Episode 181

4.

He hadn't planned to put Hwangdo front and center from the start.

"Let's go. From now on, we're sticking together. If I record your growth phase on video, I'll have another category to decorate the channel with later."

He wasn't expecting anything huge.

Hwangdo was small and cute now, but he wanted to have footage ready for the day he grew big.

Someday, when Hwangdo became massive and powerful like a dragon out of a novel, wouldn't people come back to the channel to see what he had been like as a baby?

It would be a memory for him, too.

That was why he brought him.

To help him readjust.

"Don't overdo it. Just focus on dodging."

"Kyuu!"

He had considered going to a 1-star dungeon, but then he thought, 'I went to the trouble of raising him to level 20. Why bother?' and entered a 3-star dungeon instead.

It was Normal difficulty, so he casually cut down the monsters rushing at him and ran forward, feeling like he was out for a stroll while clearing the objective, when he felt it.

"Kyu! Kyuuuuu!"

"What are you doing?"

He turned at the loud cry behind him and saw Hwangdo savagely biting into the monsters' necks.

His movements were surprisingly quick and powerful.

Every monster that was falling, and every monster already on the ground, was Hwangdo's handiwork.

He couldn't help but be impressed.

He had high expectations for Hwangdo's growth, but that had always been about the number of stats he gained per level. Looking at the actual distribution, half of his points were in Magic.

In other words, at his current level, Hwangdo's stats weren't actually that different from the monsters in a 3-star dungeon.

And combat wasn't decided by stats alone.

Even if there was a visible difference of 20 or 30 points, unless the gap was so huge that the opponent couldn't even be considered an enemy, a life-or-death fight could always flip depending on variables like battle sense or a moment of carelessness.

Yet Hwangdo was crushing the other monsters.

As expected of a Legendary-grade pet.

His body was small, but he was flaunting his dragon instincts to the fullest.

So he watched.

And then he made up his mind.

"You're going to earn the gold I spend on you."

That was how Hwangdo ended up soloing the dungeon in the video.

* * *

There were countless classes.

Among them, there were indeed classes that summoned pets or tamed monsters.

There were even players who had publicly revealed monsters they had tamed in real life.

However, the number of players who actually sat at the very top of the rankings and showcased the true potential of those classes could be counted on one hand.

Among the rankers that people genuinely acknowledged, there was only one.

The reason was simple.

Taming, in the end, meant dealing with monsters inside dungeons.

The class allowed you to tame monsters and make them your allies, but the skill conditions for doing so were complicated enough to make you sigh.

Especially as the monster's level went up, the material costs were bad enough, but the stat requirements and other conditions made it impossible for a tamer to progress alone.

So what most players of that class chose to do was tame low-level monsters and raise them.

Not because it was easy, but because it was at least somewhat possible.

Their skills were also mostly geared toward growing the monsters they had tamed.

The problem was that even if you raised them, it didn't matter.

The ceiling was obvious.

There was the grade of the class itself, but more importantly, there was the limit of the tamed monster.

Just like how a 1-star card could never surpass a 5-star card in a gacha game, that innate limitation applied here as well.

So what if the dungeon shackles were removed, the monster bound to the player, and carefully nurtured?

In the end, a tamed monster was at best a 1–3-star monster, and even if you pushed it higher, it still couldn't take down 5 or 6-star monsters.

And even if it did reach that point, the risk was enormous.

For tamers who had to fight with their tamed monsters in dungeons where even their own lives weren't guaranteed, those monsters weren't just bits of game data that could be resummoned after a cooldown if they died.

They were, in some ways, the biggest risk of all.

They poured in money and time, and with a single small mistake—or even without a mistake, just from a freak accident—the death of a tamed monster meant a chunk of the power they had built up vanished in an instant.

So they often ended up weaker, not stronger.

To players like that, Kim Buja's video was pure shock.

—Wait, he's hunting with a tamed monster?

—And the monster's doing it alone?

—Is that a 1-star dungeon or something?

—Wow, so being Legendary-grade really makes all the difference.

—I'm jealous. If only my little guy had met a better owner… I'm sorry, buddy!

—No, it's the owner who got lucky with the monster. Where do you even find a dragon like that to raise?

Even if it was Normal difficulty, it was still a 3-star dungeon.

Never mind the pet's level; even regular players couldn't clear that easily.

Even if you ignored all the finer details, the combat power Hwangdo showed in the video went way beyond "wow, that pet's strong."

—Does it cast magic on its own too?

—Look at Kim Buja. He's just lying there on a mat watching. He's not giving any commands.

—A tamed monster that can cast magic on its own and fight according to the situation. How does that make any sense?

—I really want to see what happens when that thing's fully grown.

—A 1v1 match with Fly would be hilarious.

More than anything, this was practically the first video where Hwangdo took center stage.

—How strong is he going to get?

—Will he be stronger in next week's video?

Comments full of anticipation.

Interest spiked, and people started looking forward to the next upload.

—I don't care if it's the same dungeon every day. Just please upload more videos.

Of course, no new video went up.

5.

Kim Buja would say:

"Behind what you see, there's always a mountain of effort that went into making it."

He hadn't coined the phrase himself.

But running his channel and playing countless games before his Awakening had taught him that there wasn't a single lie in it.

The effort and all the other bits and pieces that went into making a video and presenting the person called "Kim Buja" inside that video didn't matter to the viewers.

Only what they saw.

That was all they cared about, and the same went for the Hwangdo video.

If you broke it down, it looked like Hwangdo was soloing a 3-star dungeon, but there was a behind-the-scenes story that people didn't know.

"It cost me two thousand gold just to shoot that one video."

Hwangdo was strong.

He had dragon blood, and his nature was that of a dragon, so it was true that he had shown overwhelming brutality with that cute little body against weak monsters.

But the reality was that he still wasn't strong enough to clear a 3-star dungeon, even on Normal, solo like Kim Buja did.

To make it possible, he had pumped him full of buff potions and poured in health and mana potions without holding back.

That was why.

That was why there was only that one cool video of Hwangdo.

"Repeating the same type of video over and over can make the channel feel stale."

It was a grand excuse.

He tossed it out with flair as he swung his weapon with all his might.

Even if Hwangdo could handle things alone, letting him slack off when he could clear the dungeon faster was just a waste of manpower.

He had to gather even one more gold, even a little faster.

"Kyuuuu!"

Naturally, as hard as the owner worked, Hwangdo's rest time shrank.

No, "rest" wasn't even the right word anymore.

"Kyuuuu…"

His pitiful cry said it all about the grueling schedule that repeated day after day.

Once he started grinding, Kim Buja even chopped his sleep into two- to three-hour chunks, barely napping as he pushed himself.

It was hell that reminded him of his early days grinding gold in online games.

"Let's rush to 30. We still have to hit the Tower of Trials."

It wasn't like he wanted to live like this either.

His schedule really was brutal.

It was only because there hadn't been any significant events back-to-back that he had any time at all. If something like the Catastrophe Event popped up, he would have to toss aside his plans for the Tower of Trials and his gold missions to participate. Was he supposed to leisurely grind gold in that situation?

'That wouldn't be grinding.'

"Kyuuuu…"

"Shut it. This is all for you, so kill at least one more."

He doted on Hwangdo when it was time to dote, but when it came to business, he drew a hard line. Faced with his owner's firm stance, Hwangdo drooped his head.

'Maybe I was better off staying home and resting.'

He missed his soft bed, but Hwangdo was still a dragon, through and through.

He didn't let himself get weak.

More than anything, his owner was working that hard too.

He was harsh, but nothing he said was wrong.

It was all for Hwangdo's sake.

He had to live up to his owner's expectations.

"Kyuuuuuu!"

Hwangdo let out a fierce roar.

Of course, that didn't magically erase his fatigue and stress.

He was dying to vent it all on his owner, but one look at how hard the man was moving told him that wouldn't fly.

Wise Hwangdo turned his head away.

Fortunately, thanks to his owner's obsession with money, there were plenty of stress-relief targets all around.

"Kyuuuu!"

The tedious hunting resumed.

* * *

Fifty thousand gold sounded like a lot at first glance.

"Son of a… this is insanely hard."

It was a lot.

But once you actually set out to gather it, it wasn't impossible.

There was the free gold that dropped into his lap every midnight, plus the dungeon grind.

Without achievement-based gold income, it took a bit longer, but there were more monsters in a 3-star dungeon than in a 1-star, and the base gold they dropped had gone up a little too. After about two weeks of focused effort, he had scraped it together.

"Whew."

As always, his hands trembled at the moment of spending.

It was far more nerve-racking than blowing a windfall.

Money earned through his own time and effort would always feel more valuable than money earned without his own effort.

[You have spent 50,000 gold.]

Before the regret could hit him harder, he hurriedly bought the package.

He kept picturing Hwangdo's evolved form and the potential he had shown in the dungeon, weaving through monsters and handling them with just basic magic.

[Intermediate Growth Package! (Evolution Package)]

▶ Level 30

▶ All Stats +5

▶ Essence of Evolution (1) granted!

▶ (★★) Invisibility Magic granted!

[The level of "Gold Dragon" has increased (10).]

[All stats of "Gold Dragon" have increased (5).]

["Gold Dragon" has reached the evolution level. First evolution is now possible.]

"Oh?"

One line in particular made the payoff of his investment hit home.

Evolution.

How long had he waited for this?

The words "first evolution" didn't exactly set his expectations soaring, but if he could just shed this body—which felt more like a sparrow than a dragon—that alone would be worth it.

"They even threw in an Essence of Evolution."

He still didn't know where or how he was supposed to use it, but the important part was that it was an item related to evolution. Besides, if he hadn't bought the package, the system would have just found some other way to push him into buying it.

He found himself oddly relieved that he had gone ahead and purchased it.

Before committing to the evolution, he checked the requirements.

[Materials Required for First Evolution]

1. Level: 30

2. Essence of Evolution: 1 (Owned)

3. First Evolution Quest: Incomplete

4. Gold: 50,000

"...Smaller is cuter anyway."

He quietly closed the window and stared up at the sky.

* * *

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