A Deal with Death Lord Garamikan (2)
"Yes, that's right. Death Lord Garamikan singled me out himself and ordered me to purchase the Bone Dragon byproducts."
Lucy said it with curiosity bright across her face.
So the bastard wants the Bone Dragon byproducts. In truth, materials like those meant little to a player of Death Lord Garamikan's caliber. He had the strength to obtain, by his own power, not merely the corrupted dragon heart of a true dragon, but an intact one.
But if they carry the karma of being first, that's a different story. The byproducts of the first Bone Dragon ever hunted on Floor 100 held a special karma. And since his class is Necromancer, he'd covet them badly. Garamikan was not called the Death Lord for nothing. He was the strongest necromancer alive in the Tower, and that was why the title belonged to him.
Ninety billion points. A fine price, I'll grant him that. It was the going rate with a premium stacked on top. To Death Lord Garamikan, however, it was pocket change. If he wants something, he has to have it, no matter what it takes. That's the temperament he was born with. Demonkin were faithful to instinct and desire, and Death Lord Garamikan stood at the peak of that kind.
"Ninety billion is too little. I'm not selling to you, so just go back."
"What? What are you saying! This is an extremely generous price! When you first heard it, you asked me if I'd eaten something strange—was that a lie?!"
Lucy shrieked, nearly beside herself.
"Did someone get a hold of your weakness?"
"It is not like that!"
"One look tells me you're not just chasing the commission. You want to use this chance to open a proper trade line with Death Lord Garamikan, don't you?"
Death Lord Garamikan was a monarch who effectively ruled more than a hundred cities and hunting grounds on the Tower's upper floors. Other players did not call him a king for nothing. He stood where a king who ruled a true nation would stand, and that was why they named him one.
For a green wandering merchant like Lucy, landing a connection like that would be the same as striking gold. She would want to buy his favor through this deal and build a relationship with Death Lord Garamikan.
"I do have that ambition, yes. But what's unfair is that I'm offering genuinely good terms, and you refuse to sell because you say it's too little. That's what's unbelievable."
"Go tell Death Lord Garamikan one thing for me. Then you'll stand to gain even more."
"Really? And what is that one thing?"
"That the seller is a necromancer. Me."
"You mean you intend to use the Bone Dragon byproducts yourself, so you have no thought of selling?"
"Right."
"But... you were a necromancer?"
Lucy studied Jin-soo, doubt filling her eyes.
"Yeah. Necromancer."
At his unruffled answer, something uneasy crossed her face.
"Go and tell him. If he wants the Bone Dragon byproducts, I don't want points. I want an item of equal worth."
He could have demanded more points. But this was an opportunity—the perfect chance to buy a necromancer-exclusive item that could never be obtained at Floor 100's level.
"An item of equal worth? What would that be?"
"That's for the one who wants to buy it to decide."
"Isn't that normally something the seller is supposed to set?"
"I trust the buyer's eye."
Lucy's expression curdled. Jin-soo, however, meant every word.
Death Lord Garamikan is a prideful bastard. He could not bear to be slighted, and for the sake of his own face he often put on a show far past what was needed. From his side, the sum wouldn't even register as excessive. Anything under a trillion points was spare change to him. Whether he spent tens of billions or hundreds was not the question. What matters is not being judged petty and low by a Lower-Floor Climber like me.
To protect that pride, he would almost certainly hand over an item worth more than ninety billion points.
"If you show him an attitude that arrogant, something terrible could happen."
Lucy delivered the warning with a grave face.
"Can he come here?"
"No."
"Then what's the problem?"
"If you think about later, of course you ought to worry—! Ha. Fine. I don't need to do the worrying for you."
Lucy shot to her feet.
"Then I'll pass it along just as you said."
With that, she left.
I appreciate the concern, but... Jin-soo laughed inwardly. It was needless worry. Even before the regression, Death Lord Garamikan had strutted about with that same arrogance and been thoroughly broken by him. There was no chance the man could match Jin-soo, who was growing faster now than he had in his previous life.
Well. He wouldn't nurse a grudge over something this small. Or would he? Knowing him, he's more than capable of it. Even if he did, it would change nothing. By the time Jin-soo reached the upper floors Garamikan ruled... I'll be overwhelmingly stronger than him.
Jin-soo passed his days no differently than before. He hunted monsters, raised his level, and stacked achievements.
An arrow hissed from the string. He no longer needed to carry a quiver, thanks to a weapon he had newly acquired: the Bow of Fire and Ice.
The bow generated fire arrows or ice arrows on its own, and it did not so much as draw on the user's mana. The Arrow Generation skill spent stacks to create them. The cooldown is short and the stacks are plentiful. Infinite arrows, in practice. It also carried a spread of useful options—Penetration Enhancement, Fire Attribute Enhancement, Ice Attribute Enhancement, and more.
It was not without flaws. The greatest was that most of its skills leaned hard into fire and ice enhancement. Most players grind a single attribute to death. Mage, archer, or warrior, they tended to pour everything into one—fire, ice, wind, earth, holy, dark. The reason was simple. It's more efficient.
A mage whose mainstay was fire needed only to learn fire skills and raise those levels with focus. Even general skills were limited to whatever could support the fire line. Use fire and ice together, though, and ice skills had to be learned and leveled alongside the fire ones. Two general-skill trees would have to be raised at once as well. Spend the same effort and the same points, and choosing two paths instead of one split the investment. The loss was not small. Overcome that, and the gain is greater—but it isn't easy. So most players concentrated on a single attribute.
Doesn't matter much to me. For Jin-soo, who held the blessings, scattering his focus was no obstacle to growth. Thanks to that, I bought this bow cheap.
Players who grew two attributes at once cared deeply about elemental opposition. Fire and ice are polar opposites. If fire was one's mainstay, it harmonized with wind. Fire and ice used together actually weakened each other. The seller who had listed the Bow of Fire and Ice could not move it no matter how long it sat, and in the end slashed the price. Set against the bow's level and the performance of its options, it was practically a giveaway. That was how Jin-soo came by a high-performance weapon for cheap.
The others were the same. Not only the fire-and-ice arrows, but other goods as well—he bought first whatever affinity problems had made inexpensive. Part of it was that none of those problems applied to him. The greater reason was simpler: he did not have enough points. To think sixty billion would vanish this fast. Once he set out to buy several items above level 1,000, even sixty billion was pocket change. In exchange, I've grown far stronger. That was satisfaction enough.
He still had not purchased a single necromancer-exclusive item. Lucy. Garamikan. I'm counting on the two of you. He did not doubt for a moment the synergy that would come of an easy-mark wandering merchant and a Death Lord steeped in empty bluster. I'm definitely walking away with absurdly good gear.
Had he sold the Bone Dragon byproducts for ninety billion points, the shopping would have been more comfortable. But Jin-soo's mainstay now was unmistakably summoning. A weapon exclusive to the Necromancer class—one branch of the summoner—mattered most of all.
Since when did summoning become my mainstay, anyway? Before the regression he had swung two swords through every crisis and cut his way clear of danger. After regressing, it had been the same at first, until somewhere along the way more and more of his problems were solved by summons rather than by his own hand. I got lucky. He had gone for a single Shadow Summon and come away with six. He had never expected the Undead Hidden Dungeon to yield two Unique-grade Necromancer class-change tomes either. I thought I'd just let them sit. Ending up with two classes was luck as well.
The blessings had twisted the course of his growth, bending one road into many. Good is good. He was stronger. There was no reason to flinch. Jin-soo was a swordsman who had lived his whole life with the blade, but he had no intention of clinging to it the way swordsman players from the so-called murim dimension did. If I can grow stronger, I don't care whether the path is one branch or many.
His purpose was to conquer the Tower and return to his only family—the younger sister left alone. That, and nothing else. Growing stronger was only a means. He had no thought of crossing the line; he had drawn his own. But he set no limit on the method. Swordsmanship, summoning, magic—if it was power, if it could make him stronger, none of it mattered. He would not lose his purpose to arrogance, pride, self-regard, or stubbornness.
Knock, knock, knock.
He was resting at the lodgings when the sound came. That'll be Lucy.
The door creaked open under his hand, and there she was.
"Come in."
"Yes."
She answered shortly and stepped inside. Her expression, though, was anything but good.
Don't tell me it came back badly. It can't have. Jin-soo knew precisely what sort of man Death Lord Garamikan was. He wouldn't scrap the deal itself. If only for the sake of his face, he would never hand over a poor item.
"The deal didn't fall through, did it?"
He asked anyway. Just in case.
"No, it didn't."
"Then he gave you something you thought was garbage?"
"Not that either."
"He say he won't trade with you from now on?"
"He didn't."
"Then why the face?"
Jin-soo asked it, puzzled, and Lucy answered on the verge of tears.
"Death Lord Garamikan heard what you said and muttered that the insolent brat had better wait and see!"
"What? Petty little bastard, just like I thought."
Jin-soo was dumbfounded. Why did Garamikan bluster and show off? Because he really was that small. He's taken losses more than once, putting on a generous act to hide that personality. One of the things the Death Lord hated most was being called petty.
"Shh! Please keep your voice down! What if someone hears!"
"Who's going to hear."
Jin-soo looked at her as if he could not believe it.
"Even so, you should be careful. He already thinks poorly of you."
"What does it matter. He can't even come to Floor 100."
"That may be so, but you have to think about later. It's not as if you'll live on Floor 100 forever."
"Don't worry. When I reach where he is, I'll be stronger than him. If he comes at me, I'll smash that Death Lord title of his first."
Before the regression, a trivial quarrel had soured things between them, and they had fought. It really was trivial. Garamikan had thrown around authority he did not possess, forced the issue on Jin-soo, and the quarrel had started there. Determined to prop up his own dignity, the Death Lord had charged him. Jin-soo had personally shattered the man and shoved the title of Death Lord into the gutter.
He had done it once. There was no reason he could not do it twice.