112. My Buff is a Drug
112. My Buff is a Drug
'That should do.'
The relic for Kwon Jin-ah was already half-done, so he'd wrapped it up quickly.
It might be slightly less potent than just casting a buff on her directly, but the convenience was well worth it.
'Alright, I'll stop relic crafting for today, then...'
His cost pool had grown considerably.
It felt like the right time to take a fresh look at Buff Custom.
How far could he push Buff Custom if he really optimized it?
When a buff turned out to be impossible, sometimes it was a structural limitation, but plenty of times it was simply because he didn't have enough cost.
So he decided to pick up the analysis he'd started before.
'First, active skills...'
Buff Custom was supposedly "buff customization," but in practice it was basically skill customization.
Still, after using it for a while, he'd found there were more constraints on creating non-buff-type skills than he'd expected.
Suppose he made a buff with the phrase "can use Fireball" written into it.
Anyone who received that buff would be able to use a fireball shaped exactly the way Hye-yong imagined it.
But actually firing the skill still depended on the user's own specs.
Even if he dumped a ton of cost into making it "can use Level 8 Fireball," if the user didn't have enough mana, it wouldn't deliver its proper power.
Of course, he could add a mana-boosting buff on top of it.
But then he'd be stacking two buffs just to make one skill work, which was a huge waste of cost.
If he had to go all-in on a fight, channeling mana into bullets would be more useful, more convenient, and simpler.
'Now that I think about it, maybe I should try a few things while I'm here.'
Before, he'd tested with a low-powered Holy Bolt inside his room to avoid drawing attention, but that wasn't really necessary now.
There was a private 1v1 sparring room, sure, but more importantly, he had Mina's Inner World.
'Might as well get some use out of it. It's a perk from the Virus, after all.'
Hye-yong decided to message Mina.
[ Choi Hye-yong : Let me into the Inner World. ]
The moment he sent the message, his field of view shifted completely.
Right in front of him stood Mina, in her default suit, hands clasped behind her back, waiting.
"What brings you here?!"
"I want to test some buffs."
"Ah, I see! Here, come on in!"
Mina spread her arms wide, like a goalkeeper.
"What are you doing?"
"Weren't you going to test them by killing me?"
"If I need to, I'll tell you. Go play on your own."
"Yes—!"
Mina snapped her fingers, and in an instant the scenery transformed.
An outdoor pool in the middle of a desert...
Mina's outfit also shifted into a Japanese school swimsuit—a sukumizu.
'Oh...'
Still, Mina's chest—which fell solidly into the busty category—was visibly pressed tight by the fabric.
It was decent eye candy, anyway.
'She even conjured up a chair for me to sit in.'
Hye-yong settled into the shaded chair under the parasol, and Mina sprinted over and dove into the pool with gusto.
"Yahoo!"
Splash!
Boldly jumping in was nice and all, but she apparently didn't know how to swim.
Splish-splash-splish!
She didn't even manage a stroke; she just kept flailing in the water while fully submerged, then soon went limp and floated face-up, only her back drifting along.
"For crying out loud."
A dry laugh escaped him.
She was perfectly capable of entertaining herself, apparently.
He'd just let Mina do her thing and get on with why he'd come.
'Where was I again?'
He'd been analyzing whether it was actually worthwhile to create skills themselves—not buffs—via Buff Custom.
'Right, that's what I was doing.'
He'd thrown together something quick.
[ Ice Mage ]
Allows the use of magic that launches an ice spear.
Level 1 Icicle Spear usable.
'Icicle Spear.'
The air froze.
Above his palm, a chunk of ice gradually materialized—more of an awl than a spear.
"Mina, can you make something like a training dummy for magic testing? Something sturdy."
Mina, who had apparently figured out how to use an inner tube while practicing swimming, poked her head out of the water and answered.
"You could just use me standing there, you know?"
"I said no. Just make one."
"Got it!"
Snap!
Mina flicked her water-drenched fingers, and a target-like object appeared in front of Hye-yong.
Simplistic anime-style features—painted-on eyes, a smiling mouth, bright blonde hair, and a suit...
She'd modeled the training dummy after herself, emoji-style.
'Whatever. Let's just go with it.'
It'd be a hassle to ask her to remake it.
Ignoring that, he launched the ice awl floating above his palm.
Crack!
― Hieeng!
Struck square in the chest, the target wobbled, its face morphing into something like [>.<] and letting out a weird noise.
'She's got some tastes.'
Anyway, that was Level 1 for you.
It could hurt if it hit, but it wasn't the kind of impact that would seriously wound an Awakened or a monster.
Maybe roughly comparable to Han Geon-hu's Wind Blast.
He bumped it up one level at a time.
Crackle-crack!!
― Hieeeng!
"Urk."
When Icicle Spear hit Level 4, Hye-yong felt a dizzying wave of mana drain crash over him.
Without the right magical traits, not only did it fail to produce the proper force, the mana drain was brutal.
So what about simply jacking up his power and cutting the mana cost as if he'd acquired the traits?
Well, there was a problem: diminishing returns existed here, too.
Diminishing returns—meaning the gains taper off the more you invest.
Anyone who'd played their share of RPGs knew this.
For any stat, after a certain threshold, even huge boosts only yielded small actual gains.
These diminishing returns applied to all stats and functions—strength increases, stamina increases, everything—but a few categories were especially strict compared to regular stats: cost reduction and cooldown.
If he used cost to reduce mana consumption, it was efficient up to a certain breakpoint.
But once past that breakpoint, no matter how much cost he poured in, the effect became negligible.
Increasing his total mana and magic power, on the other hand, had relatively mild diminishing returns. Even if he went that route, though, it was still just as inefficient as using some other buff, as he'd already said.
Making magic with Buff Custom could be a neat toy, but unless you used exactly the right type for exactly the right situation, it was hard to treat as real combat power.
Teacher, what if you swapped the resource cost from mana to Divine Power? Wouldn't that make it usable?
Someone might want to ask that.
He'd explained this before, too.
Simply converting a skill that normally consumed mana into one that consumed Divine Power came with a massive cost of its own.
On top of that, magic and psychic abilities also required developing specific elemental affinities, so it was absurdly inefficient.
Ultimately, with this Buff Custom, he could mimic an all-rounder—someone slinging magic, blocking everything with shields, and still packing decent physical ability—but if he wanted efficiency, it was better to stick to buffing.
However, if he gave it to someone else, the efficiency was solid.
Give a person who already used ice magic a custom-made spell in exactly the form they wanted, and wouldn't they be thrilled?
Their mana pool and elemental affinity were already there.
For the recipient, it was simply a powerful new skill getting added to their kit.
In the end, the ability was designed to faithfully follow its name: "Buff Custom."
It was far more useful when given to someone else than when used on yourself.
'Icicle Spear.'
Crack—crackle—crack!!
― Hieeeng!!
He used all his cost to create a buff that boosted mana and strengthened cold affinity, then fired Icicle Spear.
The Mina-shaped training dummy, skewered by the spear, half-froze over.
But even so, his gut said a bullet-enhancing buff was still better.
'Same story even with more cost, huh.'
Teacher, so does that mean no matter how much my cost grows, I'm better off just shooting guns forever?
He wasn't entirely sure about that yet, but it wasn't as if there were no useful skills.
There were still the skills a Blessing Mage was supposed to have.
Being a Blessing Mage didn't mean you only had blessings.
A Blessing Mage was practically a surrogate for a priest by nature.
He could also acquire skills that gathered Divine Power to suppress enemies.
Among what Hye-yong had learned were "Holy Impact," which directly struck a foe with Divine Power;
"Holy Chain," which bound the enemy;
and "Light Seal," which lowered an enemy's stats.
They were mostly the type that hindered and weakened rather than dealing direct damage.
Of course, those were the skills of Instructor Yoo Ji-ah; he'd heard that Blessing Mages varied a lot from one to the next.
In the case of these sorts of skills, they could perform at a decent level when combined with Hye-yong's inherent Blessing Mage traits.
Up to now, he'd simply stuck with guns because they felt a little better.
Now that his cost had built up to this point, it seemed worth considering putting them to use.
'Holy Chain.'
He created a buff granting him the ability to use Holy Chain.
Clatter!
The ground didn't actually split, but chains burst upward in a dramatic display, wrapping around the Mina-shaped training dummy and binding it.
If this were a monster or an Awakened, they'd dodge before being caught or resist and break free, but the training dummy didn't resist, so it stayed tied up.
'Holy Impact.'
Smack!
Divine Power slammed hard into the dummy's head.
― Hieeng!
He'd set it to Level 10, but the power didn't seem all that strong.
'Light Seal would be pointless to test here, I guess...'
One thing he'd learned was that when creating active skills this way, mimicking skills that already existed in this world produced far better results.
'I'll check the Divine Power-based skills in the next raid.'
And finally, he couldn't wrap up without addressing restrictions.
Saving cost by placing limits on buffs—like making them exclusive skills or self-only—was something he'd used all along, so he figured everyone already knew.
So what happened if you pushed the restrictions to the extreme?
Could you create a glass cannon that dealt one explosive blow by making a single skill consume all your resources, or by setting its cooldown to about a million years?
Hye-yong had tried it, of course.
The diminishing returns he'd mentioned earlier applied here as well.
Setting the cost high enough to leave you exhausted after one shot might not be efficient, but it could be usable at least once someday. Cooldown restrictions, though, were far harsher.
Because of the Buff Custom's nature—you could make and delete buffs at will—it was hard to milk much benefit out of cooldown fiddling.
Buffs didn't really have cooldowns to begin with.
By that logic, even setting a very long cooldown only squeezed out a tiny benefit, so Hye-yong's stance was that you were better off not bothering.
'Making them exclusive or self-buffs does produce meaningful cost reduction, probably because blessings are normally something you can toss on anyone.'
Hye-yong's ability, in its identity, was about assisting others.
He could make himself strong, but it was inefficient—just crushing the problem with cost.
When facing a truly powerful enemy, protecting himself with relics and buffing his allies was the most efficient way to fight.
So making lots of trustworthy comrades was, in the end, the surest path to power.
In a sense, his ability was tailor-made for becoming a gigolo.
Somehow, the more he analyzed his abilities, the more he arrived at the conclusion: actively recruit more allies.
'Not that being a buff monkey in the back is bad. It's comfy, too. Just a little unsatisfying...'
Even if his cost increased massively down the line, that part probably wouldn't change much.
Hye-yong decided to call it here.
"I'm leaving now, Mina."
"Puha!"
At his words, Mina, who'd been submerged, popped right up.
"You're going already?"
"I finished what I came for."
"Yep! Take care! I'll send you out!"
Snap!
Mina raised her arm and flicked her fingers, and the next instant, the familiar ceiling filled his view.
'It's already time for dinner.'
He should eat with Lanfang.
With that thought, he picked up his terminal.
'Oh right. Don't I have Resonance?'
He'd been about to send a message, but realized he didn't need to, so he tucked it back into his pocket.
〔 Lanfang, what are you up to? 〕
〔 Ah, Master! 〕
〔 I was just about to have dinner! 〕
〔 Want to eat together? 〕
〔 Yes, I'd love to! Lanfang really, really loves eating with you, Master! 〕
'She really does sound happy.'
Using Resonance let him feel the other person's emotions to some degree.
He could tell it wasn't fake; she genuinely was thrilled, and that just left him feeling quietly satisfied.
'Alright then...'
He stepped outside, mulling over where to eat.
In front of the dorm, there was a bench for people waiting, and the moment Hye-yong emerged, a well-built male student stood up from it.
"Hello. You're Choi Hye-yong, right?"
[ 2nd Year ]
[ Yoo Il-seok ]
Lately, strangers had been seeking him out.