Financial Healing
Financial Healing.
What the hell? Is this for real?
The skill name alone was enough to make his head spin, and for a moment even his curiosity about how she had brought dollars into the Tower vanished completely.
And that recovery speed—
It was something Yujin had never experienced even once. The only word that came to mind was monstrous.
Judging purely by the effect, he could have believed it was A-grade rather than C-grade.
The penalty of having to spend money was probably so severe that the grade had been knocked down.
But Baekbaeki is rich.
For her, that penalty was barely a weakness at all.
Well, how she had brought the dollars in was a separate question.
Unbelievable.
Even Yujin, who had conquered the Tower in the first timeline, had never heard of a skill like this.
"Come at me again. I haven't lost yet."
Fully recovered in an instant, Baekbaeki stood tall and looked up at Yujin. Of course, since he was taller, she had to tilt her head back quite a bit.
"You."
Yujin called to her with a serious face, then tossed out the question that had just occurred to him.
"How much did you just spend?"
Benjamin had been stacked to an absurd degree.
"Ten thousand dollars."
"Are you insane?!"
At roughly 1,400 won to the dollar, that was a cool fourteen million won blown in a single shot.
Sure, if you called it the price of a life it was cheap—but Baekbaeki's life hadn't been in danger, had it?
An ordinary person would have recovered from those injuries with a month or two of rest. A player wouldn't even need a week.
And she had burned fourteen million won on that?
To Yujin, who had been nothing more than a painfully ordinary, penny-pinching commoner, it was a level of money-wasting he couldn't even imagine.
"Now come at me."
Just as Yujin had done earlier, this time Baekbaeki crooked a finger at him.
Apparently her pride had been a little wounded.
"Hey, Baekbaeki."
"…Baekbaeki?"
She tilted her head at the unfamiliar nickname, as if trying to figure out what it meant.
There was no way she would know, and Yujin didn't bother explaining.
Instead he made a different proposal.
"Become my companion."
She was a real piece of work.
But she was a healer.
An incredible healer, at that.
And excluding himself and his two slaves, she had climbed to the 5th Floor faster than anyone else.
If she had been a pure damage dealer he might have hesitated, but a healer of that caliber—he was willing to take her even if her personality was a little unhinged.
Besides, he wanted to know how she had brought real-world goods into the Tower without using dollars.
He had Chunbae, sure, but another method would be even better.
Other players besides himself could use it, after all.
After weighing every advantage and disadvantage, the conclusion was overwhelming: recruiting Baekbaeki was pure profit.
"Companion."
Baekbaeki blinked blankly at Yujin's face.
Then she opened her mouth.
"No."
"…Why?"
"Not my type."
Of all the reasons.
It wasn't as if he had asked her out. Once again she had completely defied his expectations.
She's a genuine lunatic.
Probably even more so than Lee Sia.
"If you want me as a companion, win the bet. Though that's absolutely impossible."
With Vajra [C], Financial Healing [C], and enough dollars, she was confident she could never lose.
"Is that so?"
But Yujin only looked pleased.
"And the condition for my win?"
"If you kill me, or put me in a combat-incapable state…"
Iron Mountain Shoulder [E]
Before Baekbaeki could even finish speaking, Yujin activated the skill.
KWA-AAAANG—!
A shoulder thick with mana slammed into her solar plexus.
"Hhk—!"
A ragged breath burst from her lungs as her body shot backward like a cannonball.
KWA-DEUK—!
The wall of Pine Hill collapsed.
There was no way a wall built of mere pine could withstand the impact of Iron Mountain Shoulder [E].
Baekbaeki flew straight through it and out the other side, sprawled unconscious in a star shape on the ground.
"Well, look at that. I win."
He struck a pose that said the victor of the bet was him.
"So that means you're my companion now, right?"
Naturally, an unconscious person couldn't answer.
But Yujin nodded as if he had already heard her agree.
"Slaves—ah, wait. Companions are my responsibility."
He grabbed Baekbaeki by the leg where she lay crumpled in the dirt and dragged her—scrape, scrape—back toward Pine Hill.
"You'll stay here until you wake up. After that, I'll bus you through the floors."
One week remaining.
They had to reach the 10th Floor within that time.
"Plenty. More than enough."
The 6th Floor would be a bit of a problem, but with Baekbaeki it would be easy.
She had Financial Healing, after all!
Yujin grinned as he stepped back into Pine Hill.
"Didn't think I'd find the right person the moment I came down."
A little tune escaped him without thinking.
Baekbaeki was still out cold, drooling from the corner of her mouth.
Time flows like water.
In plain terms: it passes quickly.
It was the same for Yujin and Baekbaeki—no, for Vivian Holloway.
"How is your name literally Vivian? Baekbaeki, Vivian—even the first syllables match."
Yujin seemed quite pleased with the nickname he had coined.
Vivian, of course, was not.
Three days slipped by in the blink of an eye.
In that time, Vivian endured an experience she never wanted to repeat.
After blacking out in the fight with Yujin, she had woken up on the 6th Floor.
Before she could even process the situation, she had been forced to escape Indigo's hunting grounds.
Eventually the memories returned, and after roasting the thing with Lightning Strike [D], she climbed to the 7th Floor.
"You're a son of a bitch, Yujin."
Having barely survived the 6th Floor, Vivian tasted true hell on the 7th.
Dodging endless waves of zombies while rescuing survivors, she had come genuinely close to dying.
If Yujin hadn't stepped in at the critical moment, she really would have died.
And then the 8th Floor.
She didn't even want to think about it.
Zombies zombies zombies zombies zombies zombies zombies.
She was so sick of them that just recalling the memory made her gag.
Yujin had helped there too.
Of course, not wanting to die herself, she had burned through Financial Healing [C] like a madwoman to contribute as well.
"How much did you spend back then?"
"…Three hundred and twenty thousand dollars."
Roughly four hundred and fifty million won, give or take.
The number was so large she could barely calculate it.
"Your family is seriously loaded."
Apparently they ran some kind of massive financial conglomerate.
A few hundred thousand dollars was pocket change to them.
But the truly shocking part wasn't that Vivian's family was rich enough to slap a chaebol across the face.
Dimensional Mailbox [B].
Amazingly, it was a B-grade skill.
Even first-timeline Yujin hadn't seen a skill of that grade until after the 60th Floor.
And Vivian had obtained it on the Tutorial Floor.
It was absurd.
Honestly, maybe the Akasha System is playing favorites with her.
Looking at everything she had acquired so far, it certainly seemed that way.
Of course, right now Yujin had received far more—but comparing first timelines, she was in a different league entirely.
Which made it all the more puzzling.
Why was someone like her never known?
No—she simply hadn't survived to the higher floors.
The three things Vivian possessed:
Vajra [C], Financial Healing [C], and Dimensional Mailbox [B].
Used well, those alone should have been a free pass up to the 50th Floor.
And from the combat he had seen, she wasn't lacking in talent either.
She had talent to spare.
Enough that Yujin, trying to help, had occasionally had to pull his mana back.
Her improvisation was excellent, her situational judgment razor-sharp.
And yet first-timeline Vivian had not survived.
The Tower is that kind of place, sure.
Even accounting for that, something must have happened.
Now that she had met Yujin, finding out what it was had become nearly impossible.
"Anyway, we've finally hit the 10th Floor. How about it? Starting to think following me was a good call?"
Without Yujin, even someone with her ridiculous kit could never have climbed this easily.
Vivian felt that truth keenly herself.
"It was unnecessary. I didn't need your help."
Of course, her pride refused to admit it.
"Then go roll around on your own again."
No answer.
Apparently she didn't want that.
"So what's your level now?"
Yujin had registered Vivian as a party member as well.
Thanks to that, she had tasted level-ups she had never experienced before.
Literally because Yujin had bused her through.
"…Level 31."
"That's all?"
Yujin clicked his tongue with a look of dissatisfaction.
Compared to the other two slaves, she was still far behind.
But that couldn't be helped.
They simply hadn't spent the same amount of time together.
Vivian glared at him with vacant eyes.
But she said nothing more.
She knew perfectly well that every bit of her growth so far was thanks to Yujin.
"Try a little harder. The slaves—ah, the companions—you'll be working with are way ahead of you."
Vivian ground her teeth.
She had believed she was climbing the Tower faster than anyone, only to learn that wasn't true.
There were people ascending at a speed she couldn't even compare to.
And not just one—three of them.
That fact scraped mercilessly at her pride.
"Just wait. I'll catch up soon. Soon."
Vivian forced herself to look unbothered and ignored Yujin's words.
Heh.
He was starting to get a sense of how to handle her.
As the youngest daughter of a wealthy house, Vivian lived on pride and self-regard.
Prod that just a little, and her behavior became relatively easy to steer.
Like right now.
"Well, I'm not expecting much. But I'm rooting for you."
Grit—
The sound of teeth clenching reached him clearly.
Yujin smiled inwardly as he climbed the stairs.
And so they arrived at Viridgrave.
"This place…"
Vivian looked around at the somehow gloomy, dim ghost city.
"It's a ghost city. You can't see anything right now, but the place is actually packed with ghosts."
How would this blank-faced, haughty Baekbaeki react?
Hopefully not like Lee Sia.
While Yujin was thinking that, Vivian simply started walking.
Ghost city or not, she didn't seem to care in the slightest.
"You're not scared?"
"I don't believe in it. Superstition."
Reliable.
She was completely different from a coward like Lee Sia.
Rich, good skills—
She was a walking gold mine.
Yujin grinned and walked ahead of her.
"Let's stop by the inn first. After that we can wash up and head outside or whatever."
"No need."
Surprisingly, Vivian refused to go outside.
On the 5th Floor she had been forced upward against her will—but she was turning it down here too?
"There's nothing to do anyway…"
When Yujin tilted his head and looked at her, Vivian reflexively started to make an excuse, then closed her mouth.
Apparently she had her reasons.
He wasn't particularly curious.
"Then we'll just wait here for the others."
Yujin opened the door of Bones Inn without much concern.
"Hey, Moston. I'm back."
The lantern swayed as if in greeting.
Four more days passed like that.
The slaves who had gone out on leave returned to the Tower.
"Who's that?"
"Baekbaeki."
"…Baekbaeki?"
Lee Sia looked at her with an expression that said, What kind of name is that for a person?
"Vivian. Vivian Holloway."
In the end, she had no choice but to introduce herself.
"The name's whatever. From now on she's the one who'll be rolling around with you guys. So get along. No fighting."