“This is not worth the effort,” Lee Ji-Hye commented.

“Someone in our guild said the same thing…” I pointed out.

“Who?” she asked.

“Park Deok-Gu,” I replied.

“...”

“...”

“Oh! By the way, Kasugano Yuno of the Yozora Guild expressed that she wants to participate in this expedition as well—” she reported.

“She can’t…” I interrupted.

Lee Ji-Hye looked at me with surprise when I gave somewhat of a stern answer. As one of the Eight Seats, I would applaud her if she participated in the expedition, but unfortunately, that only applied if this was an ordinary dungeon.

‘Her luck stat is zero.’

When considering Kasugano Yuno’s luck stats, her offer to help was actually an inconvenience, so I wanted to deny her any interest in this. Honestly, I just wanted to tell her that it was none of her business.

“That’s surprising. I thought you would want to take her…” she said.

“Her luck stat is low,” I informed her.

“Ah…”

“Hopelessly low,” I added.

“Have you two gotten close enough to share stats?” Lee Ji-Hye asked.

“I don’t know the details…”

“Hm, perhaps…” she muttered and paused.

It seemed like she was staring at me strangely, but seeing that she didn’t say anything else, I guess it didn’t really matter because she didn’t really care about the people I had met.

I wasn’t sure why she thought I would come back to her eventually, but one thing I could acknowledge was the fact that this task had become easier thanks to her.

‘Maybe, I should have recruited her to the Blue Guild.’

In addition to adapting well to the Black Swan Guild, she had also become successful, so I guess it was a good thing she had joined the Black Swan Guild. Of course, I did kind of feel that it was a shame.

‘It’s comfortable.’

We worked so well together that it was comfortable for me, and when I started reading the expedition profile again, Lee Ji-Hye spoke, “This is hard. It’s difficult to find a balance since the luck stat is important, and it’s my first time focusing on the party this much. The other expeditions had been difficult to handle as well, but not to this extent.”

“...”

“Not only that… not a lot of people have high luck stats. You barely have 70 points, oppa… I thought it would be higher than this…” she added.

“What’s the average luck stat of the people isolated in the museum right now?” I asked.

“Hm, maybe 30? There’s probably an error of plus or minus 15 points,” she answered.

“That explains why they have gotten isolated,” I commented.

Disclosing everyone’s luck stat was the most important part of capturing the Rift Museum, so I didn’t have to use Mind’s Eye to find those with high luck stat. To capture this dungeon, Lee Ji-Hye proposed that we disclose our luck stats, and both the Black Swan and Blue Guild agreed to it. I assumed it wouldn’t be difficult to create a party for the expedition, but the fact that not many people had high luck stats had thrown a wrench in the party’s creation. It would be best to form an expedition party with people whose luck stat was over 80, but those with legendary-ranked luck stats had no potential in their other stats.

Out of all the stats players had, luck was the most mysterious stat.

‘It’s understandable.’

No one had studied how a player could increase their luck stat—no one even knew why this stat existed in the first place. Many people with high luck stats died as beggars, and some with low luck stats, like Kasugano Yuno, were on the road to success.

Increasing the strength stat would make you stronger, and increasing the agility stat would make you faster. Simple logic could be applied to the other stats, but the same logic couldn’t be used on the luck stat. Of course, increasing the luck stat…

‘Seems to influence those with production-type jobs…’

Anyway, we could be grasping at straws for this expedition, but we had no choice but to include those with high luck stat. Obviously, forming a party with only these people would be suicide. Realistically, our goal was to have an average of 60 points in luck stats, so we were trying to create a party with members whose luck was closer to those numbers to take on a legendary-ranked named monster. This was the key to the creation of the party, and it was also the reason why Lee Ji-Hye was struggling.

“What did the Blue Guild decide to do?” Lee Ji-Hye asked.

“We’re still thinking about it. However, my participation as well as Mr. Hyun-Sung, Ha-Yan, and Miss Hee-Young’s have been confirmed for now,” I replied.

“You’re not taking Mr. Deok-Gu? Didn’t he grow into one of the Blue Guild’s great powers?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re thinking about right now. His other stats are good, but his luck stat has just reached 40 points. If he joins, the average luck stat of the party will drop,” I explained.

“Just put him in. If something bad happens, at least you’ll have someone that can protect you, Oppa. It probably won’t matter since Miss Ha-Yan, Mr. Hyun-Sung and you have high stats. The problem is the Black Swan Guild members. By the way, what is Dialugia going to do?” she asked.

“I think she’s going to participate, but… it’ll be difficult for her to maintain her human form since it’s a dungeon and she’s not good at wielding a weapon, so I don’t really want her to join. But, I’m sure she’ll be useful since her stats are high…” I answered.

“What about your precious daughter?” she questioned.

“If Dialugia decides to join, the remaining members at the Blue Guild will watch over her. I’m worried about leaving Smartie by herself, but Dialugia told me that she had to go, so there’s nothing I can do about that. After all, it’s true that it’ll be dangerous…” I replied.

“Her luck stat was in the 80s when she was in her human form,” Lee Ji-Hye recalled.

“Your guild master, too…” I pointed out.

“Yes, she’s in the 80s as well, so if we form it that way, then we’ll be set for the vanguards. I think we can handle any named monsters that appear, and Mr. Deok-Gu in particular—”

“He will definitely be helpful. Having a pure tank with the stats to take on a legendary-ranked monster’s attack is pretty rare,” I interrupted.

“The priests are kind of weak, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about that. Creating the rearguard party is getting difficult. We can’t focus on one area since we don't know if the named monster will be resistant to physical or magic attacks…” she muttered.

“We’ll have to discuss the party formation more, and the guild masters are probably discussing many things about this expedition as well… They’re the experts in killing monsters, and we’re just giving our opinions as the strategy team. We just need to submit our report and give the list of names. When is the next meeting?” I asked.

“In two hours…” Lee Ji-Hye replied.

“Look over the supply team for me,” I requested.

“What about the party? We still need to go through our guild…” she reminded me.

“I’ll take care of it,” I told her.

She looked at me with doubt as if asking if I could really do it, but she immediately nodded, and I understood why she questioned me. However, there was no way she knew the fact that I knew the Black Swan Guild very well. While visiting the Black Swan Guild a few times, I checked the members’ attributes and overall stats using Mind’s Eye. Obviously, I memorized the stats of those who were executive members at the least, so it was better for me to form the party by myself. Considering their stats, job, and even their nature, I was the only one who could do this.

‘It would be a different story if everyone revealed their status windows…’

There were many things people tended to hide, and it was even more true when it came to their natures and habits. It didn’t happen often, but people would sometimes use the fact that others couldn’t see their status window to give false information. As such, I was the only person on this continent who could form a proper expedition party.

‘A party’s formation involves statistics.’’

Based on the Black Swan Guild’s expedition data accumulated over time, I had to think about which jobs had good compatibility when it came to the party. You could easily find the answer when comparing the dungeon capture to a soccer match and thinking of the expedition members as the 11 players of a soccer team. You have to think about the win rate when selecting two players together, the win rate of a specific player when they played at home and when they were away, and the win rate of a specific player when they were playing against their rival. Winning the match represented the success of the expedition and losing represented failure. Of course, there were things I couldn’t explain with this type of explanation alone.

‘It’s just simple statistics, anyway.’

There would be variables during the actual expedition and it was up to the party to handle the variables. Some people who sit at a desk all day may say that forming a party was useless, but… But if the players could have a match on their own in the first place, then a director or coach wasn’t needed.

Statistics would never lie. It was a lot more convincing than the power of friendship, spirit, or vigor, which were indescribable elements. The number of deaths and injuries from previous expeditions and the success rate in expeditions involving specific members were the information that made the party formation possible for me.

‘Like… What type of people usually fail the expedition?’

Obviously, I wasn’t a god and I knew that judging people solely based on their nature and habit was dangerous, but to increase our success rate even just a little bit, it wasn’t a bad idea to give a numerical value even to the most trivial things.

Because…

Our regressor was a bit anxious.

Unlike the optimistic Park Deok-Gu who said that we just had to be lucky, Kim Hyun-Sung hadn’t been able to hide his nervousness as soon as this expedition was confirmed. It was obvious why our confident and lovely regressor was reacting that way.

‘Has he experienced it before?’

This was just my assumption, but he had probably experienced the Rift Museum before, and if that wasn’t the case, then he must have heard of this dungeon, at the very least. I was assuming his comrades had gotten annihilated after a mythic-ranked monster appeared before them, and I was sure the battle had been one-sided. He had always been serious and had constantly been thinking about how this was dangerous, so he had been training with his sword more often and had been working even harder to prepare for this expedition. He was also probably worried about those sealed or contracted transcendent beings. I was sure there was a monster out there he believed was difficult to handle by himself.

‘I’ll carry you.’

There wasn’t much I could do, but I could at least help him with this. It had been a while since I was this focused. Actually, it had been a while since I was this busy after distributing the majority of my tasks to other people. Lee Ji-Hye had to have realized how busy I was because she left the office long ago.

I was immersed on forming the expedition party for quite a while. The meeting started and the report of the unit I had formed was delivered to Kim Hyun-Sung and Park Yeon-Joo. Obviously…

“Mr. Hyun-Sung, your sub guild master… he’s very competent. No, how… how is… this possible?” Park Yeon-Joo asked.

The expedition I had formed obviously brought immediate results at the demonstration training, and it shocked the Guild Master of the Black Swan Guild.

‘I was lucky…’