Experience Shuttle
“Sis.”
Lee Sia called out to Vivian, her face drawn with exhaustion.
There was no answer.
Only a vacant gaze drifted her way.
“Heal me a little.”
It was a pleading request.
But Vivian shook her head.
Sia’s expression crumbled at the refusal.
“Aaaah, I’m seriously dying here.”
“Stamina recovers with rest. I’ll only treat injuries.”
“Just this once. Please?”
“No.”
Vivian was absolute.
“Why not?”
Sia asked with a look of pure incomprehension.
Vivian’s Financial Healing [C] was an absurdly powerful skill.
It restored not only wounds but lost stamina as well.
Poison. Status ailments. Everything.
Calling it all-purpose barely did it justice.
One cast right now and Sia could spring back up and keep hunting…
“You think money grows on trees?”
There was no room left to push.
Money.
It was always money—inside the Tower or out.
Sia had never once chipped in a single coin toward Vivian’s costs, so she shut her mouth.
“Hang on a little longer. If you get hurt, I’ll heal you then.”
“Yeees—”
That almost sounded like an invitation to get injured first.
Sia scratched her head, then flopped flat onto the smooth marble floor.
She turned her head toward Park Ji-hoo, who was already sprawled out beside her.
“Ji-hoo. What level are you?”
“Fifty-one.”
“Same as me.”
“We’ve been hunting together the whole time.”
“…Right.”
Sia nodded along to the pointless small talk.
“What about you, Sis?”
“…Forty-eight.”
“You’ve climbed a lot too.”
“Still not enough.”
The reason Sia and Ji-hoo kept grinding long after breaking level fifty was Vivian.
She had joined late; her level lagged well behind the other two.
“But you’re almost caught up now.”
Experience requirements ballooned exponentially with each level.
The gap was closing fast.
A little more time and they would finally stand at the same level.
“If we kill ourselves until the end of today, we should make it.”
This was the fourteenth floor.
Only one floor left until the fifteenth.
They had already cleared the boss—the Stone Dragon—so all that remained was getting Vivian to fifty.
“I’m so sick of this.”
How many days had it been?
From the eleventh floor all the way here.
The three of them had cut sleep to the bare minimum and thrown everything into hunting.
Their leveling speed had been beyond imagination—but the backlash was just as brutal.
It felt exactly like the Red Goblin grind under Yujin’s tyranny on the first floor… only this time they were doing it to themselves.
She half expected to work herself to death.
“Never thought I’d end up understanding how office workers feel about overtime.”
Sia gave a self-mocking little laugh.
Still, it wasn’t all bad.
Watching herself grow stronger by the day was satisfying—and, more importantly, Seong Yujin wasn’t around.
“Ji-hoo. Be honest. Feels freer without that crazy bastard, right?”
She muttered the last part under her breath: I sure do.
“I’m fine being with Hyeong, though…”
To her surprise, Ji-hoo did not agree.
“What? Are you crazy too?”
Sia bolted upright and shouted.
“No, I just… there’s a lot to learn from him.”
Ji-hoo shrank under her glare, looking thoroughly cowed.
“Learn what?”
There were things, sure.
How to torment people.
How to act like a psychopath.
How to snag someone by the tail of a sentence and humiliate them.
And so on.
Every rotten trick in the book—he taught those exceptionally well.
Even gentle Ji-hoo had started picking up the contamination. That said enough.
“Ji-hoo, listen carefully to Nuna. There are people in this world worth getting close to, and people you should never go near. Seong Yujin is definitely the second kind.”
It wasn’t too late.
She had to drag Ji-hoo out of that brainwashing right now.
Fired with that sense of mission, she was mid-rant when—
“Get up. Time to hunt.”
Vivian cut her off cold.
“…Can’t we rest a little longer?”
Sia’s mood plummeted in an instant.
The endless chatter had really been an attempt to stretch their break as far as possible—to buy even a few more minutes of rest by keeping the conversation alive.
But cold-blooded Vivian was immune to every tactic.
She moved as if a clock had been screwed into her skull: every action perfect, every timing exact.
As if she had no choice but to move that way.
She’s like a machine.
Sia had once half-wondered whether Vivian was an android or a cyborg.
“Up.”
Vivian was already on her feet, looking down at her.
That vacant gaze carried an oppressive weight.
“Ugh—”
Sia considered rebelling for a second, then gave up.
She had always been strangely weak against people older than her.
Except Seong Yujin, of course.
She rose with Ji-hoo and stretched.
Joints all over her body cracked and popped.
“Guess we really have been pushing it.”
“It’s been three weeks already.”
Not a single day off. Fifteen-plus hours of hunting every single day.
It was a miracle their bodies hadn’t simply fallen apart.
“Just a little more suffering and we’re done.”
Two more levels.
At the rate Sia had estimated earlier, they could finish even today.
A little more pain, that was all.
“Let’s get ready.”
As if the laziness had never existed, Sia drew her sword.
Shhhhing—
A sharp metallic ring slid down her spine.
“Counting on you again today.”
She spoke to her own blade.
Vmmm—
The blade hummed faintly in reply.
Sia smiled at the sensation.
At some point while leveling, Black Wing [C] had become Black Wing [B].
Yujin had explained when he gifted it that it was a growth-type item, but she had never truly believed the grade would rise.
Only a single rank, yet the evolved Black Wing [B] felt like an entirely different weapon.
Its killing edge was sharper—and a skill that had never existed before had appeared as an option.
The tears shed by a once-pure angel as she fell are sealed within the blade. Upon activation, attack power rises slightly and a holy aura coats the edge.
The description was simple.
The effect was anything but.
Especially on a floor like the fourteenth, where dark-attribute monsters thrived.
Kyaaaaaaaaaaak—!
An ear-splitting screech tore through the air as formless monsters poured in.
Wailing Maiden Banshees.
True to the name, they charged in the shape of women, shrieking all the while.
They looked like classic virgin ghosts—only twisted and warped even further.
Sia felt no real fear.
She had nearly jumped out of her skin the first time, but after killing about two hundred she had adapted.
“Nice timing. It’s like they were waiting for us.”
“This is exactly the edge of their detection range.”
“True enough.”
Sia nodded and raised Black Wing [B], activating the skill at once.
Tears of the Fallen Angel [C]
Plink—
A single droplet fell, and a soft ripple of power spread across the blade in concentric circles.
Sacred light gathered along the dark edge.
Holy power.
Against dark-attribute trash like banshees, it was nothing short of Excalibur-level effectiveness.
“I’ll go first.”
But the one who stepped forward was not Sia—it was Park Ji-hoo.
Thud— thud— thud—!
Massive red slabs of metal slammed into place around his body.
Armor forged from the scales of a battle-crazed dragonkin. Slightly increases defense and breakthrough power.
An item from the seventh floor.
Being armor, it did little for attack, but its defense was outstanding—good enough that he could wade straight into a swarm of banshees that looked like a girl-group fan club and come out fine.
KWAANG—!
Ji-hoo stomped the marble.
Spiderweb cracks raced across the once-smooth floor.
His body stretched forward in the same instant, launching like a rocket.
Like an eight-ton truck with the brakes cut, Park Ji-hoo’s charge began.
Pabababababababak—!
Banshees detonated, flinging translucent scraps into the air.
“Ugh.”
It looked exactly like bugs hitting a truck on the highway. Sia’s face twisted.
“How come none of these monsters ever look normal?”
If they looked normal they wouldn’t be monsters, but she complained anyway and took a single light step forward.
Unlike Ji-hoo’s crude, overwhelming style, her footwork was soft—almost casual, as if she were strolling through the neighborhood.
The aftermath made the eyes refuse to believe it.
Black Wind Slash [C]
A skill she had received as a leveling reward at some point flared to life.
Hoooooooong—
Sia’s body dissolved into black wind and scattered into the air.
As if she herself had become the wind.
The black gale followed the path Ji-hoo had carved.
And then—
Pibibibibibibibibibibibit—!
Every banshee the black wind brushed simply split apart.
Into dozens, hundreds of pieces.
Nothing here could stop the wind.
Sia tore through every banshee she touched in a single raging sweep.
Vivian watched quietly.
She did not join the assault.
She had a few usable skills—options on Vajra [C], plus several more she had picked up while leveling, and Black-and-White Twin Rings [C] as well.
But she had chosen a different way to contribute.
It would help far more.
Shhhk—
She pulled a thick wad of dollars from her Dimensional Mailbox [C].
A considerable sum at a glance.
Vivian cast without hesitation.
Financial Healing, right then and there.
Financial Healing [C]
Hwaaaaaak—!
Like a paycheck vanishing from a bank account, the dollars burned away into pure light.
The skill that was capitalism itself poured vitality into the two fighters who had been ground down by continuous combat.
Stamina flooded back in an instant.
Ji-hoo’s charge and Sia’s black gale slammed into the banshees with renewed force.
Several died every second.
Vivian’s experience bar climbed like mad.
After a few more casts of Financial Healing [C] and the slaughter carried by the two on the front line—
A light of level-up finally burst around her.
“Hm?”
Vivian’s vacant eyes widened a fraction.
A level-up was always welcome.
But something completely unexpected had happened.
Just now…
It wasn’t one level.
She had jumped two levels at once.
“Huh?”
“Nuna! What just—?”
Even Ji-hoo and Sia, still mid-slaughter in front, leveled up as well.
Why?
Simultaneous level-ups like this?
Banshees alone could never dump that much experience in so short a time.
Not without killing a boss, at least.
Vivian frowned in thought, then found the answer.
Seong Yujin.
That bastard was hunting somewhere else even now.
Hard enough to shove an entire level into them in one go.
What a wonderfully useful little bastard.
Vivian found she was starting to like Seong Yujin—just a little.
As an experience shuttle.