The Support Ate it All

While Kim Ho stared at the catfish-man statue—one that looked an awful lot like someone—

Song Cheonhye was trying to sort out the chaos in her head.

Ever since entering , everything that had happened had been one shock after another.

Especially from the moment the dimensional crow appeared.

— CAW, young sovereign. It has been some time.

...Sovereign?

Like Grandfather?

There was no way.

Maybe it didn’t mean the word she knew. Maybe it was just some title between the two of them, or a code word.

But judging by the dimensional crow’s attitude, it really did seem to mean exactly that.

When she had tried to ask it something, it hadn’t even bothered replying, clearly unwilling to exchange a single word with her. But with Kim Ho, it had spoken like he was an old friend.

That meant it recognized him as being at least somewhere near its own level.

...Then is he really a sovereign?

Of course, they did not seem to be completely equal beings.

There was still that “young” attached in front of it.

Even so, the fact that the possibility existed at all was incredible.

But as though that still was not enough to be shocked by, Kim Ho had then started trading with the crow.

The things that came out of his inventory made Song Cheonhye’s eyes widen again.

...Two chunks of meteoric iron?

And he was going to combine them into one?

It was something she had never heard of, let alone seen.

Then he lined up all those statues as payment.

Even to someone like her, who did not have much artistic sense, they were obviously extraordinary.

As expected, the crow had practically lost its mind with delight.

And their source was not hard to guess.

There were only a handful of candidates in the entire school.

It has to be the Sculptors Club.

Until last year, that club had had so little recognition it had nearly been dissolved.

But the club head’s skill had been the real thing.

At one point, they had casually carved a statue of the Hero—the principal—over in the training center, and the thing had turned out to be S-rank with absurd options.

If the statues had been carved by someone with that kind of skill, it made perfect sense that a dimensional crow would love them.

At the same time, another question occurred to her.

...But why does he have so many?

Lately, the Sculptors Club had been so flooded with commissions it was bursting at the seams.

Even giant groups like the Swordsmanship Club or White Magic Club had probably only managed to get one or two pieces.

But Kim Ho had enough to practically hold an exhibition.

And from how casual he looked, it seemed like this was far from all he had.

Is he close with the club head over there?

Whether it was ability or connections, there was no end to the new things she kept learning about Kim Ho.

And she could not even begin to guess how many more secrets he was hiding.

But he’s showing me those secrets right now.

All those sides of himself he had kept so tightly hidden until now.

Was it all right to take that as a sign that he had started trusting her, at least a little?

Like the conversation they had shared at the dungeon entrance.

— We’re... close, aren’t we?

— Pretty close... and we’ve built up trust...? You even put [Austerity] on me.

— And we did... eat sweet buns together.

There were not many people Song Cheonhye was close enough to share secrets with.

The only ones she could think of right away were Han Somi and Lee Seulbi.

She was on decent terms with the other Discipline Committee members too, but it would still take more time before she could put them on the same level as those two.

Then... that makes him the third.

For some reason, something in the corner of her chest felt faintly itchy.

Kim Ho always seemed busy teasing her to death, but when it really mattered, he actually trusted her like this and thought things through for her.

And compared to that, I...

Hadn’t she been too busy looking for his flaws and trying to catch him on something?

Even just before entering the dungeon, she had doubted and doubted him again.

It had been part of her Discipline Committee work, yes, but even so, there had been something excessive about it.

Song Cheonhye reflected on that deeply.

And made up her mind.

She still absolutely intended to get him back with one good hit someday, but from now on, she would at least keep the minimum line.

And when it was time to trust him, she would try trusting him.

As she clenched her fist in resolve, Kim Ho slowly waved a hand in front of her face.

“Why are you zoning out?”

“...I was just thinking about something else for a second. Are we doing the rest now? The shutdown.”

Song Cheonhye asked back with a bright smile.

*****

Looks like there’s been a change of heart.

The atmosphere shifted right around then.

If I had to compare it to a hedgehog, it was like she’d been about to puff all her spines up, then quietly laid them down instead.

Well, I did show her the deal with the crow.

Reasonable that some trust would build up after that.

As for how Song Cheonhye would act from here on, I could wait and see.

I stood facing the catfish-man statue again.

Then I gathered wind in my palm and said,

WHIIIIIR—

“I’m going to break it now.”

“What happens after that?”

“It’s a boss fight, so get ready.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“Understood.”

The place and timing were both abrupt, but Song Cheonhye no longer looked doubtful and simply started preparing for battle.

She really was listening better than before.

CRACKLE, CRACKLE.

One [Lightning Rod] after another appeared nearby.

At the same time, I hurled the wind I’d gathered in my hand.

BOOM!

Despite looking like it should be able to throw a mean punch or two, the catfish-man statue collapsed far too easily.

Then we both slowly looked around.

“...”

“...?”

The area had gone silent in an instant.

The reason was easy enough to guess.

The teleportation magic that had been raging around us like heat haze was completely gone.

No point keeping it up anymore.

After all, we had forced our way through the thing meant to keep people out and gone as far as destroying the statue. There was no reason for the magic to remain active.

Next, we looked up at the sky.

RUMBLE...

Dark clouds gathered fast enough to see with the naked eye, dimming the heavens.

Then one raindrop fell.

Then another.

SHAAAAAA—

Meanwhile, a notification message appeared in one corner of my vision.

[You have fulfilled the shutdown condition.]

[A special reward will be granted.]

▷You may add a water/ice attribute to one of your owned skills.

▷Or increase the power of one of your owned water/ice-attribute skills.

[Accept/Decline]

This was one of the reasons I hadn’t bothered bringing the others.

Why would you slap an attribute onto a skill you were already using just fine?

Especially Hong Yeonhwa. If one of her spells turned into water or ice, that would practically mean throwing the whole spell away.

But for me, this is great.

My skills and traits were wind- or freeze-based.

So the instant the message popped up, I selected Accept.

[Please designate three owned skills.]

[One of the three will be enhanced at random.]

Couldn’t you just let me pick one?

I’d expected it to work out like this from the start, but that didn’t stop it from feeling a little disappointing.

Still, even if it was random, it was all upside for me.

I just have to pick three skills that all benefit from water/ice anyway.

Or pick ones that would profit from gaining the attribute.

From that angle, three choices almost felt too few.

First, exclude the wind line.

Just like with the others, changing their attribute would only make them worse.

And exclude the ones that are better left alone.

For example, [Concussion Mark] and [Transplanting Flowers, Grafting Trees].

In the former case, adding a freeze effect would only make it easier to get blocked.

And the latter’s real value was in deflecting the opponent’s attack, so adding freezing would not give me much.

[Pulverize Zone] seems like it could improve, though.

Right now I only used it because of the rank; it didn’t have any real synergy yet.

So I marked that down as candidate number one.

I’ve got five freeze-type skills in total.

[Frost-White Shot], [Mystic Sound Jade Demon Finger], [Diamond Freeze], [Ice Wall], and [Mutual-Destruction Eye].

Of those, I had only copied [Ice Wall], not fixed it, so it could not be enhanced.

As for [Mystic Sound Jade Demon Finger], strengthening the freeze effect would also increase the elemental penalty, so that was out too.

At least until I raised the magatama set’s [Damage Reduction(F)].

That leaves four.

After thinking a little longer, I decided to take [Diamond Freeze] out too.

In situations like this, the returns were better from strengthening attack skills.

[One of the following skills will be enhanced at random.]

▷[Pulverize Zone(S)]

▷[Frost-White Shot(B)]

▷[Mutual-Destruction Eye(B)]

[Accept/Decline]

Let’s do it.

I selected Accept again and watched for the result.

At that point it was purely up to luck, but I felt more anticipation than anxiety.

Whatever gets enhanced, I win.

More precisely, I had only chosen things that would benefit me.

And the boost should be pretty big too.

Naturally, shutdown rewards were far greater than clear rewards.

Since you would never be able to enter the place again, it dumped a huge payout on you all at once.

And the reward scales more to the shutdown difficulty than the dungeon’s rank.

itself was only F-rank, but the difficulty of breaking through the teleportation magic was on an entirely different level.

You needed a spatial-type skill or trait on the level of the dimensional crows. No matter how low you rated that, it was mid-to-high A-rank territory.

Usually, this was the kind of place people came after reaching S.

I was only here this early because several hidden pieces had overlapped and gotten me the [Crow Tree].

In short,

This is basically S-rank-class reward territory.

So I waited for the result in a very good mood, and another series of notifications spilled down across my vision.

[[Mutual-Destruction Eye(B)] will be enhanced.]

▷The status ailments [Poisoned] and [Weathered] are removed.

▷The status ailment [Frozen] is maximized.

▷Ignores 2 ranks of the target’s freeze resistance.

Excellent.

It was a little disappointing that the status ailments had been consolidated into one, but in the long run this was better.

Mind games were only really useful in student PvP. Against high-rank opponents, they did not help much.

The lack of control had been a big issue too.

If I chained it with [Octopus Arms] and hit ten times, probability meant the three status ailments would usually come out fairly evenly.

But sometimes I’d land [Poisoned] eight times, or [Weathered] seven times.

Not being able to inflict the one I actually wanted had been a bigger drawback than anything else.

Now it was unified as freezing.

Ignoring 2 ranks of resistance is nice too.

Even if the opponent was a dragon—or one of Kim Ho’s bonded family with S-rank [Elemental Resistance]—I could treat that as B-rank instead.

So even with [Mutual-Destruction Eye] still at B-rank, I should be able to get a bit of freezing through. And once it rose to A or S, it would only get easier.

Since we’re here, I may as well test it out.

I shook off the thought and looked ahead again.

SHAAAAAA—!

By then, the rain had grown heavier and heavier, until it was pouring down almost like a waterfall.

The wind was fierce too, strong enough to make it feel like I might get blown away any second.

Then the storm gathered in front of us and began taking on a distinct form.

A giant several times larger than we were.

And its face was the same catfish-man one as the statue we had just smashed.

Looking at it, an irreverent thought suddenly crossed my mind.

...Storm Gapdu?

SHAAAAAA—!

The moment it appeared, Storm Gapdu—no, the storm catfish-man—made its hostility toward us clear.

When it stretched one hand over its head, a storm gathered there too, forming a long trident.

But before it could begin its attack—

My eyes, filled with a cold sharp enough to sting, locked onto it.

[Mutual-Destruction Eye]

CRACK—CRACK—CRACK!

The storm catfish-man became an ice catfish-man.