59. Ranfang(11)
59. Ranfang(11)
Shwaaak!
Lanfang's blade tonfa shredded the Mush Cluster—an F-rank raid monster that looked like three giant mushrooms fused together—to pieces in an instant.
"This is insane...."
The dazed look she gave the monster's corpse afterward said everything: the buff's performance was definitely sinking in.
'It'd be weird if she didn't notice. I dumped pretty much my entire cost into it, leaving just a sliver.'
The Agility stat could directly boost speed, I'd heard, but that part was minor—it mainly enhanced reaction time, situational adaptability, and bodily flexibility.
With a 10-level Agility stat buff on her, her reactions were visibly faster, her movements more fluid, and her attacks far more precise.
And on top of that, dagger proficiency.
That weapon, the blade tonfa, fell under the Dagger category in broad terms.
The higher her dagger proficiency, the better she could handle it.
With the buff active, she looked nothing like the Lanfang Hye-yong had subdued on the sparring ground.
'If I'd set it to Blade Tonfa Mastery, I could've saved some cost.'
For buffs Hye-yong cast on himself, he could include Blade Tonfa Mastery outright, since he never showed them to anyone.
But after attending every single class in the Blessing Mage curriculum and studying buff mechanics, he'd learned that proficiency-boosting buffs mostly fell into broad categories.
Dagger, longsword, axe, bow, and so on.
A dedicated buff could be brushed off as a unique trait, sure, but if he created one that broke too far from the mold, it might draw suspicion.
So even if it meant taking a small loss, he figured it was better to play it safe.
'If it were ever confirmed that Lanfang would never betray me, I'd happily slap every growth buff on her without a second thought.'
He could use the hiding function to apply them, but growing Lanfang's power only meant something if she became a fully trusted ally.
Right now, his focus had to be on searing the existence of Choi Hye-yong deep into her mind.
Hye-yong approached Lanfang, who was still staring at the spot where the monster had vanished, as if she couldn't believe what she'd just done.
"Lanfang."
"Y-yes!?"
"Chin up."
Confusion flickered across her face, but she lifted her chin.
Hye-yong gently stroked under her chin.
Like someone doting on a newly adopted puppy.
Lanfang flinched sharply, but stayed still, feeling his touch. She only spoke after he pulled his hand away.
"Wha-what was that just now?"
"Praise. It means you did well."
"......Huh? I-I am not a pet!!"
"Hmm. That's not what I meant. Or... do you actually want to be one? If so, just say the word. I'll take full responsibility and raise you."
"Uhk...!?"
The words take full responsibility and raise you hit Lanfang so hard she startled herself.
They were obviously humiliating.
He had to be saying it just to mess with her.
But... why did some corner of her heart find it appealing?
'Take... responsibility and raise me?'
There was no doubt—the buff on her now came from this man.
A single buff, boasting values that dwarfed all her own stats combined.
Right now she was brimming with strength and drive, but once the buff ended, she would clearly return to her usual lethargic self.
Taking responsibility and raising her—did that mean he'd follow her around and keep refreshing this buff?
'This man said he'd help me. That he'd party with me. With me.'
If he kept this buff on her, she could definitely perform in a higher-tier party than the one she was in now.
But why?
Why, after tormenting her the whole time, was he suddenly saying he'd treat her well?
To Lanfang, who'd believed Hye-yong hated her, it was nothing but a mystery.
'Could it be....'
But the more she thought about it, the more it actually made a strange kind of sense.
It seemed tied to that dream.
— I like you! I like you because you make me feel good!
Her own words overlapped in her mind, and her face flushed red all over again.
Had the man really come into her room and slept with her?
Maybe what he'd said was that kind of reward.
It might have just been a dream, but....
Right now, she felt like she had to shove everything else aside and ask.
"U-um! Yesterday...!!"
"Hm... looks like the reward's just soul stones this time. You keep them."
"Huh? U-um."
"What're you doing? Let's go."
"N-no!"
Hye-yong knew exactly what she was trying to say.
That was precisely why he cut her off on purpose.
The key was to neither confirm nor deny a thing.
"We didn't come all the way to raid together just to stop after one. I bought plenty of transition stones."
"......Okay."
True to Lanfang's passive nature, the moment Hye-yong pushed, she swallowed the words she'd been trying to say right back down.
-
Hye-yong's current buff was strong enough that even an ordinary person could fight monsters—assuming ordinary people could receive buffs, which they couldn't, since they weren't Awakened.
Anyway, to a buffed Lanfang, the raid monsters of the F-rank other world weren't opponents at all.
Instant kill. Quick kill. Slaughter.
It felt like less than thirty minutes had passed, and they'd already cleared six other worlds.
And every time....
"Lanfang. Come here."
"......."
Every single time she cleared one, without exception, he stroked under her chin.
She lifted her chin when told to, but it filled her with shame, as if she'd become an animal rather than a human.
And what shamed her more than anything was that, somehow, this didn't feel bad at all.
"Good girl, good girl. You fight well. Think you can do just as well next time?"
"Nh... y-yes."
He was openly treating her like a pet, so why didn't it feel bad?
Probably because she'd never really been praised in her life.
Up until now, her life had been one long series of things that "just were."
Her family was poor, so of course she helped with the household work.
Of course she didn't get a proper education.
China, shattered to pieces by war, had developed a strong regional autonomy. Outside of areas with considerable influence, schools were rare, and there was no compulsory education.
A poor family spending tuition money to send a child far away for schooling made no sense when there weren't even proper jobs to take. So they wrote it off with home education and left it at that.
From her parents, she'd received nothing but the food, clothing, and shelter needed to survive.
But they'd loaded her up with expectations.
They'd raised her diligently, so how many times had she heard that she had to catch a decent man from outside the tribe and lift the household back up?
Her mother and father always told her to keep her appearance neat so she could present as a demure woman—never to be proactive.
Even after she'd become an Awakened, nothing changed.
She ran around frantically for the party, draining monsters' strength, pulling aggro—and that was just expected.
Not a single word of thanks or praise.
Among party members or friends you'd think some praise would come naturally, but poor Lanfang hadn't even realized from the very start that she'd been suffering something close to ostracism.
Having only recently started receiving a proper education, she was slow to pick up on subtle social exclusion—she'd thought of them as close friends right up until they'd told her to her face she was useless.
She was clueless. Stupid.
For someone like her to receive praise from another person, she'd have to pull off something incredibly difficult.
Or else be forced into something blatantly unfair and self-sacrificing.
That kind of thinking had been buried deep in Lanfang's psyche.
"Good girl."
Stroke, stroke!
"Ooh...."
So what did that make this situation?
Being praised with words and touch at the same time, Lanfang felt her mood turning strange.
With a buff this insane, anyone could kill an F-rank monster.
What she'd done was the most expected thing imaginable.
Literally nothing special.
Yet this man praised her, told her she'd done well, over things that truly weren't anything.
'There's no reason to praise me, so why is he praising me.'
Lanfang had no immunity to praise.
Every effort she'd ever put into anything in her life had been treated as simply what was expected of her.
So now, for something this trivial—and being praised by the man she'd thought hated her most—it felt bad, but also not entirely bad. A strange, muddled state.
"I-I'm not a pet...."
Even as she said it, she didn't pull away from Hye-yong's hand stroking under her chin.
She even adjusted the angle so he could touch her more easily.
'Feels like I'm actually raising a puppy. Why's she so damn cute.'
Taking Lanfang through repeated F-rank other world raids like this felt, if he had to describe it, like playing frisbee with a dog.
Give her a buff, tell her to go, and she'd go kill a monster and come back.
Tell her to lift her chin for praise, and she'd do it—reluctantly, acting like she was only humoring him, but she'd glance up with eyes that seemed to expect something all the same.
And all Hye-yong did was stroke her and say good girl, good girl.
The charm point was that she kept insisting she wasn't a pet, but thanks to the repeated conditioning, every time she came back from a kill she'd hover awkwardly, already positioning herself to be touched.
"Alright, shall we move on to the next one?"
"Okaaay...."
Even as she fought monsters, Lanfang kept searching for the reason behind the praise.
It was something so utterly expected—so what could possibly be his reason for praising her?
'Right. He's trying to exploit my labor!'
Once the raid ended, the man would probably take all the profits.
If her actions brought him financial gain, wasn't that reason enough to throw some empty praise around?
She settled on that as her conclusion for why she was being praised.
If she wasn't being unfairly exploited, if she wasn't carving off her own flesh, of course she couldn't even hear a simple "well done." That was just how it was!
That belief was lodged solidly in Lanfang's mind.
She accepted the fact of her own exploitation and kept hunting monsters diligently.
The reason Lanfang had ended up with such an extremely passive personality was partly her environment, but it was also clearly the toxic fruit of utterly failed home education.
"Good girl, Lanfang. That's it for today. Since you did so well, I'll give your head a pat too."
Stroke, stroke!
"......."
Lanfang had stopped even saying she wasn't a pet now.
'Look at that—fully adapted. If just one day did this, imagine running her around for several more days of repeated conditioning. She might develop a slavery complex she never had before.'
With that thought, Hye-yong opened the final box of the day.
"Oh? Something's in here."
It always seemed like something showed up on the last one. He'd been half-expecting it.
Inside was what looked like a cord made of white fur.
[ Lesser Yeti Fur Collar ]
Stamina stat +1 level
Agility stat +1 level
Stamina recovery speed +1 level
The monster they'd just killed was a Lesser Yeti.
A shaggy creature about the size of a human torso, at best.
Its teeth were sharp enough to bite a person to death easily, but a buffed Lanfang was never going to fall to something like that—she'd simply cooked it with her blade tonfa.
"Ah, an artifact...."
Lanfang, who'd been peeking curiously to see what came out of the box, murmured softly at Hye-yong's reaction.
"This your first time seeing an artifact from a reward?"
"I've seen it once. This is the second time."
"It's my first. These things really don't drop."
Was the drop rate even 0.1%?
Actually, 0.1% might be relatively generous.
'Selling it would probably fetch around 700 coins, but....'
This artifact seemed like it had a use far more valuable than selling.
"Lanfang, do you have a neck-slot artifact?"
"No...."
"Okay. Stay still for a sec."
"Wha-what are you doing?"
Lanfang, who'd tensed up with her head raised, expecting something, instead felt the sensation of soft, warm fur wrapping gently around her neck.
"Ah...?"
Hye-yong had personally fastened the artifact around her neck.