into the sky above.

Pow!

The Dryads under his feet also jumped up, trying to catch him.

‘Now, it’s showtime.’

Bam!

Ji-Cheok’s posture of ascending to the heavens was only held for a very brief moment, as he turned his body over and rotated one hundred and eighty degrees. His head was now facing the ground, and he was nose-diving with the help of gravity. Yes, he was falling to the ground while the Dryads were still in the process of jumping up.

The monsters knew that something was wrong, but it was already too late. As the distance between him and the monsters got smaller and smaller, Ji-Cheok activated the Sword Qi. The length of the extended blade reached two meters in an instant.

‘Activate [Heaven and Earth Chaotic Sword Qi] and [Mysterious Swords: White Night, Dark Night]!’

His super-climactic twin swords started flashing as if they were dancing.

-Holy moly, how is that possible?

-The blades just doubled in numbers!

-Are the swords having a BOGO sale?

An afterimage-like blade appeared next to each of the twin swords.

“Shall we practice the multiplication table? What is two times two?”

-4!!

-444444444444444444444!!!!

-Death! Death! Death! Death! Death!

A total of four swords began to sweep through like a storm in all directions. Like the blade of a blender, the rotating swords shredded the Dryads as Ji-Cheok activated [Soul Telekinesis]. All of the monsters were killed as he was falling toward the ground.

Boom!

He landed on the ground with a loud noise.

“Hey look! There are no more Dryads left!”

There were no living Dryads around Ji-Cheok.

‘How many did I kill?’

?You have eliminated eighty-seven monsters at once, Master.?

‘Man, that’s a lot. I should say something cool to the viewers.’

“Well, that’s it for the Dryads. They are a good source of fiber.”

Ji-Cheok put his thumbs up to the camera.

-LOL LOL! That’s such an old-school joke! LOL LOL

-Hahahahaha He sometimes sounds like such a boomer. LOL LOL

?What do you mean sometimes? He always sounds like a boomer.

The chat seemed happy.

“Then, it’s time to do some more recon!”

‘Can you hear the sound of the Likes exploding?’

?Master! This is amazing! So amazing!?

* * *

He was in a room surrounded by glass windows overlooking the city skylight. In the penthouse of a high-rise building—which even most chaebols could not obtain, not because of the price, but because none of them were on sale—Jung Su-Gi was sitting on a sofa and staring at the screen. On the screen, Ji-Cheok was slaughtering enemies one by one with frightening force. His eyes were full of interest, but his lips were twisted in anger.

“No wonder they failed. The people I sent last time definitely could not kill that guy.”

Next to Su-Gi was a man in a black suit. It was Kim Yeong-In, his right-hand man.

“Well, his level must definitely be under twenty, because the System does not lie. But his skills and a level 20 Hunter? You can’t even put them in the same sentence. What do you think his real level is?” Su-Gi asked.

At his questions, Kim Yeong-In gulped. He knew that if he answered wrong here, Su-Gi was going to go rampant in the room, and in the worst case, he might have to clean up another dead body. People thought of Su-Gi as an easygoing and cool young Hunter, but the truth was the exact opposite.

“I would estimate that he is a top-tier Hunter, around level 80 at the very least,” Yeong-In answered.

“Right? I’ve never seen a cultivator that used their Sword Qi so freely. How long do you think he trained for that?”

“At least in Korea, there is no one with such cultivation skills. Well, there are many Hunters with Aura Blade, a warrior-type skill, who might be on the same level with Ji-Cheok.”

“But that’s not cultivation. That’s an aura ability. It’s completely different.”

Aura and cultivation—both skills were based on the physical body, but the principle was completely different and the direction of those skills also diverged in completely different directions.

“Why would he choose to train his cultivation skills? I’m sure he knows that aura skills are so much easier to learn.”

“...”

Yeong-In did not answer that question as he thought it was rhetorical.

“I want to meet him in person,” Su-Gi said.

“I will make an appointment, sir.”

“Let’s see if we can cajole him into talking to us… And if he refuses….”

He made a small ice sculpture of Ji-Cheok’s GodTube channel symbol. Then, he shattered it with just his grip power.

Crush!

“...I’ll just have to break him.”

Su-Gi laughed. It was a burst of murderous laughter that was never seen in his commercials.

His laughter gave the chills to his secretaries, but they didn’t show it.

‘I’m sure he would join Su-Gi if he wasn’t crazy. He wouldn’t still be siding with Ji-Han…Would he?’

All of Su-Gi’s secretaries were thinking the same thing. They didn’t know why Ji-Cheok wouldn’t join that famous Guild in the United States. However, there had always been personal circumstances that made one Hunter or another unable to leave Korea. In any case, Su-Gi was next in line for the succession of the Jungha Group, while Ji-Han was just a scoundrel who had suddenly matured very recently. There was no way that Ji-Cheok was going to keep his loyalty to such a fool. Nobody would be that stupid.

* * *

Ji-Cheok destroyed the swarm of Nepenthes and also the pack of Dryads. After all that, when he climbed up a tree to look around, he noticed a tree that stood out the most. It stood tall like a skyscraper, and if the other trees were about fifty meters tall, this tree seemed to be at least one hundred and fifty. Basically, it was three times taller than the rest of the trees. The tree was as thick as it was tall, and it almost looked like a World Tree from an elf movie. Of course, Ji-Cheok knew that it wasn’t a real World Tree. The World Tree was the centerpiece of a sacred elven forest, and this was a hellish forest made of corpses.

‘Fake World Tree. I’m going to call this the Fake World Tree.’

?Master, I think it would be good to develop a better naming system. The viewers are saying that your lines are sometimes too old-school.?

‘What do you mean? They love it.’

?I know they love it… That is precisely the weird part.?

‘Maybe it’s because my Charm is B-rank? If a dad joke was told by a handsome man, people would still love it.’

?It is fortunate that you are handsome, Master.?

‘Hm… I hope you are being sarcastic, Cheok-Liang. Anyway, I’m sure I will find the boss monster in that tree that’s three times taller than the rest. Probably.’

?Yes, Master. It was the same pattern in the last mushroom dungeon.?

‘Then, #Letsgo!’

Ji-Cheok ran toward his goal, and he encountered many monsters on his way.

First was the Baltards. These monsters looked like spiders but had four legs. They were the size of a human and they jumped high like a flea. It was terrifying to see a human-sized spider jumping around like a flea.

‘You have been sliced, sir~’

He sliced apart 123 Baltards in total. He was sure about the numbers because it was Cheok-Liang who counted it.

Next up were the Potens. They were long-ranged dealer monsters that shot poison from their bud-like mouths. Since long-ranged attacks were meaningless against [Soul Telekinesis], Ji-Cheok was able to easily block their attack and cut them into thirds.

‘I’m gonna slice you into a bucket of wings, breasts, and thighs, you flowery bastards.’

The number of Potens casualties was 83. They were all sent to Hell in an instant.

Next were the Sunzettes. Ji-Cheok was not even in a desert, but these monsters were nevertheless cacti that were about 2 meters tall. They walked with their roots exposed and shot out their thorns while making the sound ‘pyok-pyok’. They actually yelled that sound! He also blocked their thorns with [Soul Telekinesis] and cut them into pieces. In the chat, there was an uproar about making cacti kimchi.

Yup, Ji-Cheok was indeed in Korea. A true Korean could make anything and everything into kimchi if they were brave enough.

He killed 76 Sunzettes, which meant that he could make 76 boxes of cactus kimchi. Cheok-Liang searched online and found that the flesh of Sunzette was actually very good for skin care and losing weight.

‘I should take two boxes with me, then.’

1. In Korean, Chinese, and Japanese the number four and the word “death” are pronounced the same.

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