Sahyeol Gate (2)
"Nice work, Leo."
Jin-soo, already braced to charge the instant anything went wrong, stroked Leo's head.
"Nyaaang!"
Leo rubbed his head against Jin-soo's hand, laying the affection on thick.
Worry for nothing.
He had been afraid the players from Museong might get the better of Leo, and so he had kept himself half-ready to step in the moment trouble broke. Looking at things now, it had been a thoroughly useless worry.
"Did you devour all the stats and skills?"
"Nyaang!"
Leo lifted his head high, wearing a look that said the answer was obvious.
"From here on, they're all yours."
"Nyaaaang!"
Leo's voice climbed, bright with excitement at Jin-soo's words.
Even if I use Stat Predation and Skill Predation myself, it only nudges the blessings' growth a little. But if Leo was the one using them? The level cap will come off again. Then the levels of the Stat Predation and Skill Predation Jin-soo received through their shared skills would rise on their own. And I've already got more than enough as it is.
Jin-soo finished the two Sahyeol Gate officers who lay at death's door, their stamina stats stripped clean away. In the same breath he gained a vast haul of points, one class advancement tome, and one skill book, and he swept every item the officers had been wearing neatly into his inventory.
"Let's go."
"Nyaang!"
With Leo at his side, Jin-soo set off toward another Sahyeol Gate officer already under Kkami's watch.
I'll feed Sahyeol Gate to Leo.
Jin-soo was confident he could win even a head-on clash with the Sahyeol Gate branch in the Starting City. The moment he understood that Leo grew stronger the more he used Skill Predation and Stat Predation, though, he scrapped that plan for all-out war.
Monsters aren't a bad target for Skill Predation and Stat Predation either. They simply could never match players who carried a wide spread of skills. And it's not as if my own growth is being held back.
Leo was Jin-soo's summon. Even if Leo claimed the greater share of the credit in a fight, the gains Jin-soo walked away with stayed exactly the same.
Clearing out Sahyeol Gate will eat a little more time. That much he could gladly invest in Leo's growth. His other summons were already hunting in real time, so spending a bit longer here would hardly cost him anything serious.
Jin-soo and Leo tracked down the Sahyeol Gate officers Kkami was shadowing and picked them off, one careful kill after another.
"Have these bastards all gone mad together?!"
Son Sanghyeok's face twisted into a savage scowl.
He had torn into them so thoroughly that he expected a report by early afternoon. At the very latest, he was certain he would hear something before he finished dinner.
He was wrong.
The officers who had bolted out as if their tails were on fire had all gone utterly silent.
"How is there not a single one of them coming back to report?!"
When Son Sanghyeok roared and raised his voice, the Sahyeol Gate players who had just returned from the hunt went rigid, utterly lost as to what was happening.
"Go find those officer bastards. Now!"
"Yes, sir!"
At his order, the Sahyeol Gate players burst out of the guild house without so much as a proper rest.
"Why are we catching hell for something the officers screwed up?"
"Just take it. You only just figured out what a filthy temper that guy has?"
"Let's find them fast. Better that than catching more of the fallout."
The Sahyeol Gate players scattered in every direction to track the officers down. The places those men usually haunted were taverns and gambling dens, so a search focused there ought to turn them up quickly. That assumption was their mistake.
I thought we were done for the day, and here they come on their own.
Jin-soo had no intention of slaughtering Sahyeol Gate players in the middle of a main street. Word would spread in no time.
Nothing good comes of Leo's abilities getting out.
If he himself were the target, he was confident he could answer any threat that came. In the worst case, he could simply put on a mask, or use False Mask to change his appearance, and that would be the end of it.
Leo was a different matter.
As a black-furred kitten, Leo was far too cute, which meant he stood out enormously even when he did nothing at all.
Since Leo has to do the work, I've been aiming only for places with as few eyes as possible.
Fortunately, the Sahyeol Gate officers favored taverns and gambling dens tucked into sparsely traveled, poorly policed back alleys, so they had been easy to deal with. The rank-and-file guild members, by contrast, stuck to the main roads and slipped straight into the guild house instead of the taverns or dens, and Jin-soo had left them alone.
Now those same members who had gone into the guild house were pouring, all at once, into the back alleys where the taverns and gambling dens stood.
No reason to turn down a feast that serves itself.
Through Kkami, Jin-soo tracked the Sahyeol Gate players and sent Leo in.
"Meow!"
"What the—?! What is this damn cat?!"
That adorable shape kept the Sahyeol Gate players from lowering their guard around Leo in the slightest.
Then Leo's cat punches landed—thwack, pap-pap-pap-thock—and the situation flipped a full one-eighty.
"Aaaagh! Die! Die!"
"Why is something that tiny so fast?!"
"Grab it, quick!"
If even the Sahyeol Gate officers couldn't catch Leo, the rank and file had no chance at all.
"Nyaaaang!"
Leo tore through them in high spirits, beating the Sahyeol Gate players down in a blur of paws. With the buffs Jin-soo and Shin Sua had stacked on him thick, he was overflowing with even more energy.
"Guhk!"
"Urgh!"
"Aaaaagh!"
The ordinary Sahyeol Gate players collapsed even faster than the officers. Their stats and skills were lower across the board.
Leo's attack power was pathetic, but suppression was still well within reach. Players dropped one after another—some crumpling where they stood as their stamina stats hit zero, some clutching their heads and thrashing across the ground in panic once their mental stats bottomed out, some falling into mana rampage or rupturing muscle the moment their durability stats sank past a certain line.
They crumble fast. Figures, given they trained in martial arts with no stability to begin with.
Once the balance of their stats shattered, that overwhelming strength and bloated mana turned against them.
Jin-soo granted the suffering Sahyeol Gate players eternal rest, then moved on and repeated the same work elsewhere.
And that night, seventy percent of the Sahyeol Gate branch's strength in the Starting City evaporated.
"Branch Head! Something terrible has happened!"
Son Sanghyeok, who had drunk himself into a pleasant sleep, jolted awake at the racket.
"What in the world is going on that you're raising this kind of hell first thing in the morning?!"
Snarling, he hauled himself up and stormed outside.
"Branch Head!"
"What happened to cause all this commotion?!"
"Last night the disciples of the sect were hit in a massive assault!"
"What?"
"Right now, fewer than a hundred disciples remain."
The moment he heard their numbers had dropped below a hundred, the alcohol burned clean out of him.
"Who dares?!"
"W-we still haven't identified them. According to the disciples, they were attacked in the back alleys by a monster with black fur..."
"A monster with black fur?"
Son Sanghyeok's expression crumpled into a mess.
"How does a monster get into the city?!"
"Th-that, I don't really know either."
"Summon every remaining disciple. Immediately."
"Th-they're already gathered."
"Let's go."
"Yes."
Son Sanghyeok started toward where the remaining disciples had gathered, but his mind was a tangled knot.
Attacked not by a player, but by a black-furred monster?
If fellow players had hit them this hard, it could at least serve as a pretext for war. Being taken down by a monster would only make them a laughingstock.
But monsters can't enter the city.
If the city's safe zone had been destroyed, there would undoubtedly have been an enormous uproar.
What in the world happened? The safe zone wasn't breached, and yet they were attacked by a monster.
By Son Sanghyeok's common sense, it was impossible to understand.
A summon?
Then the clear answer surfaced. Summons, like players, were unaffected by the safe zone.
Who the hell is it? Those Elain Alliance bastards? Or is this the Eor Guild's doing?
The first names that came to him were the guilds founded by players from Arius, who held a great many outlandish skills.
Whoever it is, I won't let them off.
Son Sanghyeok had confidence in his own skill. Many disciples had lost their lives, but a fight was not decided by headcount.
I'll show them the terror of a peak-realm master.
Since becoming a player and breaking through the wall of the first-rate, his pride in his own ability had swollen past confidence into arrogance.
First I should report the damage and request reinforcements.
Fail to follow procedure, and it could become a headache later.
If that bastard has any sense, he'll strike before the reinforcements arrive.
Son Sanghyeok meant to scatter his disciples as bait, draw the enemy's attack, and then counter.
"Aaaagh!"
"What is that damn cat?!"
"Catch it, now!"
Just then, the disciples' screams reached his ears.
They attacked this place—the Sahyeol Gate branch itself?
His face twisted with rage.
How dare they look down on me!
The Sahyeol Gate branch in the Starting City had Son Sanghyeok, its branch head and a peak-realm master. For an enemy to charge in regardless was the same as holding him in contempt.
I'll cut them down in a single stroke.
He burst into a full sprint, and before long he reached the open ground at the center of the branch.
"Ha!"
Arriving on the scene, Son Sanghyeok was dumbfounded. He had expected some enormous, terrifying summon to be the one attacking. Instead, the thing assaulting Sahyeol Gate's disciples was nothing more than a black-furred kitten, barely larger than a palm.
Every last one of them is pathetic. Taken down by an undergrown kitten.
He knew the creature in the shape of a black kitten was a summon. But wasn't there such a thing as strength that radiated from one's appearance? From the kitten before his eyes, he felt none of that strength at all.
Its attack power was miserable too. It only swatted with its front paws and nipped with that tiny mouth, and the wounds it left were nothing but scratches the size of dust. To be terrified and gasping at attacks that trivial could only look pathetic.
Then bodies hit the ground.
"Aaaagh!"
"Uuurgh!"
The moment he saw them collapsing as their strength failed, screaming as they trembled, or howling as they fell into mana rampage, his thinking changed in an instant.
"It's a curse! Healers—what are you doing, not using Dispel and Purification?! Move, now!"
Having barked the order, Son Sanghyeok charged.
A sword boasting a razor edge slid free of its scabbard with a long, cold ring. From the blade in his right hand, blood-red sword qi poured out in streaming threads.
I'll cut it down in a single breath.
The sword qi lashing out from his blade bent like a whip and flew at the black-furred kitten.
Steel rang—and a pure-white aura lightly struck the sword qi aside.
"So you had an accomplice!"
Son Sanghyeok turned toward where the white aura had come from. There stood a player clad in jet-black full plate, two swords in hand.
"The Elain Alliance?! Or the Eor Guild?!"
Seeing his enemy, Son Sanghyeok thought his prediction had landed true.
"And what exactly do you plan to do with that?"
At the words of the figure in jet-black plate, Son Sanghyeok's face twisted into a wreck.
"You're from Earth?"
The Tower had no language barrier. Players from every dimension could speak their native tongues and still understand one another without trouble. Accent and pronunciation, however, made it easy to tell which dimension someone came from.
If Son Sanghyeok's memory was not failing him, those words belonged to a language used by some of the players from Earth.
"You bastards have truly lost your minds!"
The realization that he had been stabbed in the back not by a guild from Arius or Museong, but by a mere guild from Earth, detonated his rage.
"I'll cut off your limbs, drag out whoever's behind you, and make them pay the price!"
Consumed by fury, Son Sanghyeok charged the enemy in jet-black plate with everything he had.