The Archaeology Mode

Either way, with no monsters around, I kicked off the empty air and crossed the map in a flash, arriving at the boundary to check what came next.

"What the fuck?"

Why the hell was that showing up.

"Okay, so… check Gallery Archaeology Mode."

The archaeology mode cooked up on the same gallery where I'd uploaded my Korean language patch had hit its activation level and switched itself on without asking. In other words, a toy for bored veterans who found the base game too dull.

The mode's biggest selling point? It massively inflated the number and variety of events. Technically it was just a modded random map seed packed with brand-new events, but still.

Come to think of it, I'd made mods of my own. No reason a gallery-made one shouldn't exist either.

"Been a while since I used this."

Clearing maps practically guaranteed positive events, which was fun at first—until the game went soft and boring. I'd only run it at the start and dropped it after that.

The problem was that this mode, which I'd poured my own money into for a contest, contained twelve maps, and the Forgotten Ruins had a ninety-percent chance of spawning an eok-kka event that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would brick the entire run.

Brick, in this case, didn't mean the character died. It meant an eok-kka so vicious the game became unplayable.

Which was this:

A ten-percent shot at a ten-percent stat boost, or a ninety-percent shot at a ninety-percent stat dump. An absolute eok-kka of an event, infamous for one-shotting newbies into the dirt.

Sure, the demons who played this trash game would strap it on in Ironman Mode and push all the way to the end for the hell of it—but I wasn't one of them. I dropped the idea on the spot and picked Naksung Mountain without a second thought.

You never, ever go into a map marked with question marks. That isn't a map that simply forgot to show its name.

Three question marks means the event spawn rate is tripled. A complete shitshow of a map.

The reason it has no name is that the event keeps swapping the map name on the timeline label so fast the whole damn game lags, so the mode just deleted the name and hard-coded the probability by itself. At least this mode was running properly. Small mercies.

It used to rank somewhere around forty-seven on the top fifty anti-eok-kka mods for beginners. Veterans would rather crank up an event-probability mod for the chaos than touch something like this.

"…This."

I was running max evil-affinity bonuses, so flipping them meant attack and defense would drop while max HP and mana went up. Not the worst map penalty in the world.

Naksung Mountain was also a place that no longer matched my level now that I'd hit Core Formation—in other words, a low-level map. As long as the penalty wasn't lethal, I could still push through and finish area recon on reduced ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠attack and defense alone.

Assuming, of course, I didn't eat an event eok-kka!

Cheon Nan-cho's backstory claimed that once you reached Core Formation, nothing in the lower realm could touch you—but event eok-kka didn't care about lore. A two-stage defense debuff was a nightmare all on its own.

Attacks that should have only grazed my skin tore out chunks of flesh, and the backlash from my own strikes crushed my body under their weight.

Without the regeneration from Slaughter Tribulation, I'd have been dead on the floor already.

"Fucking trash game, shit game, why the hell am I even playing this."

I wrapped myself in Slaughter Tribulation to patch the missing attack power and bisected monsters in a single hit, then groaned at the sight of experience trickling in like pocket change—low-level trash, after all. The Slaughter Tribulation still registered, but the XP was garbage.

"Hee-a, do you have something wrong with your head?"

"I think I just developed something like bipolar disorder, yeah."

This absolute garbage of a game really knew how to yank a person's heart around.

"And my name is Yu Hee."

"Sure, Hee-a."

I stared at her for a second, seriously considering deep-frying this prisoner who refused to listen and eating her as vegetable tempura, then let it go.

Think of her as the xianxia-mode lore TTS. A walking in-game encyclopedia! She had a function that boosted my HP regen, so she was useful for combat too!

"Ohh… ohhhh…!"

Even on a low-level map, the field boss of Naksung Mountain was still a field boss—and after I put it down with almost insulting ease, I dropped to my knees, trembling, and let out a cry of pure emotion.

"Unique pants…!"

A unique lower-body piece that would finally swap out the magic-equipment bonus I'd still been stuck with for a unique-equipment bonus.

"I feel a little better now."

Hitting level two hundred and still rocking a magic-equipment bonus had been a constant itch. That itch was gone. All that remained was filling the leftover artifact slots—grade didn't even matter.

Either way, the equipment bonus had pushed my all-stats past six hundred. If a Mortal's limit was ten, six hundred was a sixtyfold multiplier just on paper. In practice it was way more than sixty, but still.

"You done with whatever weird ritual that was?"

"?"

"You just dropped and started shaking. I thought you were performing some kind of ceremony."

I'd gotten so used to being alone that I'd completely forgotten I now had a help tip—no, an assistant, a mascot—sitting right next to me, and only now realized I'd made a complete fool of myself. I writhed with secondhand embarrassment for no good reason.

Strictly speaking, you didn't need to kill the field boss for area recon.

Area recon, for all the grand name, just meant lighting up the minimap and killing a set number of monsters in field or dungeon zones—excluding instance dungeons—until the percentage filled. Killing the field boss simply maxed it to one hundred percent and finished the job instantly.

The real reasons I'd bothered were that the reality patch made lighting the minimap require an absurd amount of walking, and that I wanted a live check on my full power now that I'd reached Core Formation.

Even a low-level field ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠boss, juiced by the Field Boss Enhancement Mode, carried raid-boss-tier HP pools—or at least attack and defense numbers scaled to raid-boss levels even without a second phase. It was no free kill.

In the end, I won!

"You serious?!"

With area recon complete on Naksung Mountain after the field boss kill, I tracked down every treasure-chest marker, killed the guardian monsters, waited for a positive event to pop, and cracked the chests open.

Field treasure chests could drop same-level gear and consumables, and at low odds even artifacts. Dungeon chests and secret-room chests had better rates, sure, but with only a minimap to work with, searching those was a nightmare.

Apparently the unique pants had burned through all my luck. Nothing noteworthy in gear or consumables showed up, and of course no artifacts—no Dharma Treasures—either.

Area recon had revealed five treasure-chest markers on Naksung Mountain. Four of them were duds. Just magic-grade equipment and rare-grade consumables. The consumables had scaled with level and still affected a body and spirit strengthened by Core Formation, so they weren't useless—but it still stung.

"…Cheon Nan-cho. You open this one."

"You're letting me use a box this precious—one that condenses spiritual energy into physical form? I've been watching. The second you open them, they vanish."

"Just open it."

I made Cheon Nan-cho crack the last chest for me.

And platinum light burst out.

A Dharma Treasure. And not just any Dharma Treasure—one carrying the tier-one prefix Swift. I'd have been grateful for any garbage prefix that wasn't the absolute worst, and out of nowhere a tier-one prefix Dharma Treasure dropped in my lap!

Granted, for a tier-one piece the active option was a convenience teleport instead of something broken like clearing all skill cooldowns, ignoring every negative effect, or a five-hundred-percent attack-speed spike—but the fixed options alone, a hundred percent to both move speed and attack speed, were rain in a drought for someone with zero skills to speak of.

I immediately used the emote [Greet] on Cheon Nan-cho.

One thumbs-up!