Clearing Tower Floor 150
About a hundred.
He had expected as much. Even so, this is too far off. He had never fallen this short of his own expectations.
Even as Jin-soo frowned, the two hundred monsters dominated by the two Orc Shamans fought with fierce courage. Bone cracked. Joints snapped. They did not last. Caught in the combined assault of the other monsters, they died off one after another.
The buffs aren't much either.
A sharp disappointment had just settled over him when a voice cut through the clash.
"Gwoooerk?"
The troll that had killed a monster under an Army Summon Orc Shaman's control froze for a heartbeat, then spun and swung its club at another.
"Hahaha!"
The disappointment staining Jin-soo's face cleared at once.
Yeah. That's more like it.
A single Army Summon Orc Shaman could dominate a hundred monsters at most. The moment one of those under its control died, though, it seized another at once and held the count steady at a hundred.
The endurance on that is decent.
Summoned through an Army Summons skill past level 1,000, the Orc Shaman's mana was generous enough. Move it with the other summons, and this won't be bad. Its mana recovered on its own. Managed properly, hunting around the clock was within reach. Still short of what I hoped for. For the time being, it looked useful all the same.
If Jin-soo's summons had kept the full combat power of their originals, the monsters of Tower Floor 150 would have been wiped out long ago.
The more summons, the better.
For a Blessing to grow, hunting two thousand weak monsters of many kinds was more profitable than hunting two hundred strong ones of a single species.
I should turn these loose too.
All Jin-soo had to do was hunt on his own and top off the summons' buffs from time to time.
Still, the buffs have grown a lot.
Until now he had held only healer buffs and summoner buffs. This time, shaman buffs had been added to the set. Among them, the skills he had newly claimed by hunting the Out-of-Spec Monster Orc Shaman—Blessing of Madness and its like—carried a power that was genuinely worth using.
Before that, one check.
Jin-soo deliberately exposed one of the Army Summon Orc Shamans to the monsters' attacks. He wanted to confirm whether the summoned shaman still possessed the Curse of Immortality.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
As an Army Summon, the Orc Shaman felt no pain. Even so, he had expected it to at least defend itself.
"Oho!"
But the Army Summon Orc Shaman simply stood there beneath the monsters' blows. The reason was simple. Their attacks were not landing any damage on it at all.
It has the Curse of Immortality.
Whether that was because Army Summons had reached level 1,022, he could not say. Either way, it was a point that mattered.
If I can take the Curse of Immortality through Skill Sharing, that's a jackpot.
The problem was that he had only two sharing stacks left. He had burned the rest sharing core skills back and forth between his Holy and Dark affinities.
Thinking of Leo, sharing a skill with a summon is a heavy gamble.
Landing the Curse of Immortality would be a windfall, and monster domination would not be bad either. But if what came across was some buff-related hex, he would only have wasted a precious Skill Sharing stack.
I'll try it later.
Those two stacks were reserved for the unforeseen. He could not spend them lightly. As things stood, the Curse of Immortality the Orc Shaman carried was of little use.
The one in the rear isn't going to be attacked anyway.
It could not be cast on Jin-soo the summoner, on the other summons, or on the dominated monsters. The Curse of Immortality was a skill that worked on its caster alone.
In a pinch, I could use it as a shield.
In battle, it looked capable of serving as a kind of moving Sanctuary.
Not that it would matter against a strong enemy.
The Curse of Immortality the Orc Shaman used held only so long as monsters remained under its domination. If a single overwhelmingly powerful monster appeared and wiped out everything it controlled, the curse lost its power as well.
If summons counted as valid targets, that would be a jackpot.
Once he had stacks to spare, Jin-soo meant to share the shaman's Curse of Immortality. But what if summons were included among its valid targets?
That would mean invincibility until the summon dissipated.
For Jin-soo, who commanded a host of summons, that was as good as gaining the strongest shield imaginable.
Being able to ignore defense and pour everything into the attack is broken on its own.
For now, though, there was no way to know whether summons fell under the curse at all.
Can the Orc Shaman dominate boss monsters too?
The original could. Whether it still could as an Army Summon was another question.
"Leo. Keep gathering the monsters."
Jin-soo said it while stroking Leo's head.
"Nyaaaang! Nyaaaang! Nyaaaang!"
Leo unleashed wide-area taunt roars in succession, and monsters kept pouring in.
"Kuwoooerk!"
At the same time, the Army Summon Orc Shaman let out a roar of its own.
Right. The Orc Shaman can draw monsters in too. That could be useful.
Leo always stayed at Jin-soo's side, so the summons had to go looking for monsters themselves. That had changed. Fold the two Orc Shamans into the other summon packs, and the hunt would be faster and easier.
The ground thundered.
"Krrrrr!"
"Kyaooong!"
Monsters surged in from every direction.
"Kuuuooerk!"
Among them were a boss—one Orc Chieftain—and five Orc Great Warriors.
Let's see what you can do.
Jin-soo watched the Orc Shaman with expectant eyes.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The Orc Chieftain and the Orc Great Warriors came thundering in.
"Krruk?"
Then the Orc Great Warriors cocked their heads—and swung their clubs at the chieftain.
The club whistled through the air and landed with a crunch.
"Gwoooerk!"
Struck by his own subordinates, the Orc Chieftain flew into a rage and threw himself into a savage fight against the Orc Great Warriors. Bone snapped, flesh flew, and the impact of their blows shook the ground. Jin-soo did not care who won.
Chieftain-class is out, then. Great Warrior is the ceiling.
He clicked his tongue in disappointment.
Even at level 1,022, it's worse than the original in every way.
In truth, the Orc Shaman had not become an Out-of-Spec Monster because the creature itself was overwhelmingly strong.
It feels more like the Tower granted it a vast store of mana.
As if, when the need arose, the Tower had strengthened a single boss and put it to use.
Even so, it has every essential skill. Wide-area taunt, monster domination, buffs, even invincibility. I'll have to be satisfied with that for now.
The fortunate part was that Army Summons still had room to grow as the skill's level rose.
It might turn useless the higher I climb.
Honestly, even downgraded from the original, two Orc Shamans carrying a stack of high-tier skills one could barely glimpse on the Tower's lower floors were broken just by existing. Jin-soo finished confirming the shaman's combat power and the strength of the skills he had newly acquired.
The hunting speed is going to jump.
He merged the two Orc Shamans with the rest of his summons. After that he took only Shin Sua, Leo, and Kkami, and threw everything into clearing the dungeon.
The results are pretty underwhelming.
Having cleared one hidden dungeon, Jin-soo wore a disappointed look. The clear reward was mediocre, and there had been no monster with the combat power he wanted.
At this rate, when am I ever going to fill all ten?
His Army Summons had grown to ten for the Holy affinity and ten for the Dark. Of those, the ones worth keeping fixed were the Bone Dragon, the Demilich, and the Orc Shaman. The Variant Lycanthropes, the other boss monsters, and the players he was keeping only because nothing existed to replace them.
I can't even find something worth swapping in for a Variant Lycanthrope.
For Jin-soo, who wanted to replace his Army Summons with Out-of-Spec Monsters or gatekeeper-class beings as soon as he could, it was a genuinely frustrating state of affairs.
The gatekeeper of Tower Floor 150 was the Orc Grand Chieftain.
The Orc Grand Chieftain stayed alone at the center of the orc village. A frontal assault would do. So would picking them off one by one, or an assassination. It did not matter. Most challengers came as guilds rather than parties. Even those without a guild banded several parties together to clear the mission, so the difficulty was not especially high. The orc village was enormous, though, and clearing the mission devoured a tremendous amount of time.
It took a long time, but there were no monsters strong enough to put your life on the line. It felt like a bit of a breather.
A low-difficulty mission might please other players, but for Jin-soo it could only be a letdown. The rewards were thin, and there were no powerful monsters worth taking as summons.
Well. Nothing to be done.
For now, the best course was to sweep up everything Tower Floor 150 had to offer as fast as he could, then climb to Floor 151.
Four months had passed since he ascended to Tower Floor 150.
Time to go up.
He had claimed every achievement Tower Floor 150 could give. The hidden dungeons—both those in his memory and those he had newly found—were all cleared. There was no longer any reason to linger.
"Let's go."
"Okay."
Will you challenge the clear of Tower Floor 150?
[Yes] [No]
Jin-soo and Shin Sua selected Yes.
In that instant a wash of brilliant light wrapped around them both.
Tower Floor 150
📍 Objective: Defeat the gatekeeper.
✦ Message: May the challenger emerge victorious.
A vast forest, thick with undergrowth, spread out before Jin-soo and Shin Sua.
"This place is different from the others, isn't it? It looks enormous. Like this, won't it be hard to find the gatekeeper?"
Worry showed on Shin Sua's face. Until now they had carried out missions in confined spaces—a colosseum, a ruined city. Even the broad plains had clear limits. Here, a forest so vast its end could not be seen stretched out before them.
"Yeah. I'll scout first."
"All right."
"Kkami."
"Kkaaaak!"
At Jin-soo's word, Kkami shot high into the sky.
"You two go as well."
"Gwooooerk!"
"Kyaooooong!"
At his command, the two Bone Dragons climbed into the sky.
Normally the Floor 150 clear moves by grinding down the orc packs step by step.
Jin-soo had no need to do it that way.
Sweep the orc packs in the shortest time possible, and take the Orc Grand Chieftain.
If he was going to do it, cutting the clear at two hours, twenty-two minutes, and twenty-two seconds seemed right. On missions without a time limit, he had always taken his time and wrung out everything there was to gain. Here, there was no need.
It's not as if the monsters refill without end.
The number he had to kill was fixed. Better, then, to annihilate them as fast as possible, clear in the shortest time, and pick up even one more achievement.
If I felt like it, a clear in twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds would be possible too.
All it would take was an order to the two Bone Dragons: kill the Orc Grand Chieftain.
No need to go that far.
At least several hundred thousand orcs were spread through this vast forest. There was no reason to throw away the chance to hunt them—to level up, claim achievements, and grow his Blessing through Stat Predation and Skill Predation.