[Skill level increased!]

Thanks to Kim Taesu, the Skeleton Soldier level-up experience filled up completely.

The moment I’d been waiting for.

“Status window!”

——+——+——Skill——+——+——

['Unique' Summon Skeleton Soldier LV. 2]

Skeleton Lord’s unique skill, summons a skeleton soldier for 17 hours '1 hour x Intelligence'.
Stat Inheritance: The summoned skeleton soldier inherits 25% '0.01 x Wisdom' of the lord’s stats.
Number of soldiers that can be summoned: 1 'scales with skill level'
Equipment System: You can equip each skeleton soldier with an individual equipment set, the equipment set is saved and when re-summoned, it is summoned with the saved setting.
Individual Entity: Each skeleton soldier is a separate entity, allowing different abilities and equipment configurations.
Stat Transfer: If a skeleton soldier dies in battle, that entity’s stats are transferred to nearby skeleton soldiers for 17 minutes '1 minute x Intelligence'.
MP Cost : 50
Cooldown : None
Experience required to level up : 0 / 2,000

+——+——+——+——+——+——+—

‘What?’

Nothing changed.

Other than the level going up by one, there was no change at all.

‘What is this?!’

It felt like I’d been scammed hard.

Was I really trash?

The skill level went up to 2, but the number of summonable skeleton soldiers was still 1.

Worse, the experience needed for the next level-up doubled.

Right after the rush from that ‘total jackpot’ level-up, the disappointment hit and the top of my head felt hot.

Is this where my dream of becoming a Delivery Lord collapses?

Kkaang- kkaang-

Hansik, unaware of my feelings, kept mining barnacles mechanically.

Hansik didn’t get disappointed because he didn’t know what was going on.

He just did what he was told.

You don’t even get tired, looks like you’re not even trying to eat them, so why are you mining barnacles?

I didn’t answer.

I was too drained to even bother.

Don’t tell me there’s some hidden quest or something?

Still no answer.

Then,

So I was right! That’s it, that’s what it is, if you remove the barnacles from Khalid you get a reward, right? Am I right?

He was playing both drum and janggu by himself. [TL: Making accusation and then affirming it.]

“That’s not it.”

Not it? Then why are you doing this crap?

“Hah… don’t talk to me, I’m not in the mood.”

A strong denial is a strong confirmation! I knew it!

“I said it’s not! I came to level up, level up!”

What? Level up?

“Yeah! They said experience goes up if you kill these barnacles so I came here to level up!”

Then why are you suddenly so pissed?

At that, I swallowed down my frustration.

“Sorry, it’s just not going the way I thought it would.”

But killing barnacles makes experience go up? Status window.

As he said that, Kim Taesu crushed a few barnacles under his boot.

Even though he was a mage, he was kind of a weird one, his strength stat was high too, so the hard barnacles crumbled like a sand pile.

It’s not going up.

“It’s because your level is high, for a level 0 trash like me, just killing this makes it go up.”

Pfft, you were a level 0 newbie? Cute, but it’s not going like you thought? Experience isn’t going up?

“It does go up, but even then it’s only the skill level that goes up and even after it does, nothing changes, haa… I guess I really am trash. What kind of hunter am I? I’m not even qualified.”

Kim Taesu let out a small laugh at what I said.

If Baek Jongdu and Ahn Seongjin gave you an E-minus, that makes sense, but when I looked at your ID earlier, I’m ten years older than you, so let’s not be so stiff, we’ve already been together for over five hours, that’s more than the total time I’ve talked to my mom this month.

Maybe he got into a good mood after stuffing himself with delicious clams.

Without knowing how I felt, Kim Taesu slung an arm over Hansik’s thin shoulder.

“You’ll regret that, call your mother often, visit her often too.”

Ohhh? Acting like an adult now? A brat who just turned thirty? Heh.

Is thirty not an adult?

I added one more line to that old-detective-who-lords-his-age-over-you.

“Detective, telling you to treat your mother well isn’t about age, be good to your mom, while she’s still there, seriously, you’ll regret it.”

At my sincere advice, Kim Taesu went silent for a moment.

Then he spoke a little more gently.

Sounds like you’ve been through something, stop calling me Detective this, Detective that and just call me Taesu hyung like everyone else, you know how many hunters try to get close to me?

“Why are you suddenly acting friendly?”

I’ve been watching and you don’t seem like a bad guy, that’s all.

So he doesn’t see me as suspicious anymore?

I had no idea why, but building a connection with Hunter Police is a massive win.

Even if Kim Taesu was the type of Hunter Police who made a habit of abusing authority and throwing his weight around… no, maybe getting close to someone like that is even better.

“Then can I really call you hyung?”

Sure, guys I’m not even close to call me Taesu hyung, Taesu hyung and cling on, it’s not some big deal and I’m way more senior in this world than you, so if you’ve got questions, ask, it’s not often you get advice from an A-rank hunter, you know that much, right?

You could feel the warmth of a veteran ‘old-timer’ dealing with a newbie.

A real old-timer.

What kind of mage uses a shield and a fishing rod as a weapon and that magic power too, he wasn’t even wearing armor, just the shield.

If I’d been face to face with him, I probably couldn’t have even made eye contact.

The gap between him and me was the difference between sky and earth, more than that.

So why are you that disappointed? If your skill level went up, isn’t that good?

I confessed why I was disappointed.

“Yeah, my skill level went from 1 to 2, but nothing changed.”

With your skill, this?

He said it while tapping Hansik a couple of times.

“Yeah, it says the number of summonable skeleton soldiers scales with skill level, but even after leveling it, I can still only summon one… I came all this way, I should just go home.”

So you’re saying at skill level 1 it’s one and at skill level 2 it’s still one, is that it?

“Yes.”

That might be huge, actually.

“What are you talking about? There’s no growth at all.”

It said the summon count scales with skill level, but it didn’t say it increases by one each level, did it?

“Right.”

Fibonacci, you know it?

Fibonacci, out of nowhere?

I’ve made a Fibonacci sequence calculator in a coding beginner practice course.

I knew it well. It's also famous for the golden ratio and shows up all over nature, like plant growth patterns, the seed arrangement of sunflowers and spiral structures in shells and snails.

In the stock market, there’s even something called Elliott waves that uses Fibonacci ratios to try to predict price movement.

“I know it, but what does that have to do with this… wait, don’t tell me?”

Taesu sat down and started scratching notes onto Khalid’s shell.

Look, Fibonacci starts with 1, then after that you add the previous two numbers, at first it’s one, the second is still one because it’s 0 plus 1, but the third is,

“Two.”

Right, two.

What Taesu wrote was this.

Level 1 - 1
Level 2 - 1
Level 3 - 2

Then what’s level 4?

1 + 2 =

“Three.”

Level 5?

“Five? Level 6 is eight?”

Exactly.

“I get it, so you’re saying the way my summons multiply follows Fibonacci?”

Yeah, so don’t be disappointed, you should be happy, we’ll only know for sure if you level it more, but I’ve seen a case where power multiplies on a Fibonacci sequence.

“Really?”

Yeah, Bae Hyeongsin.

Bae Hyeongsin.

His bounty was 500 million won.

A former A-rank hunter and a vicious criminal who committed indiscriminate serial murder and terror attacks.

“The guy you’re chasing.”

Yeah, that piece of shit, you can chew him up and it still wouldn’t be enough. Grit.

I could even hear him grinding his teeth through Hansik’s mic, all the way to my speaker.

“Bae Hyeongsin’s power multiplies in a Fibonacci sequence?”

Yeah, his unique skill Dark Bolt, it’s arrow magic made of dark energy, when he first registered with the Awakener Management Office, the number of Dark Bolts he could fire was one, but now, you know how many it is?

“How many?”

You can’t even count it, at minimum, a hundred million.

“A hundred million?!”

A gasp escaped me.

It’s a deranged skill, each shot isn’t insanely powerful, but once he casts it, the sky gets covered in darkness until you can’t see anything.

Which means…

If the pattern for skeleton soldiers multiplying really is Fibonacci, then if I grew to Bae Hyeongsin’s level, I’d be summoning a hundred million skeleton soldiers?

I got chills all over.

If Hansik was a hundred million…

No, Korea’s population isn’t even a hundred million.

I couldn’t even wrap my head around how big that number was.

If I summoned a hundred million skeleton soldiers, wouldn’t that be on the level of destroying Earth’s ecosystem?

We’d have to acknowledge skeleton soldiers as a new species.

This is insane.

Then who could possibly handle me?

I swallowed hard.

This shield, you were curious, right? The reason I carry it is because of Bae Hyeongsin’s Dark Bolt, it’s an item even top tank rankers drool over, I went all-in to catch Bae Hyeongsin while blocking those dark arrows falling from the sky, but now it’s all for nothing, that bastard hasn’t shown himself for years and I don’t even know where he went.

“Couldn’t he have stowed away? You said the last place he was seen was Busan Port.”

Kim Taesu shook his head.

If it was somewhere else and not Busan Port, sure, he might’ve stowed away, but he got caught trying, so right now there’s nowhere in Korea you can stow away from, Hunter Police are stationed everywhere, this is my territory.

“Ah…”

And I think Kim Taesu is hiding somewhere in this gate, a gate is the easiest place for hunters to hide, isn’t it?

“Wait… then you think he’s in the Oryukdo Gate?”

That’s what I think, the most traffic and a semi-permanent gate that isn’t cleared.

“Then Hunter Police and the hunter military could pick a day and do a full sweep to find him.”

You think we haven’t? Not just Hunter Police and the hunter military, even hunters who’ve got bad blood with him got mobilized and searched this place top to bottom, to the point the monsters almost went extinct, ground, trees, under rocks, even the sea, there wasn’t a place we didn’t search, but he wasn’t there.

Somehow, I was completely pulled into his story.

Cop and criminal, isn’t that a guaranteed addictive story?

“Um… but Taesu hyung.”

Listening carefully, I had one question.

“You wouldn’t have searched inside Khalid.”

In here? I’d rather he got eaten by Khalid and died, but how do you check? If you mess with Khalid the wrong way, nobody can handle it.

“No… like Khalid’s nostrils.”

What? Nostrils?

“Look, with Khalid’s ridiculous size… it’s like the distance between subway stations, so even his nostrils should be about the size of a subway entrance.”

Kim Taesu’s eyes shifted upward as he thought deeply.

That’s plausible, barnacles overflowing means there’s plenty of food and then water?

“Even if this is the sea, if you distill saltwater it’s annoying, but you can still get drinking water, right?”

So you’re saying he could be hiding in Khalid’s head?

“I’m just imagining it, it’s probably nonsense, if Khalid sneezes he’d pop right out.”

No, I have to check, no matter what.

“You’re serious?”

Yeah, help me once.

“Me? I told you I’m trash.”

Not you, your summon, I think your summon can do it, don’t worry, I’ll make sure there’s no danger to you.

“But you know, right? My style.”

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.