Seeds of Grudge

"Use that black cat, and tracking down Out-of-Spec Monsters ought to get a whole lot easier."

"You're telling me. We got lucky."

"Hey. Start by listing every place you haven't been yet."

The party speaking Chinese clearly took it for granted that Jin-soo and Shin Sua would do as they were told. That had to be why the orders came so naturally, as if the strangers were already their superiors.

Jin-soo's face creased.

These aren't normal.

In a situation like this, common sense was to ignore one another and walk on. If you actually needed help, you asked what guild someone belonged to, named your price, and then made an offer. These men had no such manners. They acted as if the world existed for them alone.

"Why aren't you talking!"

"If you want to live, you'll do as you're told."

The Chinese-speaking players drew their weapons and leveled them at Jin-soo and Shin Sua.

"Still giving us the silent treatment."

"How about we start by taking an arm? Maybe then they'll understand plain speech."

At the threat, Jin-soo opened his mouth, perfectly calm.

"Which guild are you with?"

"Oh! Korean!"

"So he was a Korean after all."

"Korean — that mean he's Daehan Guild?"

"Could be. Could not."

"And why are you asking what guild we're in?"

"Looks like he means to lean on our guild's name and put the squeeze on us."

"Idiot. You think that'll make us flinch?"

"Go anywhere and you'll find punks who get cocky just because their guild is strong."

"You really think your guild can help you right now? Pop a rescue stone if you want. It won't matter. We'll take your arms and legs and be long gone before anyone gets here."

They sneered at Jin-soo and Shin Sua, laughing in their faces.

Trash.

They hadn't even bothered to hide their faces, and still they came on like this. That settled it. Work the two of them for a while, then kill them — that was the plan.

Kill them.

The order went to the Shadow Summons in the same breath that Jin-soo triggered his curse skills and assassin skills and brought both blades around — the Blood-Sucking Sword and the shining longsword. Steel sheared. The neck of the player who had been jeering at him from closest range came away in an instant.

"Guh—!"

The Shadow Assassin punched a dagger into another player's heart. Arrows hissed from the Shadow Archer as the Shadow Mage's attack magic caught fire, and hard on their heels came the Shadow Knight's shield bash, the Shadow Warrior's greatsword, and last of all the Shadow Healer's curse, settling over the enemy like a shroud. Flesh thudded under the impacts. Magic detonated.

"You son of a bitch!"

"Kill him!"

Rage took the Chinese-speaking players, and they swung.

They're strong.

He had cursed them and hit them while their guard was down, and still only two were dead. The Shadow Archer's arrows had missed the vitals, and the Shadow Mage's attack had failed to land a fatal wound.

About on par with Kim Young-cheol's party, then.

Seen that way, dropping two of them in the opening ambush was no small thing. Jin-soo had taken a warrior. The Shadow Assassin had taken a mage.

Aggravate. Decay.

He triggered the Ring of Aggravation's option together with a dark-affinity healer skill and tore the wounds already there even wider.

"Heal! Purify!"

The enemy healer was not about to stand idle.

"Kill that bastard, now!"

Steel crashed. Magic blew apart. The fight turned vicious, and the numbers were even. The enemy had started at ten and was down to eight. On the other side stood Jin-soo and Shin Sua, five Shadow Summons, and the stone golem.

Touch of Black Darkness. Shackles of Binding. Crown of Thorns. Flame Storm. Flame Explosion.

Every time a cooldown returned he cast another curse or another attack spell, and both swords never stopped.

"Ghk! A curse! Dispel it! Somebody dispel this!"

A blast tore through the line.

"Get a heal up! Protection, now!"

Dispels and recovery skills flew toward the players caught by Jin-soo's curses and attack magic.

"Kill that one and it's over!"

"Shackles of Restraint! Grasp of Binding!"

Curses came in one after another. Their party balance was good.

Not just a holy healer. They've got a dark one too.

But a holy healer and a dark healer stood on this side as well — Shin Sua, and the Shadow Healer. Add Jin-soo, who had taken dark-healer skills through Skill Synthesis, and the count rose to three.

Warrior skills, mage skills, assassin skills, healer skills: he chained them without a breath and drove the enemy back. A blade sheared through flesh.

"Gyaaah!"

Magic detonated.

"Aagh!"

Two more of them went down. That did not mean there was no problem.

Mana's burning far too fast.

Using the skills of several classes at once drained it at a rate that beggared belief.

Without Blood Drain and Mana Drain, I'd have hit empty already.

The trouble was that Mana Drain was coming back far weaker than he'd expected. They had something — a skill, an item — raising their resistance to magic.

Still. Taking those two was a blessing.

Blood Drain had put some of his health and mana back.

Hold Status Window Switch in reserve as long as I can.

The ambush had removed two. Pouring out mana had cleaned up two more.

Six left.

He could finish them without switching.

Touch of Black Darkness. Shackles of Binding.

As soon as an enemy was cleansed, Jin-soo laid the curses on again and pressed the attack with the same cold calm. Shin Sua kept the stone golem and the Shadow Knight in front of her like shields, and on the beat she needed she cast blessing, protection, recovery, dispel, and purification, carrying the fight forward.

An arrow sang and punched home.

"Aagh!"

The Shadow Archer's shot took the enemy holy healer through the head — the one who had spent the whole fight ducking, weaving, and refusing to be pinned.

"Fuck!"

"Zhou Tianyu is dead!"

With the holy healer gone, the battle pitched hard. Curses stacked. Wounds piled up. Then steel sank in.

"Guhk—!"

The Shadow Assassin drove a dagger into the nape of the last dark healer and cut his life short. Holy and dark alike, both healers were down, and casting a recovery skill became impossible.

"You bastard! Do you know who we are?! We're Yellow Dragon Guild! Kill us and they will never let you live!"

Certain of defeat at last, they dragged out the guild name they had kept buried and offered a threat that could not land.

"Can the Yellow Dragon Guild help you in a situation like this? I'll kill the lot of you and be somewhere else before any reinforcements arrive."

Jin-soo handed their own sneer straight back to them.

"Split up and run!"

They heard no room for a deal in his voice. They broke and fled in every direction.

Idiots.

If half of them had stayed behind and spent their lives pinning Jin-soo and the summons, then — a vanishingly thin chance, but a chance — one of them might have gotten away. Scattering when no one remained to hold the pursuit was the same as begging to die faster. Arrows flew first from the Shadow Archer. Jin-soo's magic and the Shadow Mage's followed. An arrow punched through the back of a fleeing player's skull. The two spells each caught a player of their own. A dagger left the Shadow Assassin's hand, whirled, and sank home, and the last of them stopped breathing.

"Haa..."

Jin-soo let out a long breath. It looked like an easy win. It hadn't been. In some ways the enemies just now had been more troublesome than the Chabel Guild.

We took them clean because it never once crossed their minds that they might be the ones under attack.

They had been one of the strongest parties on Floor 100, operating out of the Final City, and they had looked at Jin-soo and Shin Sua hunting in the Starting City and seen nothing but prey already in the bag. Had they watched Jin-soo and the summons kill monsters, they would not have dropped their guard. That was the mistake.

People who make a habit of carelessness never last.

The Tower was a place where you could never know what variable would leap out, or when, or from where. A high level, fine items, fine skills, an enemy of lower level — drop your guard, and in the blink of a single slip you could lose your life.

Well. From where I stand, it worked out.

If an enemy carrying real malice had also come fully prepared, it would not have ended this easily.

Let's see.

He gathered the items they had been wearing, and the class-change tomes and skill books that had spilled out when they died.

High level, just as I thought.

Every piece of gear was seriously expensive. The tomes and skill books, too, were the sort that were hard to come by even by Floor 100 standards.

No wonder they were arrogant.

They must have believed a surprise attack from Starting City players was something they could swat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠aside.

No matter how high anyone flew, they figured the whole sky still fit in their palm.

If the opponent had been anyone but Jin-soo, that arrogance would have worn the face of confidence, and no one would have died for it.

Good riddance.

Left alive, they would have worked anyone weaker than themselves like slaves and killed them after. Of that he had no doubt.

More to the point — Yellow Dragon Guild.

Jin-soo frowned. Unlike the Chabel Guild, the Yellow Dragon Guild was one he still carried in memory.

A guild built with the Chinese players at its core.

Not only on Floor 100. A colossal guild that had kept its power on the higher floors as well.

Their numbers were absurd.

And their skill had been nothing to dismiss.

Closer to a player-killer guild in temperament.

Even with a nature like that, their strength had been so great that no one could strike them lightly.

I remember them as the vengeful sort.

Guilds founded by Chinese players generally ran that way. They packed tight among themselves and shut the outside out. A favor they repaid twofold. A grudge, tenfold.

Drop them into a real crisis, though, and they show their true colors fast — too busy saving their own skins.

Turn that around, and it also meant that in a moderate crisis they could muster a terrifying unity.

Will pursuers come?

There was no knowing. What mattered was how much standing the dead had held inside the Yellow Dragon Guild.

They're in the middle of a faction fight. If this party sat on the fringe, the guild will make a show of caring and then ignore it.

If the party had belonged to the mainstream, pursuers were possible.

I'll think about that when it comes.

Fretting over it now would change nothing. Jin-soo and Shin Sua finished the cleanup and set out again after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what they had come for — titles, and a hidden dungeon to clear.

Jin-soo and Shin Sua returned to their lodging.

Everything the Starting City has to give, I've taken.

Every title he had been aiming for was his, and the hidden dungeon was clear.

The rewards weren't bad either.

No Demon Spirit Divine Pill had dropped, but Tendon-Reforging Pills and other expensive elixirs had come out in plenty.

We leave first thing in the morning.

Once they were out of the Starting City, he meant to go straight for the Undead Hidden Dungeon.

Anything worth using?

After listing the items he meant to sell, Jin-soo ran his eyes down the auction house. Every day, without missing a single one, he combed the listings in hope of a jackpot like the shining longsword. A jackpot, though, was a jackpot for a reason. Nothing of the kind offered itself easily.

"Huh?"

Then a familiar name slid into view.

The Ring of Ouroboros.

Before the regression, a player from another dimension called the Mad Demon had been infamous as a butcher of players. In the last bloodbath, just before he died, he had used this item exactly once.

So this is before it reached the Mad Demon's hands.

It had gone up on the auction house a bare two hours ago.

Dirt cheap for the level.

There was a reason.

The one and only skill looks like that.

The ring's single option was Ouroboros's Greed.

Trigger it and every stat climbs a hundred and twenty-five percent for twelve hours. A hundred-day cooldown, but the skill itself is genuinely good. Genuinely good — and yet.

The condition for activating it was the problem.

Twelve hours later, every stat is permanently cut in half.

Unless you were already about to die, it was a skill you could never use.

And surviving is its own problem.

If whatever stats you had left were permanently halved, then even with your life saved, living on became a hard thing.

That's why they called it cursed. The Mad Demon died. So did every owner before him.

Whoever had put the Ring of Ouroboros up for sale now was probably not the original owner.

The original owner's dead, most likely.

A party member, or someone who had happened to pick it up, had found the thing too unsettling to use and listed it cheap to be rid of it as fast as possible. Otherwise an item of level 1,251 would never have hit the auction house for a pittance of a hundred million points.

Do I buy it, or don't I?

What made him hesitate was the blessing.

Can the blessing cancel the downside of Ouroboros's Greed?

A blessing that ignored stat gains from titles, from leveling, from elixirs, and forcibly locked every ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stat at 922. And Ouroboros's Greed, which handed over tremendous power for twelve hours and then permanently halved whatever stats remained. If the two collided, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not even Jin-soo could say what would come of it.