The Very First Mission

Seunghyuk never felt so excited throughout his whole entire life, he felt like he could explode any moment with joy. The Conqueror's System, he never thought he would be able to see it one day.

"Wait...How am I supposed to increase my stats?" Seunghyuk questioned himself and gazed into the gray system screen blankly, asking," System: How can I improve my statistics?"

"I'm glad you asked, Conqueror Choi Seunghyuk. There are mainly two ways to do so: Firstly, by physically training your own body, your body statistics will increase along with that. However, if you want a quicker increase and you do not mind the risk of losing your life, you can complete Conqueror System Missions. These missions, upon completion, will give you what you seek."

Seunghyuk took his own time to read the long passage carefully, even after the system finished reading out the whole text, he was still reading it. After all, being given such an opportunity is not a small thing to Seunghyuk.

"I guess I'm not afraid of death anymore. It's better than sitting here and rotting to death," Seunghyuk glanced around his surroundings, bags and bags of rubbish laid everywhere, clothes hung disorderly on window grates, to think he has been living in a rathole all this time.

"Time for an escape from one reality to another," Seunghyuk said to himself with a strong resolution in his voice, as he turned his gaze back onto the gray System screen floating in front of him," System: Turn on Auto-Receive for Conqueror System Missions."

"Auto-Receive turned on. You will receive Conqueror System Missions automatically. "

...

"You have received a mission."

"That was really fast...System: Show Mission details," Seunghyuk asked, and the gray screen took a one second buffer before revealing a long passage of details.

"Misssion I: First Steps Starts With Nature

Objective: Find and collect five Soul Flowers

Destination: 15-metre radius around your apartment

Rewards: Beginner Statpack."

"I guess I should set off immediately," Seunghyuk quickly changed into something less conspicuous to avoid attention, and it seemed like the colour black worked best for the night.

Holding up his hand to the window for some light from the moon, he looked at his family ring once again. Similarly, it still looked normal and nothing out of the ordinary. Even now, the ring still signified how much he missed his family, but now it seemed to have another significance.

Running out and shutting the wooden door behind him, Seunghyuk made his way down the stairs to the ground floor and abruptly stopped in his tracks.

"15 metres is pretty wide, isn't it?" Seunghyuk immediately questioned his method of simply running round everywhere and looking for an unknown flower.

"Uh...System: Show me a picture of a Soul Flower," Seunghyuk requested, and almost immediately after, the System replied with a distinct image on the gray screen.

Seunghyuk gasped.

The Soul Flower is indeed an ethereal beauty, the elegance the flower was radiating seemed to pour out of the image. Three long, blue petals of the Soul Flower glowed amicably with a light shade of blue, like it was part of Seunghyuk's life the whole time. The flower also has a relatively small pistil, glowing in a darker shade of blue. According to simple comparison, it looked really small in size, having the same height as the green mid-height grass around it. Seunghyuk suddenly felt like he looked at the world at a whole new perspective, not only a perspective with the Obelisks and Conquerers, but one with many mystical objects appearing and melting together with our world as one.

Hence, wouldn't it be really easy to locate and find if its glowing brightly all the time?

That's what Seunghyuk thought, and he was definitely correct. By only taking a short 10 to 20 steps to the right of his apartment, he very quickly spotted a faint blue glow from behind the bushes. His eyebrows raised with intrique and rushed forward without any hesitation, closing his distance with every step towards the blue glow.

"That's actually really bright..." Seunghyuk stated as he climbed over the bushes, and took a good, long look at the miraculous Soul Flower," What? No way...There's more than one here, it's a whole bunch."

The Soul Flowers lined themselves up in a neat circle formation, exactly five in total, glowing and shining in the dark. It seemed even more beautiful up-close, the flowers full of life as it bobbed every once in a while. The flowers glowed like they were participating in a competition, competing against each other to see which flower could emit the brightest light. The blue glow flowing out from the five Soul Flowers is calming to the eyes, ironically. It seemed to lure Seunghyuk in and Seunghyuk gladly allowed himself to be mesmerised by the Soul Flowers. He cautiously uprooted the Soul Flowers one by one, laying the flowers carefully on his palms. The flowers delicately detach from the ground soil, seemingly easy to pull out, clicking with every slight movement.

"They're really beautiful...System: Collect the Soul Flowers," Seunghyuk said softly, his gaze fixated at the delicate yet magnificent Soul Flowers resting on both his palms.

"You are currently trapped in battle with another Conqueror. System is unable to collect the items to complete the mission."

That instantly broke the mood into irreparable pieces. Seunghyuk's soul almost left his body when he read the texts on the gray System screen, and on instinct, he swung his head backwards and retracted his steps. A middle-aged man met his eyes, untrimmed facial hair dotted around his mouth and a bush of overgrown hair peeking out of his dirty, red cap. The man had a peculiar silver chain hung around his neck, the pendant of the chain being a silver padlock.

"Hey, young lad. Give me the flowers," The man asked with a raspy voice, one of his hands outstretched, motioning for Seunghyuk to pass him the Soul Flowers.

"No. Why would I do that?" Seunghyuk replied, his tone was stern, although it was clear to the man that it was just faked courage," You're not getting your hands on the flowers. I got to them first, it means their mine. If you would excuse me, I have other things to do..."

"You're not leaving here with the flowers, kid. You can't even do so even if you wanted to," The man mentioned, again with his raspy voice," You must have realised that you are unable to collect your precious little flowers, right?"

Seunghyuk two another good two to three steps back, his lips shaking and trembling in slight fear. He was not at all used to this confrontation, and to be faced with such a huge problem just right after he became a Conqueror scared him. Seunghyuk watched the man stand there haughtily, laughing to himself. He deduced that the man's silver chain had some skill related to creating a Battlespace where it only breaks apart when the user is knocked out.

"Still not giving the flowers? You're not going to be so stubborn, are you?" The man asked again, this time with a breathy tone as he stepped forward," You don't want to force me to take action."

Seunghyuk took a little too many steps back and felt the touch of the face of a wall on his back. He could not move backwards anymore, there is no room to. Stubbornly, Seunghyuk held on to the glowing Soul Flowers in his hands and desperately formulated a plan in his mind.

"Hhargh!" Seunghyuk dashed forward and threw a punch with his dominant right hand, his fist nearing the man's face until it was caught.

"You know you're really weak, right?" The man grabbed onto Seunghyuk's right hand and lifted him off the ground effortlessly, looking him in the eyes as he threw Seunghyuk to the ground," You're all bones and no meat, little skeleton."

Seunghyuk groaned as he struggled to stand up, still protecting the Soul Flowers from any danger. The man looked down on him with his cold eyes, snd Seunghyuk used up all his courage in him in order to not shiver under that stare.

"I'm taking your face!" Seunghyuk shouted as he threw another punch towards the man, and the man arrogantly waited for the fist to near his face, then to grab it.

Surprisingly, the man grabbed a pocket of air in his hands and his eyes went wide as Seunghyuk's punch landed on his stomach instead of his face. The man shouted and cursed vulgarly, his face creasing with anger as he stepped forward with towering pressure. Even though the man was tricked by the simple move, Seunghyuk knew very well that he did not have enough strength to deal any significant damage to the man. On the other hand, all he did was make the man even more annoyed than he already was before.

"Okay, you tested my patience long enough," The man took a step forward and swung his fist backwards, before driving it forward scarily, catching the wind as it landed on Seunghyuk's chest with a bone-cracking thud.

The heavy blow smacked Seunghyuk backwards, but there was nothing else behind him, but a cold, hard wall. He crashed painfully agaisnt the wall, helplessly collapsing to the ground grimacing in great pain. Seunghyuk's hands released its grip on the five stalks of Soul Flowers as blood begin to trickle down his forehead.

"Well, I guess hopelessly weak dogs like you only need to be taught a lesson before you stop biting," The man picked up the five stalks of Soul Flowers and looked down at Seunghyuk's lying figure," Well, be happy I'm doing you a favour...by ending your pathetic life..."

"...shortly and painlessly..."

Seunghyuk could only see the man raise his fist once more through his blurred vision, and he never would have thought his first mission would lead to all this.