The 58th Floor
Musaeng was panicked.
“Damn it, crazy... what the hell is—?”
Yet even as he cursed under his breath, there was no hesitation in his movements. Chugging a recovery potion straight from his pack with violent gulps, his hands were already wrapping thick bandages tightly around his shredded thigh.
This is manageable. If the femoral artery had been severed, I’d already be dead on the floor.
There was no way to treat the wound properly in a place like this anyway. After applying minimal first aid, he had no choice but to place his faith in the potion’s regenerative magic. Even while collapsed on the cold stone, his arm shot out, bracing against the temple wall to fashion a makeshift crutch.
“Khhh... That useless bastard was shivering like a leaf in front of a giant bat, but he carves up a human like a block of tofu. One Way Group, my ass. Just you wait... If I make it out of here alive, you’re dead meat, Lee Eunwoo.”
Musaeng dragged himself upright with agonizing effort.
He spat venomous curses at Lee Eunwoo, but in truth, his mind wasn’t fixated on revenge. He was simply spouting whatever nonsense came to his lips to distract from the searing agony and force his battered limbs to keep moving.
The entrance we came through definitely won’t open from this side. Trying to turn back is the worst possible gamble. It’s better to push deeper and search for an alternate exit. A temple with architecture like this has to have another way out.
His mind worked coldly and methodically, calculating the sole path to survival. Compulsory secondary education had been abolished long ago in this era; Musaeng had started working as a dungeon porter the moment he finished middle school. For thirteen grueling years, he had endured the depths.
Was it through accumulated book knowledge? Sheer animal instinct? His inexplicable resistance to mana pressure?
If there’s so much as a ventilation shaft, I’ll cram my body into it. I just need to buy time. Dammit, do you know how much this recovery potion cost me?! The bleeding should stop any second now!
No. It was pure spite. Pure, unyielding grit.
He had endured, and he had survived. He had done whatever needed to be done. His entire existence had been defined by clawing forward with everything he had just to fulfill his duties and stay alive.
“Once I heal up, I can carefully find a way—”
Sssssss....
“—to escape...”
Even Musaeng could not suppress the suffocating dread crawling up his spine. It wasn’t merely a sound. Something colossal was slithering through the darkness, parting the shadows as it drew near.
“To think a group would offer up their sacrifice so quickly... And despite being discarded, you still refuse to yield. An intriguing human.”
From the neck up, it was a hooded cobra; below, the muscular torso of a man. The creature stood at least three meters tall.
Sssssss....
The sinister vibration humming through the air came from the elongated, bifurcated tongue darting rapidly from the serpent’s maw.
Musaeng swallowed hard.
This went beyond the oppressive weight of mana pressure. It was primal, bone-chilling terror—the helpless paralysis of a frog pinned beneath the unblinking gaze of a viper. In that instant, Musaeng smelled his own death.
“Mmph... Ghk! Aaargh!”
He refused to stand still.
Slamming his bare fist directly into his barely mending thigh was not madness. It was calculated necessity. The blinding, white-hot agony shot straight through the crown of his skull, and that overwhelming shock was the only thing sharp enough to shatter the paralysis of fear.
“Haa... haa... Look. Let’s... let’s talk this out, alright?”
“Oho... Talk, you say?”
The massive serpent-man advanced with heavy, deliberate strides.
Musaeng thrust his left hand forward in a placating gesture, shuffling backward one cautious step at a time.
“Yeah, talk. Listen, mister. When it comes to living sacrifices, you don’t have to settle for just one, do you? If you let me walk out of here, I can drag those bastards who just bolted right back in for you. Five is way better than one. Simple math. What do you say?”
Even as he rambled, his right hand moved frantically behind his back, three fingers working with desperate precision to twist and tear an escape scroll.
“Does a predator converse with its prey?”
Then came absolute despair.
The cobra’s jaws unhinged with a sickening crack, gaping wide enough to swallow Musaeng whole in a single bite. Yet even then, Musaeng did not surrender. Dropping the useless scrap of scroll, his right hand snapped around the hilt of a B-Rank artifact he had emptied his entire life savings to purchase—a poisoned stiletto capable of dropping an elephant in a single prick.
“Kkyaaaack?!”
Leaping forward with explosive force, he slashed the blade across the flickering, monstrous tongue!
“If you won't talk, then choke on it and die— Guh!”
Just as he thought the strike had landed, the tongue snapped forward again. Lashing out like a whip, it coiled around Musaeng’s torso in the blink of an eye.
“A delightful poison,” the serpent-man hissed, chuckling low in its throat.
Bound tight from shoulders to knees, Musaeng couldn’t twitch a muscle. Resistance was futile.
“Talking pretty slick with your mouth open, aren’t you, you Tower parasite... you dungeon trash. God, I despise your kind. May whatever’s left of your miserable life rot in eternal damnation.”
As long as he could draw breath, Musaeng would spit curses to the bitter end. The Tower had stolen his lover. The dungeons had taken his parents. And both had stolen his entire life, leaving him as nothing more than a disposable sherpa.
“Such flattering praise.”
The serpent-man retracted its tongue with a wet slurping sound. The instant Musaeng’s upper body crossed into the gaping maw—
“Khhk.”
Massive venomous fangs sank deep into his flesh.
An icy, alien substance coursed violently through his bloodstream.
Damn it... Yerin. Yerin-ah...
His eyelids grew impossibly heavy. Yet even at the threshold of oblivion, Musaeng fought back with every shredded fiber of his willpower.
“Trans... Transmit! Transmit, goddammit! Transmit! Send my body outside! Send me a weapon! Do something, anything! Why did I get stuck with such a worthless, piece-of-shit Awakened ability—”
And in that final moment as he plummeted toward death, reality violently fractured.
[Transmission request of target verified.]
[Transmission integrity verified.]
[Match confirmed.]
[Download incomplete.]
[Download Rate: 73%]
[Executing forced boot sequence.]
[Ignoring corrupted data and forcing execution.]
[Emergency Recovery Mode initiated.]
[Verifying encryption code.]
[Decompressing data...]
“Ngh?!”
Light detonated.
A blinding brilliance swallowed everything in existence, turning the world into a boundless sheet of immaculate white. The oppressive darkness and the monstrous serpent-man had vanished without a trace.
“...Uh?”
Floating directly in front of Musaeng’s eyes was something utterly absurd. It flickered with static, resembling a digital model subjected to a broken pixel filter.
“[Still at seventy-three percent? To think the transmission bandwidth capped out at a measly seven exabytes per second... CX-Ω-74 really is a thoroughly detestable planet.]”
It was a small yellow rubber duck.
And for reasons beyond mortal comprehension, it was perched behind a pair of thick, black horn-rimmed glasses.
“[Now, let’s see. Execution halt looks successful, and spatial partitioning managed to hold. As expected of my brilliance.]”
The rubber duck puffed its chest out with an intensely smug expression.
[Tower CX-Ω-74 Administrator: Codename 'Wahsh']
[Transmission Complete]
〈Transmit(O)〉
His innate ability, Transmit(X), had permanently shifted into Transmit(O).
A boundless, featureless expanse of pure white stretched to infinity. Musaeng warily surveyed his surroundings.
It doesn’t hurt.
He reached down and squeezed his injured leg. The bone-deep, throbbing agony had vanished completely. This was definitely not the lingering effect of a recovery potion.
“...Where the hell am I?”
The answer almost certainly lay with the bizarre entity hovering before him.
“[A space of my own design,] the yellow rubber duck announced with unbearable arrogance. [An isolated fold in spacetime. Outside, time has ground to a complete halt. Ah, though I suppose an explanation like that is far beyond the comprehension of a primitive creature.]”
Bzzzt. Patches of its yellow body glitched with jagged pixelation. Regardless of what was real and what wasn’t, the fact remained that the cobra monstrosity was gone—all thanks to this self-proclaimed ‘Administrator.’
“An Adminis... trator? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Musaeng narrowed his eyes. A ‘Tower Administrator’? Even having lived as an Awakener since birth and spending thirteen years guiding climbers through dungeons, he had never once encountered that term.
“[Well, obviously,] the rubber duck scoffed, peering down its beak with open disdain. [Why on earth would we reveal our existence to the primitive apes of CX-Ω-74... Earth? From a rational perspective, it would be utterly absurd. Ah, or is common sense simply not common on this backwater rock?]”
The duck bobbed lazily in midair, floating comfortably above Musaeng’s eye level.
“And so?” Musaeng snapped. None of that mattered right now. “Are you my Awakened ability?”
Transmit(O). The inactive status that had plagued him his entire life had finally cleared. The situation made it blindingly obvious: this talking rubber duck existed solely through Musaeng’s awakened power. And if an ability was powerful enough to tear open an entirely separate pocket dimension...
“[My, aren't you full of yourself?] the duck sneered, instantly shattering Musaeng’s budding hopes. [You're nothing more than a primitive savage whose signal happened to catch my transmission code. Who belongs to whom? Bwahaha! I have no idea what your original ability was supposed to be, but it was overwritten and erased the moment I connected.]”
Musaeng’s fleeting optimism evaporated on the spot. But another part of the duck’s statement struck him like a sledgehammer.
“Erased? My... my ‘original ability’?”
Every Awakener who cleared the 3rd Floor of the Tower unlocked specialized skills derived from their innate ability. But Musaeng’s Transmit(X) had yielded nothing. No combat techniques to face monsters on Floor 4 and beyond, no spells, no utility—which meant no raid party would ever accept him. That was why he had quit climbing. That was why he had spent thirteen years as a dungeon sherpa—a glorified pack mule risking his neck day in and day out.
“[Naturally. It was a manual override direct from me. A trivial, randomly assigned system code would be expunged in an instant.]”
His true ability hadn’t been Transmit(X)? He was supposed to have had something else? Something useful? Something infinitely better than the useless junk that had ruined his life?!
“You goddamned... piece-of-shit duck!”
If he had possessed a real ability, maybe he wouldn't have been discarded. Maybe he wouldn't have lost Yerin!
Musaeng leaped forward, throwing a furious punch straight at the floating toy.
“[Kkw-kkwak?! What savage barbarism is this, human?!]”
“You... you bastard... You...!”
White-hot rage clogged his throat, rendering him temporarily speechless. A violent urge tore through his mind—he wanted nothing more than to seize that pliable yellow body and rip it in half with his bare hands. Sensing the murderous intent radiating from Musaeng, the yellow duck scowled deeply.
“[Attempt that again, and I will obliterate you.]”
“...Go ahead. Kill me.”
“[What?]”
“I was already about to die anyway. Do it. Kill me.”
Musaeng was boiling with fury, but beneath the explosive temper, his calculating instincts remained razor-sharp.
“[...]”
The rubber duck adjusted its black horn-rimmed glasses with the tip of its wing. It neither struck Musaeng down nor uttered a retort.
The corner of Musaeng’s mouth slowly curled into a cold, mocking smirk.
“You can’t kill me, can you? My ability manifested the moment I was born. What did that notification say earlier? Download Rate: seventy-three percent? That means you’ve spent twenty-nine goddamn years just to get this far. If I die right now, how much longer will you have to wait? Another thirty years? A century? Can you afford that?”
The system messages. The duck’s arrogant rants. Musaeng hadn’t missed a single detail. He remembered every syllable.
The rubber duck let out a long, weary sigh.
“[...Curse it all. This is precisely why the download needed to hit one hundred percent.]”
Silence descended over the white void. Musaeng and the hovering duck stared each other down in a tense standoff.
Deciding to break the icy chill, Musaeng casually tossed out a question.
“Setting aside the fact that you can talk... why the hell does a rubber duck need glasses?”
“[Glasses?! This is an Ultra-High-Vision Monitor for data retrieval and—ugh, shut up! Confound it, human... Answer me one thing.]”
The duck drifted downward until it was hovering level with Musaeng’s eyes.
“[Do you possess the desire to reach the pinnacle of the Tower?]”
“Nope. Not interested in the slightest.”
Musaeng answered without a fraction of a second’s hesitation.
“[H-huh? I'm offering to take you to the very top! The summit of the Tower!]”
“And do what up there? If a sherpa climbs the Tower, who’s going to guide the clients?”
Now Musaeng was grinning openly, deliberately playing the fool.
The duck’s brow furrowed in irritation. In that split second, Musaeng caught it—a faint digital gleam flashing across the dark lenses of the glasses.
“[Tell me... do you happen to know a human named Joo Yerin?]”
The name struck Musaeng like a thunderbolt, freezing the blood in his veins.
“...How do you know that name?”
He fought with everything he had to keep his tone flat, but the tremor in his voice was impossible to hide.
“[I scanned the local data accumulated after my code anchored to your soul,] the duck replied. [The most intensely etched data imprint in your entire existence... was that name. Joo Yerin.]”
“What about her? What about Yerin?!”
“[Entered the Tower eight years ago. Reported missing inside. Declared legally dead one year later. Hmm, hmm, hmm... Wait. What’s this?]”
The duck hummed inquisitively, tilting its head.
Musaeng wanted to seize it by the throat, but the words that followed paralyzed him entirely.
“[This is peculiar. There is no death data recorded for this human named Joo Yerin. When an Awakener dies inside the Tower, a death log is generated without exception. Yet there is no death log here—only a last recorded location.]”
The words slammed into Musaeng’s chest with concussive force. His heart hammered violently against his ribs.
“Wh-what are you talking about? Hold on. What did you say? Are you saying... she’s alive?!”
“[I cannot ascertain that. However... no death data exists within the Administrator System.]”
The duck gave an indifferent shrug of its stubby wings.
Musaeng stared at it, his breathing shallow, before letting out a sharp, incredulous scoff.
“Bullshit. Why should I believe a word you say?”
“[Whether you believe it or not is entirely your prerogative.]”
The duck snorted. Musaeng let out a dry, mocking chuckle. He had observed the creature’s personality—its arrogance, its vanity, its petty defensiveness when challenged. If he played his cards right...
“Hah. Talk is cheap. Anyone can spout nonsense.”
“[Spouting nonsense? Me?!]”
“Isn’t it? Claiming you have location data out of nowhere.”
“[I told you, it’s right here in the log!]”
“Sure, real easy to make something up on the spot—”
“[Floor 58! How dare an uncivilized primate doubt my administrative authority?! To think I expended a one-time emergency query on an ungrateful brute!]”
There it was.
Just as Musaeng had baited it to do, the duck snapped and spilled the truth.
“Floor 58...?” Musaeng murmured. “Floor 58... Floor 58.”
He repeated the number over and over, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his lips.
The yellow rubber duck pushed its glasses back up its beak, grumbling indignantly.
“[Tch... Well, at least you aren’t completely brainless, primitive though you may be. Now, human, I shall ask you once more. Have you found the motivation to climb to the pinnacle of the Tower?]”
Musaeng locked eyes with the yellow rubber duck.
“Can’t I just stop at the 58th Floor?”
“KKWA—AAAK!”
A furious, ear-splitting squawk echoed endlessly across the white void.