Chapter 13
ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : I really don't know what I did wrong… You even licked my face to wake me up, and we were so close. Why are you acting like this?
ㄴ Fenrir : …?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : ?
ㄴ Fenrir : You... licked me...?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(156F) : Hey, don't be jealous.
ㄴ Fenrir : No, that's not it. They don't normally do cute things like that unless you feed them.
Fenrir continued explaining.
ㄴ Fenrir : Anyway... the Golden Carriage skips anyone who isn't eligible to use it.
ㄴ Fenrir : If you have zero money on hand, it gets skipped. It doesn't appear at all.
ㄴ Fenrir : So the horses' original route probably starts at Floor 100, but because of you, they had to start from Floor 25 this time.
“Huh…?”
ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : So... you're saying they're angry because they had to work too much?
ㄴ Fenrir : The problem is that you kept climbing without resting.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : ?
ㄴ Fenrir : For thirty-one floors! Imagine how exhausted they were climbing after you...! They never got to rest once!!!
ㄴ Fenrir : Just look at the size of that carriage... From their perspective, they had to haul that thing up thirty-one floors!
“Hmm…”
I couldn't understand that explanation.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : But the Demon King's Tower has a thousand floors... How can they be that exhausted after climbing a mere thirty-one floors? That makes no sense.
ㄴ Fenrir : It's because you didn't feed them. You animal abuser.
So I had to feed them.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : Feed them? What do they eat? I didn't see anything like horse feed being sold in the carriage.
ㄴ Fenrir : Everything in the carriage is food.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : ?
ㄴ Fenrir : Ro and Lu eat items. Normally, they dismantle and enhance items, taking a break at least every ten floors. But you starved them for over two hours and did nothing but whip them onward. Poor things ㅠㅠ
“Oh, enhancement…”
ㄴㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : Seriously?
Fenrir : Yeah. Poor things, right...? You should give them something to eat, right...? Take off those earrings and feed them right now.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : Wait, that's fucking awesome. There's a dismantling and enhancement system too?
ㅇㅇ(421F) : Look at them being on completely different wavelengths lolㅋㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : But then to get them to calm down, you're saying I have to feed them my gear?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(421F) : Yep, exactly. Give the gear to the black horse. The black horse turns it into enhancement stones. For the skeleton horse, put the equipment and enhancement stones together, and it can enhance the equipment.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(574F) : Never feed the earrings to the black horse. Give them to the skeleton horse.
ㄴ Captain Death Note : Never feed it the Death Scythe!!!
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(56F)(Author) : Understood, teachers...
I guess I needed to enhance the earrings.
It hurt to think that I had to sacrifice my precious gear.
But to buy the 120,000-gold sash, I had to get into the carriage right away.
‘Let's feed it the common items.’
Of the three rings on my fingers, I first handed the [Adventurer's Ring] to the black horse.
Hee-hing!!
It refused. It turned its head away.
“You don't like this?”
I took off the [Obsidian Insight Ring] and held both rings out together.
Then.
Prrrrr!
It snorted and sniffed them, then stuck out its tongue and swallowed both rings.
I guess there simply hadn't been enough.
“Thank goodness. I thought it didn't eat common items…”
It rolled them around in its mouth with its tongue for a moment...
Gulp!
It swallowed them without even chewing.
Neigh-!
It shook its mane and cleared the way.
It seemed satisfied.
“Sorry for making things so hard for you…”
But where does my dismantled item come out?
No way.
“Ah... please.”
“Ah...”
“Um.”
It was exactly what I had imagined.
There was nothing dirty whatsoever in the result, but it was still a little unpleasant to look at.
“Next time, I should look away…”
What came out were two stones of different colors.
“So these are enhancement stones.”
I picked them up.
Now it was time to feed the skeleton horse.
I picked up the two enhancement stones from the floor, removed the earrings from my earlobes, and placed them between the skeleton horse's jawbones.
Clatter! Clatter!
The skeleton horse clacked its jaws, then began chomping the earrings and stones all at once.
Crack! Crunch!
“Uh... this is okay, right?”
The savage noise made me wonder if the items were being destroyed, but...
Inside the skeleton horse's hollow rib cage, blue and red light began swirling together.
Kaaang-!
With a sound like hammering, the earrings dropped from the horse's hole-filled belly.
“Good thing it's made of bones…”
The skeleton horse stepped aside.
I picked up the earrings and brought up the hologram window.
[Magitech Azure Earrings +1 (Charge: 31%)]
Enhancement Granted Effects: Intelligence +2, Vitality +1, Senses +2, Luck +1, Defense +2
“Wow, this is fucking great. A hundred percent transfer?”
The two rings' junk stats had been compressed into the stats of my core item, the earrings.
ㄴㅇㅇ(432F) : Up to 10 total stats, it's lossless, so you can feed it anything.
So that's how it was. In that case, feeding it common items was actually a profit.
‘SSS-Rank Gearhead had thought this far ahead…’
Thinking that, I pushed the earrings back through my earlobes.
At last, the entrance to the Golden Carriage opened.
“Done.”
I entered the carriage.
I looked at the item displayed at the very top.
Beyond the glass display case was the one that had been waiting for me.
“Heh... I'll rescue you from there.”
[Pitch-Black Knot Sash (Unique)]
Price: 120,000 G
“Purchase.”
[- 120,000 G]
[Payment complete.]
[Balance: 4,097 G]
The glass disappeared, revealing the item in its entirety.
It was dazzling.
It was such a perfect black that I felt as though the space it occupied had been erased.
I picked up the sash.
It had a smooth, silk-like texture.
“But where do I equip this...?”
The moment I thought that, a hologram appeared.
[Unique Item Effect: ‘Synchronize’ Activated]
[The equipment evolves to suit its user.]
“What?”
The thick sash tied itself and split apart...
Then it began to take on some sort of form.
After a short while, something tiny and adorable was resting in my palm.
There were two of them.
[Pitch-Black Knot Sash -> Twin-Tail Black Ribbon]
“Ribbons…?”
“Twin tails…?”
I was speechless.
“Are you telling me to tie my hair into twin tails with ribbons…?”
I froze, staring down at the ribbons.
They were designed to go with this reaper girl's goth-lolita outfit.
So that's what it meant by evolving to suit the user.
But naturally, I'd never done anything like this in my life.
I tried tying them around my arms like bracelets.
“…”
Nothing happened.
“What else could I do?”
This was a 120,000-gold unique item with 90 flat Magic Power and a blink skill with a 30-second cooldown.
My pride meant nothing.
I carefully swept the silver hair that fell to my waist into two bunches.
It was something I had never done even once in my life.
I clumsily gathered the hair that slipped silkily through my fingers, then wrapped the black ribbon around it once and tied it.
Swish, swish.
Each time the silk ribbon cinched the hair, my nape was exposed.
“This isn't going very well…”
It took a lot of trial and error.
I didn't know how to do it, so I had to tie and untie it over and over.
About five minutes passed.
I managed to tie both sides, however clumsily.
Then my eyes met my reflection in the Golden Carriage's smooth glass display case.
“……”
The silver hair that had fallen calmly down my back now stuck up perkily on either side, while two black ribbons fluttered softly.
“Ugh... ah…”
The back of my neck, fully exposed by the twin tails, felt strangely hot.
I pouted with my lips tightly pressed together, then hurriedly lowered my gaze to the floor.
That was when it happened.
The hologram appeared.
[Item Skill: ‘Black Shift’ Acquired.]
And then.
BOOOOM-!
In an instant, a pitch-black aura surged from the ribbons tied into twin tails, enveloping my body.
It felt like I could hardly breathe.
“Whoa, what the hell.”
The sensation was so overwhelming that I didn't even have to worry about my embarrassment.
“So you can actually feel Magic Power too…?”
I could feel the backlash from my Magic Power increasing by a whopping 90 all at once.
It was difficult to describe.
If I had to compare it to something, it felt as though an extra organ had formed inside my body, and that organ was experiencing growing pains...
‘That comparison is weird... Wait. It's not a comparison.’
Only then did I realize.
A new organ had truly appeared in my body a short while ago.
Sssrrk.
I quietly closed my eyes and focused my awareness inward.
Deep in my dantian.
The pitch-black ring I had stolen from some unknown mage and embedded into myself three days ago.
Vrrrrrr-!
The enormous circle settled within me was spinning rapidly.
“It's faster…”
It felt as though the engine's torque had increased.
I could get a sense of what Magic Power was, but it was still idling.
I wanted to try it out right away.
I knew instinctively.
This ribbon used Magic Power.
I calmed my trembling hands and looked toward the wide marble clearing outside the carriage.
“Black Shift.”
I murmured the skill's name.
Then.
Vwooom-!