The Strongest Spirit Master Duo
Jin-soo was deep in the grind with Shin Sua and Cheon Museong, hunting monsters and clearing dungeons, when a problem came in.
Demirich, one of his Army Summons, had been attacked while searching a dungeon.
Another fool who's forgotten what fear is, picking a fight.
Ever since the day the Eight-Radiance Hound had thrown itself at a pack of Dragon Tooth Soldiers, clashes between his summons and other Players had cropped up now and then. Disasters on the scale of the Bone Dragon being mistaken for an Out-of-Spec Monster and throwing the whole floor into an uproar were rare. Smaller incidents were not. Players kept mistaking his summons for monsters and attacking them.
Most of them take one look at how many summons there are, lose the nerve to attack, and give them a wide berth.
The ones who still came in swinging were those with a measure of faith in their own strength. As a rule he frightened them off by calling in a nearby summon, but this time that was not an option.
I scattered them for the dungeon search. Getting them to cover one another from here is a mess.
Given the distance, it was faster for Jin-soo to go himself than to send another summon.
"One of my summons ran into trouble. I'll be back in a moment."
"I shall accompany you, My Lord."
"I'm coming too."
Cheon Museong and Shin Sua attached themselves to him before the words had even finished leaving his mouth.
"You don't need to follow me and open a hole in our hunting time."
"It's barely a moment. Call it a break."
"Then let us do so, My Lord."
Shin Sua and Cheon Museong were relentless.
"Fine. Come along."
Arguing about leaving them behind would only waste more time, so he decided to take them with him.
With a sharp clap of motion he tucked Shin Sua under his arm and launched himself forward, and Cheon Museong followed at his back.
He could at least carry me in his arms, like last time.
Wedged against Jin-soo's side like a piece of luggage, Shin Sua cut through the battering wind and swallowed her disappointment.
Next time I'm going to tell him to.
While she made that private vow, the three of them closed on their destination at speed.
Before long the crash of combat reached them—heavy impacts rolling through the air—and they could see who was attacking the summons.
Spirits?
Nearly every spirit master on the Tower's 200th Floor came from the Arius Dimension, and even among Players from Arius, spirit masters were vanishingly rare.
Those forms look far too familiar.
A spirit took whatever shape its master desired, so their appearances varied without end. Some were cute. Some were frightening. For that very reason, a spirit alone could be enough to identify its master.
The spirits before Jin-soo's eyes were twins in all but color: enormous lions, each with three heads. One was white as snow. The other was black as pitch.
Those are definitely the spirits those two used to command.
His gaze shifted to the figures he took for their masters.
It is them.
An elf woman with white hair and snow-pale skin, and an elf man with black hair and the same porcelain complexion.
Of all the places to run into those two.
Karolina and Rafael.
Before the regression, the pair had been spoken of on the Tower's upper floors as the strongest spirit master duo.
The synergy, especially, was monstrous.
Karolina and Rafael handled a light spirit and a darkness spirit—beings that ought to have been natural opposites.
Their affinities didn't match either.
Karolina was Holy. Rafael was Dark. From the attribute of their mana to the nature of their spirits, they went together about as well as water and fire.
And yet they made it work.
They controlled spirits of light and darkness with such natural harmony that the two moved as a single body. The artificial explosions they forced by slamming together the auras of those polar opposites were devastating beyond measure.
A hair out of alignment, and they would have annihilated themselves. They moved as if they shared one mind and one heart.
That perfect coordination was why Karolina and Rafael could be called the strongest spirit master duo on the upper floors.
Apart, each of them was strong, but a cold assessment put them short of the very highest rank even up there. Together, their destructive power was great enough that calling them the strongest of the upper floors would not have been an exaggeration.
I knew they came from the Arius Dimension. I didn't expect them on the 200th Floor this early.
Luck. He had never imagined crossing paths with them by chance.
If this meeting had not happened, he would have climbed to the 201st Floor without ever learning they were still on the 200th.
We wouldn't have met again for a long while.
And had that come to pass, even the chance to recruit them would have slipped away.
I have to bring them in. No exceptions.
It was better for the two of them as well. Karolina and Rafael had never gathered a faction or founded a guild of their own. They always moved as a party.
The members changed constantly, and the overall level was low.
Their own might was so overwhelming that it rarely mattered in ordinary times. The Tower, however, was a place where no one could say what variable might appear next, and Karolina and Rafael had died empty deaths alongside their party in a battle against an Out-of-Spec Monster on the upper floors.
They were rated highly enough that people said they might actually clear the Tower. They died on the 1,500th Floor—barely into the upper reaches.
Had they not fallen then, they would surely have thrown the balance of power at the Tower's highest floors into upheaval.
I regretted it too.
Before the regression, Jin-soo had kept a measured acquaintance with Karolina and Rafael, quietly laying the groundwork to recruit them. Then they were killed in the fight against the Out-of-Spec Monster before anyone could so much as raise a hand, and every effort turned to foam.
This time, I will not fail.
Resolve set, he stepped forward.
"That's enough."
He raised a hand as he spoke, and the undead monsters under Demirich's command drew back as one.
Not many left.
Aside from Demirich himself, barely twenty undead remained.
Thank goodness Demirich didn't die.
An Army Summon could be revived after it was destroyed, but the number of revivals was limited by how much lingering soul-residue remained.
Two or three times at most.
If he meant to keep using them for the long haul, he had to avoid letting them be destroyed.
"Human. Why are you shielding those revolting things?"
Karolina's gaze was sharp as a blade.
"They aren't monsters. They're my summons."
"What?"
"They don't drop items when they die, and they don't grant experience. That is proof they aren't monsters."
The explanation did nothing to cool Karolina's or Rafael's hostility.
"So they were the minions of a disgusting necromancer."
"Die with the cursed spawn, human."
The white lion Karolina commanded and the black lion Rafael commanded charged straight at Jin-soo.
Ah. Right. They were always this sort of trash.
Karolina and Rafael were infamous for their foul tempers and arrogant bearing.
High elves of royal blood from the elven kingdom, wasn't it?
Having never spent a day of their lives reading a room or bowing their heads, they had been notorious for their utter lack of manners even before the regression.
If their skill had been any less, they would have died ugly deaths long ago.
They had seized the seat of the strongest from the moment they entered the Tower, so that fate had never found them.
No need for me to step in.
As the white lion and black lion spirits lunged for Jin-soo, Cheon Museong and Shin Sua moved with sharp precision. Cheon Museong activated a Guard skill and barred the way with his great shield, while Shin Sua swiftly cast Blessing and Protection.
The impact thundered. Cheon Museong smashed the spirits' heads aside with his shield and brought his sword around in a heavy chop.
"Go easy."
"Worry not, My Lord."
Cheon Museong answered with perfect calm.
"That human is strong. Rafael, don't let your guard down."
"I know, Karolina."
A thread of tension had risen on faces that, a moment ago, had been entirely at ease. Even so, Karolina and Rafael still could not conceive of the possibility that they might lose.
Arrows of light hissed from the white lion. Pitch-black chains rattled out from the black lion, reaching to bind Cheon Museong.
He was not a man to fall for tricks of that sort, and the impacts broke uselessly against him. Shin Sua's support shone just as brightly. She used her protection skills without hesitation, shielding him and purifying the light and darkness eating into his body.
All that sparring with me and the summons, matching our timing—it's paying off.
Cheon Museong and Shin Sua had not known each other long. Even so, they covered one another with the flawless rhythm of partners who had been fighting side by side for years. Cheon Museong advanced one sure step at a time, keeping Shin Sua firmly protected behind him.
Again and again the white lion and black lion spirits threw everything they had at the two of them. It did nothing.
"Huh?"
When an all-out assault was stopped cold without dealing so much as a scratch, bewilderment spread across Rafael's face.
"Karolina, what do we do? That human keeps getting closer."
"Then we open the distance. It will take a little longer, that's all. We win either way, so don't lose your nerve, Rafael."
"Yeah. Got it, Karolina."
Karolina and Rafael put a little space between themselves and Cheon Museong. Hearing them, Jin-soo let out a short, empty laugh.
He's moving slowly on purpose, and they can't even tell.
This was Cheon Museong's first fight against spirits. He was simply enjoying it, testing one skill and martial art after another against a new kind of opponent. If Jin-soo had not told him to go easy, Cheon Museong would already have been swinging sword and shield at Karolina and Rafael themselves.
"You lot—don't just stand there. Move!"
Rafael barked at his party, voice sharp with anger.
"Y-yes!"
"Let's go for that one."
At his shout, the party members who had not dared insert themselves into the fight edged toward Jin-soo, watching Cheon Museong from the corners of their eyes.
They showed no wariness of Jin-soo at all.
They think I'm just a summoner. Fair enough.
With only about twenty undead summons left, it was only natural they would take him lightly.
An arrow came whistling in. Far too slow. Jin-soo turned his head and let it pass.
Even so, this level is pathetic.
The mana packed into the arrow was miserable.
"Hyaaah!"
Tanks drove the undead summons back, an assassin slashed in with a dagger, and a frantic melee broke out.
"Gruoooo!"
Bone cracked and knit as Demirich resummoned the undead.
"What? There are more of them?"
"He's a summoner. Of course there are. There'll be a limit, though."
"Right. We whittle them down, piece by piece."
Their panic was written plainly across their faces.
They really are weak.
Cheon Museong, Karolina, and Rafael were certainly powerhouses far beyond the standard of the Tower's 200th Floor. But if these were Karolina and Rafael's party members, they ought at least to have sat in the upper tier of the 200th.
Two healers, two tanks, one assassin, one archer.
The gap in combat power was so extreme that expecting party composition or synergy to matter was hopeless.
At this level, they're basically servants and pack mules.
Coldly speaking, the healers—one Holy, one Dark—were being kept around for the moments a class-specific skill was required: Sanctuary, Blessing, Purification, Decay, Aggravation. The two tanks were meat shields and luggage carriers against an emergency. Strip away trap-checking and scouting, and the assassin and the archer looked nearly useless in an actual fight.