Dividing the Spoils
“What exactly did you do to deserve claiming the byproducts?”
The werewolf, Bogard, glared at the alchemist climber with a ferocious expression. The cheerful mood shattered the moment the alchemist, whose contribution to the hunt was practically zero, insisted on taking the venom and fangs from the snake head.
“Wh-why are you only, y-y-you know, picking on me? I-I’m a climber too.”
Apparently intimidated by Bogard’s savage face, the alchemist stammered as he spoke. I felt a little sorry for the skinny guy looking frightened, but Bogard was right.
Unless he’d actually dealt at least a little damage to the chimera, why would anyone hand over the byproducts to some guy who hadn’t attacked at all and had only been skulking around at a distance?
Besides, according to the byproducts book sold by the Climbers’ Association, the chimera’s venom and fangs were the most valuable parts. Excluding the mana stone, they accounted for forty percent of the total value. Fifty percent of the remaining sixty was leather, so in practical terms, the venom and fangs were almost everything we could actually take.
Of course, since we could sell the corpse to the village and handle things that way, the byproduct distribution wasn’t a huge issue.
The problem was that a guy whose share was less than one percent was trying to snatch forty percent for himself. That was ridiculous.
“Even if Han Jiwoo, who contributed the most, said he wanted the venom and fangs, people would still tilt their heads and wonder about it! Maybe if it were Han Jiwoo, but what exactly did you do to claim them?”
At Bogard’s shout, everyone nodded in agreement.
Oh, so everyone recognized that I’d contributed the most.
Well, I had killed the goat head, cut off the snake tail head, and helped with killing the lion head, so it was only natural that my contribution would be the highest.
If my conscience hadn’t shattered, anyway.
“W-we’re all c-climbers, aren’t we? I-I’m an alchemist, so you have to c-consider that I’m not s-suited for combat.”
Then why did that alchemist look like his conscience had shattered?
“You little shit!”
When Bogard clenched his fist in anger, William stepped in to calm him down.
“Now, now. Please, calm down. If you fight over this, only Mr. Bogard loses out. Don’t waste your energy on something that can simply be ignored.”
The ever-polite William looked at the alchemist with contempt in his eyes.
Then, ignoring the alchemist completely, he spoke to everyone.
“Does anyone here have the skill or ability to dismantle the chimera?”
No one raised a hand at William’s question.
“Then let’s sell the chimera corpse to the village as it is. After talking with the chief and the villagers, it seems they’re short on food and supplies, not money, so I’ll negotiate with them on purchasing it. Any objections?”
Everyone except the alchemist had none.
“Then we’ll exchange the byproduct sale and mana stone for points and distribute them. Since not everyone contributed equally, I think we should divide things proportionally. Any other opinions?”
“How are you going to calculate contribution? There’s no system for that, is there?”
At Bogard’s question, William answered, “How about using a points system? Each person states what they believe they or someone else contributed, then assigns a score to it. If we total those scores and convert them into percentages, wouldn’t that be fair?”
At William’s suggestion, I objected.
“Wouldn’t that take too long? I’m starting to feel the anesthetic wearing off.”
I wanted to press my acupoints again, but if I stimulated them too much, it might actually hurt more. And it would be a little strange to create a new clone in front of everyone. I still wasn’t very experienced with acupoint pressure.
“Oh, so you anesthetized your left arm? No wonder you seemed too calm for that kind of injury. Then I’ll hand out paper to everyone, and you can write down what percentage you think you and the others contributed. We’ll add them up and get a rough estimate.”
William pulled a notebook from his inventory, tore out some sheets, and distributed them.
That was how the rough estimate ended up being made.
For my contribution, some people wrote as little as thirty-five percent, while others wrote as much as seventy.
The one who wrote seventy percent was the Black climber in heavy armor, Jonathan.
For the record, I modestly wrote around forty-five percent.
Realistically, I thought I’d done about seventy percent like Jonathan said, but the others needed something to eat too.
And in the middle of all that, the alchemist had rated his own contribution at thirty percent.
His conscience was absolutely busted.
“Roughly speaking, it comes out like this.”
Me: forty percent.
Diana and Jonathan, who fought in the most dangerous area: twelve percent each.
Bogard, the metal man, and the tamer, who fought in close combat: seven percent each.
Suyoung, William, and the druid, who fought from a relatively safe distance: about five percent each.
Of course, the alchemist got nothing.
“Then let’s distribute the mana stones first and take the snake head. The villagers will want to see proof that we took the monster down if they’re going to buy it.”
William quickly exchanged the mana stones for points.
Then he picked up the snake head and led the way back to the village.
It looked pretty heavy, but he really was superhuman.
Come to think of it, since everyone had killed the chimera and absorbed its mana, they’d each taken in maybe ten to twenty percent.
I had absorbed less than one percent, so I had to be the one with the worst Tower talent.
As for the alchemist, whether he really hadn’t contributed or simply couldn’t, the mana hadn’t gone anywhere near him.
I’m hungry.
The sun was still leaning east as if it were morning, but my watch said it was already noon. Lunch time had come around.
Since every floor had different time flow, seasons, and time zones, climbers had no choice but to live by the hour they woke up.
I’d heard that every floor difference meant roughly a ten percent difference in time, so the seventeenth and tenth floors were almost twice apart.
That was why I always returned to the tenth floor to reset my timing.
As I walked along thinking that, Suyoung suddenly grabbed the alchemist by the collar and shouted, “You! What were you trying to do to Jiwoo oppa?!”
Everyone jumped at the sudden outburst and turned to look at her.
“W-what are you doing!”
“You were fiddling with something inside your coat while looking at oppa! What are you hiding in there?!”
“D-don’t do this!”
The alchemist was pushed back by Suyoung’s strength.
But because everyone disliked him, no one stepped in to stop her.
Instead, Bogard helped Suyoung rummage through the alchemist’s coat.
“What’s this? Doesn’t look like a potion... sniff, ugh! What is this? Isn’t this poison?”
“Poison?!”
Once poison was discovered, the alchemist panicked and fumbled over his words.
William’s expression hardened, and he asked sharply, “What were you planning to do with this poison? I heard some of the abilities alchemists use among Tower returnees let them consume the potion they created and apply its effect to others—don’t tell me you were trying to poison us with this?”
What?! That kind of ability existed too?
“N-no! T-this isn’t poison!”
“Then what is it?”
As William pressed him, Bogard shoved the vial straight into the alchemist’s mouth.
“You said it wasn’t poison! Then it should be drinkable!”
“W-wait, gurgle—”
After gulping down a mouthful of the liquid, the alchemist’s face went deathly pale and his eyelids sagged.
“It’s poison! It’s poison, so stop doing that!”
“No... blegh.”
The alchemist collapsed on the spot.
“Did he die?”
At Bogard’s question, Diana checked his expression in case he had been poisoned and needed saving.
“I don’t think he’s dead. This... isn’t he just asleep?”
At Diana’s words, everyone looked flustered.
“Asleep? So it was a sleeping potion? Ah! That bastard! He was planning to put us to sleep, steal the snake head, and run!”
At Bogard’s cry, everyone chimed in one by one.
“The roots were yellow just like his head.”
“Still, if it wasn’t poison, doesn’t that mean there’s a chance for reform?”
“Reform, my ass! I’m thinking about throwing him off the coastal cliff behind the village!”
“He’s despicable, yes, but murder is not allowed. The Tower is a place where law does not reach, so we must live by morality as our law.”
Everyone’s temperament showed clearly.
My comment about his rotten nature, William’s belief in rehabilitation, Bogard’s fiery suggestion to toss him off, and Jonathan’s moral stance in heavy armor.
Personally, Bogard’s idea of throwing him off the coastal cliff was tempting, but Jonathan did have a point that morality had to serve as law in a place where the law couldn’t reach.
Once you crossed a line, no one knew where it ended.
Stealing wasn’t a crime worthy of death.
Still, since he’d climbed all the way to the seventeenth floor, maybe throwing him off the cliff wouldn’t kill him, either?
In that case, maybe tossing him was not such a bad idea after all.
“But, Suyoung, how did you know?”
At my question, Suyoung answered as if it were nothing.
“My mom told me that if I ever met an alchemist among Tower climbers, I should run away if he seems even a little weird.”
Ah, right. Her mother was supposed to be a WPTO employee.
Bogard roughly grabbed the bastard by the legs and dragged him toward the village.
Once we reached the village, William immediately began negotiating with the chief over the chimera corpse, while I quietly slipped away, saying I needed to use the bathroom, and made a new clone to repair my body.
Every time I made a new clone, the military uniform got recreated too, which meant I had to change clothes again. It was annoying.
Wasn’t there some way to fix that?
When I came back after making a fresh clone, Diana looked surprised.
“Your arm... what happened?”
“Oh, I fixed it with a potion I had. Honestly, whether I pay points to a priest at the tenth floor cathedral or fix it with a potion, it’s basically the same thing.”
Strictly speaking, the priest was a little cheaper, but that didn’t mean much to me.
“I should have fixed it for you...”
“You’re going up right away too, Diana. You don’t need to waste a day on me. Maybe we’ll even be able to go up together to the eighteenth floor.”
“I’d like that. Even if we can’t on the nineteenth floor, maybe we can on the eighteenth.”
If it were the nineteenth floor, maybe not. But the eighteenth floor was one we could still climb together if things lined up.
From what I’d seen on the community board, the nineteenth floor had to be cleared individually, but the eighteenth floor often got cleared with a group.
By then, William had finished the negotiation and distributed the credits.
After bargaining down the chimera bounty and byproduct prices, William managed to squeeze out one million credits.
If one credit was a hundred won, then one million credits was a hundred million won, right?
Come to think of it, that was cheap for the value of the villagers’ lives.
And since there had even been a bounty on the monster, the villagers weren’t really losing out.
It was basically the same as hiring mercenaries for almost free.
As planned beforehand, the distribution was forty percent for me, twelve for Diana, and five for Suyoung.
So this was my first time seeing green credits worth ten thousand each.
So a coin the size of two hundred won was worth one million won?
I felt my sense of money slipping away.
I needed to get to the twentieth floor and dump everything in the bank as soon as possible.
With that thought in mind, I called William aside.
“Your arm’s healed nicely. Miss Diana must have had a tough time.”
William must have seen Diana treating me during the fight, because he brought her up first.
Rather than making things awkward by saying I’d used a potion, I got to the point I’d been planning to make.
“Once we reach the twentieth floor, we’ll all be in the same city anyway. How about partying up with us?”
Someone like William, who was a leader, a gentleman, and also firm and skilled at negotiation, was rare.
I couldn’t really judge other people’s talent when it came to mana absorption, and he could handle both ranged and close combat, so his potential was definitely worth expecting.
You can be my leader.
(To be continued)