No. 388 Feathered Snake Altar (4)
Take down the priest we must, but a D-rank dungeon boss was honestly still more than Go Hyeon-woo could handle head-on.
Which meant this one was mine.
Before I let the burning fist fly, though—
'Copy the trait first.'
'Copy-Trait' activated.
Registering target's trait 'Priest (D)' to slot.
Copy-Trait [2/2]
1. Elemental Resistance (S)
2. Priest (D)
There it was—the [Priest] trait, the signature ability of the Feathered Serpent High Priest. It blended any number of powers into one, and even just its boost to mana sensitivity alone would be enormously useful to a mage.
"You wretch!!"
The priest thrust out his staff, and another golden mass of light came plummeting down. I'd dodged it cleanly every time so far; there was no reason to start eating it now. A light step carried me aside as I closed in, one hand clenched around the burning fist, the other reaching forward.
Wind Force
- Whuum—!
Wind packed with raw physical force howled in from every direction at once, bearing down on the priest from all sides. However much he struggled, he wasn't going to budge an inch.
"Wh-what is the meaning of this...!"
While the priest wriggled helplessly in place, I shaved the distance down second by second—and the fist in my grip blazed ever fiercer. One look at it and he seemed to grasp that his end had arrived, because he spat out a line straight from the third-rate villain handbook.
"Do not think this is the end. Next time, I shall surely—!"
"Sure. See you next time."
Inferno Fist buried itself in the priest's face, and everything ahead was swallowed whole by the onrushing storm of flame.
- KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA—!
"Brother Kim!!"
Go Hyeon-woo arrived hot on the explosion's heels, genuine alarm written across his face—having seen that burst of fire, he must have thought some catastrophe had befallen me. The moment he confirmed I was in one piece, relief flooded in.
"Oh, you're here."
"It appears it is all finished."
"Right before you walked up."
Impeccable timing.
Go Hyeon-woo looked down at his sword. It had just devoured the priest's soul, so I could guess its new options without even seeing them.
◈ High-level durability protection
◈ Automatic durability recovery
◈ Elemental Resistance (F)
For a C-rank item, the abilities weren't exactly grand. In terms of durability, though, it could hold its own against anything C-rank or above—and the [Elemental Resistance], F-rank though it was, would help somewhat whenever magic came flying his way. In short, a piece of equipment tailored to Go Hyeon-woo from hilt to tip.
His face brightened as he read through the stats.
"Performance like this...! It was all your careful arrangement, Brother Kim. I shall put it to grateful use."
"We cleared it together, so it's whatever. In exchange, these are mine."
Where the priest had vanished, four wooden boxes sat in a row, giving off a faintly mysterious air.
Go Hyeon-woo nodded without hesitation.
"But of course. This sword alone is more than enough for me."
"Right. Let's head out."
The dungeon was slowly coming apart. With the priest destroyed—the dungeon's core and its boss monster—it could no longer sustain itself, and there was nothing to gain from lingering, so out we went.
Shin Byung-cheol was waiting outside to greet us.
"Oh, wow, that really didn't take long?"
"Told you it'd be quick."
D-rank dungeon or not, we'd cleared it perfectly in record time—thanks to Go Hyeon-woo and me working in seamless sync.
Once outside, I glanced back. The entrance, once tall as a great gate, had shrunk to the size of a fist and drained of all color, gone pure black and white. A dungeon whose core had been destroyed sealed itself away like that, barring all entry, until enough time passed for the core to regenerate. And when it did, the Feathered Snake tribe we'd cut down would return exactly as they were, prowling their altar once more. Then someone else would enter to clear it, the core would break, the dungeon would renew itself—the cycle repeating for all eternity.
Either way, that made one underground-floor dungeon successfully conquered.
But it was far too early to breathe easy.
'We still have the trip back.'
We hadn't touched a single step of the official procedure for raiding underground-floor dungeons—we'd slipped in and smashed the core. Shin Byung-cheol had scrubbed the traces as thoroughly as he could, but the fact that a dungeon had been destroyed was not something you could hide. Someone would be coming down soon to assess the damage, and nine times out of ten it would be one of the staff who managed the Dungeon Hall. Getting out fast was the only sensible play.
Shin Byung-cheol took point, hurrying us along.
"Move it, move it, up the stairs. We are so getting caught."
Stairs are always crueler going up than coming down. The descent had already felt bottomless, and retracing every step of it was no joke at all. By the time we neared the surface, even a body tempered by mana was filing formal complaints.
The one mercy was that we crossed paths with no staff and no Disciplinary Committee on the climb.
On the climb, that is.
We were barely a few steps out of the building when we walked straight into Song Cheon-hye and Han So-mi.
Han So-mi waved with the purest, sunniest grin.
"Hi hi!"
"..."
We traded a flurry of quick glances. They didn't seem to have noticed we'd come up from the underground floors, so the silent consensus was: act natural, keep moving. We waved back—and Han So-mi's waving only sped up.
Song Cheon-hye, on the other hand—
- Crackle.
Sparks jumped from her fingertips the instant Shin Byung-cheol entered her field of view. Apparently the mere sight of him triggered a conditioned reflex: what is he plotting this time? To be fair, he'd piled up quite the karma, starting with the stolen bald wig.
But Shin Byung-cheol's face was thicker than leather, and he greeted them breezily.
"Well, well, ladies of the Disciplinary Committee. A very good evening to you."
"What business could you possibly have here."
To the razor-edged question, he answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"What business does anyone have in the Dungeon Hall? Raiding dungeons, obviously."
"I find that difficult to believe."
Song Cheon-hye's eyes narrowed to slits. Roughly translating what she'd left unsaid:
'You? A raid? Starting Monday? Genuinely?'
Shin Byung-cheol put on a wounded look.
"Aigoo, have you really been burned that many times? Can't trust a word out of anyone's mouth. Hey, hey, don't just stand there—say something, back me up."
A request for covering fire, aimed squarely at me. If I wanted out of this conversation quickly, playing along was the smarter move. I tossed a question at Song Cheon-hye.
"You coming back from your raid too?"
"We are."
"What percentage?"
"You don't need to know."
"I see."
Suit yourself. I hadn't asked out of genuine curiosity anyway—just to steer the topic somewhere harmless. Shin Byung-cheol seemed to be in the clear now, so all that remained was a cheerful 'Good work, have a good night!' and a clean exit.
Just as I opened my mouth to say exactly that—
"Aw, why'd you go and ask her that? If her score didn't come out so hot, of course she wouldn't want to say."
Shin Byung-cheol dumped a fistful of ash onto a finished meal. He'd meant it as an assist, but the trajectory had gone severely off-course—judging by the thick vein throbbing at Song Cheon-hye's temple.
Swallowing her fury, she turned to us.
"I don't know what your percentage is, but mine will be higher than yours."
"Doubt it."
"And how can you be so certain?"
'Because mine's a hundred, obviously.'
You couldn't exactly exceed 100% on a Sweep. Not unless you went around conjuring monsters just to kill them. But I kept that card face-down. It seemed the more profitable play.
"Just a hunch."
"Your hunch appears to be lacking."
"Then let's bet on it. Whose completion rate comes out higher."
"Betting what, exactly?"
As expected, Song Cheon-hye didn't yield an inch. Watching her, I could tell she was the type who despised losing more than anything.
"How about a light Wish Ticket?"
"A Wish Ticket?"
"Yeah. You grant me one favor, or answer one question I'm curious about."
Song Cheon-hye knitted her brows and deliberated for a long moment before accepting. It was, after all, only a small Wish Ticket—she must have figured that even if she lost, it wouldn't cost her much.
"...Very well."
"Count of three, say it at the same time?"
"Certainly."
"Counting, then. Three."
"Two."
"One."
"100%."
"97%."
Cracks splintered clean across Song Cheon-hye's face.
She stood rooted to the spot, utterly dumbstruck, for a good long while. It had been the most trivial bet imaginable, but the mere fact of losing seemed to have rocked her—or perhaps the real shock was that her raid score had come in below mine. Either way, we seized the opening, tossed out hasty farewells, and quickened our pace. Han So-mi could handle whatever came next.
As for the Wish Ticket, it would sit on the books as a debt of conscience for the time being. I hadn't made the bet planning to demand anything grand anyway; I figured I'd cash it in later for some intel on the Disciplinary Committee's inner workings.
The next day.
Lunch finished, a short window of free time. Seo Ye-in, Go Hyeon-woo, and I gathered in a quiet spot. Shin Byung-cheol was tied up with Errand Center business, apparently.
With both their gazes locked on me, I pulled four wooden boxes from my inventory.
"..."
Go Hyeon-woo studied the boxes with unconcealed interest, and even Seo Ye-in, in a rare display, prodded at one with eyes brimming with curiosity.
Go Hyeon-woo asked,
"And what emerges when these are opened?"
"Beats me. There are way too many possibilities."
Truly every kind of item could come tumbling out, and the odds had never been made public, so even I didn't know the contents with certainty. There were, however, a handful of items known to show up fairly often—and my targets among them were the ones bearing the 'Priest's~' prefix. Anything carrying that prefix was D-grade, whatever its shape, so I'd be satisfied no matter what form it took.
"Then let the unboxing ceremony commence."
"Wow—"
Seo Ye-in delivered a silent round of applause. It looked completely soulless, but that was the maximum reaction she had in her.
I held up one random box, displayed it this way and that like a stage magician mid-performance, then, with a heart full of reverence, flipped the lid open.
- Flash!
The light that spilled out wasn't especially bright. Still, nothing was certain until the contents were confirmed.
'Not bad.'
Given the box's grade, it was a middling pull at best—but Rank Up happened to be an item of considerable importance to me. So I accepted it with thanks.
"Next."
I opened the second box, this time leaving it where it sat and easing the lid up just a sliver.
- FLASH—!
"Oh."
"Oh."
Go Hyeon-woo and I breathed our admiration in unison—the radiance pouring out was unmistakably fiercer than the first.
'There it is.'
I cheered inwardly. A 'Priest' item, and in the accessory slot I favored, no less. Stack the earlier Rank Up on top, and we were already past breaking even.
Feeling considerably magnanimous, I made the two of them an offer.
"Want to open one each?"
"Is that truly all right?"
He'd insisted the shamanic sword was plenty and ceded every random box to me, but apparently the contents had been gnawing at him all the same. Go Hyeon-woo carefully took up the third box, drew a deep breath, and lifted the lid.
- Click.
"Ahem..."
At a loss, Go Hyeon-woo took to coughing awkwardly, again and again. Not a single thread of light from the moment it opened. Figures. Every so often a random box would cough up a lifestyle item with absolutely nothing to do with combat, and this was precisely one of those occasions.
I nodded as if it were nothing.
"Tough luck."
"I have no face to show you, Brother Kim."
"Don't let it weigh on you. It happens."
When you open boxes on someone's behalf, whatever tumbles out, you accept it and blame no one—that was the unwritten law of this trade. Unlucky or not, I was the one who'd chosen to hand the boxes over to him in the first place.
Go Hyeon-woo decided the wooden cup would serve as his teacup.
Which left one random box.
Go Hyeon-woo's gaze and mine both converged on Seo Ye-in. The atmosphere alone would have been enough to crush anyone—but Seo Ye-in, face perfectly blank, slid the last box toward herself and flipped it open with the utmost naturalness in the world.
- FLAAASH——!
[66] The Support Takes It All