Chapter 23
“Liege Lord, Liege Lord…”
Katarina looked up at me.
Her red eyes were moist.
Her expression showed overwhelming emotion.
“Hmm. Is it really that touching?”
Of course, I’d probably feel good too if I got head pats from a silver-haired, red-eyed Vampire Bishojo, but Katarina was overdoing it a bit.
Perhaps because she was a Retainer created through [Summon Retainer], her loyalty to me, her Creator, seemed far more immense than I had thought.
“Anyway, the cost-effectiveness is really good.”
It takes at least 10 Essence of Blood to grant a single grace, yet Katarina was reacting this way to just a few head pats.
Pat, pat.
In the end, I only pulled my hand away after petting her for a good while longer.
“That is enough, Katarina. You have worked hard.”
“…Yes, Liege Lord.”
Katarina replied, looking at my hand with a slightly regretful expression.
Meanwhile, Si-Yeon had quietly stepped back and was waiting on standby.
A very Si-Yeon-like reaction, as expected.
I roughly wrapped up the situation like that and lay down on the bed.
“Phew.”
With the AC blasting, burrowing Under the Covers made me feel my tension melting away.
A lot of things really happened today.
An A-rank Gate opened in the neighborhood, Katarina went out and saved the Ice Empress, I drank Vampire blood, the Blood’s Grace Interface opened, and I even enhanced Si-Yeon.
It felt like events kept happening all day long, so I was quite exhausted.
Actually, all I did was hole up in my Home Base and cheer, click the Book of the Dead, and click to grant grace…
But there’s still such a thing as mental exhaustion, right?
“I should rest a bit and check the gallery.”
I picked up the Smartphone by my pillow and logged into the Hunter Gallery.
Then I started binge-reading through the popular posts.
Today’s hot topic was, of course, the Seollim-dong Gate incident from earlier.
Fortunately, I didn’t see any posts that seemed to have pinpointed my or Katarina’s existence.
It was all just people wondering about the Ice Empress’s current condition or talking about a Gate Judgment Error.
While I was leisurely scrolling down like that, a post with quite a few upvotes caught my eye.
[Title: But True Ancestor << What is this guy doing and where?]
Poster: ㅇㅇ
Why isn’t he normalizing the A-rank Gate with a 1-second clear?
He should be popping out right away when an incident like this happens.
Because the True Ancestor didn’t show up, our Ice Empress noona struggled greatly.
If the True Ancestor is lurking and reading this, hit upvote and reflect on your actions.
- Fr lol
- I’m the True Ancestor and I hit upvote
- This is fr. If it’s the True Ancestor, he could evaporate the whole gate in one strike, but he didn’t step up lol
- But jokes aside, if he’s really True Ancestor-level, isn’t it seriously possible?
ㄴ ??? What are you talking about lol
ㄴ No matter if the True Ancestor is a god, he’s just a Prospect Awakener who just reached the 3rd Floor. How could he clear an A-rank Gate lol
- No, seriously, he cleared the Nightmare 3rd Floor 3-second, but he can’t clear a single A-rank Gate?
ㄴ Wow, there really are a lot of normies in Heon-gael lol
- I see a few people in the comments seriously expecting it lol Wake up. The True Ancestor’s current Skill is at most Upper A-rank. He’s just highly rated because he shows that kind of performance at a low level.
ㄴ Probably because there are a lot of Unawakened in Heon-gael, they can’t grasp it well. There are actually kids who seriously believe he has S-rank Hunter skills lol
'…'
They’re making fun of me, right?
These guys are worshipping and mocking me at the same time?
Of course, I knew it was just WWE-style banter, but I felt a bit triggered.
Because.
“I actually did help the Ice Empress, okay? What do you guys know!”
The Ice Empress was literally on the verge of death.
If it weren’t for me, all of Seollim-dong might have been blown away by now.
But I couldn’t brag about it anywhere. And in the Community, I was just being used as joke material.
Feeling needlessly petty, I pressed the downvote button hard.
Let’s just read this topic up to here and move on.
While I was flicking down the scroll again, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
“…Come to think of it.”
It was about time to set up my next Climbing Plan slowly.
Since I cleared up to the 3rd Floor, it was now time to climb the 4th Floor.
“They said the 4th Floor has a Cemetery background.”
But the problem was what came after.
I became curious about information regarding the next floor, the 5th Floor.
Up to the Nightmare 4th Floor, there were still a decent number of strategy guides.
[4th Floor boss difficulty is insane. It’s on a completely different weight class from the 3rd Floor]
[Nightmare 4th Floor: Consider it the first gateway for an S-rank Prospect. If you clear this, you seriously have the potential to be an S-rank Hunter.]
[I gave up on challenging the 4th Floor; Even with an A-Rank Class, I challenged it 10 times and failed all 10 times.]
The difficulty is on a different level from the 3rd Floor.
You need immense Skill to break through.
These kinds of stories were universally reported.
However, from the 5th Floor onwards, there was almost no information in the gallery.
[Title: Why is there no info on the Nightmare 5th Floor in the gallery?]
Poster: ㅇㅇ
Are there no Hun-bung-i who have been to the 5th Floor?
- Of course not lol Everyone gets stuck on the 4th Floor, so there’s no one to talk about the 5th Floor
- Just consider the 5th Floor and above as the Realm of Gods. It’s not a place for humans to go
- I saw somewhere a long time ago that once you go up to the 5th Floor, the entire structure changes completely
ㄴ What does that mean
ㄴ I dunno?
ㄴ Nobody knows ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- I think a 5th Floor guide was posted a while ago in a somewhat translated tone… It seems to have been deleted now, but did anyone see it?
ㄴ Yeah I saw it too. Don’t really remember the contents.
ㄴ That guy was a troll. He was acting up claiming to be some American Ranker and got perma-banned by the mods
- I know it doesn’t change completely just because it’s the 5th Floor yeah.
ㄴ What rank are you?
ㄴ I’m not a Hunter!
ㄴ Ah… Thanks for the reply
ㄴ What are these guys doing lol
ㄴ They’re doing a comedy routine lol
Even after searching diligently, all that came up were these kinds of shitposts. There was absolutely no useful information.
'Hmm. I guess it can’t be helped.'
Come to think of it, it was obvious.
The people gathered in Heon-gael were mostly ordinary hunters or completely normal people like me before the awakening.
Even the high ranks were just B-ranks, with maybe a few A-ranks occasionally seen.
The number of skilled people capable of clearing the Nightmare Grade 4th Floor in Korea could be counted on one hand, so there was no way those people would bother coming to a place like Heon-gael to post strategy guides.
In the end, information could only be obtained if the people who knew it released it.
In this ecosystem, it meant that information on the high Nightmare floors wasn’t even being circulated in the first place.
Naturally, it was no different even if I searched other communities or Nutube.
“Well, nothing I can do about it.”
I let go of my useless lingering attachments and brought up the System Window.
Since I was already thinking about this, I figured I might as well organize my stats.
[Name: Yu-Jin]
[Level: 22]
[Class: Lord of Blood (EX)]
[Strength: 3]
[Agility: 4]
[Stamina: 3]
[Blood Power: 154/154]
[Available Stat Points: 9]
The 9 points that came in from this level-up.
As expected, it’s right to put them into Blood Power, isn’t it?
Because every time I raise Blood Power by 1, 1 Essence of Blood accumulates.
Plus, this was the information I found out earlier.
Drinking Monster Blood grants experience points.
It seemed like the higher the grade of the blood, the more it gave.
So, if I map out my future route…
1. Level Up to raise Blood Power.
2. Then Essence of Blood accumulates.
3. Use that to grant grace and enhance my Retainers.
4. When my Retainers hunt strong enemies, I drink blood safely in my Home Base and Level Up.
5. Then I use that to raise Blood Power again… and repeat this infinitely.
→ Become the World’s number 1 Ranker!
It was roughly this kind of vibe.
“Should I switch to being a Jungler? My path design is too perfect.”
I nodded in satisfaction.
It was clear that even my intelligence had skyrocketed after awakening.
Then I shall raise my Blood Power right away.
I invested all 9 points into Blood Power.
[Blood Power +9]
[Blood Power: 163/163]
[Essence of Blood: 24 → 33]
'Nice.'
It’s going up steadily.
I felt good.
But then, a passing thought.
'But if I do this, won’t I have to keep raising only Blood Power every time I Level Up from now on?'
That was the only way to accumulate Essence of Blood and Level Up the kids' skills, so going all-in on Blood Power was indeed correct.
Then, is my main body destined to live with trash stats like this forever?
Probably not…?
I’ll be able to raise them someday… right?
Suddenly, a wave of disillusionment hit me for no reason.
'Let’s just play a game.'
I decided to play a game to soothe my sorrow.
I logged into LioHun as usual.
As soon as the lobby popped up, my eyes naturally went to the friends list.
However,
[Ice Coffee (Offline)]
'…Huh?'
I tilted my head.
My friend hasn’t logged in today.
Looking at the Match History, it seemed they hadn’t even logged in all day today.
'Didn’t they say they were free after coming back from a month-long business trip?'
They definitely said that while we were duoing yesterday, and even suggested we duo today too.
Well, since they’re a Hunter, maybe something important suddenly came up?
I shrugged without thinking much of it.
It wasn’t something to make a fuss over just because they didn’t log in for one day.
If I don’t have a duo partner, I can just run solo queue anyway.
'Yeah. Let’s just go solo queue.'
We lost that last game yesterday because Top Lane exploded. I was going to pay them back by carrying hard, but that’s a shame.
For reference, after that game, I had reached a state of perfect enlightenment regarding the character Blood Mage.
National-power-level True Ancestor Blood Mage sorties!
Let’s get right into copying LP!
I boldly started a solo queue match and -
“T-This is truly a Jungle Difference…!!”
Like Magic, I went on a 3-game losing streak.