She Had Gained Sniping Ability
“This True Ancestor shall ever be with you.”
It was a cool-sounding line I’d copied from somewhere and blurted out on impulse.
But the effect of that one sentence was far greater than I’d expected.
“Ahh, my lord…!”
Katarina suddenly burst into tears and started sobbing.
“Though this body die and die again a hundred times, though my bones be ground to dust and earth itself reclaim me, I shall remain forever loyal to you, my lord!”
“Master. Those words alone—that you are always with us—are enough. I fear nothing now.”
Even Siyeon, whose expression almost never changed, had tears glistening in her eyes.
“Yeah, Master! Lili’s gonna stay with you forever too!”
Even Lili was shouting in her own determined way.
They all looked genuinely moved.
Phew. Looks like I somehow got away with it.
I let out a secret sigh of relief inside.
Whether I’d phrased it well or my familiars were just too kind, I seemed to have managed to dress up the fact that I’d caused a huge nuisance with my clumsy skill control.
My conscience stung a little, though.
Still, it wasn’t as if I’d lied completely.
...I really am always with them, aren’t I?
To begin with, I spent most of my time lazing around in my room, so at home I was always with the girls anyway.
And even if they went out on errands or entered a gate, if I turned on Vision Share, I could always share their sight.
That counted as being together anytime, anywhere, didn’t it?
Of course.
It was the exact opposite of what lines like that usually implied—I’ll protect you and watch over you.
The problem was that the ones doing the protecting and watching over weren’t my familiars. It was me.
B-but still, I’m useful now in my own way...!
I wasn’t just dead weight anymore.
Book of the Dead and Divine Instrument: Death Scythe.
A buff skill that increased my familiars’ stats by fifty percent. And even an area attack that could one-shot an S-class monster.
That was enough to count as pulling my weight, right?
Granted, all of it came from item power.
Item power is still a legitimate part of skill.
In RPGs, everyone knows the most important content is gear setup.
There was an old saying that a master never blames her tools, but I absolutely did.
Why?
Because I wasn’t a master. I was the True Ancestor.
I was going to gather even more broken items and finally escape being useless for good.
I burned with resolve.
There were still two weeks left on the cooldown before I could enter Nightmare Floor 5 of the Tower of Trials again.
During that time, I did various things inside my new-and-improved shut-in sanctuary—my territory.
For example:
“Mmm. This blood sausage soup is quite edible as well.”
Eating delicious blood curd soup.
“This time, I shall reach Platinum without fail!”
Raging through solo queue.
“Hwaaam.... Ever since I took this body, I seem to sleep far more than before....”
Sleeping ten hours a day.
And besides that, refreshing Hunter Gallery and the Climber Community while lurking, and so on...?
...Huh?
I’d been sure I was living a really hard, busy life.
But looking back on it like this, I’d just been loafing around.
Still, if I were to defend myself, it wasn’t as if I’d done nothing but play. I’d done a fair amount of productive work too.
First, just as I’d planned before, I bought this entire building—the one containing my territory—outright.
I was a real landlord now.
And I also began researching the new weapon I’d obtained this time: the Death Scythe.
Life Harvest had a twenty-four-hour cooldown, so I was limited to using it exactly once a day, but I visited the Special Training Ground daily and repeated experiments with steady persistence.
The suffering I had to endure all this time...!
Pouring out my full 190 Blood Power every single day and swinging that scythe while grunting with effort was no easy ordeal.
Thanks to that blood-soaked labor, I managed to uncover some fairly meaningful information.
The first thing I learned was the exact power and range of Life Harvest.
When I activated the skill using up all 190 Blood Power, it could kill exactly two Lachesis.
In other words, it meant I could turn up to two S-class monsters into dust in a single strike.
Just in case, I tried summoning three and using it, but taking down three Lachesis at once was impossible.
Only two turned to ashes; the remaining one survived just fine.
The area of effect was also quite wide.
It seemed that all enemies within roughly a hundred-meter radius in the direction I swung the scythe were within range.
That was where it stood for now, and if I raised my Blood Power later, it’d probably get even stronger.
And then there was the second thing I learned.
Increasing Strength did not make the scythe any lighter.
I had some junk item I’d gotten as a Tower of Trials climbing reward before—a potion that massively boosted Strength temporarily for ten minutes.
I drank that and tried lifting the Death Scythe with my inflated Strength stat, but it was still heavy.
So Strength wasn’t what mattered?
That was pretty unexpected.
It wasn’t just heavy because my stats were trash.
Then how was I supposed to make it lighter?
I felt like I’d need to think on that a little more.
And then.
The third piece of information—the most important one.
It was something I discovered by accident while trying all kinds of experiments...
Amazingly, I could use the Death Scythe’s skill while Vision Share was active!
What that meant was this: if I swung the scythe from my room, the attack would go off on-site wherever my familiar’s vision was focused.
This is seriously broken, isn’t it?!
I could safely grind enemies to dust remotely from home.
Safety first. Risk aversion.
For someone whose creed was outside is dangerous, there couldn’t have been a more perfect function.
Of course, while it meant I didn’t have to go to the scene in person, I still had to physically heave that absurdly heavy scythe at home.
And there was one more fatal drawback to this remote activation.
Because I was using the skill at long range through a familiar as the medium, its power was greatly reduced compared to when I wielded the scythe myself.
I actually tested it by using the skill at full power on a Lachesis summoned into the training ground through a familiar’s shared vision, but the thing only staggered slightly instead of turning to dust and disappearing.
It was definitely a much weaker version than using it directly.
Even so, it was still a powerful attack capable of sweeping away most enemies, and above all, the absolute safety of remote sniping was an overwhelmingly huge advantage.
There was also one more highly attractive benefit.
My leveling.
Originally, I could only level up through rewards from the Tower of Trials.
The gates I sent my familiars into existed purely so they could level up or farm blood.
But if I landed the finishing blow on a monster with this remote skill, it counted as me killing the monster, which meant I got the experience!
So in actual combat, it would look something like this.
A swamp terrain inside some B-class gate in the countryside.
“Krrrraaaah!”
A house-sized crocodile demonic beast emerged from the mud.
A B-class boss monster, the Giant Alligator. It roared and charged at my familiars.
And in that instant—
Through Siyeon’s vision, our eyes met.
I clenched the Death Scythe tightly in my room.
Here goes! Life Harvest!
I swung the scythe with all my might.
The skill activated instantly hundreds of kilometers away at the scene.
Thud—splash!
Before it could even fully open those massive jaws, the creature dried into a shriveled mummy and collapsed face-first into the mud.
Then even that turned to dust, vanishing into the air without leaving so much as a trace behind.
It was a perfect instant kill.
You have harvested a life.
Your level has increased by 1.
You have reached Level 33.
Nice. Another level up!
Using this method, I managed to gain a total of three levels in just two weeks.
Killing monsters and gaining experience without leaving the house.
If hunting could be this effortless, I felt like I could do it for the rest of my life.
That said, if I wanted to use this remote hunting method properly in real combat, I had to manage my Blood Power pretty carefully.
Life Harvest had a payback mechanism: if it killed a living target and harvested its life force, some of the Blood Power I spent would be restored.
The problem was that the amount restored was proportional to the number of targets killed.
If I swept away a large number of weak mobs with an area attack, I recovered a fair amount of Blood Power. But if I focused down one strong enemy, I got very little back.
At the moment, my maximum Blood Power was 190.
It cost 120 Blood Power to activate Book of the Dead, the buff skill that strengthened my undead familiars.
If I used Book of the Dead, that left me with only 70 Blood Power.
If I were wielding the Death Scythe on-site myself, 70 Blood Power was still enough to comfortably cut down an A-class monster or so.
But in remote mode, where the skill came out as a degraded version, 70 wasn’t even close.
I had to fire it at a full 190 just to safely erase a single A-class monster.
But if I dumped all 190 into killing one strong enemy, the Blood Power recovery would be so low that I wouldn’t have enough left to use Book of the Dead afterward.
On the other hand, if I used the area attack on a bunch of weak mobs, my Blood Power filled right back up, so I could cast Book of the Dead without any trouble.
In other words, in actual battle I had to choose carefully and commit.
Either I used the area attack to wipe out weak mobs and then spent my replenished Blood Power buffing my familiars with Book of the Dead, or I gave up on buffing and fired off a full-power remote finisher to assassinate one dangerous enemy for certain.
I had to pick the right hand depending on the situation.
Anyway, as I spent my time like that, two weeks flew by before I knew it.
And at last, the time came for me to enter the second chapter of Floor 5 of the Tower of Trials.