God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 176: Episode 35_A Feint in the East, a Strike in the West (4)

Chapter 176: Episode 35_A Feint in the East, a Strike in the West (4)

6.

He hadn’t seen this coming.

’Why?’

He couldn’t understand it.

At least, not from Kenji’s point of view.

Han Simin shouldn’t have been there.

One of the biggest worries they’d had when giving up their pursuit of the Specialists was that, in the meantime, the Specialists would be racking up points.

That was the obvious next step, the logical thing for the Specialists to do.

Of course, from Kenji’s perspective, this was good.

He just couldn’t make sense of it.

’Why on earth?’

The only ones who stood to lose by getting involved here were the Specialists.

They were throwing away a chance to secure the number-one spot in the player guild rankings and instead hurling themselves into a gamble.

He didn’t understand it, but what he had seen was definitely Han Simin.

When he lifted his head, he could see the golden gargoyle high above as well.

’I have to kill him.’

His questions remained unanswered, but his judgment had never been faster.

For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the two people he absolutely had to kill had appeared right in front of him.

If he missed this chance, there wouldn’t be another.

’No matter how amazing he is, there’s no way he can handle everyone here.’

Among the NPCs, there were a few mages mixed in.

They had to use magic to sustain the battle, so they were at least 4th-Circle mages.

Their attacks, plus the swarm of NPCs whose levels were on par with the monsters in this mountain range, filled the entire area.

If he survived that, he wouldn’t be a player; he’d be an AI created by BetaGo itself.

KRA-KABOOM!

So Kenji ignored Han Simin’s desperate shout and gave the order.

It was barely worthy of being called an order, but in any case, all attacks focused on the newly arrived Han Simin.

A colossal bombardment!

It was so spectacular and destructive that he thought, ’If this had hit the dragon from the start, she might have actually died.’

The attacks continued for quite some time, and even after they stopped, the echoes lingered.

And when the tattered figure of Han Simin, who had taken every last one of those attacks, came into view—

The onlookers were stunned.

They could not believe their eyes.

Everyone froze.

“Wow. Have you ever seen such a trash rune? It’s basically telling me, Here, be a punching bag for five minutes. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

They were staring at Han Simin, who was grumbling as he casually brushed the dust off himself.

STEP. STEP.

As he walked toward them as if nothing had happened, everyone unconsciously took a step back.

At the same time, they all imagined it.

’What if I had been standing there?’

Would there have been even a handful of dust left to prove they had ever set foot on the continent of Fantastic World?

They shook their heads.

And they hesitated to attack again.

The first time might have just been luck.

But that “luck” had manifested with an overwhelmingly powerful effect.

Even if they attacked again, it felt like it would just be nullified.

Watching them, Han Simin let out a sigh.

“Right now is the perfect time to strike.”

Everyone was looking at him with awe.

No attacks were flying his way, and the initiative in the battle had shifted to him.

Normally, this was the moment to charge in and tear through them.

But he had no motivation to do so either.

“How am I supposed to kill this many people in the time I have?”

The two runes were, objectively, good. The fused rune was useful, too.

If he had gotten Earthquake and Divine Punishment like he’d wanted, he might have died in that first wave of attacks.

But so what?

After surviving, all he had was one hammer and hundreds of heads to crack.

Even if he killed one person with every swing, he couldn’t finish them all in five minutes.

And with his current attack power, there was no guarantee he could kill one person per hit.

Both sides had lost their will to fight.

Then Han Simin glanced over toward where Kardian was.

At some point, Squeaker had landed, and Kang Yeseul had dismounted to dump the contents of a magic pouch into Kardian’s mouth.

Low-grade mana stones from Kardian’s own lair.

They were meant to give her just enough mana to polymorph again.

The world’s stingiest penny-pincher, Han Simin, was making a rare investment to keep her alive so he could squeeze more work out of her.

“Phew.”

An investment requires a return.

At the very least, he had to buy some time, so he tightened his grip on the hammer.

The guilds’ confusion wouldn’t last long.

No, they were already looking around, trying to assess the situation, and as they watched Han Simin not attack, they would start to feel that something was off.

’Why isn’t he attacking?’

’With that level of defense and HP, his attack power should be strong enough to crush us. So why isn’t he?’

’Could it be...’

Their questions would inevitably lead them to an answer.

They were mercenaries who lived every day on a battlefield where life and death were separated by a hair’s breadth.

“Everyone, attack!”

The guilds charged.

Han Simin’s brow furrowed.

And in his ear, he heard Jeong Seolah’s voice.

“Simin, that rune... if you form a party with Dian, do you think the effect might be shared?”

He looked at her, puzzled.

* * *

They had run all sorts of experiments while climbing the guild rankings.

That was the fun of games, after all.

The adventure of discovering systems and figuring out how to exploit them to squeeze out the maximum profit!

Wandering the continent day and night wasn’t the only kind of adventure.

This kind of discovery was meaningful, too, and often even more fun.

In practice, it had been.

When they formed a party, Sudal’s buffs applied to everyone.

The effect was only about half as strong as what Han Simin received, since his relationship with Sudal was bound by the master–slave—no, tamer–tamed monster—link, but still. It was free power.

They even speculated that the effect might keep diminishing as more people joined the party, but regardless, getting buffs like this for free was a huge advantage.

It had been another turning point that raised the hourly rate of his “buff service.”

In any case, weeks of testing had proven that the effect applied to party members.

But he had never once considered whether that would apply to a dragon.

He had never needed to.

“Who would even imagine something like that?”

Or rather, he had never dared to.

Forming a party with a dragon.

For an ordinary player, it wasn’t easy to even think about partying with a monster.

And even if they did, there was no guarantee the monster would accept.

Besides, this was Fantastic World, a game with such intense realism that such an idea was only possible because of that realism. The system itself might simply block it.

“You said she’s a sentient being, and while she’s not tamed by you, she’s bound to you by a kind of pact, right? It feels like it might work.”

“We should at least try.”

In this critical situation, Jeong Seolah had presented a possibility.

If it worked, this useless, trashy buff would become the perfect solution to turn the tables.

Rather than swinging his hammer at hundreds of people only for the buff to end before he got a fraction of them, it was better to gamble on this.

He turned his back on the charging players and sprinted toward Kardian.

’I think it’ll work.’

That was the thought that crossed his mind as he ran.

It was possible.

There was a chance.

The pact was also a relationship formed through a system.

If so, would the party system, a more basic system, really not apply?

“Hey! Let’s form a party!”

“Grrrr.”

Han Simin shouted, and Kardian nodded.

A tense moment passed.

By then, the players had already closed the distance again and were within range to hit the Specialists, who were clustered together in one spot.

The moment they drew close, attacks flew like a black curtain.

There was nowhere to dodge.

They could only block.

Jeong Hyeonsu yanked the two women behind him and raised his shield.

His tanking was so perfect that he was completely obscured, but the incoming attacks crashed down with enough force to threaten even him.

Just as the attacks were about to annihilate the Specialists, along with Squeaker and Kardian—

VWOOOM—

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

A thick barrier sprang up around them, deflecting the barrage.

They gasped in shock.

It could only mean one thing.

The experiment had succeeded.

Inside the barrier, which cut off all view from the outside, the Specialists all turned their eyes to where Kardian had been.

But the massive dragon was nowhere to be seen.

In her place stood a single woman.

A beauty with jet-black hair cascading down to her waist.

She had milky-white skin, a fist-sized face, and delicate, perfectly symmetrical features. Cherry-like lips. A slender neck, a defined collarbone, and a curving...

“Curving...?”

Their gazes stopped at her curves.

The Specialists’ eyes were on the black hair draped over her delicate shoulders and the lines of her thighs visible below, but Han Simin’s focus was different.

He stared intently.

Han Simin and Kardian’s eyes met.

No—Kardian’s gaze met Han Simin’s, and then, following the line of his pupils, her own gaze naturally dropped downward.

She fell silent.

A look of pure disgust shot toward Han Simin.

He didn’t flinch.

Wrinkling her nose, Kardian opened a subspace, pulled out a robe, and threw it on.

It wasn’t that she felt any shame about being naked.

She just had the distinct feeling that leaving herself exposed would only benefit Han Simin.

“Tch.”

When she returned to being a robed beauty with only her face showing, Han Simin clicked his tongue in disappointment.

Then, with a satisfied expression, he walked over and patted her on the shoulder.

“Not bad at all.”

She glared at him.

“Tsk.”

From behind, Jeong Hyeonsu made an instinctive sound of regret, but no one paid him any mind.

Feeling her mana surge, Kardian experienced a primal conflict.

’Right now...’

She didn’t know what had happened, but the moment she formed a party with Han Simin, her HP and MP began to recover at a blinding speed.

It didn’t exceed the limit imposed by her restraints, but in no time at all, her reserves had filled back up to the level she’d had when she first awoke from her long slumber.

That was more than enough.

As long as she didn’t cast Meteor with the intent of wiping out an entire kingdom.

If she used her power efficiently, she could easily deal with every human here, and that one arrogant human as well.

Her fingers itched.

“Think carefully, you little punk. If I die, I just come back to life. But you? You’ll never be able to use mana again for the rest of your life. You okay with that?”

Of course, thanks to Han Simin’s uncanny sense for mortal danger and his quick intervention, she abandoned the idea.

Sigh.

All she could do was sigh.

She had thought that once her body recovered, she would finally be able to do something, but even with this brief surge of mana, she couldn’t land a single hit on that infuriating human.

It made her wonder what the point of living even was.

“Show them. Show them what a dragon really is.”

From beside her, Han Simin egged her on.

The devil’s whisper.

The barrier slowly faded, and the bewildered faces of the people outside came into view.

Kardian shot Han Simin a resentful look out of the corner of her eye, then raised both hands.

Fine. Slave mark or not, she was a slave either way. Better to at least imprint on them what kind of slave she was than to be ignored.

Besides, she had been under a lot of stress lately.

VWOOOM—

Mana gathered in her hands.

As the buff’s duration ended, the mana that had filled her body began to plummet again, but she ignored it and kept drawing more.

She would show them.

If she couldn’t strike her master, she would at least get to see their dumbstruck faces.

VWOOOOM—

The waves of mana grew more intense.

But rather than sensing the danger, people were focused on the fact that the dragon had disappeared.

“What the...?”

“Where’s the dragon?”

A few who noticed the change felt that something was wrong.

“Who’s that woman?”

“Isn’t she the one from that stream...?”

The puzzle pieces clicked together inside that sense of wrongness.

“Scatter!” Kenji shouted.

The instant he did, the mana gathered in Kardian’s hands was unleashed.

No chanting. No casting time.

She skipped every step with multi-casting and instant-cast.

RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE—

The ground began to shake.

And then lightning fell from a clear sky.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The first Judgment of Heaven! 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Bolts of lightning so thick and bright they were blindingly clear speared down faster than lightning itself, seeking their sacrifices.

“Gyaaaah!”

And Han Simin’s scream was the first to ring out.