Chapter 81: The Second SSS+ Rank Ability

A crisp, refreshing morning.

It had been a long time since I'd slept straight through into the afternoon. I'd gone to bed late last night, so it was only natural—but still, more than eight hours.

"Haaah. Slept like a rock."

I stretched, came downstairs, and sat down to a lunch that might as well have been breakfast. Ever since the refrigerator had shown up, the table had climbed a notch. Fresh vegetables made the cut now, and the steaming stew was thick with actual ingredients.

"What, you learning how to cook these days?"

The side dishes seemed to change with every meal, so I asked. Kim Sujeong shrugged, openly proud of herself.

"I've been saving cooking videos off Nutube and teaching myself. Well? Not bad, right?"

She had the look of someone who couldn't boil a pack of ramen to save her life and would live on delivery until the day she died—and yet here she was, learning to cook and having a grand time doing it herself.

"At first I only started so I could earn my keep on the food bill, you know? But cooking's actually kind of fun. Maybe it's because the ingredients here are so fresh. It's wild how the flavor changes depending on what you throw in. The effects are great, too."

"Right? The stuff from here is worth cooking. Let's keep at it."

"..."

Once we'd eaten our fill, I called Kim Sujeong out in front of the cabin.

"Watch closely."

I pulled a box ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from my belt and set it down beside the cabin door. The medium box I'd brought back from the sewers got shoved down a slot, dropping to second priority.

"Whoa."

"Wha— Master! Is that a large box...?"

"Pretty sick, right?"

"You got that from there yesterday?"

"Yeah. From now on, dump crops or whatever else in here and it'll sort everything into the other boxes on its own. Just leave the matching kind of resource in each box you want it sorted into."

"No way. Can I try it right now?"

I snatched Kim Sujeong by the hair as she bolted for it.

"Ack!"

"Where do you think you're going before the adult even picks up his spoon? Unboxing ceremony first."

A luminous yellow light poured out in dazzling splendor. Just what was waiting in those fifty slots? When I opened the box, every one of them was packed solid with items.

"There we go."

Of course, as always, most of it was junk. Plenty of slots were nothing but filler, this and that tossed in to round out the roster. But this was Legendary grade. Even the junk in an S- rank Legendary box started at a high base grade, and a fair amount of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was actually useful.

And then there was the expensive reward that actually mattered. Unfortunately, there was no weapon. No armor, either. What the box held was a single ring and a handful of gems.

I looked at the ring first, and its radiance had me before I even opened the item window. This wasn't the murky dark-crimson glow I'd seen in the Corrupted Forest, red energy tangled up with shadow. I'd thought that darkness strangely beautiful, and here it was, held entirely inside the ring—like smoke that seemed alive and moving. Even if the options had been garbage, I would have wanted to wear it just for how pretty it was. And the options were perfect.

"Wait. An exclusive item?"

Exclusive items were usually ability-exclusive items, the sort an NPC with some special ability would pass down now and then. A blacksmith, for instance. Clear a blacksmith's quests long enough and they recognize you as a disciple, then hand over some treasured possession of their own. Those exclusive items almost always carry options tied tightly to amplifying that ability—raising a blacksmith skill's effect, its level, its grade.

And now one of those had shown up here. The Main Quest itself looked long and important enough that, thinking it over again, there was nothing strange about an item like this appearing. I'd just never seen it coming, so it startled me a little.

"A growth-type exclusive item..."

S rank from the very start, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no less. The option itself was good enough to drag a hollow laugh out of me. With an S-rank growth item, you'd expect the opening options to undershoot the grade—something you pocket with a we'll see later and move on. But this single line, All Stats +1 Rank, was arrogant to the point of insolence. The effect carried a weight so heavy it made the item's grade look cheap.

I pulled off the Ring of Monstrous Strength on the spot.

"This one's going in storage."

The Corrupted Ring from that S- rank Legendary box fit me so perfectly that, free accessory slot or not, I could have shut my eyes and yanked off anything to make room.

"Whoa. Are you kidding me? All stats, plus one rank? That's disgusting."

The reason the ring's efficiency was insane wasn't that it handed +1 rank to Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Magic one by one. It was written as +1 rank to all stats, taken together. To an ordinary hunter, you might well ask what the difference even was. Most hunters only had those four: Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Magic.

But among the tiny handful with certain rare abilities, a few awakened an entirely new stat suited to that ability. All Stats included those newly awakened stats in the +1 rank. And for me—someone who could learn multiple abilities—that effect applied as well. Every time I picked up a new ability and awakened a new stat, this ring would get stronger while I did nothing but breathe. On top of that, its effects would climb as it grew.

The moment I slipped it onto my finger, the ring glittered, luminous in the sunlight.

That alone was enough to satisfy me. I didn't so much as glance at the gems sitting beside it.

Honestly, I'd been a little uneasy when I first opened it. Ten years of my life in Farming World. I'd opened Legendary-grade boxes a handful of times, but maybe my expectations had always run too high—I didn't have many memories of a reward that actually beat them.

While I was still growing the map, I'd never once gotten my hands on a Legendary box. The only times I had were near the very end, once the grind-farming started. So part of it was simply that an item valuable enough to hit me with joy this pure didn't really exist for me anymore. In my memory, a Legendary box was nothing more than the box that auto-sorted. I hadn't been expecting much from what was inside.

If I truly had been expecting something, I never would have hauled it all the way home from the Corrupted Forest and—too tired to care—put off opening it until the next morning. If anything, expecting less let me enjoy a jackpot like this all the more.

Seeing how lukewarm I was about the rest, Kim Sujeong stole a glance at my face, then checked the remaining gems herself—and nearly fell over backward as she shouted.

"Hey! A mana stone! It's an S- rank mana stone!"

They weren't the Corrupted Ring. Even so, the gems beside it preened where they sat, as if to prove an S- rank box wasn't worth only a single prize.

I stored the rest of the rewards and set aside what I meant to take with me. The three items from the Corrupted Ogre were headed for the auction house, too. Every one of them was good. But once the Corrupted Ring was on my finger, my head held nothing except the next reward.

The long-awaited Main Quest reward. Hadn't I prepared to take down the Corrupted Ogre with this one thing in mind? An SSS+ rank ability selection.

Thinking back to when I'd first arrived and been handed a casual just do your best, experience had at least taught me this much: I had to choose very carefully. It offered the choice as if to say do whatever I liked, but the truth was that whatever I picked would only be one ability for enduring the difficulty that came with it—not an ability meant to make my life comfortable.

This was no different. It was a Main Quest reward. Another Main Quest would follow, and there was no telling what kind of freak—another Corrupted Ogre of a monster—might be waiting in it. So once again, I was being tested.

"Magic's the right answer, I'll give it that."

In fact, the moment that SSS+ rank ability selection had appeared as the Main Quest reward, I'd already settled on what to pick next. Magic. An SSS+ rank ability.

Looking back on how I'd first weighed melee weapons against summons, a summon had seemed like the better call—but a late-game ability like that lost out to magic I could use right away. Anything in the melee-weapon line, I'd ruled out completely. I'd kept magic and summons in mind for exactly one reason: whichever I chose, I figured it would drag my lacking Magic Power all the way up to S rank, the same way things ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had worked before. Even if I never mained magic, higher Magic Power meant more mana, and more mana meant my melee weapons hit harder too.

But clearing the Corrupted Tree and the Corrupted Forest changed my mind. If this energy of chaos was the same breed of thing as the Demon World biome I knew—if Divine Power was as close to poison against it as a matchup could get—then there was nothing left to agonize over.