A Misunderstanding
Well, even so, it still fell far short of the blessings of Shin Sua, the one they had called the Holy Saintess. That hadn't been what truly mattered.
The Holy Saintess Shin Sua and the Dark Saintess Shin Sujeong were sisters, and they had belonged to the same party. Identical blessings and identical curses could not stack. Blessings and curses that produced similar effects, however, could.
Take the Holy Saintess Shin Sua's blessing together with a curse-buff like the Dark Saintess Shin Sujeong's, and the effect had been monstrous.
Remembering the days before his regression, Jin-soo broke into a bright smile and looked at Shin Sua.
"Why are you smiling?"
"No reason. I just like looking at you."
The Holy Saintess Shin Sua already belonged to his party. He meant to draw the Dark Saintess Shin Sujeong into it as well.
The mere thought that the sisters who had displayed such overwhelming presence before his regression would both become his party members sent fresh motivation surging through him.
"Oh... I see."
Shin Sua answered in a mumble, her head ducked low.
Class change first.
There was no need to buy a class-change tome. He had already secured an absurd number of them.
This one looks the most special.
The tome bore the name Curse Healer. It was dark-aligned, and it looked specialized in curses — a choice he could stand behind.
Even among holy-attribute healers, the kinds of blessings and purifications diverge. Even among dark-attribute healers, the kinds of curses and worsenings are bound to diverge as well.
It was the same principle by which an ice-dragon mage made freeze skills their mainstay, while a flame mage made fire skills theirs.
Points he had in plenty, but the number of times he could lock himself at level 222 was running low, so he chose with a measure of care.
Let's learn it.
Jin-soo advanced his class to Curse Healer.
Let's see.
Jin-soo looked over the skills he had just acquired.
Touch of Black Darkness. So this was the skill they used on me.
A skill that plunged the target's vision into darkness.
Shackles of Binding — that was the one that bound the feet.
Most of the curse skills he had found so troublesome were gathered neatly together in the class skill window.
The one who held the Curse Healer class must have been the most skilled of the dark-attribute healers.
Jin-soo set about hunting for skills with a high chance of successful synthesis. It was long, tedious work. Shin Sua said nothing. She only watched him steadily as he worked his status window.
In truth, the moment the sorting of items was finished, Shin Sua's reason for helping him had ended. She could simply have risen in silence, gone to her own room, and rested.
She did not move an inch. Breath held, she only watched him forge his synthesis skills.
"Done."
Jin-soo stretched long and hard. Beginning with the curse skills that were a Curse Healer's mainstay, he had turned the various skills a healer needed into synthesis skills, and by the time he finished, a great deal of time had passed.
Sanctuary failed in the end.
For Sanctuary, unfortunately, there had not been a single skill whose synthesis success rate cleared even ten percent.
"You're finished?"
"Huh? You were still here?"
At Shin Sua's question, Jin-soo asked it in surprise.
"Yeah."
"You should've gone in and rested. Go sleep, even now."
"You're not sleeping?"
"I want to wrap up the Assassin class too."
"Then I'll just wait. Sitting still is basically the same as resting anyway."
"All right."
Jin-soo said it with a smile, then took out the Assassin class-change tome. Inside, though, his thoughts were considerably tangled.
I didn't register her.
More precisely, he had registered Shin Sua's presence, and yet he hadn't. He had known she was in the same space, and still he had forgotten.
There were plenty of safeguards. The mana contract, for one, and this space itself was a safe zone where PK was forbidden.
That isn't the point.
What mattered was that he had unconsciously let his guard toward Shin Sua fall. He had shown her his unguarded self without a shred of wariness, without the least discomfort.
Do I trust her? Am I relying on her?
A hollow laugh rose in him of its own accord. How long had they even known each other? How long had they been together, that he should speak of trust and reliance?
He had lost his guild members one by one. Before he knew it, the guild was gone.
He had lost his party members one by one. And so, before he knew it, he had lost every last one of them.
After that, Jin-soo had been alone the whole way.
He had climbed the Tower in solitude, holding to a single thought: he had to meet his younger sibling. He had to return to Earth.
Even after regressing, he had been alone right up until he met Shin Sua. The reason he had brought her into the party was necessity.
It wasn't as if he'd been close to Shin Sua before the regression.
If closeness was the measure, he had been nearer to the Eight Mad Dogs who had belonged to the guild he himself had founded.
Is this just something you can't help, so long as you're human?
Not many people could walk a lonely, solitary road alone. Jin-soo had thought of himself as one of them.
Apparently not. Somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, he had come to trust Shin Sua and lean on her.
No harm in it.
Before the regression he had lost every comrade, challenged the end alone, and been defeated. He had no intention of repeating that foolish choice. This time he would conquer the Tower together with skilled comrades he could believe in and rely on.
Shin Sua was simply the first such comrade he had met since regressing. Trusting her, relying on her — that was not a wrong thing.
He had only been a little surprised at himself.
Let's finish this quickly.
With his thoughts in order, Jin-soo threw himself diligently into crafting synthesis skills. An assassin's mainstays were stealth skills and ambush skills.
Assassin synergizes well with the dark attribute.
Healers were favored more in the holy attribute, but assassins were favored more in the dark.
Pretty finicky.
Not impossible, though. Working through combination after combination, Jin-soo turned the Assassin class skills into synthesis skills.
"Done."
He had spent every one of the level-lock charges, all one hundred and twenty-two of them.
"You worked hard."
"Go in and sleep now."
"Okay. You should go straight to sleep too, Jin-soo."
With that brief farewell, Jin-soo and Shin Sua parted.
After Shin Sua left, Jin-soo lay down beside Leo and sank at once into a deep sleep.
The next morning, Jin-soo and Shin Sua went downstairs for breakfast. Something about the atmosphere was unsettled.
"Do you intend to go hunting again today?"
Kim Han-ul, who had all but neglected Jin-soo and Shin Sua until now, was the one who addressed them.
"Yes, that was the plan. Has something happened?"
At Jin-soo's question, Kim Han-ul opened his mouth with a stiff expression.
"It appears an Out-of-Spec Monster has shown itself in the hunting grounds."
"An Out-of-Spec Monster?"
Monsters called Out-of-Spec were types that did not match the level of the hunting ground.
The Goblin Champion of Floor 1, the White Drake of Floor 50 — those were precisely such cases.
"Where did it appear?"
Jin-soo's eyes gleamed.
Kill an Out-of-Spec Monster, and an Impossible Feat was guaranteed. On top of that, Floor 100 paid out rewards of a caliber that could never otherwise be obtained there, and paid them generously.
"The hunting ground near the South Gate. They say the Chavel Guild encountered a monster of out-of-spec caliber while hunting there and was wiped out."
"What?"
"The Chavel Guild was the strongest power this city could boast. And that guild was annihilated by a monster. The Out-of-Spec Monster is presumed to be an insect type. Insect monsters often burrow underground to live, and they frequently form massive colonies numbering in the tens of thousands, even the hundreds of thousands. Given that, you would do well to refrain from leaving the city to hunt for the time being."
"Ah. I see. Understood."
Jin-soo was more than a little disappointed.
I thought a real Out-of-Spec Monster had shown up.
It hadn't. Word had simply gotten out about the day he wiped out the members of the Chavel Guild.
At the end, I summoned Dragon Tooth Soldiers and the Preta Ants.
Of the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, he had summoned only nine, forged from the teeth of a White Drake, while the Preta Ants he had called forth numbered a good thousand. Naturally, far more traces of the Preta Ants would remain.
If that thing had really appeared, the first words out of anyone's mouth would have been to evacuate.
Jin-soo knew the identity of the Out-of-Spec Monster that appeared on Floor 100. That creature was a monster capable of smashing a city's safe zone.
"You would do well not to take my words lightly. Lives are at stake."
Kim Han-ul looked at Jin-soo and Shin Sua with open displeasure, then turned sharply on his heel.
"Jin-soo, what are you going to do?"
"Let's eat breakfast first."
"Okay."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua loaded their trays and ate breakfast in quiet. Around them, the talk of other players drifted over as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"So Lucas is the only one who made it back alive?"
"That's what they're saying. A real coward. Threw his guild members to the monster as bait and saved nothing but his own hide. And that's not even the end of it."
"Why? What else is there?"
"They say Lucas killed the guild members who were still at the guild house, took every last bit of the guild's wealth, and ran."
"He's completely insane. Why kill the guild members?"
"He wanted the guild's fortune all to himself."
"Wow! I thought he was a decent guy, but he was total human garbage."
"Right?"
"But if it's a monster that can wipe out the Chavel Guild and send the guild master, Lucas, fleeing in the middle of the night, isn't that seriously dangerous?"
"We should put hunting on hold for a while."
"We should. One wrong step and it's straight down the road to the underworld."
This blew up more than I expected.
The traces left by the summoned Preta Ants had stirred up a furor over the appearance of an out-of-spec insect monster.
No harm in it.
If fewer players headed for the hunting grounds, the number of monsters Jin-soo could kill would rise on its own.
Clearing hidden dungeons will get easier too.
Even if a wild rumor was making the rounds, there was nothing in it that hurt him. Jin-soo and Shin Sua finished their meal as if nothing were amiss and stepped outside the building. He had half expected Kim Han-ul to try to stop them, but the man didn't spare them so much as a glance.
All the more convenient.
Jin-soo left the city with Shin Sua.
"Nyaaaang!"
Leo's roar called the monsters in. Jin-soo summoned his Shadow Summons and hunted as he pressed forward.
It should be around here.
What he was looking for was a hidden dungeon.
Found it.
And at last he discovered the entrance.
"Let's go in."
"Okay."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua entered the hidden dungeon.
Subjugate the Orc Great Warrior Horde
📍 Status: Calculating clear rewards...
🎁 Clear Reward: Demon Spirit Divine Pills ×4
⚠ Restriction: You cannot leave the dungeon until the mission is cleared.
Four Demon Spirit Divine Pills?
A proper jackpot, the first in a long while.
Feed two to Shin Sua, and keep the other two in storage.
Points were plentiful, so there was no need to sell them at the auction house merely to gain more. Better to feed them later, when he met a player he absolutely had to recruit.
"Krururuk!"
The eyes of forty orc great warriors turned on Jin-soo and Shin Sua all at once.
"Kuuuuurk!"
With a powerful roar, the orc great warriors shed a red heat haze from their whole bodies and charged.
Shaaaaak!
Shadow Summons burst from Jin-soo's shadow.
Flame Storm
Jin-soo cast an attack skill of his own, then drew the Blood-Sucking Sword and a shining longsword as he rushed in.
Kwaaaang!
The axe of an orc great warrior wreathed in red aura slammed into a shadow knight's shield and stopped dead.
Shwish, shwish, shwish!
The shadow archer's arrows flew.
Papak!
Arrows that had boasted one-shot kills in the war against the Chavel Guild punched into the orc great warrior's body.
"Kuooh!"
Struck by the shadow archer's arrow, the orc great warrior howled roughly and charged. The arrowhead had pierced hide and lodged in muscle, but it was nowhere near a fatal wound.
The endurance was staggering.
How is it that tough?
It wasn't only the shadow archer's attacks that failed to land properly. Of those killed by Jin-soo's magic, there were only the two that had stood at the heart of the flames. The rest got away with light burns.
How high are their durability and willpower?
Forty orc great warriors.
I thought the numbers seemed low.
Each and every one of them was tremendously strong.