The S-Rank Secret
There was still a little time left before the limit on how long I could stay in the tower ran out.
But Aisha had already been unsummoned and I had cleared the hidden route as well, so there wasn’t much else to see.
After wrapping up some minor tasks like skill upgrades, I left the tower. The tavern was in complete chaos.
There were Awakened who had come out before me, and others who still hadn’t emerged, but people’s attention had already shifted away from the students who had entered the tower.
“Ah, senior’s out!”
In the middle of all that, Seol Yura spotted me and greeted me with a bright smile.
Another Awakened returned to the tavern in a flash of blue light, but no one seemed particularly interested.
They were too busy chattering noisily among themselves.
“What happened?”
“Huh? Senior, didn’t you get the notification?”
Seol Yura asked, looking puzzled.
‘Notification?’
Her words reminded me of the alert that had appeared for me inside the tower earlier.
Global notification will be sent due to S-rank achievement.
Global notification will be sent due to hidden route clear.
‘That’s right. It did say a global notification would be sent.’
My head had been so full of everything that happened with Aisha that I hadn’t thought about it at all.
Now that I thought about it, clearing any floor of the tower with an S-rank always triggered a global notification.
At first people were impressed, but since the alerts went out to every Awakened on the planet and came so frequently, everyone was slowly getting tired of them.
Even so, the number of people in Korea who had publicly revealed they cleared the first floor with S-rank could still be counted on two hands.
‘And I did it in one second. The hidden route clear was supposed to trigger a notification too.’
When I considered all that, the uproar suddenly made sense.
Anyway, I opened my mouth to make an excuse about missing the notification.
But Seol Yura spoke first, as if she had already figured it out.
“Ah, you must not have seen it because you were busy fighting! So here’s what happened…”
She started explaining the events with obvious excitement.
Well, I already knew all of it anyway.
“…I mean, the previous record for the fastest clear was fifty-seven seconds, but you did it in one? As you saw yourself, senior, the goblins are really far away when the trial starts, so even with long-range skills it’s hard to hit them at the beginning…”
The way she kept talking about it like it was the most amazing thing in the world made my face grow a little warm as I listened.
“More importantly, you cleared it too, right?”
I nodded.
Seol Yura gently took hold of my wrist, smiled with her eyes, and tugged my arm slightly toward herself.
“What rank did you get? Can’t you show me first?”
Like Kim Jinho had done earlier, the mark proving you were a tower climber—showing the floor you cleared and your rank—appeared on your arm.
Seol Yura slowly rolled up my sleeve.
“Please? I’m curious…”
“Alright, fine.”
I channeled mana into my arm.
I could choose one of the floors I had cleared and display its rank as a mark.
I could even show the name I had used in the tower records if I wanted, but since I needed to hide my identity right now, that was out of the question.
A blue mark began to rise on my arm.
“Huh…?”
A dazed sound slipped from Seol Yura’s lips.
I felt the same way.
I couldn’t hide the fact that I had cleared the first floor with S-rank, and since there were quite a few S-rank clears worldwide, I had planned to show it.
‘But the hidden part wasn’t supposed to appear!’
It was my first time displaying the mark, so I had messed up.
I frantically fiddled with the notification window and, thankfully, managed to hide the hidden route clear record.
Seol Yura stared at me with wide, rabbit-like eyes, completely stunned.
I wiped the flustered look off my face and pretended it had been intentional.
Looking at her, I raised a finger to my lips.
“It’s a secret, so ‘you alone’ know about it.”
“Y-yes…”
She nodded, still looking dazed.
For some reason her face had turned bright red.
‘Good. If I put it like that, she’ll think I deliberately chose to tell only her.’
If she thought it was a slip-up, she might go around telling other people.
But if she believed I had intentionally shared it with only her, the idea of the two of us sharing such an enormous secret might actually stop her from telling anyone else.
She would feel a sense of superiority from knowing something others didn’t, and she would want to keep the special status of being the only one who knew.
While Seol Yura was still staring blankly at my face, Shin Seojin—the Korean Literature student who had greeted me earlier—walked over.
She squeezed into the spot beside me, opposite Seol Yura.
“What’s going on? Why are you two just staring at each other?”
Her gaze shifted to my arm.
“Dohyun-nim cleared it too! Everyone who went in has come out now, so we’re all going to check our results together! So, what rank did you get, Dohyun-nim…? Uh…”
She suddenly froze, unable to finish her sentence.
The 1-S mark was still clearly visible on my arm.
“Huh? Huuuh…? N-no way!”
She grabbed the arm Seol Yura had been holding, brought her face so close she almost touched it, and stared in disbelief.
“Is this real? Everyone! Look over here!”
Shin Seojin made a huge fuss.
At her urgent shout, every head in the tavern turned our way.
“This is insane! Dohyun oppa cleared the first floor with S-rank!”
“What?”
“Did someone just say S-rank?”
Even in the noisy tavern, Shin Seojin’s voice carried clearly.
A few people assumed she was still talking about the one-second hidden clear Awakened they had been discussing earlier.
But Kim Jinho had definitely heard her.
His expression flickered with confusion for a split second before twisting into something truly ugly.
“Uh, you’re that second awakening guy from before, right?”
“S-rank? For real? Are you kidding?”
“No way. Someone like that wouldn’t be here.”
“Wait, it really was a second awakening?”
People shouted as they crowded closer.
“There really is a mark on his arm?”
“Is it legit?”
“I want to see too!”
Shin Seojin hugged my arm, lifted it high, and showed it off to everyone.
“I’m telling you it’s real! This oppa is completely crazy!”
Even while doing that, she turned to me with an excited face and asked,
“How did you do it? Can’t you tell us the story?”
Kim Jinho pushed through the crowd toward me.
“S-rank? Bullsh—”
He stopped dead when he saw the 1-S clearly displayed on the arm Shin Seojin was waving around.
Seol Yura gently took my arm from Shin Seojin and lowered it.
“Senior’s arm is going to hurt.”
“Ah, sorry oppa! You were just too cool.”
Shin Seojin gave my arm a light tap as she apologized.
For some reason, Seol Yura’s expression had stiffened.
They had just been talking about the S-rank hidden clearer, and now an S-rank Awakened had suddenly appeared in the tavern. A few people’s minds began to connect the dots.
“Wait. The notification about the S-rank hidden clear just went out, right? Then…”
Several people looked at me as they spoke.
Kim Jinho shouted as if he couldn’t accept it.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Lee Dohyun came out way after the notification went off!”
It was true. I had spent extra time inside upgrading skills and transferring the passive skill I received as a reward to Aisha.
I had also taken a long time carefully hiding the magic stones I got as rewards inside my clothes.
Thanks to that, when Kim Jinho pointed it out, several people nodded in understanding.
In reality, it wasn’t so much that his logic was sound as it was that they simply couldn’t believe an Awakened who had cleared the first floor with S-rank hidden in one second was standing right next to them.
I spoke to the crowd.
“I only learned about the notification after I came out of the tower.”
Seol Yura looked at Kim Jinho and added,
“Clearing with S-rank is already an incredible achievement. I heard there aren’t even ten people in our country who have done it.”
Her words seemed to shield me from Kim Jinho while subtly establishing the assumption that I wasn’t the hidden-route clearer.
Thanks to her, the people who had been suspecting me dropped their doubts.
Nice assist.
Somehow I managed to escape suspicion, and the university Awakened group ended up with me as its president.
After I created a group chat and invited everyone, both the Awakened and the regular students who had been there offered to help. The group quickly grew.
Overseas, similar organizations had already evolved into massive guilds, so even if it was annoying, I figured I should keep the president position.
“Ugh, there are more people than I expected…”
Seol Yura, who had overheard my mutter, spoke up beside me.
“Now that I think about it, senior, you’ve been so busy lately that you haven’t been able to attend classes properly.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“If it’s too much trouble or difficult, I can help—”
At that moment, Shin Seojin cut in from my other side.
“Oh, oppa! If you go into the menu you can appoint a vice-president. Give it to me and I can help manage everything! I was in the student council, so I’ve done this kind of thing a lot.”