Episode 183

1.

By any measure—subjective or objective—Kim Buja felt that the path he had walked since awakening had been easy, or at least, certainly not difficult enough to complain about.

Anyone who had watched him through his video channel would agree.

—Why is he so strong?

—He's doing that kind of damage in his 20s?

—And he's not even an offensive class? That's broken.

Even if you pulled up any recent video at random right now, comments like that would make up at least twenty percent of the total. He was blatantly over-tuned.

On top of that, he had the trifecta of class, stats, and items all lined up. He could accept people calling him a "jack-of-all-trades broken character," and he had the luck to match.

So he had been confident.

'Is there even a class out there with higher growth potential than mine?'

His class was a "growth"-type class by design. As long as you could leverage it, it was a solid foundation for achieving overwhelming power.

That was why he could be so sure of himself.

'It wouldn't have worked if it wasn't me.'

That had been true at the beginning, and it was still true now.

If it hadn't been for his skill, his innate talent, there was no way he could have unlocked the Gold Maker's potential this far in just a single year. At best, he would have been treating it like some idle AFK game, letting the daily gold trickle in, slowly increasing his total, and wasting time while thinking about the long haul. He'd only now be starting to wonder if maybe he should try gold enhancement and take a shot at some dungeons.

That was about it.

And yet, even someone like him now felt a hollow sense of defeat.

"The world really is a big place."

He hadn't felt this way even when he watched Fly's 8-star dungeon clear video.

"Kyuuuuu!"

Thud!

"Kyuuu!"

Hwangdo hurled himself forward without hesitation, slamming his body into a monster bigger than he was. The monster, which had confidently charged to meet him, let out a strangled scream as it was sent flying.

It made him suspect that Hwangdo's physical performance had been buffed to match his new size, separate from the raw stat increase.

More than anything, the most dramatic change from the first evolution was his magic. He was, after all, the Lord of Magic.

Whoosh!

Fireballs flared to life.

His magic stat had gone up, of course, but even at a glance, the roughly ten Fireballs he had been able to create before evolution had more than doubled in both size and number.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

It felt exactly like this:

When Kim Buja entered a dungeon appropriate for his level, there was no danger, no threat. He could respond to any variable, and the only thing that mattered was his mood as the one cleaning out the dungeon.

Now, the power of life and death—when and how the monsters would die—belonged solely to Hwangdo.

"Level really is king."

To be fair, even if Hwangdo were a player, a 3-star dungeon was something he should have long since outgrown now that he was level 30. As a Legendary-grade being, gaining six stat points per level, it was only natural that he could breeze through.

But the place they were running now was a 3-star Special-grade dungeon. He had deliberately picked a dungeon with penalties that boosted monster stats in exchange for more gold drops.

There was barely anything left for Kim Buja to do. All he had to do was deal with the idiots who ignored the rampaging Hwangdo as he tore through the dungeon and instead charged at Buja, the seemingly more effortless target.

[You have acquired 14 gold.]

["Gold Dragon" has acquired 2 gold.]

"Haah."

And then, on top of all these changes, another hologram popped up that made his shoulders sag. It was a change he hadn't seen before the first evolution.

▶ Trait

First: Gold Growth Lv. 2

→ 10% of the gold obtained from killing monsters is used for growth. Upon accumulating a certain amount of gold, you gain a level, or stats, or a skill.

Hwangdo already had insane growth potential. The problem was that leveling him required feeding him gold, but once he leveled, he gained twice as many stat points as a player. Plenty of people would have killed for that.

His own master had been the most jealous of all.

And now, they had given him wings on top of that.

Off just the first evolution.

And not in a gentle way, either.

"Why do you have to grow by stealing my gold?"

"Kyuuu..."

Ten percent of acquired gold. It sounded nice on paper, but in practice, it meant that Kim Buja's gold income had dropped by ten percent.

Of course, if you factored in the faster hunting speed thanks to Hwangdo's involvement, that ten percent loss didn't translate into a huge difference overall... but humans were inherently subjective and selfish.

Seeing a visible portion of his earnings diverted into Hwangdo's pocket made him sigh.

He would get stronger. He now had an additional growth path beyond simple leveling.

'At this rate, is Hwangdo going to end up being the protagonist instead of me?'

He felt a twinge of competitiveness, but he couldn't help feeling excited.

"Legendary really is busted."

He wasn't worried about losing his spot. He was confident.

Whether it was Hwangdo or Fly, in a world that worked like a game, the most important thing was the skill to wield your power. He didn't have decades of craftsman-like dedication, but he had the innate talent and confidence that he could beat anyone at anything.

That was why he could look forward to it.

▶ Resistance

First: Dragonkin's Mind

→ Immune to all mental-type status effects / Resistant to all status effects of grade (★★) and below

How far could a pure-blooded dragon with such a solid foundation grow?

At the same time, he couldn't help imagining.

'What if I had taken the evolved Hwangdo into the Castle of Nightmares?'

Even at just level 30, simply by virtue of being a dragon, Hwangdo's grade wasn't even displayed. He was immune to all mental-type status effects while having resistance to all physical status effects of 2-star grade and below.

The place would have been a perfect hunting ground for him.

"All right. Hwangdo."

"Kyuu!"

"Let's go."

"Kyu?"

In the end, there was only one conclusion.

The investment had paid off.

* * *

[Tower of Trials]

▶ Floor 1

▶ Floor 2 [Available]

▷ Clear Condition: Find the Treasure

▷ Reward: VIP Token (40), Level +2, Random Pet Summon Ticket (Unique)

The next step was obvious.

The Tower of Trials.

It was one of the three things currently at the top of Kim Buja's priority list.

[Would you like to enter with your pet?]

He had already learned on the first floor that he could enter with Hwangdo. If Hwangdo were a pet he could unsummon and resummon at will, there would have been no need for this extra prompt. But since he couldn't be unsummoned, the system prompted him via hologram despite the distance between them.

"Enter."

He had declined on the first floor, but not this time.

As soon as he confirmed, his vision flashed, and the scenery changed.

"Kyuu!"

A familiar cry sounded at his side.

Hwangdo looked around with curiosity at the new environment, so different from a dungeon. At the same time, perhaps sensing his master's tension, he circled around him, keeping watch on their surroundings.

Whenever he encountered a new place, he always judged it based on prior information. For Kim Buja, the first floor of the Tower of Trials had been the hardest, most demanding content he had experienced so far.

It hadn't been so hard that it felt impossible, but that was exactly why it made him more nervous. If it was difficult even when his heavily boosted specs weren't being restricted in any way, that meant the content itself was naturally tuned to be that hard, or there was some kind of built-in adjustment at work.

This time would be no different.

Judging by the rewards alone, it was obviously going to be much harder than the first floor. And the condition wasn't as simple as "kill all the monsters."

"What treasure am I even looking for?"

The system had just thrown out a single condition with no explanation.

On the first floor, he hadn't needed to think; he had just fought for his life in a confined space, endlessly battling the monsters that poured in. Here, though, the map was a vast expanse of plains and mountains stretching all the way to the horizon, and he couldn't help letting out a sigh.

On top of that, nothing changed when he entered the second floor. No monsters rushed at him, and he didn't see any monster silhouettes nearby.

He would have to search from start to finish.

"Hmm."

Still, it wasn't completely hopeless. This was hardly his first time dealing with something like this. He just had to tackle it step by step.

The only real difference was that this time, he had Hwangdo with him—a pet he had fed over 100,000 gold—inside the Tower of Trials.

"For now..."

'Should I scout the area first?'

He was just about to move, having made up his mind, when something cut across his path.

"Kyuuu!"

Hwangdo, now too big to perch on his shoulder, soared up and called out to him. Then, flapping his short wings, he headed off in a specific direction.

Anyone could see from his movement that he was flying with certainty.

Curiosity stirred.

'He's a dragon, after all. Did he sniff something out with that draconic nose of his?'

Since he had no better plan, Kim Buja followed without hesitation.

In this vast, empty plain, where not even a rat stirred, finding anything to break the dead silence would be more than enough.

"Even the smallest clue."

Buja's hope—and his guess—was right on the mark.

Hwangdo found it.

He had no idea how.

[You have found the 'Treasure.']

[You have cleared Floor 2 of the Tower of Trials.]

[You will be removed from the Tower of Trials in 30 seconds.]

With ridiculous speed and precision, Hwangdo located exactly what they needed, shattering the second floor's speed-clear record. Thirty seconds later, they were kicked out of the tower.

* * *

Buja glared, his face scrunched in disbelief, while Hwangdo happily tore into the raw, top-grade ogre meat he'd received as a reward, practically smiling from ear to ear.

He could have asked. Though they couldn't speak, a certain level of communication was possible, likely because Hwangdo was his pet.

But the whole thing was so absurd he didn't even feel like asking.

At the same time, he couldn't help but wonder if this was really how things were supposed to work.

'What would I even get out of asking?'

Maybe this was how Seora felt whenever she looked at him.

"Yes, that's right. This is probably exactly how I felt whenever I looked at you, Buja."

"This game is busted. Pure RNG trash."

"Birth is everything. In games, in real life, for pets, for people."

Even if he asked, what would Hwangdo say? There was no need to guess. It would be the same answer Buja always gave people.

"He just knew, obviously."

Whether he'd sniffed it out or sensed the treasure's aura, the fact remained: he had found a treasure—a literal chest of solid gold—buried sixty-five feet underground in a patch of dirt indistinguishable from any other. You could spin a thousand theories, but it all boiled down to one thing: Hwangdo was a Gold Dragon.

In a way, this floor was special.

It was nastier and more treacherous than the first.

Yet, like the Castle of Nightmares, it also had a weakness so blatant it was almost laughable.

If Buja hadn't watched Fly's video, if he hadn't decided to invest gold in Hwangdo at that exact moment, clearing the floor wouldn't have been impossible, but it certainly would have taken a much longer, more roundabout route.

Of course, that was all hypothetical.

Nothing would change now.

All it did was give him more certainty.

'Life really is just one choice after another.'

As he grew more accustomed to this new reality, his plans began to change. He was no longer painting a picture where he stood alone.

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