The sensation of the sword tip piercing the hard shell traveled straight into his hand.
With a flick of his wrist, Ju-min lightly pulled the sword out of the monster’s nape. The monster, which resembled an enormous field mouse, lay on the floor and kicked its legs a few times before going still. He shook the sticky slime off his blade onto the ground and briefly caught his breath.
"No one’s hurt, right? Let’s wrap things up."
The shield bearer at the front lowered his shield and called out. At his voice, the tension filling the cave instantly eased.
Ju-min had joined this E-grade dungeon party early that morning to test his ability. After checking the monsters’ attack patterns and silently swinging his sword, he had already reached the final area.
"Seriously, nothing but rat bastards, and not a single thing worth any money."
The mage rested a staff on one shoulder and grumbled irritably.
"What do you expect from an E-grade dungeon? We’re lucky if we don’t get badly hurt or lose too much weapon durability. Let’s collect everything and get out."
As the party members traded complaints that were half joking and half serious, the porter waiting at the rear began moving busily. With practiced hands, the porter carrying a large backpack gathered the monster materials and cheap mana stones scattered around the corpses.
Ju-min slid his sword into its sheath and moved toward the wall. He partly intended to clear the porter’s path, but his real purpose was something else.
DING.
Once all the monsters had been dealt with, a translucent blue window appeared in the air.
[E-Grade Dungeon Clear Complete.]
[Calculating Individual Contribution.]
The dungeon clear notification. He could see the party members staring into the air before them, checking their reward summary windows. Ju-min likewise fixed his gaze ahead.
[Issuing Individual Contribution Reward.]
[1 E-Grade Recovery Potion Assigned.]
Ju-min moistened his lips without changing his expression as he checked the reward list. It was not even a mana stone, but the most common sort of low-grade consumable. Something he could buy in a shop for a few tens of thousands of won. Normally, this result would have left him bitterly thinking he had wasted another dungeon run.
But things were different now.
Familiar golden letters appeared in an enormous overlay across the blue system window.
[100× Quantity]
[100× Value]
Strange choices that no one else could see. Ju-min’s heart began beating faster than usual.
Yesterday’s three hundred low-grade mana stones had made him keenly aware that Quantity Amplification was neither an illusion nor a display error. The cash he had received from selling fifteen stones, and the remaining stones sleeping deep in his inventory, were proof.
That left only one thing. His real reason for joining today’s party was to test the other option he had left unresolved.
'If I choose 100× Quantity, that cheap potion will turn into a hundred.'
That would be a decent profit, too. But he was intensely curious about what would happen if an ordinary consumable’s value increased a hundredfold.
With an unwavering gaze, Ju-min stared at the letters on the right. Then he made his decision inwardly.
'100× Value.'
FLASH!
An intense, piercing golden light filled his vision. The party members around him were chatting noisily, but that light was something only Ju-min could see.
The image of the dull red E-grade recovery potion in his personal reward summary window began to distort. A turbulent mass of light broke apart the potion’s shape and formed it anew.
A few seconds passed, and the light faded.
Ju-min unconsciously held his breath.
The newly formed item looked completely different from before. In place of the drab glass bottle was a finely crafted crystal vial, filled with a clear, transparent golden liquid that gently sloshed inside.
[Value Amplification Applied.]
[1 B-Grade Full Recovery Potion Stored in Inventory.]
"Ha."
A short exclamation escaped Ju-min.
A B-grade full recovery potion.
It was not merely something for treating scrapes or recovering from fatigue. It was a rare consumable that could repair ruptured internal organs or stop fatal bleeding in an instant, carried by high-ranking Hunters as an emergency lifeline deep inside dungeons. Listed on the exchange, a single bottle could easily command several million won.
The system had not performed the stupid calculation of simply multiplying the original potion’s healing amount or duration by a hundred. Instead, it had multiplied the original reward’s value by a hundred, then fully converted that total into a rare reward of a higher grade worth the corresponding amount.
A cheap recovery medicine had instantly become an expensive lifeline.
'This is a leap in quality.'
Where Quantity Amplification simply duplicated resources, Value Amplification raised an item to an entirely different level.
"Hey, Hunter Im Ju-min! Did you get something good? You’re grinning to yourself."
The shield bearer called out, pausing while handing his load to the porter. Ju-min quickly composed his expression and gave a slight shake of his head.
"No. I was just glad my weapon didn’t lose any durability."
"You really are positive. If everyone’s finished with their rewards, let’s head out. I can’t stand this smell any longer."
One by one, the party members walked toward the gate. Ju-min followed them as though nothing had happened. With every step, he felt the weighty presence of the golden potion resting carefully in a corner of his inventory.
An exhilarating shiver ran down his spine. To make proper use of this miraculous ability, he needed to establish its exact rules.
***
After leaving the dungeon, the party members exchanged brief farewells near the entrance and went their separate ways.
Ju-min turned in the opposite direction. Leaving the busy streets behind, he found a secluded spot in a quiet back alley and carefully checked his surroundings.
It was so still that not even a stray cat passed through.
Ju-min reached out and opened his inventory. The first things he took out were three dull low-grade mana stones obtained through yesterday’s Quantity Amplification. Then he took a bottle of ordinary store-bought medicine for stopping bleeding from his pocket and placed it on the ground. He had bought it at a convenience store before entering the dungeon.
"Let’s see where the limit is."
Holding a mana stone, Ju-min called out forcefully in his mind.
'100× Quantity. Or 100× Value.'
But the golden system window that had shone so brilliantly inside the dungeon yesterday and today was nowhere to be seen. Only a single line appeared in a plain gray notification window.
[Invalid Target.]
"It doesn’t work."
Ju-min put down the mana stone and picked up the store-bought medicine. The result was the same. No matter how hard he tried to activate the ability, it produced only the same error message.
The result was clear.
He could not use this ability on things he already owned, things he bought, or things he picked up on the street. Even rewards that had entered his inventory after being amplified a hundredfold could not be amplified again.
Ju-min crouched, rested his chin on his hand, and quietly stared at the message window floating in the air.
'Official rewards.'
That was the sole condition.
Clearing a dungeon, killing a boss monster and having his contribution recognized, or completing an assigned mission—the moment the system explicitly allocated something to him as a reward.
The 100× choices activated only immediately after that allocation, while the reward awaited confirmation and had yet to enter his inventory.
As long as he had not confirmed receipt, he would be able to leave it in his pending personal rewards and postpone his choice even outside the dungeon. But once he confirmed receipt and it entered his inventory, it became an ordinary item, and he could never apply the ability to it again.
"So I only get one choice."
Ju-min gathered the mana stones and medicine from the ground and put them back into his inventory.
He was disappointed that repeated amplification was impossible, but he also found it reassuring. If he could amplify things indefinitely, he might have become blinded by immediate profit and duplicated a single mana stone into millions, only to be tracked by the system or hauled in by the Hunter Association for disrupting the market.
Having a limit meant he could act according to a plan within a range he could control.
'Quantity for things that bring in immediate cash or matter in bulk, like mana stones and ordinary materials. Value for things whose rarity matters, like potions and equipment.'
A clear set of criteria took shape in his mind.
For the past three years, he had been forced to settle for avoiding injury and picking up the crumbs others left behind. But that was different now. Even if he ran the same dungeons and killed the same monsters as everyone else, the rewards he received would be on an entirely different level.
He now had a reliable weapon for extracting the greatest possible profit within his own safety limits.
Ju-min slowly rose. Lightly brushing the dust off his trousers, he left the alley with a firm ease in his steps that had not been there before. The sound of his worn boot soles striking the asphalt rang out pleasantly.