Out-of-Spec Monster
The penalty's pretty steep. Even so, there was no reason to call it a bad thing. Every skill had its strengths and its weaknesses.
That six-summon limit is both the flaw and the virtue of Army Summons. Having so few summons, no matter how powerful each one was, could just as easily be an advantage as a drawback. Aside from Army Summons, Jin-soo held four other summoning skills: Shadow Summons, Dragon Tooth Soldiers, the Ant Maw Colony, and ordinary Summon.
Leo and Kkami don't count. Neither of them can fight. Of the rest, the Shadow Summons boasted the greatest combat power, the Dragon Tooth Soldiers came next, and the Ant Maw Colony trailed last. Numbers run the other way. The Ant Maw Colony has the most, then the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, and the Shadow Summons the fewest. Sheer numbers didn't decide how strong a skill was.
And an individual's power having nothing to do with the T.O. can be an advantage in itself. With Dragon Tooth Soldiers, the tooth of a dragon-type monster of too high a grade might be unusable altogether. A single Dragon Tooth Soldier could blow past the skill's entire T.O. Army Summons, by comparison, was largely free of that restriction.
I couldn't turn a boss into an Army Summon back when I was level 2, so it's not as if there's no level limit at all. Still, once something was made into an Army Summon, it occupied exactly one slot of the T.O. and nothing more. That was a tremendous advantage. Unlike the Dragon Tooth Soldiers, it meant he could keep six genuinely powerful summons no matter what the T.O. said.
Not that it matters yet. On Floor 100, there's no way to lay hands on the soul of a monster whose grade sits that far above everything else.
Promising himself he would save that for later, Jin-soo pressed on with the remaining tests. It was time to measure the combat power of the variant lycanthrope that had just become his newest summon.
"Hunting's going to be miserable around here. Let's move somewhere else."
"Yeah. That sounds better."
Even Leo's wide-area taunt roar had drawn out only twenty-odd monsters, so they would be on the move for a while yet.
Kkami. Jin-soo sent the crow to find a region thick with monsters. Wouldn't mind another Undead Hidden Dungeon. Hoping for another honey pot — a place where he wouldn't even have to travel, and where blessings would climb with ease — he shifted to a new hunting ground.
"Leo."
"Nyaaaang!"
At his call, Leo immediately unleashed a wide-area taunt roar.
The ground thundered. Monsters came pouring in, and Jin-soo threw the variant lycanthrope into them.
A body glittering like obsidian smashed through the pack like a siege engine, the impact rolling out in a boom. Bone crunched and snapped underfoot. Its attack power isn't bad either. Defense was its greatest strength, but that hardened flesh was a weapon in its own right. It took the monsters' blows on its bare hide and rampaged anyway, tearing with sharp fangs and raking with its claws — a savage beast through and through.
The feral instinct it fights with is still intact. He had wondered whether turning it into a summon would dull that edge, but perhaps because he had used its lingering soul as the material, the wildness it had possessed in life remained exactly as it was.
Jin-soo kept hunting, took the measure of the variant lycanthrope's strength, and found himself satisfied enough. Not that there was nothing to regret.
It didn't get that much stronger. It outmatched its original body, but not by an overwhelming margin. This'll do for now. Once his blessings grew and the skill level he could lock rose with them, the problem would solve itself. And it's not as if Army Summons are all I have. On the dark side, they could join their strength to the Shadow Summons; on the holy side, to the Dragon Tooth Soldiers and the Ant Maw Colony.
With the test finished, Jin-soo threw himself back into the hunt.
Jin-soo and Shin Sua returned to the city looking like beggars.
"I want to wash in hot water." Shin Sua's voice was utterly drained.
"Same. And once we're clean, let's eat something good."
Jin-soo was quick to agree. They had been sleeping rough on a forced march, and reaching a city that should have been about a week's travel away had cost them more than two months. Every monster they could catch had been killed and offered up as a sacrifice for achievements, and they had cleared every dungeon they found, open and hidden alike.
The results aren't bad. Every stat had risen to 1,122, and the locked level for skills and items had climbed to 722. He hadn't gained a new blessing, but his constitution's level lock had grown in succession, leaving both his Holy Physique and his Dark Physique at level 522.
The return has definitely dropped. He had devoted a full two months to hunting, and the gains still fell short of a single month in the Undead Hidden Dungeon. Well. This is probably what normal looks like. The ant nest and the Undead Hidden Dungeon, where he had been able to spike his blessings in so short a time, had been closer to heaven-sent fortune from the start.
Just keep at it. He couldn't spend his life chasing only grounds as good as those. Even at this pace, I'm growing far faster than any other player. Thanks to his blessings, his total stats had risen by 600 in two months. An ordinary player would have needed sixty level-ups to match that. And there's the stat-increase blessing on top of it. The raw gain was 600, but the stats that had actually climbed were nearly double — close to 1,200. It was as if he had gained a hundred and twenty levels in a mere two months. If other players knew, they would have been staggered.
Let's rest properly for a few days. He meant to recharge in the city, then go back to sleeping rough and throw himself into the hunt again.
But why is the city this unsettled? The number of players, above all, was excessive. This has to be well past what the city can hold. It occurred to him they might not even find a room.
"Jin-soo, something's off here." Shin Sua had sensed it too.
"Yeah. Think something's going on?"
"Let's get a room and dig up some information while we're at it."
Jin-soo headed for the district where the inns clustered, only to find a full sign hanging in front of every last one.
"Looks like they're all full."
"Yeah."
The city was packed tight enough that players had pitched tents here and there just to rest. These aren't low-level players. Most of those gathered in the city ranked among the very top of Floor 100. Why are they all piled in here? The city he had come to sat beside hunting grounds for mid- and low-level players. High-level players had no reason to gather in a place like this.
Should I go to the Daehan Guild? He hadn't planned to visit. Looking at the city now, though, a room wasn't going to come easy. If it comes to that, I'll impose on the Daehan Guild for room and board. Jin-soo was human too. After two months of sleeping on bare dirt, he had finally made it into a city, and he had no desire to sleep in the street again.
First, find an inn, and pick up information along the way. It was easier to get answers from NPCs than from players.
"It won't be easy, but let's start by finding somewhere we can stay."
"Let's. Though I don't think it'll be easy." Shin Sua's face darkened as she watched the players living out of tents.
If even Jin-soo was desperate to wash in hot water and collapse into a soft bed, how much worse must it be for her? He searched briskly for an inn without a full sign. No matter where he looked, he couldn't find one.
"I'm getting hungry. Should we eat first?" His stomach was starting to complain, and stepping into a restaurant seemed a better way to gather information anyway.
"Yeah, let's. I'm hungry too."
The inns were full, but the restaurants still had some room. Jin-soo and Shin Sua went inside.
"Welcome." An NPC server greeted them warmly.
"We can get a meal, right?"
"Of course. Please, sit here."
"Do you happen to know why so many high-level players have flooded in?" Jin-soo asked as he took his seat.
"I do know, but..." The server trailed off.
"Service is good here. This is a tip." Jin-soo passed over a hundred points.
"They say an out-of-spec monster is coming to this city."
Jin-soo's eyes flashed. If it's Floor 100's out-of-spec monster, then it's that one.
The Bone Dragon. An undead monster forged from the bones of a true dragon. Even so, he needed to be sure.
"Do you know what kind it is?" He asked it with his eyes alight.
"I heard it's called a Bone Dragon."
It was the one, all right. Before the regression, I never even got to see it. This time, it seemed he had timed things well. Or maybe it's my fault.
Jin-soo had hunted an enormous number of monsters, and one of the conditions for an out-of-spec monster to appear was that a quota had to be filled. The fall of the Sabel Guild and the Yellow Dragon Guild might have something to do with it too. Undead reacted keenly to death energy, and the Bone Dragon, out-of-spec though it was, was no exception. The more dead players and monsters there are, the higher the chance an undead like the Bone Dragon shows itself.
The problem was that the Bone Dragon would be tremendously strong, as befitted an out-of-spec monster. Even downgraded, a Bone Dragon is still a Bone Dragon. The White Drake had been the same. Because it had appeared on Floor 50, it was weaker than the White Drake Jin-soo had hunted before his regression. Even so, it was a monster the players of Floor 50 had no hope of hunting.
Out-of-spec monsters had never been spawned so the players of a given floor could hunt them in the first place. High-level players did swarm in once, mistaking the traces of the Ant Maw Colony for an out-of-spec monster. That had happened only because Floor 100's elites didn't understand how strong an out-of-spec monster really was. Some of them may have gotten word through NPCs, or had an indirect taste of it on Floor 50. Not a single player had truly felt that strength for themselves. If they had, this city wouldn't be crawling with players. It would be empty.
Before the regression, the White Drake that appeared on Floor 50 had never been hunted by anyone. It had run rampant, and then it had vanished. The Bone Dragon of Floor 100 had been the same. He hadn't lived through it himself, but he had heard plenty from NPCs and players alike. Before the regression, the players never managed to hunt the Bone Dragon that appeared on Floor 100. Hunting it was out of the question. They had swarmed it like bees, been thoroughly broken, and spent the rest of their time running. It razed several cities, massacred the players, and then disappeared at its leisure.
Kim Young-cheol had been among those who told him about that day. So this is the city where the players charged in full of confidence before the regression, and were crushed. The high-level players were in high spirits already, dreaming of hunting the out-of-spec Bone Dragon and claiming its spoils. Once the fight starts, that anticipation will curdle into despair. If Jin-soo didn't intervene, the outcome would surely be the same as before the regression.
"Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
"If you know anything about the Bone Dragon, please tell me."
"It's incredibly strong. It appeared twelve years ago too, and the players back then were slaughtered outright. You'd do well to leave for another city if you can. The Bone Dragon hides itself once the number of players drops below a certain point."
Every word of it was sincere.