Variant Lycanthrope
Clang!
The silver-furred lycanthrope swept its claws through the air and turned aside both the Baekcheon Divine Sword and the Blood-Sucking Sword. A furious roar tore out of it, and the beast hurled itself into a savage flurry of blows.
"Graaaah!"
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Jin-soo met the assault head-on, the Baekcheon Divine Sword and the Blood-Sucking Sword flashing as he knocked each strike aside.
Its body's absurdly hard. The claws in particular—hard enough to stop blades already wreathed in aura—were beyond anything he could have imagined. And the way it moves is no joke either. There was nothing systematic in the attack, only feral motion driven by instinct, and that only made it more erratic, and more dangerous.
Shhk!
Jin-soo's sword sheared across the silver-furred lycanthrope's waist.
"Kyaaak!"
The beast screamed and pressed in harder still. The hide's ridiculously tough, too. Against any other boss monster, a blow like that would have split the body clean in two. Here, hide and muscle barely parted under the edge. And that's with the Baekcheon Divine Sword's Skill Nullification already active. Physically, at least, the thing was stupidly durable.
If this had been an ordinary player party, they'd have been wiped out in an instant. It wasn't an enemy normal players could handle. Even so, it didn't quite rise to the level of an Out-of-Spec Monster. You get ones like this now and then. A mutant variant, unusually strong even among boss monsters—and usually worth a fat reward once you brought it down. Someone on Kim Young-cheol's level could probably take it. But Kim Young-cheol's party sat at the very top of Floor 100, which meant, put the other way, that anyone a tier below them would die without question.
An achievement and a title are a sure thing. What nagged at him was that, before the Regression, he had never once heard of a silver-furred lycanthrope. Word of a variant like this usually got around. Well. From where I'm standing, there's nothing to complain about. He'd been looking for a strong monster to turn into a summon anyway. Something on this level would produce a creature on an entirely different plane from the six summons he had made out of ordinary boss monsters.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa!
Jin-soo poured mana in and reinforced his aura skill. In the same instant the pure-white aura bound to the Baekcheon Divine Sword and the blood-red aura bound to the Blood-Sucking Sword swelled violently and roared up into full flame.
Kwaaaang!
The claws that had been holding his attacks at bay shattered, and the lycanthrope's right arm shattered with them.
"Graaaah!"
As if in one last desperate thrash, the silver-furred lycanthrope abandoned all defense and drove its fangs toward Jin-soo's shoulder. He could have dodged easily enough. No point dragging this out. He offered the shoulder and rammed both the Baekcheon Divine Sword and the Blood-Sucking Sword into the beast's heart.
Crunch!
The lycanthrope's jaws closed on him. Jin-soo didn't take so much as a scratch. Shin Sua's protection skill was up, layered over a tank's guardian skill, and on top of that sat the defense of the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set. That won't even scratch the armor, you mutt.
Thuk!
"Kiiing!"
Where Jin-soo had taken no damage at all, the silver-furred lycanthrope—heart run clean through—simply died.
You have hunted the Lycanthrope Lord, called the Nightmare of the Forest.
◈ The elixir Heart of the Lycanthrope Lord has been granted.
The messages kept coming, the rest of the list scrolling past in a generous heap of rewards. None of it was what mattered to Jin-soo.
Army Summons.
He moved at once to bind the silver-furred lycanthrope's lingering physical spirit as a summon.
Activation of the skill Army Summons has failed.
Not a skill-level problem. Army Summons sat at level 622. On Floor 100, there was no monster he failed to summon for lack of level. Are the slots full? Right now he was already commanding six boss monsters. Shouldn't have revived all of them earlier. I'll erase them one at a time.
He dismissed the boss monster with the lowest combat power, then cast Army Summons again.
Shaaaaak!
"Krrrrng!"
A lycanthrope that glittered like obsidian answered the call. Did the old boss monsters eat that many slots? Or does this one consume that many on its own? It was a variant far stronger than an ordinary boss, but it wasn't an Out-of-Spec Monster, and that left him unavoidably disappointed. I'll pin down the exact situation later.
For now he switched his status window from the dark affinity to the holy and dismissed one of his existing summons.
"Kyaoong!"
A second lycanthrope rose in its place, this one glittering like marble. Good. He had worried that destroying the old summons might erase their souls along with them, but fortunately both sides took. Jin-soo switched the status window back to the dark affinity. Ever since Skill Synthesis, he had kept the more versatile dark-affinity window up while he hunted.
Still, the slot cap is tighter than I thought. Necromancers usually commanded enormous numbers of summons on their own. He had assumed a Sovereign Necromancer and a Dominator Necromancer would be the same, and that assumption had missed completely. If six boss monsters is the limit, that's far too tight. At this rate, his plan to turn an Out-of-Spec Monster into a summon would go sideways from the very start. Even a White Drake alone ought to be stronger than six boss monsters. Which meant that, in practice, an Out-of-Spec Monster on the White Drake's level couldn't be made into a summon at all. Level 622, and this is all the ceiling I get? From where he stood, it was enough to leave him sick with frustration.
The gap with Dragon Tooth Soldiers is ridiculous. That skill could maintain twelve summons forged from White Drake teeth and still produce eight hundred and ten more from Lizardman teeth. Army Summons, by contrast, topped out at a mere six—boss monsters or not. I should check it properly.
Deciding the skill needed more study, Jin-soo was about to resume the hunt when Kkami shared its vision with him.
Players?
What the crow's eyes showed was a band of players, moving fast and straight toward where he stood. That's Kim Young-cheol's party. Familiar faces, heading for his position. Why are they coming this way? It wouldn't be for him. We agreed to forget what happened last time. Kim Young-cheol wasn't the sort to smile on the outside and nurse a grudge underneath, and in the first place there was no way he could have known Jin-soo was here.
That left only one reason. It's because of that thing. The variant lycanthrope he had just made into a summon. Strong enough to be called the nightmare of the forest, and I'd never heard a rumor about it before the Regression. So that's why. Kim Young-cheol's party must have hunted it down before he ever reached Floor 100 in the previous timeline.
Jin-soo kept only his Shadow Summons up and set about clearing the field.
Tap-tap-tap!
By the time the loot was sorted, Kim Young-cheol's party arrived.
"Huh? What?"
"The lycanthropes are gone."
"That guy—isn't that him? From back then?"
"The summons match, too. Yeah, that's him."
Finding Jin-soo and Shin Sua where they had expected a lycanthrope pack, the party stared in open surprise.
"It's been a while."
Jin-soo looked at Kim Young-cheol as he spoke.
"Well, I'll be. It has, hasn't it? I never thought we'd run into each other like this. Did you happen to hunt the lycanthrope pack here just now?"
"I did."
"Hahaha! Looks like we were a step too late. Players from Daehan Guild got torn up by those lycanthropes, and we came out to settle the score for them. Thank you for paying that debt in our place. Still, this really is no ordinary coincidence, is it? Meeting like this on the vast expanse of Floor 100. It's fate, if you ask me—why don't we head to a nearby city and share a meal?"
The words came out of Kim Young-cheol in a machine-gun burst.
"I'm all right. I'm sleeping rough out here so I can focus on the hunt."
"Sleeping rough? Well, now! That's some passion. I did the same, once, back in the day. Gave it up quick, though. Because once you get past Floor 100 you're going to be sick to death of sleeping rough anyway, so what's the point of getting a head start? Honestly, the discomfort was the bigger part of it. Sanctuary skill or not, sleeping outside is just..."
And on he went, with no end in sight.
If I keep listening, he'll talk all day. The bundle of stories that had started with sleeping rough was already climbing all the way back to his first night camping on Floor 1. I need to cut him off. At this rate Jin-soo was going to hear every camping anecdote Kim Young-cheol owned, from Floor 1 through Floor 99.
"Hey. Knock it off. My ears are about to bleed."
One of the party stepped forward and cut the flood short.
Seong Ha-yeon, was it? Second-in-command of Kim Young-cheol's party, and someone Jin-soo had been on decent terms with before the Regression.
"What did I even do? You always—"
"I said stop."
The moment Seong Ha-yeon fixed him with that axe-sharp glare, Kim Young-cheol quietly shut his mouth. Jin-soo couldn't help a smile. Exactly the same as back then. He remembered seeing this before the Regression. Watching Kim Young-cheol's party unchanged down to the last detail put him in a strangely good mood.
"If you stop by a city later, drop in at a Daehan Guild guild house. I'll put the word out ahead of time. Whichever city you go to, room and board will be on us."
"I appreciate the consideration."
"Oh, it's nothing special. Ah—and do you happen to have any connection with Oh Su-hyeok's party?"
An unexpected name came out of Seong Ha-yeon's mouth.
Oh Su-hyeok. That's the Mad Dog, leader of the Eight Mad Dogs. How does Seong Ha-yeon know him? A small question stirred, but if she knew of the Eight Mad Dogs, then they had definitely reached Floor 100.
"Yes. We met briefly, before I climbed to Floor 100."
"Not a grudge, I hope?"
"No. But how do you know Oh Su-hyeok's party?"
"They reached Floor 100 the day after you left. They're Korean, so Daehan Guild took them under temporary protection. They've formally joined the guild now."
"They joined Daehan Guild?"
Jin-soo asked it with open surprise.
"Yes, they did. Is there a problem?"
"No. They're highly skilled, so you made the right call. It's just that their personalities are absolute garbage, so..."
"Oh, come on, they're not that bad. You're being way too harsh. Oh Su-hyeok's party asked if we knew you, so I wondered whether there was some connection and brought it up."
Seong Ha-yeon brushed it off lightly, and Jin-soo was left blinking. Those delinquents, joining a guild. Until they met him, the Eight Mad Dogs had never belonged to one—not once. Their tempers were simply too wild for it. And they reached Floor 100 faster than before, too. Getting beaten half to death by him, then grinding their teeth and throwing themselves into the hunt, would account for that. The Eight Mad Dogs' future has changed. The feeling was faintly puzzling. It's for the best. Under Daehan Guild, they wouldn't run wild the way they had before the Regression. Not nearly so often.
"Well then, I'll take this chatterbox and get going. See you next time."
Seong Ha-yeon flashed a bright little smile, caught Kim Young-cheol by the arm, and dragged him off.
"Hey! Let go! If you go and say everything I was about to say, what am I supposed to do? And what did I even do wrong that you're making this kind of—"
The chatter of the man being hauled away drifted back across the trees. Not bad. Between the Eight Mad Dogs' altered future and Kim Young-cheol, who hadn't changed from before the Regression in the slightest, a faint smile rose on Jin-soo's face.