Victory (2)
They've lost their heads.
They couldn't even spare the presence of mind to remember Sanctuary's weakness and cover for it.
"Sanctuary!"
Someone tried to cast the skill again. This time Jin-soo moved first.
The healer's heart is pierced before Sanctuary can fully form.
Sanctuary — canceled
"We're going to die! Every last one of us is going to die here!"
"We have to run!"
"Aaaagh!"
The Chavel Guild broke. Will to fight gone, they dissolved into panic.
"Th-this can't be."
Lucas stared at his dying guildmates, eyes wide with disbelief, face slack with terror. He had expected the losses to run higher than planned, but he had been certain the day would still end as a successful harvest. So why had it come to this?
"This is a dream! It has to be a dream!"
He refused the world in front of him. The Chavel Guild was a great guild, three hundred Players strong. A guild like that did not fall to a single Player.
Jin-soo's calm voice rang at Lucas's ear.
"Th-that can't be. It can't."
Lucas shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. Nothing before him had changed.
"No! No! This can't happen! It can't!"
"Too loud. Now go."
Jin-soo swung the Staff of the Ice Dragon.
Crack.
Lucas, Guild Master of the Chavel Guild, died still denying reality. What remained of his guild followed him.
The Yellow God's blessing has grown.
The Red God's blessing has grown.
An Impossible Feat, of all things. He hadn't expected that. Achievements granted for fighting Players rather than monsters were scarce to begin with. Titles, and the blessings grew as well. The battle had yielded far more than points and items, and yet he felt no joy in it. Only a bitter aftertaste.
Is this the first time I've fought this many Players since then? He thought he remembered feeling something similar, back before the regression. All I did was take out the trash. Trash had to be cleared on time, for the other Players' sake as well. He settled the thought and was just moving to clean up the aftermath when—
"Jin-soo!"
Shin Sua rushed in and threw her arms around him.
"It's okay. This isn't your fault. You did the right thing."
There was nothing but sincerity in her voice.
"Yeah. I know."
Jin-soo smiled and stroked her hair.
Shin Sua forced down the urge to sprint onto the battlefield that very instant. She could see them — the tangle of curses binding Jin-soo's body.
If I'd been at his side... Remove Curse would have unraveled them. Purification and Recovery would have healed the flesh rotting away on him. But she wasn't beside him. She was hidden far from the fight with Leo, only watching.
Crunch. Crunch.
Leo was happily tearing into meat. Shin Sua's worry was a mountain.
The Shadow Summons are all gone. Jin-soo was alone now. I know there's a way through this. It hurt that the way through wasn't her.
"Nyaang?"
Leo, mid-feast, startled. His body was turning faint.
Dark Affinity → Holy Affinity
A summon cannot exist without its summoner.
"See you in a little while, Leo."
"Nyaaaaang!"
He shrieked at her words and fought hard to stay. Holding on did not mean he could.
His form scattered.
Leo, straining to remain, was forcibly unsummoned.
A fierce battle unfolded, and Jin-soo was its victor.
The moment it ended, Shin Sua ran.
She saw his face. He looked exhausted. Lonely. Worn thin. In pain.
"Jin-soo!"
Before she knew it, her arms were around him.
"It's okay. This isn't your fault. You did the right thing."
She meant every word.
"Yeah. I know."
His hand stroked her hair.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't help at all. I left you to fight alone."
"The buff you gave me before the fight was enough. It's late. Let's head back."
"Okay."
They unsummoned what remained, finished the cleanup, and returned to the city.
After a simple meal, Jin-soo and Shin Sua went straight to their lodgings. Once inside, he switched his status window.
Profile restored to its state from before the previous switch.
Stamina, mana, and skill cooldowns carried over unchanged.
His vision dulled. His body grew heavy.
The curses stay, too. Just as his stamina, mana, and cooldowns had carried over exactly as they were, so had the curses.
"Remove Curse! Purification!"
Shin Sua cast both at once. A single casting wasn't enough to strip every curse.
"Remove Curse! Purification! Remove Curse! Purification! Remove Curse! Purification!"
Remove Curse · Purification
Cast the instant each cooldown ends, until her mana runs dry.
The world in front of his eyes grew sharp, and his body lightened. The headache and the nausea faded by degrees. Flesh that had been rotting away knit itself whole again.
"I think they're all gone now."
"Thank goodness."
At his words, Shin Sua's face brightened.
"Go in and rest."
"...Okay. You get some real rest too."
"Yeah."
She hesitated a moment, then returned to her room. Jin-soo checked his points.
Incredible. The pool he had drained to the bottom making synthesized skills had climbed back to 900 million. Sell everything I picked up today, and I might even hit 2 billion. But the auction house would have to wait. Sorting came first.
How much of this is actually useful?
He started on the spoils, job advancement books first. Quite a spread. Tank, warrior, assassin, archer, mage, healer — every class was there, and even books for the same job weren't the same book. The same class can still specialize in entirely different skills. In rare cases, one of those skills might even be unique, the only one of its kind. The name is usually enough to tell. A plain Assassin advancement book had no chance of carrying a specialized skill. Names like Moonlight Assassin, Dark Assassin, Pitch-Black Assassin, or Shadow Assassin were another matter.
I've got points to spare anyway. He set aside the books most likely to hold something specialized, then moved on to skill books.
Nothing special. Most of them were common skills. I'll pull out anything worth learning for me or Shin Sua. There were plenty that could serve as material for Skill Synthesis, and he worked through the pile in a blur.
"Huh?"
Then a skill book caught his eye — the kind that snapped it wide open.
False Mask? A name he had never heard. What does it do? He had a rough guess, but the details wouldn't come until he learned it. Books like this were a gamble through and through. A lottery ticket, more or less. List it high at the auction house, and someone drowning in points might buy it. I've got points to spare. I'll learn it myself. Picking up extra skills almost never came with a downside.
Jin-soo acquired False Mask. The moment he did, its information seeped into his mind.
False Mask
Changes the user's outward appearance.
"Hahaha!"
A loud laugh burst out of him.
I never imagined a skill like this existed. False Mask let him change his appearance. Trust people with something to hide. Of course they'd gone and learned something this rare.
At a mere level 2, all it could alter was part of a face. He stepped in front of the mirror in the lodgings and tried it.
Weak. For now, the most it did was nudge the size of an eye, a nose, a mouth. What if I raise the level?
He locked False Mask at level 222 and activated it again.
Features, face shape, eye color, and hair color can be altered at will.
"Whoa!"
Raising the level had thrown the skill's power into an entirely different realm. He could reshape his features and the lines of his face at will — even the color of his eyes and hair.
This is huge. At this level, passing as someone else seemed possible. He called up the dead Lucas's face and activated False Mask again.
Close. Not identical. Similar enough, though, that a glance would fool you. Changing my build is still out of reach. He couldn't grow or shrink his height or his frame, and hands and feet were the same. If the level climbs further, though, it feels entirely possible. Even this much was an enormous windfall.
I'd given up on cleaning out the Chavel Guild's guild house. With False Mask, he might actually be able to strip it bare. Finish the skill books first.
He went back to sorting. Nothing else as special as False Mask turned up, but he secured a heap of material for Skill Synthesis. Equipment can wait until tomorrow.
He slipped quietly out of the lodgings.
Good thing I wrung that man dry. Before the Chavel Guild's main force arrived, he had interrogated them and taken every scrap of information he could. He knew where the guild house stood, and that the guild master's office and quarters occupied the top floor.
The problem is that I don't have a key. Lodgings inside a building were a safe zone where player killing was impossible. Without the keyholder's permission, entry itself was impossible. So I'll just break it.
The city was a safe zone monsters couldn't enter, and the lodgings were a safe zone where even PK was forbidden. But this world was not the inside of a game. It was reality, plain and simple.
A city's buildings can collapse. A lodging's door can be forced. Sanctuary was no different. It isn't that attacks are impossible. Which meant destruction was possible too. Not easy, of course.
The Sanctuary Shin Sua had raised had shrugged off even a White Drake's breath. A PK-forbidden lodging was the same: an ordinary attack wouldn't come close to breaking a door or a window. And by the system's rules, no attack, however powerful, could shatter them in a single blow. Destruction required a continuous assault, stacking impact until something gave.
Which is why I gave up. If he attacked the Chavel Guild's house while no one knew what the guild really was, the city NPCs and the players from other guilds who came running at the commotion would not stand by. But there's no grounds to stop a guild master from smashing his own guild house. They would most likely shrug and decide he had lost his mind.
Not a single word. He had matched the face well enough, but the build was a little off. The voice was unmistakably different, and — decisively — Jin-soo couldn't speak a word of French. Keep my mouth shut, and just take the items stockpiled in the guild house.
The Chavel Guild's guild house came into view. He pulled Lucas's gear from his inventory and put it on. Face changed by False Mask, Jin-soo walked in with a confident stride, as if the place were his.