by Elan Wang
“I got more upgrades than that…”
“So you can get even more powerful?”
I nodded my head and she began digging into the backpack for the skillbook. She brought out a thin paperback looking book and stared at me with a frown after looking at the weird words.
“What the heck…what language is this…?”
“I don’t know either. It was the first time I ever saw anything like it when I saw it in mine. But when I just read it, it popped into my head. Even though I didn’t know the meaning still.”
“Hm…I see. Are all skillbooks like this?”
“Nope. From what I hear, all the other skillbooks are written so people can understand it. But if you keep reading it, you’ll learn it. Oh…wait.”
I remembered one thing. But she was in the zone and didn’t hear me. I didn’t want to break her concentration. If I broke it, the skillbook might end up disappearing before she could fully gain the skill.
Flash!
A burst of light exploded out of the book.
A moment later. I saw Jung Sooah’s head collapsed into the empty ramen bowl. She must have fainted just like I had done. I passed out for about 10 days…the same would probably be true for her.
“This annoying girl…”
It would have been fine if it was just one day…but if she ended up missing for 10 days, her family would probably file for missing persons. The problem was, I didn’t know where this girl lived. I tried to look through her phone, but there was a passcode on it. Arg.
All I could do was wait for a call to come through.
I cleaned off the remnant ramen soup off her face and placed her on the bed. Since she would be out for so long, I couldn’t let her lay on the ground. I don’t know if it was because she was so muscular, but she was pretty heavy for a girl.
I cleaned up a bit and went on the internet. I wanted to see what happened with the irregular event from yesterday. But there was nothing out of the norm. There wasn’t even one line of news referring to an irregular.
Then that means it only happened at the Baekoonsa dungeon?
I guess it’s not impossible. Because irregulars had appeared once in a blue moon before that incident. That one incident was the only time irregulars had popped up all over the country. It seems the Baekoonsa irregular was an isolated one this time.
But I still had some questions.
Why did the irregular appear at the same time the level 0 skillbook did. If these two events happened independent of eachother, I would have crossed it off as nothing out of the ordinary. But for them to happen at the same time…it couldn’t be chance.
“Hmm…”
Click. Click.
I clicked the mouse while thinking.
Level 0 skillbook. Irregular.
What was the meaning of these two?
I went into the hunter market. I went to check if there was anyone trying to sell a level 0 skillbook.
No one.
From my experience, it would seem that the drop probability of a level 0 skillbook were high. I mean, I had hunted just twice and both times I got a level 0 skillbook. Even if I had ridiculously good luck, there should have been at least 1 level 0 skillbook up on the market.
Or maybe level 0 skillbooks drop only for me?
Nah. It’s probably all in my head.
***
There were no calls for her over the next 10 days. I guess she was just as much of a loner as I was.
“Water!”
Sooah drank a crapload of water as soon as she woke up. When she finished off an entire 2 liter bottle of water, she stared at me dumbly and said.
“Hungry.”
“Jesus.”
She finally seemed to get it together after eating a piece of bread and two ramens. Then she said to me.
“Ha? Did I eat too much?”
“Yes. You even ate my share.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll make you food.”
“It’s fine. More than that, how do you feel?”
“Eum…now that you ask, what happened? Last thing I remember is reading the skillbook.”
“You fell asleep while learning the skill.”
“How long?”
“Ten days.”
“Haaa?”
“Didn’t I tell you last time? That I fell asleep for days while learning my skill.”
“You were telling the truth then? I thought you were making that up after ignoring my calls.”
“I don’t lie unless it makes me money.”
“Wow. Ten days.”
She checked the time on her phone then suddenly whipped her head to face me.”
“Did you by any chance do any naughty things to me while I was asleep?”
“No.”
“You should have.”
“Don’t think so little of my honor. You brat.”
Tap.
“Ow. Why’d you hit me.”
“Be thankful I’m just letting you off with this. Anyway, you should check for your skill, no?”
There was no information on her new friendship skill. We just needed to find out if she actually got the skill properly by having her close her right eye.
“I just see two zeros.”
“One is your level and one is your proficiency. Since you only have two numbers, it seems you don’t get any reward points…then could it be a skill you have to activate? I guess it could also be a passive skill.
“Explain please.”
“I’m saying I don’t know what it is. We need to figure it out slowly.”
“Is it going to be useful though?”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I trust you. Almost too much.”
She said this and followed up with a big sigh.
Why is she sighing like that?
***
Now that she was awake, I made a round of calls to all the members of the party. Even though they had all experienced the dangers of an irregular, all of them responded to my summons. Most likely none of them were able to find any other job and were doing nothing at home.
We decided to go to Baekoonsa dungeon once more. The deciding factor was because of the cheap admission fee and because we were used to it. We were a bit worried about an irregular appearing again, but you couldn’t be a hunter without taking on that kind of a risk.
That didn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared. Just in case, I packed some chains and pepper bombs.
The raid was going well. We fought against wolves, goblins, kobolds, and even ran into a rare slime monster. But everyone did their job, and every monster died easily against my blade – so we were getting through the dungeon fairly quickly.
“It’s way easier than the last time we came.”
Glasses girl nodded her head with a grin. I answered back.
“Thanks to manager Kim doing so well.”
“Hm. Who said I ever skimped on my job.”
“Naah. It’s not because of manager Kim. It’s thanks to our party head being so good at attacking.”
Cho Youngoo said with a small smirk. Seeing that the ever prideful manager Kim didn’t say anything to that, it seemed all of them thought I was pretty strong.
My level up in focus helped in one other area aside from having stronger reflexes. I was able to fight and get rid of the enemy one by one before they could even start attacking.
Since my fights all started with going up against one enemy and then the next, winning was that much easier.
But even taking that out of consideration, there was something else that made my battles so ridiculously easy. I turned at looked to Jung Sooah. Could it be because of the ‘friendship’ skill?
I went to her and said.
“Check your skill.”
“Hm…it went up one.”
“Is it because of that?”
“You mean the monster being weak?”
“It might just be that we got stronger.”
Every single one of our party’s abilities had in
creased. The one who got noticeably stronger was glasses girl. In the last raid, she was able to hit her mark 1 out of 4 times, but she was not able to hit 1 out of 3 times. You could say that she got better in the 10 days, but if that were possible then she wouldn’t have been suffering all this time. From what I knew, she was a crappy archer for the longest time.
“Now that you mention it, I feel like I got a bit stronger.”
She said while she pointed to her bag. She had about 12 ores in her backpack. It was probably over 130 kg, but she didn’t look like she was breaking a sweat at all.
“That could be true. A passive skill that increases the teammates’ abilities…it’s definitely a worthwhile skill.”
“Oh. Then shouldn’t you give me more distribution money?
“I’ll give you something extra from my share this time.”
If Jung Sooah’s friendship skill had really raised everyone’s ability, then it was only right to acknowledge this in the contribution rankings. The only thing was, there was no way for us to really measure how much it helped..and the skill wasn’t discussed with everyone at the start so I would have to do the rankings normally this one time.
“Anyway, do you know how the skill activates?”
“Hm. I’m not sure. But I think I might know. It’s a weird feeling. Is a skill supposed to feel like that?”
“Just because you learn a skill doesn’t mean you discover everything about it instantly. Think about someone who gains a boxing skill. If you asked them to explain exactly how to punch and step in words, would they be able to explain it? No. Because they just acquired the skill instantly without physically doing the work and uncovering it themselves.”
“That makes sense.”
“So they would need to do some tests. To learn how to punch, they need to test some punches..to learn how to dodge, they need to test evading a punch.”
“Then everyone else learns their skills by testing it like this too?”
“No. Usually there is a known way to use the skill. It’s been already 50 years since the first skillbook appeared. Most skillbooks have alot more of the same kind out there, so people usually already know how to activate or use it.”
“So you’re saying there isn’t really a guideline for mine.”
“There isn’t one for mine either.”
“Oh. Feels like we hit some kind of jackpot or something.”
“Let’s get going.”
Han Joonseok said as he got up. It seemed our break ran a little too long. We had finished clearing about half the dungeon and the left trail – we only have the right trail left to clear.
We had packed everything up and were getting ready to continue when we heard a voice coming down from the entrance.
“Over there! Stop what you’re doing and everyone come on out!”
Everyone looked in the direction the voice was coming from. We could now see someone in military uniform yelling and waving his arms about at us.
“I said come out! You can’t hear me?”
“What…?”
“Why is someone not in our party in the dungeon?”
Half of the party looked at me, confused, while the other half frowned. This was the difference between the experienced and novices.
“Let’s listen to what that man is saying.”
“What? Why? We still have time left.”
Glasses girl said. I could see why she was annoyed. Dungeons operate where each session is reserved at 4 hours. Since we were here, we could lay claim to remaining here until our time ran out.
By normal procedure this was true. By normal procedure.
I waved my arms to let the military man know we understood. I saw him nod his head and disappear again.
I faced the party members and tried explaining it to them after seeing their bafflement.
“There are a lot of instances where things like this happen in a dungeon. This is called a booking change and…”
“Booking change my butt. It’s a rip off – jumping the queue, is what it is.”
Jung Sooah said.
“Jumping the queue?”
“Eh…so. What it is is. There are people who are um…higher than us…waiting to come in.”
At Han Joonseok’s answer, manager Kim responded.
“So we have to leave then? Didn’t we pay the normal admission fee?”
“They do give us some of that back. But we can’t expect anything more than that.”
Han Joonseok’s face turned red in an instant.
“Wait. Do they realize how much of a pain it is to get ready and come out altogether for a raid? It’s not as if we can come back any time soon if we leave right now!”
“So?”
Manager Kim said with a snort.
“..I’m sorry?”
“So what are you saying you’re going to do about it? Are you going to go and tell them you won’t leave?
“Of course.”
“This is why amateurs are amateurs. Chet.”
“Aren’t you being a bit rude?”
“Rude! Am I saying anything wrong!”
“Dungeons are operated by the government.”
I interrupted them just as they were about to go at eachother.
“There are about 50 groups who can put pressure on the team that operates a dungeon, of which include: entrepreneurs, lawmakers, and other senior officials of the ministry. Very rarely, sometimes a raid team could also have that kind of power.”
“So. If someone with power wants to do a hunt, we just have to bow out like that?”
Han Joonseok still couldn’t accept it. But I liked these kinds of people. People who rage against the unfair and unjust. If we wanted anything to change for the better, we needed more people like this.
“Yes. If we cause any problems over something like this, we could get blacklisted. That list is…”
“Put up in their database and distributed to all dungeons.”
Sooah finished.
“Then…”
“At the very least, it would be hard for you to find any hunting jobs in all of South Korea.”
“So they’re saying, ‘You people with no connections can just shut up as do as we say.’ Got it?”
“Why do you keep taking their sides since the beginning? You think you’re anything special?”
Han Joonseok asked.
“This bastard. Who said I’ve been taking their side…!”
“Let’s get going.”
I tried to break it up and get everyone back on task. Any fighting can be continued outside. Since it came to it, it was better to leave earlier than later. Though it wasn’t much, we were able to get some ores so it wasn’t a complete waste and we could always come back next time.
We couldn’t say we were losing out on too much because the dungeon operators would usually get us a earlier reservation slot for our troubles.
As soon as we left the dungeon, we spied a couple youngsters standing by. They were probably mid twenties at the most. Surprisingly, I knew one of them.
“That person…”
Sooah pulled on my arm cuffs. One of them was pretty big. He was one of the guys that had tried to violate Sooah at the Ansan dungeon. He recognized me as soon as I recognized him.
I think his name was Park Jungbeh.
He made a great big smile as he sauntered over to me.
“Perfect timing. Let’s go have a talk. Ha? The girl from last time is here too?”
“Ah…yes.”
“Are the two of you going out?”
Park Jungbeh asked coyly. I started to wonder if there was something wrong with my memory. Then I wondered just how stupid these guys were.
He wouldn’t be smiling like that unless he were stupid or retarded.
When I shrugged it off, he continued.
“The porter that was supposed to meet us here bailed on us. So why don’t you porter for us a bit. If that girl over there comes, it would be even better.”
“We’re on o
ur way from doing a round in the dungeon so it would be difficult for us.”
“Heyy. Don’t be so stiff. Aren’t we pals? If it’s because of the incident from last time, I’ll apologize. Honestly, we only did it because of Hansol so don’t take it so personally. I’m not a bad guy, really. And if we were to really be truthful, it’s not like you were all perfect either. Don’t you know that I almost died because of you. So let’s just let bygones be bygones. What do you think?”
I thought it was just Song Hansol who was the crazy bastard, but it seems this guy had a few screws loose himself. How is it that he can be so self-absorbed? I almost got goosebumps when he complimented himself saying how he’s not a bad guy.
“I’m truly sorry. Maybe next time.”
“Are you really going to be like this?”
“More than that, aren’t leisure parties against the law at this time…”
“Ah. That? Don’t worry. I got a memo saying it’s fine.”
He was talking about a waiver that said that the country would not be liable if the signer died in the dungeon.
“We’ll wait for you to finish with your other group. We only have 4 in our party so if both you and the girl came, it would be just perfect. So we’ll assume you’ll be joining us and wait. We’ll give you thirty minutes.”
This bastard was not going to let it go. If we keep insisting on not joining, it could really end up becoming more troublesome for me.
“Ok.”
Plus I had something I wanted to try out. It could be really dangerous so it might be better to try it out with these guys than my own party. We’ll see.
After auctioning the ores, I finished up the contribution split. I gave Sooah a bit more from my share and sent her home with everyone else. No use in having her come along. Park Jungbeh glanced behind me and said in an almost disappointed voice.
“You didn’t bring that lady with you?”
“She said she had a previous engagement so I couldn’t do anything but let her go.”
“Hm. I guess nothing we can do. I wanted to compensate her well since that incident from last time and all..”
“I will let her know that you were sorry.”
“Nah. You don’t need to do that.”
I was used to gauging people. A person can cover up a lie with pretty words and how they acted but it was hard to lie with your eyes. I could tell from this guy’s eyes that he was telling the truth. He was probably being honest when he said that he was sorry.