4. My Buff is a Drug
4. My Buff is a Drug
[ Feeling of Fullness ]
Instills a feeling of being full.
It looked like the buff had managed to take shape somehow.
Right after creating Feeling of Fullness, I took another look at Flower's Feast.
[ Flower's Feast ]
Cognitive Filter applied
Adaptive Stats 4-level increase
'As expected... the original stat increase dropped.'
The result was almost exactly what I'd predicted.
In the game, you could just throw things together and they'd pop out instantly, but here, the power I could wield was limited.
If the power I currently possessed was 100, then it was likely already split entirely between the two buffs, Flower's Feast and Feeling of Fullness.
'Let's see if I can compromise a little more.'
Adaptive Stats were versatile.
A safe option no matter who you cast them on.
Naturally, they had higher efficiency than buffs that pinpointed and raised specific stats like Strength or Stamina, and they'd consume more power.
So, like this.
[ Flower's Feast ]
Cognitive Filter applied
Stamina stat 3-level increase
Protection stat 2-level increase
[ Feeling of Fullness ]
Instills a feeling of being full
Magical Power stat 3-level increase
The people receiving these buffs were set in stone anyway.
This way, I could secure the stats more efficiently.
This was possible because I could freely delete and modify skills.
'Chae Hwa-ra will need a buff too, though.'
When it came to Chae Hwa-ra, she was considered the easiest female character to walk through in the modpack.
As long as you played along with her unique concept properly, her affection shot up quickly, so she was often used to farm sexual experience points from the early game.
So much so that for anyone who played the modpack classic-style without cheats or customs and was interested in the sex content, Chae Hwa-ra was usually their first experience.
That was how the system was designed.
In the game, once you raised affection past a certain point, they'd always agree to lewd requests, and in Chae Hwa-ra's case, her affection rose so easily that you'd hit the cap fast if you picked options that fit her concept.
On top of that, she had a hidden character trait, 'No Sexual Knowledge,' so even the affection threshold was low.
'Of course, this isn't inside a game, so things are probably a little different.'
Even if it wasn't exactly like that, raising her affection a lot would mean Bwitgwitgak would do something for me, so that in itself would be a big help.
In the end, the final buffs turned out like this.
[ Flower's Feast ]
Cognitive Filter applied
Stamina stat 2-level increase
Protection stat 1-level increase
[ Feeling of Fullness ]
Instills a feeling of being full
Magical Power stat 2-level increase
[ Power Surge ]
Strength stat 4-level increase
'Okay, that's reasonable. Came out just right.'
I agonized over the name for the buff I was going to give Chae Hwa-ra.
Power Surge.
I thought I'd nailed a perfectly chuunibyou-style name.
'Should I practice my cringey dialogue delivery too...?'
Who'd have thought a day would come when I'd have to interact face-to-face with the characters from my game?
You really do live long enough to see everything.
With this, preparations for tomorrow's raid were complete.
For what it was worth, the night had gotten late while I was getting ready.
In the middle of all that...
'I'm fucking starving.'
I'd seen a convenience store inside the academy building while passing by.
Remembering I hadn't eaten a thing since arriving here, I figured I ought to at least grab a snack.
'Let's see... they didn't use cash here, they used academy currency, right.'
I turned on my terminal and checked my 「Points Balance」.
My current balance was 628P.
Looking at the 「Goods Purchase」 app where you could buy all sorts of daily necessities through delivery, it seemed like 1P was roughly treated as a thousand won.
So, my current funds were about 630,000 won.
The rule here was that you had to handle dorm fees and meal costs all on your own with this.
The standards for flunking were also set by these points; to maintain your current rank, you had to pay a maintenance fee.
Even the lowest D-rank maintenance fee, if unpaid for three consecutive months, meant instant flunking, apparently.
This rank maintenance fee policy was said to closely mirror the system in actual Hunter society.
'I'm currently F-rank, so I get a base pay of 1,000 points a month.'
From that, the dorm fee was 300 points.
If I bought meals and pegged food costs at roughly 20,000 won a day, that was 600 points a month.
Since the F-rank maintenance fee was 300 points, to pay the maintenance fee on just my base pay, I'd have to live dirt poor or earn points on the side.
As always, society was a cruel place for anyone who couldn't earn their keep.
*
I walked down the hallway, checking my terminal.
The convenience store should be around here... ah, there it was.
The terminal had a map function too, which was convenient in many ways.
'Phew, guess I'm adapting.'
In the campus convenience store, students bought food or daily necessities, or sat at small tables drinking coffee, chatting and laughing.
My reason for heading to the convenience store was to buy a chocolate bar for Han Geon-hu.
I didn't really want to spend my pittance of money buying something for a guy, but in Han Geon-hu's case, giving him food was the most direct route, so I had no choice.
'There it is. I'll buy five of the same flavor and tell him I'm giving them away because they weren't to my taste.'
I was about to grab them and head to the checkout when I spotted a familiar face from today.
It was Choi Ah-young.
She was inspecting something, her gaze darting back and forth between a body wash that was clearly the cheap stuff and a regular-looking body wash.
Though the price difference wasn't even that big.
Swish.
Her hand reached for the regular one, then quickly changed direction and picked up the cheap body wash.
'So she went with that one after all.'
Hmm, struggling financially, I see.
Everyone had their burdens in life.
With a sigh, Choi Ah-young dropped the cheap body wash into her basket and turned around.
Standing still, my eyes met hers directly.
"Oh, hey?"
I was the first to greet her.
Ah-young's face showed she found my greeting incredibly awkward, but she returned it anyway.
"Hey. Your body... you feeling okay?"
"No issues now. More importantly, I'm sorry. I guess I was out of it back then."
"Don't worry about that. But... you speak just fine now, so why haven't you said a single word until now?"
Because that was Choi Hye-yong's character concept?
But I couldn't exactly say that here, so I just fumbled an excuse.
"Dunno. It's like I suddenly figured out how to talk, I guess."
"What's that supposed to mean."
Choi Ah-young let out a small snicker and then spoke as if giving a gentle order.
"Tomorrow, let's give it our best."
"Yeah. Let's do that."
"You can look forward to it!" — I held back the itching urge to say those words.
In Choi Ah-young's case, she was a character designed to be used as a party member even after the tutorial ended.
Decent stats and potential in many ways, with a personality that wasn't particularly abrasive.
Since she was on the verge of expulsion, I'd set it up so that if the player partied with her and succeeded in a few raids, her affection would rise quickly up to a certain point.
As such, I didn't bother making a separate buff for Choi Ah-young and planned to just make do with the one I'd made for Chae Hwa-ra.
She'd do just fine on her own without any special help anyway.
'Her back looks so lonely. Life must be really tough for her.'
The fact that Choi Ah-young, who had an all-around decent spec and was fairly pretty to boot, was scraping by at rock bottom like this was highly likely to be entirely my fault.
The plausibility of why Choi Ah-young had to be in such a total shitshow of a tutorial party.
Because I'd gotten too lazy to think about it and just handwaved it as "she had terrible luck."
'I did set her up as unlucky, but I never even imagined the process of her situation going down the shitter like that.'
If Choi Ah-young had actually lived through that process, it makes me think about how many unfair and absurd things she must have suffered.
'So she's a victim of my sloppy settings too.'
When she was just a game character moving according to set patterns, I felt nothing at all, but now, seeing her move and live and agonize over body washes with barely any price difference, I felt a little sorry for her.
*
Knock, knock, knock!
The next morning.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Hye-yong?"
Seo Ha-yoon's voice.
I got up right away and opened the door.
"I was waiting."
"Uh-huh. Then let's go."
The two of us walked together toward the Otherworld Waiting Room.
'I'm debating whether or not to mention the buffs.'
Rather than going to the trouble of explaining this and that, it seemed better to just let them experience it on the spot, so I kept my mouth shut and walked.
"You're here. Then I'll explain right away."
Everyone was already at the Otherworld Waiting Room, waiting.
As befitting the party leader, Choi Ah-young immediately started the briefing on the raid.
"The otherworld we're heading to this time is the 'Lair of the Giant Deep Forest Elephant Shrew.'"
So the first monster you faced in the tutorial chapter being the 'Giant Deep Forest Elephant Shrew' hadn't changed, it seemed.
For the record, I put it in because it was cute as hell.
"The Giant Deep Forest Elephant Shrew isn't hard to deal with, but its claws and teeth are pretty sharp, so you have to be careful. There's a weight class difference, so getting hurt is easy. The pattern to especially watch out for is its foot stomping. If it digs into the ground, it'll get annoying. When it starts stomping its feet, trying to dig, if you keep attacking its legs, you can break the pattern easily."
The more I listened to the explanation, the more I thought, I already know all these patterns.
"Other than that, there's nothing special. As long as we keep our heads on straight, we should be able to take it down without much trouble."
It certainly was a manageable opponent.
As long as there was no trouble.
In the game's story, the moment the raid started, Chae Hwa-ra would charge in, declaring she'd show her power, and slash the shrew's flank.
Then, hit by the tail of the rampaging shrew in pain, she'd get knocked clean out and faint.
As it rampaged, scattering red blood everywhere, Seo Ha-yoon would see that and collapse in a heap.
Han Geon-hu would fire off a single spell with pathetic firepower, then be too busy stuffing his face with a chocolate bar.
Choi Hye-yong did cast a buff on the only somewhat normal combat member, Choi Ah-young, but receiving a buff that only raised her Stamina stat by 1 wasn't enough for her to take on a raid monster alone.
She wasn't a combat-specialized type either.
The original story had the player next to her, as Choi Ah-young fretted helplessly, suddenly displaying unexpected skill and butchering the monster.
But this time, the progression would be a little different from the original.
'Ah, I'm kind of looking forward to this.'
Honestly, at this point, I was feeling almost giddy.
An actual raid, with game characters realized in reality.
Who else in the world would ever get to have such a novel experience?