Debuff Master

Chapter 133

“I apologize, but… shouldn’t these kinds of issues be resolved by the church…?” Siegfried asked, seemingly in disbelief.

“We are trying to resolve it on our own, but look at that over there,” Leonardo replied and pointed at the square where the Adventurers were gathered.

There were a bunch of muscular NPCs who looked like they would shout ‘Sparta!’ at any moment now and rush toward somewhere.

“They are the execution unit of the church. Hoho, what do you think? Don’t they look strong?”

“Ah,?well… I guess they do look strong…?”

“But they can’t catch those match-fixers. There is a limit to what they can do.”

“Hmm…”

“That is why the church has decided to employ the services of true warriors like you. Hmm… you can think of it as outsourcing the work or something like that.”

Siegfried’s interest was further piqued after hearing the words ‘outsourcing the work’.

“And we have statistics that ninety-nine percent of the match fixings are done by Adventurers. The Martial God Temple corrupted by the Adventurers was cleansed by an Adventurer. What do you think? It sounds good, right?”

After hearing that, it started to make sense for Siegfried.

The developer of BNW, Hive, was also infamous for not interfering with the game no matter what, so it wasn’t strange at all if this was the game’s way of dealing with people abusing the game without interference from the developers.

“Hmm… It makes total sense now that I listened to your explanation,” Siegfried said with a nod.

“So, will you do it?”

“Yes, I will do it.”

“Excellent!”

The quest details popped up in front of his eyes.

Ding!

[Arrest the Blasphemers!]

[Go and arrest the blasphemers abusing the Arena system and unfairly enjoying the privilege of access to the many different dungeons across the continent!]

[Reward: Arena rank boost! (Hero III)]

[Progress: 0% (0/10)]

[Caution: You may only arrest the Adventurers once their HP goes below 20%, and you will not be able to arrest deceased Adventurers.]

The quest was pretty straightforward, but the problem was that Siegfried had no idea what the ‘arrest’ part meant.

“How do I arrest the Adventurers…? I’m also an Adventurer, and I think it’s impossible to ‘arrest’ Adventurers as far as I know?”

“If there is a will, there is a way! You are immortals from another world, so I’m aware that it’s impossible to arrest you guys like normal people.”

“Then… how…?”

“Here, take these.” High Priest Leonardo passed a bunch of items to Siegfried.

[Alert: You have obtained the item ‘Tracker’s Compass: Blasphemy’!]

[Alert: You have obtained the item ‘Insignia of the Martial God’!]

[Alert: You have obtained the item ‘Rope of Shame x 20’!]

[Alert: You have obtained the item ‘Book of Savage: Total Binding’!]

[Alert: You have obtained the item ‘Return Scroll of the Martial God Church’!]

The Insignia of the Martial God was going to vouch for his identity, Tracker’s Compass: Blasphemy would allow him to find the Abusers, and the Return Scroll of the Martial God Church would allow him to instantly transfer the arrested Abusers to the church.

However, the two remaining items exuded a sinister aura for some odd reason.

“What are these two items?”

“That is a book with instructions on how to bind blasphemers and a magical rope. You will be able to arrest the blasphemers once you study that book.”

“I see… so this is basically a skill book?”

“Precisely.”

“Ah, I understand,” Siegfried replied with a nod.

‘A gamer is going to be?arresting a gamer? That sounds fresh…’

Siegfried agreed to do the quest since it didn’t look particularly difficult, and he immediately moved to do the quest.

“W-Wait a minute!” exclaimed High Priest Leonardo as he stopped Siegfried from walking away. “Kneel down on one knee first. I will bless you with Martial God Aries’ blessing so that you will have a higher chance of successfully completing the quest.”

“Okay.”

Siegfried got down on one knee as instructed, and High Priest Leonardo placed his hand on Siegfried’s forehead and said a word of prayer.

[Alert: You have been blessed by ‘Blessing of Aries’!]

[Alert: All of your stats will be increased by 15%! (Duration: 72 hours)]

An extremely powerful buff was cast on Siegfried.

“Alright, I wish you success!”

“Thank you.”

Siegfried left the temple to go and arrest the blasphemers.

Unfortunately, he was completely oblivious to the fact of how ugly this quest was going to get, and he was definitely going to be in for one huge ugly surprise as well.

***

While he was on his way to arrest the blasphemers, Hamchi started talking, “Hey, owner punk! You said you were going to wrestle with sweaty men, so where are you going?”

“Oh, that is…”

Siegfried explained what happened and the details of the quest to Hamchi.

“Tsk… Tsk…?You, humans, are really foolish. Why would you do something that is eventually going to be ruined soon enough?”

“Who knows? I guess it’s because it looks cool to have a high Arena rank. They probably wanted to show off to others and make other people go ‘wow!’ or something.”

“Are you saying that they want to put on airs? Haha!?That sounds dumb?”

“I guess you’re right,” Siegfried agreed with Hamchi while looking at the Tracker’s Compass and the map.

“It should be around here somewhere…”

When he was about to get closer to an abandoned temple, a fully-armed knight with a group of soldiers appeared.

“Halt! This is a restricted area. Turn back now if you don’t want to suffer the consequences!” exclaimed a knight who looked like the leader of the group.

“I have something to say. Will you hear me out?” Siegfried asked.

“What is it?”

“Well…” Siegfried told them about what he was doing, and he showed the Insignia of the Martial God as well.

“Hmm… so you are from the Martial God Church? That’s good. We have been getting a lot of ragamuffins here recently, and it has been getting much more difficult to control the area.”

“Huh?”

“As you might be aware, these kinds of dungeons managed by the kingdom are called ‘Dimensional Rifts’.”

Dimensional Rifts were strange phenomena that appeared all over the Nürburg Continent one day, and they were strange places where either time flowed in reverse, or they were inhabited by monsters from other dimensions. If left alone, these Dimensional Rifts could unleash a terrible disaster or a wave of monsters on their surroundings.

Therefore, every nation paid special attention to the Dimensional Rifts in their territories by stationing armed troops to manage them or hiring skilled Adventurers to clean the monsters up for them. In addition, the criteria for becoming a ‘skilled’ Adventurer was a high enough Arena rank.

“I am aware of the Dimensional Rifts.”

“There has been a steep rise in parties that fails their tasks, so we did some digging and found—Ha!?Just thinking about it makes me mad!” the knight scoffed in disbelief before continuing, “I mean, it seems that these assholes manipulated the matches at the Arena!”

”They obtained the qualification to enter Dimensional Rifts through shady means because they aren’t qualified!”

Basically, these unskilled gamers managed to enter dungeons that they couldn’t handle by abusing the Arena. There was no problem if that was the end of it, but these people were basically just parasites trying to leech off of others, and their pitiful skills would usually put the entire party in jeopardy.

“How can we trust the Martial God Church when they are sending those kinds of Adventurers? And how can we trust you as well, Adventurer?”

It seemed that the entire player population would be the ones who would suffer the consequences of what the Abusers had done.

“Anyway, I hope you successfully arrest those bastards.”

“I am here to do just that, so please leave it to me,” Siegfried said as he retrieved the Tracker’s Compass.

Then, the Tracker’s Compass pointed at the entrance of the Dimensional Rift.

“It seems that a criminal is in there,” Siegfried said as he showed the Tracker’s Compass to the knight.

“Oh? Really? Get going, then! You better catch him and bring him to me first! Let me have a look at that bastard!” the knight exclaimed before commanding his troops, “Give way!”

The soldiers moved, allowing Siegfried to enter the Dimensional Rift.

***

There was a party of five Adventurers in front of the Dimensional Rift. Each and every one of them was a Super Total Expert in the Arena. Their first hunt went well, but the party started collapsing when the humanoid monsters showed up.

The culprit behind the collapse of the party was an Adventurer named ‘Sanagat,’ and this Adventurer made all sorts of blunders during the hunt. Sanagat could not live up to his rank as a Total Expert, as he was one-sidedly beaten up by the humanoid monsters.

As such, the entire party had to step in and run all over to try and salvage the situation, but they had already reached their limits.

“Hey! You shouldn’t let them go over there!”

“Ah, are you kidding me?!”

“Argh!?

“This is driving me crazy. Let’s just give up. This is a complete waste of time…”

The party members started expressing their anger at Sanagat while they were fighting the boss monster.

“Are you an Abuser by any chance? How could someone with your skills be a Super Total Expert?” One of the party members voiced out his suspicions.

“Now that I think about it, you may be right…”

“I mean, he’s overgeared, and his rank is Super Total Expert, but his skills are…”

“Ah, we should have kicked him out from the start. Why did we bring trash like him all the way to the Boss Room?”

Unfortunately, the party could no longer keep on harassing Sanagat.

[Humans! I will rip you all to shreds!]

Boss Monster Blood Zombie unleashed a fierce attack on the chaotic party.

“Ah! Fuck! I could clear all this by myself if I were in good condition today! Stop talking shit at me!” Sanagat lashed out.

However, his bluff only further angered his party members.

Why?

It was all because everyone disliked people who couldn’t take responsibility for their blunders.

“Really?”

Someone whispered in Sanagat’s ear.

“Of course! Everyone has a bad day or two, right? So—Whoa! Who the hell are you?!” Sanagat screamed and jumped in surprise.

“Hi~” Siegfried greeted with a smile.

“Who are you? How did you get in here when you’re not one of our party members?!”

“Me? I came to catch you.”

“What bullshit are you spouting…?”

“The Martial God Church asked me to catch Abusers like you, so l came to catch you. Anyway, just come with me without causing a scene, okay?”

“M-Martial God Church?!” Sanagat screamed once again.

‘Wasn’t it all over after I ran?away that time?!’?he thought as he recalled the time he narrowly escaped from the Arena when the executioners came looking for him. He hadn’t taken even a single step in the Arena since that day.

They actually came out to catch him. However, why did they send an Adventurer rather than an NPC?

“W-what nonsense are you spouting?! You’re not an Administrator!” Sanagat retorted.

However, Siegfried let his hammer do the talking as he smashed his hammer into Sanagat’s head.

Pak!

“Kuheok!”?Sanagat exclaimed and fell to the ground.

[Alert: The blasphemer’s HP has fallen below 20%!]

[Alert: You may use the Rope of Shame and arrest the blasphemer!]

Siegfried retrieved a Rope of Shame after reading the message in front of him.

“Oh, right… I have to use the skill book first…” Siegfried muttered. He hurriedly retrieved the skill book High Priest Leonardo handed over to him.

‘Huh? What the hell is this? These pictures are a bit… strange,’?he thought while flipping through the pages with illustrations of people bound in strange positions.

“W-Who are you?” asked one of the party members.

“I came to arrest this guy, so please don’t mind me and carry on with your business. Ah,?hey you! It’s dangerous over there!” Siegfried shouted at one of the party members.

He told them not to mind what he was doing, and he even used Flying Spur to save one of the party members in danger.

[Alert: You have read the secret book ‘Book of Savage: Total Binding’!]

[Alert: You have learned the skill ‘Tortoise Shell Rope Binding’!]

Siegfried started binding Sanagat with the Rope of Shame using the extremely suspicious skill he obtained from the extremely suspicious-looking skill book.

‘This looks a bit…’?he felt awkward throughout the entire process.

Kwak!

Siegfried pulled the final knot of the Tortoise Shell Rope Binding, and Siegfried immediately shut his eyes upon seeing his masterpiece. He started screaming in agony as well.

“Ack!?My eyes…!”

“Hey! You fucking son of a bitch! Release me at once! Release meeee!” Sanagat screamed at the top of his lungs.

For some reason… the secret binding technique of the Martial God Church put the victim in a very shameful and precarious position…