Victory
A wet, greedy rasp.
The Blood-Sucking Sword drank Zhou Tianguo's blood without restraint.
Right. Time to clean up.
Jin-soo gathered the items Zhou Tianguo had been wearing, along with the class-change scrolls the man had dropped, and headed for where the remnants of the Yellow Dragon Guild were still fighting.
As expected. Some of them ran.
The moment Zhou Tianguo fled and Jin-soo took the shadow archer and shadow assassin after him, the guild members locked in combat with the shadow knight, the shadow warrior, and the stone golem chose to run at once—even if it meant eating the shadow mage's bombardment of attack magic to do it.
No need to hunt down every last one of them.
Just in case, Jin-soo still had False Mask active. Raised all the way to level 522, the skill could alter not only his build but his height itself, stretching him taller or shrinking him shorter at will. He had already changed his face, his irises, and his hair, and cut his height down with them, remaking his appearance completely.
If I hadn't changed, Zhou Tianguo wouldn't have had a chance to run in the middle of it.
The altered height and build had thrown a slight dissonance into his fighting, and thanks to that, Zhou Tianguo had managed to cling to life for quite a while.
Let's head back and rest.
Jin-soo decided not to mop up the fleeing remnants of the Yellow Dragon Guild. It wasn't that he had any fondness for them. He meant to drag the dead Zhou Tianguo's honor through the mud.
"Hyunsoo, you okay? You're not hurt anywhere?"
Shin Sua, who had been keeping herself hidden beside the shadow mage, hurried over and asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. You've been through a lot. Let's get some real rest now."
Facing the Yellow Dragon Guild's elites, neither of them had slept properly or eaten a decent meal; they had simply kept moving without pause. The fatigue piled on both of them was no small thing. If even Jin-soo, with his high stamina stat, could feel it, then Shin Sua—whose stamina was markedly lower—went without saying.
"Right. We should rest. First, let me lift that curse."
She cast Dispel and Purification, stripping away the curse skills clinging to his body and cleansing the corruption.
"Thanks. Let's go."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua set off toward the city.
I'll have to sort through the items.
The dead guild members had left behind a heap of equipment, along with the class-change scrolls and skill books they had dropped. Separating what he could use or learn from what he meant to sell was a job in itself.
Busy turning over the fatigue he had stacked up and the work still waiting ahead, Jin-soo never really looked at Shin Sua's face. And so he never saw how endlessly dark it had become.
They reached the city and took rooms.
"Let's rest for now and sort everything tomorrow."
"Okay."
Shin Sua agreed, and the two of them went into their separate lodgings.
"Haa..."
Alone again after parting from him, she let out a long sigh.
I'm of no use to Jin-soo at all.
She curled in on herself on the bed.
To him, am I nothing but a tick? Something that steals his experience and gnaws through his items?
Ever since Jin-soo had learned the healer's class skills, Shin Sua's self-esteem had plunged. That already-fallen pride had taken a direct hit in the fight against the Yellow Dragon Guild.
I didn't do a single thing.
All she had managed was to lay a few blessings and protection skills on him beforehand. Once the fighting actually began, the only thing she could do was watch him from far away.
I swore I wouldn't just watch from a distance next time. I swore I'd fight right there with him.
That vow rang hollow now. In the war against the Chavel Guild, and again in the war against the Yellow Dragon Guild, Shin Sua had been nothing but dead weight.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jin-soo.
When they hunted monsters as they usually did, there were roles only she could fill—raising a Sanctuary, blessings, protection, recovery, dispels, purification. Aside from recovery, none of it overlapped with the dark-affinity shadow healer, or with Jin-soo's own healer skills. She had taken real pride in helping him through work that only she could do.
The problem was fighting other players.
Her holy-affinity healer skills showed their true strength only when they were cast at the right moment in the middle of an ongoing battle. And she had never joined the battle. She had only watched from afar. Naturally, her skills had been no help at all to Jin-soo as he fought that fierce fight alone.
I did cast the blessings and protections ahead of time, at least.
Judged coldly, even without them the outcome would hardly have changed.
I'm useless. Completely useless.
Knowing she wasn't helping him hurt more than she could bear. And there was another problem on top of that.
Right now I can still help him a little. But will I be able to later?
Jin-soo could move freely between holy-affinity and dark-affinity classes. On the dark side he had learned skills from any number of classes; on the holy side, he was maintaining only the mage.
What happens if he learns healer skills on the holy side, too?
Then she would truly be of no use at all.
No—she would be a harm. She would be stuck to his side like a parasite, sucking up experience and items.
I don't want to be thrown away.
She didn't want to be alone anymore. She wanted to stay with Jin-soo. And to do that, she wanted to become someone he truly needed—someone who helped him.
Shin Sua uncurled.
A faint smell of blood hung in the air. While she had been balled up, she had clenched her hands so hard that her nails had bitten into the flesh of her forearm.
"Rapid Recovery."
She cast the recovery skill, and the wounds closed in an instant.
The level of Rapid Recovery has increased.
At the same moment, the skill's level rose.
She stared blankly for a while. Then she drew a self-defense dagger from her inventory and drove it into her own thigh.
The flesh tore. Red blood welled up in thick beads.
"Rapid Heal."
She hurt herself, and every time the cooldown came back around she cast a recovery skill, over and over.
"Blessing of a Sturdy Body, Blessing of Enhancement, Blessing of Vigor..."
After that she laid every kind of blessing on herself. Once all the blessings were cast, she followed them with protection skills.
A healer's advantage was being able to raise skill levels alone, simply by casting. It was slower than real combat, of course. But it was better than doing nothing.
That night Shin Sua cast and cast again until her mana was utterly spent, then sank into a deep sleep.
The next morning.
Rested, and finished with breakfast, Jin-soo and Shin Sua gathered in the lodgings and began sorting the items.
Most of this is pretty useless.
For weapons he already had Baekcheonsingeom, the Blood-Sucking Sword, and the Staff of the Ice Dragon. Everything else amounted to a staff for a dark-affinity mage whose mainstay was fire magic, a healer's staff, a bow for an archer, and a dagger for an assassin.
I can upgrade some of it, at least.
With an inventory, gear could be swapped in an instant. From Jin-soo's point of view, the more good equipment he had, the better.
This one looks usable.
A bow and a suit of leather armor one of the archers had worn—an item with a set effect.
The level's a bit low.
An item-level lock would take care of that.
Set it aside for now.
The moment a better piece of archer-exclusive gear turned up, he meant to swap it out immediately. He worked through the pile quickly.
A lot of these are borderline.
By his standards, not a single item was worth using for the long haul. There were, however, quite a few that weren't bad for right now.
Won't even one real piece turn up?
Even the Bracelet of Reduction that Kim Young-cheol, Guild Master of the Daehan Guild, had given him was a genuinely fine item—truly hard to obtain on Floor 100. Handing over something like that was as good as proof that he held better items still.
It's not as if the Yellow Dragon Guild is lacking in strength or scale next to the Daehan Guild.
Which meant the odds were high that the Yellow Dragon Guild had also held something on the level of the Bracelet of Reduction, or better.
Not even halfway through yet.
Expectation intact, Jin-soo kept sorting.
"Hey, Jin-soo. Want to try this on?"
Shin Sua, sorting beside him, held out a bracelet.
"A bracelet. Huh?"
He took it and was about to check the item information when he couldn't help being more than a little surprised. The exterior was identical to the Bracelet of Reduction.
He checked the information at once.
"The name's the same, too?"
It bore the very same name as the Bracelet of Reduction he had received from Kim Young-cheol of the Daehan Guild.
"The level and the option effects are the same, too. Think it might be a set?"
At her words, Jin-soo confirmed the bracelet's options and slipped it onto his left arm.
A soft click.
The two Bracelets of Reduction clung together as if drawn by magnets and became a single bracelet.
The set has been completed.
The set effect activates.
"It really is."
It really was a set item.
Uses went up by one on each of them.
The set effect had triggered.
They must have been one set to begin with.
Only the owners had ended up split in two.
Well, that happens often enough.
A hidden-dungeon reward might have been divided among party members, or a dispute—or an outright fight—might have forced the pieces apart. The paired rings he already carried, the Ring of Recovery and the Ring of Deterioration, were a set as well, and yet they could be split and worn by two different people.
Of course, if you do that, you have to give up the set effect.
A member of the Daehan Guild and a member of the Yellow Dragon Guild had each been holding one, so under any normal circumstance the set could never have come together. He had been lucky.
"Nice work. Thanks, Sua."
"Yeah. I'll keep looking."
Cheered by the praise, Shin Sua threw herself back into the sorting. Jin-soo did the same.
"Oh? Sua, I think this would suit you."
"Thanks."
Now and then something usable turned up—items that strengthened a particular skill, or shortened its casting time. Nothing, though, as good as the Bracelet of Reduction.
Is this the sword Zhou Tianguo was using?
The level was high and the options were good, but beside Baekcheonsingeom or the Blood-Sucking Sword it was plainly lacking.
I'll just sell it.
The equipment was sorted.
Are my standards too high?
He had pulled quite a few things worth using for a while, and not one worth keeping. Finished with the gear, Jin-soo and Shin Sua moved on to the class-change scrolls and skill books.
His hopes were considerably higher here.
They could serve as materials for Skill Synthesis, so he figured he would get more use out of them than out of equipment.
This'll be useful later. This one's decent, too.
Once he reached the scrolls and skill books, there were clearly more things worth keeping. Common skill books, especially—the ones that could be learned regardless of class—had nothing among them worth throwing away.
Learn them now, and I'll be able to use them later no matter what.
Thanks to the blessing, he didn't have to fuss over raising skill levels, which made the whole thing convenient. Common skills he simply learned on the spot. Whenever two copies of the same skill book turned up, he set one aside, to acquire it on his holy-affinity status window.
Plenty of usable class-change scrolls, too.
Compared with the dark-affinity status window, which already held quite a number of synthesized skills, the holy-affinity side did not have a single one.
The Staff of the Ice Dragon and the Ice Dragon Mage mesh too well.
Turning every one of the Ice Dragon Mage's class skills into synthesized skills would solve the problem, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
The reason was simple.
If I make them synthesized skills now and change to another class, the only Ice Dragon Mage skills I'll be able to pick up are the basics.
Unless the blessing grew enough to push his class level to 2 or higher, he was a little reluctant to lay a hand on it before then.
The Ice Dragon Mage was a reward earned by hunting an Out-of-Spec Monster, the White Drake, and the class-change scroll's grade was accordingly high.
Not unique grade. Still.
It was not the sort of scroll he would be able to obtain easily later.
And I don't have a mage class-change scroll of a higher grade than the Ice Dragon Mage sitting in front of me.
After a moment's thought, Jin-soo decided to keep the holy-affinity class—the Ice Dragon Mage—a little longer.
Nothing's urgent.
There was no need to rashly acquire another class's skills at the cost of giving up the Ice Dragon Mage's mid- and high-tier class skills.
He sorted the scrolls and skill books one by one. Even as he did, the items he had listed at the auction house kept selling.
I've gathered quite a few points.
The war with the Chavel Guild had brought in a great many. The war with the Yellow Dragon Guild had brought in still more.
I spent so many in the meantime, and still this much piled up.
The points consumed in making synthesized skills had been enormous, and yet what Jin-soo held now was approaching ten billion.
Then shall I do some proper shopping?