Yellow God and Red God's Protection (3)

Huh?

Jin-soo was caught flat-footed. What?

The hunt had ended only moments ago, and the mission reward was already his. He had gained no title since then, and he hadn't leveled up either, yet the blessings had grown out of nowhere.

The reward's different from last time, too.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Every muscle in his body had drawn tighter and stronger, and the stamina burned away by hunting without rest was restored in full.

The next turn should have been mana and mental strength. There was no mistaking the change that came of the blessings growing twice in a row. Jin-soo opened his status window and pulled up their information.

Strength and Vitality jumped by a hundred each, all at once?

He checked the stat readout.

Every other stat was still locked at 22. Strength and Vitality had become 122. His total had leapt by two hundred in a single breath.

At this rate, have I broken even?

Titles, level-ups, and cleared missions — added together, the stats he ought to have gained by now came to a little over two hundred. Instead, Strength and Vitality had each risen by a hundred, and his total had climbed by two hundred in an instant.

And there's the 12.2% increase on top of that.

Twelve-point-two percent of 22 and twelve-point-two percent of 122 were as far apart as heaven and earth.

I'm ahead.

Measured against the titles and levels he had poured in, the return had been poor until now. This was the first time he had actually come out in profit.

Agility, Endurance, Mana, and Mental Strength didn't rise. If the blessings grew again, following the pattern so far? The rest will probably lock at 122 as well.

The pace of growth wasn't bad. The problem was that he had no idea why the blessings had grown at all, and the pattern of the stat increases was just as hard to pin down.

Why jump from 22 to 122?

He called back the system messages from the moment his regression began and his second life started.

Kinship. Grief. A second chance. A second life.

They had felt kinship with a life bound tight to the number two, and they had pitied it. They had given him a second chance, and a second life.

The blessings are tied to two. That much is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠certain. Don't tell me they grew because I put on a pair of level-22 rings.

If that was it, then the earlier growth — the one that had come before he had even hunted his first monster — suddenly made sense. Back then he had taken two longswords, two daggers, and two packs of food.

That's insane.

Absurd as it was, he had no other explanation for now.

Do they grow when I equip something tied to two? They also seemed to feed on titles, levels, and elixirs, taking them as offerings and growing from the meal. He couldn't get a precise feel for it yet, but that was how it looked.

He pulled the paired rings off and put them back on. This time, nothing changed.

I have to test whether the hypothesis is right.

He needed the exact reason the blessings grew. Only then would efficient growth be possible. But Yellow God's Protection and Red God's Protection were a kind of power he was meeting for the first time, and he had no information on them at all.

Finding a lead will have to be enough.

The growth pattern itself was another question. Gain a title or level up and the stats snapped straight back to 22, precise as a blade — so why was 122 allowed?

So they aren't unconditionally locked to the digit two.

Yellow God's Protection and Red God's Protection. For now, what he didn't know still outweighed what he did.

I'll learn it as I go.

What mattered was simpler. Growth through the blessings was already faster than the path he had planned after the regression.

He emptied his treasure pouch, left the dungeon, and made for the site of the next hidden dungeon, throwing himself into titles and levels along the way.

What?

Doubt settled over his face again. Not much time had passed since the blessings last grew.

I earned fewer titles this time. The levels I gained were lower, too. So why had they grown even faster? Not that I mind.

He opened the status window, and just as he expected, Agility and Endurance were locked at 122.

I can't see the reason. He turned it over for a moment. Don't tell me...

Through the system messages, he counted every title he had acquired so far.

Skilled Goblin Slayer was the twenty-second title to vanish.

It really was bound to two. And the growth was greater when the twos came as a pair than when there was only one.

Do levels work the same way? Then titles and levels disappearing wasn't meaningless after all. A loss at the start — but once the number of vanished titles and levels passed twenty-two, it would come back as a greater reward. There'll be a step after that, too.

Twenty-two was probably not the end. Titles, though, were often the reward for a first achievement. In plain terms, they grew harder and harder to stockpile.

But that's a problem for novice Players who don't know anything.

Before the regression, Lee Jinsoo had been dragged into the Tower at twenty and had reached Floor 2,222 — the second Player to do it, the second challenger, and a failure. Where the Tower was concerned, he was past veteran. He was stagnant water gone rotten, and he knew the place better than anyone. Titles that could be earned only on a given floor, hidden dungeons — he had most of that information by heart.

The mechanism for earning titles is more or less the same from the start. Climb a floor, move faster than the rest, and take the first achievements. Plenty of those feats stayed out of reach without real skill, information or not. In information, experience, and ability, Jin-soo lacked nothing.

He cleared the second hidden dungeon just as lightly. The reward was a rise in Vitality, a rise in Endurance, and a level-19 dagger smeared with paralysis poison.

Would've been nice if the dagger came as a pair. Or if it were only three levels higher.

Unfortunately there was one blade, not two, and it was level 19, not 22. The stats he had just gained vanished at once, but he didn't regret it much. Clearing a mission for the second time in pursuit of a hidden dungeon had made the blessings grow.

Every stat is 122 now.

Add the 12.2% increase, and his total came to a staggering 821. On Floor 1, that was a figure no amount of effort could ever produce.

Sweep every title and grind levels as hard as you like — on Floor 1, a total around 400 is the ceiling. Thanks to the blessings, he had more than doubled the stats he had been aiming for. From here, titles and hidden dungeons will come faster. The higher the stats, the easier the achievements, and the smoother the missions.

I thought it would take about three days. Two would be enough to scour every title and hidden dungeon on Floor 1 and climb to Floor 2.

Rest first.

In the body he had owned before the regression, movement like this would not have left him even lightly tired. The body he had now, however far the stats had climbed, was still no better than an ordinary low-level Player.

I need a safe place to shut my eyes for a while. Sleep mattered. With Vitality and Mental Strength still low, skip enough of it and physical fatigue and mental fatigue would stack together. I should refill my water, too.

The food pack included a canteen, but it was far too small.

The treasure pouch can hold water. Food he had in plenty. Water was all he needed to find. Would've been better if I'd come across some while I was hunting.

He was sorry he hadn't. Jin-soo closed his eyes, sharpened his hearing with mana, and focused.

Trickle... trickle...

"Whew. Let's rest a little."

"That sounds like a good idea."

A thin run of water reached him together with the voices. He killed his presence and moved.

Have they banded together?

At a narrow stream, the people dragged into the Tower on the same day and at the same hour as Jin-soo had gathered.

Fewer of them.

A hundred had been taken with him. The brute was dead, and Jin-soo himself had split off, so ninety-eight should have remained. What he saw looked closer to eighty.

More than ten dead? They might have broken away in groups of their own, but the odds were miserably low. Anyone who wasn't a fool would know that peeling off in a band of ten or so, in a place swarming with monsters they had never seen in their lives, was suicide.

A lot of them made it. Most likely because the survivors had pulled together as one.

Before the regression, they had never even managed to secure weapons and food. While the Players were still wary of one another, the monsters struck. Chaos tore through them, and the hundred scattered in knots of about ten.

In the end, of those hundred, the only ones left alive were me and those two.

Jin-soo taking the weapons and the food, putting the brute down, then sweeping up most of the monsters stationed on Floor 1 for the sake of titles and levels — that was what had set the butterfly effect in motion.

Early on, the whole point is simply to survive. It wasn't as if no one hunted with practiced ease from the Tower's lower floors, leveling up, claiming titles through achievements, clearing dungeons, and taking mission rewards.

People from Earth have it harder.

Those born to a race of high combat power, or to a bloodline with some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠special strength running through it, or brought from another dimension already rich in battle and able to wield mana — when the Tower took them and made them Players, it was not rare for them to run wild even on the lower floors. Earth-born were different. Ordinary people, raised in countries where a fight for one's life, or a killing, was something they might never experience, then dragged into the Tower — for them a brilliant debut was out of the question. Just staying alive was difficult.

No need to cross paths with them.

He moved upstream, wet his throat, and filled the treasure pouch.

Time to go.

He had done what he came for, and he was just about to look for a place where he could rest in safety.

"Kreeek!"

A goblin horde came into view, more than three hundred strong.

Why?

He had never seen so many goblins gathered in one place on Floor 1.

A hobgoblin.

He found it at the head of the horde.

Was there a hobgoblin out in the field? He had thought they appeared only in dungeons. Apparently not. Before the regression, he had never met a hobgoblin on Floor 1 at all.

Could it be...?

His eyes went to the Players gathered in one place.

Count me in, and every survivor is clumped together right here. On top of that, his own work had left far more of them alive than in the life before the regression.

The Tower's monsters bear a blind hostility toward Players. They would find them somehow, and they would try to kill them. If the Players had split into several groups, the monsters would have scattered too. One group of people, and so one mass of monsters.

Even so, a hobgoblin was outside his expectations.

Nothing about this is bad for me.

He had already hunted one hobgoblin, a boss monster. Take one more?

That makes two boss monsters. An achievement would trigger, a title would follow, and the odds that the blessings would grow on top of it were very high.

Better to wipe them out, then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rest.

Hidden in the dark, Jin-soo closed in on the horde the hobgoblin was leading.