Dragon Tooth Soldiers (2)
"Kieeeek!"
"Kyaaaak!"
The swamp began to freeze, and the lizardmen hiding in it burst out in a panic. Stay where they were, and they would freeze along with the mire. They had no choice.
"Ice Arrow."
Crack-crack-crack!
Jin-soo cast the skill again. Dozens of ice arrows materialized and streaked for the lizardmen.
Thud! Crunch!
Half-frozen, their feet snared by the swamp, the lizardmen died helplessly. While he wove his attack skills, the Dragon Tooth Soldiers and the Stone Golem moved just as busily, slaughtering the rest. Slowed by Proclamation of Freeze, the lizardmen were nothing but easy prey for the two. The force that had ambushed Jin-soo and Shin Sua was annihilated in an instant.
"That way."
Jin-soo said it to Shin Sua.
"Got it."
She steered the Stone Golem in the direction he had indicated.
The hidden dungeon in the marsh sits in a spot a lot like the one in the desert. He had a feeling he would find this one just as easily.
"Kyaaaak!"
The lizardmen came at Jin-soo and Shin Sua without rest. But with the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, the Stone Golem, and the chain of his spells bearing down on them, they couldn't mount a real resistance. They died, strengthless.
The matchup is way too one-sided.
Had his class been Flame Battle Mage, it would not have gone this smoothly. Attack skills built around fire struggled to deal real damage to lizardmen concealed in a swamp. The mana drain would have been heavier, and he could not have bound their feet. Hunt speed would have suffered for it.
The Mage of the Ice Dragon, by contrast, fought with ice magic as his mainstay. A swamp was wetland — moisture everywhere, the finest ground for ice magic to find its synergy.
The rise in my class skill levels is playing a part, too.
His main skills as Mage of the Ice Dragon sat at level 122. Of course the power was on another scale.
Jin-soo kept moving and cleared the hidden dungeon. The difficulty was laughably low.
Day faded, and night came on.
"Let's rest here."
He chose one of the rare stretches of firm ground in the swamp as their camp for the night.
"I'll use Sanctuary, then."
"Hold on."
"What?"
"I'm sending the Dragon Tooth Soldiers outside the Sanctuary to hunt. Send your Stone Golem out ahead of time, too."
"Oh. So that's an option. All right."
Jin-soo sent the Dragon Tooth Soldiers out, and Shin Sua sent the Stone Golem after them. Only then did she cast Sanctuary.
"They won't break, will they? The Dragon Tooth Soldiers, or the Stone Golem?"
She sounded worried.
"Both of them are summons with high durability. They'll be fine. The hunting will slow down a lot, though."
The Dragon Tooth Soldiers and the Stone Golem had abnormally high health and durability. Their attack power and attack speed lagged by comparison, but there were thirteen of them in all. No great cause for concern.
"Order them to roam the swamp and hunt monsters. They'll keep at it on their own until morning."
"So our levels will rise even while we're resting or asleep. I love that."
Shin Sua's eyes shone, as if she had just tasted a whole new world. After a simple meal with her, Jin-soo entered the auction house, collected his proceeds, and listed new goods.
Nothing worth buying.
A look of regret crossed his face.
Well. For the time being, I don't need to worry much about gear.
For his dark-affinity class, the Blood Demon Swordsman, the Blood-Sucking Sword and the Shining Longsword were weapon enough. The weapon for the Mage of the Ice Dragon was in the hands of the master artisan Unlaelba, hard at work on it even now.
Proper armor and accessories can wait. I can take my time.
The one thing that still nagged at him was that he had yet to discover how to grow the Shining Longsword and the Ring of Revival.
I've tried every method there is. They just won't grow.
Even so, he wasn't greatly worried.
All I have to do is grow the Blessing.
Didn't know how to grow the Shining Longsword and the Ring of Revival? Then grow the Blessing, and use Level Lock to force their levels up. That was all.
The Shining Longsword is level 187 right now, so a Level Lock set at 122 won't do me any good on it.
From level 222, it would be a different story.
The Ring of Revival, though, can take the effect immediately, starting from level 122.
The Blessing really was absurd. Broken, even.
Hunt hard.
That was how the Blessing would grow faster.
Jin-soo and Shin Sua began climbing the Tower at a fierce clip, cutting each floor in 22 hours, 22 minutes, and 22 seconds. A forced march, with meals, rest, and sleep pared down to the bone.
She's keeping up.
It had to be a brutal schedule for Shin Sua, and yet she followed without a single complaint, digging in with everything she had.
Around the time Jin-soo reached the 62nd floor, the level at which the Blessing could apply his shared skills finally rose to 122.
The number of skills I can lock went up to twenty-two, too.
He immediately set his core shared skills — Shadow Summon, Dragon Tooth Soldiers, Inventory, and the rest — to level 122.
The result was staggering.
Boom!
The Shadow Knight, whose attack power had been on the modest side, swung his shield and smashed a troll's head as if it were nothing.
Crunch! Slash!
The Shadow Warrior ignored the petty blows and swept his greatsword in a fury, mowing down more than ten monsters in a single stroke.
Slash! Shhk!
The Shadow Assassin vanished into a monster's shadow and emerged again, over and over, snuffing out boss monsters with ridiculous ease.
Shwish, shwish, shwish!
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
A single arrow from the Shadow Archer punched through more than ten monsters at once. Drawing and loosing took a mere 0.2 seconds. Five arrows a second.
Those aren't arrows. That's nearly a machine gun.
Both the Shadow Assassin and the Shadow Archer had seen their attack speed and attack power climb enormously.
Booooom!
And yet there was one presence whose attack power overwhelmed even the assassin and the archer.
The Shadow Mage.
A single powerful offensive spell erased a great host of monsters — a thousand of them — in one stroke.
Regrettably, he never had cause to see the Shadow Healer's recovery skills. So the Shadow Healer scattered potent curses and decay over the monsters instead.
The moment a curse touched a low-level monster, it writhed in agony, turned to harming itself, or swung its weapon at its own kind. Those struck by decay suffered their bodies rotting from within, and died by inches.
I don't even need to step in.
Before Jin-soo could move, the Shadow Summons were already sweeping the field. The fortunate part was that, as their level rose, they could operate farther from their master. Where their range had been about ten kilometers, it was now something like twenty.
I should have them move separately.
That was better for hunting.
If there was a problem, it was only this: more monsters were being hunted into nothing than were appearing anew.
I ought to test the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, too.
With the Shadow Summon skill's level up, its cooldown had dropped from twenty-four hours to twelve — cut fully in half. He had a measure of room he hadn't had before.
Raise the skill level further, and the cooldown will shrink again.
He would have liked the cooldown gone entirely, but that was unrealistic.
Even if it only falls to an hour or two, that'll be enough.
Once the test of the Shadow Summons was finished, Jin-soo switched his status window from the dark-affinity Blood Demon Swordsman to the holy-affinity Mage of the Ice Dragon. Then he locked his main neutral skills at level 122.
Summon Dragon Tooth Soldiers.
Crack!
Twelve teeth swelled in bulk and became Dragon Tooth Soldiers.
The size hasn't changed.
The luster of the weapons they held and the armor they wore, however, had. Before, it had been obvious the gear was made of monster teeth. Not now.
They look like they're wearing armor forged from well-refined platinum. Let's see what they can do.
The twelve Dragon Tooth Soldiers began to hunt in place of the five Shadow Summons.
Boom!
They fought with considerable toughness, taking all but the heaviest blows on their bare bodies and butchering the monsters.
Even at the same level, they're clearly a good deal weaker than the Shadow Summons.
They were certainly strong. The material was the tooth of a White Drake past level 500, thick with karma, and the skill itself sat at 122. But they could not compare to Shadow Summons that drew on Jin-soo's stats and his Blessing.
A little disappointing. Still, it was the result he had expected from the start. The Dragon Tooth Soldier skill, though, had a wide road of upgrades left open.
True-dragon teeth, lesser-dragon teeth — secure as many teeth from dragon-type monsters as I can, and I can raise an army.
The mana cost of the skill would grow in proportion, but his mana stat stood at 922. Dragon Tooth Soldiers of the current grade — he could produce not twelve at a time, but something like fifty, easily.
Drop the grade, and it isn't fifty. Hundreds. Thousands, even.
Jin-soo drew lizardman teeth from his inventory. They were among the common material items, and they sold for next to nothing. Even so, lowest grade or not, a lizardman was still, strictly speaking, a dragon-type monster.
He used the teeth to summon Dragon Tooth Soldiers.
Crack!
The lizardman teeth swelled and turned into Dragon Tooth Soldiers.
Pathetic.
The soldiers made from karma-steeped White Drake teeth looked strong at a glance, and handsomely made besides. The ones made from lizardman teeth were small, and thoroughly shabby.
Their armament is poor, too.
Set against the White Drake soldiers, who looked like an elite order of knights, the lizardman soldiers looked like the remnants of a routed army. Even so, he needed to test their fighting power.
Go.
At his command, some three hundred Dragon Tooth Soldiers made from lizardman teeth advanced. And, as ordered, they fought with fair courage.
"Kyaaaak!"
Thud! Crack!
But their skill, even generously judged, sat a notch below that of a living lizardman.
Their durability is far lower, too.
The soldiers made from White Drake teeth had never once been destroyed. Unsummon them, return them to their original form as White Drake teeth, and there wasn't a scratch. The ones made from lizardman teeth, though, shattered in a string and reverted — smashed to pieces, or snapped, ruined past the point where the Dragon Tooth Soldier skill could ever be used on them again.
As expected. The gap in materials matters more than the skill's level.
Raise the level further, and soldiers made from lizardman teeth would grow stronger too. But once he counted the mana consumed, it was hard to call it a profit.
Well. Mana does recover with time.
If he committed to an assault by sheer numbers, it didn't look like a bad choice.
They got weaker because the grade of the material fell. Raise the grade, and the soldiers get stronger with it.
If the six Shadow Summons were elite special operatives, each with an outstanding ability of their own, then the Dragon Tooth Soldiers were closer to a well-trained army.
Even so, the hunting speed is fairly similar.
That was only because the monsters of the 62nd floor were overwhelmingly weaker than either the Shadow Summons or the Dragon Tooth Soldiers. Whether six rankers or twelve high-levels dropped into a level-1 beginner hunting ground, it was a one-shot clear either way. The three hundred or so soldiers made from lizardman teeth were holding their own, in their fashion.
Let's take it easy.
Clearing every achievement and every hidden dungeon on a 2-hour, 22-minute, 22-second clear was physically impossible anyway. And so Jin-soo lengthened his meals, his rest, and his sleep, and climbed the Tower at his leisure.