The Tower - Silver Divinity (Part 1)
When we arrived on the 16th floor, the entrance to a cave that looked like ancient ruins came into view.
The area around the ruins was thick with trees like a tropical rainforest, and the air was hot and humid.
And more than anything, there was one other person there besides me and Lee Suyoung.
For someone who had supposedly prayed to the Tower to grant a wish, her outfit was strange: jeans, a thin T-shirt, leather armor thrown over it, and a mace in hand. A textbook climber's getup, awkward and mismatched in exactly that way.
"Are you a climber?"
At Lee Suyoung's question, the black woman—probably mixed-race, and astonishingly beautiful—looked startled and asked, "Are you two climbers as well?"
Thanks to the translation ability, it sounded natural, but it was English with a British accent, similar to William's from the 14th floor.
A celebrity?
I didn't know much about foreign celebrities, but with a face like that, she had to be famous. I glanced at Lee Suyoung, but she looked just as clueless as I was.
"Yes, that's right. I'm Han Jiwoo, and this is Lee Suyoung. The two of us formed a party and have been climbing the Tower together."
"A party? That was possible?"
"...What? Didn't the Climbers' Association explain that?"
At my question, the British woman answered awkwardly.
"I only entered the Tower today, so I still don't really..."
She entered today and came straight to the 16th floor nonstop?
Most people took it easy on the 10th floor and gathered information first, didn't they?
No, more than that, it was still morning. How fast had she climbed?
She didn't look tired in the slightest, which made me wonder if she was lying, but then again, why would she lie about something like that?
"Then you haven't read the community or WPTO's guide either?"
"Ah, I did read that. I even expanded my inventory the way it said to."
Then, as if she had just realized she still hadn't introduced herself, she hurriedly did so.
"My name is Diana Violet. I'm from the UK."
Just as I'd guessed from the accent, she really was British.
"We're from Korea."
Diana said she had only just learned that climbers could climb together with other climbers.
Well, of course she had. She'd entered the Tower today and rushed upward without gathering any information.
"Well, it's not like we know that much either. Today's only my fourth day."
"I see."
Diana smiled and checked the 16th-floor quest.
Reach the End of the Ruins.
This time, unlike the 13th floor, it didn't seem to be the kind of quest born from a First Settler's wish.
"Looks like we need to go in there."
As Diana pointed at the dark entrance to the ruins, I nodded.
"Before that, let's at least share a rough outline of our abilities. We don't know what might happen inside."
At my suggestion, Diana readily nodded.
"Ah, that's a good idea. My ability is... getting hard."
"Getting hard?"
"Yes. Like this."
Bang!
Diana swung her mace hard into her own leg.
But instead of flesh being struck, it sounded like metal hitting cloth-wrapped iron, and she looked completely unharmed.
"Other than that, I don't get tired, and—"
"Hold on! You don't need to explain in that much detail."
"Hm?"
When I stopped her, Diana froze for a moment.
Then she nodded as if she understood.
"Ah, right. If I explain too much, then you two would have to do the same. I'm sorry."
It was a little surprising how unconcerned she seemed about her ability being exposed.
Well, if it was the kind of ability that didn't matter even if people knew, then I supposed that was possible.
I shook my head at Diana's apology.
"No. Since we need to cooperate, it is good to know each other well. But..."
"I understand. I was definitely careless. Thank you for stopping me. This is my first time meeting fellow climbers like this, so I got a little excited. I didn't even run into any climbers in the 10th-floor city."
Diana gave a cute, embarrassed smile, apparently flustered by her own mistake.
She seemed a little ditzy.
From the look of it, she probably hadn't even stopped by the library or the Association. There were always at least a few climbers there.
"My ability is martial arts. I mainly use swordsmanship."
"Mine is Slime Summoning. I can attack from range, and I mostly use a bow as my weapon."
Once the brief introductions were over, we each checked our equipment and decided to head inside the ruins.
"It looks dark in there. Should we buy lanterns from the shop?"
A lantern only cost 1 point, so it was cheap.
"No, I have flashlights. Let's use these instead."
I pulled out the three flashlights I'd procured through my reincarnation avatar.
Even with 50th-century technology, civilian flashlights weren't all that different from 21st-century ones.
They just used two AAA-sized batteries with a capacity of around 40,000 amp-hours, and the flashlight itself could put out up to around 100,000 lux of visible light.
Lee Suyoung's slime Bitpung-i could also produce a lower level of light, but creating light itself consumed mana.
"Did the shop sell flashlights too?"
"No, I had these before I came in. Since we've met like this, I'll give you one as a gift."
There was no point in hoarding multiple flashlights anyway. They weren't expensive, so I could just buy more later.
"Really? I don't know if I should accept something like this. I don't have anything to give you right now..."
"It's fine. Think of it as a goodwill gift. Looking forward to working together."
At my words, Diana thumped her chest as if telling us to leave everything to her.
"Don't worry about that. I'll protect both of you!"
Naturally, with Diana acting as our tanker, she took the lead; I, the damage dealer, stayed in the middle; and Lee Suyoung, the ranged attacker, covered the rear.
"It's small, but incredibly bright."
Even one flashlight was enough to illuminate the cave-like ruins.
Inside, there were paintings like ancient murals on the walls, but they didn't translate, so they probably weren't text.
Or maybe the vines growing over them and the damage from time had erased too much.
Friendly as ever, Lee Suyoung struck up a conversation with Diana.
"By the way, you said you entered the Tower today. Shouldn't you get some rest?"
"I'm fine. Nothing that happened while climbing up was all that exhausting."
Diana told us how she'd made her way up, and just as she said, the quests hadn't been especially difficult.
Even when she fought monsters, her hardening ability meant she took no damage, so she dealt with them quickly. And even then, there had only been about a dozen monsters at most.
At her words, Lee Suyoung and I looked at each other.
No matter how I looked at it, hadn't we been getting quests that were way too hard this whole time?
Even William and Le Thi Hoa, whom we'd met on the 14th floor, hadn't had that rough a climb.
"Still, the 15th floor wasn't that hard."
"Right? It was probably just coincidence, wasn't it?"
Well, having a higher difficulty wasn't all bad.
Trials made people stronger.
And since the structure of the Tower was all about growing stronger, the more enemies there were, the faster you could become stronger.
And come to think of it, it also seemed like the harder the difficulty, the easier it was to obtain items.
We kept talking as we slowly moved deeper into the ruins.
I felt something overhead, so I looked up and spread my sensory perception.
"There's something up there."
"What is it?"
"Wait!"
Before I could stop her, Lee Suyoung raised the flashlight overhead.
At once, the swarm of bats hanging high above was stimulated by the light and suddenly came flying at us.
"Diana! Close your eyes! Suyoung! Bitpung-i!"
"Yes!"
Thankfully, Diana squeezed her eyes shut at my command, and Lee Suyoung summoned Bitpung-i and set off a flashbang.
The bats let out shrill cries and went berserk, and I heard them smashing into the surrounding walls.
Checking with my sensory perception, I saw that Lee Suyoung had raised a barrier to protect herself, and Diana had protected herself by hardening her body.
I struck down the bats flying at me with my sword.
Even with my eyes closed, once I spread my sensory perception, I could vaguely grasp my surroundings.
It felt similar to the ultrasound of bats or dolphins.
Bitpung-i's light lasted for nearly five seconds now. It seemed she must have leveled up at some point.
Once the light faded, I slowly opened my eyes.
All around us was a heap of bats that had either died or passed out after slamming into the walls.
Bat eyes were degenerated, but that didn't mean they couldn't see at all.
If anything, because they lived only in darkness, they were especially sensitive to light.
"I'm sorry. I was careless."
At Lee Suyoung's apology, Diana smiled and said, "No, it's fine. Suyoung did all the work, after all."
Diana's clothes were slashed and torn in several places, but there wasn't a single scratch on her smooth skin.
The bats' wings had been as sharp as blades, but apparently that level of attack wasn't enough to leave even a mark on Diana's body.
"We should collect the Mana Stones, right?"
The bats were each about the size of a decent bird.
Right there on the spot, we extracted Mana Stones from the chests of 150 bats.
There were three of us, and now that we'd gotten the hang of it, gathering Mana Stones didn't take that long.
Strictly speaking, Lee Suyoung had done the most work, so it would have been right for her to take most of them. But because she felt responsible for provoking the bats, she only took half.
Diana tried to refuse any Mana Stones at all, saying she hadn't done anything, so I forcibly pressed half of the remaining stones into her hands.
"Make sure you take your share properly. You never know when you'll need points to survive in the Tower, and once you start getting magic tools, you'll need Mana Stones for those too."
Some magic tools ran on the owner's mana, while others used Mana Stones as batteries.
In terms of output, those that consumed the user's own mana were generally better, but the convenient ones were obviously the Mana Stone-powered kind.
As we headed back into the ruins, I asked Diana, "Do you have any credits?"
"Credits?"
"The currency used by the First Settlers in the Tower."
Judging by her reaction, she had probably only skimmed the guidebook distributed by the WPTO too.
She was exactly the type to ignore the manual and lose out because of it.
You could buy food with credits on the 10th floor, but apparently she'd just bought bread and water from the Tower Shop because it sold those directly.
"You can buy credits from the shop. Even if the Tower Shop won't take other goods, it will convert Mana Stones into points, so it's a good idea to keep them."
Maybe I was being nosy, but if she kept climbing the Tower without knowing anything, it felt like she was going to get badly burned someday. So I taught her everything I knew that was necessary for surviving in the Tower.
What I knew was just information I'd gotten from talking to the First Settlers or from the community—things anyone could learn with a little effort.
But for some reason, Diana felt like the kind of person who wouldn't make that effort until after she'd been burned once.
After listening to my explanation, Diana smiled.
"You're kind, Jiwoo."
"Hahaha. I do have a bit of a nosy streak."
"Nosy? Not at all. It really helped. I'm a bit slow when it comes to machines—no, to new technology—so I'm not very used to using the community."
Was she just about to call herself technologically illiterate?
She didn't even look that much older than me, yet she was talking like an old woman.
We searched every corner of the first level of the ruins, looking for where it ended, but we couldn't find the destination marked as the end of the ruins.
There was probably a crystal there that would let us move on to the next floor.
Still, while exploring the first level, I found a few objects that seemed to hold magical power.
Since no one else knew what they were, I quietly pocketed them for now. If we needed them later, we'd use them; if not, we'd split them up afterward.
"Come look! There's a staircase behind this stone slab leading downward!"
Lee Suyoung had found the path to the lower level.
(To be continued)