Transcendence

When was that, again?

Hmm. The summer vacation when I was sixteen, I think. I was sitting in the back seat, staring at my phone.

Watching a screen in a swaying car made me sick. I was drowsy, so I closed my eyes, and I think I drifted off for a moment. Not long after, a suffocating impact hit me, and everything went black.

Beep— beep—

Beyond a vision gone hazy as fog, I saw a hand soaked in blood. It was unmistakably mine, and yet I couldn't feel a thing. Blood kept falling from my fingertips, drop after drop.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

And why drag up something that old? Because blood is dripping right in front of me now.

"Ghhk..."

The middle-aged woman, Lee Hee-ja. She'd been stepping out of the room when she caught her foot on the threshold and went down. Rotten luck: she hit headfirst, and her skull split open. Blood is still streaming from the torn scalp. Concussion or whatever it is, she stares at me with wretched, pleading eyes and mumbles something I can't understand.

So what. My gaze stayed cold.

No one can blame me. Not even Lee Hee-ja herself can blame me for failing to save her. I was sixteen in that summer-vacation accident I just remembered, and I've been a bedridden quadriplegic—little more than a vegetable—for eight years now.

"Guhk, ghkk—!!"

Lee Hee-ja's eyes rolled white. Watching her, I thought that, set against the cruelty she'd dealt out, this was far too merciful a death.

Die as slowly as you can.

Oh, right. That accident, as it turned out, was a massive cargo truck plowing into our car from the opposite lane. It crossed the median, and my parents died on impact. I was lucky enough to survive, and unlucky enough to lose the use of every limb.

My guardian became my only blood relative: my uncle. Lee Tae-sik. That goddamn bastard. At first he played the devoted caretaker with all his heart, but he'd been after Dad's fortune the whole time. He picked the estate clean, meticulous to the last, and the more of Dad's wealth dwindled, the worse my treatment became.

Once that work was more or less finished, Lee Tae-sik decided to erase me from the world entirely. Afraid a crack might show in his crimes, he stopped short of killing me. Instead he dumped me in some wretched rural backwater and handed my care—along with a gag order—to Lee Hee-ja, a second cousin once removed, or whatever distant relation she was.

Fucking worthless crippled piece of shit.

That was what Lee Hee-ja spat every time she looked at me. I couldn't even answer. I only blinked. She probably knew I heard every word.

And she must know it now, too.

"Ghh... gh...!!"

That I am watching her die.

I met her eyes and said it silently. Please. Die slowly. So very ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slowly. And in pain.

I opened my eyes. As usual, the TV was on in front of me. It was loud, and I couldn't turn it off. Inconvenient.

I turned my head toward Lee Hee-ja. She lay facedown on the floor. Enough time had passed that the blood pooled beneath her had already clotted.

I ought to hurry up and follow her. The way things stood, that wouldn't be easy, and there was nothing to be done about it. What choice does a man have when he can't so much as twitch a finger?

......?

For a moment, at the black letters floating before my eyes, my brain simply stopped. An Awakening, out of nowhere like this?

What is this?

I dug through my memory. Right. There was a theory like that.

By that measure, I was a perfect fit. A fully paralyzed patient with not a single person to help him. There couldn't be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a more extreme crisis, and there couldn't be a stranger situation.

Even while I turned it all over, the message kept repeating, as if it were waiting for me to acknowledge it. I confirmed it not with my sight, but with some other sense.

The letters unraveled and vanished. From somewhere, black points drifted in like sand and gathered into a new message.

These bastards. Out of nowhere, they were confirming the kill. They weren't even mocking me.

The system seemed to know it too. That whatever ability it handed me would mean next to nothing. It might as well have given me an instant-death skill. Then I could have used it on myself and at least died without pain.

My wish went ignored. The messages rose one after another.

Seeing the status window, it finally felt real that I had Awakened. There wasn't much else to look at. Level 1. No skills. I checked the trait.

......?

For an instant my brain locked the way it had when the Awakening message appeared. I'd never even seen an EX-rank grade before, and the effect was more absurd still.

Experience, multiplied by a million?

I'm a dead man anyway. Is the system just tossing me something at random?

Maybe. Among the things experts batted back and forth on TV, there had been an opinion like that.

Not that it mattered. A thousandfold, ten-thousandfold—what good would any of it do? A quadriplegic Awakened was still a quadriplegic. Awakening didn't mean I could move...

...Huh?

Wait. A fact I hadn't considered suddenly surfaced. The Black Tower. A place of miracles. A place where the constraints of reality did not apply.

At once, one Awakened came to mind. Han Yong-gyun.

He had lost his left arm in an accident while still young, and yet inside the Tower he swung a massive greatsword and swept through monsters—a hunter of the highest caliber. In the Tower, both of his hands existed, perfectly intact. Bodily damage suffered before Awakening simply wasn't recognized there.

Looked at that way, the limits of reality might not matter much inside the Tower.

Maybe I... can move too.

And in that moment, absurd as it was, my heart began to pound. I wasn't asking for much. I wanted to walk. At that simple urge, my mind went white.

When was the last time I'd walked? The last time I'd seen anyone but Lee Hee-ja? If I saw someone, what was I supposed to say? Could I even enter the Tower? How did you enter the Tower again?

Ah. Right. They said thinking it was enough. I didn't have to speak it aloud. Thank God.

If I'd had to, I couldn't even have entered.

Enter.

The moment I murmured it inwardly, white light filled my eyes.

I really had entered. My heart dropped.

Can I move?

I raised a hand. I moved my legs. I took a step.

Step. Step.

I could.

"Holy shit..."

I couldn't even think of what to say. Out in the real world my body was dying, and still my chest swelled until it felt like it might burst.

To think that walking alone could make me this happy. Had what I'd wanted always been something this small?

I'd been moving in a daze. The message that surfaced snapped me back to myself.

This place. I'd watched it on TV the whole time, and still I'd never once imagined I would actually come here. The Tower's lobby floor.

A vast cavern, packed with hundreds of people. The murmur of voices filled it—people talking and laughing, people shouting at the top of their lungs. Among them, one spot drew a thicker crowd than the rest.

A man of exotic looks in a brilliant robe. If I had to place him, he seemed closest to Hispanic. When I drew near, his eyes fixed on me.

"What do you want?"

Thanks to Lee Hee-ja leaving the TV on every day, I knew the business of climbing the Tower inside and out. Maybe better than your average Awakened.

The available affinities told me I was a magic-type Awakened. A mage, so-called. The basic skills were Flame, Earth, and Wind. Choose once, and you followed that path from then on.

Of course, a truly exceptional hunter ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠might master one affinity and then learn the next.

That would never be me. Never mind several affinities—I was certain to die before I mastered even one. Whether I starved, or died under a body riddled with bedsores.

I chose Flame. I was going to die anyway. Something that burned hot looked better.

As expected, the basic skill was Fireball. The same the world over. I checked the skill.

I opened my palm toward the sky. A sphere of flame rose and floated above it. I must have been short on mana; a considerable weakness washed through me.

Fwoosh!

When I moved my palm, the sphere followed. I tested this and that and worked out how the skill behaved.

I could create it only from my palm. I could launch it by will alone, but throwing it like a ball was much faster. Not that it was tremendously fast. About the speed of a grown man throwing a tennis ball.

Even so, the situation itself was strange and fun. Walking in a new place. Seeing people. It had been eight years, and the dopamine surged.

Getting to have even an experience like this before I die. Awakening isn't so bad.

Thinking that, I turned my head. Dozens of dimensional gates shimmered along the wall. The rest were gray. Only one gate burned with blue light.

The smallest gate of them all. I walked up to it. When I stood before it and held out my hand, a message rose in front of my eyes.

I hesitated a moment, then slowly opened my mouth.

"Enter."

My own voice, unheard for so long, sounded awkward.

The white light filling my eyes subsided. The air had gone cool. It was a cave that looked much the same, and yet it was a completely different place from the lobby I'd just left.

"Krrrk!"

Darkness filled everything ahead. From somewhere beyond it came a strange, clammy voice. The goblin's, most likely.

Keep my head on straight, and one is enough.

The first floor of the Tower was a kind of tutorial. Focus, and you could clear it without a scratch. One goblin. Land a fireball solidly in the torso or the head, and that ought to be plenty to kill it.

Thinking so, I stepped forward. The thick dark slowly drew back before the fireball's flames. After a while I rounded a corner into a fairly wide space, and there it was.

"Kek, kik!"

Short enough to reach only my pelvis. A scrawny body. A tiny head, and ears large by comparison.

It was perfectly the goblin I knew.

"Kyaaaak!!!"

Then it spotted me. Shrieking, it charged.

I didn't flinch and I didn't panic. I watched its eyes, calm, and when the distance had closed for certain, I hurled the fireball into its face.

Fwoooosh!!!

Flame burst from its face and swallowed the goblin's body as it collapsed. It thrashed its limbs and rolled across the floor. I opened the distance and simply watched. It kept burning for about another minute, and then it went still.

"I... I did it."

The tension let go of me late. My head went a little light, and I sank to the floor. A new message rose before my eyes. What it said left me deeply shaken.

Level 20, from a single goblin. The highest level a hunter could reach by clearing the first floor of the Tower. That alone was absurd enough. And then—

"...Good God."

The skill had reached its maximum level too.

© Domhwangcha #1ylk2