Chapter 104

Normally, this was the timing where Soo-ah brought me a towel, but right now she was currently in a state of complete exhaustion.

After checking that there were no Mukamukas around this area I checked the state of my party members.

Han Joon-suk and Edward were looking after Soo-ah. Soo-ah, who looked much better than before, was trying to get up.

“Keep resting.”

“It’s fine. They will all be caught in the spider web, we have to get them all.”

“That can be done later. Either way, why were you in such a bad state?”

No matter how fast she was moving, it was abnormal for her state to have been that bad. The amount of time she spent blocking the enemies was only 2~3 minutes.

It was an incredibly short time for Soo-ah who had the self buff on top of the stamina of a professional athlete.

“I think it’s because I didn’t control my strength properly. It was my first time moving that quickly after all.”

It seems the problem was that she couldn’t adjust to her own speed. My physical ability increased rapidly as well but I still took a few steps while her stats rose all at once.

Its similar to how someone’s stamina is used up quickly if the person overpaces.

“Since your stamina is still only a bit better than a normal person, it seems you will have to pace yourself.”

“Yes, I think I will be able to show my actual speed if I get used to it.”

“That’s nice.”

We took a break for now while waiting for Soo-ah to recover. I asked Edward if he was going to drink some blood but he refused saying that he was full.

He said that it seemed like it would take at least a week to digest the blood he drank before.

Soo-ah who was regulating her breathing for 10 minutes or so slowly raised her body.

“I think I’m fine now.”

“Then we should get going.”

“Come to think of it, where did Kelby go?”

“Ah…….”

The situation was urgent so I completely forgot about him.

“Don’t tell me you forgot about him?”

“Haha…… thats.”

“Come on. Even if it was urgent. If Yeon-gyeong was here then you would have been scolded.”

“I probably wouldn’t have forgotten if she was here.”

I said some appropriate excuse and went out to look for Kelby. I picked up the dropped ores and items on the way.

The village area was quiet.

We made that much of a ruckus on top of killing the Mukamuka Leader so if it was a monster with a functioning brain there was no way they would come here.

“Oh. What’s this?”

Soo-ah picked up a shining ore. It was an ore that come from the Mukamuka Leader’s corpse.

“Hey. Put that back on the ground for now.”

“Yes sir.”

High level ores were radioactive. This was why the Geiger counter was a must-have for porters at dungeon above level 3.

I took out the Geiger counter from Soo-ah’s Space Expansion Bag and took the measurement. After checking that there were no problems I held it in my hand.

Because it was an ore that I saw for the first time, I checked it with the manual.

Strengthening Stone (4) : Can make an item’s level the same as the Strengthening Stone’s level through combination.

“Seriously?”

This is pretty surprising. I thought it was one of the normal ores but something completely different from my expectations came out.

“What? What is it for you to be that surprised?”

“This seems to raise the level of an item?”

“The level of an item?”

“Yeah. So you can raise the level of a low level item to level 4.”

Looking at the combination formula, it seemed like any item could become a level 4 item with 3 Strengthening Stones.

“You can even make a level 1 a level 4?”

“Probably. This is seems to be pretty nice?”

I didn’t think that a new item would drop. This was a rather good item too. It’s because there are quite a few items among the low level ones that I can’t use even if they have a good option due to their low level.

This was especially so for the Bloody Sword. Although the special ability of it was A level, because the damage stat was too low it couldn’t do much damage to monsters of levels higher than or equal to level 4.

However, now that I can use it as much as I want as long as I have the Strengthening Stone.

“Wow…… If this gets out then this will be traded for a really high price.

“It probably won’t be like that.”

“How so?”

“You can only strengthen through combination and I’m probably the only person that can use combination.”

“That’s true. This is an amazing profit then? We would be able to make a lot of money by just searching for Strengthening Stones, strengthening an item and selling it.”

“It would be nice if it works out that well.”

“Is there something more?”

I looked at the Strengthening Stone’s combination formula on the manual and clicked his tongue.

3 Strengthening Stones and 3 ores of the same level were required for a level 4 Strengthening Stone combination.

That meant that I needed the incredibly rare ellanite. The bright side was that I currently had 3 or so ellanites in my possession.

They were from the bunch of the ores I picked up during the battle with Chungho Group.

“Now then. Just need to collect 2 more Strengthening Stones.”

“We’re more like a miner than a hunter.”

“Well. There’s not much of difference in what they do.”

My work is basically swinging around tools to mine ores and items. The fact that the average lifespan of both jobs isn’t long is also the same. The main difference would be that our job earns a lot more money.

After collecting all the items that had dropped here and there in the village, we headed towards the middle road.

I could see trails of blood in some places on the path. Because monsters bleed the entire time they’re returning to the void, one could tell that it hadn’t been that long since a fight broke out.

“Is it Kelby I wonder.”

“I can hear some sounds from that direction. Let’s hurry.”

Soo-ah urged us as she walked hastily. We were following after her when I heard a disturbing sound.

Crunch. Crunch.

It was the sound of chewing something hard. When we arrived at the origin of the sound, we could see Kelby eating a Mukamuka that was caught in the spider web.

I was used to it since I had seen it a few times but Soo-ah’s expression was one of shock.

“You, what are you eating!”

“Kek?”

Gulp.

Kelby got surprised and swallowed the bone that he was chewing on. Soo-ah ran up to him and smacked him on the back.

“Quickly spit it out! If you’ll upset your stomach if you eat something like that!”

“Leave him alone. That’s his ability.”

“Yes?”

*whimpering*.

Kelby who was almost 2 meters high when he stood up started rubbing his face on Soo-ah’s head. With blood on his mouth.

“Ah, seriously. Wash your mouth first!”

Soo-ah took out a towel from her bad and wiped his mouth. For your information, the towels with blood on them were all one time use only.

If we threw it away in the dungeon then there was no need to recycle it separately.

I gave a rundown on Kelby’s ability. Han Joon-suk who was listening quietly opened his mouth while talking.

“I was quite surprised to be honest. I believe it would be best to not show this scene to Yeon-gyeong.”

“I don’t know if she would say such a scene is cute but it’s not like we’re keeping him as a pet so she will have to put up with it.”

“Certainly. That is true.”

“I was really surprised. Does his ability increase if he eats like that?”

Said Soo-ah, who finished wiping off the blood on Kelby’s mouth. As the one that adored Kelby the most after Yeon-gyeong it seems the mental impact was quite severe.

“Well, it seems like he’s able to imitate the monster’s characteristic. If it’s a characteristic of the Mukamuka’s then it’s mighty strength so I would imagine it would increase that stat.”

Eating monsters or items did not appear numerically so it was difficult to understand everything. It wasn’t like I could see every one of Kelby’s fights either.

“Whew. We couldn’t see any Mukamukas on the way here, did Kelby eat them all?”

“It wouldn’t be possible for him to eat that many since we only rested for about 10 minutes. It’s probably right to say that a lot of them escaped.”

“Hm…… That means we should chase after them and kill them all. If we want to clear the dungeon.”

“There should be a different method to clear. The dungeon is pretty large and there are many monsters as well so 2 hours would be insufficient to clear it. Come to think of it, how much time has passed?”

“It’s almost been 2 hours.”

“Damn…… we should leave then.”

The Red Dungeon where I first saw the Vampire Lord didn’t have a separate entrance. However, these dungeons created through ‘Mystic Dungeon’ had an entrance just like the past dungeons; allowing us to leave whenever we wanted to.

There were a few peculiarities that were different but the basic rules such as items disappearing if one died were the same.

“Isn’t it better to clear it since we came in already?”

“Then we would have to pay extra though?”

“Do we look like we have no money?”

Soo-ah said proudly, and when thinking about it she was right. In my point of view, the fine was a miniscule amount of money. Information about this Red Dungeon was more important than some chump change.

It might be more important to find out the method of clearing than the fine.

We decided to continue the dungeon exploration for now.

The monster with the highest population after the Mukamuka was the Tutulips. It closely resembled a puma but was 3 times bigger.

Its movement was agile and possessed strong bite force so it’s menacing enough that it can be said that your life is over if your bitten by it.

Normally that is.

The point was that this side had a guy that was more terrifying than that Tutulips.

“Grrr!”

A low pitched growling.

As Kelby took a step forward while growling the Tutulips took a step backwards.

“Bite it!”

Once Kelby ran in the Tutulips scattered while making eerie sounds. At the scene that I couldn’t predict I laughed involuntarily.

“Woah…… thought they were cats for a second there.”

“They’re still level 4 monsters. If you look down on them your neck will be ripped off in on strike.”

“Speaking of which, I should get a new armor first. I’m anxious because this one is only level 3.”

Soo-ah said so while looking down at her Spider Web Armor.

“It would certainly be a good idea to change it if you’re going to high level dungeons.”

“It is nice because it has the spider web ability but…….”

“We can upgrade it after gathering Strengthening Stones too.”

“After senior brother’s thing.”

“You think I’ll do yours first if you say something like that?”

“That was from the heart though.”

I have no idea how to reply if she come out this seriously. Han Joon-suk opened his mouth instead of me answering.

“May I have the Needle Gun for a bit?”

“Sure. What are you going to do?”

“Well, was thinking about testing out the firepower.”

While Kelby was herding the Tutulips, I started aiming at the ones that were running away.

“Kyaang!”

“Nice shot!”

Soo-ah yelled in a loud voice. It seems that habit will not disappear easily.

1 shot 1 hit. The reason I’m able to hit them so well without a guiding function isn’t because I am a sharpshooter but because the Tutulips are large.

The Tutulips that got hit by my Needle Gun looked at me while jumping around but because Kelby was growling nearby they didn’t even try to attack and stayed busy trying to run away.

I continuously chased after them and pulling the trigger.

As result of the experiment, I was able to find out that they became unable to fight once they were hit with 3 shots.

If they were shot in their vitals then they could even be killed in 3 shots. Even without shooting their vitals, it was possible to kill them with 5 shots.

Han Joon-suk who was watching opened his mouth.

“It packs quite a punch.”

“It seems like the firepower test is enough with this. It seems to have higher damage than a bow of the same level.”

“The only minus is that it can only be used at mid range.”

I agreed with Han Joon-suk’s opinion. Bows could still be used from a distance of 100 meters minimum but the Needle Gun’s damage dropped sharply once the range passed 20 meters.

If it was like this, it was uncertain as to whether or not ranged attackers could use this.

Instead, it seemed useful for someone with a battle power of 0 like Manager Kim to use for self defense.

After the firepower test was over, Kelby had bitten all the Tutulips to death. After waiting for the corpses to return to the void, we picked up the ores and items and set off again.