What a Windfall
When the hell did she even drink that much?
He had been so focused on Lee Sia that he never noticed a thing. Thinking back on it, though, Vivian had been knocking back drinks nonstop as well.
Damn it.
If everyone was going to have this little self-control… Yujin clicked his tongue inwardly and launched himself forward.
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM—!
The Silverstream Inn was smashed to pieces. From a far corner, the innkeeper—who until moments ago had worn a gloomy expression—yelped and bolted.
…Is that bastard smiling?
Unlike before, the corners of the innkeeper’s mouth were stretched wide. The image of the Silversnow liquor, the wrecked inn, and the credits Yujin had paid in the first timeline all flashed through his mind.
So he was aiming for this all along?
It had been strange from the start that an inn would freely sell liquor with such blatant side effects and no restrictions whatsoever. Especially considering that most of the guests were players. Apparently this innkeeper made his living off the messes that followed.
Whatever.
NPCs were the sort who stabbed players in the back as a matter of course. There was no reason to feel betrayed now. What mattered were the two lunatics currently tearing the place apart right in front of him.
One would be manageable. Two is a headache.
He would have been more than happy to indulge Lee Sia’s rampage. On her own she could never actually hurt him, no matter what she did. Vivian was different. She, too, couldn’t lay a finger on him—but that wasn’t the problem.
Fwoooooosh—!
“No—my money!”
Burning dollar bills scattered through the air. If they had at least healed something, it might have been bearable. But Vivian’s skill, under the influence of Berserk [E], had simply failed—wasting both mana and cash for nothing.
“What a waste!”
Yujin spun toward Park Ji-hoo, who was staring in blank horror.
“Stop that crazy bitch! I’ll handle the other crazy bitch!”
He left Lee Sia to the boy and turned to deal with Vivian himself.
“M-me?”
Park Ji-hoo hesitated. He lacked the confidence to hold Lee Sia alone. It was understandable. Their levels were the same, yet objectively Lee Sia was the stronger of the two—better items, better skills, everything a cut above. Park Ji-hoo’s combat instincts might edge her out by a hair, but she was still the superior fighter overall.
Still, it would be fine.
“She can’t use her real strength right now. She’s too far gone to even cast skills. You saw it just now—Financial Healing [C] failed completely. Same thing’ll happen with her.”
Berserk [E] was only a low-grade status effect, but that was because of its strict activation conditions. Once it took hold, the effect far outstripped its rank. Even Yujin himself had lost his mind and gone berserk under it; there was no way Lee Sia of all people could overcome the penalty.
“R-really?”
“Yeah. So get in there and stop her. Knock her out if you have to.”
He no longer felt like enjoying the show. He wanted Vivian restrained as quickly as possible so he could stop watching his money go up in smoke.
“Yes, sir!”
At Yujin’s urging, Park Ji-hoo nodded with a determined face. With a sharp paang he was already clad in the Dragon War Armor [C], kicking off the air and charging at Lee Sia.
“Kieeeeeeeeeek!”
The girl answered with a shriek that no longer sounded human. She didn’t even think to draw Black Wing [B]; instead she came running on all fours. Yujin let out a hollow laugh at the beast-like sight, then turned his gaze to Vivian.
“Vivi. Your money isn’t yours alone, you know.”
Somehow she already had thick wads of dollar bills clutched in both hands. The sight made his chest go cold.
“Grrrrrrrrrr—”
Vacant eyes filled with pure madness; killing intent rolled off her and locked onto him. With a fluttering parararak she flung the cash. Beautiful bundles of money scattered like flower petals.
“No!”
Yujin tore through the air. It felt like the fastest he had moved since the regression. He had to knock her out before she could activate Financial Healing [C].
The instant he appeared in front of her—
“…She’s fast.”
A vivid blue staff glittered in Vivian’s grip.
Vajra [C].
In the first timeline it had belonged to Indra, a famous Indian player. So long as the user’s mana held out, it could rain down unlimited Lightning Bolt [E] and Thunderclap [E]—a broken item if ever there was one.
Yujin’s expression said You’ve got to be kidding me as he looked at her.
“Graaaaaaaah—!”
With the scream, dozens of lightning bolts crashed down from the sky.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake!”
Yujin clicked his tongue and flung himself sideways.
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOOOM—!
It was a full-blown thunderstorm. The ground where he had stood a heartbeat earlier was reduced to a cratered wasteland.
“So that still works.”
A target under Berserk [E] could not use skills. Item options, however, were another matter entirely. All they required was a simple infusion of mana—whether the user still possessed enough reason to cast a skill or not was irrelevant. Even monsters could activate such items if they held them. Lee Sia and Vivian were little better than monsters right now, but they still had more than enough sense to trigger an item’s option.
“Tch.”
Yujin clicked his tongue and drew up his mana. Knocking her out without injury was no longer realistic. Vivian’s mana reserves were absurdly vast—almost as if she possessed some mana-related trait or item he had never looked into.
I’ll have to dig into that later.
Come to think of it, he had never bothered investigating Vivian in any real depth. She simply handled things well enough on her own. That was a far cry from how thoroughly he knew Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo. Finding a chance soon to look into her properly wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Including how much is sitting in her bank accounts.
Keeping that most important detail in mind, Yujin weaved through the rain of Lightning Bolt [E]. None of them so much as grazed him, yet every fine hair on his body stood on end. Without hesitation he stretched out a hand.
Shrrrrrrrrrak—!
Heavenly Silk Thread [C] unfurled. At level 59 the threads now stretched a full twenty meters in every direction. With a continuous, rolling thunder they intercepted the cascading bolts and grounded the power into the earth.
Ten strikes. Thirty. Fifty. A hundred. An endless, mad storm of thunder and lightning. Yujin was almost admiring the way Vivian poured out attacks powerful enough to let her switch from healer to pure dealer—when something registered through the soles of his feet.
A wriggle.
It moved. No illusion. With senses sharp enough to feel an ant crawling within a fifty-meter radius, there was no way he would mistake a tremor big enough to jolt his entire body.
What the hell is this now?
Deep underground, something vast was shifting—struggling, as if trying to claw its way to the surface. The vibrations closed in at terrifying speed.
Wait… no way.
Yujin’s expression turned complicated. This was the 20th floor—the Dream Garden, the storied treasury of opportunities. A place where even a weed you yanked while walking by might turn out to be an elixir. Players’ paradise. Which meant that whatever was moving down there had an extremely high chance of being one of those very opportunities.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA—!
The earth heaved upward with the force of a mountain being born. Yujin locked a rear-naked choke around the thrashing Vivian’s neck and rocketed skyward.
“Khack!”
She struggled for air, but he couldn’t risk releasing her. Whatever had just burst out of the ground, it was no joke. If she picked a fight with that unknown presence instead of him, she would be flattened into a pancake. Preventing that disaster required exactly this.
In the blink of an eye he put distance between them. Beneath his feet, something enormous tore free of the earth.
An existence powerful enough to raise a mountain on the outskirts of Unmonghyang…
I’ve seen this one before.
In the first timeline—right here on the 20th floor—he had faced it.
Why is it out here?
The Subterranean Dragon.
A true-dragon species with neither eyes nor mouth, its entire body sheathed in sleek black scales. Originally the boss monster that guarded the hidden ruins beneath Unmonghyang. Alone it was hopeless; at least fifty top-tier players had to join forces just to scrape out a victory—and only after they had gorged themselves on every opportunity this floor offered and grown explosively. That same Subterranean Dragon had left its ruins and revealed itself on the surface.
It almost certainly had something to do with the endless lightning energy that had been absorbed into the ground. Whatever the reason, at this point in time it amounted to a natural disaster.
And yet…
What a windfall.
To enter the hidden underground ruins you normally had to clear a chain of linked quests that stretched on for at least a month. Only after gathering countless materials and learning a whole mess of miscellaneous skills would the entrance’s Leap [E] finally activate. Forced entry before that was impossible. And now the thing had politely come outside on its own!
Where else would you find luck like this?
Yujin crowed with delight and glanced sideways.
Crack!
At that exact moment Park Ji-hoo drove a fist into Lee Sia’s face. He had seized the instant her attention scattered toward the Subterranean Dragon. A punch wearing the Champion Gauntlets [C] and powered by Heavy Strike [E] was more than even Lee Sia could endure. Her eyes rolled back and she went limp on the spot.
“Park Ji-hoo!”
Yujin called the boy’s name and, without ceremony, hurled the still-struggling Vivian through the air.
“Deal with Vivi too, then dump both of them somewhere far away!”
The order sounded almost like an instruction to dispose of corpses. Then he dropped.
Thud!
He landed right in front of the Subterranean Dragon. It was enormous. Every lesser dragon he had faced until now looked like a hatchling beside a true-dragon species. The Terminal Dragon at the summit, the Black Dark Dragon of the 90th floor, the Demon Dragon of the 64th floor—every one of them had been a transcendent powerhouse. The Subterranean Dragon belonged in that company. Its rank was markedly lower for remaining on a lower floor, yet it was still a genuine true dragon. That much was beyond doubt.
Yujin looked up at the creature and spoke.
“Hey. Can you hear me?”
It had no ears. But for a being of that caliber, physical organs meant nothing; other senses would more than compensate.
Fwooooooh—
A chill breath leaked from the single nose on its face. The sheer density of mana within that exhalation would have felt like a death threat to any ordinary player. Yujin only smiled wider.
“You could’ve just stayed buried down there. Why crawl all the way up here and make a scene?”
He opened Chunbae’s mouth and shoved a hand inside. Pulling out U.S. military hardware wouldn’t have been terrible, but the efficiency was poor. Inflicting real damage on a Subterranean Dragon would burn through a mountain of munitions. Better to fight it himself. He had the confidence for that, too.
Ssssssshk—
What emerged from Chunbae’s maw was a single blade that radiated a deathly, sinister aura.
Soul-Reaping Sword [C].
A weapon Yujin had newly acquired on the 16th floor.
“This time’s going to be a little different, so come at me with everything you’ve got from the start.”
Yujin waggled the tip of the blade and grinned. At that thin provocation, the Subterranean Dragon moved.