Field Boss D-Day
Haven has something called a material warehouse. It's a magic box that can hold all sorts of crafting materials, sold at the Magic Tower, and in one room of my sprawling Haven house I'd stacked the oversized ones until they were piled to the ceiling.
"This ought to keep me from running short for a while."
The supplier had agreed to set monster materials aside for me by level before anyone else, and I'd combed the community for everything I'd need more of as I climbed, buying every auction-house listing I could get my hands on. I'd burned through the remaining hundred and forty billion or so in Haven currency I had on hand and still had to convert more on top of that, but once I thought of it as an investment in the future, it didn't sting.
For the moment I wouldn't run short of what I needed to roll low-level skills, but who knew what came next—especially at high levels. The second competition heated up and material prices climbed, there'd come a day I couldn't roll as much as I wanted. The price could jump several times over and I still wouldn't care. What would actually piss me off was people sitting on the supply and refusing to let it out. Better to start buying, little by little, from here on.
I had no intention of purchasing any more low-level materials. High-level skill-roll materials, though, I meant to keep buying, and I wouldn't even have to do it myself. The owner who sold monster materials had agreed to pick them up for me whenever he had a spare moment.
"So it really is that day."
Between converting currency, running in and out of the auction house, buying bulk material boxes at the Magic Tower, and hauling them home yesterday and the day before, tomorrow had somehow crept up on me. The stream was on break. I'd posted a notice and let the anticipation swell until it was fit to burst.
Viewers left comments like that on the VODs every single day. Looking back, I couldn't even say when the audience had grown this large. I'd passed two hundred thousand a while ago, and once word got out that I'd partied with Lim Sarang, three hundred thousand came just as easily.
"Money really can do anything in this world."
There wasn't a speck of fun in any of it. Nearly a month since I'd started the game, and I'd set foot in fewer than ten dungeons. All I did, all day, was roll gacha and spend money—so what was so entertaining that people watched from the moment the stream went live until it ended? Then again, I knew spending money was the most entertaining part of all, which was half the reason I kept spending even bigger. Anything the old me would've hesitated over, I now just bought outright. Unless I was genuinely getting fleeced, the vicarious thrill of watching money that wasn't yours get burned like kindling was bigger than you'd think.
One last check. There wasn't much to check, really.
"Hm. Good enough."
My own setup was already finished, piece by piece. What mattered more was Lim Sarang.
"Sarang!"
"Siwoo!"
It had been a few days. Seeing her again after a while, she looked even prettier.
"Hehe. I hit the level!"
"Whoa. That's insane. How'd you hit level twelve in three days?"
"Got carried, obviously. My old raid members said if I ever rolled a five-star, I should let them into the party."
"A five-star is welcome, no question. And if they were on your old raid team, their skill has to be serious."
"Whoa, really? They were probably just saying it, though. If I roll a five-star, I'll go scout them myself!"
She chattered about how things had been, bright with excitement, and I told her about yesterday in return. We ordered coffee at a café and talked like that for two hours.
"Seriously? Wow. I knew it. I was thinking I should buy some lowest-grade essences just in case, but I forgot while I was out hunting. The price shot up like crazy—that was you?"
"Don't worry. I bought enough with you in mind, too. If you can't get them with contribution at the temple later, just use mine."
"Wait. Is this a proposal?"
"Was the mood a little off?"
"I'm completely moved, though?"
We'd definitely gotten closer—she tossed out jokes like that without a hint of awkwardness. I might be a social outsider, but I had enough sense not to blurt something stupid like Huh? For real? So today's our day one? And sitting there, I was starting to understand why guy friends and girl friends danced along that razor-thin line, keeping just enough distance while something simmered between them. Calling what I had with Lim Sarang a thing was a stretch, but just being alone with her like this—that faint rise of tension—felt good.
"For the gear slots that had listings, I bought five-star, and I equipped four-star accessories."
"At this level you could've gone for value. You're a healer anyway."
"No way. There's no 'good enough' on a Dragon Words Mage's raid team!"
"Good attitude. If the raid ever needs better benefits, just say the word."
"Yes, sir! Boss!"
Truth was, once Lim Sarang's gear was set, there wasn't much else to touch in the current situation. She'd already rolled her unique options up to two stars at SS, and though she'd reached level eleven, she still couldn't learn an SS-grade skill—her contribution wasn't high enough yet. She could have filled it if she'd wanted, but there simply wasn't time. Wait to finish that too, and we might not be hunting the Slime King until next month, so we'd decided to go as we were.
"After we take down the Slime King, let's go for the content where we snipe a three-star SS special option. I've pretty much cleared everything I can do for now, and I want to hunt for a bit."
"I'll take that gratefully. An option that actually helps you, Siwoo. I'll make sure I roll one!"
Lim Sarang didn't refuse the offer. She seemed a little burdened by it, but maybe that was because she knew it wasn't much of a burden for me anyway. More than that, as a healer, she probably figured a three-star SS special option tied to support would be a huge help to me, too.
"Perfect. Shall we go live?"
"Yes!"
And so, before we headed out to hunt the Slime King, we turned the stream on.
The Slime King spawned in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province. The whole region used to swarm with monsters, but after the first Slime King—the field boss—was cleared, anything that used to wander out of the zone stopped respawning. In their place, people could live there now, and dungeons had appeared.
Haven Online worked that way. Only the capital region and a handful of major cities started as safe zones, and players gradually cleared the surrounding field bosses, or met various other conditions, to purify each region. Purify a place, and NPCs began migrating there while the nation grew a little stronger.
It wasn't active yet, but through dealings with NPCs, players had already picked up a few things. Certain regions were hard to clear—but defeat the field boss, reclaim the area, and the government would grant you the authority to rule it.
Veterans took one look and caught on.
And so field bosses had settled in as extremely important content. Even though the system wasn't fully open yet, the content itself was already plenty appealing. It was practically the only place you could compare how strong you'd gotten against other players. Dungeon clear speed inevitably depended on which dungeon it was, but a field boss was the same boss under the same conditions, hit the same way, so you could tell for certain who was stronger. It wasn't a training dummy, either. Dodging attacks, choosing where you stood to deal damage—skill mattered enormously, which was why damage duels always used field bosses.
The rewards were pretty good, too. You got a decent chunk of personal experience, and just as clearing a dungeon brought up a loot list, a successful field-boss clear brought up field-boss loot according to your contribution. The boss's own materials already had uses all over the place, but if an actual field-boss item dropped, that day was a jackpot among jackpots. Which was why spawn time was always packed.
"Wow, Siwoo. Today's going to be rough, isn't it?"
"Wait. Isn't this a recommended level eleven field boss?"
"I think everyone showed up to take you down."
Even at a glance, plenty of players were dripping in flashy gear. Unlike a dungeon, a field boss wasn't a place you could just walk into because your level was high. Recommended level, plus ten. Only players within the recommended bracket—set in units of ten levels—and up to ten levels above it could enter the zone. The Slime King was a field boss for the level eleven bracket, which meant the level twenty-one bracket could get in as well: anyone up through level twenty-nine.
On a normal day there should have been plenty of level eleven players—newbies who'd picked up the field-boss quest and come to hunt it, with a few mid-to-late level tens mixed in to farm Badges. Today, even at a glance, the place was crawling with players in their twenties. The gear gap between level ten and level twenty was impossible to miss. The twenties were a stretch you could skip through fairly quickly, but they were also where hunting got rough if your setup was half-assed.
"This'll be fun."
It was strange. I knew the stream had a lot of viewers, but I never thought players would actually show up in person to test themselves against me.
The viewers were just as amazed by the absurdity of it. I clicked my tongue.
"Point bets are open."
A loyalty test. That's what the feature was usually called on streams, and I was about to use it for the first time.