Cooperation (2)
"Hahaha, thank you so much for coming to see me, Jin-soo. Have you been well?"
Kim Young-cheol asked after him with a brilliant smile.
"Yes, I've been well. And you, Young-cheol?"
Jin-soo smiled back and returned the courtesy.
"I have, I have. But running into you again like this—what a pleasant surprise. Seeing each other this often, I'd say there's some special bond between us. Bonds are precious things, you know. Let one slip away carelessly, and..."
True to his reputation as a man who never knew when to stop talking, Kim Young-cheol's mouth poured out words without a pause.
He's after something.
Kim Young-cheol knew almost nothing about Jin-soo. Jin-soo, by contrast, knew a great deal about Kim Young-cheol and the Daehan Guild.
He's talkative, sure, but he doesn't just blurt out whatever comes to mind.
There were times he truly said whatever he felt like saying, but he was still the guild master of the Daehan Guild. When he faced an outsider, the words he spilled usually carried some purpose he meant to achieve.
Lean on meetings, bonds, and friendship, and the rest writes itself.
Kim Young-cheol wanted Jin-soo's help.
Does he want me to join the Bone Dragon raid under the guild's banner?
Right now, that was the only help Kim Young-cheol could possibly be asking of him.
This might be easier to draw information out of than I thought.
Both of them knew the Bone Dragon existed.
Kim Young-cheol doesn't know my real strength.
He was only guessing, and roughly at that.
And the me from back then and the me standing here now are worlds apart.
The number and level of his skills, the levels of his Holy Body and Dark Body constitutions, his stats, the items he carried—everything had opened into a gulf like heaven and earth since the first time he had met Kim Young-cheol.
He couldn't even imagine I'm sizing up the Bone Dragon for a solo hunt.
Far more likely, he assumed Jin-soo meant to throw in with one of the mega-guilds and set a foot in the Bone Dragon raid.
Well. He's not entirely wrong.
Challenging the raid alone promised plenty, but the risk was just as great. Jin-soo had no intention of rushing in blindly.
"You're aware the Bone Dragon is heading for this city, I trust?"
After a long sermon on meetings and fate, Kim Young-cheol finally came to the point.
"Yes. In fact, I came to the Daehan Guild because I wanted information on the Bone Dragon."
Jin-soo stated his purpose plainly. There was no need to hide a fact that was already obvious.
And Kim Young-cheol hates that sort of thing anyway.
Given the man's character as Jin-soo knew it, if he laid his purpose out honestly first—
"How refreshingly direct. The truth is, I need your help as well."
—Kim Young-cheol was very likely to lay his own cards on the table just as honestly.
"Do you know of the Phoenix Guild?"
"I know them as one of the guilds built around European Players."
"The Phoenix Guild's strength is by no means lacking next to our Daehan Guild. And yet they moved first. They attempted the Bone Dragon raid alone."
"I take it the result was poor."
"It was. They failed to land any meaningful blow on the Bone Dragon and took losses bordering on a one-sided annihilation, or so I hear. So our Daehan Guild has had a great deal to think over. Even so, we've decided to attempt the raid once, using the city itself as a shield. I'd like you to join us under the Daehan Guild. From your side as well, fighting as one of us will gain you more than joining the Bone Dragon raid alone. You could join another guild, of course, but I doubt you'll find terms better than ours."
Classic Kim Young-cheol. The moment Jin-soo spoke his mind, the guild master spilled his own without resistance.
"As for the distribution terms..."
Kim Young-cheol laid out in detail how the items would be divided if the Bone Dragon raid succeeded.
These are genuinely good.
He also liked that the split would be judged by the System's contribution rating.
"And this is a gift, on the condition that you take part in the Bone Dragon raid as a member of the Daehan Guild."
Kim Young-cheol held out a skill book.
A summon buff skill book.
For a summoner, it was a skill well worth coveting.
"All right. I'll participate as a member of the Daehan Guild."
Jin-soo agreed without hesitation.
"Hahaha, thank you."
"You'll need to share every piece of information on the Bone Dragon, openly and in full."
"Of course. We're fighting together—that's only natural. I'll tell the person in charge. Ah, and we'll provide lodging as well."
Kim Young-cheol said it with a smile spread across his whole face.
"No need. I've already arranged a place. It's close by, so you don't have to worry."
"Understood. Still, it's a shame. Staying under one roof would make a response much easier. Back when I was in the Starting City, something similar..."
The moment the agreement was settled, Kim Young-cheol's mouth started running again.
Sit here and listen, and there'll be no end to it.
At this rate he might end up eating dinner here and sleeping over besides.
"If you'll just point me to the information officer, I'll hear what there is on the Bone Dragon and be on my way. I haven't even had a proper wash since I entered the city."
Jin-soo cut him off at a suitable moment and rose from his seat.
"Ah, I see. Very well."
Wearing a regretful look, Kim Young-cheol introduced him to the Daehan Guild's information officer. Jin-soo took the Bone Dragon's current location and left the branch.
He and Shin Sua arrived at their lodging and stepped into the place the thugs had signed over to them.
Not bad at all.
With so many of them, they had apparently taken a spacious one.
"I'm stepping out for a bit."
"Jin-soo, you're not thinking of hunting the Bone Dragon alone, are you?"
At his words, Shin Sua asked with a worried look.
"I just want to take a look from a distance."
He needed to see it with his own eyes before he could judge whether a solo raid was even possible.
"Couldn't you just send Kkami?"
If all he meant to do was look, then as she said, sending Kkami would have been enough. But through Kkami's eyes, he couldn't properly read the Bone Dragon's caliber.
"Don't worry. I'm only going to look and come back. If I were hunting it alone, I'd need your help too."
Whether or not he had Shin Sua's buffs mattered a great deal. And their opponent was an undead monster.
To hunt it, he would obviously need her healing and purification.
"All right. Be careful."
"Yeah. Don't worry."
After parting from Shin Sua, Jin-soo left the city and set out after the Bone Dragon on the information he had taken from the Daehan Guild.
Found it.
The journey had taken quite some time, but finding the thing was not difficult. It was simply that enormous.
Over level 1,000. No question.
Even at a considerable distance, he could feel a tremendous flow of mana.
That was not all. The Bone Dragon was merely moving, and yet the plants on the ground beneath it withered and twisted dry.
The Bone Dragon itself is a mass of curses.
That curse applied to Players as well.
Fortunately, it isn't the mage type.
Bone Dragons generally split into warrior types and mage types.
Then again, even a warrior type spews curse skills as a passive, and even a mage type is tough enough to put a tank monster to shame.
A true dragon is both a warrior with a powerful body and a mage with overwhelming mana. An undead Bone Dragon, forged from a true dragon's bones, can possess only one of those two traits.
The mage type is harder to create, and trickier to fight.
In particular, because it carried Life Drain, sheer numbers actually became a hindrance when hunting a mage-type Bone Dragon.
At least it's the warrior type, so a hunt is conceivable.
A warrior-type Bone Dragon had only its wide-area curse as a passive skill.
Set aside Decay Breath, its racial trait, and it had no attack skill worth mentioning.
Then again, that sturdy body is as good as its most powerful weapon.
It was not the worst situation. It was not an optimistic one either.
This is on a different level from the White Drake.
Even if Jin-soo had grown far stronger than he had been on the Tower's fiftieth floor, the gap between a White Drake and a Bone Dragon was not a gap he had closed.
There was a reason multiple cities were smashed before the regression. I absolutely cannot take this alone.
The Bone Dragon he had seen with his own eyes was an enemy so formidable that even with the city as a shield and other Players combining their strength, it was uncertain whether they could bring it down at all.
Still, I should try.
He would get only one chance.
Suffer a crushing defeat, and the Players will give up on hunting the Bone Dragon.
He had to aim for the moment when the Players of Floor 100 still had their confidence and were throwing themselves into the hunt.
A shame.
If the scouting had shown an opening, he had meant to bring Shin Sua, take her buffs, and attempt a solo raid.
The solo raid is off the table. Even if I join forces with the others, just bringing it down should still earn a substantial reward.
Claim first place in contribution, and he could monopolize the best of it. And this scouting run had revealed one important fact.
Whether the undead Bone Dragon still possessed a soul.
The soul is there.
He could feel the Bone Dragon's soul, clear and distinct.
That meant the Bone Dragon, too, could be used as material for Army Summons.
Lucky that undead monsters carry souls.
Being able to turn them into summons with Army Summons was an enormous advantage.
As long as the soul is there, I can make not only the Bone Dragon but even Floor 100's gatekeeper, the demilich, into a summon.
He was confident he could take the demilich for certain. The Bone Dragon, though, was still an unknown.
I'll make it succeed.
If he could turn the Bone Dragon into a summon, his fighting power would rise dramatically.
Time to head back.
Having accomplished what he had come to scout, Jin-soo carefully returned to the city.
The Bone Dragon had drawn right up to the city's doorstep. Every preparation for the Players' hunt was in place.
"The Yellow Dragon Guild, the Minamoto Guild, and the Ollich Guild have agreed to take the vanguard."
Kim Young-cheol briefed Jin-soo on how the city's forces were deployed.
"The guilds that took the vanguard don't seem to know the Phoenix Guild suffered something close to a one-sided annihilation."
"They know the Phoenix Guild was crushed, but... they never witnessed the battle themselves, so they're optimistic."
Kim Young-cheol said it with a bright expression.
"The plan is for every class except the ranged damage dealers to rotate through vanguard, center, and rear in a relay, wearing down the Bone Dragon's mana and stamina. The Daehan Guild has been assigned to the rear. Well, if things go according to plan, the order won't matter much."
The vanguard stood the highest chance of taking heavy losses. But there was a first line of defense: the city walls, where a safe zone was in effect. If vanguard, center, and rear took turns fighting with those walls as their shield, order would not mean much.
The guilds on the vanguard must be counting on the walls and the safe zone too.
The mega-guilds of Floor 100 gathered for the Bone Dragon raid were far too optimistic about the situation. And Kim Young-cheol was no exception.