The End of Greed (2)
"I'll do whatever you tell me. Please—sob—just stop..."
"Please just kill me. I don't want it to hurt. Waaaaah!"
Robert and Okamoto begged Jin-soo, their voices thick with pain and despair.
Couldn't even last a day. Guild masters of great guilds, and this is all the grit they've got?
Jin-soo clicked his tongue, then spoke.
"Both of you. Open your status windows."
"Yes, right away!"
"Opened!"
The words had barely left his mouth before Robert and Okamoto flung their status windows open. Jin-soo went over their stats and skill levels with care and wrote down every last figure.
I can watch this in real time now.
It was time to begin the test in earnest.
Thud!
He tapped Robert lightly in the ribs with the sword sheath.
"Guhk! W-why are you hitting me?"
Tears streaming, Robert stared at him with a look of pure, wounded disbelief. He truly felt wronged. He had already sworn to do whatever he was told—so why was he being hit again?
"I went easy. Whining over that much..."
Jin-soo clicked his tongue and studied Robert's status window.
His lowest mental stat dropped by about seventeen, and his skill levels only fell by nine.
He had struck while Stat Predation and Skill Predation were active. This was the result.
I need to find the limit.
Thud! Thwack!
With both skills still running, Jin-soo laid into him.
"Aaagh! It hurts! Please stop! Ugh!"
The fear of violence had piled up until even blows that weren't especially hard dragged screams out of Robert, as if he were dying.
At this rate it'll take forever.
Watching the stats and skill levels tick down in real time, Jin-soo felt a sharp pang of disappointment. It would be of some use in a real fight, but matching the overwhelming performance he'd managed before his regression looked unlikely. The levels of Stat Predation and Skill Predation were still well and truly broken, which also meant they had slipped beyond the influence of the blessings.
Is it because I'm sharing a summon's skills? Or because of something special about Leo?
Leo had devoured a job-advancement tome and acquired a class skill, and on top of that he had shattered the existing job-level system. None of this was ordinary.
"Leo."
"Nyaang?"
"Your turn."
"Nyaaaang!"
At Jin-soo's word Leo bounded over to Robert in high spirits and swung his front paws.
Papapapak!
The cat punches still had next to no attack power. On the status window floating before Jin-soo's eyes, though, Robert's numbers were changing at a staggering rate.
One hit, and his mental stat dropped by a hundred and four.
His skill levels fell by seventy-eight as well.
That much from a single strike?
Under the continuing cat punches, Robert's mental stat hit zero in an instant. The moment it bottomed out, his mana stat began to drain at speed. His skills followed the same pattern: starting from the lowest, their levels raced toward zero.
Jin-soo kept his eyes on the status window of the man still eating those punches.
Stats over two hundred aren't changing.
The skills were the same. Anything past level 200 refused to drop. Once every stat and skill level Robert held at 200 or below had hit zero, Leo seemed to lose interest and stopped throwing punches.
Thud!
Jin-soo struck him again with Stat Predation and Skill Predation active.
No change at all.
The versions he had been granted shared the same ceiling as Leo's.
The limit is identical, but the gap in efficiency is absurd.
It defied all common sense.
What on earth is the reason?
He turned it over and over in his head, and no matter how hard he thought, the cause refused to show itself.
Let's check one more time.
His gaze shifted from Robert to Okamoto.
Thud! Crack! Crunch!
This time he didn't go easy. He beat Okamoto with everything he had.
"Guhk! Aaagh! It hurts! It hurts! Why only me!"
Okamoto stared at him, eyes brimming with injustice. Robert had been tapped lightly—so why was he being pounded with all of Jin-soo's strength?
For Jin-soo, it was only a test.
Hitting harder doesn't change the skill's effect.
Regardless of how much damage the target took, the skill triggered the moment an attack landed, and its power stayed the same.
Thud! Thwack! Crack!
He eased off a little and kept beating Okamoto until every stat and skill level at 200 or below reached zero.
"Guaaagh!"
Okamoto foamed at the mouth and passed out.
As expected, it takes forever.
The difference in speed compared to Leo was enormous.
"Leo?"
Jin-soo called him and pointed at Okamoto.
"Nya? Hmph!"
Leo snorted and ignored him.
I already devoured every stat and skill level, so he's lost interest.
Leo seemed to know whether an enemy still had anything left to prey on.
Does he know it by instinct, being a magic beast?
What Jin-soo couldn't tell until he checked an opened status window, Leo knew at a glance. It was remarkable.
Thanks to those two, the test was thorough.
His eyes moved to Robert, and to Okamoto, unconscious and foaming at the mouth.
"Eek! You're going to hit me again! Don't! Just kill me! Please, just kill me already!"
Robert flinched and begged for death.
"Fine. Go."
Jin-soo swung the Blood-Sucking Sword and granted Robert and Okamoto eternal rest.
Time for the last test. Army Summons.
He raised the lingering spirits of the dead men as Army Summons.
Their forms haven't changed in any particular way.
The problem was what lay inside.
He went straight into the test, and was bitterly disappointed.
Damn it.
The combat power of the Army Summons built on Robert and Okamoto's spirits was pitifully low. He had thought it might not matter, since the summons were made from spirits rather than flesh. Apparently that wasn't the case. Before they died, both men had been drastically weakened by Stat Predation and Skill Predation, and reborn as Army Summons, that weakness remained.
Is the state just before death imprinted on the spirit? Or is the status window the standard?
He had expected that, being built from spirits, they would show their combat power at its absolute peak. The expectation had missed.
If that's how it is, I'll have no choice but to be careful about using Stat Predation and Skill Predation.
He might even have to hold those skills back if he wanted to increase his Army Summons.
After a moment's thought, he made his decision.
Don't worry about it.
For now, Stat Predation and Skill Predation were still too limited to touch anything but stats under 200 and skills under level 200. Monsters and players weak enough to be affected wouldn't help much in strengthening his forces anyway. Army Summons were capped in number, so every slot had to be filled with something truly powerful. Anything frail enough for those skills to touch wasn't worth turning into one.
There was no need to restrain Stat Predation and Skill Predation merely to preserve candidates. The moment he decided that, his mind felt lighter.
After the clash with the great guilds of Tower Floor 150, Jin-soo returned to ordinary days. The ripples he had set in motion, however, were enormous. The balance of power that had held on the floor for so long had been smashed to pieces.
Phoenix Guild and Minamoto Guild lost their guild masters, Robert and Okamoto, and at the same time their elites were all but wiped out. The guilds that had sided with them didn't suffer quite so badly, but they too were stripped of vast amounts of points, and for a time the flow of their funds snarled.
For the guilds that had not made an enemy of Jin-soo and had kept their distance, it became a kind of opportunity.
We can't let this chance slip.
We have to seize as much of Phoenix and Minamoto's interests as we can.
This is the perfect moment to grow our guild.
The great guilds that had come through unscathed, Daehan Guild among them, raised the pressure on Phoenix and Minamoto. That pressure took many forms. They nibbled away at the hunting grounds and open dungeons the two guilds had treated like private property, coaxed existing members into their own ranks, and expanded their influence over the Starting City so that new players joined them instead.
Once things reached that point, Phoenix and Minamoto went on highest alert. That their guilds would shrink was already as good as decided. They could not, however, afford to lose the standing of a great guild. Their leadership felt the crisis keenly: one wrong step, and Phoenix and Minamoto—once great guilds—might fall to the level of ordinary mid-sized ones.
"Don't give an inch!"
"Hold as if you're ready for a guild war!"
Phoenix and Minamoto resisted fiercely against opponents who had joined forces, and fortunately they managed to blunt the other great guilds' offensive to some degree.
The problem was that once the external crisis quieted, conflict broke out within. Both guilds had lost their masters to Jin-soo, and the seats stood empty. While attacks poured in from outside, they had huddled together to survive even without a guild master. The moment a path to survival opened, greed bloomed. The officers who held power began a cutthroat scramble for the empty throne.
"Phoenix and Minamoto are a mess these days, huh?"
"Yeah. When a faction fight reaches all the way to the Starting City, that says it all."
"They're not idiots—why are they fighting each other? Anyone can see the other big guilds are the ones who'll profit."
"Either they're fools who can't see an inch ahead, or they can see the future and still refuse to be the one who yields."
Word of the internal power struggles reached even Jin-soo and Shin Sua, who had thrown themselves into hunting and were living ordinary days since then.
Human greed really has no end.
Jin-soo learned of the infighting over a meal and clicked his tongue. He felt no particular responsibility for Phoenix and Minamoto tearing themselves apart, and he had no intention of stepping in.
"Phoenix seems to have settled things to some extent. Minamoto hasn't, I hear?"
"The Ogawa faction and the Fujiwara faction look pretty evenly matched."
The words that followed changed his thinking.
The Ogawa faction?
Ogawa was the man who had led the Sasaki pursuit team, chased Jin-soo, and ended up his slave instead.
They said he was twenty-second among Minamoto's officers.
With the upper ranks swept away by the Bone Dragon's breath, he had seized his chance.
Good thing I let him live back then.
Ogawa had been part of Minamoto's Bone Dragon subjugation force. He didn't know it, but surviving that breath had not been pure luck. Jin-soo had deliberately spared him and let him go.