The Yellow Dragon Guild

"They swallowed it way too easily."

"Something like this is nothing. Contact the Guild Master. Right now."

"Got it."

The moment the Yellow Dragon Guild players saw Jin-soo and Shin Sua come out of the Undead Hidden Dungeon, they cleared the area. Picking a fight with opponents they had no hope of beating would have been no different from suicide.

The mage was just reaching for a communication skill when a blade punched through his throat.

"Ghk—!"

"Assassin!"

"Kill him!"

The others reacted the instant their mage died, sharp and ready. The assassin moved in a way that made every bit of that effort useless. A jet-black edge sheared through the dark, and players began to drop one after another.

"Aaaagh!"

"Kugh—!"

"Eek—!"

"Run!"

In the end, flight was the only choice left to them.

"S-spare me! Ghk—!"

"Graaah!"

The tank turned his back on his companions' screams and ran blind.

The rescue stone.

The thought struck him mid-sprint. He yanked the stone free and moved to activate it—and the arm holding it was sheared clean off.

"AAAAAGH!"

The pain of a severed right arm tore a scream out of him until his throat nearly split. Then a metallic hand, cold as winter iron, closed around his neck with a crushing grip.

"Kgh! Ghk—!"

He could not even scream. The pressure was so absolute he could barely draw breath, and the terror of suffocating swallowed him whole. Unhurried footsteps approached from behind.

"Yellow Dragon Guild?"

The voice that came with them was Korean.

"Ghk! Kgh! Kgh!"

He wanted to answer. The brutal hand wringing his throat would not let a single word out.

"Let go."

At the command, the hand slid free of his neck.

"Koff—! Koff—! Hah... hah... hah..."

The tank coughed and dragged air down into his lungs in ragged pulls.

"Heal."

The moment the other man cast a recovery skill, the agony burning through the tank's right arm began to ebb.

"You are Yellow Dragon, aren't you?"

Fresh oxygen filled his chest, and the pain of the lost arm had dulled, when the question slid into his ear.

"Answer me honestly, and you live. Lie, or refuse to answer, and I'll peel the flesh off you one strip at a time, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet."

There was no killing intent in it. No heat, no excitement. The man spoke words horrific enough to imagine in a perfectly calm voice, and that only made them more frightening.

"Y-yes! I'm with the Yellow Dragon Guild!"

Terror pried the tank's mouth open at once. He had only just crawled free of a severed arm and the feeling of being choked to death, and nothing mattered more to him than his own life.

"Why were you waiting for me outside the hidden dungeon? Was it because of the Yellow Dragon party that died near the Starting City?"

"Yes."

"Explain. In detail."

"The party wiped out in the Starting City... it had the Guild Master's sworn younger brother, and his blood brother..."

Everything the tank knew came spilling out in a rush.

"So that's how this got tangled."

The man's face creased, thick with irritation.

"You... you did say you'd spare me..."

Fear had sunk its hooks in again, and the tank asked it carefully.

"A promise is a promise. Of course I'll let you live. In exchange, you're going to show me the way."

"...Pardon?"

"Start by guiding me to the Yellow Dragon Guild branch in the city you were staying in."

"Th-that's..."

Cold sweat beaded on the tank's face. When he had been spilling information, the desperate will to live had emptied his head completely. Now that survival felt certain, a sliver of reason crept back.

He's planning to hit the guild branch first.

Only then did he understand what he had done. To save himself, he had sold out the Yellow Dragon Guild.

"Don't want to?"

The man asked it with a gentle smile, as if refusal were perfectly welcome.

"N-no, sir! I'll guide you. Right now."

The gentle smile at the corner of the man's mouth frightened the tank more than anything else had.

Garbage people. Excellent connections.

The moment his shadow assassin confirmed that the party waiting outside the hidden dungeon was hostile, Jin-soo gave the order to attack. He did not order a total wipe. He needed someone who could give him information.

So the party included Guild Master Zhou Tianguo's sworn younger brother and his blood brother.

The men who had taken Jin-soo and Shin Sua for prey, only to be undone in turn, might have left some room for compromise if they had not been so close to the Yellow Dragon Guild's master.

Among all the bonds the Chinese call guanxi, sworn brotherhood runs the deepest.

A sworn brother might as well have been blood.

And a real younger brother was in the mix besides.

From the moment the Guild Master's sworn brother and blood brother died, compromise was impossible. To the master of the Yellow Dragon Guild, Jin-soo and Shin Sua were enemies he could never share the sky with.

Even if the man were a cold-blooded creature with no sense of loyalty and no feeling for kin, he would still have to move.

Guanxi mattered enormously among the Chinese. To swear brotherhood was to vow that you would share one fate for the rest of your life. His sworn brother and his blood brother murdered, and he takes no revenge? No Chinese guild member would trust a Guild Master like that, let alone follow him.

And the Yellow Dragon Guild isn't the only guild the Chinese have built.

If word spread that he had failed to avenge them, the guild's standing among the Chinese would hit the dirt. That much was as obvious as watching a fire burn.

If we're going to fight them anyway...

Better to strike first, from the advantageous side.

And looking at what a party led by his sworn brother and his blood brother got up to, it's plain enough what kind of men they are.

The Yellow Dragon Guild's nature was already close to that of a player-killer guild.

Depending on the temperament of each floor's Guild Master, a Yellow Dragon branch is sometimes classed as something other than a PK guild.

But judging by what the party containing the master's sworn brother and blood brother had been doing, the Yellow Dragon Guild on Floor 100 was very likely a player-killer guild made of PK players, little different from the Sabel Guild.

First, wipe out the branches. Carefully. One at a time.

The Yellow Dragon Guild was larger than the Sabel Guild, and it was not merely a matter of scale. The average skill of its members was on another level entirely. That alone meant he had to approach this with care.

Lucky their elites weren't camped out here for over a month.

If they had been, the odds of being ambushed from a bad position would have been high.

I need to retool, too.

In the Undead Hidden Dungeon, Jin-soo had grown a great many blessings. He had acquired plenty of items and earned a heap of points. He had not yet spent the increased level-lock stacks, or those points, to forge proper synthesized skills.

Get the preparations halfway there, then move.

Jin-soo set out for the nearest city.

Surveillance is tight.

He had not brought the sole surviving tank into the city. Outside it, the shadow assassin kept constant watch.

Synthesized skills first. Might as well start with the tank skills.

For a tank, the power of core skills—including guardian skills—swung wildly with the Endurance and Vitality stats.

Having every stat identical is convenient at a time like this.

All of Jin-soo's stats sat at an even 922, and every one of them was increased by 92.2 percent. Whatever class skill he learned, it would perform at its peak.

Guardian skills first.

A tank's toughness came from high Endurance, yes, but whether those stats were linked to guardian skills did just as much of the work.

Even the most basic guardian skills are broken.

The fundamental option baked into the lowest-grade guardian skill was the nullification of ordinary attacks and skill attacks below a certain threshold. Physical blows from sword or spear, and skill attacks woven from mana, simply failed to land.

They're influenced by the Endurance stat, true.

But the fact that an attack could be nullified outright was absurd in itself.

Before the regression, the player who had owned the Ring of Revival was called a walking fortress. The reason was simple.

He really did have the defense of a fortress.

Hundreds of players could rush him with swords and spears and fail to leave a scratch. He could take the attack skills of dozens of mages on his bare body and walk away unharmed.

It was staggering.

Even seeing it with his own eyes, Jin-soo had struggled to believe a defense like that could belong to a single human being of flesh and blood.

His attack power, on the other hand, was pathetic.

His companions had covered that weakness.

And he had the Ring of Revival besides—the same ring that's mine now.

Even if you sacrificed everything, somehow punched through that monstrous defense, and reduced him to ruin, he would trigger Revival and stand up whole again. From an enemy's perspective, it was enough to drive you mad.

Could I become that?

Probably not.

His core skill was something else entirely.

Jin-soo also lacked the man's skill with a shield, and his sense for using guardian skills.

I can't become the same thing.

He could still get as close as possible.

Jin-soo changed class into a tank, and went straight into Skill Synthesis.

He spent points like water and fused skill after skill. To raise the success rate he bought every kind of common skill book he could find. Even if a low chance of success left some of them sitting unused, it was no waste.

I don't need to grind just to raise a skill's level.

Use a blessing, and the level climbed on its own. The more skills he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had, the better.

And later they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠can serve as synthesis material for other classes.

One by one, Jin-soo turned the tank's class skills and exclusive skills into synthesized skills. At the same time, the defense he had been propping up on raw stats alone began to climb fast.

"Jackpot!"

Jin-soo's mouth fell open. The only ways to overcome a curse skill were a high Spirit stat and a healer's purification. Tanks, though, possessed plenty of class skills that resisted curses.

For a Dark Guardian Knight, that skill was Curse Absorption: take in a curse and turn it into greater curse resistance. Fused with Self-Recovery, it produced something astonishing.

Absorb a curse, and both curse resistance and self-recovery rise.

A rise in curse resistance alone would have been a jackpot. The self-recovery option stacked on top of it was obscene.

Using the Dark Guardian Knight tome now almost feels like a waste.

His job level was a mere 2. The skill level Jin-soo could currently lock was only 522.

Even this much won't be a problem for a while.

Move to higher floors, though, and problems would start to pile ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up.

With enough points I can get another Dark Guardian Knight tome.

Even so, the thought of throwing points away on a duplicate investment could not help but sting.

When are the blessings that lock class-skill level and synthesized-skill level ever going to show up?

Only then could he milk a job-change tome dry without leaking points, and keep using a synthesized skill this good from here on out.

Well. They'll turn up eventually.

Even Jin-soo did not know which way his blessings would grow. For all he knew, those two might never appear at all. He deliberately wiped that possibility from his mind. If it came to that, he would never be able to use unique-grade tomes, or the ones so scarce they were hard to obtain in the first place.

I could still use them if I swallowed a massive loss in points.

And all he would get for it would be a handful of basic skills.

They'll appear. They will.

Forcing himself toward the optimistic thought, Jin-soo kept forging synthesized skills, diligent and steady.