Affinity Work 4
After a long while, I got to see some familiar faces… or rather, faces that looked like they'd all gotten plastic surgery — but the Tower adventure pressed on regardless. Unlike me, who'd dropped into this world already handsome from the start, everyone else was growing more dashing, more beautiful, and younger by the day, yet none of them seemed to find it the least bit strange. It was a little funny, but it had nothing to do with the adventure itself.
And neither did Han Se-ah, trembling with envy at the overflowing 5-stars she could only look at like pie in the sky, nor the chat flooding with accusations that she was stuffed full of greed.
"Hey, you guys saw it too! Looking at those flashy stat windows, of course I'd get greedy…."
"People need greed to succeed, okay? You guys too, huh? When you're playing a game and pull something good, don't you get the urge to whale right then and there thinking this is the moment? Do any of you just stop satisfied? A hundred percent of you would keep going."
She was working hard to engage with her viewers, but she never once let go of her tension. Even when a moss wolf ambushed us, she never missed the counterattack window — it was almost uncanny. At this rate, she probably could have become a ranker even without me.
With Kayden now in the party, our coordination was starting to click, and we began carving through whatever monsters appeared without breaking a sweat. After all, an impenetrable shield with no weaknesses and no conscience sat smack in the center of the party.
"There are a lot of moss wolves today, and we barely run into any helmet deer. Most of the commissions ask for helmet deer mana stones, though."
"But they look identical from the outside. How do mages even tell them apart?"
"Apparently the mana inside is different, so they get sorted that way."
At Grace's question, Han Se-ah muttered something about them going into separate inventory slots, then kept sneaking glances my way. Wondering what that was about, I looked back at her — and she immediately dropped her gaze, as if terrified of meeting my eyes.
…What is going on with her?
It wasn't anything she needed to keep secret, and even the viewers could figure it out from a brief glimpse of the stream. That suspicious behavior — more precisely, the look of a dog that had done something wrong and was pretending it hadn't — made me speak up right away.
"What's wrong?"
"Huh?! N-nothing, it's nothing."
"You say that while reacting like that."
She waved her hands frantically insisting it was nothing, so I just nodded and let it go. She might have personal worries, and prying too hard would be weirder. If it was stream-related, it would reach my ears anyway — between the chat, the boards, and the internet, I'd find out eventually.
It wasn't affecting the adventure, so leaving her alone was fine. For all her flustered act, the moment a monster appeared she was slamming magic missiles at roughly the same speed as Grace's arrows. Maybe a gamer's reaction time carried over into virtual reality after all.
Even while my mind wandered, a helmet deer thrashed its legs in my arms before letting out a pitiful kweeeong and dissolving into a mana stone.
"Ah, found one!"
"Already? Lucky day."
"Should we scout the next floor a bit before heading back, or gather more mana stones on the way down?"
"Scouting the next floor doesn't seem all that useful, so heading back would be better."
"I agree."
I kept my mouth shut, wary of turning advice into orders, and Irene rarely volunteered opinions to begin with — so the conversation naturally fell to the other three. Han Se-ah and Grace would talk it over, Kayden would add a curt word, and that was how the party decided where to go.
With the lantern already logged, Grace turned around without hesitation. The mana stone fragment spinning inside the lantern in her hand whirled about before pointing a different direction. With one passage leading up a floor and another leading down, it looked like a broken compass.
"This way should work."
"Really? Hanna's magic really is something. Same as with the full moon wolves."
"Pretty useful, right?"
Normally, you'd pick a rough direction, put some distance between yourselves and the upward passage, then wander around with the lantern hunting for the way down. But a gamer with the minimap on was completely free of that kind of hassle.
Han Se-ah pretended to raise her staff and pointed the way, and Grace trusted her word completely, setting off at once. She wasn't the type to get lost even with a minimap, so the "Han Se-ah is a genius mage" theory solidifying in Grace's head showed no signs of weakening.
With Grace in the lead, we marched steadily along the forest path until the spinning mana stone in the lantern locked firmly onto a single direction. Naturally, it was the same direction Han Se-ah had confirmed on her minimap.
"Hey, is something going on?"
"Hm? Going on with what?"
Grace sidled up beside Han Se-ah, who was still pretending to navigate with her staff while checking the minimap. Two people chatting wouldn't break formation or dull our senses, so it didn't particularly matter.
That said — was Han Se-ah's terrible acting so bad that not only Grace and Irene, but even Kayden, who'd only just joined, could see through it?
"No, nothing's going on, I told you."
"Huuung, so you can't even tell your unnie?"
"Because there's nothing to tell…."
Of course, no matter how persistently Grace clung to her, Han Se-ah never gave an answer. And of course she wouldn't — her dilemma was about the game system. There was a reason she'd turned on the stream for nothing but forest exploration with no events or quests.
"Ugh, seriously, this choice paralysis is killing me. I don't have to use the Awakening Stone right this second, so I've got plenty of time to think, right? But having more time just makes it harder!"
The source of her dilemma was the reward from clearing Grace's character quest a few days ago. It was called an Awakening Stone, but it wasn't an actual rock like a mana stone — it seemed to be used through the system, the same way you'd pick a skill.
The problem was that as Grace rose from 3-star to 4-star, she also got to choose one skill.
It worked differently from me — I'd started as a 6-star with one passive already, then gotten to pick additional skills after joining the party. Maybe because her rank was lower, skills unlocked as stars were added.
Does every character have different skill unlock conditions? Feels pretty RPG-like when you put it that way.
The reason Han Se-ah was agonizing over this was Grace's role in the party. She was a seasoned scout and pathfinder, and also a sub-DPS who supported the team with her arrows. Having that many roles brought two things to a gamer's mind:
Build her well, and she's a versatile all-rounder. Build her poorly, and she's a jack-of-all-trades mess.
Unlike me, who could pull my weight as a 6-star through raw physical stats no matter what I picked, Grace was in a position where a single skill could start to feel sorely missing as we climbed higher. Just look at the viewers practically forming a fan club, calling her unnie this and unnie that. If a bad skill pick ever forced us to drop Grace from the party, the future was crystal clear.
"Looking at chat right now, I'm gonna get flamed no matter what I pick. What am I supposed to do! This is day three of the same conversation over and over and over, ugh…. Fine, I'm just picking myself?"
With monster spawns thinning out, Han Se-ah started chatting with her viewers again. I couldn't see the stream directly, but screenshots were going up in real time on the station boards and internet forums, so it was convenient enough.
Ooh, if the Blue Pirate King fought the Hokage from Ninja Village, who'd win?
People obsessed with subculture always loved their versus debates. Games, comics, novels — East or West, lining things up and comparing them was just human nature. And so, of course, a fight had broken out over Grace's skill list too.
From the stream screenshots, the three most-mentioned skills were roughly these. Looking at the list, it seemed the ones available this time were all passives.
First was the most-mentioned scouting passive, Wild Intuition. A very simple passive with no extra effects — it just maximized Grace's senses. The skill that would keep her as the party's scout, lantern in hand, just as she was now.
Second was the passive that would turn her from a scout into a sub-DPS: Sharp Arrowhead. Where Wild Intuition maximized her senses, Sharp Arrowhead supported her archery. It felt like a basic attack enhancer, so it was getting a lot of discussion.
The third and final one was the passive riding the wave of Han Se-ah's CC-shuttle declaration: Ranger's Trapcraft. True to its name, it granted knowledge of makeshift snares and traps — not just how to set them, but how to disarm them too.
"Still, Grace unnie is our party's reliable scout who shuts down ambushes before they even happen, so I think going the scouting route is right. You need a solid foundation first — if you try to do everything at once, you end up good at nothing. You know that."
After all that wavering, Han Se-ah seemed to have settled on the scouting passive and spoke up again. Once she finally locked one in, the viewers fell into a supportive mood. Of course, some still pushed for other options to the bitter end, but Han Se-ah didn't get swept up by that kind of noise.
"Hm? Looking at the chat from earlier too — I don't have the confidence to pull a new 4-star or 5-star scout. If we're going all the way with Grace unnie, she has to be the absolute best scout who can still hold her own on the upper floors."
With a resolute face, Han Se-ah clenched her fist and made an exaggerated tang! motion, punching the empty air.
"Hm? What's wrong. Is there a bug or some— hyueot?!"
"Grace unnie? What's wrong with you?"
"Ah, no…. I just felt weird all of a sudden."
Grace made a cute little sound, flexing her hands open and closed, then gently stroked her own forearm. Was that how the aftereffects of a new skill being added manifested?