＜ 10. There are no bad dogs (5) ＞
“Hey, this is nonsense! you, you, you! Is there an imprint somewhere else?”
Andrea gladly took off her coat and allowed the gambler to examine her body. Of course, it didn’t happen that the hidden imprint came out. Even so, the gambler, in disbelief, even pinched the back of his hand.
“Yeah, that can’t be. When they are carved, they contort their foreheads with pain…”
At this point, I couldn’t have known. The fact that the whole process of pretending to use the card was acting.
It wasn’t that the gambler didn’t notice it, so he was making such a fuss. He just didn’t want to admit that he had been tricked.
“How did you guess where the ball is? There’s no way that’s possible without cheating!”
“I was kind of lucky.”
“Luck, this, good, okay, everything, there’s no way you can even guess minus the ball!”
Of course it wasn’t luck. That said, it wasn’t really about observing where it was and guessing it. Andrea simply analyzed the pattern of gamblers mixing cups, which she had seen countless times in the game, and guessed the answer.
‘When you hide the ball, hide it in the middle, swap it with the left, then swap the right and center, and swap the left and right, no matter what the middle process is, it’s in the middle unconditionally. And if you judge that the other person is cheating and mix it up like crazy, you will unconditionally remove the ball and put it in your pocket.’
But there was no need to tell the loser about it. Andrea took the reinforcement tickets that were on the table and stood up leisurely.
“This is a tip. I have no intention of resting at the inn, so please guide me to the exit.”
Andrea bounced a gold coin at the waiter. The boy hesitated for a moment when he saw the gambler going wild, but he couldn’t overcome the temptation of money.
“Hey, you can come this way.”
Andrea and the others turned their backs on the gambler, who was lavishly spewing out emotions that were usually tightly hidden, and proceeded to the next floor.
*
“Huh, did you use that trick after realizing that you believe in the Shadow God?”
“…How could you think such a thing in such a short amount of time? Andrea, you really are… a born con artist.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Hearing an uncomfortable exclamation, Andrea thought. Originally, was he the kind of person who was good at hitting and cheating people like this?
‘It wasn’t like that in real life… but it was like that in the game.’
I felt a little strange. I feel like I’m getting further and further away from ‘Jung-hyeon’ in reality. Just as the mind changes when the environment changes, Jung-hyeon’s mind may be adapting to ‘Andrea’s’ body and environment.
‘Calm down, don’t be buried in the environment here. You are Park Jung-hyun, and there is a reality to return to. I can’t forget that.’
Andrea sighed and looked at the floor. I couldn’t openly talk about this issue with my colleagues, so I had to manage my mental well on my own.
When the mind is so flustered, capital therapy is direct. I felt much better when I turned the cramped feeling of not being able to get out of here right away to the thought of the income I had just earned.
“Tricia, take two reinforcement tickets first. Containment Shot and Blink Shot are cards that I will continue to use, so it would be good to strengthen them.”
Tricia nodded, received the reinforcement ticket, and used it immediately. A turquoise glow enveloped the card, and the two cards were strengthened at once.
‘[Normal] Containment Shot ++ (1 cost): Disappear, the next time you attack with an arrow, reduce the target’s resistance by 15%.’
‘[Rare] Blink Shot ++ (0 Cost): Move to the location where I shot the next arrow.’
15% slash arrows on 0 cost teleporters. If you do this, it is a performance that is not envious of tolerable unique cards. No, it was better than that, considering that even unique cards had a lot of trap cards.
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Next it was Andrea’s turn. Andrea first thought about where to use the ordinary reinforcement ticket.
‘It would be better to strengthen the shadow imprint to level 2… then the remaining one is the problem.’
After much consideration, Andrea decided to strengthen her ‘Shadow Strike’. It was necessary to lower the cost of ‘Shadow Strike’ and make it a usable card.
‘[Unique] Shadow Imprint ++ (0 Cost): Engraves an imprint to match the divine and shadow gods.’
‘[Rare] Shadow Strike + (2 cost): Holy, the next physical attack you deal deals 5 more damage. The damage is increased by 5 for each card with ‘Shadow’ appended to its name in the deck.’
The last thing left is a brilliant reinforcement ticket. Andrea held it in her hand and looked away at Marco. Marco waved his hand in bewilderment as he realized the meaning behind that look.
“Oh, no. I like it the way it is now There is no need to strengthen it!”
He wasn’t complaining too much, but after completing the second level of reinforcement, Marco was whipping his spear all day long when he only entered the card because of the animation effect. It seemed that he was afraid of what would happen if the illustration’s posture was more dynamic than this after the 3rd level of reinforcement.
Andrea was conflicted inside.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing how strong Marco will be once he finishes the 3rd level reinforcement… but he’s already done the 2nd level reinforcement, so the reinforcement rights are a bit wasteful.’
The Brilliant Reinforcement Ticket makes it a 3rd level enhancement even if it is used on a card that has not been enhanced at all. In other words, it was most efficient to write to a card that was not reinforced.
‘Let’s not use this for now, let’s keep it. It’s not too late to use it when you get an Epic or higher grade card.’
“Relax, Marco. I will keep this for now.”
Marco let out a sigh of relief. In fact, there were probably few people who wouldn’t be afraid of unknown changes not only in their posture but also in themselves.
The road to the 33rd floor was pretty dreary. It wasn’t that the afterglow seeped in through the cracks in the walls and I couldn’t see, but the darkness was unavoidable as there wasn’t a single torch hanging from the wall.
In addition to that, the dreary atmosphere was heightened by the spider webs hanging from the ceiling and the faint sound of the wind. Tricia pulled out a rainbow lantern and looked up at the dark road ahead, while Marco looked everywhere.
“…It’s an atmosphere that seems like a ghost would appear.”
“Ah, uncle. Unlucky, why would you say that…”
When Trisha spoke bluntly, Marco suddenly straightened up.
“I have really seen ghosts. From ‘Fish Bowl’.”
Andrea let out a small laugh at the name he hadn’t heard in a long time. Trisha asked, puzzled.
“Where is that?”
“It is a cabin where slaves who are about to die on galleys are kept overnight. The next day, without exception, they were thrown into the sea.”
“Wow, that’s so savage…”
“That’s what Nelas did. Well, anyway, let’s talk about it, that day was also the day when a friend who was seriously ill went into the fish bowl. Since I shared the same room with him, I took some leftover bread with me so I wouldn’t go hungry on the way to the underworld. But that friend was the only person who went into the fish bowl that day, but there were two of them lying inside.”
Trisha, who had said that she didn’t say anything bad, was listening to Marco with her ears open. Marco paused for a moment before continuing his story.
“I could see my sick friend at a glance because he was sleeping with his head turned toward me, but the other guy… had his head turned so I couldn’t even see his face. I carefully woke up my sick friend and asked him. Hey, who the hell is that guy over there?”
“…”
“Then the friend said so. The one hanging from the ceiling, or the one lying on the floor?”
“···crazy.”
“As soon as I heard that, I was terrified and kicked out the door. The next day, I saw that the friend was dead… The supervisors shook and disposed of the body, but I definitely saw it. There were red handprints all over the corpse.”
Speaking in a calm voice made it feel even more bleak. As soon as Marco finished talking, a cold wind blew from somewhere.
Tricia felt goosebumps all over her body, but it was Andrea who was most shocked by this story.
“No, what the f*ck? You mean I stayed the night there?”
Only then did Marco realize that he was talking about something useless and scratched the back of his head with a shy smile.
“I’m so glad, something. Since nothing happened to you there, ha ha ha!”
“…”
“hahahaha···.”
Seeing her smiling broadly didn’t make the awkwardness go away.
Andrea and the others opened the door on the 33rd floor in a rather calm atmosphere. As confirmed through the map, it was a floor with normal monsters, so Marco was immediately reverse summoned.
The crescent moon hung as thin as a narrowed eye, and the moonlight, insignificant than a lingering lamp, was breaking through the bare branches. The dry grass shimmered in the darkness, and green eyes twinkled between the tombstones with broken corners.
The bent back and the rotting flesh, just looking at it seemed to give off a stench. The vertebrae protruded through the skin, and below the ribs, it was completely empty, with no internal organs. Its unusually long arms and sharp claws seemed well-suited for digging up corpses or turning enemies into corpses.
ghoul.
It was an enemy that I predicted I would face someday. The number of heads is about six.
Andrea suddenly remembered the time when she first met Marco, thinking of him as a ghoul who ate corpses.
‘Now that I’ve become a reliable colleague, I really don’t know what the world is like. . . . I just talked about useless things a while ago.’
It was not the time to be sentimental. Andrea and Tricia took their hands to the deck and drew a card.
The cards Andrea drew were Shadow Imprint, Curse of the Necronomicon, and Defense. The cards Trisha drew are blow, blow, and strong shot.
“Kurrureuk, kuuu-”
The ghouls, noticing the presence of the enemy, quietly moved their steps. It’s easy to mistake them for slowness based on their first impression, but in reality, the ghouls were very nimble and cunning undead monsters.
Andrea cautioned Trisha to beware of surprise attacks. In addition to that, he even advised me to aim only for the head. Tricia nodded briefly, then used strikes and enhanced shots before pulling the bowstring.
Deuk Deuk Deuk –
Wedge liquid – !
It was different from the previous bow from the sound of the shot. The arrow that broke through even the resistance of the wind, and the vibration of the shaft that shook like a swimming fish stopped only after it hit the target accurately.
Perseok!
“Queueek!”
A large hole opened in the ghoul’s head, and pieces of rotten flesh flew out.
A neat shot to announce the start of the hunt. Tricia put a thin smile on her lips and put the arrow back on the bowstring. It was the face of a hunter.
Andrea glanced at the figure and spit out a word of appreciation.
“As expected, it’s Drakus’ strong bow. Performance is certain.”
＜ 10. There are no bad dogs (5) ＞ End