777. Status Effect, Status Effect, Status Effect

The reason I'd grown close to Lee Yeonju so quickly — close enough to start something with her — was, if I was honest, that she had been the one to come on stronger.

I knew money could read as attractive to a woman. My personality still wasn't shameless enough to lead with cash and call it confidence. That was probably why watching Bulldog left a faint bad taste in my mouth. With her, at least, I knew she wanted money, and we actually understood each other, so I could open up and meet her halfway without forcing it.

Lim Sarang was different. Approaching her aggressively, first, felt like a little too much weight to pick up. I didn't think that was only me. Every man would feel about the same.

Would a woman who lacked for nothing even find my money charming? She had already set aside some eighty billion won, ready to wage an all-out five-star class pulling war. If a man showed up broke, she would be the one feeding him — so whether I was sitting on four hundred ninety quadrillion won or a mere four-point-nine billion, she wouldn't care in the slightest.

The one mercy was that my face had landed dead center in her type. That wasn't easy. The world is full of men, and an idol like her is surrounded by handsome ones on every side. Somehow, in the middle of all that, my face was exactly her taste. Which was why we could stick together all day, at least inside the game.

If she liked me more than this, Lim Sarang might have been the one to suggest meeting once in real life. That she hadn't, to my mind, meant we weren't there yet. And because of that, I hadn't pushed any further either. I was afraid of getting carried away all on my own and breaking even this.

Of course, attraction to looks is still attraction. So long as I didn't make a move too recklessly, she wasn't likely to cut me off first just from the pressure. A little. I wanted to gather my courage and approach her carefully. I'm a man too. Lim Sarang's face, her figure — they were my type as well. And the more time we spent together, the more her personality seemed to fit.

That was why I'd brought up the Wish Bread. It wasn't the shameless kind of wish you only see in porn webtoons — I lost, so let me have you once!! — obviously not. I was thinking of working up the nerve to ask her out to a meal in real life. If even that felt like too much, I meant to say it was fine if the Lovely members came along, the way we did things in Haven. So the Wish Bread mattered a great deal to me.

A Wish Bread staked on a Level 5 Badge? In truth, it was a bet I couldn't lose. Pulling Lim Sarang's Level 5 Badge was, soon enough, a road to me getting stronger. The only real loss would be if I pulled it for her and we ended up strangers, the party itself dissolved.

"I have to pull it..."

Watching her try so hard to roll, if anything, set one side of my heart more at ease. Less a gold-digger, more someone who always gives everything she has to whatever situation she's handed. I decided this bet was worth playing.

The first one hadn't been me rolling a four-star SS. It had been me rolling the special-option SS, while Lim Sarang only had to land an ordinary SS option. Even granting that I'd been the underdog in a spot where I had to pull two, this time the odds were the same.

"Ah. So close."

"Aww. The options are all mixed."

"Usable options are still fine, though!"

"...Sarang. Where did our romance go."

"In front of a Level 5 Badge, I think a little compromise is allowed."

While we rolled in earnest, I put on the stream of the man fueling the whole mood: Bulldog. He looked a little deflated over Skeleton Summoner being nothing more than an ordinary five-star class, but he was still grinding the game itself with everything he had.

"Damn."

"Me? I'm actually pretty arrogant."

"You think so..."

I was unexpectedly moved by the way the viewers thought of me. I'd been telling myself I ought to ease off, since I felt like I was turning into someone who threw his money around.

"So trying to buy a date with Sarang for thirty billion isn't quite money-tyrant territory, right? That's what you're saying?"

The Skeleton Summoner was cooler than I'd expected.

He grumbled, but he didn't say a word about waiting for the price to drop. He bought like a real man and kept rolling. And in the end, he even pulled an SS-rank skill. Truly, a man with the makings of a master of the Skeleton Summoner.

While I hadn't been watching, Bulldog must have been grinding hard to snipe a two-star SS special option, then parked it in temporary storage with mana.

Just as my Dragon Words Mage's base effect was Pentacasting, the Skeleton Summoner seemed to carry an option that raised the number of skeletons he could summon. I wanted the exact class description, but he wasn't making it public, so guessing was all I had. And both Lim Sarang and I probably had one more option sitting on top of ours. People asked him about it too.

Bulldog didn't answer questions like that.

The excuse was pretty plausible.

Hearing that, a thought occurred to me for no good reason.

"The base effect is just one, isn't it? On a normal five-star class."

Whatever the truth was, the Skeleton Summoner's skeletons were strong enough that you could feel the five-star in them.

One skeleton summon. That was all. He took a single SS-rank skill and a stack of mana potions into a Level 1 dungeon and started hunting, and the speed was absurd.

So long as the mana kept coming without limit, skeleton soldiers kept being summoned. Three at a time, so in a flash he was steamrolling with a headcount of thirty. Even stock, unset skeleton soldiers — there's no business like numbers — mobbed the monsters to death. And when a dead monster rose through the Skeleton Soldier skill, that corpse became a skeleton and obeyed the Skeleton Summoner's commands.

I admitted it. I hadn't been entirely free of underestimating him. I'd thought the gap between a Root Class and a five-star class would truly be heaven and earth. But it wasn't that extreme. I could feel it, even from a Skeleton Summoner who had only just begun.

A few percent on the numbers. And the convenience of getting a small head start on help from NPCs. Wasn't that the whole of what a Root Class had? In the end, Skeleton Summoner or anything else, they were branches grown out of the root, no different. At least ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inside their own field, they put up the same five-star performance as the root.

But then another thought came. Those few percent. The difference those percents make as they stack and stack. The way turning three Badges five-star and plastering them with the highest numbers opens nearly a thirty percent gap over the grade below. The gap between Root and five-star reached about that far, too. That was what it meant.

"..."

"...?"

I was watching when I suddenly felt a gaze on me. I turned my head and met Lim Sarang's eyes. She was right beside me, looking at me with a faintly apologetic light in them.

"No way..."

Why look at me in the middle of a roll. There was only one reason.

"Hehe..."

Utterly perfect. A clean option with nothing to nitpick.

"Actually, it came up a little earlier... I waited a bit."

"...When?"

"When you asked if the base effect might only be one."

"That was a while ago."

I admitted defeat cleanly. If the options hadn't even been pretty, I might have picked a fight, but this was a BiS line for a Level 4 Badge. Of the three Badge slots, one of them could wear this for life and it'd be fine.

"Then the Level 5..."

With a good heart. The wish ticket to ask her out to a meal had flown away, but I was about to accept it on the hope that the party could get stronger.

"Huh?"

I had no choice but to admit it. Lim Sarang was lucky. And standing right beside her, I seemed to be catching the full trickle-down of that luck.