Her Plan
"What the hell is that?"
Minwoo woke to a woman's voice, close enough that it seemed to be coming from right beside him. And there, filling his vision the moment his eyes opened, was Kang Jia.
"W-what?"
He jolted upright. Her image was right there in front of him — and it was talking.
"That's right, Dad. It says some guy put equipment on me, and I can't take it off. Mm. I don't know what he gets out of putting it on me, and it looks weird, but my abilities have been amplified like crazy. Anyway, it says if I climb the Tower, I'll get information on the crafter who's doing this to me. If the System is saying it, it can't all be fake. And it says once I find him, I can go back to how I was."
She was telling her parents. Right away.
He'd thought it was just a visual model. The fact that it came with audio too threw him completely. Still, the situation snapped into focus at once. They looked close — close enough that a flicker of envy mixed with something that didn't sit well in his chest. Worse, she didn't seem like the type to suffer in silence, which meant his plan was already going off the rails. The leisurely pace he'd sworn to take just yesterday felt laughable now. A restless urgency was already tightening behind his ribs.
Assuming she'd think like some friendless orphan had been a fatal miscalculation. Deciding she wouldn't tell her family — or anyone around her — had been stupid. Honestly, he never imagined she'd go straight to her mother about her pubic hair turning into a heart. It was a private part, for god's sake.
Or maybe that's exactly why she told them?
Regret was already too late. And even now, she was apparently laying it all out for her parents.
"I should tell the guild too, get equipment and party support, then climb as fast as I can. The Tower's layout is the same everywhere anyway. ...I know, Dad! I'll go in prepared. I get that you're worried about the monsters, but I'm more worried about what's happening to my body right now than I am about the Tower. Yeah. Right. Endless white space, monsters spawn, you kill them. I made it to the thirteenth floor myself. Mm. I'll make sure to bring an Escape Stone so I can get out before I die. Nothing's going to happen, okay?"
He couldn't hear the other side of the call, but he could infer most of it. That she was in a guild, though — that was new.
They said she was just a college student. What kind of fan club president doesn't even know this?
It was information that hadn't gotten out because she'd contracted to quietly finish university first, but he blamed the fan club president's incompetence anyway.
"I could already take goblins easily with my old stats, and now my Vitality is 36, Dad. They won't even be able to scratch me up to the thirtieth floor. ...I know that. I think so too. But I can handle it, okay? You know the monsters change every five floors. So I'll at least push to the twentieth floor as fast as I can. Yeah?"
They seemed to go back and forth for a while before things quieted down. Her father clearly understood how serious the situation was, but he was a parent — of course he was worried. Stack a change in crotch hair against risking your life climbing the Tower, and putting your life on the line was obviously the worse option.
If you're a parent, worrying is only natural. ...Is it?
A brief silence settled while he sat with that bitterness. In the quiet, he organized everything he'd seen the moment he woke up.
He couldn't see her surroundings or anything else, but he could see her face, her expressions, and hear every word. Volume control worked with just a thought. He could even pick up the things she muttered to herself in detail. He'd probably be able to hear her breathing, too. Should he count himself lucky that he didn't have to keep her chattering image floating in front of his face all day? Not that he wasn't planning to listen to every word anyway. It felt like he'd left a one-woman broadcast running in the background.
Meanwhile, she started talking again.
"So we shouldn't tell the guild the details of what's happened to my body? Mm."
"Obviously going to a hospital is pointless — the equipment window shows I'm wearing gear. A psych eval, though? Just in case? Uh... yeah. I'd rather be sure too. The guild should have a facility for checking mental influence, right?"
"Mom said we should tell the guild everything, since there might be parts where we need their help... but Dad, you think it's better not to tell them everything? Why?"
"...Right. Common sense says there's no way someone could remotely put equipment on another person... You're right, Dad. I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't gone through it myself. Even in the Mana Department, the basic premise they teach is that all abilities only manifest within your own body."
Watching her assess her situation and lay out a plan, he felt a flicker of fear. So this was how a highly intelligent woman ran her deductions. Even her voice was clipped and precise, radiating a sharpness that made it seem like she could pinpoint his location and have him in a cell at any moment.
"Then I need to go to the guild and convince them I have to climb a lot of floors in a very short time. Honestly, if I just offer to turn over all the materials I get while climbing, the cost of borrowed equipment and monster intel will more than pay for itself. Yeah. That's right. You said some of your friends are famous hunters, didn't you?"
"Isn't there a professor Mom knows who published a paper on the synergy between equipment and a hunter's mana wavelength? Yeah. That's the one. If I offer to help the lab with wavelength research related to my current body, maybe something that could identify the cause will come out of it? I'll give that professor a rough version of the situation. Yeah, yeah. I understand what Mom's saying, but... yeah, that's true."
What on earth had her mother been saying? And what the hell was mana wavelength synergy supposed to mean?
"Right. If I take an ability test and show them the results, Changwoon Guild will throw serious support at me immediately. Honestly, looking at my Vitality alone, reaching near the fortieth floor is just a matter of time. Yeah. I've never tried it, but they don't say you can climb as many floors as the number on your Vitality for nothing, right? And I'm not even a Vitality-type hunter... Mm. That's true. I know hunters all go up after preparing like crazy. And yeah, I am trying to force a climb right now. But I can't just not do it, can I? This kind of thing has to be stopped before it gets bigger."
Her expression was resolute. She was genuinely furious.
Minwoo was thoroughly rattled. Things were accelerating in a completely different direction from the plan he'd been laying out. He hadn't known her circumstances and connections were this good. He hadn't expected her to respond like this. Not that any of that was more than an excuse.
She'd only learned she had Unique Equipment equipped a few hours ago, and she was already making plans and moving. He'd had days to research his ability, days to prepare, and he'd used none of it — he'd even accidentally bought a mountain of crafting materials. Her pace couldn't have been more different from his.
In a single day, desperation had set in. This was no time to sit around leisurely hawking equipment and watching her like a show. Even if he crafted something new, he needed to pick gear that would interfere with her actions as much as possible. The catch, of course, was that equipping anything still improved her abilities. He'd have to find equipment whose drawbacks were more lethal than the power-up it gave her.
"Am I going to tell my boyfriend? How am I supposed to tell him this. I'll have to see how things go, but I can't tell him right now. I'll think about it one more day and decide."
So she had a boyfriend. He was a little disappointed — then remembered she'd been registered as a virgin, and recovered.
It's not like the guy's even gotten to fuck her yet.
If he'd been even a little later, he might not have been able to register her at all.
Having found his composure again, he kept one ear on her voice beside him and went back to reviewing the equipment he could craft.
Unlike last time, the pubic hair recipe had moved into the owned section. He'd even made a Rare version, but the recipe itself was unchanged. He'd expected the Rare version to register separately. Apparently not. It seemed you could only craft it as a matter of probability.
If I remove it from her equipment window, it'll go back to the craftable recipes, right?
Of course he didn't try it. He couldn't afford that kind of luxury when every recipe slot counted. He checked the manual just in case this part was covered. It said the recipe would simply disappear.
Shit. That was close.
It wouldn't vanish completely, though. It looked like it would reappear if he equipped it on her again. So managing equipment by briefly unequipping and re-equipping was possible. At least it wasn't irreversible the moment you put something on. Every single recipe could be precious.
Last time he'd barely glanced and just picked the pubic hair recipe sitting at the top. This time, he studied all ten recipes carefully, looking for something that would actually get in her way. Some other recipe would have filled the pubic hair slot, but the names were still so unfamiliar he couldn't tell what was new.