New Friends Arrive at Hyung's Ranch
"Thanks for all your hard work—!"
The truck from the Korea Racing Authority pulled away from Hyung's Ranch.
Phrrr…
Two horses, flawed as racehorses—the first fruits of the contract struck between the Racing Authority and Hyung's Ranch.
Dohyeon turned his gaze away from the two newcomers, who stood there stiff and sheepish under the bright-eyed stares of Goldie, Taesan, and Lightning—like elementary schoolers who'd just walked into a friend's house and didn't know what to do with themselves.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Kang Eunseo was typing something into her tablet.
"What are you writing?"
"Oh. The little lady has a medical condition, so there are special measures she needs. While I'm at it, I'm putting together a care rundown for each of them so every employee at Hyung's Ranch knows what's required."
"Ah, right. You did work for the Racing Authority, so I guess you'd know pretty much any horse."
"I know all of them. And not just 'pretty much.'"
"Oh… now that's what I call a veterinarian."
"And what did I seem like before, exactly?"
"Hmm… a very capable YouTube PD?"
"Ah… I can't argue with that."
Eunseo gave a wry laugh.
"Anyway, I'll get the kids settled into their stalls."
Kang Eunhyeok took the reins of both horses and headed for the stable.
"Shoo, shoo— friends, step aside and let them through."
The two bone piles and one foal obediently made way.
Even the ever-curious Goldie, having learned his lesson from the Lightning incident, didn't dare approach too eagerly.
With the three siblings of Hyung's Ranch sent outside to play, the humans gathered to talk over their two new arrivals.
"This brown fellow's name is Volcano. He was a very popular racehorse back in his day."
While Eunseo inspected Volcano from head to hoof, Dohyeon stroked his mane and ran a brush over his body.
He's so old he looks ready to drop any day now. Better get on his good side fast.
Not that his heart was entirely innocent on the matter.
Eunseo spoke up. "You know, they say his original name was so forgettable nobody even remembers it. Then some shocking incident happened, and after that he gained a fanbase and a brand-new name."
"What incident?"
"To tell this story I need to give you a little background first… Boss, did you happen to know that most male racehorses are geldings?"
Dohyeon's eyes went wide.
"What? Aren't those the ones—stallions or whatever—that go for insane money? Geldings, you say?"
"The seeds that pricey stallion scatters become racehorses like these. One stallion can cover for any number of them, so the rest of the boys get gelded and put on the track."
"Wait, do they really have to go that far?"
Dohyeon asked, having completely forgotten that he'd had Goldie neutered too.
"It'd be nicer if they didn't have to, but an intact stallion usually has such a fiery temperament that he won't do a thing his jockey tells him."
"Ah… so this guy too?"
Clap!
When Eunseo clapped her hands together, Volcano's ears gave a proud flutter.
"And that's exactly where Volcano's star quality comes from. He was one of the rare ones who stayed a stallion—and then, would you believe it, he mounted a mare in the middle of a race."
"I'm sorry—in the middle of a race?"
"In the middle of a race."
"So what happened?"
"Chaos. Complete chaos. The grandstands turned into a war zone, the thrown jockey got carted off on a stretcher—"
Volcano's ears were standing at full attention, as if he knew perfectly well whose story this was. Eunseo stroked one of them and went on.
"Anyway, he came this close to being gelded for it. But somehow his popularity exploded after the incident, so they gave him a new name and left him intact. For years afterward, they say the race betting boards even ran odds on whether Volcano would or wouldn't mount a mare mid-race."
"Wow… this guy is something else."
Phrrrrr—
For a moment, Volcano's face looked as if it were split by a hearty, joyful laugh.
"How is mounting mares a selling point for a racehorse…"
Dohyeon was lost for words.
Eunseo chuckled and patted Volcano's rump.
"Anyway—Volcano, all checked! Let's go see Snow."
Eunseo moved to Snow's side and gave her the same thorough once-over she'd given Volcano.
"What's this one's story?"
"She was a five-year-old right in her prime. Then she came down with roaring—a paralysis of the throat that steals a horse's wind—and lost her competitive edge. A truly pristine white mare. One of those original whites, so she was popular. A real shame, honestly."
Dohyeon stroked her snowy coat and studied Snow's face closely.
"How old is she now, that she ended up at our ranch? She looks younger than Volcano."
"She's still five. Dead center of her prime."
"Huh? Then isn't she here by mistake?"
"That's not it."
"A popular white mare that young—if she can't race anymore, couldn't they just use her as a broodmare?"
"And that's exactly where the problem was. She violently, absolutely refused to mate or carry a foal. Sent one stallion flying with a single kick of her hind legs… Most breeding techniques failed on her too, and when they finally forced a pregnancy on her, the stress was so severe she miscarried on her own. Back then, all this beautiful coat was falling out in patches. She looked a fright."
Phrrr…
Perhaps objecting to being called a fright, Snow shoved her nose at Eunseo.
"Aigoo— what can I even say. Okay, okay. You're beautiful."
Eunseo gently pushed away the nose that was drooling all over her ponytail.
"In any case, our ranch doesn't keep score. Snow has nothing to prove, and neither do the people looking after her. She's already had her surgery, so all she needs is her meals and an occasional check on her breathing."
Dohyeon stroked the crest of Snow's neck.
"You've been through a lot too, huh. And you're only five. Live happily here. Not that you'll have many friends around."
Perhaps his warmth got through—Snow leaned her head against his chest.
Her inspection complete, Eunseo gave Snow's rump a pat as well.
"Alright! Checkups are all done, and neither of them needs any special attention, so let's turn them loose in the pasture and let them get to know the gang!"
Hee-hee-hee!
Neeeiiigh—
Volcano and Snow sidled up, ever so casually, toward the three siblings of Hyung's Ranch.
That evening, Lightning's introduction video went up on the Hyung's Ranch channel.
"It's me! I'm the baby of the family now—!"
It was only their third upload, but already a routine had taken hold: the day after a video went up on the Hyung's Ranch YouTube channel, the entire staff gathered to comb through the video and the comments together.
Kang Eunhyeok, who had joined just the day before, sat among them as a matter of course—along with Volcano and Snow.
Watching three living humans, two skeletons, and three living horses huddle their heads together, Dohyeon quietly added a projector to his mental shopping list.
"I was worried how the view count would hold up, since Lightning's just a horse and not a skeleton, but she's doing better than I expected. Maybe the whole channel's riding the algorithm right now?"
The video was stitched together from footage of Lightning as a younger foal, before her hind legs bowed, then the story of how her legs gave out and she left the Racing Authority, and finally her new life as the baby of Hyung's Ranch, bonding with her skeleton big brothers.
"The editing's really nice. Turns out you've got a talent for producing, too?"
Eunseo opened the comment section.
"They're asking us to do a Q&A when we hit one hundred thousand subscribers, Boss. What do you want to do?"
Seizing the pause, Dohyeon slipped a sugar cube into Volcano's mouth and answered.
"A 100K Q&A is basically the unspoken rule these days, no? Sure, let's do it. Although—doesn't that mean we should collect questions first? How many subscribers do we have right now?"
"Right now we're at 99,000… oh. We just crossed 100,000."
The three humans, still dazed by their improbable YouTube boom, exchanged a look.
Eunhyeok spoke up.
"If we start collecting questions now, the Q&A video wouldn't go up until we hit around 300,000 subscribers. Why not just do it live?"
Dohyeon and Eunseo nodded along readily.
"That does sound better."
The three of them announced a same-day livestream on the channel's community tab, then split up to start the day's ranch work.
Eunhyeok cleaned up the chores that had piled up overnight, while Eunseo fed the kids and let them out of the stable.
And Ranch Owner Cha Dohyeon…
simply parked himself in a nice cool spot and let the time slide by.
Ah, sweet, sweet capitalist life…!
Dohyeon was enjoying the breeze when something clicked in his head, and he picked up his smartphone.
"Might as well use this lull to brush up on the Tower."
Everything before Volcano and Snow's arrival had been so hectic that Dohyeon had done nothing but grind out repeat clears of Floor 10.
But the busywork had more or less settled, and with more mouths to feed, both the need and the conditions for climbing the Tower to grow his income had finally aligned.
The Bureau's been knocking on the doors of horse farms all over Jeju, but horses that fit my exact conditions are surprisingly hard to come by. For the time being, I should treat Volcano and Snow as the whole roster.
What Dohyeon looked for were animals with enough remaining lifespan to build a real bond.
Nowhere short of an institution like the Korea Racing Authority had the luxury of simply keeping a horse that did nothing but eat through feed and medicine.
That was why he was now toying with the idea of a makeover for the ranch: from a horse-only operation into a shelter for abandoned animals spanning all of Jeju.
Originally I planned to resurrect only horses—animals naturally gifted with strong bodies. But once I had the Skull Engine, there was no reason to be picky. They don't tie up my mana or my dominion slots anyway…
There was no sense letting the sprawling ranch that the Tower Management Bureau staff had gone to such pains to secure sit idle.
"Should I use today's 100K Q&A to put the word out for sick animals?"
In Dohyeon's mind, a picture took shape of Goldie beaming triumphantly at the head of one hundred little siblings.
"Oof— better get ready to rake in the money."
Dohyeon began digging through the Climber community for strategy guides covering Floors 11 through 20.
"Oh. Exactly the post I needed."
"Looks like the Tower runs on five-floor cycles. Skills come every five floors, and apparently so do the walls in the climb."
"So it's the same old Orcs all the way up to Floor 14. I wonder how ordinary Climbers handle them?"
Watching Taesan amble past, utterly at ease with two Orcs skewered on his tusks, one could safely say his circumstances were a world apart from the average Climber's.
"Oh. So it's a long game…"
Dohyeon reflected that a drawn-out fight against an Orc with hide far thicker than a human's would be no joke.
"What party do they recommend, then?"
"Oh, there are healers too…"
Dohyeon found himself thinking that a healer pushing through the tutorial must have suffered through it just as much as he had.