9. My Buff is a Drug
9. My Buff is a Drug
"Huh? There's something like a knife in here."
Just as Seo Ha-yoon said, inside the dirt box, alongside the usual white stones, lay a single dagger that looked like it had been delicately carved from transparent ice.
It radiated an unmistakable coldness, as if it would be freezing to the touch.
Choi Ah-young examined it and explained.
"It's an ice crystal dagger. This thing sometimes drops as a reward when you clear this ice cave area. You can also get spears or bows, not just daggers."
Curious about the price, Hye-yong asked.
"Is it expensive?"
"Last time I sold one, it went for about 53 Points. Not sure about now."
Still, that translated to roughly fifty thousand won or so.
That was pretty lucky.
"The Soul Stone will probably sell for around 100 Points. Still, looks like we'll each walk away with 30 Points this time."
Choi Ah-young's voice was light, as if she finally felt like she had a little breathing room.
They were still a long way from gathering the points needed to maintain their rank, but she seemed to take heart from the fact that they'd successfully cleared their second raid.
Since students could send Points to each other via their terminals, they would settle up afterward: Choi Ah-young would sell the items on the market, divide the earnings, and send everyone their cut.
"Didn't we finish earlier than expected? We could take a little break and then run it a few more times, couldn't we?"
I brought it up because ending things here felt like a letdown.
But when she heard that, Choi Ah-young's expression grew even more regretful.
"I'd like to go a few more times, honestly... but I don't think we can because we don't have any entrance tickets. If we want to enter again, we have to buy Transition Stones."
"Wait, entrance tickets—you buy those with money?"
"Yeah. But you can get one free ticket per day for F-rank and E-rank difficulty levels. The otherworld we just cleared was F+ rank."
So it was... a kind of welfare product for the lowest rungs of society.
"How much is an F-rank entrance ticket?"
"Usually around 30 Points. There's a lot of variance, since they price them based on the wavelength emitted by the Transition Stone."
"So after you subtract the ticket cost, there really isn't much profit. And we have to split it among ourselves, too."
"Sometimes we even run a deficit. Soul Stones have a high appearance rate, but they don't drop every time. If an extra item drops instead, but even that's worthless... it feels pretty damn awful."
That explained why they handed out one free rescue ticket a day.
Life here was a lot more cutthroat than I'd thought.
'Well, this isn't exactly a place that's meant to protect and nurture you just because you're a student.'
According to the setting, humanity in this world was currently at war.
The enemy was a heterogeneous species that had nested on the moon.
After a protracted war, they had somehow succeeded in driving the heterogeneous species off Earth, but the damage to civilization had been catastrophic.
Transition Stones and Otherworld Crystals had appeared before humanity during the worst economic depression in history, almost like salvation.
The otherworlds, accessible by touching a Transition Stone to a crystal, bestowed new and mysterious resources that could restore the lost civilization.
The only ones able to enter them were the Awakened, a new humanity born with stones in their hearts.
The reason this facility, disguised as a school, had been created was simple.
To gather young Awakened and cultivate top-tiiiiier laborers for the state!
They framed it as a school, but it was already a labor market and an adult society.
Because of this, once you entered the facility, the environment pushed you to survive by your own strength, and rescue for the trash-tier was kept to a bare minimum.
'Plus, there was that one quirky setting.'
That quirky setting was Body Synchronization.
Being an Awakened didn't mean you could come and go from the otherworld as you pleased.
If you were exposed to the otherworld's atmosphere for too long or too often, you contracted a mysterious illness that sapped both body and mind, leaving you unable to enter the otherworld for a time.
Humanity, driven into a corner by this, researched new materials and eventually developed a new technology.
A device was invented that, after pickling an Awakened for about seven years and two months, allowed them to live in the otherworld with zero side effects.
But since spending seven years and two months inside a device barely big enough for two people to lie down in was practically impossible, they also developed a technique to solve this problem.
A mysterious substance extracted and synthesized from the otherworld's atmosphere.
This substance, which reacted only to the Awakened, kept the body close to its original state while the person spent seven years and two months in suspended sleep, preventing muscles and organs from deteriorating and even allowing for physical growth without any sense of incongruity.
Some growth was possible, but it was so minimal—at most a few more centimeters of height—that the person wouldn't even feel they had grown.
They said they would wake once every few months to have their condition checked for a day before falling back asleep.
Assuming you decided to enter the academy at seventeen and underwent the Synchronization Procedure, even if you slept through most of those seven years, you had still lived those seven years, making you twenty-four both legally and in practice.
In other words, all the Awakened in this facility were "adults" and accustomed to being treated as such.
'Since the setting says they all consented to be here, I guess that's that.'
What did it matter if their school years and early twenties were wiped out entirely?
Even if you graduated from here just without being trash-tier, you entered the upper crust of society immediately, so it was more than attractive enough.
And teenagers fundamentally wanted to be treated as adults as fast as possible!
Waking up to find themselves treated as adults didn't seem like much of a loss to them.
Moreover, they weren't just laborers—they were also soldiers, ready for when the time came.
While the heterogeneous species had been driven back, they were still presumed to be nested on the moon, and nobody knew when they might invade again.
The setting was that the moon's atmosphere, where the species had nested, was almost identical to the otherworld's, so a soldier who had undergone the Synchronization Procedure could fight on the moon without being crushed by the atmosphere.
The procedure, designed to acclimate an Awakened's body as closely as possible to the otherworld's elements, and the facility housing the "students" who received it—whether this was ultimately beneficial to the nation was still being tested, and the program continued to receive investment, according to the setting.
The students of this facility could be said to be squarely inhabiting the transitional phase of a technological plan devised by those who dreamed of extending beyond the otherworld to a world completely safe from invasion.
'...That's how it was written in the novel.'
Still, 30 Points seemed like an affordable amount...
For today, we decided to say our goodbyes and part ways.
"Since we cleared it without much trouble again today, let's try an E-rank difficulty tomorrow."
Once again, everyone agreed to Ah-young's suggestion to raise the difficulty a bit.
Then we split up to go do our own things.
'Can't really say I have my own things to do, though.'
Hye-yong decided to use the spare time to look around the facility a little more thoroughly.
< Physical Training Room >
So the gym was here.
< Swordsmanship Training Room >
And there was also a place solely for training the sword.
< Magic Research Lab >
This place didn't look like it was worth entering.
< Weapon Polishing Ground >
This looked like a training ground for students who used weapons other than the sword.
'In the game, they just made one training room with multiple doors. But here it's branched out completely.'
This was certainly more realistic.
< Shooting Range >
The shooting range.
'This looks like an obvious archery range.'
I was thinking that and about to pass right by.
Just then, I spotted a girl coming out of the shooting range with a pistol strapped to her thigh.
'...They have guns, too?'
I didn't really put guns in my modpack.
The original novel was the same way.
It wasn't that guns were phased out for any particular reason; it just felt like they were never even mentioned.
Thinking back, that novel was practically a collection of stray setting ideas, anyway.
But considering the author was Bwitgwitgak, it wasn't entirely incomprehensible.
'Since this place has turned into something closer to reality, there must be guns even though they weren't in the original setting.'
My interest was instantly piqued.
Because with a gun, it seemed like I could attack monsters without much difficulty.
After all, I figured I needed some means to defend my own body—that thought was what steered Hye-yong toward the shooting range.
But when I went further inside, everyone was just practicing archery.
'Where's the gun range?'
I walked around looking, and there it was.
A room with a gun picture hanging on it, tucked away in an inconspicuous corner.
'Seriously, bows being way more mainstream than guns. If anything is a classic fantasy trope, it's that.'
In some ways, it was an element that didn't quite make sense.
Anyway, I opened the door and went in.
Inside was a shooting range that, while tucked away, was still properly outfitted—a room with firearms lined up on the walls and targets set up.
It looked like someone was curled up in the corner sleeping under a blanket, but I didn't want to wake them, so I just quietly looked over the guns.
'Goddamn, these are fucking slick.'
I guess you could say the designs were a bit different from the guns I'd seen in movies.
Every single gun was engraved with small patterns resembling magic circles, which was fascinating.
'The only thing I've ever shot is a K-2, but since I'd want to travel light, wouldn't a pistol be better?'
I was just about to pick up a pistol to examine it more closely.
"Whooo do you think you are, touching the guns without permission~!"
Whoa, shit—scared the hell out of me.
Startled half to death, Hye-yong's gaze snapped toward the person who had been sleeping.
Scratching her disheveled hair with her right hand, a woman with a slurred, sluggish voice swayed groggily, as if she were drunk.
'What's with this person?'
Since the gun range didn't exist in the game or the original work to begin with, I had no idea who she was.
Was she some kind of security guard here?
"Sorry. I didn't know we weren't supposed to touch them. And I didn't want to wake you, so."
The sleepy-eyed woman didn't look like a student.
Under the blanket, it looked like she was wearing pajamas—as if she'd come here specifically to sleep.
"Ah, if you didn't know, it can't be helped~. From now on, just wake me up and ask."
Still, it was a relief that she seemed to have a chill personality.
"I'll do that."
"You came to shoot?"
"Yes."
The woman craned her neck and studied Hye-yong intently.
"First time seeing your face. You do have a firearm-related trait, right?"
"Huh? You need a trait for it?"
At that, the woman answered like yet another annoying bastard had shown up.
"What, is this your first time hearing about it? What year are you."
"First year."
"You sure you listened properly during first-semester classes?"
"I kind of dozed through them, to be honest."
"Wow, you're not shy about admitting that. You do realize I could dock your attitude points for that if I wanted?"
Wait, was that really a thing here?
Judging by how she talked, she wasn't a guard—probably at least a professor.
"Not that I'd actually dock you for something like that. Too much hassle. I'm just saying this to warn you: there are a lot of anal pricks around here who'll start shit over things like that, so watch yourself."
"Thank you. I'll be careful. But do you really need a trait to fire a gun at all?"
"No, but there's no point. Once you go above D-rank, almost every otherworld monstrous species comes wrapped in a Mana Barrier. If you have the trait, it's a different story; if you don't, guns are a no-go. The bullets can't hold any mana, so they can't pierce the barrier."
D-rank.
That was a story that didn't apply to Hye-yong at all right now.
And it wasn't like I'd be making guns my main weapon anyway.
"I'm F-rank... and I don't really carry a weapon around, you see. I came here thinking it would be nice to have some means to protect myself, even if it doesn't help much."
When she heard that, the woman looked at Hye-yong like she was observing some bizarre organism.
"Effff? It's second semester, and there's a guy with a rank this shitty? Wo~w. So you were a super worthless loser. I didn't get that impression, but now I see it."
This woman just came at me with a knife between her teeth and stabbed me right in the gut.
It seemed like, at this point, anyone who was F-rank was a rarity.
The idea that people around here viewed it as nearly a disability was probably right on the mark.
"Ah okay, okay. Acknowledged. Acknowledged. In that case, just go ahead and use a gun. It'll work juuust fine on you. But then why the hell haven't you picked a main weapon yet?"
"Well, I think it's because I'm a Blessing Mage."
"Blessing? If you're a blessing type, just quietly carry a shield around and that's it."
"Anyway, it's good to have a means of attacking, isn't it."
The woman gave a defeated little scoff.
"Alright. If you're dead set on it, I won't stop you, kid. It's not like I'm gonna live your life for you."
Still, she gave me a warning, as if mildly concerned.
"I'm saying this because it sounded like you really did sleep through your classes: remember that once you get used to one weapon, it's hard to build proficiency in others. I'm not telling you it's suicide without a good reason."
Right, the game had that setting.
The first weapon you set as your main would gain proficiency the fastest, and after that, the rate became 0.8x, then 0.7x, making it progressively harder to build proficiency.
I decided to mull it over for a moment.
'I'm a Blessing Mage, so I don't even have a weapon anyway. Isn't a gun better than scurrying around with a shield and some blunt weapon?'
Bows required a lot of strength and skill, and they seemed cumbersome.
Plus, I wasn't about to become a grandmaster with it or anything.
'In that case, should I try asking about it?'
Hye-yong decided to test out one of the game mechanics he knew.
"Doesn't really make much difference, does it? Wearing a weapon that suits you doesn't boost your blessing performance or Divine Power, right?"
That was how the stat and weapon bonus system worked.
There were weapons that gave bonuses depending on your trait, but for Blessing Mages, there wasn't really anything like that.
There were no weapons imbued with Divine Power, and even if you equipped a blunt weapon, it didn't grant any bonuses to your buffs.
"Well, that's true."
The woman answered that much.
In that case, there was no reason to hesitate anymore.
"I'd like to try shooting a pistol."
Of course, it wasn't like Hye-yong was a particularly good shot.
He had no reason to stubbornly force it when guns were supposedly so difficult without the right trait.
But Hye-yong had one thing he could rely on.
Buff Custom!
With Buff Custom, he had no doubt that he could easily create a buff to increase his firearm proficiency and shooting accuracy, and even imbue his bullets with mana.