Mana Equals Damage
To a hunter, mana is damage.
Whatever ability you have, a skill still costs mana to use, and most skills come with no cooldown at all—only a hard limit on how much mana they burn. You can cast whenever you please, but the moment that mana runs dry, the damage dries up with it.
Which is why anything that raises mana sells for a brutal price.
An option that raises damage outright sits, if you really look at it, a tier above an item that only raises mana. Jack the raw damage up and every skill hits harder, instead of scraping together enough mana to squeeze out one extra cast.
Options like that almost never drop, though, and even when they do the price is absurd. So people settle for the next best thing and raise their damage by raising their mana.
Strictly speaking, it isn't a damage option at all.
All it does is raise your DPS.
Same difference, either way.
Items with mana on them are treated as a pretty efficient option by hunters sitting on a middling pile of money, which is exactly why they go for serious prices. Even when you want a listing, you usually can't find one, and more often than not you have to go all the way to the Hunter Department Store before you can actually lay eyes on the stock.
That was why I'd come straight here.
"Mana items are on the third floor. I'll show you the way."
Even after getting a look at the state of me, the employee didn't let the polite smile slip, and guided Kim Sujeong and me along. The whole vast store had been papered in hunter gear, and the interior looked extremely high-end; the people drifting through it were draped in equipment that looked expensive in its own right. Next to them, I was dressed like I'd grabbed whatever was closest and thrown it on.
Maybe it was the three hundred million won I'd named. Before introducing a single piece on display, the employee turned to me.
"Would you prefer an accessory, sir?"
"An accessory's fine. Armor's fine too."
Accessories—you only had to look at what a Glass Stone went for. If a piece raised damage in any way, direct or indirect, you could assume one extra zero tacked onto the price compared with any other slot. Armor ran a little cheaper, since most hunters put defense first and favored stats, or special options tied to defense, after that. That didn't make it cheap. Mages like Kim Sujeong often found that even a stacked defense rating punched straight through the moment they were hit, so plenty of them wrote defense off at the bare minimum and loaded up on mana or damage instead. Still, next to accessories, it really was the cheaper buy.
The employee started with a bracelet.
"This came in three days ago. An item called Blue Ripple. Would you like to check the options yourself?"
"Yes."
A small blue gem was set into a bracelet whose colors balanced from end to end, and even at a glance it caught the eye.
A bracelet wrought from seawater stone, formed where the deep sea's dense mana pooled and pooled again. Thick mana brims within the rippling current.
◈ Magic Power +1 rank (maximum C)
◈ Mana recovery per minute +5%
"Oh."
Not bad.
A simple accessory I could just slip on already scored it points, and within the range of what I could equip right now, Magic Power +1 rank was nothing to sneeze at. Better still, it was a Hero-grade option capped at C, so with my Magic Power sitting at D-rank I figured I could get a long stretch of use out of it. And it didn't only raise Magic Power. It was a double option, bumping mana recovery per minute by five percent on top of that.
An accessory with two special options bolted on.
"The listed price is 270 million won."
The nice thing about a luxury Hunter Department Store is that you don't pay sales tax. It isn't unique to the department store, either. Worldwide, hunter items simply aren't taxed on the buyer—part reward for the work hunters put in, and part incentive, skipping the double tax so they'll keep chasing the rewards. Either way, the employee had set exactly the item I wanted in front of me.
"I'll show you the armor as well."
I like it. This is precisely the level I was after.
I nearly bought it on the spot, then asked just in case.
"Can I get Magic Power +2 ranks across two pieces of armor? If you've got it, show me. If not, I'll take this."
"Magic Power +1 rank, and Mana +15."
"I'll take this one."
"Right this way, sir."
Blue Ripple became mine the moment the payment went through.
"No need to wrap it."
I slid it onto my wrist at once. Magic Power that had sat at D-rank climbed to D+, and as the stat rose, my mana rose with it—to 80.
Thirty a rank.
No matter how I look at it, the weighting feels a little different from when I was playing Farming World.
I would have shopped longer, but with twenty million left I'd be lucky to scrounge a single cup of coffee out of a place like this.
"Oppa. You didn't regress or anything, did you? Or get possessed by somebody else? I'd be fine with a possessed Oppa. You already seem like a different person."
"Bullshit."
"It's because you seem way too much like someone else. Were you always like this? I mean... you've done nothing but game since you were little, so it's not like I even know what kind of person you are."
"..."
"I'm jealous."
Kim Sujeong, watching the shopping from beside me, clicked her tongue with real feeling—then shook it off just as fast. She knew the Glass Stone accessory was hers, after all. I'd given her a Glass Stone. If she stood there side-eyeing a three-hundred-million-won purchase and calling herself jealous, what kind of person would that make her?
I finished getting ready, tucked the PP box into my belt, and went to sleep. The login cooldown had long since run its course, so night or not, I could have gone right then. One night in a soft bed and a clean departure in the morning still beat sleeping on that miserable mattress.
"Mom! They said I might not be back for a few weeks this time. I'm going with Oppa, so don't worry. Yeah. I'm eating fine."
Kim Sujeong was working up to her goodbye with Mom.
Six days at the shortest. I had no intention of stretching past that if I could help it. As I'd said, this was only a test run—showing her around so we could live comfortably for a bit. Plant her on my farm and leave her there, and I might spend the rest of my life staring at that mug, whether it was Earth or the farm.
"So what am I supposed to do? Where are we going? Should I bring my keys?"
"What do you think you're supposed to do. Login!"
Logging in with one companion!
Kim Sujeong and I returned to the Rift Dimension together.
"Whew."
Clean air slid in at the tip of my nose. The first thing that registered was how different it felt from Earth, which had seemed somehow thick and stale.
"Master!"
And then Ruru's voice, the first I'd heard in a while. Gladness packed into it, and something like fear sunk underneath, she spilled every bit of backed-up chatter in a bright tinkling rush, as if she'd been waiting the whole time.
"Welcome back! You're not hurt anywhere... ah. Who is this person?"
"Uh... what? Is this a dungeon?"
Kim Sujeong looked around with a dazed face, and she and Ruru locked eyes almost at once. Whether they did or not, I let out a sigh of relief.
"Works fine even if we're not touching."
What had worried me about the login was the chance that going together might mean holding hands, or keeping some part of us in contact, and I'd hesitated over it. Fortunately, just intending to log in together had been enough to bring her along. A relief.
I introduced the two of them in the simplest way I could.
"She's my little sister."
"Eek! Master's... own blood?"
"W-what. A fairy?"
"Name's Ruru. Yeah. Says she's a fairy. According to her."
"Kyaa! She's so cute!"
"Ah... h-hello, Master's little sister!"
"What's with the 'Master'? Oppa, you into that?"
"Shut up."
You could tell from the way she carried herself that Kim Sujeong was the type to start showing off, but sure enough she settled in faster than the strange place could rattle her. She barely even flinched at Ruru—called her cute, if anything—and it took almost no time before the two of them were getting along. She took an interest in the farm, too.
"Oppa, what is this place?"
"My farm. Just think of it as a dungeon only I can enter."
"Whoa. That's insane. So this is where you got the Recovery Herbs, and the items? Is there a Glass Stone too?"
"The Recovery Herbs are something I planted. There's another dungeon inside here, so I just picked the rest up in there."
"No way... Jihyun unnie was telling the truth."
Far from being shaken, she only looked more fascinated.
"Whoa. What's that field out front? Were all of those Recovery Herbs you planted? They're gone now?"
"Ah. I harvested them all. Master! You didn't give an order about the seeds, so I didn't plant them."
"You were too lazy to plant them and you're making excuses."
"..."
One fairy alone chattered enough to keep the place from getting dull. Add one more loudmouth and the hut never got a quiet second.
"Insane. Insane. Oppa, your ability is seriously crazy."
I'd meant to show her the Farming Window as well and shut her up with it, but a simple explanation already had her making every fuss there was to make. The Farming Window could wait.
"I've really decided on my path. Oppa. Hire me as your manager. Caretaker's fine too. I actually love this kind of thing. Can't I be deputy manager of the farm?"
Watching her march up and volunteer for slavery on her own two feet, I got curious.
"You actually want to? Can you give up everything else and do it? Then there is a spot that would suit you perfectly."
I held a hand out to Kim Sujeong.
Bright-faced, she put out both of hers and caught mine.
"Looking forward to working with you, Boss!"
I scowled, shook her off, and held my hand out again.
The hand I offered this time was gripping a wooden watering can.