LRAB Chapter 384: Synergy (1)
Chapter 384: Synergy (1)
“Was I... too hasty? Hahaha.”
“I’d always thought I should meet you, but I didn’t expect to be dragged into it like this.”
“Sorry, hyung. But no matter how I thought about it, it just had to be you.”
“You’ve got Se-hyeok and Se-yeong too, don’t you? They should be closer than me.”
“We’ve been out of contact lately. I don’t know if they’re preparing something internally or what, but they’ve cut me off too.”
“Hm...”
“I don’t have enough trust in the Myeongga Guild to go that far. Somehow I just had this feeling you’d be nearby, hyung.”
“Knowing I almost always stay in the capital region, that’s a pretty flimsy excuse.”
“Hehe. Anyway, you’re the only one I could think of! And I really didn’t want to report the dungeon to the Public Safety Bureau!”Kang-hoo completely understood Park Dong-jae’s feelings.If he himself had discovered a dungeon, he wouldn’t have reported it to the Public Safety Bureau either.
That would only be doing a favor for the Jeonghwa Guild, and the reward money you got for reporting it was peanuts.
In the underworld, the base unit price for trading a dungeon was over ten billion won.
Ten billion was just the convenient “base number” people used to talk about it; the actual market price was several times higher.
Unless it was a dungeon so low-level it wasn’t worth raiding at all, the starting price was at least fifty billion won.
Once you owned a dungeon, you could raid it again every time it reset.
Having a stable means of growth like that was a massive asset in itself—its price couldn’t help but be high.
Kang-hoo asked,
“So, you bought an entire gym that used to be run in the basement to use as a training facility. And a dungeon that wasn’t in the storage room before suddenly appeared there, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It just popped up. If the original owner had known, he never would’ve sold it. It’s all money.”
“It’s random, but it’s not like something like this never happens.”
The apartment that Takashi had bought in the past was a similar case.
All of a sudden, the front doors of a few units in the building had become dungeon entrances.
To own all of those dungeons, Takashi had persuaded every resident and bought the whole building.
Even now, when Takashi had nowhere in particular to go, the place he habitually ran was that “apartment dungeon.”
“Hyung. Do you want this dungeon? I can’t solo in there anyway, so there’s no point in me having it.”
“Hm?”
Kang-hoo looked surprised at that sudden offer to give it up.
No matter how close you felt to someone, it wasn’t easy to hand over an entire dungeon.
Of course, the very act of trying to own it privately without reporting it was illegal, and he knew Park was mindful of that.
If the Public Safety Bureau found out, it would become theirs regardless of who found it first.
If they got caught raiding it a few times without reporting it, there was also a chance they’d be hit with separate legal penalties.
The Public Safety Bureau had become a scarecrow and been treated like a vegetable for so long that the time to argue legal or illegal was long gone.
Never mind laws that applied to all citizens and hunters alike.
The “special laws” that applied only to hunters through the Public Safety Bureau had been meaningless for a long time.
Unless you were blindly devoted to the Bureau, there was no need to obey laws that had no real meaning.
If the Public Safety Bureau had truly been an organization that protected laws and rules, they would have stopped the Dongducheon battle from the very start.
“I felt like I wouldn’t regret giving it up if it was to you, hyung. I mean, it’d be nice if we could talk about splitting the rewards we get inside somehow, but in any case, I thought you’d handle it better than me.”
“This sounds like a deal where I only gain and you only lose, Dong-jae. Isn’t that a bit unfair?”
If he had thought of Park Dong-jae as just some guy, he would have grabbed the offer without hesitation, but he pointed out how lopsided it was.
Of course he wanted to accept. No one turned down a deal with no downside.
“I already drew up a kind of contract between us. Not that it’s something we can ever get the Public Safety Bureau to approve. Haha.”
On the paper Park handed over, it said that although he was the one who discovered it, the dungeon’s ownership would be transferred to Kang-hoo, and in return, all the “magic stone” rewards obtained inside the dungeon when they raided together would go to him.
Naturally, that only applied when they raided together; if Kang-hoo raided it without Park Dong-jae, those terms were waived.
There was also a special clause stating that at least once every two months, they had to raid this dungeon together.
It was all within the range of what Kang-hoo had expected him to ask for, just a few guarantees he wanted, so there was no discomfort in it.
If anything, he could feel that Park had written it with consideration for him, even though he was the discoverer.
It was true that dungeons yielded a lot of magic stone rewards, but the value of those stones fluctuated wildly.
Sometimes you got high-priced rewards like red magic stones, and sometimes you got so sick of purple magic stones from start to finish that it made you want to scream—even from the main boss.
If it becomes a dungeon I can use as my personal property, it’d be worth trying out the Prankster Betrayer constellation.
【Prankster Betrayer】
【You can obtain complete internal information on five dungeons with no prior data.
To acquire internal information, you must have been located at least once within a 9-meter radius of each dungeon.】
Prankster Betrayer—the constellation he had stolen after killing Ishihara Yuji.
He’d wondered when he might get a chance to use it, and now was the perfect time.
Even if he used it once this time, he would still have four chances left. It was more than enough for a preliminary test.
“Good. The Public Safety Bureau would probably snort if they saw this contract, but it’ll be a firm agreement between us.”
“I knew it! I knew you’d accept it coolly, hyung.”
“It’s only cool between us. If the Public Safety Bureau finds out, that contract’s just scrap paper. They’ll confiscate the dungeon on the spot.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m going to remodel it into a security training facility so no outsiders can even look inside.”
“Either way, thanks.”
Kang-hoo patted Park Dong-jae on the shoulder.
He was grateful that the moment Park discovered a dungeon, the first person he thought of had been him.
It meant he trusted him that much and had that much confidence in his ability.
From any angle, the picture was one that acknowledged Kang-hoo, so he couldn’t help but feel pleased.
“Hyung, can I take like ten minutes to get myself ready?”
“As long as you want. I rushed over too, so I’m not fully prepared either.”
“Okay. Then I’ll go grab a few things from the car! I also need to bring the potions I’ll need.”
“Go ahead. I’ll stand watch here.”
While Park Dong-jae stepped away,
Kang-hoo stood right in front of the dungeon entrance. It was time to use the Prankster Betrayer constellation.
A newly formed dungeon.
They had absolutely no information about the interior, but with the constellation’s ability, he’d be able to see everything.
【The Prankster Betrayer constellation is asking you one last time if you want to obtain information about this dungeon.
It says that the moment you obtain the internal information, you and it will be in the same boat.
It repeatedly emphasizes that this is a secret deviation carried out without the Great Constellation Sanctuary’s approval.】
‘Like I care.’
Kang-hoo nodded.
The wording felt a bit threatening, but even if he got caught, nothing much would happen.
In a world where using a long-discarded twisted contract caused no issues, dungeon information was nothing.
The moment he hit the confirm button—
【Internal information has been acquired.】
【All information and layout data for this dungeon will be injected into the contractor at once. A headache will accompany the process.】
“Urgh!”
Since the headache struck at the exact same moment as the warning message, it came before he could brace himself, and a groan escaped him.
Separate from that—
Not bad.
The overall dungeon information he gained looked good.
It was as if he had received the full internal blueprint; he quickly grasped which path had what and which elements required caution.
He even learned that there was a deliberately hidden location—a kind of secret area.
In places like that, you usually gained hidden skills, skillbooks, items, or abnormal amounts of experience.
The recommended level was 525.
That was the average, which meant the boss monster would be at least fifty levels higher than that.
Even with Park Dong-jae along, whether a two-person raid was realistic remained to be seen—they’d have to hit it and find out.
All right, planning complete.
Since he’d obtained the entire blueprint, there was no need to think in circles.
The internal terrain was already etched clearly in his mind, as if he’d known it from the beginning.
All that was left was to steadily clear things starting from the nearest areas. There were no other points of anxiety.【Primordial Mother】
【Passionate Adventurer】
【Altruist Priest】
【Holy-Body Devotee】
【Dark Heaven’s Advent】
【The More, the Better】
He’s got one more constellation.
The moment they entered the dungeon, Kang-hoo scanned Park Dong-jae’s constellations and confirmed that one had been added since they last met.
The constellation The More, the Better.
【For every additional buff placed on yourself or others, all buff effects increase by 10% per buff.
The same applies to debuff effectiveness.】
It was a perfect constellation for a buffer like Park Dong-jae, and it naturally had great synergy for Kang-hoo as the teammate receiving those buffs.
And that wasn’t all.
As he watched the list of buffs in his own status window fill up one after another, Kang-hoo couldn’t help clicking his tongue in admiration.
“Dong-jae, just how much did you grow while I wasn’t looking?”
“How could I compare to the hyung who took down the serial killer Ishihara Yuji and beat him to a pulp? I’ve still got a long way to go!”
Praise met with even greater praise in return.
Normally, when someone was focused on refreshing buffs, they would be too occupied with that one task to talk easily.
But Park Dong-jae carried on a conversation and stacked buffs at the same time, handling multiple tasks in parallel.
In other words, he had been grinding away with blood and sweat. This kind of proficiency didn’t come just from acquiring skills.
“Let’s start by sweeping up the trash mobs. We need to do that at least at the exploration stage.”
“Everything as the leader commands!”
Park Dong-jae took up a position about ten meters away from Kang-hoo. That seemed to be his usual “routine” spot.
Buffers each had their own preferred distance from their buff targets.
There was a position where the refresh timing and the travel distance of their buff spheres lined up perfectly with their “eye feel.”
Like how a basketball or soccer player had particular spots they were especially good at scoring from.
Of course— ninety-nine out of a hundred hunters didn’t pay attention to a buffer’s routine. Or more accurately, they couldn’t afford to.
To do that, they would have to constantly calculate their distance from the buffer and keep their own position fixed.
But while dealing with the monsters right in front of them, worrying about the support behind them was extremely difficult.
In a normal case, the problem was simple: people didn’t have eyes in the back of their heads. They couldn’t keep turning around mid-fight.
However—
【Third Eye】
【You can place a Third Eye at a designated point and share its field of vision.
The Third Eye is invisible due to its transparent form but is very fragile and easily broken because it is sensitive to flows of mana.】
Kang-hoo had a clever trick for matching his distance to Park Dong-jae’s with razor precision.
The Third Eye.
Unlike other hunters, he could always create an “eye” at the back of his head—a unique constellation ability that only he possessed.