Rapid Growth (2)

Deep silence.

The constellation Addict of Slaughter immediately shut his mouth at Dimension Plunderer’s “proper” traffic control.

Kang-hoo was grateful to Dimension Plunderer for stepping forward and saying what he wanted to say for him.

It was not that he had an aversion to killing itself. Those who deserved to die should be killed.

But killing even people who had no reason to die merely out of simple interest did not match Kang-hoo’s beliefs.

It seemed this annihilation operation, where Kang-hoo had become the bait, had greatly appealed to the constellations.

In truth, there were also parts that surprised Kang-hoo himself. He had certainly gathered the Claw Lizards very well.

On top of that, the wide-area skills Takashi, Lemon, and Mokomichi had slammed down onto them possessed power beyond imagination.

If one wanted to know what the word annihilation meant as an expression, all one had to do was look at this current situation.

“Oh?”

He was surprised by the support and change he had not expected.

To upgrade Subspace, he needed a red mana stone whose price hovered around 100 billion won.

So although he had always kept it in mind, he had kept postponing it because of the burden of the price.

But thanks to the constellation’s support, it had risen by one stage without any particular cost.

‘Nice. Since I have Optimization - Space Skill, it’s effectively 1.5 meters in width, length, and height. At this size, I can store mana-shot guns without disassembling them.’

The wider Subspace was, the better.

It was a privilege he would have refused if the constellation Frenzied Murderer had demanded the position of main constellation or wanted some other price.

But since he had offered one-sided support out of admiration for Kang-hoo’s ability, Kang-hoo felt thankful for that.

Of course, since the essence of that constellation was a vicious madman, he had no intention of deepening their relationship.

“Even though this is a picture I personally designed, I still can’t believe it.”

Kang-hoo clicked his tongue as he looked at the Claw Lizard corpses scattered in every direction.

There were no surviving Claw Lizards.

Nor were any of Kang-hoo’s group injured. They had succeeded in a one-sided annihilation.

If sections where this kind of immunity tanking worked continued to appear, there seemed to be consistent room to profit from it.

Perhaps.

He thought the labyrinth raid might be resolved quite easily.

After that.

An annihilation battle proceeded, based on the idea that Kang-hoo could tank by using the Five-Colored Blessing skill.

It was a raid method that satisfied everyone involved, and level was not important at all in the process.

Moreover, since the division of roles was intuitive and skill usage only needed to be a simple firepower-centered formation, the raid difficulty dropped sharply as well.

Difficulties in terms of terrain were overcome with Blue-Position Exchange Formation. Even the narrow cliffside path sections were passed easily.

As a result, their raids of the second, third, and fourth floors gained speed.

As they threw themselves into the raid frantically and finally began to run out of stamina, the group had somehow arrived at the end of the fifth floor.

‘Level 475. I climbed 15 steps from the second floor to here? That’s insane. 500 is right in front of me.’

Kang-hoo wore a satisfied expression as he looked at his level, which had soared without stopping.

Takashi and his comrades, who were in the 700-level range, said they had risen by 3 as well. Though it was a 3 closer to 2, still.

Since the final raid was the process of raiding the main boss monster of this labyrinth, they entered the necessary rest.

They had been excited by the extreme firepower battle and had continued raiding the labyrinth all the way, but stamina depletion was unavoidable.

Perhaps because of that, as soon as rest was mentioned, Lemon and Mokomichi took out simple sleeping bags and fell asleep right away.

Takashi, who was on night watch, stayed awake, and Kang-hoo did not sleep because he did not particularly feel like sleeping.

Instead, he sat beside Takashi and became his conversation partner, reviewing the raid so far together.

This was one of the things Takashi liked most about Kang-hoo.

Even at scenes that had ended in one-sided victory, Kang-hoo somehow found points to review and studied better methods.

And while recalling the tricky sections among the labyrinth terrain, he thought of other ways to raid them.

For Takashi, who liked chewing things over, Kang-hoo’s meticulous and cautious personality was a perfect fit and exactly right.

How much time had passed like that in review? Around the time their throats began to grow dry from the long conversation that had gone back and forth.

Takashi let out a pleasant laugh and changed the topic they had been discussing.

“Kang-hoo.”

“Yeah.”

“I feel really good that we got to the fifth floor with several times less hardship than I expected, you know? But there’s one problem with the raid. Do you know what it is?”

“A problem? So far, wasn’t there no section where we particularly struggled?”

Kang-hoo tilted his head.

There had been sections that took some time, but there had been no sudden situations in the middle that made them suffer.

Rather, the labyrinth had felt so simple that he wondered if it was really okay for things to go this easily.

But since Takashi brought up a completely different topic, Kang-hoo could not guess either.

“There is a very big problem.”

“So what is it?”

“Kang-hoo, if you aren’t here. Lemon, Mokomichi, and I, the three of us, absolutely can’t raid this. Clclcl! Isn’t that a very big problem? We can’t do it without you.”

“Then you can just call me.”

“I know. That would solve it. But for someone like me, who is a corpse without his pride, that is a decision that requires a great deal of patience.”

“You’re stubborn in a strange place. Takashi, but you know. It’s the same for me. I can’t do anything here by myself. Even if I tank, if there’s no firepower to smash them apart, I’m just doing useless scarecrow work.”

“It is good that we both help each other, but how should I put it? I don’t really like raids with high dependency.”

“Mm.”

“I’m not saying I dislike you, Kang-hoo. I’m not jealous of your ability either. It’s just frustrating that when Plan A doesn’t work, there still isn’t a Plan B or C to replace it.”

“I agree with that too. Until now, I didn’t really think of anything other than this method.”

If they kept thinking about raid methods, an alternative method would come to mind at some point.

Of course, from Takashi’s perspective, it was regrettable that the current strategy had made Kang-hoo an essential element.

But Kang-hoo himself had no complaints. Since he was the puzzle piece, if needed, they only had to fit him in.

The raid so far had been nonstop fighting, yet it had been so enjoyable that it was truly a feast for the eyes.

To compare it to a game, should he say it felt like freely equipping and swinging endgame-grade items without restriction?

When hundreds and thousands of monsters disappeared like worthless flies, he could feel the pleasure of slaughter.

A proper firepower battle!

Everyone was serious at every single moment, and Kang-hoo gained a lot of motivation in the process.

With the members of the Takashi Family, he wanted to match not only their skill, but also their level.

Only then would he also have more opportunities to go with them to more numerous and more difficult dungeons.

According to what Takashi had hinted, among the dungeons they owned, there were quite a few dungeons with level restrictions.

They were that tricky and difficult, but for that very reason, the probability of obtaining special and good rewards from them was overwhelmingly high.

Challenges that could act as catalysts for rapid growth were also the adventures Kang-hoo had always dreamed of and wanted.

A little later.

When Kang-hoo’s night watch shift began, Takashi also fell asleep right away.

Even while tightly holding the pad in his hand just in case, he was probably drooling in exhausted sleep.

Since he was given time alone just then, Kang-hoo was able to examine the skills he had obtained earlier on the second, third, and fourth floors of the labyrinth.

All of them were skills he had plundered after eliminating the middle bosses.

He had also obtained quite a bit of mana stone rewards, and if he combined the value of the mana stones they divided equally, it was at least 50 billion won.

‘It hits me again, but the advantage of a labyrinth is that there is a boss for each floor. It’s the best structure for securing skills.’

The three added skills were each skills with clear uses.

The middle bosses he had faced were also guys with clear identities of their own, and because of that, the raids had been even more fun.

‘An enhanced form of Clone Arts. Then that makes 10 illusions, 5 shadows, and 5 clones. I can confuse opponents in 20 branches.’

From the perspective of someone facing Kang-hoo, the existence of illusions, shadows, and clones was already troublesome enough.

But due to Multiple Clone Arts, an even more troublesome variable had increased.

Illusions could at least be made to disappear by using the flow of mana, but clones absolutely required physical destruction.

So even one was already troublesome, and now four more had been added, so from the attacker’s perspective, it could only be something worth cheering over.

‘Praise be to skill plunder, which even lets me obtain a signature-like necromancy skill.’

Corpse Explosion seemed overwhelmingly more likely to be used on monsters than on hunters.

It was the best for creating variables.

Because a monster corpse that, on the outside, merely looked like a dead body could suddenly be detonated.

However, since the level of explosion differed depending on the monster’s level and possessed mana, it seemed necessary to collect many samples going forward.

‘And finally…….’

Kang-hoo’s gaze turned to the skill he had plundered after killing the middle boss monster on the fourth floor of the labyrinth.

It was the skill that had made the group suffer greatly in the early part of the raid because of how troublesome its skill composition was!

A skill that unfolded an inescapable antlion pit for the designated opponent was now in Kang-hoo’s grasp.