The Eight Mad Dogs
Jin-soo had once been the second-strongest Player in the entire history of the Tower.
Mindful that they were still on the lower floors, he had lowered his standards a great deal. Even so, items that could actually satisfy his eye were vanishingly rare.
Shin Sua was another matter entirely. Scorned by her parties and forever handed the worst gear as if it were charity, she could only stare wide-eyed at every single item that came out of a hidden dungeon. To her, each one was an absurdly expensive treasure.
It's all thanks to Jin-soo.
Her faith in him, and her trust, only deepened. Even the equipment he lent her to use for the time being was, from her perspective, an incredible fortune, and the elixirs were no different.
To Jin-soo they were useless. Swallow as many as he liked, his stats would not rise, so their only purpose was to be sold off at the auction house. That made them easy bribes, offered without much burden, to cultivate a bond with the Holy Saintess Shin Sua—and, in time, with the Dark Saintess Shin Sujeong, whom he had yet to meet.
To Shin Sua, he was constantly yielding precious elixirs that could raise her stats while never taking a single one for himself. Her trust in him, and her closeness, could only climb.
Something actually useful had better turn up this time.
Jin-soo made for a place where a hidden dungeon was likely to be, dreaming of a windfall. Monster hunting he left to the Dragon Tooth Soldiers. He and Shin Sua rode the stone golem at an easy pace.
The force he currently commanded numbered twelve Dragon Tooth Soldiers forged from White Drake teeth, and 810 forged from Lizardman teeth.
The ones made from Lizardman teeth are surprisingly serviceable.
The reason was cost. The first time he had mass-produced them from Lizardman teeth, the mana drain had been severe, but time had changed the equation. Jin-soo's mana recovered faster than the Lizardman-tooth soldiers were destroyed, and so he could maintain all 810 with his mana still full and room to spare.
I didn't know there was a cap on their numbers.
Before his Regression, he had met mage Players who possessed the Dragon Tooth Soldier skill. They used nothing but true-dragon teeth, and even the largest forces they fielded never cleared a hundred.
I used to wonder why. So it was a limit on their T.O.
Depending on their strength, Dragon Tooth Soldiers devoured more T.O., or consumed less of it. Jin-soo hadn't known because not a single mage among his companions had held the skill. Most mages who did chose a summoner line when they advanced to a higher class, and so he had simply never crossed paths with them.
Once I get my hands on teeth from a higher dragon-type, I'll have to play for quality over quantity myself.
Even so, Dragon Tooth Soldiers were only a skill worth using for the moment. The higher one climbed the Tower, the more it mattered to choose and to focus. Chase two rabbits, and more often than not you caught neither.
I'm an exception, though.
With his blessings, Jin-soo had no need to pour his growth into a handful of core stats, nor to concentrate his skill levels on just a few abilities. Even now he held two classes at opposite extremes: a holy-attribute mage, and a dark-attribute warrior.
Can't be helped. I have no intention of advancing into a summoner.
The masterpiece class his plan required was the holy-attribute mage, armed with powerful skills for both attack and defense—offense and protection in balance. It was not a summoner.
A bit of a shame about Dragon Tooth Soldier.
So long as he meant to walk the mage's path, the skill's usefulness would fall away. Even if he kept using it later, it would be hard to get much help from it.
Well. I'll settle for having picked up a card worth playing for now.
He was driving the Dragon Tooth Soldiers briskly onward when other voices cut in.
"Aaagh! What are these monsters?!"
"There's a ton of them!"
They had run into other Players.
They'll run on their own anyway.
Jin-soo ignored them. Running into Player parties while he climbed with Shin Sua was a regular thing, and every last party that met the Dragon Tooth army fled in terror, without a single exception. He had ordered the soldiers to ignore Players on contact, so they neither attacked nor gave chase, and the fleeing Players had no trouble getting away.
"They're walking experience!"
"Let's wipe them all out!"
This time was different.
Crunch! Boom!
"They're total weaklings!"
"Their reactions are slow, too!"
"Then why aren't they hitting back?"
"No idea."
"Just kill them. This hunting's insanely easy. I love it!"
Far from running, the Players charged in, thrilled at the chance to hunt the Dragon Tooth army.
What the hell is wrong with these lunatics?
Seated on the stone golem's shoulder, Jin-soo turned his head, and familiar faces came into view.
The Eight Mad Dogs.
A party of eight mad dogs, which was why everyone called them the Eight Mad Dogs. Each had a nickname of his own: Mad Dog, Mutant Dog, Fierce Dog, Demon Dog, Rage Dog, Iron Dog, Swift Dog, and Ruin Dog.
Jin-soo pulled the Dragon Tooth Soldiers back.
"Huh? They're running!"
"Get them!"
"Don't let a single one go!"
"Kill them all!"
The Eight Mad Dogs came charging like maniacs. Jin-soo sent in the soldiers forged from White Drake teeth, then rose to his feet.
"These ones look different!"
"They'll give a ton of experience!"
BOOOOM!
"Ghk! It's not just their looks! They're insanely strong!"
"You cowards, ganging up on us?!"
"Hold them! Kill them!"
Crack! Thud!
BOOOOM!
The Eight Mad Dogs fought a fierce battle against the twelve Dragon Tooth Soldiers.
Decent, I'll give them that.
They had not even reached Floor 100, and already they were tremendously strong. What impressed him most was how organically they worked together. Without a word spoken, a glance or the smallest shift of movement was enough for them to read one another and fight the soldiers as if they shared a single body.
Figures. That's how they survived past Floor 2,000.
Called the Eight Mad Dogs and heaped with contempt by other Players, their skill, at least, was the real thing. And the number of people who could call them that to their faces was small enough to count on one hand.
Why? Do that, and you got beaten to the edge of death.
They knew where the line was, in their own way.
Mad dogs or not, they did not kill carelessly, and they did not rob the innocent of their belongings. The unhinged stunts, though—those they pulled in abundance.
Seriously short on common sense and basic decency.
Jin-soo arrived where the twelve Dragon Tooth Soldiers and the Eight Mad Dogs were locked in a brutal clash, and he pulled the twelve back.
"Where do you think you're running!"
"Kill them!"
The Eight Mad Dogs pursued, pouring attacks after the soldiers.
"That's enough."
At Jin-soo's words, every gaze among the Eight Mad Dogs snapped around at once.
"Huh? Who's this bastard?"
"When did he show up?"
"A mage?"
Jin-soo answered with a calm face.
"What you attacked weren't monsters. They were my summons."
"Summons? Do those even exist?"
"Guess they do."
"Well, the Tower's got everything, doesn't it."
"Then why do they look like monsters?"
"Right?"
"Hey. Why are you walking around with monster-looking summons and confusing people?"
Having stopped their attack on the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, the Eight Mad Dogs spat the words out like a machine gun.
Same as ever.
Jin-soo found the sight less irritating, less infuriating, than welcome.
"What are you grinning about?"
"Is he crazy?"
"I asked why you're dragging monster-looking summons around. Good thing it was us. If it'd been other Players, this would've been a much bigger mess!"
"Yeah! What are you doing, just letting dangerous things like that loose!"
"Don't you know a dog needs a leash when you take it for a walk?"
"It's dangerous!"
Jin-soo, who had been quietly listening while lost in old memories, opened his mouth.
"My summons don't attack Players. I ordered them not to. They didn't even counter when you hit them."
"Huh? Did they?"
"Now that you mention it, I think they didn't."
"No. Those things attacked us!"
"Thinking about it, maybe they only defended."
"Isn't defense a kind of attack?"
"That's true."
"Is it? Then they attacked us either way."
"It's not like we're entirely in the wrong. He's the one who caused it."
"Right. Right."
"Obviously it's the fault of the guy who let his summons off the leash."
They had struck first, yet the Eight Mad Dogs concluded they had done nothing wrong.
In truth, Jin-soo had not meant to blame them much for attacking the Dragon Tooth Soldiers. There really was room for a misunderstanding. Admitting each other's mistakes and moving on would have been enough. The Eight Mad Dogs were the exception.
I knew full well they'd come out like this.
Room for misunderstanding or not, they would never admit a mistake of their own. Apologize to each other and part on warm terms? Impossible, for the Eight Mad Dogs. So Jin-soo decided to be shameless right back.
"You attacked first, so you're in the wrong. Which means you're going to compensate me for the summons you smashed."
The cost of replacing a destroyed Dragon Tooth Soldier came to a Lizardman tooth—a low-grade material worth less than ten points—and Jin-soo's mana. All told, the damages, at cost, did not even reach a few hundred points. If they had simply agreed to pay and asked how much they owed, he had been ready to work out the exact figure and tell them politely.
Not that these guys would ever do that.
Had it been anyone else, he would never have brought up compensation in the first place.
"Compensation? Ha! What kind of nonsense is that?"
"You're trying to shake us down for points, aren't you?"
"If anything, you should be compensating us. You startled us, and you made us waste our strength hunting summons that don't even give experience."
It matched his prediction exactly.
"So I'm running a scheme to squeeze points out of you? Fine. You don't have to give me points. Just apologize. Politely."
Jin-soo offered a compromise.
"We're the ones who should be getting the apology."
"Yeah. Do you have any idea how badly those vicious things scared us?"
"Looks like you're holding your head high because you trust those things. Keep that up and you'll get burned."
"Apologize and leave quietly. Then we'll let it go."
The Eight Mad Dogs pressed him, utterly confident.
"And if I refuse?"
At his answer, madness flickered in their eyes.
"Then we'll have to teach you your place."
"We'll make you weep tears of blood for refusing our mercy."
"Take enough of a beating, and manners inject themselves."
Each of them threw out a line, and then, as if they had promised it, the Eight Mad Dogs launched themselves at Jin-soo all at once. They moved as though they had rehearsed it, cutting off the Dragon Tooth Soldiers' paths while Iron Dog and Swift Dog rushed him. Not to kill him, it seemed. To take him hostage.
A rational approach.
Cut off the summons' movement, strike the summoner, seize him as a hostage. Against a counterattack, the tank—Iron Dog—stood in front, and the assassin—Swift Dog—aimed for the rear. Had the target been any mage-type Player but Jin-soo, it would have been a perfect response.
Whoosh!
Jin-soo swung the Staff of the Ice Dragon at the tank, Iron Dog.
Crrrunch!
Iron Dog's shield crumpled, powerless, before anything else.
CLAAANG!
Then his body, armor and all, shot skyward like a baseball off a bat.
Thud! Thud! Thump!
He tumbled weakly across the ground.