Ch.225225. The Butcher

When summoning a single Gear Sword, the stat effect causes two additional Gear Swords to be summoned. Since all skill effects are applied at 140%, the magic that occurs is that summoning one Gear Sword actually results in a total of seven Gear Swords appearing.

Basically, I would summon three Gear Swords, resulting in a total of 21 swords accompanying me.

The curious thing about Gear Swords is that while seven swords are summoned at once with a single cast, each of the 21 swords consumes mana individually to maintain their existence.

So each of the 21 swords consumes 100 mana per minute, meaning 2,100 mana drains away just by breathing.

With the 50% mana reduction, it’s actually 1,050, but still.

That’s why summoning more swords would be excessive, and it was most efficient to summon just enough to get two stacks of additional attack power.

After learning Gear Sword, I no longer had to fear battles with Gold Birds.

Swish—

As I dodge a rapidly approaching Gold Bird, the nearest swords leap forward and slice it down without me having to specifically attack.

There’s no need to use Leap Slash on each of the 21 swords individually.

Moving too many would only drain mana faster.

Using just 4-5 swords was enough to catch a Gold Bird, and this had the same effect as using multiple Leap Slashes at once.

“If I learn Double Casting too, that would be insanely powerful.”

There are skills that can add various synergies to abilities.

For instance, if you combine the completely unrelated Leap Slash of melee weapons with the Double Casting of magic, you can create a situation where you use Leap Slash twice at once, doubling the number of slashes.

Naturally, it consumes more mana, so it’s generally not worth using, but for someone like me who has moved beyond worrying about mana efficiency, it can be an excellent means of powering up.

It also allows for creating diverse situations to generate even more powerful forces.

I was looking forward to it.

Slash-slash-slash—

The quality of hunting had dramatically improved.

I no longer had to think about counterattacking while dodging, and even when I did counterattack, the Gear Swords would follow up with their own attacks, allowing me to take down Gold Birds more decisively.

“Now this is what growth feels like. Indeed.”

It’s not that I could dodge more safely or anything, so the tension of hunting still required full attention, but the difference in simplification—being able to attack an approaching Gold Bird, knock it down, and finish it off in one go while still in the air—felt incredibly significant.

Naturally, the number of Gold Birds I hunted increased, as did the amount of gold I obtained.

So by the third or fourth day, I was able to comfortably wander around the Vein Mountain Range and explore the mines.

The sky was completely dominated by Gold Birds, and it seemed like no other flying monsters could even approach the entire mountain range. However, as I descended the mountains, the Gold Birds disappeared, and I could sense a densely woven food chain below.

Various types of monsters welcomed me, and particularly around the mountain range, I saw many monsters that would typically be found in higher-tier biomes, alongside ogres.

“The gold mine is quite large too.”

The copper mine felt like a small operation buried in a neighborhood hill compared to the mines in the Level 5 biome, which were incomparably larger.

It was as if an entire mountain itself was a massive mine.

The fog was thick, making it impossible to take in everything at once, but the golden veins embedded throughout the stone mountain clearly occupied about 20-30% of the visible surface.

Gold was so abundant in places that it seemed like it would fall in chunks with minimal effort, and the entrance to the mine was so wide that it felt more like a tourist attraction for cave exploration rather than a mine.

Of course, it was only natural that powerful monsters guarded such a place.

Kwaaak—

But even in a Level 5 biome, nothing could be more threatening than Gold Birds.

I stood still with my Light Sword in hand, just watching the monsters, while my Gear Swords cut down dozens of creatures that had emerged from the mine and surrounded me from all directions.

It was somewhat for show, but it was an important exercise for me.

“Gear Sword is definitely perfect for YouTube.”

I thought that if magic has Meteor, then swords have Gear Sword.

The most spectacular skill a sword can display.

A skill that overcomes the weakness and limitation of having to swing the sword yourself.

I deliberately arranged the swords to look flashy and impressive.

The swords, aligned in neat rows and columns, vanished in an instant to slice through monsters before returning.

This was possible because each sword could perform its own [Leap Slash].

The scene captured on camera was satisfying.

“Hyunji would love this.”

Lately, whenever I returned to Earth and checked the messages piled up on my phone, there were always messages from Yoon Hyunji.

While I usually discussed work-related matters with my friend Kim Soo-jung, I had given Hyunji my contact information so she could reach out to me directly as her boss rather than going through Soo-jung if she had any work concerns. But instead of work-related messages, I’d receive occasional long personal messages about how happy she was editing our videos.

She explained that she had become an editor because she wanted to make hunters’ videos look flashy and cool, and now that she was working for a hunter’s YouTube channel with those abilities, she was incredibly happy. Previously, she had been told to keep things plain and simple, which had been frustrating, but since being scouted by Kim Soo-jung, every day had been joyful.

There wasn’t much else to it.

That was all, along with her hopes for our continued good relationship.

And if she could add one work-related note: if I could make things as flashy as possible, even killing monsters with style and full power when I could easily dispatch them simply, she could create highlights and make 5-10 minute videos from just one such scene.

Whether it was personal preference or not, the Farmer Hunter channel was currently running entirely on Hyunji’s editing, with neither Soo-jung nor I paying much attention to it. So Hyunji deserved most of the credit for its growth.

Therefore, it made sense to listen to her.

While I could say YouTube was just a hobby, it was helping me become well-known and famous, so it made sense to grow it further if possible. Even in situations like this, being conscious of YouTube content and capturing these scenes wasn’t a bad idea.

“That was cool.”

Even looking back, the scene just now was more than sufficient for a YouTube video.

If Hyunji saw it, she would probably agonize over whether to use this scene or the Gold Bird hunting scene, ultimately either splitting them into two videos or editing both as highlights.

About twenty mixed monsters falling at once to five swords’ Leap Slashes, with me walking calmly through the aftermath.

After roughly planning the video editing cuts, I quickly turned around at the mine entrance and rummaged through the fallen monsters’ corpses.

“Can’t resist butchering.”

The monsters here are all corrupted creatures.

The resources from each corpse could fetch a decent price anywhere and were also sufficient as crafting materials.

Now I needed to think not just about real-world money but also about Fam for the Rift Dimension.

Currently, I had plenty of Fam from quests, and I hadn’t fully populated my village with NPCs so there wasn’t much need for it, but as my farm grew larger and gained more members, various problems would arise that would need to be solved with Fam.

Even Kim Soo-jung was finding it challenging to be self-sufficient in Fam while farming and searching for recipes, so she often asked me for Fam.

My Fam wasn’t just mine anymore, making the situation somewhat ambiguous.

So I needed to establish a regular and stable Fam supply source.

One method was through ores from mines like this, along with monster corpses.

I diligently collected the corpses and entered the mine.

An endless expanse of mine stretched before me.

I took out my pickaxe and struck the wall.

Stones and gold nuggets came tumbling down in abundance.

Seeing the nearly equal amounts pouring out brought a smile to my face.

In terms of quantity, hunting Gold Birds might be more efficient.

It’s easier to obtain at once.

But ultimately, the number of Gold Birds is limited.

The gold stored here is ample future assets, as I’m not planning to live off accumulated gold forever.

The full-scale Level 5 mine clearing operation began.