85. My Buff is a Drug
85. My Buff is a Drug
July 12 (Thu) 8:10 AM
Choi Hye-yong's Room
"Nnngghhh......!!"
Morning.
As I stretched and shook off the last dregs of sleep, a message filled my vision.
[ Stamina stat level increased. ]
[ Strength stat level increased. ]
'Oh. A two-for-one special.'
The fruits of my labor spread out right before my eyes.
This grind I'd been calling training had finally yielded two tasty-looking crops.
Looked like the stats had settled into my body while I slept.
'I was wondering when Stamina would finally hit level 5. Took its sweet time.'
Hye-yong let out a long sigh and shoved himself out of bed.
All for another day of doing what needed to be done and pouring every remaining second into crafting holy relics.
-
[ Holy Relic Maker ]
Grants the ability to craft holy relics.
Holy Relic Crafting Proficiency level 16
Self-cast only
'Whoa. Level 16?'
Once you planted a Seed of Recognition, it just kept accumulating on its own.
Like interest piling up on a fixed deposit.
Which meant Hye-yong had become a man who grew stronger just by breathing — even if only by a tiny fraction.
But a jump from level 14 to level 16 in a single day was not normal.
Unless someone had just had a Seed of Recognition violently carved into them for the first time.
'Kwon Jin-ah...... was it?'
So did that mean the whole scene I put on yesterday had really drilled its way into her?
'If it wasn't that, there's no other hole for the cost to spike like this.'
Hye-yong tried to picture Kwon Jin-ah's face.
'I only ever saw her in the dark, so I thought her hair was black, but once we stepped inside the cafe, it was actually a green tone.'
A very deep shade of green hair.
Same with her eyes — they were dark-hued, but if you looked closely, a violet tint swirled in them.
If I had to sum her up, she had a dark vibe with green hair and violet eyes.
Looking at the Awakened, even if they were East Asian, their hair and eye colors seemed to be all over the place.
Take Lanfang — her eyes were a reddish tone. And Chae Hwa-ra's flowing twin tails were so blazingly red you could spot her from a mile away.
Nishimoto Kana also had that navy-blue hair feel to her.
Baek Yun-seo, too, had black hair streaked with red in patches.
Though in Baek Yun-seo's case, it felt more like she just dyed it that way.
'Is this because I jammed a fuckton of different hair colors into the characters when I was making them?'
Koreans' natural hair colors are mostly black, followed by brown.
Any other hair color is rare unless you dye it.
But in most creative works, characters' hair comes in every color under the sun.
And you almost never hear anyone complain about it.
Because everyone knows it's a device to give characters individuality.
Seeing that implemented and applied to actual reality gave me a weirdly novel feeling.
'If it's full of individuality, that's a welcome sight for me when I'm angling for a lay.'
But how the hell did my stream of consciousness drift all the way over here?
Hye-yong yanked his thoughts back on track — the Seed of Recognition.
'No matter how I look at it, it definitely took hold. Is there any way to confirm it right away? Ah, if only some Virus would pop up somewhere. If I could make her experience one, that'd be a direct hit.'
Or, if I could enter her Inner World, I could roughly gauge what was in her heart.
'......Will it work? Inner World Intrusion.'
According to what Mina said, Inner World Intrusion became possible when the target felt intense fear toward you.
'At some point, Lanfang stopped being scared of me, but I can still intrude on her.'
If I woke up horny in the middle of the night, I could pop into Lanfang's Inner World, violate her, and come right back anytime I wanted.
Kwon Jin-ah had also experienced extreme terror toward me at one point.
The moment when she lost her mind, grabbed my pant leg, clung to me and begged for forgiveness was still vivid in my memory.
If the condition for intrusion was based on 'history'.......
'Asking Mina would be the straight-line answer, but I've got stuff to do anyway. I'll try it tonight.'
If I could just get a read on her loyalty and betrayal likelihood, then I'd feel safe slapping a growth buff onto Kwon Jin-ah too.
'Alright. In that case, today as well.'
Hye-yong sat down at his desk and started fiddling with a ballpoint pen.
'Now then, let's see just how big the gap is between level 14 and level 16.'
He continued the work he'd been grinding at for days.
The task Hye-yong was currently doing was taking a 「Flaw」 that had been diligently filled with Divine Power and converting its form into that of a Blessing.
In vocational training, they called this the 「Engraving」 process.
Right now, he was in the middle of fervently engraving a buff he'd created called 'Comfortable Feeling' into this ballpoint pen.
Even Hye-yong's custom buffs possessed a unique blessing form.
The task was identifying that form and meticulously engraving it, bit by bit.
True to its reputation of taking several hours per item, it was a battle against himself laced with considerable tedium.
Still, Hye-yong found it enjoyable.
That's what having talent meant.
He had no idea how exceptional a level-14 proficiency was for a Holy Relic Maker, but with no roadblocks in his way and the feeling that the more he did it, the more manageable it got — there was no way he couldn't enjoy it.
'Ohhh. The 2-level difference is huge. The speed's gotten goddamn fast.'
This wasn't like jumping from level 5 to 7 — this was 14 to 16.
The difference was staggering.
At this speed, he might even finish one relic today.
'There's no one I can ask, but...... isn't this some insane talent in the crafting field!?'
Come to think of it, Hye-yong wasn't limited to crafting only holy relics.
In this world, there were definitely Awakened who could manufacture Artifacts.
Right now, he was laser-focused on relics because the growth buff made them urgent, but gear was also an excellent way to get stronger.
He couldn't not try it all.
Hye-yong crafted the relic, completely losing track of time.
-
"Finished!"
Elated, Hye-yong held up the ballpoint pen and shouted.
The dorms were so well soundproofed that something like this wasn't even a nuisance.
'I'm a little nervous.......'
The buff Hye-yong had strived to engrave was this.
[ Comfortable Feeling ]
Comfortable Feeling effect level 5
Would the buff Hye-yong made actually work properly?!
'They said you use it like this.'
Hye-yong gently clasped the ballpoint pen in his right hand and offered a prayer to receive the blessing.
[ Comfortable Feeling ]
Comfortable Feeling effect level 4
'Oh?'
It cast properly.
The custom buff Hye-yong had made!
Granted, one level of performance had been shaved off.
'Is my Holy Relic Crafting proficiency not yet at the point where it can fully preserve the buff's performance?'
Hye-yong switched the page.
Remarkably, the buff remained active.
Even though he was alone, the corners of his mouth crept upward at the successful result.
'Damn, seeing it work exactly as I imagined just feels fucking amazing.'
The fact that it activated just by holding it in his hand meant it could be put to seriously useful applications.
'If I make a relic that grants a Shield buff, then I can use other buffs myself. Isn't that something?'
They might not stack, but if I wanted the buff again, I could just reapply it anytime.
No need to even switch pages.
'Actually, switching pages isn't that hard, so on my own it feels kinda pointless...... but it doesn't hurt to have it!'
This would be especially helpful for party play.
If danger came crashing down on me in the middle of a party operation, I'd have to switch my buff page to a shield to block it.
In that case, every single buff placed on my party members would get dispelled.
I'd have to switch pages back and recast them all.
And in that brief window of weakness, who knew what kind of disaster could strike?
But what if I walked around with a relic that provided adequate shield performance?
When I was in danger, I could simply block the attack with the relic instead of switching pages, and that would be that.
A massive convenience upgrade! was how you could put it.
'Holy relics are fucking insane! To think I had no idea until now. I've been living my otherworld life at a 50% loss!'
I also heard you can engrave blessings onto Artifacts.
'If I disguise them as artifacts and carry them around, there'd be no chance of dropping them and losing them either, heh.'
This ballpoint pen was only the beginning.
I had just taken my first step, carrying a grand, far-reaching dream.
-
There was one fairly strict rule governing Blessings.
Namely, that blessings could not be applied simultaneously with one another.
If there were any exceptions, they were blessings that came with a simultaneous-application feature built into them from the moment of creation.
However, in the case of those blessings, without exception, their exhibited performance was poor relative to the Blessing Mage's level.
They seemed to be used more as a way to just snag a couple of extra stat levels on top of everything else.
Upon hearing that, Hye-yong had thought, "Hah, cheap tricks," and tried experimenting with it.
But even with Hye-yong's ability, this one was a no-go.
Stacking did work, but the cost would split in half and just die out.
Let's say you could spend cost to create a buff with power of 100.
If you tried to add a condition like "will not disappear when another blessing is applied", it sucked down the cost like a madman.
A skill that should normally consume about 20 cost to create would use up all 100 and still come up short.
In cases like this, the "poor performance relative to the Blessing Mage's level" rule was being applied simultaneously.
Making the same blessing stackable with itself couldn't even be created at all.
'But what if holy relics enter the picture?'
Relics would also suffer a drastic performance drop if you crafted them with the simultaneous-application feature.
But — what if you crammed the simultaneous-application feature into artifacts on every single wearable slot?
Head, neck, chest, rings, and whatever else there was.
Just off the top of my head, there were over twenty slots.
Just imagine receiving all those effects at the same time.
Caked in buffs — wouldn't he become a human tank!?
'This is the form we've always desired......!!'
Just the thought of achieving that sent a thrilling jolt through his imagination.
If anyone else tried to do this, they'd have to gather every relic maker in the country who had a skill that could be applied simultaneously and have them each carefully stitch it together with different skills.
Because the condition was only "won't disappear under other buffs" — it wasn't that the same skill could stack.
But if you did it that way, what you gained was far too paltry compared to the manpower required.
For Hye-yong, however, it was a different story.
With Buff Custom, he could effortlessly churn out countless skills, each of which could be set to apply simultaneously.
In this world, at least, Choi Hye-yong was a very, very special person.
'First, I've confirmed my relic works properly. Now I've gotta make Lanfang's present!'
The Exchange near the Facility shut its doors the moment 9 PM hit.
The current time was 7:41 PM.
If I was going to move, now was the time.
-
[ Ring of Strength ]
Strength stat +1 level
[ Ring of Agility ]
Agility stat +1 level
[ Ring of Stamina ]
Stamina stat +1 level
[ Ring of Protection ]
Protection stat +1 level
[ Ring of Mana Recovery ]
Mana Recovery +1 level
[ Ring of Magic Power ]
Magic Power stat +1 level
[ Ring of Divine Power ]
Divine Power stat +1 level
'Spent a fair chunk of the money I'd saved up. Well, I can always earn it back.'
As I browsed the Exchange, I found a place that had gathered up a whole bunch of these cheap-ass rings, each with only a measly single stat level on them.
Looked like there was some company out there mass-producing these things.
Of course, "cheap-ass" still meant they were all in the 300 to 400 Point range.
I bought about three of each type of ring like this.
Since I'd be using them all as materials anyway, I also bought them as daily wear.
Rings weren't like "a ring's a ring" that you could wear anywhere — the wearable area was divided by thumb, index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers.
'Wow. Having rings on all ten fingers feels stuffy as hell.'
But that meant I could make this vanish.
Swoosh!
The moment I mentally commanded the artifacts to hide, every single ring on all ten fingers disappeared, like I'd never worn them at all.
'Haha. So the stat adjustments still apply even like this, right?'
By equipping those ten rings, Hye-yong secured two Strength stat +1 levels, two Agility stat +1 levels, two Stamina stat +1 levels, two Divine Power stat +1 levels, and two Protection stat +1 levels.
There was a reason I put it in such a long, grandiose way that just reading it could make your head spin.
Because stats don't do 1+1=2.
At lower levels you could practically call it the same, but it was technically different.
Adding one level to one level only brought you close to an approximation of level 2 — it didn't actually become level 2.
This was also why growth speed slowed down the higher your stat levels got.
Hye-yong contacted Lanfang.
[ Choi Hye-yong : Lanfang. ]
[ Lanfang : Yes! Master! ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : Are you wearing any ring artifacts? ]
[ Lanfang : Yes! I didn't used to have many, but I went on lots of raids with Master and bought a lot! ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : The ones that just boost a single stat by 1 level, like a Ring of Strength, right? ]
[ Lanfang : Yes. I don't have the money to buy proper rings....... ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : Did you buy for all ten finger slots? ]
[ Lanfang : The ring finger on my left hand is empty. ]
"Oh."
One's empty?
[ Choi Hye-yong : Don't go buying one for that slot. Just wait. Agility stat works, right? ]
[ Lanfang : Ack! You don't have to buy me one....... ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : It's your Master giving it to you, so shut up and accept it. ]
[ Lanfang : Yes......! I'm so happy to be the pet dog of a kind Master......!! ]
Good thing I bought one of every type.
Hye-yong thought this as he clutched a ring in his hand.
'A growth buff. This has to come out right. It'll work out, won't it?'
Slowly, he drew up his Divine Power and began the process.