After taking away the soul stones from both Hoonie and Canoel, Ian had now accumulated around 85 soul stones of Tarveros in his inventory.
That wasn’t a small amount, yet Ian still had an upset expression on his face.
‘Hmm, does the number of soul stones depend on the amount of contribution one does in the battle? Three people fighting should at least give around 300 stones…’
Ian himself got 41 soul stones from taking down the Tarveros, and Hoonie got 28 soul stones.
Canoel obtained 16 soul stones, he contributed the least to the combat.
Hoonie spoke while having a very gentle expression.
“Hyung, will you give the Behemoth’s skin to me?”
“Okay man.”
For a Black Magician like Hoonie, the soul stones were rather useless items.
Ian gave the Behemoth skin in exchange for the items which were useless because he had other plans.
And if Hoonie later found out that a single piece of Tarveros’ soul stone could be traded for 500,000 gold, then he would probably hit the floor.
However, Hoonie was pleased with their transactions and seemed to have no complaint.
“Well, since my hyung has taken good care of me till now. I can do this much.”
“Keu, well, Noel is surely on a different class. I always say this, but Hoonie can’t you take that as an example?”
Ian’s ball hit Hoonie right in his balls.
“Ah, why do you keep comparing me?”
While Hoonie and Ian were having fun, the restructuring of the party was finished.
It was time to move deep into the main part of the tower.
‘I would feel so happy if there were dozens of Tarveros in this tower.’
The time it took for Ian and his party to hunt down five Tarveros was three hours.
Considering that it took 30-40 minutes of maintenance time after the battle, the speed of their hunting was really terrible.
But even then, the extra income he got was really good, Ian thought that it would be really good if he could keep on hunting Tarveros.
“Kay, Let’s get our minds together, and move in very slowly.”
“Okay, Hyung.”
“Hmm, do you think that maybe only legendary monsters will continue to appear? No matter how hard the hidden dungeon is, it is a bit obnoxious…”
Ian nodded and replied to what Hoonie said.
“I think the same too… but I hope that the Tarveros will keep on coming.”
“You want to finish this right?”
“Sure, I do.”
Hoonie squinted his eyes and spoke.
“There are many familiars… even if Tarveros is finished, will it be able to work with your leadership?”
Ian smiled a little and shook his head.
“No, no. I didn’t know there is a need for leadership to summon monsters?”
“Huh?”
Hoonie’s eyes twitched.
For not summoning the monsters, Hoonie thought that Ian didn’t have enough leadership.
Ian continued.
“The cost of summoning a monster was ‘Magic’. Don’t you think that around 10,000 to 20,000 of Magic would be consumed for a legendary monster? It varies depending on the level…”
“Hm? Consumed?”
Canoel spoke this time.
“It doesn’t mean that it will disappear, but it is similar to that of leadership. Assuming that Ian hyung’s magic is 50,000 he could summon up to 5 spiders with 10,000 magic.”
“Ah…”
Hoonie looked at Ian and was lost in his thought.
“Well hyung, then why is it that you don’t use them? Hyung surely has more than 50,000 magic. Even if they are intermediate, can’t you call them to help us?”
Ian just shook his head.
“It doesn’t help much if I try to do it, it’s just for the experience. For one to serve at my party…
It should at least have a legend rating.”
“Ahha.”
Hoonie—who understood—nodded, and Ian and his party members started to move further into the tower.
Unlike what Ian was expecting, Tarveros no longer appeared on the first floor of the tower.
In the field, intermediate and higher grade monsters kept on appearing.
The experience and rewards that were gained from the dungeon’s first recovery were tremendous, but still, they weren’t enough to bring back Ian from his blues.
It was because he wanted to collect a complete Tarveros.
‘Ah, I want to collect as much as I can for this to be collected.’
A total of 200 soul stones were needed for completing a Tarveros.
They killed 5 of them and earned around 80 stones. If there were 8 or 9 more, then he could collect enough to finish the required 200 stones.
“Hyung, there’s a gate over there.”
“So, let’s head to the next floor then?”
Ian and his party who discovered the gate to the next floor did a quick maintenance and then walked towards the gate to the second floor.
* * *
The official community homepage of Kailan was big enough to have a portal site with a volume that no other had.
The biggest reason for the huge number of users playing Kailan was the amount of content that one could enjoy in it, Kailan’s content page was infinite.
There was a lot of content in the game that was based on nature, and with the direct connection of the game with the gaming capsule, there was no way for the community to not be active.
All the above mentioned were possible because the official community page itself was managed by a separate team directly under LB.
“Lee Daeri! What are we planning to do with the main A part for today?”
“Hold on a moment! Let me check the schedule!”
“Find it fast!”
“Umm… a new dungeon was supposed to open in the Southern Island’s event page!”
“Wasn’t it supposed to open in for a few days?”
“It is scheduled to open 3 days from now.”
“Cancel it! We need to promote banners of it all over the eastern continent guilds. It’s on hold till next week!”
“Huh? This has been delayed for a whole week already. Do you know that the guild battle was also over?”
“I was just contacted by the planning department. The Lotus freaks suddenly ran onto the eastern guilds according to their ranks.”
“Oh shit, awesome! Not a guild war but an Empire war?”
“Yes! I think there are going to be hundreds of protest emails to the Public Relations Department as this didn’t show up in the Main page.”
In the community management headquarters of LB company, Public Relations was a well-known department with more jobs than any other departments in the company.
The general manager of the management headquarters Im Jin-hyun, had a very bad thing going on these days.
In recent years, the number of jobs had suddenly increased.
‘It was easier to do the dimensional war all through the month…’
The Community management headquarters, on the other hand, had large events with big content which meant less time.
It was because they could pass for a month without changing the concept of the page if the banners they made had a few pieces of big images.
The gameplay video as well could also be played continuously.
However, they didn’t have a big event for a long time, so they waited from time to time and managed it when any incident was supposed to happen.
Well, there was plenty of bonus for the extra work, but these days it seemed like they had to work for their money.
“Design team, In 20 minutes I need all in the meeting room!”
“Manager, General manager… it’s 5:50 now… hehe…”
“Shut up! You want to go home now? The A part banner is needed to be placed tomorrow. We need to replace some stuff…!”
“Can’t we just use the image that we have used the last time? Well, the main focus of the image will be the Lotus Guild, so we can just swap out the opponents in the guild charts…”
Im Jin-hyun replied with fury because of what the leader of the Design team Mr. Yoo said.
“Then you should go and meet the director, directly!”
The Yoo team leader was forced to say it.
“… I will call in the design team.”
* * *
Kwahh-!
Enormous scream resonated in the dark, gloomy tower!
A giant shadow was seen on the floor, and the ceiling of the entire floor shook.
Kung-!
“Nice shot! I’m still dealing with this guy!”
Hoonie laughed and made a peace sign with his fingers, and Ian too smiled after seeing him.
“Hoonie, we dealt with the Death Hound quickly.”
Canoel too added a word.
“Yeah, since Hoonie’s skill has gone up, he’s catching the monsters easily.”
Hoonie just shrugged it off with a cool expression.
“Ahem, I am the awesome KanjiHoonie. This kind of control is my left hand’s skill.”
There were two monsters lying in front of the party.
The Tarveros was the only one that remained.
They didn’t see any Tarveros after the 1st floor, but each time they climbed a floor, at least two Tarveros would appear to them.
The place that Ian and his party had moved up to was the 8th floor of the tower.
Five on the first floor, and two on each floor after that.
They had hunted more than 20 Tarveros in total.
Of course, the Soul stones were all taken by Ian and there were already 340 soul stones now.
“Hyung, when will you summon the Tarveros? Haven’t we gotten 200 stones already?”
Ian nodded at Hoonie’s question.
“Hmm, I do have enough stones, but it’s meaningless to summon it now. I’ll summon it once the quest is cleared.”
“Why? The Tarveros will be a great driving force for our party.”
Instead of Ian, Canoel answered.
“Summon? And what if we get a level 1?”
“Huh…?”
It wasn’t done before, but guessing what might happen was enough.
When an egg or a monster hatches, an unconditional level one monster was summoned, so the soul stones were considered to be similar.
“But, then we won’t be able to use it.”
Hoonie nodded since he now fully understand. Ian smiled and went to the bodies of the Tarveros.
“Hmm… I don’t think there is much floor left upon reaching the top. Will we be able to meet the Behemoth after going up a floor or two?”
Ian was mumbling to himself, but Canoel replied.
“Maybe not? According to my thoughts, we need to go beyond the 10th floor.”
While they were talking.
The whole tower began to shake.
Trrrrr- Trrrrrrr-!
Like a quake, it started to shake roughly.
It was a tower made entirely of stones. As the tower shook, the residue of the stones started falling down from the cracks.
“What is this? An earthquake?”
Ian looked around calmly.
“I don’t think it’s an earthquake. But just in case, be careful. If that stone falls from the top, we will die in an instant.”
Right after saying that, a stone fell down right in front of them.
Kwang-!
The three members freaked out and retreated a few steps quickly. The vibrations began to get worse.
“What? Noel hyung, let’s prepare and hold onto the scroll.”
Canoel nodded and pulled out the scroll.
None of them wanted to get out of the game because of a natural disaster, nor by getting killed by a monster.
But at that very moment, Ian discovered something.
One of his hands were restrained from holding the others, and the other one was pointed towards the dark.
“Wait, there is something over there.”
“Huh…?”
Canoel and Hoonie both moved their sight in the direction where Ian was pointing at.
And in that place…
Grrrrrr-
Giant red eyes were staring at their direction.
