The Buffs I Raised Are Too Strong - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 22.
“Huh…….”
Gazing at a cactus larger than a human body.
Baek Yul-heon marveled.
“A plant from the second tower…… and it’s got quite the menacing look to it.”
As Baek Yul-heon reached out his hand, spines extended bit by bit.
Baek Ryeon, catching the shift, seized his wrist.
“That’s far enough. Go any closer and you’ll get pricked.”
“You’re saying an Awakener’s skin can be pierced?”
“I got a small scratch, actually.”
“What!? Where? Show me!”
“It’s already healed completely.”
Baek Yul-heon exhaled in relief.
Then, narrowing his eyes, he fixed the cactus with a hard stare.
“……Berner Spine.”
“……How did you know that?”
Berner Spine.
The moment that name left Baek Yul-heon’s lips, she couldn’t hide her bewilderment.
The exact same name that appeared in the information I’d seen.
Baek Yul-heon shrugged and answered.
“It’s one of the few plants that’s been given a proper name.”
“Oh…….”
“Likely because it inhabits the mid-level zones where most current Awakeners congregate.”
‘Given a name?’
A proper name had been assigned to it.
That phrasing bothered me.
The name displayed in the information window would be the plant’s original designation.
But did the name humans gave it replace the original one?
Then what about Azure Breeze?
‘……I’ll worry about that later.’
The name didn’t matter much either way.
What mattered was that Baek Yul-heon knew about this thing.
Baek Yul-heon stroked his chin for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“That thing is a carnivorous plant, for one.”
“Carnivorous?”
“To be precise, human blood is its staple diet. It can extract nutrients from other creatures’ blood too, but it prefers human blood above all.”
“……How exactly does it consume it?”
“The blood gets absorbed through the spines. When the spines extend slightly as we approach, it’s not a threat—it’s carefully making minimal wounds so the prey’s blood doesn’t spill all over the ground.”
“…….”
‘Creepy.’
Looking closely at the cactus, I saw that the sister’s blood smeared on it earlier had vanished completely.
No trace of which spine had pricked her remained.
“The Berner Spine is a dangerous plant, but it’s never posed much of a threat to Awakeners.”
“Why is that?”
“Haven’t you heard from So Hyeon? It can’t even pierce skin, let alone draw blood.”
“Oh…….”
“Mid-level Awakeners who’ve reached floor thirty and beyond usually possess skin of above-average durability. So it poses no threat. The Tower Climbing Manual even states: ‘It’s recommended to destroy it upon discovery, but ignoring it is also acceptable.'”
“……There’s something like that?”
“But! This one is different.”
Baek Yul-heon fished something from his pocket.
“……What is that?”
“Just an ordinary stone. I picked it up on the way here.”
Before the question ‘Why?’ could even leave my lips,
Baek Yul-heon hurled the stone at the cactus.
Thwack!
“Wow.”
“……It went straight through.”
The stone hung suspended in the air.
Dangling from a single thin spine, the sight could almost be mistaken for levitation from a distance.
“Pierced it clean through without a scratch.”
“…… Why did you throw that?”
“A test.”
“A test?”
“My skin’s probably about as hard as that stone right now.”
“……?”
Skin? A pebble?
“Ha! What’s with that face? My stomach’s probably harder than you, at least.”
“…….”
I was at a loss for words.
When I looked at her, she just shrugged.
“So we’ve proved that if I get any closer, I’ll just shred myself to pieces.”
“…… That’s not exactly good news.”
“No, but we’ve proved something else too.”
“What?”
Baek Yul-heon shifted two steps to the side from where he’d been standing,
then threw an identical pebble from his pocket once more.
Whomp!
“Oh…….”
Now there were two stones floating in midair.
The same height, suspended at a position exactly two steps apart.
“What is this?”
“Speed.”
“Speed?”
“This time I put force into the throw. Different force. But the position stayed the same.”
“……?”
“It means the spines’ maximum retraction speed is about that.”
“…… How does that information help us right now?”
“It won’t help me or Hyeon, but I know someone it will help.”
“Someone……?”
“Someone Hyeok knows too. Didn’t Hyeon mention them?”
“I thought the Guild Master would bring them along. I was disappointed when they came alone.”
“Ugh…… but there’s a reason for that too.”
Baek Yul-heon pulled out his phone,
clicked the screen a few times, and showed it to us.
“Take a look at this.”
“Oh…….”
“Wow, what is this?”
A screen marked with red dots.
It wasn’t a photograph.
“Call history……?”
And every single entry showed both outgoing and incoming.
In other words, calls that Baek Yul-heon had made himself.
And the person on the other end was.
“Hyeon Chae-rin — isn’t this grounds for termination?”
“…… We’re in a period when we need every single Awakener, so firing someone isn’t exactly…”
“Do you know the reason?”
“No. Not exactly. Though if you asked whether I have a hunch, that’s another story.”
Hyeon Chae-rin.
Definitely someone I knew.
But.
“Hyeon Chae-rin helps with clearing the cactus?”
At my question, both Baek Yul-heon and my sister turned their heads toward me at once.
Then.
“Yeah.”
“A lot.”
They nodded in agreement.
‘…… That much?’
Hyeon Chae-rin was definitely still an Awakener in the thirty-level range.
I couldn’t imagine how someone weaker than my sister, who was in the fifty-level range, could be that helpful.
‘So they introduce me to someone with skin made of stone, and now this.’
When I fixed him with a skeptical gaze,
Baek Yul-heon fidgeted with his phone, a suggestive smile playing at his lips.
“So Hyeok, take a look at this.”
“……A photograph?”
“Proof that Hyeon Chae-rin’s useful.”
I accepted the phone from Baek Yul-heon.
A photo of Hyeon Chae-rin.
She stood drenched in sweat, cradling something enormous in both hands.
‘What is she holding?’
I pinched the image to enlarge it,
and what rested in her grip came into sharper focus.
“……Huh?”
My eyes darted between the phone and the cactus beside me.
After squinting for a long moment, I spoke.
“Are those thorns?”
“Yeah.”
Sharp spines filled both her hands.
Her delicate skin bore not a single scratch.
Seeing my bewilderment, Baek Yul-heon launched into an explanation, pride evident in his voice.
“This was when Hyeon Chae-rin had just cleared floor twenty-six. Those flying things were a nightmare to catch, so she came up with an ingenious solution—she plucked every spine from a nearby Berner Spine and hurled them at the creatures. With her Throwing skill, they dropped one after another. The moment she returned to reality from the tower, we managed to capture this remarkable photograph.”
“……Wow, that’s unsettling.”
The way he boasted about her like a proud parent.
My sister’s face contorted.
“You talk about her like she’s your own daughter?”
“Baek Ryeon is like my own child. Every guild member is precious to me.”
My sister shuddered, her skin crawling.
Baek Yul-heon’s expression dimmed slightly as he forced himself to ignore her reaction.
“Ah.”
That’s when something odd caught my attention.
“But……can’t you take plants from the tower into reality?”
“Right. So it shattered less than a second after we took the photo. Since Hyeon Chae-rin had categorized it as her weapon, there must have been some kind of system error.”
“……There are errors in the system too?”
“How should I know?”
Baek Yul-heon said it as though it were nothing serious,
but it bothered me.
“Anyway! This works out perfectly.”
“Works out?”
“I’ve been searching for Hyeon Chae-rin too, and you need her right away. We can just look together.”
“……Aren’t you just dumping this on us?”
“Ugh……no, I’m not. It’s mutually beneficial.”
“Sure it is∼.”
My sister answered his words with barely concealed sarcasm.
She had every right to.
The atmosphere between my sister and Hyeon Chae-rin didn’t exactly look harmonious.
Baek Yul-heon seemed determined to patch things up between them,
but knowing my sister’s temperament, that would never happen.
Not unless she decided on her own to grow closer.
“But if she’s completely vanished, how are we supposed to find her?”
“Ah, I misspoke. She’s not entirely missing—I know where she is.”
“What? Then why don’t you just bring her back? It’s not like anyone’s stopping you.”
“That’s……I can’t do it, or rather, I shouldn’t.”
“What do you mean……?”
Either way, the situation seemed tangled in complications.
‘Well, the cactus strategy takes priority anyway.’
“Let’s go check it out?”
“You……really?”
“I need Hyeon Chae-rin too.”
Baek Yul-heon seized my hand, beaming widely,
“Tch.”
while my sister stood there with undisguised displeasure written across her face.
“If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to follow me.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“…All right.”
He set out in Baek Yul-heon’s car to meet Hyeon Chae-rin.
* * *
At that very moment.
The Management Bureau.
“What’s his location?”
“…We still don’t have it.”
Without question, the most active agency in South Korea when it came to Awakener intelligence.
Not a single Awakener incident that had occurred in South Korea escaped the Management Bureau’s knowledge.
Surely it shouldn’t have taken so long to uncover information about Mi-jeong.
‘What in the world is going on?’
There was no information at all.
It felt like chasing the shadow of someone who didn’t exist.
It had only been two days since the Tower’s first floor was cleared.
The Management Bureau’s top priority was monitoring Awakeners who had recently undergone their Awakening.
Yet among them, no one showed suspicious activity patterns.
Then—Awakeners from the past.
Given the circumstances, a Second Awakening seemed certain, so they prioritized identifying those whose recent movements seemed peculiar.
But—
‘Nothing.’
Even with assistance requested from other Management Bureau branches.
After searching through every Awakener in South Korea, no one showed signs of a Second Awakening.
‘Should we expand the scope to include people who Awakened over ten years ago?’
Maverick.
That monster had undergone his Second Awakening roughly a month after his initial Awakening.
So the gap between Awakening and Second Awakening shouldn’t be that large.
‘No, wait.’
There was only one precedent in the entire world.
Hardly anything to call absolute.
“Expand the search to combat-type Awakeners who Awakened twenty years ago or more.”
“…Twenty years, sir?”
“Doesn’t matter if they’re over seventy. If they’ve undergone a Second Awakening, they’ll straighten their crooked backs and fight.”
Mi-jeong.
An Awakener who appeared suddenly and turned South Korea upside down.
“If you don’t find them, consider them as good as dead.”
I will find them no matter what.
The Buff I Raised is Too Strong
Author |
Naengmyeon-hwachae
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(주) Samyang C&C
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Editorial Department
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The contents of this book may not be used in any form or by any means without the written permission of (주) Samyang C&C – Dreambooks.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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