The Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set
Jin-soo worked through the auction house listings from the top, taking the highest-priced goods first.
Job advancement tomes are useless to me right now.
Those were worth buying only once he slipped the collar of class level 2, and skill books were nothing he needed in a hurry. An ordinary Player would have grabbed the highest-grade skill book available, learned it at once, and pushed levels as fast as possible. That was the sensible path.
None of it has anything to do with me.
With his blessings, a skill's level meant nothing. Equipment was another matter. The highest item level he could currently anchor was 522, so anything above that would raise his combat power the moment he bought it.
And unlike job tomes or skill books, I can sell it back.
So long as a piece wasn't soulbound, he could use it for a while and dump it on the auction house when he was done.
Please. Just give me something decent.
He wasn't hoping for cheat-tier gear on the level of Baekcheonsingeom or the Ring of Revival. He would have been satisfied with anything at least as good as the Bracelet of Reduction or the Ring of Ouroboros.
He went through the equipment with care, mostly armor and accessories. Then, deep among the expensive listings, a familiar name caught his eye.
Huh?
The Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set.
Its level was 1,487.
That's the armor he wore. I'm sure of it.
The Player they had called a walking fortress — the man who owned the Ring of Revival before the regression — had worn that set. He had traded up to higher-level armor later, and even then he had hated letting it go. The set was loot from a Black Drake, and the skills attached to it were excellent: penetration resistance, blast resistance, physical attack resistance, skill attack resistance, mental attack resistance, a whole chain of them.
But this skill is the real prize.
Curse Predator devoured curse, deterioration, and corruption skills, then turned them around to heighten every resistance already on the set while restoring mana and vitality.
And every option skill on the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set scales with Endurance and Vitality.
Armor that complete was genuinely rare.
It ought to pair well with the synthesis skill Curse Absorption Recovery, too.
In the Tower, where level was a tyrant, a Level 1,487 Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set would give him a defense so absolute that, for the time being, he might as well call himself invincible.
So this is that moment.
He remembered the complaint. The man had wanted the set badly enough to ache, and he hadn't even had the points for a minimum bid. Later he had tracked down the winner and paid far more to buy it off them.
The listing in front of Jin-soo carried an instant-buy price of ten billion points and a minimum bid of five billion. That was not expensive.
Items have a hierarchy of their own.
Gear at Level 500 or below traded from a few hundred thousand points up to around ten million. The moment an item crossed 500, the price leapt nearly tenfold. Under Level 1,000, the range ran from tens of millions at the low end to a few hundred million at the top, and the next bracket, under Level 1,500, ran from a few hundred million to several billion.
Among items under Level 1,500, the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set sits at the very top.
The current price was fair enough, and about thirty hours remained before the auction closed. The set was good. Its limits were just as plain.
He didn't throw it away later for nothing.
The first problem was its birth. It was loot from a lesser dragon, not a true dragon, and of course it paled beside gear taken from a true dragon. The second was level. At 1,487 it was supreme between 1,000 and 1,500, and plainly weaker than anything at 1,500 and above.
Level I can cover once the blessings grow.
The third problem was offense.
The Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set is a pure tank item.
Not a single offensive option. Defense was plastered over every inch of it.
For a tank like him, it would have been the finest item imaginable.
Not for Jin-soo.
Even so, walking away would be a waste.
He turned it over for a moment.
I'll buy it.
It was too good to abandon, and nothing else on the board was worth taking.
If I'm going to face Demirichi, the gatekeeper of Floor 100, and his undead legion for a long time, curse resistance and raw defense matter.
Had he meant only to clear them, he would have had no reason to obsess over curses or defense. Jin-soo intended to squeeze Demirichi for every last drop. He had deliberately left the Black Mana Orb in the Undead Hidden Dungeon intact and hunted the undead it summoned so his blessings could grow. He meant to do the same here: not bring down Demirichi, gatekeeper of Floor 100, but hunt only the undead the man summoned, and push the blessings to their limit. For that, curse countermeasures and defense came first.
The decisive reason, of course, lay elsewhere.
I'll use it for a while and sell it. That's all.
It wasn't soulbound. When he no longer needed it, he could put it back on the auction house and recover a fair share of what he had paid.
Sell it for more than I paid, and I even turn a profit.
He also knew exactly when, where, and whom to find if he wanted to sell the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set at a premium.
That one will buy it. No question.
Before the regression, the same man had swallowed a rip-off and paid fourteen billion points for the set.
He'll do it again. That's obvious.
Resolved, Jin-soo weighed the bid with care. He had decided to buy, but he had no intention of pouring ten billion points into an instant purchase.
Anything over eight billion should be safe.
The question was how many hundred million to add on top, and he had to be careful. A hundred million points alone could buy dozens of job advancement tomes — enough to forge a passable synthesis skill.
How much did he say the gouge was?
Jin-soo strained after the memory from before the regression. After a long, grinding effort, the faint recollection surfaced.
5.9 billion points.
Right. 5.9 billion.
Set against the fourteen billion the man would later pay, that put the hammer price on this very listing at 8.1 billion points.
He might have padded the number a little, though.
Jin-soo decided not to get greedy. This was an item he could sell for fourteen billion later, so long as he actually secured it. Better to pay a price firmly inside the safe range than to lose the set by pinching points.
He entered a bid of 8.2 billion points on the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set. Points that had stood above ten billion plunged below two billion in an instant.
All right. Anything else worth buying?
He looked through the auction house again. Nothing particularly worth taking caught his eye.
Then I'll leave it.
Bidding on the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set was the end of the day's shopping.
Jin-soo rested through the whole of the first day. From the next morning, he returned to his usual schedule.
"Nyaaaah!"
Leo's roar unleashed a wide-area taunt, and monsters came pouring in from every side.
"Graaaah!"
"Grrrrr!"
Beast-type monsters — wolves, lions, leopards, and things only kin to them — rushed him in a mass. Jin-soo's arrows and the Shadow Archer's flew first. Bowstrings screamed, shafts hissed, and the foremost beasts dropped with their throats torn open.
Flame Storm. Flame Explosion. Flame Barrier.
As the pack closed, he swapped his archer gear for mage equipment through his inventory and cast alongside the Shadow Mage. A roaring sheet of flame wiped out most of the beasts that had bunched together.
Touch of Black Gloom. Shackles of Binding. Crown of Thorns. Body Weakening. Deterioration. Corruption.
Closer still, he traded the mage gear for a healer's and laid curse, deterioration, and corruption over what remained. Then he switched once more, this time to a warrior's equipment, and charged the survivors.
Baekcheonsingeom poured out a pure-white aura. The Blood-Sucking Sword spewed a blood-red one. Jin-soo swung both, and the blows landed in a ripping flurry.
A clean slash. "Kyaaak!"
Another cut. "Guuuoh!"
The last of the monsters were annihilated in an instant beneath the combined assault of Jin-soo, the Shadow Knight, the Shadow Warrior, the Shadow Assassin, and the Stone Golem.
Being able to use skills from several classes at once really is convenient.
The first strike used the bow, longest in reach, and poured out archer skills. The second devastated the field with a mage's wide-area attack magic. The third weakened whatever survived through the curses, corruption, and deterioration of a dark-aligned healer. Last came the close fight, drawing evenly on warrior, assassin, and tank, and then the hunt was over.
To think synthesis of basic class skills and common skills — things you can get at a mere class level of 2 — could reach this far.
Just imagining how much stronger he might become once the blessings raised his class level was enough to send a thrill through him.
Keep moving.
Only those who were prepared could seize an opportunity. Now was the time to grow the blessings, pile up points, and make ready for what came later.
When the hunt was done and he had returned to his lodging, Jin-soo checked the auction house and went straight to the items he had won.
There it is.
The Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set sat squarely on the list of winning bids. He claimed it at once.
It really is good.
Perhaps because it was the most expensive item he owned, even the look of it belonged to another tier. It felt less like armor than like a work of art, and anyone could tell at a glance that it was high-level gear. He had only just come back from a hunt, and already the urge to go out again was boiling up.
Easy.
Rest was necessary, and a live test of the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set could wait until tomorrow. Like a child handed a new toy, he forced the excitement down.
The blessing of the Yellow God has grown.
The blessing of the Red God has grown.
The blessings grew without warning.
Letting the shadow summons loose paid off.
Jin-soo and Shin Sua had come into the city to rest, but the shadow summons were still throwing themselves into the hunt in real time. The blessings' growth was the immediate result, and Jin-soo's face brightened.
Did it finally go up?
He didn't even open the blessing's information. The change running through his body told him at once what had risen.
Base stats really are the best.
The base stats, stuck on a plateau for a long time, had increased.
Strength and Vitality are at 1,022.
As the blessings kept growing, the other stats would surely follow, climbing past 922 to 1,022 in turn.
Once the stat increases finish, will a new blessing show up this time?
No one knew. A new blessing might appear, or it might end with the existing ones simply growing. Even so, he had a good feeling. A single stat crossing 1,000 also meant his standing as a Player had risen.