The First Perfect Clear

"Hrrraaaagh!"

Kirk roared.

When the goblin warriors came charging, he had thrown up Steel Body—a skill with a full day's cooldown—and held the front by himself. That had counted for a great deal. Right now, though, something else mattered more.

"The ability stone! The magic stones!"

I set the spirits moving and snatched up the ability stone the hobgoblin had spat out, along with the three magic stones from the goblin warriors. The ability stone was the size of a fist, the magic stones no bigger than fingernails, and every one of them burned a glittering red. The moment I called up their basic information, my eyes went wide.

"Kirk! Jackpot!"

The three magic stones, first. A stone a monster coughed up in death was usually of steady quality, and each of these would fetch a solid ten gold and then some. But the ability stone outshone them all.

Among every ability stone an elite hobgoblin could spit out, this was the one they called the finest.

"No way—Dominator's Majesty!?"

"Yeah!"

"Whoa!"

Strangely enough, hardly anyone fussed over the numbers stuck to this particular stone. The people who wanted it weren't adventurers. They were nobles—folk who had an ability slot, and not the slightest wish, or need, to do anything as dangerous as an adventurer's work.

As expected.

"The higher the intelligence, the less it works" did not mean clever people. Give someone nothing more than an ordinary human mind, and a hobgoblin's so-called absolute dominion became a parody no one could pull off. Even so, the stone sold dear for exactly one reason.

"Hundreds of gold, just to look imposing, for garbage like this. Does that make any sense? Nobles. Honestly."

"Well. Some people put their value on that sort of thing."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A fashion ability stone, in the most literal sense. What mattered was that it sold high.

"Works out for us, doesn't it?"

"It does."

"Sell it, trade up to better gear, and maybe we stop getting cut to—huh?"

Only then did the shredded leather armor, and the wounds under it, swim into focus. My head went light.

"Guh..."

"Hyung!?"

Kirk caught me as I staggered.

"Hey. The medicine."

"Hold on!"

He dug ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a wound salve out of the bundle he had brought and started smearing it on thick, over every inch of me.

Ugh. Small mercies, at least.

If I hadn't raised my stamina through training and ability stones, there were enough wounds here that I might already have bled to death.

Dominator stone gets sold, and the first thing I buy is armor. Especially shoes. Shit...

No wonder the soles of my feet had hurt worse than anything. The leather shoes had already lost their bottoms, and feet I thought callused halfway to iron were closer to a sheet of blood. The damage underfoot looked worse than the cuts from goblin blades.

"Still, I came away with a real feel for the spear. It was a good fight."

"You got even stronger from that?"

This, from a man whose level display had frozen at 10 for no reason but that he still had no class?

"Come on. I'm still green. More to the point, you're a summoner—your level must have jumped, right?"

The question reminded me, late, to open my status window.

"Whoa!"

My level had climbed seven steps and landed on 8. More startling than that, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠two skills had reached level 10—their cap. On top of it, Vartus Iron Body Art (Common) had risen to level 5, laying a bonus equal to five percent of my mana across Strength, Stamina, and Agility alike. The numbers were still feeble, but at the edge of death even feeble numbers helped.

So that's why it felt, partway through, like my stamina ticked back up.

My mana seemed to have risen as well.

If it's you, common skills at least you can master without points. So save them.

Jerik's words came back. Even he could not have guessed that one trip into the Labyrinth would drive two of my skills all the way to max.

Was I the type who came alive in a real fight?

"Hyung, it went up a lot, didn't it?"

"...Yeah."

I was busy admiring myself, and in the same breath the temptation hit. I wanted to spend the level-up points right now. Pouring them into stats was practically a fool's move—the gain from upgrading a skill, or evolving one, dwarfed it. So what I was eyeing was the skills.

A skill at max level... I think I can evolve it.

One point raised a skill's level. Two evolved a skill that had already struck its limit. I turned it over for a moment.

The more you hoard level-up points, the better. Especially at the low grades.

Jerik again. I set my teeth and held back.

"Here. I'll give you two of the magic stones."

"No. Let's split them exactly down the middle."

"Then we sell them with the ability stone and divide it?"

"Yes. That's better."

Once the split was settled, we settled what came next.

"And we might as well hunt for more exits while we're at it. We'll walk back over where we fought and see if any magic stones got dropped. Ordinary goblins almost never drop them, but there were a lot of goblins."

"Sure, that part's fine... but why more exits? We already found six."

That gave me a moment's pause.

Same problem as the goblin basket. The fact that my trait could uncover the conditions for a Perfect Clear felt far too dangerous to hand to anyone.

Not in a world this savage.

If the goblin basket raised the odds that I would turn up someday as a corpse in a back alley, then this would raise the odds of shackles—a slave's collar, worn for some great guild or for the royal palace itself.

The goblin massacre I can explain. I'll just insist I heard it somewhere.

It sat close enough to the half-known "heroic exploits" people chased when they wanted a Special Class. The exits, though, were absurd even by my own measure. So I turned the talk aside.

"You remember where those exits were?"

"...Ah."

Good enough for now. One way or another, I still had four more to find.

From there we worked backward along the trail of our fighting, searching in case a magic stone had been left behind. The search, of course, was only half sincere.

"Hyung, I don't think it's that way."

"It might be. We came running. Could've been over here."

"You think so?"

I kept my feet moving into stretches of cave we had never walked, hunting exits we had not yet found. Ordinary goblins almost never dropped a magic stone anyway, so the excuse held. Three more exits turned up that way.

"This time, let's try over there!"

"Hyung, that one really isn't it either..."

"Yes, it is."

"Hyung. Were you hopeless with directions this whole time? After all that talk about how to get out of a maze?"

"Just come on!"

"No, seriously, I think we've found as many as there are to find..."

"Let's go!"

"No sense of direction, and stubborn as a mule. Wow..."

Cast on the spot as the man who couldn't find a door, I used the part to drag Kirk off another way entirely.

One more. Just one!

And then—

"Kyaaak!"

"Damn it. Goblins again!"

"I told you this wasn't the way!"

Only after several more fights did the last exit finally show itself.

"Ugh. Shall we head out?"

"Now you feel like leaving? We lost the path ages ago."

"Hey, we banked a pile of experience instead. Massacre that many goblins and it's got to count toward a class condition. Probably."

"Probably? That was a guess too!?"

It wasn't a guess. It simply ended up counted as one.

And then the chime came.

What!?

I was still reeling at the system's chime—the Perfect Clear, and above all the level-up point—when Kirk cocked his head.

"What? Something wrong?"

He didn't seem to hear the chime at all.

"Ah—no."

Gaining a level-up point without a level-up was surprising enough. The achievement mattered more.

A bonus when I obtain a class?

Which also made it the sort of thing too dangerous to say out loud.

"Just tired. Thought I saw something that wasn't there."

"And here I was... All right, let's go. I'm wiped out."

"Earlier. When we killed the hobgoblin, you didn't hear a system chime?"

"You mean the one that said the fight was over?"

"...Yeah."

So he truly hadn't heard this one.

"Why?"

"...Nothing. Heading back, every stray thought in the world showed up at once."

"Can we hurry? Aren't you tired, hyung?"

Level-up points belonged to summoners, so that much I could let pass. It seemed the achievements that fed into a class made no sound for the natives, either.

Figures...

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it was. If those chimes rang for the locals too, then even if a Perfect Clear stayed unknown, word of Special Classes ought to have spread everywhere by now.

"Yeah. Let's go."

Only after I had the thought sorted did I set a hand on the exit, the blue portal.

Of the two, I chose the way back.

A flash.

And with that, the first delve—far more profitable than I had any right to expect—was over.

One random stat, raised by one. The light shivering at the edge of my sight died with the message every adventurer received for clearing a floor, and I found myself standing before that enormous circle, black as a hole torn through the world.

A crowd milled in the space between the labyrinth stele and the outer wall. Jerik was among them.

"You're back!"

"Yes, Master."

"Yes, Instructor."

"I told you to clear the first floor and come straight back. Why are you this late? I've been waiting more than half the day. Hm? And why do the pair of you look like beggars?"

Jerik hauled Kirk into a crushing hug and made a great fuss of him, then promptly soured, picking apart the boy's condition and mine one detail at a time. His voice carried. I felt the sidelong looks from all around us, and under them the little sneers—first floor, and they look like that? How weak are they?

"That's..."

"Let's talk once we're home."

I got Jerik to bite it back. Only after we had returned to the dojo did we explain what had happened.

"What!? A goblin wave—and a hobgoblin!?"

"Yes. We got caught up in the slaughter before we knew it."

"Why would you do something that reckless!? Confidence in your own skill is no excuse!"

"Well... Char-hyung talked me into it. Said it was a condition for a Special Class."

The little traitor tattled.

"What? You punk!"

"No, I—I'd heard a rumor to that effect..."

"The accepted wisdom is that a Special Class reflects how you perform against elite monsters and bosses. Where did you hear—!"

Uh. That's not actually it.

I thought it, and bowed my head all the same.

"I'm sorry."

I had already sworn not to give this to anyone. Bragging about the haul, though—that much I was owed.

"Thanks to it, a Dominator ability stone dropped."

"...What?"

"We got three magic stones, too."

"...Huh?"

"Kirk said his skills grew from getting through it, and I hit level 8. They say a summoner tops out at level 5 on the first floor."

"...They what?"

Only then did the anger start to drain out of his face.

"Don't tell me. Because it got dangerous, you burned every skill point you had...?"

"I didn't use a single one."

"...What?"

The truth was I hadn't even had the presence of mind to use them. He turned it over this way and that, and in the end nothing was left but the gains. A dry laugh escaped him, and both hands went up.

"Fine. I'll grant you brought back more than I ever imagined. But you will not pull a stunt that reckless again. Understood?"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"Especially you, Char. You hear some strange rumor, and you do not go charging off after it!"

"Yes!"

I'll only charge off after the ones that are actually true.

I gave him a different answer on the inside. Only then did he let it go.

"Good. Rest. And Char—I'll say it once more. Do not even think of evolving anything with those points. Not yet."

"Yes. I was already meaning to save them..."

"I'm saying it because there's something I need to tell you."

"...Yes?"

"Today, you rest. You spent a whole day fighting without a moment to breathe, didn't you?"

And so our long day came to an end.