Tank, Dealer, Healer

Tank, dealer, and healer. The most basic combination in any RPG raid party — and in the real world, they mattered just as much. Dungeon Hunters, forced to explore dimensional rifts with limited numbers, built their parties around exactly this class system.

There was no written regulation that strictly divided hunters into tanks, dealers, and healers. In practice, though, a Dungeon Hunter's class was determined by their ability and the direction of their training.

Once a class had been drilled into the body, it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠almost never changed. Switching meant not only absorbing an entirely new body of knowledge, but unlearning every habit already carved into muscle memory.

For the most part, class followed ability. If your ability made tanking easy, you became a tank. If it made dealing damage easy, you became a dealer. Not always — but usually.

"One tank, three dealers, one healer. A textbook composition. This is the easiest party setup for dungeon exploration."

That was how the staff member explained it. I checked the other people's abilities as they appeared on the party window. Hwang-whatsit had already announced his was an acceleration ability, so there was nothing to see there. I already knew Sujin's and Lina's abilities too. The only one worth looking at was the man named Go Yohan.

An enhancement-type ability — physical reinforcement, through and through. It was the name that came to mind when anyone said tanking, and one of the more common abilities out there. Of course, the ability itself was common. The people who pushed it all the way to Dungeon Hunter caliber were a rare few.

Hwang-whatsit, who'd been staring at the laptop, suddenly cranked his energy all the way up.

"Wow! Jaeseong, you've got Light Control! I can't believe I'm actually seeing an ability this rare!"

Light Control was rare enough that the reaction was fair. That didn't mean I was even slightly pleased to have this dyed-hair prick be the one gushing over it. What I wanted was a drop-dead gorgeous girl staring at me like I hung the moon.

"Me, a dealer, huh. Not sure I'll be any good at it. Haha."

He scratched his head and muttered. For a dealer, this bastard sure talks a lot.

Of the three classes — tank, dealer, and healer — dealers were by far the most common. The ratio ran something like 3 to 5.5 to 1.5. Tanks were rarer than dealers, and healers were rarer still. That was why the saying made the rounds so openly: Royal Healer, Aristocratic Tanker, Peasant Dealer.

The reason dealers were common was simple. Abilities powerful enough to make someone a Dungeon Hunter were, more often than not, offensive. Cases of someone pushing a healing ability to a high level were already uncommon, and the people who then took that ability into dungeon work were rarer still. Even staying a General Hunter and working as a doctor was enough to make serious money.

So the Hunter Association offered healers every convenience they could. Even then, the shortage on the ground never let up, and plenty of parties simply patched the hole with potions.

Tanks were a different story. The ability itself wasn't as rare as a healer's, but the number ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of Dungeon Hunters who actually wanted to tank was small.

Body Strength was widely known as a tanking ability, but more people who had it chose to deal damage than to tank. Because the tank was, of the three classes, the most dangerous seat at the table.

Standing at the front of the party, drawing enemy aggro and eating attacks — there was nothing safe about that. The risk sat in a different league from dealers, and even from healers. The tank's entire job was to pull aggro so the dealers and the healer could stay alive. Of course it was dangerous.

Not many people signed up for a job like that. You got the ones whose ability was useless for anything but tanking, the ones with a crushing sense of duty, or the ones with a freakish talent for it.

And because the danger was so high, the number of tanks who dropped out to injury or death was high too. Hunt for an actual tank and they were every bit as scarce as healers. In the Dungeon Hunter world, the running joke was that half of all tanks were currently occupying a hospital bed.

Healers, to put it simply, were the royalty of a party. You needed them to explore a dungeon, and because they were so hard to come by, they were welcome everywhere. Substituting potions for a healer had a hard ceiling.

The higher a dungeon's difficulty climbed, the less optional a healer became. On top of that, potions were expensive enough to make your mother skip town — there were plenty of cases where the potion bill outstripped the cost of actually recruiting a healer. A party without one hadn't chosen to go without. They simply couldn't find one.

Tanks were just as rare, and just as welcome wherever they went, but the treatment and the standing tilted, however slightly, in the healer's favor. A party without a healer was a candle in the wind, which also made the healer the most protected person in the group. In that sense, they sat at the exact opposite pole from the tank.

A healer possessed an ability that could not be replaced. The same ability, depending on a person's temperament and the techniques they used, could make them a tank or a dealer. Body Strength, as I'd said, reinforced the body — and some people tanked with it, while others dealt damage.

A healer, though, needed an ability that actually healed. You could die and come back to life and you still couldn't heal anyone with Body Strength.

And that was one of the reasons Light Control was held in such high regard. Light Control was one of the rare abilities that could fill all three roles — tank, dealer, and healer. Its offensive power was solid, it had a healing function, and depending on the techniques you used, you could even tank with it. Not the stubborn, planted-feet tanking of a traditional frontliner — it leaned toward evasion tanking — but it counted.

In the Dungeon Hunter world, a Multi-Player was worth a fortune. Say one hunter's raw power sat at fifty, but they could both tank and deal. That hunter was worth several times more than a hunter whose power sat at a hundred and who could only deal. A Multi-Player could fill a seat the moment another party member dropped out mid-expedition, which jacked a party's stability through the roof.

For Dungeon Hunters who put their lives on the line every time they went in, stability was an enormous value. There was a reason they hauled around potions that cost hundreds of dollars a bottle, packed in by the armful.

Of course, simply having an ability that could multi-play didn't make you a Multi-Player. If I wanted to tank and deal, I needed at least a baseline of tanking skill and dealing skill, and that was something you built through education and training. The depth of that training was nothing to sneeze at.

Among Dungeon Hunters of Rank 5 and above, those who held two or more classes numbered fewer than a hundred in the entire world. The highest-ranked Multi-Player sat at Rank 3 — and there was only one of them on the planet. That person happened to be Korean, and they were treated on par with a Rank 1 Hunter. That was the kind of status a Multi-Player commanded.

"Now that everyone's class has been assigned, we'll proceed with the matching basic education. Ah — and Jaeseong, since you have Light Control, you can take classes for multiple roles in parallel, if you'd like."

Oho.

That was excellent news for me. Being able to tank, deal, and heal was obviously a good thing. It wouldn't just raise my market value — it would let me build a party as flexibly as I wanted.

"That sounds great. If possible, I'd like to take the tank, dealer, and healer courses. All of them."

"All three might be a bit much. We'll set it up if you want, but it's going to be tough."

"That's fine."

And with that, the classroom session was over. They told us that was it for today's instruction. We were shown to our rooms — private quarters at the level of a high-end hotel, exactly as they'd looked from the outside.

Class time arrived. Because I was taking all three roles, I had to move a lot faster than everyone else. Even then, I couldn't get an education as deep as what each of them received in their single class.

So I took the crash course. That kind of approach could leave you half-baked at everything, but I gave it everything I had. I pulled my focus tighter than I ever had writing novels.

The curriculum covered formation tactics, protocols for conducting yourself in a dungeon, hand signals, monster intelligence, equipment handling, and action procedures integrated with your ability.

There was more to memorize than I'd expected, and just as much that had to be beaten into the body. The healer's basic tactics manual alone was as thick as a phone book. Of that, I learned only the most fundamental tactics.

A week went by in a blur. It was a new-recruit training course, but it was no joke. We sat two pop quizzes a day, every day, and if you didn't pass, you retook it until you did. The questions kept changing, so the only option was to study yourself half to death.

If I'd been holding down a single class, it would have been a difficulty you could clear with a bit of studying. For me, trying to swallow all three, the bar was brutally high. Not that I cut any corners.

This studying was for my own good anyway, wasn't it? Every bit of it would become blood and bone once I was inside a dungeon. Playing clever would only cost me.

The week ended, and at last the practical training week arrived. From this week on, we would step into a dungeon ourselves and hammer the tactics we'd learned in theory into our bodies. We wouldn't enter a real dungeon until the last day of the week, though. Until then, we were going to drill tactics to death inside a fabricated Artificial Dungeon.

The Artificial Dungeon was built from monster byproducts and an ability like the Real Mirage an Association employee had shown us before. If you ever ran into a facility or a product that felt a little uncanny, it was a safe bet that expensive monster byproducts had gone into it.

After breakfast, we gathered at the Artificial Dungeon's entrance. It had been built about a ten-minute drive from the training center — a huge, crude container building from the outside.

Several locks hung on the entrance. No doubt those were special locks made from monster byproducts too. There wasn't a speck of the ordinary about any of it. The building's featureless exterior only made the Artificial Dungeon behind it stand out more.

"Ugh... I'm a little shaky. Think I'll be okay?"

Sujin hunched her shoulders, wound tight with nerves. My own heart was beating faster. Thanks to the combat experience I'd picked up in the Solari World, I didn't feel any real fear — just the right amount of tension to keep me locked in.

"Don't worry. Just do what we learned and you'll be fine."

I gave Sujin's shoulder a couple of reassuring pats, and that was when the dyed-hair prick decided to open his mouth. His name was Hwang... something-or-other.

"Are the two of you a couple?"

"We are~"

Sujin answered with a bright smile, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as if she'd been waiting for that exact question. For some reason, that dyed-hair prick's face seemed to wilt. What a pathetic bastard. Sujin is a woman a guy like you could never get his hands on.

"We'll proceed with entry. Surveillance cameras cover every inch of the Artificial Dungeon, so if a dangerous situation develops, we will halt the exercise immediately. Even so, be as careful as you can. Trainees do occasionally sustain injuries, rare as it is."

The staff member unlocked the container building with the keys he'd brought, then stepped aside as the door opened. There was no chance a non-ability user would be following us in.

Dungeons weren't places non-ability users could enter in the first place. A human who couldn't use mana felt crushing pressure from simply being inside one. Whether that applied to an Artificial Dungeon, I wasn't sure.

"Let's go in."

We formed ranks the way we'd been taught and slowly stepped into the container building. Tank at the very front, two dealers behind him, then me. One more dealer covered the rear behind me.

I was standing in the safest position in the party. A healer's privilege.

Yohan took the vanguard. Sujin and the dyed-hair prick stood behind him, and Lina watched our backs. We moved forward, slow and steady.

"Whoa... it feels completely different from outside."

Amazingly, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inside of the container building was a narrow cave. A cramped passage barely wide enough for three people stretched ahead of us, and the ceiling sat so low that if you jumped with your arms stretched up, you'd touch it. In the theory classes, we'd also learned about the monsters that commonly appeared in environments like this. I turned the memory over slowly.

"We'll likely be looking at slimes, evil bats, skull spiders — that sort of thing."

Yohan, standing at the very front, spoke in a cool, clipped voice. He was right. The monsters that appeared in caves were too numerous to count, but at our level, those were the ones we could actually put down. If you added a few more to the list...

"Or perhaps poison centipedes, crawlers, mini stone golems."

More competent than I expected. Suddenly I like him a whole lot less. The odds were basically zero, but I couldn't have Lina falling for this insufferable bastard. I glanced over at her. She didn't seem particularly interested in what he'd said.

Good.

"We'll advance once I've secured our field of vision."

Yohan checked every corner of the cave with the headlamp he'd brought, then pressed forward. The pace of a dungeon expedition was set by the tank at the front. Which meant, in the end, this had the shape of a party he was leading. We moved ahead like that, slowly punching a hole through the cave's darkness.

Nothing of note stirred. After about five minutes of walking, a presence registered ahead of us.