Chapter 100 - Chapter 100 (1/2)
Fangs' power, having been buffed up by the item 'Bead of Avarice', was gobsmackingly incredible.
Fuu-woop.
Fangs sucked in so much air that the temperature of the surroundings momentarily dropped to a bone-chilling level. And then...
Kuuuuwuuuu....
He spat out a massive pillar of flames from left to right and literally vaporised all enemies before him.
[You killed a High-Ranked Demon.]
[You have earned 1,700 experience points.]
[You killed a Superior Demon.]
[You have earned 2,200 experience points.]
….
…....
[You killed a High-Ranked Demon.]
The messages telling him that he killed a demon and earned some experience points endlessly popped up in his view. And the tti-ring, tti-rings of the mechanical beeps didn't want to end for a while, too.
Jin-Woo was all smiles, though.
'I've hit the jackpot!!'
His Mana must've run dry, because Fangs stopped attacking.
A single shot from Fangs managed to vaporise the majority of the attacking demons' group, but there were a few lucky ones who managed to somehow survive the fiery massacre. Jin-Woo simply ordered his Shadow Soldiers to go and get rid of them.
Quietly watching over one hundred of his Shadow Soldiers marching forward in perfect order, Jin-Woo finally felt like the 'Shadow Sovereign'.
[You killed a High-Ranked Demon.]
[You killed a High-Ranked Demon.]
The feel-good messages continued on. Jin-Woo didn't even lift a finger and used only his Shadow Soldiers to annihilate the monsters. The biggest contributor among them was, of course, Fangs.
'Fangs, you beauty....'
Jin-Woo looked behind him – or, more specifically, way up behind him.
He then saw the gigantified Shadow Magic Soldier, previously a High Orc Sorcerer, and the 'Bead of Avarice' that had also been enlarged to match his size.
That bead was an item capable of doubling the power of its holder's magic attack. From Jin-Woo's perspective, it looked like that bead shored up Fangs' powers quite nicely, which would've been nerfed somewhat after becoming a Shadow Soldier. And it looked like there was some room to spare too.
'Looks like I'll have to entrust the 'Bead of Avarice' to Fangs for a while.'
Even though he was also a mage-type, he possessed not one skill that might enjoy the amplification effect, so he didn't have much of a choice here.
Jin-Woo opened his own Skill Window.
[Number of shadows that can be extracted: 127/820]
[Number of shadows that can be stored: 127/155]
'Shadow Extraction, Shadow Storage, and Sovereign's Territory.' All three skills were unaffected by the 'Bead of Avarice' whatsoever.
If he wanted to increase the number of slots for either the extraction or storage for his shadows, the sole method available currently was to increase his Intelligence Stat.
Jin-Woo closed the Skill Window.
Meanwhile, the soldiers gathered one by one in front of Jin-Woo after mopping up their quarries.
Seeing the mountains of demon corpses piled up like that, the corners of Jin-Woo's lips arched up considerably.
'With this many demons, I get plenty of loot as a result.'
Tti-ring, tti-ring, tti-ring....
This time, an endless stream of item acquisition messages popped up in his view.
'Well, I got everything I can from here....'
Jin-Woo smiled deeply as he went about acquiring all the loot, and after finishing that up, he climbed up on the back of 'Tank', his trusty Ice Bear Shadow Beast Soldier.
The so-called 'Entry Permit' allowing him to move to the next floor hadn't come out yet. Which meant, he had to kill more monsters on this floor.
Jin-Woo ordered his troops to move out.
"Giddy up!"
Tank slowly began trotting forward, and the Shadow Soldiers all followed after Jin-Woo in an orderly fashion.
***
'The whole army moving around together is inefficient.'
Jin-Woo thought that all 120 Shadow Soldiers acting as one unit was not quite efficient enough. If the individual soldier was weak, fine, this tactic made sense. But, even the regular soldiers had gone up several levels now and they could more or less hold their own against the demons and still achieve some success.
Not only that, he even had assimilated monsters from a rank A dungeon into his Shadow Soldier army, too. Quite obviously, the overall quality of the soldiers had risen up by a lot.
"Kiiieehhk!!"
"Kiiaahk!"
[You killed a High-Ranked....]
[You killed a.....]
What with his soldiers boasting such a mighty combat prowess, the time taken to move around and search for monsters turned out to be longer than it took to actually kill them.
The thing was, each floor of this Demon's Castle was as wide as an average city.
'This will take forever at this rate.'
Jin-Woo divided his soldiers into six groups of twenty. And then, had them scatter around to hunt down monsters.
He gave them two orders.
'One, kill every enemy you can find.'
'Two, if the entry permit for the next floor is found, let me know straight away.'
It may not be possible to hold a conversation with his soldiers, but he could still communicate by using simple hand gestures.
Since the soldiers couldn't pick up any loot, he had to go there personally if he were to acquire the entry permit. Sure, he'd have to give up on other loot beside the 'floor entry permit', but his current priority was to get to the top floor as soon as possible.
"Begin."
With his command, all six groups went their separate ways.
And, a short while later....
[You have earned 1,500 experience points.]
[You have earned 1,500 experience points.]
[You have earned 900 experience points.]
[You have earned 1,100 experience points.]
Experience points began raining down on him from literally everywhere.
'Looks like my shadows have begun hunting, huh.'
Jin-Woo watched his experience points climb up and formed a pleased expression. However, he soon discovered that something was off.
'The amount of experience points I get has decreased?'
After arriving on the upper floors, he never once ran into the commonly-found low or mid-ranked demons from the lower floors.
High-Ranked Demons appeared most of the time now, and every now and then, he would find a couple of Superior Demons mixed in among them.
The amount of experience points earned after killing a High-Ranked Demon was 1,700. And from the Superior Demon, a creature one rank higher than High-Ranked Demons, he received the fixed amount of 2,200 points.
However, the amount he was getting at the moment fell far, far short of those numbers.
'Could it be that the further away they are from me, the less experience points I earn?'
Jin-Woo quietly observed the experience points messages popping up non-stop for a while. The amount earned had definitely decreased, albeit by a small margin. It seemed that he was right about the distance affecting the amount of experience points he could earn.
'I got to learn about something useful.'
He wouldn't have found out about this fact without the unique set-up of the Demon's Castle, which let him know of the information regarding experience points.
He also thought that, he did the right thing by not letting his soldiers go out in groups to hunt on the lower floors. Back then, he wanted to refine his combat style even further by personally fighting the monsters, as well as not wanting to miss out on a single 'Demon's Soul', the so-called quest completion 'items'.
Still, he didn't think the reduced experience points weren't much of a loss.