You Can Always Try, Can’t You?
Catherine had been standing in front of the mirror for a long while, bare from the waist up, admiring her own body in silence.
She lifted her breasts carefully with both hands, then turned sideways to check the line of them from another angle.
At first she had worn a bright, satisfied expression, but at some point her brow pinched, and she muttered under her breath.
“This makes no sense....”
Woojin, looking exhausted, turned his head away and answered, “They’re big enough already. Now please put your clothes on.”
But Catherine didn’t hear a word he said.
She kneaded her own chest with grave concentration.
“No matter how unequal the world is, this is just too much. I’ve gone up to +3, and yet Lady Eileen, who’s still at +0, is bigger than me?”
Woojin instantly guessed what she was about to say and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Ah, seriously, don’t. Just don’t.”
“Woojin, my little brother.”
“I said don’t!”
Even Woojin’s desperate plea didn’t stop her. Catherine strode over to him without even bothering to cover her newly enlarged breasts and grabbed him by the shoulders.
Embarrassment? Catherine had left that behind long ago.
By now everything there was to see had been seen, everything there was to touch had been touched—what did it matter?
Something else mattered more.
“Just one more boost. One more. If it’s +4, the odds should be good too, right? Right?”
“Haah....”
Woojin pressed a hand to his forehead.
The odds, as he felt them, of going from +4 to +6 were somewhere around seventy to eighty percent.
That might sound high, but it still meant failure once every four or five tries.
“I keep telling you, it’ll erode....”
“If I just do one more, I feel like it’ll be perfect. Please....”
Faced with Catherine’s stubbornness, Woojin sighed and offered a suggestion.
If he wanted to stop this woman’s rampage, he needed fear she could see with her own eyes.
“Then let’s do this. The organization’s members we’ve got locked up aren’t all dead yet, right?”
“Yeah? I dumped them all in the underground prison.”
“Bring one of them here and strengthen him directly. Then see for yourself what erosion does. What if the erosion effect makes it shrivel up like an old woman’s chest?”
At the words old woman’s chest, Catherine flinched and stopped moving.
For a moment, apparently imagining it, she shuddered.
“...Then maybe we should check first. No harm in seeing it before I decide. I’ll bring one right away.”
***
A little while later, one of Prasap’s men was flung down in front of Woojin.
His mouth was taped shut and his arms and legs were bound so tightly with rope that he couldn’t even twitch.
“Mmph!! Mmmph!!”
The man stared at Woojin and Catherine in terror, his eyes darting between them.
Of course, Catherine was already properly dressed again. Woojin inspected the captive’s condition with a casual expression.
“Hm, what should we enhance first? Let’s start with something easy—the hand.”
Woojin placed his hand over the bound back of the man’s hand.
“Enhance, enhance, enhance.”
With his low murmur, golden mana coiled around it three times.
The man’s hand swelled up in an instant.
It became a so-called king-size fist.
As his own hand grotesquely enlarged, the man’s eyes went wide and he sucked in a ragged breath.
Woojin didn’t stop. He went straight into a fourth attempt.
Body Enhancement +4
“Damn it, it worked.”
At Woojin’s grumbling, Catherine, who had been watching from the side, let out a cry of dismay.
“I should’ve been the one to do that! It goes through at +4 too!”
“Just wait.”
Woojin gathered his mana again.
Then he kept forcing reversals until the failure message appeared, and repeated the enhancement process over and over.
After doing that about three times—
Enhancement failed. Target body has been eroded.
A violet flash washed over the man’s arm.
“There! Erosion!”
At the sight before her, Catherine gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.
The arm that had been gleaming gold began to turn blue in an instant.
It was the same sickly color as a severe bruise, as if the flesh were filling with blood and rotting from the inside.
That wasn’t all.
The previously taut muscle shriveled up like a deflated balloon, and the skin turned rougher than an old man’s.
Woojin roughly ripped the gag from the man’s mouth and asked, “Hey, how does your arm feel?”
The man stared at his own arm and screamed.
“My, my hand! What did you do to my hand, you devil!! I can’t feel anything! I—It won’t move! It won’t move at all!!”
“Oh? Really?”
The erosion penalty from Body Enhancement was far crueler than he’d expected.
It wasn’t just a simple stat drop; it was a total loss of function, with the nerves dying and the muscles going numb.
Woojin turned proudly to Catherine and said, “You still want more after seeing that, sis?”
Catherine imagined her own chest turning blue, dying, and shriveling up, and her face went pale as she shook her head.
“I’m glad I listened to you.... That’s a bit too much.”
“Right? So let’s be satisfied with +3.”
“But... if we get that erosion removal scroll or whatever, then I’m doing it. I’ll get it no matter what.”
“Well, if that happens, I’ll do it for you then. No promises on when.”
And just like that, the breast-related uproar that had shaken the fortress came to an end.
***
After dealing with Prasap’s remnants and finishing his second awakening, Woojin began to reclaim the Southeast Asian front in earnest.
Within a few days, his level had already reached 47.
He wasn’t just commanding goblins from the rear anymore.
After changing class to Augmentor, Woojin had started applying Body Enhancement to his own body as well.
By upgrading his muscle strength, bone density, and neural response speed all the way to +3, his physical ability had risen to a completely different level from before.
Using his enhanced body, Woojin cut into the monster ranks and swung his sword.
“Haaah!”
Shhk—!
The monster struck by his blade was split cleanly in two and dropped to the ground in a heap.
“Phew. This is starting to feel doable.”
Rather than letting the goblins do the killing and sharing the experience, Woojin’s own direct slaughter of the enemy was far more efficient in terms of experience gain.
The system was structured so that, when he killed something alone without summoning assistance, the main body received all the experience.
If I keep this pace up, I might even manage a third awakening before this expedition ends.
Normally, level 60 was when the door to a third awakening opened.
Even a second awakening had unlocked the absurdly overpowered Body Enhancement skill, so if he reached a third awakening, just what kind of power would be granted to him? Woojin felt a strange thrill bloom in his chest.
***
At the end of the day’s extermination run, while they were setting up camp, Catherine stretched and drifted casually over to Woojin’s side.
She seemed thoroughly satisfied with her newly acquired volume.
“Heh heh. It’s such a pain, honestly, having these things bounce every time I move. Haaah, what can you do? I guess this is the price of abundance.”
“...Sis, can you at least tone it down a little? How many days have you been like this already...?”
“Hm? What’s that? You like big-breasted women too? Woojin, you’re sneakier than you look.”
“Please, for the love of God, get a grip, woman....”
While Woojin shook his head and packed away the tent, Gabi—who was sitting nearby eating mango—opened her eyes wide and asked a question.
“Appa, do you like big boobs?”
Woojin froze for a split second, then turned to glare at Catherine like lightning.
“...You corrupted the kid with that crap!!”
Catherine, realizing she’d been caught, looked away and muttered, “S-sorry....”
Woojin gathered Gabi into his arms and gently stroked her hair.
“You don’t need to know about that stuff, Gabi. Right now, your face is the prettiest and cutest thing in the whole world. Okay?”
“Hehe, really? Then if Appa liked big boobs, I was gonna change too!”
“Change what...?”
“Gabi’s body can do anything! Look!”
Suddenly Gabi pulled out her goblin bat and tapped herself on the head.
“Turn into an adult, poof—!”
Bang—!
With a puff of mist, Gabi’s tiny body began to grow at once.
When the fog cleared, standing there was a woman with such a mature, breathtaking figure that both Woojin and Catherine could only stare, dumbstruck.
Her hair was split into a dazzling silver on one side and jet-black on the other, lending her an uncanny mystique.
It looked as though she had been made by blending Eileen and Yu Jihyun’s features half and half.
“How is it, Appa? Is Gabi pretty? I mixed the moms together. Hehe.”
When Gabi winked in the voice of a grown woman, Woojin clutched his chest and shouted, “N-no! Not my Gabi!! This look is forbidden until dirt gets in my eyes and I die!! Absolutely forbidden!!”
“Really? Actually, the smaller form is more comfortable anyway.”
Bang—!
Gabi returned to her original child form and beamed.
Woojin let out a sigh of relief and hugged her tight.
“Let’s live like this for a hundred years, a thousand years, Gabi. Got it?”
“Mm-hm!”
What broke that peaceful camp atmosphere was the ringing of Woojin’s phone in his pocket.
The caller was Yu Jihyun.
“Oh, Jihyun? You finished clearing your side too?”
[Yes, Oppa. It was very easy here. But... I heard a very strange rumor.]
The instant he heard that, a chill raced down the back of Woojin’s neck.
Kim Chulsoo!! That loose-lipped bastard finally...!
“W-what rumor?”
[Body Enhancement. Is that really true? That you can strengthen people too, not just items?]
“Uh, that... y-you heard?”
[Wait there, Oppa. I’m coming right over.]
“R-right now? Aren’t you far away? You can’t just fly all the way here, can you?”
[We have Gabi! Tell her to open a goblin door right now!!]
At Yu Jihyun’s firm voice, Woojin was left speechless.
Watching the situation from the side, Catherine wore a sly grin and whispered, “See? I told you, Woojin. Lady Jihyun’s going to react too. A woman’s greed never ends.”
“...Gabi. Can you open a door for the black mom?”
The white mom, the black mom, the little mom.
That was what Gabi called Eileen, Yu Jihyun, and Jo Ayoung.
“Okay! Got it!”
And just like that, a goblin door was made in the blink of an eye.
The moment it opened, Yu Jihyun burst through.
As soon as she saw Woojin, she cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“Oppa!! I need!! Boobs!! Now!!”
“C-calm down, Jihyun.”
“How am I supposed to calm down? This is a revolution! It’s insane! Huh? Ms. Catherine?!”
Yu Jihyun’s eyes locked onto Catherine’s changed silhouette.
Her eyes widened in shock as she took in Catherine’s chest, whose shirt buttons looked ready to burst at any second.
Catherine deliberately straightened her shoulders and smiled in triumph.
“Heh heh. You’re here, Lady Jihyun. I got the procedure first. It’s very... full. Quite nice.”
Yu Jihyun grabbed Woojin’s hand with trembling fingers.
Her eyes burned with a crazed kind of desire.
“Oppa, you’re the savior of women now! The god of all women in the world! Do mine too, right now!!”
Woojin was flustered, but he quickly nodded.
“A-alright. Calm down. I’ll do it.”
“Yes! Yes! That’s great!”
“You’re that excited...?”
“Of course!! That bitch Eileen kept bragging about how big her chest is!! Hah! Just wait and see!”
Woojin snorted.
If it was what his woman wanted, there was nothing he wouldn’t do.
The problem came next.
Without warning, a massive shadow appeared in the sky.
“Huh? What is that...?”
“What the hell, it’s a monster?”
Yu Jihyun spotted it and shot upward with a sharp cry.
Now that she had completed her second awakening, she no longer relied on the old method of flying by hurling her spear; she could wield true flight at will.
But something seemed off.
Yu Jihyun was coming back down without having dealt with the monster.
When she landed, Woojin asked, “What is it? What happened, Jihyun?”
“It is a monster, but the person riding it is Secretary Kim.”
“What?”
The flying monster that touched down on the ground was a giant undead bird reduced to little more than bone.
It looked like something Shangjin had made for him.
And atop it, Kim Chulsoo was climbing down with an awkward expression.
Seeing that, Woojin shouted in outrage.
“Damn it!! Seriously!! You shouldn’t be here!!”