Of course, the United States, the current chairman of the NW, knows that monsters were not the end of this phenomenon. But they kept quiet about it.

They concluded that it was better for power to be concentrated, not dispersed, so it was essential for member countries to experience some proper hards.h.i.+p for such purposes.

In any case, the NW"s meeting was filled with only pessimistic views without any workable solution.

Obviously, the continuing appearance of monsters made them conclude that they can"t hide it any longer, but the partic.i.p.ating members in today"s NW conference have been preparing for such a scenario for several years, and they have been able to suppress the monsters so far with modern weapons.

Perhaps that was why the 2nd regular meeting of the NW ended without any good solution.

At the Land of Endless Greed.

I kept running ahead, leaving behind the endless sand.

And soon I encountered monsters in the desert, but they were undead monsters that didn"t fit the desert terrain at all. They were low-level general skeleton monsters.

“Ice Spear! Multiple Ice Arrow!”

Puck! Puck! Puck!

Pasasasak!

I didn"t even need AOE skills, so I used a single target skill. The three skeleton monsters collapsed helplessly, not even able to respond to my attack.

At the same time, a message rang.

[You have killed Skeleton Monster 1.

-You have acquired 100,000 golden rings.

-They are stored temporarily, and some will be obtained proportionally to your final achievement rate.]

[You have killed Skeleton Monster 2.

-You have acquired 2 remaining stat points.

-They are stored temporarily…]

[You have killed Skeleton Monster 3.

-You have acquired 500,000 EXP.

– They are stored temporarily…]

I earned enormous rewards by simply killing the skeleton monsters.

At the moment, I thought that I might fail to clear this level 900 limited quest, blinded by these kinds of rewards.

However, I soon shook my head because unless one was stupid, they clearly knew that they would only be able to keep this kind of reward only if they returned to the starting point within 24 hours. The message also made it clear that any rewards were only being stored temporarily.

But then another message rang.

[The Forgotten Hero"s Cloak fails to defend.

-Your greed has increased from killing Skeleton 1.]

[The Forgotten Hero"s Cloak succeeds in defense.

-Your greed has not increased by 1 even though you killed Skeleton 2.]

[The Forgotten Hero"s Cloak succeeds in defense.

-Your greed has not increased by 1 even though you killed Skeleton 3.]

“Wow!”

I didn"t know this. No one told me about it. Obviously, no one knew about it.

The correlation between greed and the Forgotten Hero"s Cloak.

My greed was checked by the Forgotten Hero"s Cloak, but unlike other debuffs, my willpower did not come into play at all. So it meant that the other did not know that there was a greed debuff.

“That"s why most of them failed. Even though they knew they had to go back, they became more and more greedy before ending up failing at the end of the day.”

Anyway, I felt really good because I felt like I discovered something like a hidden secret.

Anyway, I moved further forward because my achievement rate was still not even 1%.

One hour later, I didn"t meet many monsters while moving.

But I also encountered other things such as random boxes.

[You have obtained 20 coins by opening a random box.

-They are stored temporarily…]

Of course, there weren"t always good things in the random box.

[You have earned nothing.]

That was also possible, and I didn"t think it was strange.

But I was embarra.s.sed when a message rang.

[The Forgotten Hero"s Cloak fails to defend.

-By opening the random box, your greed increases by 10.]

I thought it was unfair to get nothing in the random box, and also have my greed increased by a whopping 10.

Maybe that"s why I unwittingly cried out at that moment.

“d.a.m.n it! Let me check if I can"t get anything in the next box!”

Even though I wasn"t conscious of it, I shouted like that before I knew it.

At the same time, I already stepped forward.

And it wasn"t until I took almost ten steps that I realized I was being motivated by my greed.

“Man, just like its name implies, this is a land filled with endless greed.”

But I kept moving forward because I was determined to go to the end of the desert under any circ.u.mstances.

I was going to hunt monsters whenever they came out or open all the random boxes that appeared.

Of course, there were traps everywhere, so I could not move forward as fast as I wanted.

For example, if the sand was flowing toward one place like water, then I was forced to move in that direction even if I didn"t want to.

Of course, I wasn"t very panicked because I was an ice-type wizard.

“Ice Field! And Multiple Thin Ice!”

Pasasasak!

Of course, my Ice Field was enough in this case, but for some reason, I felt it was insufficient, so I even used Thin Ice.

At that moment, thick ice began to form not only on the sand flowing like water, but also on the rest of the sand. The sand flow stopped.

I then ran on the ice ground at high speed.

“Man, I should have used Ice Field like this…”

Of course, running on the fine sand where my feet got stuck, and running on hard ice was like night and day.

Besides, I had no risk of falling because it was my own ice.

Even though I used Thin Ice as well, it was still pretty useful.

Of course, I quickly exited the range of Ice Field and Multiple Thin Ice once I cast it, but I still used it when possible because it saved me quite a bit of time.

About 3 hours later I checked my status window.

“Check status.”

[Lumen, Asirante"s current status.

-Current achievement rate: 18.53%

-Time remaining: 21:07:44]

“Hmm…”

Of course, the 100% achievement rate was not the end.

Even if I achieved 100%, I had to return to the starting point, and only then could I succeed.

In other words, I had to achieve 100% within 12 hours.

However, I did not achieve even 20% after 3 hours.

Moreover, it would be naive for me to think I would achieve 50% on the way up and 50% on the way back.

Maybe those who challenged this quest with such a naive mindset must have tasted failure.

“Is 100% impossible from the beginning?”

I thought that way before I knew it.

I could say confidently that even though my strength and agility were a bit lacking, my stamina was so high that it didn"t lag behind anyone else, and I had the ability to smash any obstacles while moving. In addition, I also possessed enough mana to use Ice Field and Thin Ice as soon as their cooldowns returned.

Anyway, while thinking about that, I diligently kept moving, although I was not sure if it was because of my own will or growing greed.

At the Land of Endless Greed.

“Multiple Ice Arrow! Ice Spear!”

Puck! Puck! Bang! Bang!

Regardless of whether it"s monsters, random boxes or traps, I kept moving forward, smas.h.i.+ng through all of them. On such occasions rang messages that I acquired golden rings, EXP, remaining stat points, coins, etc. Of course, at the end of the message, there was always a line that reminded me that they were only stored temporarily.