The Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff

"Haa... You don't even know how strong Lord Garamikan the Death Lord is, and still the confidence just pours off you."

Lucy looked at Jin-soo the way one looks at a foolish child.

Well. From where she stands, it might as well be impossible. He had grown a great deal stronger, true enough. Set beside Garamikan the Death Lord, one of the greatest powers the Tower currently held, the gulf between them was as wide as heaven and earth. No—to compare the two at all was an insult to Garamikan.

And she doesn't seem to have any real grasp of the power I actually hold. Even if she did, that judgment of hers would not change. Still, she's only saying it because she's worried about me. He had no mind to blame her, and no mind to force her to understand.

"First, show me what that bastard sent."

"Here."

Lucy held out a staff and a robe thick with a dark, ominous aura. "The staff is payment for the true dragon's corrupted dragon heart. The robe covers the rest of the byproducts."

"Oho."

True to form for a swaggering mark, he had handed over two items when one would have done. Jin-soo checked the staff's information first.

The Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff. A weapon of no less than level 2,492. He must have wavered between something just under 2,500 and something just over, then gotten too stingy to go higher and settled on this. The deliberation showed plain as day—and so did the fact that, for all that agonizing, he still couldn't shed his petty nature. Honestly, even this is excessive. He only sent something of this grade because I said I'd trust his eye. Hand over an item of too low a grade, and his own face would suffer. That was surely how he had seen it.

The options were excellent. A Skeleton Knight summon skill, and buff skills plastered on top of it. Put bluntly, change class into a necromancer and hold this single item, and you could reign like a king on the Tower's lower floors.

The robe was a lower grade—a level 1,922 item called the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe, loaded with options a necromancer could not do without. Reduced cooldown on summon skills. Reduced mana cost for those same skills. Increased mana recovery. And more besides.

I've come out enormously ahead. The Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff alone was worth well over seven or eight hundred billion points. On top of that, he had gained the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe, which looked good for a solid ninety billion.

"Take them."

Having confirmed the information, Jin-soo handed over the bone dragon's byproducts.

"Here you are."

Lucy took the byproducts ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and passed him the Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff and the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe in return. His hand closed around the staff.

A wave of killing intent, heavy with powerful residual thought, crashed over him. The thoughts blazed with fierce will, reaching to seize his mind.

"Hah. And where does this bastard get off with his cheeky little tricks..."

Jin-soo's face twisted hard.

Among items, there were cases where lingering residual thought grew strong enough to form an ego. The Blood-Sucking Sword had been one. If that ego formed naturally—residual thought clumping together on its own as the blade drank endless blood—then this is something else. The Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff felt as if a powerful curse and a powerful will had been deliberately driven into it, residual thought planted by force.

Who had done it was obvious.

Garamikan, you bastard. Pulling tricks like this. All magnanimous bluster on the surface; petty and sinister in everything he actually did. That was Garamikan the Death Lord.

The residual thought is strong, but its roots don't run deep. Any other Player would have had their mind snatched away on the spot by what poured from the staff. It was forced in, so it won't last. But lose your mind to it even once, and that was the end. Even short of a complete takeover, the odds were very high you would come away half-mad, your spirit fouled into something barely sane.

I thought he gave me a high-grade item out of sheer swagger. That wasn't it. He had chosen a high-grade item so he could pack a stronger curse and a stronger will into it.

Jin-soo brushed aside the lingering thought the staff was spewing, lightly, as if it were nothing. His will was firm enough to ignore even a direct projection from Garamikan the Death Lord himself. Residual thought merely breathed into an item was something he could let wash past without a second thought.

Is this one the same?

He draped the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe over his shoulders.

As expected.

This one's rather simple. The grade was lower, so it seemed he had managed to plant nothing but raw killing intent. The staff is the main piece. The robe is only support. Even so, this much could not shake Jin-soo's mind.

"What is it? Did something happen?"

Lucy asked, her face puzzled. She showed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no sign of knowing that Garamikan the Death Lord had tampered with the staff and the robe.

Right. A Player's power is sealed at the root where NPCs are concerned, so she couldn't know. And if he told her for no good reason, the information might leak. That would be trouble. An NPC can't harm a Player, but helping one is allowed. Lucy was innocent enough that whatever she thought showed straight through on her face. Even this time, her worry that he had earned the Death Lord's hatred was written all over her. There's no way that bastard doesn't know it. So he would have locked the information down all the more carefully.

"No. Nothing's wrong. You worked hard, running back and forth."

"If you truly think I worked hard, then please spare me something. Lord Garamikan the Death Lord at least pays handsomely for the trouble. All you ever do, Jin-soo, is work me to the bone."

At her protest, Jin-soo let out a short laugh.

"Then I'll pay you for the trouble."

"You will?"

Lucy's ears shot upright, and her tail flicked high.

"Yeah. Shame it's the last time, though. From now on I'll have to find a wandering merchant who doesn't charge a fee for the trouble. Here. Take it."

He held out his hand, and Lucy burst into hearty laughter.

"Hahaha! A joke, a joke! As if I would do what I'm already supposed to do and then ask a valued customer for something like a fee!"

Her mouth was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠smiling. Her eyes were crying. The ears that had pricked up sagged flat, and her tail sank all the way to the floor.

"Thought so. I wanted to keep doing business with you. I was starting to wonder if we weren't of the same mind."

"How could that be? You won't easily find a wandering merchant whose heart matches yours the way mine does."

"True enough."

A mark on Lucy's level was not easy to find. And the dealings were profitable for her as well. Hadn't she already closed a major trade, opened a channel with Garamikan the Death Lord, and collected a fat fee for her trouble besides?

"You really must keep trading only with me from now on."

Thanks to Jin-soo, Lucy had made an enormous profit. From the first trade until now she had been dragged along in his wake, but that did not mean she had gained nothing. As a wandering merchant, she had been able to build credit and connections. And in her eyes, he was no ordinary Player. The first trade, the second, the third—all of them had been in the byproducts of Out-of-Spec Monsters. Nothing said a fourth and a fifth would not follow.

I absolutely cannot let him go.

Jin-soo was a Player with a high chance of continuing to sell items steeped in extraordinary karma. To a novice wandering merchant like Lucy, he was a precious connection and a trading partner she could not afford to lose.

"Keep things as they are, and I've no reason to go dealing with unfamiliar faces either."

At his words Lucy smiled brightly, and inwardly ground her teeth. He was indeed a connection and a client she could not lose—and yet he always scraped her share down to the bare floor, which made him more than a little infuriating.

"The items are delivered, so I'll be on my way."

"Right. Take care."

Jin-soo smiled and waved, and Lucy left the lodgings.

I let her off this time.

He could have demanded a cut of her brokerage fee as a condition ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the trade from the start. He could also have made an issue of the curse and the residual thought sealed into the items Garamikan had sent, and squeezed points out of it. He did neither.

She worried about me. Lucy had genuinely fretted over his safety. So this once, he decided to let it slide. And it's true I made a huge profit on this trade.

Garamikan the Death Lord had laid his sinister trick, yes. But Jin-soo had not lost a single thing. If anything, thanks to that very trick, he had gotten his hands on items he could never obtain at the level of Floor 100—items he still could not find even if he climbed to the Tower's 200th Floor or Tower Floor 300. An enormous gain.

New items in hand. I'll rest, and run a proper test tomorrow.

For the time being, he shoved the Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff and the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe into his inventory.

Incredibly noisy. The curse and the residual thought pouring off them could not infiltrate his mind, nor seize it. They could, however, chatter loudly enough to give him a headache, so unless he was actually using them, burying them in his inventory seemed best. A few days at most, and they ought to fade on their own. That much inconvenience, he could easily bear.

The next morning, Jin-soo and Shin Sua set out to hunt once more, with Leo and Kkami in tow.

The auto-hunt is going well. His summons hunted monsters day and night without rest. When a core's mana ran dry, they rotated among themselves on their own, demonstrating in the most literal sense what twenty-four-hour endless hunting looked like.

I wonder if these ones can manage it too.

Skeleton Knights. Grade for grade, they sat in an awkward place. Among skeletons, they're high-tier, at least. Above the Soldier Skeleton, the Warrior Skeleton, and the Great Warrior Skeleton stood the Skeleton Knight. Even so, skeletons themselves belonged to the very lowest class of undead. Still, they've got the level to carry them. A skill sealed inside a weapon of level 2,492. There was no world in which its power would be weak.

With a level gap like this, they ought to chew through even ghouls and dullahans—upper-tier undead on the scale of Floor 100. They might even be able to bring down a Death Knight.

Level was a tyrant. That was one of the Tower's absolute truths.

Summon Skeleton Knight.

With a grinding crack of bone, Skeleton Knights two meters tall, clad in armor of bone, revealed themselves by the hundred.

As expected. Nothing beats a high level. Not hundreds of them. Thousands.

Exactly 249. One for every ten levels of the weapon.

I wonder how their combat power stacks up. There were so many that a worry stirred—maybe each one's individual strength had been shaved down a little.

No. I'll trust Garamikan's swagger. Surely it was an item whose performance would not shame the title of Death Lord.

The Garamikan the Death Lord who remained in Jin-soo's memory was a man obsessively conscious of how others saw him. In particular, to hide that stingy streak of his, he never spared points on anything that would prop up his own dignity and pride.

I'm counting on you, Garamikan. If, after tampering with the item, he betrayed even this faith? When we meet, I'll see you pay a fitting price.

For the record, making him pay for tampering with the Cursed Skeleton Knight's Staff and the Cursed Arch Lich's Robe was already a settled matter.