One Block of Red

The community was in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an uproar again today.

The boards were plastered in every flavor of clickbait rag headline, and the shocking part was that none of it was bait. It was fact.

There was a funny story riding along with it, and that only fed the fire.

Everyone was sick with envy, and they had every reason to be. Haven's class gacha had settled numbers by now. For a 4-star, an expected cost of about a billion won had hardened into common sense: luck could pop one early, but enough users had proved that most people landed a little sooner or a little later than that billion-won line.

A 5-star had no such line. Even the users who claimed they'd pulled one on luck had never published exact figures, and the only public sample—Kim Siwoo's—sat at 3.4 billion won, far under any expected value anyone wanted to believe in. In a sense, people were spinning on hope from that single number alone.

And then a hundred million won happened. Once can be luck. But twice?

The money you still had to spend. The cost of keeping up the look. Plenty of long posts spelled it all out, but would any of that land in eyes already glued to a hundred million? People don't really see what gets spent. They only see the overwhelming presence that shows up after the spending.

On top of that, the temple's treatment—broadcast for everyone to watch—was more than enough to hook them.

A free pass that bought endless goodwill from NPCs who otherwise distrusted and sneered at outsiders, and all you had to do was pull. When I'd met the Magic Tower Lord alone, not many users had envied that treatment. The Magic Tower was merely curt, and mages were supposed to be like that anyway. The temple was different. In everyone's head, a priest is kind and friendly. Once that coldness had been stamped into memory, the two-faced warmth was impossible not to envy.

And that wasn't all. A 5-star still demanded plenty of money after the pull, but it had been revealed once again that they had privileges of their own.

The community's fire showed no sign of going out.

The next day I turned the stream on and met Lim Sarang.

"Want to take a look at your skills?"

"Yes...! I'm nervous."

"You haven't checked yet?"

"No. I held off so we could look together."

"That's insane."

Lim Sarang turned her own broadcast on and opened her skill window.

"Damn."

The sound left me on its own. The viewers were no better.

As a base class effect, every rank of divine magic carrying the Moon's power rose by one. Of course, that was a lesser version of my own three-star SS option, magic skill rank +1. Learn a skill carrying the Sun's power instead of the Moon's, and the effect did nothing at all. Ordinary skills weren't locked to divine-magic users either, so taken as a whole, it might apply to less than you'd think.

There was, however, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skill source that covered that weakness. Assuming you could at least fill the contribution requirement, that base effect might as well have read every skill.

"...This is fucking broken."

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

"..."

I'd muttered it without thinking, and at her echo I scrambled to scoop the words back up. I wasn't the only one feeling it.

Even the base option was absurd. In Haven, the difference between a heal and a shield was usually sorted like this—and not only in Haven. A heal is aftercare. A shield is preemptive. A shield soaks the damage before it lands; a heal restores the HP you already lost. Each has its strengths.

Stretch a fight out long enough and healing's advantage is staying power. So long as you don't die, you can keep recovering, and sooner or later you notice your side still near full while the enemy is crawling along the bottom of their life. There's a reason people say to kill the healer first. A shield has little to do with that kind of endurance. Take a bad hit and the shield cannot give the lost HP back, which is why people say skill matters. You can't keep one up forever. The shield that lands at the right moment, in the right amount—under the same conditions, mid-fight, a shield beats a heal. You can't ignore the psychological slack that comes from your health never dropping in the first place.

And for me, a shield was unconditionally better.

It wasn't a way of raising HP, but a shield equal to your HP did the same job as HP. And the base coefficient on Lim Sarang's shield skill, by itself, was already 100%.

"Seventy-five percent chance of two hundred percent of max HP. Add the class exclusive one-star SS effect of a hundred and five percent and that's three hundred and five."

I'd done it as simple addition. Multiplication told a different story.

"Whoa... you're right."

Calculated that way, Moonlight Protection's skill effect came out to 420% in total.

It hit me all over again.

A shield, at its root, was meant to cover you against an enemy's attack for an instant. In any novel or movie, you throw one up to match a heavy blow and cut the damage as much as you can. Nobody wraps themselves tight in a barrier and calls it a day.

It was a word from back when the old online games were in fashion. A player's health was usually painted a hard-to-miss red above the character, and any shield laid over it was painted white. The bar didn't grow. Relative to max HP, white simply stained across however much shield you'd gained, and that white broke first. The closer the shield came to max HP, the less red remained and the fuller the white became. Pile on an absurd amount of shield and there was barely any red left—nothing but white—so people said it looked like you'd put on a condom.

"Pfft."

It was my first time hearing it, and the laugh burst out of me. Man... people really do come up with everything.

Lim Sarang must have been curious too, because she tried the skill. On me.

Vwoom—

The skill triggered, and a transparent membrane rose around my body. It didn't block my vision. Only in the moment it formed was there a faint, alien shimmer, and when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I stretched out an arm, the shimmer moved to match it.

"Whoa."

Haven had a setting, just like an old game, that let you see a user's health bar floating over their head. It was off by default for the sake of realism, but you could turn it on if you wanted to look. I switched it on, and a bar rose over my head.

"..."

I hadn't noticed before I turned it on, but it felt strangely cozy.