Energy Charged to 100%

When was I supposed to clean up all the corpses and blood strewn across the front yard? Before those practical headaches could take root, a tip popped up—and the Wild Dog carcasses vanished.

My eyes went round at the assortment of loot left in their place.

"Why is there so much of this?"

In a dungeon, a hunter with a dedicated butchering skill had to process a monster before any loot would drop.

The only real difference in the Survival Server was that it handled the butchering for you even if you didn't have the skill. So for someone like me, with no butchering skill to speak of, expecting a generous haul would have been shameless—except that what I was looking at already piled up where each Wild Dog had fallen, after the carcasses disappeared, was as much as the animals themselves. No—more.

I had no choice but to push my still-recovering body to its feet.

Two hundred Growth Cards, the reward for hitting Level 10. Setting aside the ones that could push Double Attack to Level 5 wasn't easy. But of course actual physical loot sitting right in front of you was always going to outshine cyber money.

"Whoa."

The biggest pile, first of all, was meat. Hides, fur, blood, and organs all stripped away—the kind of neatly portioned cuts you'd find at a butcher shop, ready to throw on a grill. Every cut you could think of, heaped up in kilogram slabs. Just this meat alone would keep me fed for a good long while.

I knew a thing or two about how dungeon ecosystems worked, scraps I'd picked up browsing the Hunter Gallery. How dungeons actually ran. And with my little sister Kim Yerin serving as a dungeon pathfinder, I'd ended up hearing way more than I ever wanted about the beginning and end of dungeon raids—stuff no ordinary person would bother with.

As far as I knew, even after you hunted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a monster, the odds of getting edible meat were only about twenty to thirty percent. Dungeon looting didn't work like butchering a cow or a pig and carving off every usable cut. A hunter with a butchering skill looted the corpse, and items dropped according to probability—which meant the meat still attached to the beast was just another roll of the dice. Miss the drop, and you walked away empty-handed.

"If you think of it that way, the 100x drop rate checks out."

If Wild Dog meat sat on the drop table at a 20% rate, the Survival Server's 100x multiplier would push that to 2,000%. So was it a guaranteed drop? Or did every 100% equal one drop, meaning you'd get twenty times the meat? The Survival Tips hadn't spelled it out, so there was no way to know for sure—but looking at the piles in front of me, the latter seemed a lot more likely.

"I don't even have a fridge..."

I was thrilled, and still I hesitated. It was raw meat, after all. I'd worry about that later. The meat wasn't what mattered.

"Plenty of hides, too."

The usual junk you got from hunting common beasts. And buried in the middle of it, a piece of clothing that did not belong.

"There it is!!"

I'd rummaged on a hunch, and the discovery was worth every second. I couldn't help cheering. A leather chest piece, covering all the way up around the neck.

"Jackpot!!"

Hunters always said it. The most important thing for surviving a dungeon was gear. Skills mattered. Stats mattered. But when things got truly dangerous, what kept you alive was a solid piece of equipment.

I was a novice hunter, and I'd felt that truth firsthand in the fight I'd just finished. Adrenaline had drowned out the pain while I was swinging, but the ache of those bites had been sharp enough to snap me wide awake, and with it had come the terror that my own body might stop obeying me. I'd gone in trusting the Life Fruits—but I couldn't help thinking how much better it would have been if I'd had armor to protect me.

So I grabbed it on the spot. More than the meat, more than the hides, more than any of the miscellaneous junk—this was the real spoils of victory.

I checked whether the other Wild Dogs had dropped any too. It was random.

"So even at 100x, it's not a guaranteed drop."

Armor was a rare drop. Hunters sometimes crafted gear from the hides that came off a kill, but that missed the most important distinction: set bonuses only dropped from the low-probability armor that came off a hunted monster. That was what made this broken.

"Oh! Pants! Gloves too! Nice!! Five-piece set complete!"

Five pieces out of twelve Wild Dogs. Almost a fifty percent rate. Armor that originally dropped at 0.5%—the kind of thing you'd kill two hundred of these things and still maybe not see a single piece—and I'd walked away with five, not a single duplicate among them. That was a gift with luck piled on top of the multiplier.

"That was worth it."

I was satisfied. I piled the meat and the rest of the loot next to the roaring campfire, grabbed just the armor, and headed back inside, shutting the door behind me. A win was a win—but it was time to cash in the rest of that dopamine, just in case something else showed up.

My payout session among the spread of cards lasted quite a while.

What to pick for the Level 10 cards. Even with the expanded options and the sea of cards in front of me, my criteria hadn't changed. Hero-grade or higher. No exceptions.

Unfortunately, no red cards showed up. Still, hitting Level 10 was enough to roll two Legendaries. The one I picked was a Trait Card.

I'd been wondering what the Traits section on my status window was even for. The cards that appeared at Level 10 answered that. I also noticed that Trait Point cards had been added to the pool.

Unlike skills, which leveled up just by using them and gaining EXP, traits could only be grown by picking Trait Points from Growth Cards. It was a hassle, sure, but given how unique traits were, I figured Trait Points were worth grabbing. Plus, the 100x multiplier applied to Trait Points too.

If you're gonna give it to me, just make it 100x.

Each card had anywhere from 1 Trait Point on the low end to over a hundred depending on the grade, so I'd need to watch for high-multiplier Trait Point Cards and pick them when I actually needed them. Not that the Level 1 Server Inventory wasn't already plenty useful.

"So I can bring a fan, an air conditioner, LED lights, a computer, a TV—all of it?"

When I'd connected to the 100x server, they'd confiscated my phone and even the clothes off my back. I'd assumed I'd have no choice but to leave behind everything I'd busted my ass to obtain here when I logged out.

"Server Inventory."

The name was kinda lame, but the space that opened in front of me felt like an inventory—no, like a dimensional pocket.

"Whoa."

Magic. I could rotate it a full 360 degrees, reach in, and stash whatever I wanted. It actually felt like I'd become a real mage. I packed the armor I'd gotten off the Wild Dogs in, piece by piece. Then the Life Fruits, stacked neatly on top, and the 1M × 1M × 1M space filled up fast.

"I actually worked pretty hard, huh."

I hadn't even done that much, and it was already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠day three. Aside from pulling weeds and fighting Wild Dogs, I barely had any memories worth keeping—but looking at the warehouse, I couldn't help thinking I'd put in a decent shift. I wouldn't regret heading back. I'd accomplished everything I'd set out to do. Level 10. Double Attack at Level 5. A full armor set on top of that. From here on out, I could walk through a dungeon—or anywhere else—a little safer, and a little prouder.

Right on cue, the message arrived that energy had charged to 100%.

"The meat? Not my problem. Let the Wild Dogs eat it, or whatever."

I couldn't wrap up everything perfectly before leaving. If I left that mountain of Wild Dog meat inside the cabin, the stench of rot would be unbearable. And given that Wild Dogs had already shown up once, some other beast would probably come along and eat it anyway. Maybe that was for the best. If some animal filled its belly and left instead of draining the cabin's energy, the meat would have done its job.

"Just one last hit of dopamine, then..."

I left behind a few fruits to eat next time I came, packed the Server Inventory to the brim, and was about to head for the Server Connection Device when—

"Hand it over!! Legendary!!!"

I reached for the sweetest reward I'd been saving.

A long, slender longsword sketched itself in hologram in front of my eyes and began to spin. White, green, blue, purple… yellow. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Colors cycling. Then another message covered my vision.

Every other color vanished at once. Only purple remained, flickering rapidly with the briefest flashes of yellow, accelerating.

And then.

"Ah. Bust."

A vaguely unsatisfying second-place prize materialized before my eyes.