115. My Buff is a Drug
115. My Buff is a Drug
'Hmm...'
I could rack my brain all day, but no answer would come.
This was like hearing a price quote when you had no clue what the market rate was.
How could I pretend I knew what I was talking about if I didn't know the first thing?
'Yeah, I figured. I could think about this forever and I'd still never know.'
If I didn't know, I didn't know. Nothing else to it.
Hye-yong walked out confidently.
"Then mind telling me what the industry average is?"
"What?"
"I just don't know how much someone like me is supposed to get paid."
At that, Han Chae-hyun grinned.
"Heh, pretty confident. You want me to see what you can do and then set a price, is that it?"
Huh?
That wasn't quite what I meant.
"I like that attitude. Perfect timing, too—Lady Eun-ha's been curious about just how much strength you've been hiding."
Uh.
So they weren't chalking it up to a sudden power-up, but treating me like a him-suk-jjin who'd been concealing his real strength?
Well, that worked out just fine for me.
Hye-yong asked again just to be sure.
"Hiding strength?"
"Aren't you? You were just quietly living as an F-rank, and then suddenly you show off your abilities—that means you had some kind of agenda, right?"
Oh...
So that's the kind of conclusion the faction students had more or less settled on.
'Hmm. How should I play this?'
The biggest reason Hye-yong had been so fixated on hiding his strength up until now was fear—but honestly, it was also because he'd read way too many novels.
Whenever a protagonist had some special ability, didn't there always have to be an event where a faction looking to exploit it would attack?
People always said to distinguish fiction from reality, but this place was a lot closer to fiction than reality.
It seemed like something that could absolutely happen here, so he'd been trying to avoid doing anything that might stand out too much.
But after living here a while, attending classes, and learning a bit about society through the internet, he was starting to get a sense of things.
Just being ordinarily excellent rather than possessing some utterly freakish ability probably wouldn't cause any real problems.
And on top of that, didn't he now have two unconditionally loyal allies who'd come running the moment things got dangerous?
'Maybe it's about time to loosen up a little? I'll just show the Shield and the exclusive buffs.'
The biggest factor that let him even have thoughts like this, honestly, was learning that dying here didn't mean actually dying.
Judging by his behavior up until now, Hye-yong was a coward.
He'd even been scared of Lanfang at one point.
His personality hated creating any risk where he might actually die.
But once he learned he wouldn't really die, courage started creeping up little by little.
Sure, in the end, he didn't want to leave this place, and if he died and went back to his original world, he couldn't return—so the whole one-chance thing was still the same.
But the psychological weight of dying versus not dying was a completely different matter.
It meant he had some mental breathing room now.
Instead of,
「I've only got one life. My abilities are special, so if they get exposed, it could be goddamn dangerous. I have to hide them tight!」
it became more like,
「As long as I don't show off anything that looks obviously suspicious, it'll be fine. So what if I'm a little gifted? Is that a crime? How do the S-ranks here live, being so scared all the time? If I'm doing this anyway, might as well rise as high as I can. No one will look down on me anymore. How great is that?」
His mindset was gradually shifting in that direction.
'Yeah, whatever. I do want to know how well I stack up, too.'
Hye-yong decided to think positively about this one.
"I don't really have some hidden agenda. I just figured it's about time I start caring about my grades."
"Right, you gotta care about your grades. So, you'll do it? The ability assessment."
"Sure, why not."
"Tell me when you're free."
"Right now, until lunch... and then I'll be completely free starting from three."
"Got it. I'll message you on Messenger."
Han Chae-hyun answered like that and then turned around coolly.
'Eun-ha Group... Yoon Jun family, was it?'
The Yoon Jun family.
From what he'd looked up online, they were a chaebol family and a prestigious Awakened lineage.
There seemed to be almost no one in this world's Korea who didn't know them.
'If I could turn a massive faction like that into allies, I could do so goddamn much.'
If only he could find some way to work on that Eun-ha girl.
'If only her inner world had been open, I would've tried something.'
You couldn't do that kind of thing between people who didn't even know each other's faces.
'Sometimes I actually envy the Virus, you know. It just latches onto anyone it wants and twists them around however it pleases.'
The moment he thought exactly that.
— HYAAAAAAAK!!
— M-Murder! Someone's been murdered!!
'Huh?'
Screams burst out in an instant.
At the word 'murder', Hye-yong rushed back the way he came.
"Yes, run away. I have no intention of killing anyone who isn't a swordsman."
Students were shrieking and fleeing in utter panic.
"That is, if you're willing to bow your heads to me..."
A woman with long black hair walked slowly forward, sword hanging low.
Behind her, three corpses lay strewn about, apparently cut down by her blade.
'Sh-Shit. No matter how you look at it, that's the Virus.'
Was this some kind of tiger-summoning trick? The thing showed up the second he mentioned it.
Hye-yong hurriedly decided to call the two of them via Resonance.
〔 Kwon Jin-ah. Aberration. 〕
〔 Ah...! 〕
〔 Do you know where I am? 〕
〔 I'll come immediately. 〕
He'd call Lanfang, too.
〔 Lanfang, come to my location! 〕
〔 What's going on, Master? You sound urgent. 〕
〔 That Aberration thing's shown up. 〕
〔 I'm coming now, Master! 〕
By pushing strong intent into the Resonance, they could vaguely sense each other's location and find their way.
He'd given both Lanfang and Kwon Jin-ah a reasonable explanation about each other beforehand.
They'd probably meet and fight alongside each other without any issues.
'Then I need to figure something out myself until they get here.'
That was definitely the Virus.
It was hard to believe that student had just suddenly gone insane and started carving people up in the middle of the Facility.
Besides, when it came to the Virus, Hye-yong could die and come back without any major penalty.
So it was better to take the risk and try to learn something.
'She said she wouldn't kill anyone who wasn't a swordsman...'
To test whether that was really true, he decided to stand there without running even as the woman approached.
The Virus stopped about three steps in front of him and looked down at Hye-yong with eyes full of arrogance.
"You, not running away?"
"I'm too scared... my legs won't move."
"Hmm, you don't look like that to me."
The Virus came closer, pushed her face right up to his, and examined the look in Hye-yong's eyes carefully.
Even with such a beauty right in front of him, all he could feel was an eerie chill.
"Whatever. Cutting down civilians doesn't gain me anything..."
Just as she said that and started to walk past—
CRASH, BOOM!!
A thunderous roar erupted, and the hallway ceiling burst open along with it.
Tzzzzzzz!
The sound of dust and debris falling.
"Tch."
Suddenly showered with dust and debris, Hye-yong hastily deployed his Shield.
The Virus seemed to have evaded with a light backstep.
'The ceiling just blew up out of nowhere. What the hell is this?'
As the thick smoke cleared, the figure of a silver-haired girl who had landed in a classic superhero landing was revealed.
"Run away."
A flat, emotionless, almost dead-sounding voice.
Who was she again?
'Right, Uenami Yurie...'
It took less than a second for the memory to surface.
A custom character Hye-yong had personally created and inserted, commissioned by a sponsor.
She was a cybernetic human who appeared in Plain Magicians, an anime adapted from a Japanese novel.
Yurie rose to her feet and glanced sideways at Hye-yong.
"What are you doing? Run away."
"W-Well, I thought maybe I could help."
"Just don't get in the way."
She cut off all interest in him right there.
'She boosts her physical abilities with mana, then fights by closing in and detonating spells at point-blank range, right?'
Hye-yong always kept one page empty, with no skills on it at all.
He opened that empty page and created a buff that purely raised Magic Power.
[ Magic Amplification ]
Magic Power stat increased by 22 levels
Exclusive to Uenami Yurie
Focusing entirely on one stat got him 22 levels.
Considering that each level became harder to raise the higher it went, and that dumping everything into a single stat triggered diminishing returns, this was a pretty high number.
"Fairly... usable."
Even Yurie seemed slightly surprised when she confirmed the buff.
Anyway, once the Virus incident was over, everyone except the host would lose their memories, so it didn't really matter what buffs he put on anyone.
"I have no intention of cutting down anyone who isn't a swordsman... but if you stand against me, that's a different story."
The Virus, who had been quietly watching the situation, now rushed forward as if she saw no further need to observe.
Yurie charged out to meet her.
The moment the sword swung, Hye-yong deployed his Shield.
Yurie had been forming a mana barrier on her arm, apparently planning to block with her own power, but the sword struck Hye-yong's Shield first and bounced off.
Confirming that, Yurie ignored her defensive motion and thrust a fist straight into the Virus's stomach.
KWA-BAANG!
Her fist made contact, and then a crimson explosion erupted.
Engulfed in flames, the Virus was sent flying far back.
'Yeah. That's how she fought.'
She looked like a close-combat brawler, but in truth, she was a stylish-concept mage who blocked every attack at close range and then planted a mana-charged spell right into the opening to blast her enemy away.
A pretty faithful representation of the original work's setting.
"Blocked by something... Is it the one behind you?"
But the Virus didn't have a single scratch.
Even after an explosion like that at point-blank range.
Somehow, the flames had even gone out, and her clothes were perfectly fine.
'As I suspected, she probably can't be subdued by the characters of this world.'
Still, it was worth continuing the fight to get a read on her combat style and power.
"Such petty tricks mean absolutely nothing before an extremely honed blade. Allow me to demonstrate."
FWOOOSH!
Blue mana blazed up from the sword the Virus held, then quickly sharpened and settled into transparency.
Seeing that, Yurie charged.
It seemed she'd decided she needed to seize the upper hand in the first push.
Psh-sh-sh-sh-sht!
Five or six ice awls shot out with every step she took.
The Virus steadied her stance and traced a sword path that was both violent and natural.
With a single swing, dozens of ice awls split in half and clattered to the ground.
BZZZZT!
Yurie, who had closed the gap in the meantime, tried to capture the Virus by making high-voltage current course around her body.
But once again, a single swing of the sword demolished it all.
'What— the Shield...!'
A slight impact transmitted through his body!
Hye-yong's Shield was cleanly broken through as easily as slicing tofu.
At the same moment, Yurie's body split apart in jagged pieces.
From her severed head and arm, mechanical components burst out along with spurting blood, proving she was no ordinary human.
A mechanical sound—not a human one—leaked from her fallen head.
"Yurie... activation... impossible... body retrieval... impossible..."
Soon, her eyes dimmed.
"System... down..."
All movement ceased entirely.
Simultaneously, a white flame roared up and burned her entire body to nothing.
It seemed like it was set up to destroy the evidence upon death.
'That abnormal strength... it's confirmed.'
There had to be some kind of device nearby that justified that power.
"Now, do you understand a little? Such tricks mean nothing before this sword."
In that brief moment of realization, the Virus had already closed in right in front of him.
Hye-yong gulped and answered.
"Y-Yes."
"Then you can die as well."
The Virus raised her sword.
'Ghk!'
He braced himself for death and squeezed his eyes shut—but no sensation came.
It felt like something else had blocked the strike.
"You held out well, Student Choi Hye-yong. But you should run, too."
That voice.
It was Hye-yong's homeroom instructor, Lee Ji-eun.
Recognizing it, he opened his eyes to see something with a squishy, jelly-like texture blocking the sword.
Instructor Lee Ji-eun's ability.
She could create liquid from mana and control its state, right?
He'd heard about it, but this was the first time seeing it with his own eyes.
'Right now, running away is definitely the better move.'
While the jelly held back the sword, he ran without looking back.
"Instructor."
"Forget it, just go."
Right. Better to leave this to Lee Ji-eun and search for a method while moving around with Lanfang and Kwon Jin-ah.
Hye-yong put distance between himself and the Virus.
"Student Seong Yu-ran. I'd like to at least hear the reason for this."
"The reason..."
The Virus smirked.
"To complete my sword?"
"Running your mouth like that. How lovely."
Lee Ji-eun gathered her mana.
"You'll be doing the rest of your talking in an isolation cell."
-
Outside the lecture hall building.
Through the continuously maintained Resonance, the two had pinpointed Hye-yong's location and arrived almost simultaneously.
"Boss!"
"Buffer-nim!"
The two, who had run into each other along the way, each formed their own impressions.
'Boss... So this must be the person he mentioned before who wanted to become Master's subordinate.'
'This person is from the Secret Society's affiliated group... He told me to keep personal talk to a minimum, since even within the affiliated group, the details are classified. There are way more people my age getting tangled up in these things than I thought.'
And the moment they saw each other, they both felt an odd sense of rivalry.
'Rather than a subordinate, I'm a pet dog—so I should be the one showing more loyalty.'
'Someone from an affiliated group that has to keep even its connection to the Secret Society a secret... Compared to them, I, who officially became the Boss's subordinate, should be the one putting in more effort.'
After each had settled their impressions like that, the two came to stand right in front of Hye-yong.
"What should I do?"
"Where is the Aberration?"
It was tough to answer when they both asked at once.
Hye-yong drew their attention with a couple of throat-clearing 'ahems,' then spoke.
"Listen carefully."
There absolutely had to be a method to counter the Virus somewhere within this Facility.
From now on, they had to go find it.