Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art (2)

I killed him.

Jin-soo frowned. Flower Grafting still hasn't been turned into a skill. A little longer and the conversion would have finished. Then, at that razor-thin moment, Son Sanghyeok crossed the line and struck at Leo — and Jin-soo, anger flaring before he knew it, cut the man down with ganggi.

He should have held with a guardian skill, a protection skill, Body-Protecting Ganggi, or Aura Defense. Or I should have eased off Ganghwan's power. The thought came too late. What was done could not be undone.

And why was he just standing there blank at the one moment his attack got blocked? A martial artist should at least try to dodge. He found himself blaming the dead man's clumsiness for no good reason, then let the regret go. Well. There'll be another chance to skillify it later.

His skill was real enough. He'll be more useful as a summon. Army Summons. Army Summons.

Jin-soo made the dead Son Sanghyeok into an Army Summon under both his holy and dark affinities. The other players of Sahyeol Gate had been hopelessly below standard, but Sanghyeok alone was worth a slot. Even giving him every benefit of the doubt, he's still a cut below a sandworm... Still, he sat several clear ranks above a variant lycanthrope.

Clean this up and get out.

Jin-soo swept the loot into his inventory with care, took Leo, and slipped out of the Sahyeol Gate guild house to rejoin Shin Sua, who had been waiting outside.

"You worked hard."

"Hardly. Let's go," Jin-soo said, as if it were nothing.

"Yeah."

Shin Sua fell in behind him, but her face was anything but bright. I was dead weight again. Aside from the buffs she had laid down before the fight, she had been no help at all in Jin-soo's battle with Sahyeol Gate. Even Leo pulled off something huge. The other summons' feats already left her feeling small. Now Leo — who until recently had nothing but a wide-area taunt — was starring in the fights too, and the impatience in her chest only grew sharper.

Once Jin-soo and Shin Sua reached the lodging, they set about sorting the items.

Why did it have to be this piece of junk? The drop he had wanted most was a skill book for the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art, left behind by Son Sanghyeok. What am I supposed to do with this? Jin-soo had no reason to ever use a skill that carried a permanent risk. It's not even valuable. It could save a life at the worst possible moment, but the penalty was far too steep.

He already knew the art inside and out. Before his regression, he had heard the details from a player who had learned it. Five minutes of mana increased by one hundred percent, in exchange for permanently losing half your Stamina, Durability, and Mana stats. Even if the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art snatched you back from the brink, the risk you carried afterward was simply too great. Skills of that kind sold poorly no matter how low you priced them.

Do I just shove it in the inventory? With plenty of items that would actually move at the auction house, listing a dud like this would only waste a sales slot. Or do I just learn it and raise the level? High-risk skills like this one were level 1 by nature. You couldn't raise them the usual way, by using them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over and over to build proficiency.

I'll just learn it. He wasn't going to auction it, and leaving it in the inventory would only take up space. Better to learn it and see whether it could serve as material for a composite skill.

Jin-soo learned the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art, then spent the lowest remaining charge of his skill-level lock Blessing to fix it at level 922. How much did it change? He pulled up the information.

What a joke. The amplification window had stretched to forty minutes, and the mana increase had become two hundred percent. The duration went up a lot, but the mana gain barely did. The penalty, meanwhile, had not shrunk by so much as a hair. I was hoping it would lessen, or vanish. The art had smashed that hope flat.

Just in case. He went looking for skills that might pair well with it and ran tests. His Blessing skill, Skill Synthesis, was level 222, which let him preview a simplified version of a composite skill before committing. This one's the best bet.

So Mana Overdrive gets absorbed into the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art. As expected, the chance of a successful synthesis was enormous. Mana Overdrive is a shared skill. If it becomes a composite, does the sharing carry over on its own? He had never used a shared skill as synthesis material before, so he couldn't be sure. First, let's see what the art looks like after it swallows Mana Overdrive.

Mana Overdrive was a skill that forcibly drove mana into a surge and amplified it for a short time — the same family as the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art, in a sense, except the amplification was far weaker. The penalty was mild to match: nothing more than a temporary drop in mana. The amount of mana it adds isn't much either. In exchange, the penalty was only temporary. He had learned it on the chance he might need it someday, but after the tests for shared skills, he had never found a reason to use it. Figures. If you hold on to something, it finds a use. And now it was turning into excellent material. Please come out clean. What he wanted was for the art's penalty to stop being permanent and become temporary, the way Mana Overdrive's was.

It worked? He had succeeded in turning the art's flaw from permanent to temporary, and Mana Overdrive's shared-skill property had merged in as well. The only problem... That penalty lasts forever. Changing a permanent penalty into a temporary one was good. Two hundred hours, though, was eight days and eight hours.

Raise it to 1,122 first, then synthesize. Jin-soo lifted the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art from 922 to 1,122 and checked the options again. The level-up stretched the duration to fifty minutes and pushed the mana increase to three hundred percent. The penalty had not lessened; it was identical. Past level 1,000, the performance did climb a bit.

With the preparations finished, he selected Yes and synthesized the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art with Mana Overdrive.

The finished art's options were exactly what the preview had shown. A higher fixed level on the Blessing skills really does pay off. Of the Blessing-exclusive skills he possessed, only four were affected by level: Status Window Switch, Skill Synthesis, Skill Sharing, and Item Synthesis. Even so, their performance climbed every time the level did, and he found himself quietly looking forward to the lock rising again.

Should I try it? In truth, there was no realistic chance he would be cornered badly enough on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Tower's middle and lower floors to need something like the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art. Put simply, unless he used it on purpose, the skill would sit untouched for a long time. Even if I'm not using it right away, I still need to check. He had to test which one sat higher — the skill's penalty, or the Blessing. That's how I'll decide whether the Ring of Ouroboros is worth using later.

He had not used the Ring of Ouroboros once since buying it. There had been no occasion, and the penalty was too severe. But if he tried the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art now that synthesis had softened that penalty? The Blessing might chew straight through it. He could also turn the Ring of Ouroboros into a composite item and aim to weaken its penalty the same way.

If I'm going to test it, now is perfect — while we're still staying in the Starting City. If his Stamina, Durability, and Mana were cut in half for eight days and eight hours, he would be weaker than usual, but even then, clearing the monsters around the 200th Floor Starting City would be no real problem. I'll use it tomorrow. Jin-soo made the decision. This is going to kill me, not knowing. The moment he committed to using it, the question of whether the penalty or the Blessing would win only grew sharper. I'll confirm that tomorrow. Today, there was too much that had to be done now.

He went back to sorting items, and he didn't forget to check the auction house for a particular piece ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he meant to buy. Once the sorting's done, I need to make composite skills too. There were also composite items to craft and list. In the end, though, he finished only the sorting that day and went to bed. Cleaning out the entire Sahyeol Gate branch had left him with so much loot that the sorting alone devoured an absurd amount of time.

The next morning, Jin-soo went out hunting with Shin Sua.

"Leo."

"Nyaaaaa!"

The moment Jin-soo called his name, Leo unleashed a wide-area taunt roar. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ground thundered as monsters of every kind came pouring in from all sides.

All right. Let's see what this does. With his status window open, Jin-soo activated the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art.

The instant it fired, he felt his mana explode outward. On the status window, the stat jumped from 1,522 to 4,566. Nice. It still fell short of what he had known before the regression, but the long-missed fullness of it pulled a smile to his mouth. Flame Storm.

He cast the magic attack. It was the same skill, at the same level — and yet the storm of fire that tore through the monsters was so much stronger it might as well have been something else entirely. A tremendous blast rolled out, and the forest ahead went up with the monsters, reduced in a heartbeat to a handful of ash. Incredible. The smile at his lips brightened.

Huh? It didn't last. My Mana stat is dropping. The power that had surged up so full was leaking away in real time, like sand through his fingers. The stat that had hit 4,566 was already 4,522, and that was not the end of it. 4,422 became 4,322, and then 4,222. It's falling by a hundred, over and over. Roughly a hundred Mana vanished every two seconds. The duration doesn't mean anything. At that rate, it wouldn't have mattered if the skill lasted fifty hours instead of fifty minutes. The Blessing would restore his mana to normal in about a minute all by itself. That's a loss.

By rights, 4,566 Mana should have held for fifty minutes. Because of the Blessing, the stat shed a hundred every two seconds, which meant both the art's amplification and its duration had been gutted. So the Blessing affects stat-increase buffs too. But the world had a way of giving something back whenever it took something away. Then it has to affect the penalty as well. If a stat of 4,566 lost a hundred every two seconds and barely lasted a minute before returning to normal, then a stat dropped to 761 would climb back to 1,522 in no more than fourteen seconds. At that point, there might as well be no penalty at all.

Not bad. Amplifying his mana for two minutes every ten days in exchange for a fourteen-second penalty was not a terrible trade. Still, I need to confirm it. Just because a buffed stat fell by a hundred every two seconds didn't prove a penalized stat would recover by a hundred every two seconds. He had to see it.

A minute passed, and the Mana the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art had raised returned to normal. It hasn't changed? The penalty hadn't applied. Right. Because fifty minutes haven't passed. He understood at once. The penalty appeared when the skill's use ended. From my side, the effect is already gone. From the System's side, the window before the penalty applied was still open. This is good. The penalty not kicking in the moment the amplification fell off was an enormous advantage. I won't be in many fights that drag on past fifty minutes. And if things ever got bad enough that he was using the Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art at all, that was him spending the last of his strength. The fight would be decided within a few minutes at most. No matter how long it runs, it'll be over around the time the penalty would apply. He was the one using the skill. All he had to do was judge how much fight was left and trigger it when he wanted.

This is more usable than I expected.

Jin-soo went on hunting at an easy pace. Then, from the moment fifty minutes had passed since he activated the art, his body grew abruptly heavy. The penalty's here. He opened the status window. Just as I thought. He had been right. The Stamina, Durability, and Mana stats that had fallen to 761 climbed to 822, and after another two seconds they rose to 922. By the time roughly fourteen seconds had passed, they were back at their original 1,522.

At this rate, there's no reason to shy away from the Ring of Ouroboros. There was a difference, though. The composite Sahyeol Demon Explosion Great Art carried only a time-limited penalty, while the Ring of Ouroboros was permanent. I'll need to find an item worth synthesizing with the ring. And it looked as though he would have to start collecting, in bulk, the skill books everyone else avoided because their penalties were too harsh.