Severing the Bridge
"You two cross the bridge first."
"But...!"
When Lee Suyoung hesitated, I shouted, "I have a plan, so move!"
My shout drew the wolves' attention, and they charged straight at me.
I cut down the throat of the first wolf to leap in, then deliberately shoved my left arm guard into the jaws of the second as it lunged with its mouth wide open. Right after that, I used the second wolf to block the third one that came ramming at me with its horn.
"Kkieeek!"
The wolf that got slammed by its companion's horn let out a cry of pain, but it still didn't release its bite on my left arm guard. I cut the third wolf's throat, then immediately severed the second wolf's neck as well.
It had bitten down so hard there were teeth marks left in the iron guard.
With three wolves dead in an instant, the rest became wary of me and stopped rushing in recklessly.
In the meantime, Lee Suyoung and Millio had crossed the suspension bridge.
"Oppa! We made it across!"
"Just wait a little longer!"
The bull-sized wolf that seemed to be the leader growled and pressured the others, and at once the subordinate wolves all charged together.
I cut them down with my sword, but when they came all at once, openings were unavoidable.
"Kkaeng!"
"Kkiing!"
A small Suoktan struck one of the wolves cleanly in the eye as it lunged for an opening, and the wolves lost their balance midair.
Lee Suyoung was covering me with her slime.
I cut down the staggering wolves and sprinted up onto the suspension bridge.
The wolves leaped onto the bridge after me, trying not to let me escape.
"Huh? It isn't snapping? Then I guess I'll have to cut it myself."
I stopped in the middle of the swaying bridge and deliberately slashed through the old rope with my one-handed sword.
"Aah! Oppa!"
The bridge gave way, and five or six wolves fell, but I caught the rope with my left arm and swung toward the cliff wall across the gorge.
I reinforced my body with internal qi to the limit, wedged both legs into the jagged gaps in the cliff face, clung to the rope, and climbed up fast.
By the time I was almost up, Lee Suyoung and Millio grabbed me and hauled me the rest of the way.
"Huff! Huff! Thought I was gonna die."
As I let out ragged breaths, Lee Suyoung scolded me for being so reckless.
"That was seriously dangerous!"
"Haha, it's fine as long as I didn't die."
Actually, even if I had died, it wouldn't have been a huge problem.
Millio stared at me like he was wondering whether all climbers were this insane.
"The villagers can repair that bridge themselves."
"Hahaha, guess I'll get chewed out later. Still, fixing a bridge is cheaper than a life, so I suppose it's fine."
"But those monster wolves never leave the center of the forest—"
Right as he was about to ask why it was here, I heard something kick off from the far side of the gorge.
The wolf was flying through the air.
The horned monster wolf leaped across the gorge, covering a distance of more than ten meters.
Patatatak!
Sure, it barely made it—its hind legs scraped the cliff wall and it only just managed not to fall—but it had still jumped that entire distance.
"Damn it, if you're a wolf, act like a wolf and stop flying through the air."
I raised my sword and checked how much internal qi I had left.
I'd used about a third of it killing the wolves.
If I'd been in my reincarnation avatar's body, I would have had much more internal qi and much better efficiency, so I would've barely spent anything. But this adult body had bones and muscles long since hardened, so the efficiency of my internal force was poor.
There was a reason Siwoo had worked so hard to maintain my body from infancy with Chugunggwahyeol.
If performed right after birth, Chugunggwahyeol prevents the Immaek and Dokmaek from sealing too thickly, which improves internal qi circulation and efficiency.
That was why the Chugunggwahyeol done in early childhood was also called Beolmose-su.
Tsk. If I could absorb my reincarnation avatar, this efficiency problem would be solved in an instant.
But that was something I could only fix by gaining an ability that dealt with the avatar's age problem, or by waiting until the reincarnation avatar grew older.
Still, there was a way to patch things up for now.
My Strength and Stamina were both 9. In martial arts, the lower your realm, the more obvious the gap in physical ability became.
I bought Strength Growth Elixir 1 and Stamina Growth Elixir 1 from the Tower Shop and drank them down.
Growth Elixir 1 raised a stat by 1 if it was below 10.
The price went up tenfold each time you bought one, but right now this was the only way to strengthen myself quickly.
I had truly terrible talent in the Tower.
The only reason my Strength had gone from 8 to 9 in the early floors was probably because it had been sitting at 8.9999 and absorbed just enough to tick over by 0.0001.
As my Strength and Stamina hit 10, vitality surged through my whole body.
I had just gotten a full ten percent stronger.
And it wasn't just that my physical specs were ten percent better.
The efficiency of body reinforcement through internal qi had also risen by ten percent.
This was exactly why physical conditioning mattered so much in martial arts.
The bull-sized horned monster wolf regarded me as the biggest threat and charged first.
I swung my sword at it too.
I blocked its claws, swept my sword in a low arc, and the wolf dodged quickly before slamming at me with its horn.
I caught the horn with my left arm guard and grabbed hold of it.
Then I tried to bring my sword down on the wolf's head.
But the wolf violently whipped its head and threw me off.
"Uwah!"
I rolled once across the ground, then immediately got back up and rushed in again.
"Oppa! Bitpung-i!"
At that moment, Lee Suyoung's voice rang out, and a yellowish slime flew toward the wolf.
I raised my left arm to shield my eyes from Bitpung-i.
The monster wolf came straight at me with its jaws wide open.
Flash!
With a sound like a powerful flashbang going off, everything around me vanished in white.
For about three seconds, even with my eyes shut, the intense light blazed so fiercely it felt as if my eyes were burning.
When it finally faded, the monster wolf writhed as though it had lost its sight.
Even I, who had covered my eyes with my arm and kept them closed, felt them go dry and stiff. The wolf, which had taken Bitpung-i's light head-on, might really have had its optic nerves burned out.
I swung my sword to cut through the off-balance monster wolf's throat.
But whether by instinct, or because it had tracked me through sound or smell, the wolf rolled away and dodged.
Still, it didn't escape completely, and a long wound opened across its neck and flank.
"Grrrrrr!"
Wounded by the humans it had looked down on, the monster wolf let out a savage roar.
But now that it was blind and injured, it was no longer a match for us.
When I rushed in, the monster wolf hastily stumbled back a couple of steps to evade me.
But from behind me, Lee Suyoung fired arrows and Suoktan at the wolf.
Its huge body, unable to dodge properly, had become an easy target instead.
Where the Suoktan struck, bones broke. And within moments, more than a dozen arrows turned it into a pincushion.
I poured strength into my sword with internal qi and slashed at the wolf's neck.
Its neck was so thick I couldn't sever it in one blow, but cutting the artery wasn't difficult.
The wolf staggered after its throat was cut, then collapsed to the ground and thrashed.
Not long after, it bled out and died.
My clothes were soaked with wolf blood, but I dropped onto the ground in relief now that the battle was over.
"Nice one, Suyoung. Without you, that could've gotten really dangerous."
"No, it wasn't me. Without you, oppa, I don't think we'd even have escaped that pack over there. We would've died."
Lee Suyoung and I slapped a high five.
When I checked the Tower Shop, the monster wolf had given 2.5 points, unlike the other wolves that had only been worth 0.5 each.
Since the reward was split evenly between Lee Suyoung and me, that meant this monster wolf itself was worth 5 points.
In other words, it was a monster on the level of the 15th floor.
"Why the hell did this thing crawl all the way out here?"
At my question, Millio offered a guess.
"Maybe because it's early spring and there's not much food? Around this time, the wolves get meaner, so even the adults never go into the forest."
You should've told us that in advance, you little brat.
Ugh. It was a bit pointless to complain over something already done, so I settled for flicking Millio on the forehead once.
"Dragging the wolf corpses back would be overdoing it. Should we just take the mana stones?"
"Yeah. Honestly, I want to take the mana stones from the wolves over there too, but that's too much, right?"
"Yeah, too much."
Without the monster wolf, the stragglers wouldn't be hard to deal with, but to go back there we'd have to make a long detour.
When I sliced open the monster wolf's chest with my sword, there was a blue mana stone inside—and a yellow Ability Stone.
"Oh! Since it's a boss mob, does it give better loot too?"
The mana stone was much larger too, nowhere near comparable to the goblins' tiny fingernail-sized ones.
"If it's an Ability Stone, that means it can give you an ability, right? I heard those barely ever drop!"
Lee Suyoung's eyes lit up with greed too.
But then she shook her head on her own and said, "Rewards should be divided based on contribution. You did more in the fight, oppa, so I think you should take it. Honestly, without you, I think we'd have died before we even crossed the gorge."
I let out a small laugh at that.
"Well, I agree with that."
Even in raid parties, tanks were practically nobility.
In games, tanks were scarce because the role wasn't fun, so they were treated like royalty. In reality, they were royalty because they were the ones risking their lives on the front line.
"But I shouldn't just gobble it up. Without you, it still wouldn't have been an easy fight, so let's call this one sixty-forty. Six for me, four for you."
I got to my feet.
"We'll appraise it with an Appraisal Document and check the ability name. If it looks useful to me, I'll pay you its value in Tower Points. If it's something you need instead, you can pay me in points. And if neither of us wants it, we'll sell it and split the money six to four."
Come to think of it, I still had the Ability Stone we'd gotten from the Hobgoblin too.
Do Ability Stones really drop this often?
Or is my luck just completely insane?
At my proposal, Lee Suyoung nodded.
"If you're okay with that, then I am too!"
That settled the distribution issue between us.
The wolf corpses were a shame, but they were too heavy, so we decided to leave them behind.
Unless we were desperate for money, there was no reason to cling to them.
Ah, so that's why the Tower sells credits so cheaply for Shop Points.
It gives you enough breathing room not to make stupid choices.
Thinking that, I left the forest.
Outside, the village's few adults were lingering at the entrance, worrying over Millio.
"You're safe!"
"Mister! We got the herb!"
Relieved to have survived and eager to brag about his heroic feat, Millio chattered nonstop.
His story was a little exaggerated—like how he'd boldly led the way, or how the bull-sized monster wolf had been as big as a house—but most of it was basically true.
The villagers couldn't quite believe the monster wolf was dead, but when they saw me covered in blood, they looked astonished.
"Millio, you should get the medicine to your mother first."
When I handed him the heavy sack full of herbs, Millio nodded and ran home.
"Mom! Mom! I brought the herb!"
The sight of him running while calling for his mother made him look exactly like the child he was.
The adults of the village thanked us over and over, saying they didn't know how they could ever repay us.
I told them I hadn't done it expecting compensation, and simply asked whether they had water I could wash with.
The blood on my clothes would need proper detergent later, but I wanted to wash my hands and face right away.
Lee Suyoung seemed to feel the same, nodding vigorously.
Once the villagers boiled some water for us, we washed up as best we could and then went to Millio's house. By then, they'd already made the herb into medicine and given it to his mother, and her fever had gone down somewhat.
"Thank you! Thank you so much! With this, I think my mother can hold on until my father gets back!"
"Yeah. That's good."
Leaving the grateful Millio behind, I walked over to the crystal for the 11th floor.
Checking the time, I saw it had been nearly four hours since we'd gone into the forest and come back out.
Unlike the 10th floor, which had been in autumn, the 11th floor was in early spring.
Since each floor seemed to run on a different time axis, there was no telling whether the next floor up would be day or night.
"What do you want to do? Go up? Or head back down?"
The 10th floor, being a residential floor, was one we could return to anytime.
At my question, Lee Suyoung thought for a moment before answering.
(To be continued in the next chapter)