Level 1 to Apex: My Monster Templates Defy Reality!
Chapter 90: The dark side

Chapter 90: The dark side

After all, where else would they get this much comfort?

He couldn’t help but mentally marvel at Roonie and his methods.

That guy was just using the classic exaggerated side-comfort method to keep Zack and the others in his guild.

Like, for any decent player, the Kiyon Guild had nothing to offer—but for those who played the game just to enjoy life, Kiyon was nothing short of heaven.

A drunken playboy wasn’t supposed to use these kinds of tricks. The more he learned about Roonie, the more exciting it was getting.

That guy was the kind of master manipulator who had set this whole trap for his guild members.

Those guys were sinking deeper into that trap while thinking they were using Roonie for their comfort.

Now that he thought about it—even that new car and house—Roonie might be trying that same tactic on him, too.

He just smiled as he walked out of the guild office.

For him, the biggest takeaway was that Roonie wasn’t as uncaring about the game as he pretended to be.

This increased the possibility of him joining the game.

Not thinking much, Forsyx just blended into the crowd and started walking back toward the slum area.

Now that he understood the basic political struggle in the city, it was time to use the leverage of his first humanoid template.

After skating around the slums for a bit, he finally walked up to a spooky underground market.

This was one of the black markets present inside Chimika City.

There, he saw most people coming in and out wearing either masks or big hoodies to hide their identities.

Though there were a rare few who arrogantly walked around without any cover.

He took out the new black long coat, which had a hoodie attached, along with a mask he had just bought from a random vendor.

As he was about to put on his coat, he mumbled, "Shift to green goblin."

The next moment, he found himself shrinking smaller and smaller.

He stopped at around half his original size.

This transformation was much tamer compared to others, as all he felt was his skeleton shrinking down.

He looked at his thin green hands and legs, and his small potbelly.

The good thing was that he had this leaf frock around his waist, covering his dignity.

It was one thing being naked in bird or snake form, as fur, scales, or feathers usually covered him, but as a goblin, there was nothing like that.

He just placed the small long coat around himself, which now fit perfectly.

The hood and mask helped him cover his bald head and his handsome goblin face.

With those new clothes on, he walked toward the market, full of confidence.

In his past life, he was so obsessed with increasing his power in the game that all he ever focused on was the fighting power of a template.

While chasing after strength, he missed out on a lot of opportunities—ones he only realized much later in life.

The biggest thing that made Apex Ascension stand out was the lack of a quest-based reputation system.

Usually, in old-school games, a player just had to do a quest for someone, and that would affect their reputation across the game.

The concept of reputation was still in this game, but it was slower and more humane, relying more on rumors and interactions.

One more thing this lack of a formal quest system did was open the possibility for anyone to issue a quest.

There were times even players issued quests while pretending to be NPCs—and vice versa, where NPCs took on quests as fake adventurers.

With such furious competition for quests, there were also different kinds of good and bad quests one could take.

For all the good, official quests, there was the Adventurer Guild—or you’d get direct quests from someone who lived inside the core region.

But not everyone was after good or mundane things. That was where the black market came into play, as these were the spots to take on all those spooky, shady quests.

As he walked down the stairs, it felt like another world had opened before his eyes.

The beggars who were lying around the street outside were now next to stalls, haggling with players and NPCs over the price of some random stuff they were selling.

He walked up to one such stall and looked at some of the random garbage laid out.

Though interesting, all the items showed "unknown" in their descriptions.

It was like the seller had used some special alchemy skill on them.

Well, to be true, not everything there was garbage. He saw a stone-shaped comb.

Now, whether that was some real unknown artifact or a counterfeit created by the seller was a mystery.

These shops were more like gambling spots—places where you had a 1-in-10 chance of finding something worthwhile.

In the past, out of ten things you’d buy from these stalls, one or two might turn out to be good.

He noticed that most of the people around these stalls had glowing eyes.

Likely, they were using some skill to discern the value of the objects.

Too bad touching the items wasn’t allowed; this prevented most inspection-based skills from working.

Beyond these gambling shops, the market branched into two roads.

The left side was full of luxury and light, as it housed the biggest slave and gambling area in the city.

He saw multiple people in luxury clothes walking around in groups—likely nobles with their guards.

On the other side, the road to the right was much darker and quieter, with very few adventurers in sight, as this road led to the illegal quest house.

Even though all these illegal tasks were super high-paying, most of the player base avoided them, as the submission of these tasks required a person to leave their mana print with these illegal operators.

The mana prints were more like fingerprints, where each creature had its own unique mana print in the side-game world.

The requirement of a mana print forced the player to choose between the illegal organization and the Adventurer Guild, as the Adventurer Guild also required the same.

There were many theories regarding this in his past.

Some players believed it was done to contain the illegal quests.

The most popular theory was that this was done to prevent these quests from leaking.

Though one thing was clear: this requirement for the mana print made the player decide whether they wanted to build a close relationship with a noble household or the crime syndicate.

There were a bunch of crime syndicates present in every city, and based on which one you chose to work with, you would indirectly work for some noble household.

It was just that a guild or player involved with a syndicate had to remain careful about the city authorities.

Also, they had to avoid any direct tasks from the Adventurer Guild, but there was no such restriction on taking tasks from the ruling guild.

There were players in his past who chose illegal quests over legal ones, and they explained that most of the quests that were usually shown were false ones.

To get the real quests, you had to build your reputation by completing at least a few of the beginner illegal quests.

Once you did that, the entire underworld syndicate opened up for you.

There were classes like assassin and thief that were easier to progress through illegal quests.

Just like how, for legal players and guilds, they had to build their reputation around the noble households who lived in the core of the city.

The same was true for those who chose the illegal path; they had to build their reputation around these crime syndicates.

Since Apex Ascension did not have a system quest function, these syndicates and noble houses were key for a player to gain high-end quests and rewards.

Though even his information about the illegal path was very limited.

Even though he did a lot of spooky stuff but he never got involved with a crime syndicate.

There was a saying in his past life that once you got involved with darkness, you could only sink deeper.

The only way to escape was to leave the current kingdom and start fresh in a new country.

That was super hard for a lot of common players, and the new kingdom would require you to start over from scratch.

The biggest point in all of this was the inability to hide your mana print.

Now, there were a few classes in the game that did allow one to hide their mana print, and his template—Wilder Class—was one such class.

Well, to be true, instead of hiding the mana print, his class recreated the mana print for all his new forms.

After all, unlike shapeshifters who just rely on physical transformation, he was more about morphing into an entirely new creature.

This meant his mana print in goblin form would be entirely different from his original human-form mana print.

These were some nuances that he only realized much later in his past life, but this time, he was going to use every possible path to get ahead of others.

These were the areas where his class far surpassed those other copycat classes.

Not wasting another moment, he took a deep breath, adjusted his hood, and stepped into the shadows.

It was time to offer his goblin grin to the underworld.

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