Masterpiece

"I used it."

I told him the truth. There was no point lying about something I'd already used.

Hudson's eyes began to tremble like leaves in a gale.

"Ah…"

A deep sigh escaped his lips. Hope crumbled all at once. And of course it did — a talisman was essential if you wanted to reach Level 10. A talisman like the Fairy Queen's Tears, which drastically lowered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠equipment restrictions, was a treasure among treasures, the kind you couldn't obtain even if you wanted to. In that moment, the so-called dream of gear-carrying power vanished into thin air.

Still, he couldn't exactly scold me for using it. The Fairy Queen's Tears had belonged to the Star Seer from the start. I had promised to show him the path — never to hand over the Tears themselves.

"You don't need a talisman to step onto the path of the Sacred Blood at Level 10. I told you in advance so you wouldn't cling to false hope."

Of course, I would never admit I'd used it because I needed it for the Chid Mamba raid — not even if someone held a knife to my throat. And it wasn't entirely a lie, either. Lowering the restriction on a single piece of gear with the Fairy Queen's Tears wouldn't have solved Hudson's problems. He had far too many of those stacked up already.

I stared hard at Hudson's face. More precisely, at the parchment floating right in front of it.

…Hudson's status window was right there in front of me.

From the moment I'd heard his entire life story, his status had been floating plainly before my eyes — his real-world name Oliver, his gender, his age, even his alignment.

…Pathetic.

I clicked my tongue inwardly. Hudson's condition was so wretched it was hard to believe he was actually Level 9. The stats section alone was pitch-black despair. Judging by the talents he'd invested in, he'd spent at least 10,000 SP — and yet.

Intelligence should be 80 at absolute minimum.

Honestly, I could have raised him better with my toes. Intelligence, in particular, governed skill growth rate — how quickly you learned and mastered abilities. Plenty of observation-related skills also demanded high Intelligence. Looking at the Great Merchant class and the talents he'd chosen, his Intelligence should have been 80 at the very least, and every skill level should have been one higher than it was.

He never fought on the front lines himself, did he?

Mercenary Arts was Level 8. Merchant-class players always took the skill as a baseline, but this was excessive. His only combat skill was Cash Hammer at Level 5. At that point, wouldn't he have been better off as a commander or a priest?

Now I understood why low stats kept him from hunting. He was probably in the same boat as Jung Jinwoo. Unlike a game, being summoned into a real body and forced to fight might have terrified him.

…Viewing someone else's full status window was never a feature in the original game.

Still, it was fascinating. Observation skills that roughly assessed a target and displayed a few pieces of information existed, but nothing this detailed — nothing that laid bare every last thing — had ever been in the game. Was it because Hudson had opened up completely to me? That alone didn't seem like enough of an explanation. Something was crystallizing my knowledge into something more concrete.

One of my Hidden Traits… the Great Sage's function, maybe?

A power that revealed levels, uncovered what was hidden, and let me scrutinize another person's status window down to the last detail — there was no explanation for it outside of a Hidden Trait. And if it involved knowledge, it had to be connected to the Great Sage. Once I'd gained deep knowledge of Hudson, the Great Sage had triggered this phenomenon.

But a question remained.

Then why can't I see Isabella's status window?

Isabella was the character I knew best of all. She was my character — one I'd created and raised myself. Something that should have been visible simply wasn't. That meant viewing a status window required some other condition.

Background, more detailed memories and personal information… Come to think of it, I don't actually know much about Isabella at all.

I knew her, and yet I didn't. I didn't even know why she'd suddenly come to be called the Snake Princess. Only then did I realize that beyond her longing for the world outside the desert and her search for her own roots, I knew virtually nothing about her.

Hudson, by contrast, had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠poured out everything — even the things I didn't need to hear.

"…Star Seer. Does that mean another path exists for me?"

"It does."

I said it with absolute confidence. There were countless roads leading to Level 10. Even without relying on a talisman to compensate for low stats, there were more than enough ways to reach it. In all of Pangenia, I was probably the person who'd hit Level 10 the most times — he could trust me on that. Telling Hudson the actual method, however, was another matter entirely.

Hudson bowed his head, his expression even more desperate.

"Please show me the way."

"Start by shutting down the casino."

"…Excuse me?"

Desperation flipped to pure bewilderment in an instant. Shut down a perfectly profitable casino? You'd have to be insane.

"Ascending the path of the Sacred Blood demands your complete, undivided focus — and even that may not be enough. Running an enterprise of this scale inevitably eats up attention. So shut it down."

"Th-that can be handled by appointing a proxy manager."

"You think the City Council will leave a casino alone once its owner is gone?"

"…"

Hudson clamped his mouth shut. One of Arcana's three great casinos — plenty of people had their eyes on it. The moment Hudson stepped away, the Council wouldn't sit idle. Greedy materialists, every last one of them, mad for money.

But how did the Star Seer know all of this? Facts Hudson himself had only come to understand after more than a year living in Arcana and running his business.

Do the stars really tell him everything?

Listening to the Star Seer talk was enough to send chills down his spine. The man truly knew everything. When Hudson had mentioned his secret engagement to Serengeti, it had felt like being struck in the head with a hammer. He'd never met a Star Seer before, and the rumors about them all contradicted each other, so he couldn't be certain of anything — except that this man knew it all.

And since the man who knew everything had said a path existed, all that remained was Hudson's own faith.

Right. The casino doesn't matter.

Hudson bit his lip. He'd only run the casino to get into the Council in the first place. Becoming a councilor and proposing marriage to the marquis's house — that was what truly mattered. But the Council had never given Hudson, who hadn't reached Level 10, a single opportunity. They'd ignored him, used him however they could, and tried to devour him whole.

"…Even if I move as fast as possible, it'll take three days."

"I'll give you two. We leave after that."

"Where are we going?"

"Masterpiece."

"Master… piece?"

I smiled faintly. Masterpiece — the starting point of Main Quest 3, and the place that would solve every problem at once. And to get there, I needed Hudson.

Hudson is a walking potion and a shop rolled into one.

Water's Protection and Hermit's Shop Summon on top of that. His direct combat ability was low, but Hudson was the ultimate supporter — a merchant and a priest performing both roles at once. Letting talent like that go to waste was out of the question.

I spoke our destination clearly, word by word.

"We're going to the Tower of Spirits."

"…? The Tower of Spirits? That place actually exists?"

Hudson tilted his head. Rumors about the Tower of Spirits were everywhere, but no one had ever actually entered it.

Except someone had.

I have.

I'd been inside. Spirits — the most mysterious beings in this world. But ascending the Tower of Spirits was possible only for the chosen. Only those selected by the spirits themselves. It was an extremely rare occurrence. You needed the relevant talents, the completion of countless quests, and no small amount of luck just to get the chance. Among all gamers, the number who'd entered the Tower of Spirits could be counted on one hand — people chosen by a probability that bordered on miracle.

And entering the tower meant punching through that miraculous probability all over again.

But there was no need to worry. I didn't need to be chosen by a spirit in the first place.

The Druid's Nature Affinity.

As long as I held the Hidden Trait of a spirit-commanding Druid, I would be the one choosing spirits — never the other way around.

There wasn't even a moment to spare for teasing him. Setting up waypoints in advance whenever you had the time was the wise move in every respect. Exploring all of Arcana, though, would have been pure insanity.

"You're asking me to open the sewers?"

Hudson asked, aghast. The request to head for a dungeon at the very bottom of Arcana — down in the sewers — clearly didn't sit well with him.

"The monster rats down there aren't few in number. If you go in unprepared, even a Star Seer—"

"I know."

"Even the City Council gave up on the sewer dungeon. Are you sure about this?"

The high-and-mighty members of the City Council had abandoned any attempt to purify the sewers. Ordinary monster rats were Level 5, but their sheer numbers and the labyrinthine complexity of the underground waterways made a clean sweep impossible. On top of that, the dungeon boss of the sewers was a Level 8 monster — a dungeon raid boss that required at least six Level 8s to clear.

"It's fine."

"…Then I'll come with you."

Hudson spoke with a worried look. Opening the dungeon was within his authority, but if anything happened to the Star Seer, the dream and hope he'd only just obtained would vanish.

"Suit yourself."

I shrugged. A free healer volunteering to help — why turn that down?

Thud!

A massive sewer monster rat hit the floor. The ringleader of the monster rats that had plagued Arcana's residents for so long — the one that had slipped through the underground waterways without ever being caught — had finally been brought down.

With that, I'd acquired waypoints for both the desert city of Faisalmer and the golden city of Arcana. The location left something to be desired, but still.

"Y-you took down the mutant monster rat… alone?"

Hudson stared not at me but at Isabella, his eyes refusing to believe it. Isabella quietly slid her dagger back into her robes and stepped to my side as if it were nothing. The mutated monster rat was fast and skilled at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fleeing — but that made it a perfect counter for Isabella and her Assassin class.

No comparison at all, really.

And though I'd built her half as a challenge, Isabella was still a character I'd raised with genuine care. I'd only abandoned her because there seemed to be no way to break the queen's curse. She was in a completely different league from Hudson, who'd been leveled purely through carrying.

Hudson muttered under his breath, still incredulous.

"Incredible. The fighting itself was impressive, but sealing off the escape routes in advance was brilliant. Calculating even the water inflow times…"

Just as he said, every escape route the mutant monster rat might have used had been blocked beforehand. Blocking every passage in a tangled sewer system was, by any common sense, nearly impossible. But the water came in at different times through different channels, and by calculating every one of those timings and moving with precision, we'd cornered the rat and hunted it down with ease.

"Even a powerful monster is easy to catch if you use your head."

"This goes well beyond simply using your head…"

He calculated all of that mentally? Hudson couldn't believe it. Arcana's underground waterways numbered in the hundreds, even thousands. The inflow times differed for every channel — was calculating all of that even remotely possible? If the water-flow calculation had been off by even a single second, the mutant monster rat would have noticed instantly and fled. Even a high-performance computer would struggle with it.

He swallowed hard.

He's a monster.

The woman who'd soloed the mutant monster rat was a monster in her own right — but the real monster was the Star Seer. Plenty of people fought well. Plenty of people had high levels. But Hudson would stake his life on this: no one fought the way the Star Seer did.

As a Great Merchant, Hudson had met countless people and developed a knack for reading their natures. And the Star Seer was the kind of person you absolutely never wanted as an enemy.

Interesting.

Paying no mind to Hudson's stare, I looked at the messages floating before me.

The Lucky Dice. An item I'd obtained after killing the Chid Mamba — something I'd never seen once in all my time playing Pangenia. I'd assumed it was single-use. Had it been a passive hold effect all along?

And on top of that, the Constellation of Adventure had smacked its forehead. Two full tiers of reward upgrade combined.

I slowly reviewed the reward list and nodded with a satisfied expression.

Lucky me.