The Value of a Strategy Guide
Imagine you are facing a truly important, brutally difficult exam — and someone waves the exact answer sheet right in front of your eyes. How many people would actually refuse it?
And in a dungeon, the strategy guide is the answer sheet.
The value of a strategy guide skyrockets without limit as a dungeon's difficulty climbs. The biggest reason is that the higher-tier the dungeon, the more elite personnel it demands. A pair or trio of first-years can clear an F-rank dungeon without breaking a sweat, whereas a B-rank one requires third-years to flock in by the dozen and grind through endless hardship just to crawl back out with their bodies intact.
And the resources poured in are no small matter either.
Potion scrolls for healing and buffs, repairs for all manner of equipment — material resources are only the baseline. On top of that comes the staggering time and effort of recruiting members amid the tangled interests of the various clubs, securing the dungeon, drafting the battle plan, and finally pulling off the raid itself.
And this is where the strategy guide earns its keep.
It raises your efficiency.
It lets you clear a dungeon that would have cost a hundred in resources with only seventy. For the raiding party, everything saved is everything gained, so it would be perfectly fair to value the guide at thirty.
What's more, Paeng Mi-ryeong stood to gain extra as the one leading the party: a reputation for reliably conquering high-difficulty dungeons, her standing within the club, and so on.
For all these reasons, she was staring at me right now with eyes that could burn a hole through me.
"There's really no choice here, then. Name your conditions. I'll meet them as far as I can."
"That dungeon allows twenty entrants, doesn't it?"
"It does."
Dungeons have a hard cap on how many people may enter. The [Feathered Serpent Altar] I had raided with Go Hyeon-woo was a four-person dungeon, while the [Gathering of Evildoers] Paeng Mi-ryeong was set to conquer was a colossal one that admitted a full twenty.
"Even so, I doubt you'll be filling every slot."
"......"
"Factoring in the reward split... I'd say fifteen or so would be about right."
"...You're exactly right."
Paeng Mi-ryeong had shown no desire to leak her plans, but with my guess landing dead-on, she had no choice but to concede. Even for a twenty-person dungeon, it was rare to actually pack the roster to the brim. More members meant a smaller share of the rewards for each individual. Split among ten what twenty would have divided, and every person's cut doubles. Everyone shared the same instinct: keep the headcount as low as possible.
Look at me — hadn't I taken on a four-person dungeon with nothing but Go Hyeon-woo at my side?
Trim the participants too far, though, and the raid itself could become impossible. Failure would mean crushing losses and someone suffering a serious injury. So a party leader had to strike a careful compromise between safety and rewards.
And in this case, that sweet spot was exactly fifteen.
Then Paeng Mi-ryeong's face went rigid. She seemed to have caught on to why I was asking.
"Hold on. Don't tell me—"
"That very 'don't tell me,' Senior."
I flashed a sweet little smile and pressed on.
"I'd like you to give me some of those slots."
"How many?"
"All five of the remaining ones."
"...Ha."
Paeng Mi-ryeong opened her mouth and shut it, clutched the back of her neck, then pressed a hand to her forehead. She looked one breath away from shouting, What? Five slots? You shameless little bandit!
"......"
Jegal So-so, meanwhile, had no direct stake in the raid and had stepped back to watch the scene unfold. Her fan was angled just enough to hide the shape of her mouth, but the soft crinkle at the corners of her eyes made it plain she was having the time of her life.
At last, Paeng Mi-ryeong drew one long, deep breath and forced the words out, visibly wrestling her temper down.
"Whew. Sorry, but that one's a hard no. It's not a decision I can make alone. And even if it were, I'd still be against it."
With a roster of fifteen, the interests of half a dozen factions were already woven through it; a party leader couldn't simply tack on five people at will. If even one of those five were a first-year barred from the Deep Layer like me, the headache would only compound. And even if she could add them, no one wants to balloon a roster they'd agonized over trimming down to fifteen right back up to twenty.
It was fair enough for Paeng Mi-ryeong to refuse.
Of course, I had expected exactly this answer. I took a leisurely sip of Longjing tea, then spoke.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding, Senior. All I'm asking is to be let into the dungeon — I have no intention of muscling in on the raid or the reward split."
"You're taking yourself out of the split? The treasure map too?"
"I won't so much as lay a finger on the treasure map, naturally."
At that, Paeng Mi-ryeong began to look genuinely tempted. If it cost nothing in raid strength or dungeon rewards, then the scales held five empty slots on one pan and the strategy guide on the other. Those five vacancies were dead weight she didn't need anyway — and if the price was the guide, she could hand them over without a second thought. With the guide in hand, smoothing over any objections afterward would be easy.
But then another question seemed to occur to her.
"Then why go in at all, if there's nothing in it for you?"
"It's not that there's nothing in it. I have other targets."
"More hidden pieces?"
"Plenty of them. That place is enormous, you know."
A super-sized dungeon so vast that twenty people would have to run themselves ragged just to cover it. Naturally, the hidden pieces tucked away inside numbered well beyond one or two.
Paeng Mi-ryeong pointed at the guide in my hand.
"Are they in there?"
"Not everything is written down."
"You left them out on purpose?"
"I did."
Paeng Mi-ryeong's eyes narrowed.
"What if I said I don't need your guide, and we'll ferret out the hidden pieces ourselves?"
"Then I'd have to swallow the loss and walk away. Although... if you could have found them yourselves, would you ever have needed the treasure map in the first place?"
The point being: she had only gotten her hands on the treasure map by waiting for me to gather its fragments — so how, exactly, did she plan to unearth the other hidden pieces on her own?
The logic held, and Paeng Mi-ryeong's mouth snapped shut for a moment.
I added one more thing.
"Besides, even if I told you where they all were, you couldn't collect them all anyway. There isn't enough time."
"Hmm..."
"Wouldn't it be better to get your priorities straight?"
Paeng Mi-ryeong's foremost goal was clearing the dungeon itself. Next came investigating the hidden chamber with the treasure map. And dead last, the assorted minor hidden pieces. If she frittered away her hours chasing the trivial stuff, there was a real chance the first two goals would collapse into failure. That was precisely why I had cut them from the guide altogether — so she wouldn't spare them a single thought.
Only then did Paeng Mi-ryeong seem to grasp my intent.
"So the minor stuff — you're telling me to write it off as if it doesn't exist and leave it to your lot."
"Wouldn't that keep things clean?"
Paeng Mi-ryeong stared down at the Longjing tea in her hand for a long moment — then raised the cup and chugged the whole thing in one go.
At the sight of premium tea being shot back like cheap liquor, Jegal So-so briefly wore the look of a beggar watching a feast go down the drain, but Paeng Mi-ryeong's attention never wavered from me.
"Let's get one thing straight. Neither side crosses the line. Agreed?"
She would focus on the dungeon's main objectives and the treasure map; I would focus on recovering the hidden pieces scattered throughout. And neither of us would ever trespass on the other's territory.
It was exactly what I had hoped for, so I nodded without hesitation.
"Absolutely."
"Good."
Paeng Mi-ryeong nodded in return — then held out her hand, and I placed the strategy guide into it.
The deal was struck.
"I'll put the Priority Bidding Right on the line and start preparing for the raid. We'll hammer out the details during the next raid week."
"Understood, Senior."
After Kim Ho stepped out of the office, silence hung between Paeng Mi-ryeong and Jegal So-so for a long while.
"......"
"......"
Jegal So-so kept her gaze fixed on the door as though she might see through it, while Paeng Mi-ryeong set about verifying whether the strategy guide was genuine. Kim Ho had no reason to spin a lie that would unravel on the spot, but there was no harm in being thorough. So she paged back and forth between the replay records of past Dragon Slayer Academy students and the guide, cross-checking them line by line.
After a long stretch of peering into the crystal, Paeng Mi-ryeong murmured, half to herself.
"That guy is something else, honestly."
"He certainly is."
"How do we not get him on our side?"
Every single strategy guide for a high-tier dungeon carried staggering value. So what was the worth of a walking archive who had them all strung together inside his head? If the other factions ever learned the truth, they would scramble with fire in their eyes to recruit Kim Ho. Simply monopolizing the guides would reap enormous returns.
Hadn't Paeng Mi-ryeong just spent an entire negotiation being led around by the nose? So, on the impulse of recruiting him outright, she had floated the question — only for Jegal So-so to shake her head with a wry smile.
"That'll be difficult. He doesn't use a sword."
The first condition for joining the Swordsmanship Club: you had to wield a bladed weapon as your primary arm. Unfortunately, Kim Ho's class was mage — a supporter, no less. He did carry something resembling a short spear, but that alone left no room for compromise.
And even if Kim Ho did switch to a blade...
"He's not the type to put himself under anyone's thumb."
"He does seem that way."
The point was sound, and Paeng Mi-ryeong smacked her lips in frustration.
By all accounts, Kim Ho had already received courtship from two clubs — Magic Engineering and the Thieves. Both were established mid-tier outfits with a solid foothold in the academy, and he had turned them both down flat, making it plain he intended to remain unaffiliated for the time being.
"Which works out just fine for us."
Jegal So-so snapped her fan shut. A gentle smile had settled on her lips.
Recruitment was off the table, but Kim Ho's current relationship with the Swordsmanship Club was quite cordial. The first button had been sewn on slightly crooked — his fault for brushing off the Priority Bidding Right — but even that had since been smoothed over. So long as they maintained this relationship and kept trading what each side wanted, they would run circles around every other club.
"And besides — we're the Swordsmanship Club."
"The Swordsmanship Club, indeed."
In name and in fact, the Swordsmanship Club was the academy's supreme power. They could always put the finest terms on the table for Kim Ho.
The two women looked at each other and smiled, their pride in where they belonged written plainly across their faces.
Still smiling, Paeng Mi-ryeong turned back to the replay crystal. Jegal So-so, just as before, fixed her eyes on the office door and sank into thought.
So the hidden pieces are 'trivial,' are they...
The instant Kim Ho handed over the treasure map and produced the strategy guide, Jegal So-so had been certain: claiming the party's five vacant slots had been part of his plan all along. He had probably been plotting it from the very moment he ignored the Priority Bidding Right and slipped into the Black Snake Chamber. Just look at how he had shown up to their first meeting with two treasure map fragments already in hand.
Which raised the question — could the hidden pieces he had schemed so meticulously to obtain truly be called 'trivial'?
Jegal So-so's eyes gleamed.
I really should ask Kyu about that, nice and casual.
Somehow, she had a feeling Dang Gyu-young would know.
[210] The Support Ate it All