Cheon Museong vs. the Shadow Summons
"Come on up."
At Jin-soo's beckoning, Cheon Museong thawed. He had been frozen stiff, mouth hanging open, his face set like stone.
"That terrifying monster is your summon, My Lord?"
"Yeah. A monster I hunted, then turned into a summon."
At that utterly casual answer, cracks seemed to spider across Cheon Museong's face.
He hunted that great monster and made it a summon...
What had stunned him about the Bone Dragon was not its bulk alone. The beast cradled an immense store of mana, and though the low floor had dragged its standing drastically downward, it was by origin a being of the Tower's upper reaches. Even diminished, a portion of that exalted rank still pressed against his senses.
"Ah. Understood, My Lord."
Cheon Museong carefully launched himself forward, stepped across the Bone Dragon's head and neck, and settled onto its back.
"All right. Let's go."
"Kuuuuaaaaa!"
At Jin-soo's word the Bone Dragon roared and beat its wings—flap, flap—climbing into the sky.
"My Lord, how were you able to hunt a being such as this?"
"I got lucky."
"Please do not say such a thing. This is not a being one can dismiss with the word luck."
"There are creatures known as Out-of-Spec Monsters."
Calmly, Jin-soo explained them: beings that soared impossibly far beyond each floor's limits, monsters that by all rights could not be hunted.
"So not every one of them is an existence this powerful."
"Sometimes a single specimen's raw power is overwhelming, and sometimes it isn't. The end result is much the same either way."
Whatever the type, they were monsters the players of that floor could not possibly withstand.
"But precisely because they are such beings, hunting one grants a far greater reward."
"I see. I would very much like to take one myself."
Cheon Museong spoke with a face alight with the hunger for a worthy fight. More than any reward, what stirred him most was the chance to clash with a power that far surpassed his own standing.
"Then the Tower's 200th Floor must have an Out-of-Spec Monster as well."
"Most likely. Whether we'll actually meet it is another question."
Jin-soo had hunted the Out-of-Spec Monster of every floor so far. That was no promise he could keep doing so.
I suppose I'll have to call it luck.
Whether it was truly pure luck, or the fruit of his own effort, he could not be sure.
The conditions I only guessed at for an Out-of-Spec Monster's appearance... they actually seem to be holding true.
Kill monsters faster than a hunting ground can regenerate them, and the balance between players and monsters on that floor collapses. When that happens, an Out-of-Spec Monster appears to thin the players' numbers.
It's a theory that can't actually be proven, either.
The reason was simple. The great majority of players hunted with everything they had, both to grow stronger and to earn points and items. Even so, the ratio of players to monsters stayed ideally balanced, because regeneration was that swift.
Even if an exceptional talent shows up and sweeps one region clean, the monster distribution everywhere else stays even.
Over a long span of time the proportion of monsters across the whole floor would slowly dwindle, and the moment that balance finally shattered, an Out-of-Spec Monster would appear. That was how it had to be understood.
I might be able to manage it.
Like any ordinary player, Jin-soo stayed in the city, hunted the monsters nearby, and cleared hidden dungeons and open dungeons. No matter how strong he was—even with another powerhouse in Cheon Museong beside him—wiping out the monsters around the Starting City was the limit.
But the summons are a different matter.
At present they were scattered through every region, hunting with ferocious intensity. Whether Jin-soo was hunting, eating, sparring, or asleep, the summons never rested from the kill.
The effect was slight for now. If it kept accumulating, though, an Out-of-Spec Monster might show itself even on the Tower's 200th Floor.
Let's try it.
Hunting hard was the baseline regardless. As on the floors below, an Out-of-Spec Monster appearing would be welcome, and if none appeared, so be it. One thing, however, would change.
If I meet an Out-of-Spec Monster even on the 200th Floor...
The Tower's 250th Floor. Tower Floor 300. Tower Floor 350. And onward.
From here on, I could force the Out-of-Spec Monsters of each floor to appear, and hunt them.
Turn every last one of them into an Army Summon, and he would grow stronger at a frightening pace. More than that—
I could become the strongest player in the history of the Tower.
An absolute rank one, separated from second place by a gulf no one could close.
I heard it was around here.
The place Jin-soo's party reached was a forest lying roughly halfway between the Starting City and the city beyond it. They had come both to earn a new achievement and to clear a hidden dungeon.
The trouble is, I never cleared this one myself. The information's fuzzy.
What he knew of the hidden dungeon here had come from a drinking session with a comrade, before his Regression.
He said the reward was no fewer than nine Demon Spirit Divine Pills.
The man told the story every time he drank, so it had stuck in Jin-soo's memory with perfect clarity.
He said it lay at the midpoint between the Starting City of the Tower's 200th Floor and the next city.
The location was broad, but too precious to abandon.
And it's a place I have to hunt for the achievement anyway.
Find the hidden dungeon while working toward the achievement, and he would be killing two birds with one stone.
I don't need them right this moment.
Everyone in the party had already taken Demon Spirit Divine Pills up to their limit.
Still, if you learn there's gold buried by the roadside, you don't just walk past it.
Throwing away the chance to obtain nine rare Demon Spirit Divine Pills would be pure foolishness.
"While we hunt, let's look for the dungeons along the way."
"Understood."
"Okay."
It was work they had been doing all along, so Cheon Museong and Shin Sua accepted it as only natural.
"Leo..."
"Nyaaaaa!"
Leo unleashed a wide-area taunt roar, and the usual drive-hunt began.
"Graaaaah!"
"Kyaaaooo!"
Monsters poured in from every side, but Jin-soo's party felt not a trace of tension. Compared with them, the monsters' level was simply too low.
"My Lord, might I ask how many summons of this caliber you possess?"
Sword-qi streamed from Cheon Museong's blade in cutting ribbons, slaughtering the monsters, and yet his breathing never so much as wavered as he put the question to Jin-soo in a perfectly calm voice.
"Individuals as powerful as the Bone Dragon aren't all that numerous. To put it roughly..."
Jin-soo laid out for him the strength and numbers of his Army Summons, Shadow Summons, Dragon Tooth Soldiers, and undead monsters.
"Hah. Astonishing."
Cheon Museong's expression hardened. Even setting the Bone Dragon aside, the demons, the Basilisk, and the sand worms were no trifling opponents. The combat power of the Shadow Summons, which shared Jin-soo's stats, was beyond even guessing at. And if one added summons that themselves called others—demiliches, orc shamans—along with the sheer headcount of Dragon Tooth Soldiers and undead?
"Alone, you have been commanding a force that far surpasses a great sect."
His personal martial might was already enough to overturn heaven and earth. Add the power and numbers of the summons under his command, and it was no different from a realm beyond the heavens.
The men strutting about the Tower's 200th Floor as masters of great sects were nothing but frogs in a well.
And that included Cheon Museong himself.
If My Lord had not shown me mercy...
He would have been defeated without ever being granted the chance to cross blades with Jin-soo.
"My Lord, I have a request. Please grant me the chance to fight your summons."
He wanted to test himself not only against great monsters like the Bone Dragon and the Basilisk, but against the Shadow Summons as well.
"Then for today's spar, would you rather face the summons instead of me?"
Jin-soo accepted the request without the slightest hesitation.
"Thank you. Truly, thank you."
With permission granted, Cheon Museong looked ready to leap for joy.
It's about time I collected their items anyway. I can take care of both at once.
The summons had piled up quite a haul while hunting. He had already planned to call them back in sequence to retrieve it, so granting Cheon Museong's wish was effortless.
The party kept hunting and talking of this and that until the day grew dark.
"Time we had dinner."
At Jin-soo's word, the hunt ended.
"Shall I raise a Sanctuary?"
"No. We'll do it after the spar."
Inside a city they would have set a Sanctuary and sparred within it. Out here, beyond the walls, there was no need.
"Won't dinner be a hassle, then?"
In the dark of night, firelight and the smell of food drew still more monsters.
"We've got guards. It'll be fine."
The instant the words left his mouth, the Shadow Summons revealed themselves in a sharp rush of shadow. He had called an end to the hunt partly because it was time to eat, and partly because the Shadow Summons he had ordered home had arrived.
A fat haul.
Jin-soo collected the treasure pouches they had been carrying.
I'll sort them later. Food first.
The party set about preparing dinner.
"Krrrrrng!"
"Kyaaaung!"
Bright light and a savory aroma spread in every direction, and monsters came swarming. They could not, however, disturb the meal. The Shadow Summons on guard moved without pause—slash, cut, a booming impact—and swept away every monster that drew near the place where the party rested.
"Remarkable. Their forms are orthodoxy itself, and their fundamentals are extraordinarily solid."
Even while he ate, Cheon Museong was wholly absorbed in analyzing how the Shadow Summons fought.
"They're summons, so orthodox movement is unavoidable."
A Shadow Summon was not a player, and its combat techniques were correspondingly basic.
And the skills they can use are few, and elementary.
In player terms, it was like holding only the basic advancement skills of a low-tier class, without a single additional common skill or class-exclusive skill on top. That was the present limit of the Shadow Summons.
But that doesn't mean it will stay that way.
Before his Regression, problems with his stats had kept Jin-soo from putting his Shadow Mage summon to proper use. Even so, he had not been able to abandon the Shadow Mage summoning skill lightly.
So I kept raising its level.
It had been possible only because his mana stat was high for a warrior, enough to produce a measure of firepower.
And because it shared my stats, its agility, durability, and stamina were fairly high for a mage, so it survived more often than not.
Back then he had tried everything to wring some use from the Shadow Mage summon.
I even sent it in as a close-combat mage.
Unfortunately, its only close-quarters technique was clubbing something with its staff, and the attempt ended in miserable failure.
Even so, I couldn't give it up easily.
It was a unique-grade skill, and it carried the merit of letting him command a summon even though he was not a summoner. A skill like that was not easily discarded.
I practically force-fed it experience and raised its level half by compulsion.
His steady effort finally bore major fruit. And on that very day, he abandoned the Shadow Mage summoning skill completely.
It was the monumental day the Shadow Summon skill hit level 2,000.
He had held considerable expectations of his own. Those expectations betrayed him utterly.
Because the result was of no use to me whatsoever.
Not merely sharing the summoner's stats, but sharing a portion of their skills—that was the reward for driving the Shadow Mage summoning skill to level 2,000.
If I could at least have chosen which skills it shared, I might have used it as a warrior.
The Shadow Mage summon could receive only the mage-exclusive skills Jin-soo possessed.
Before the Regression I was a warrior. Naturally, I didn't have a single mage-exclusive skill.
He had poured his care into raising that skill all the way to level 2,000, even surrendering a portion of the experience he needed to level himself, and what came back was a complete dud. Judging that further growth of that sort would be no help at all, he cast aside every expectation he held for it and gave up.
But this time is different.
Jin-soo possessed the skills of every class. The Shadow Knight could share the tank skills he held; the Shadow Warrior, his warrior skills; the Shadow Assassin, his assassin skills; the Shadow Archer, his archer skills; the Shadow Mage, his mage skills; and the Shadow Healer, his healer skills.