First Gate (3)
KWA-AAAANG—!
Time Remaining — 14:32
Yu Haneul
Lv.18 (Exp: 2%)
Even the levels that had been climbing so steadily were starting to plateau as time wore on. With only E-Class beasts, the ceiling was painfully clear.
Still—this was nothing to sneeze at.
◈ Amplifying Shot (Ex)
◈ Lesser Heal (D)
◈ Lesser Mana Recovery (D)
◈ Lesser Purify (D)
◈ Lesser Barrier (D)
◈ Lesser Blessing (D)
Just looking at my newly stuffed skill window was enough to put my mind at ease.
Heal at level 0, Mana Recovery at 2, Purify at 4, Barrier at 6, Blessing at 8—skills unlocking in that order. Then at level 10, Lowest-Tier Heal (E) had upgraded into Lesser Heal (D), and the rest followed the same cadence, each one stepping up from lowest-tier to lesser every two levels after that. Hitting 18 just now finished the last of them: Blessing, now fully upgraded to lesser rank.
Granted, they were all pure healing and support—no attack skills, no mobility. But I had never expected cross-class skills in the first place.
This was more than enough to swagger around calling myself an Awakener. A D-Class one, sure, but still.
Past this point, levels would crawl and real power would get harder to claw free. Especially for a healer like me. Higher-grade beasts that actually knew how to use their mana properly wouldn't even flinch at cannon fire like this. Until I somehow landed an offensive skill, leveling was going to get very, very sluggish.
Even so…
As long as I stuck close to the protagonists, I would find a way to grow stronger.
The trials that came with that were a separate problem.
Catching my breath, I looked around. The siege weapons were starting to run dry. Ruins were ruins—stock had never been generous to begin with.
A little later, I loaded the last remaining cannonball and fired.
We scraped every last scrap of remaining ammunition into annihilating the beasts, and for a moment, a fragile peace settled over the walls.
I turned to Yeon Hajin with a look that clearly asked, Now what? He gestured, calling the party together.
Once we had gathered, he glanced around a little cautiously before speaking.
"Guys… doesn't this feel just a little unfinished?"
"…What?"
"If we push just a tiny bit harder, we could grow a lot more. What do you all think?"
He had never done this in the original.
They had just farmed mobs at a comfortable pace and wrapped it up cleanly.
I checked the others. Irritation sharpened Chae Yujeong's eyes; Yoon Chae-ah was staring at Yeon Hajin with a faintly dazed look.
I met his gaze head-on and asked,
"You confident?"
The cautious light in Yeon Hajin's eyes hardened. Then he answered with a faint smile.
"I am."
"Then do it. Everything you want."
"Huh? For real?"
He looked mildly startled—as if he hadn't actually expected anyone to accept so readily when he was the one who brought it up.
A sharp glare lanced over from Chae Yujeong's direction. I held it without flinching, and she quickly turned her head with a snort.
"Hah. Do whatever. I've got ways to get myself out alive either way."
As the pampered jewel of a potion house, she probably had no shortage of reliable escape tools. No matter how this went, she was confident she could save her own skin.
I glanced toward Yoon Chae-ah next. Our eyes met; she startled hard and ducked her head.
Once it looked like the party was more or less on board, Yeon Hajin pulled a flag from his inventory. Then he started tying it to the bare flagpole rising over the castle's main gate and hoisting it up.
A moment later, a red banner with a gold sword-and-shield emblem snapped at the very top of the pole.
At the same instant, a system window rose.
The Gate is evolving.
The timer that had been floating there vanished, and the gate information window rewrote itself.
One word snagged on my eye: Union Church.
All kinds of theories spun up in my head, but this was not the moment for them.
Thud— Thud—
The gate had evolved a full rank. Matching that, a C-Class gate boss was closing in.
"Yu Haneul. How far have your skills come?"
Yeon Hajin asked while watching the boss's silhouette beyond the wall.
"Heal, Mana Recovery, Purify, Barrier, Blessing—all of them lesser now."
"Top me up on mana first."
As requested, I leveled my sniper rifle at him, loaded the Mana Recovery skill, and fired.
Bang—! Ba-bang—!
After four shots, he said,
"Blessing too."
Blessing was a buff skill. It scaled to the recipient's own stat ratios, which made it wonderfully convenient—no need to tailor different buffs for different classes. It just leaned into whatever their main stats already were.
Bang—!
Stacking it didn't work, so one shot was enough.
The gold bullet unraveled into threads of light and wound around his body. A soft golden aura began to radiate from Yeon Hajin.
"Cover me well. I'm counting on you."
Looking down at the boss that had already reached the base of the wall, he simply jumped.
…Lunatic.
I peered over the edge. Down below, Yeon Hajin was already tangled up with a three-meter giant of a boss.
"……."
The Yeon Hajin of the original Academy Battle Mage had been extremely calculating and cold-blooded. If that same man was proposing this and then acting on it, he had solid grounds for it.
But in the original, when he cleared this dungeon, he had never brought up any extra challenge. Which meant he hadn't had enough grounds back then. And the only difference between that party and this one was a single person.
Me. Yu Haneul.
In other words: in his judgment, with my support alone, he could take a C-Class boss by himself.
The weight on my shoulders was heavy—and yet it didn't feel half bad.
"Haa…."
I exhaled, steadied my breathing, and shouldered the sniper rifle.
Then, with vision sharpened by the distinct sense that the original story was already twisting, I lined up on Yeon Hajin.
Bang—!
Whenever his mana looked about half spent, Lesser Mana Recovery.
Bang—!
Whenever Blessing's duration was running out, Lesser Blessing.
Bang—!
Whenever the boss wound up a big swing, Lesser Barrier.
The boss fight seemed to be going smoothly enough—until the first real disruption hit.
Kiiiyaaak— Kyaaak—
Dozens of flying beasts appeared in the sky and dove straight for the walls.
To check them, I packed pure mana into the rifle instead of a skill and fired at a descending beast.
Pik—!
It left only a light scratch—no real damage. Which told me they were D-Class.
Whether she had seen my shot bounce off or not, Chae Yujeong immediately started loosing arrows at the flyers. Wind coiled along her bowstring, shimmering.
Whoooosh—!
An arrow launched with a miniature storm behind it, punched through a diving beast's wing, and shredded it to ribbons.
Rude as she was—maybe that was why she was a heroine after all?
She dropped two of them in an instant.
Meanwhile Yoon Chae-ah was throwing throwing knives to keep the ones coming at me at bay. When one got too close, she vaulted onto its back, carved its throat open with a dagger, kicked the falling corpse away, and snapped back to the wall to resume her knife harassment.
Bang—!
Watching them, I fired Mana Recovery, Barrier, and Blessing at Chae Yujeong and Yoon Chae-ah, covering Yeon Hajin down below whenever I could spare a shot.
Ba-bang—! Bang—!
Of course, with everyone moving at combat speed across a chaotic field, I couldn't land every skill. When I missed, I fired again—kept firing until I hit—doing whatever it took to hold the line.
Just when things seemed to stabilize, their anti-air screen finally broke, and a few beasts came straight for me.
I rolled hard with the sniper still in hand and yanked a pistol from my inventory with the other.
I loaded Blessing into the pistol and fired it into my own forearm.
Golden heat-haze rose off my body at once. My own stats were nothing special, so a self-cast Blessing barely moved the needle—but against beasts lunging for me with jaws and claws, even that scrap of difference was desperate.
Whoosh—!
I ducked and rolled as claws raked for my head.
KRAK—!
A beast's beak punched into the stone where I had just been, with a sound that made my skin crawl.
Huff—
Dodging attacks that poured in from every direction like a storm, I closed the distance toward Yoon Chae-ah as hard as I could.
Seeing my situation, she rushed my way and started cutting beasts down; Chae Yujeong packed wind into her feet and sprinted to my position just as fast.
Slash—
In the brief window Yoon Chae-ah carved by cutting down a beast right in front of my face, I hesitated only a second—then aimed the sniper over the wall.
And fired Blessing straight into Yeon Hajin.
The flying beasts were still pouring in without end. The only way to end this was for Yeon Hajin to kill the boss and clear the gate as fast as possible.
He had said he was confident. If I just kept the buffs on him, he would handle the rest.
KRAK—!
Of course, the price of that one shot was having to roll across the stone again as a beak lunged for me in that same heartbeat.
"Haa…. Ha…."
Every time my lungs burned, I jammed Lesser Heal into my forearm with the pistol.
Burning mana to paper over failing stamina, firing Blessing and Mana Recovery at Yeon Hajin whenever Chae Yujeong and Yoon Chae-ah bought me a gap—I lost count of how many times I rolled.
Just as my mana was about to bottom out—
BOOM—!
Yeon Hajin succeeded in blowing the boss's head apart.
In that same instant, the world froze as if time itself had stopped.
The fluttering flag, the flying beasts mid-dive filling the sky—everything locked in place, pinned to the empty air.
The only things still moving were the four of us.
A system window rose before my eyes.