The Underground 1st Floor Is a Whole Different Scale! (1)
The next day, I woke up and immediately logged into the K-Tem Bank website to check the market price for tunnel centipedes.
The price had actually gone up a little.
Makes sense.
Our country is still a solid mid-to-large nation with a population of fifty million. Dumping a few dozen tunnel centipedes on the market wasn’t going to crash the price overnight.
After a quick breakfast, I headed out to Hunter Alley.
Hunter Alley was basically an open-air flea market where people traded goods that came out of the Tower.
It had the advantage of zero commission compared to K-Tem Bank, but the credibility was low.
In other words, if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could easily get ripped off.
On top of that, smuggling and black-market deals with Chinese and Japanese merchants were everyday occurrences here. Banned items and substances changed hands constantly—mostly new kinds of mana-based drugs.
I went straight to the herbalist who specialized in poisonous insects.
“Tunnel centipedes, huh… Let me see. Those barely ever come out… Hmm, I’ll give you four hundred thirty thousand won per kilogram.”
Next was the gourmet ingredient vendor who dealt in delicacies.
I made the rounds like that, casually selling off about twenty of them.
Four million won quickly landed in my account.
That was enough for today.
If I flooded the market too hard, people might start tailing me, and the price could get adjusted.
* * *
That night, I headed back to the 0th Floor Lobby.
Two tourists were chatting away, so I had to loiter around until they finally left. Only then could I open the slate and descend.
It was incredibly nerve-wracking.
I might get away with sneaking in and out for a day or two, but if I kept this up for months, someone was bound to spot me eventually…
Going in was manageable.
I could just wait for a moment when no one was looking.
But coming out was extremely dangerous. If my luck was bad, I could get caught red-handed.
Anyway, I armed myself heavily with tobacco essence again and returned to the bottom of the Centipede Cave. I had a few things to take care of.
First, I captured several wild centipedes.
Since each one sold for over a million won, bagging a few every time I came down would be a nice steady income.
After that, I peered into the hole the Queen Centipede’s acid had melted through the floor.
It was narrow, but wide enough for me to slip through.
The problem was that even at the very bottom it was still solid bedrock, so going any deeper seemed impossible.
I took out Matdeu and tried using him to dig downward. But with only two tiny venom needles, it would take forever.
It was basically like trying to dig with a spoon.
Fuck. This isn’t The Shawshank Redemption.
Still, the moment the path seemed blocked, an intense urge to keep digging downward gripped me like madness.
No one knew creatures like these lived beneath the 0th Floor, right?
So who could say there wasn’t a Basement Level 1 below that?
You never know until you dig.
Until you actually dig.
Of course, my strength and stamina had gone up, and I was no longer a total beginner. I could start climbing the Tower normally—Floor 1, Floor 2, Floor 3…
But…
My heart was already set on going down.
Climbing upward was a path countless hunters had already walked.
Going downward, however, was a path no one had ever taken.
Of course, pioneering it would be difficult.
But the harder it was, the greater the chance of an incredible monopoly jackpot waiting at the end.
The real issue was that digging was extremely difficult.
In the end, the only option seemed to be luring the Queen Centipede and using her acid somehow…
Once my thoughts reached that point, another idea followed.
The Queen Centipede had already drilled a passage right up to the 0th Floor bedrock. She probably wanted to escape this place where she had no choice but to eat her own children, but maybe she gave up because of the light pouring down from the 0th Floor.
If that was the case… maybe if I searched every corner of the Centipede Cave, there could already be passages leading to Basement Level 1.
Either way, if I wanted to completely clear the Centipede Cave, I had to start sweating from now on.
My trait didn’t count re-digging places I had already dug.
But this Centipede Cave still had tons of routes I hadn’t “dug” yet, all filled with the centipedes’ secretions and waiting just for me.
===
[You have dug down 1 m.]
[You have dug down 2 m.]
[You have dug down 3 m.]
.
.
.
===
That day, I wandered around for a full five hours and pioneered routes totaling several hundred meters.
The Centipede Cave was so intricately dug that remembering every place I’d been was nearly impossible, but fortunately the spiderwebs almost completely disappeared in areas I had already entered, so the risk of making a mistake was almost zero.
Besides, this time I wasn’t killing centipedes and was only pioneering routes, so it was much easier than last time.
During one of those explorations, I discovered a strange passage in one of the tunnels.
All the passages in the Centipede Cave generally sloped downward, even if the angle varied.
But this newly discovered passage sloped gently upward at about a forty-five-degree angle.
I brought out Matdeu, secured him against the wall, and began climbing.
===
[You have dug upward 1 m.]
[You have dug upward 2 m.]
[You have dug upward 3 m.]
.
.
.
===
Whoa.
Climbing gives experience too.
The concept of “digging” doesn’t necessarily mean only downward, so it makes logical sense.
After struggling all the way up, I reached a section blocked by dirt.
I swung my titanium spade wildly. The loosely packed soil crumbled and poured down, opening a rather anticlimactic passage to the outside.
===
Pathfinder
You are the first to discover a new Tower entrance.
Reward:Compass of Fortune
Nice!
Another achievement!
But what the hell is a Compass of Fortune?
The Compass of Fortune was a transparent sphere the size of a tennis ball. There was nothing inside it.
I’d figure it out later.
I crawled through the gap.
Familiar Seoul air flowed into my nose.
I lowered my stance and looked around.
Fortunately it was still dawn, and the place I’d emerged was surrounded by dust barriers on all sides, so there was no chance of being seen.
I casually stepped outside the barriers and checked my current location.
It seemed to be southeast of where the Tower had risen, in the park that used to be called the Gwanghwamun Open Citizens’ Plaza.
The park had been temporarily closed ever since the Tower appeared. Plus, the passage connected directly to the Uijeongbu Site Excavation Ground right in the middle of the park. It was perfect.
Even if I came and went in work clothes, no one would suspect a thing.
I later learned that after the Tower rose in Gwanghwamun, most of the surrounding buildings—including the Government Seoul Complex, the History Museum, and the U.S. Embassy—had been converted into hunter-related facilities.
The only exception was this Open Citizens’ Plaza, which had been classified as a historic site under cultural heritage law and simply left closed for the time being.
Heh. Perfect.
Now I could go down to the Centipede Cave without going through the 0th Floor.
And if there was one passage like this, there were probably others, right?
The moment that thought crossed my mind and I re-entered the Centipede Cave, the Compass of Fortune began glowing with a blue light.
Inside the transparent sphere, an arrow had appeared, pointing in a specific direction.
I followed the arrow exactly, and sure enough, two more passages that the Queen Centipede had dug toward the surface appeared.
One led to the sewer near Hyoja-ro.
The other was near Heungnyemun Gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace.
But after considering all the factors, the Open Citizens’ Plaza route looked by far the safest and most convenient.
And these new routes didn’t just improve safety—they dramatically upgraded the quality of my Tower life.
I could now follow a normal schedule: head in at dawn and come out at night, instead of the previous midnight-in, dawn-out pattern.
* * *
===
[You have dug down 1 m.]
[You have dug a total of 1,000 m beneath the 0th Floor.]
[You can no longer gain experience from the 0th Floor.]
[You can no longer obtain gold from the 0th Floor.]
[You can no longer obtain random luck items from the 0th Floor.]
[You can no longer obtain ability points from the 0th Floor.]
===
A few days later, I learned that even the benefits from and had a limit of “1,000 m per floor.”
By that point, I had reached Level 8.
After diligently digging a total of a thousand meters across the 0th Floor and the Centipede Cave, there was no way my level wouldn’t rise.
If I had done all this with actual physical shoveling, it probably would have taken months…
The Rune Stone also continued to provide solid support on the side.
The multiplier, which had already reached 0.035, was steadily raising my ability points every 29 meters I dug.
===
[Strength has reached 45.]
[Stamina has reached 44.]
===
The moment to head down to Basement Level 1 had finally arrived!
Once I made up my mind, I entered the space I had already discovered a few days earlier with the help of the Compass of Fortune.
The last tunnel I hadn’t fully explored yet.
Even deeper than the main cave,
A space I had barely found after passing through an incredibly winding passage.
Smaller than the main cave but larger than a normal habitat.
It was a spawning ground packed with dozens of tunnel centipede eggs and larvae.
The moment I approached, the massive Queen Centipede guarding the place lifted her head and stared straight at me.
* * *
Over the past few days while wandering the Centipede Cave, I had run into the Queen Centipede several times.
The Queen Centipede was basically terrified of me—someone who emitted flashlight beams and a nicotine stench. Her default behavior upon seeing me was to run away.
Also, ever since the massacre on the first day, I hadn’t killed any more centipedes, so she didn’t seem to treat me with aggression.
On top of that, I had been doing something interesting for the past few days.
I had thrown hundreds of raw chickens into the main cave and various other spots.
Ssssss—
Sss—
Centipedes and chickens are natural enemies.
Chickens love pecking at centipedes, but centipedes also love chicken meat.
Sure enough, for the past several days the tunnel centipedes had gone crazy eating the raw chickens.
And…
I had been gradually lowering the concentration of tobacco essence I applied to my body.
It was like offering the Queen Centipede a kind of peace treaty.
* * *
And today, I came to the spawning ground without applying any tobacco essence at all.
Of course, I had hidden some under my work clothes so I could burst it in an emergency.
The Queen Centipede seemed intelligent enough to respond to my conciliatory gestures over the past few days.
On the first day I discovered the spawning ground, she had sprayed acid and shown fierce resistance. But today, even when I approached the spawning ground, she only watched me and didn’t react much.
I carefully tossed one of the raw chickens I had prepared in my inventory into the spawning ground.
Ssssss—
Sss—
The small centipede larvae went berserk and swarmed over to devour the chicken.
I boldly took one step inside the spawning ground.
The Queen Centipede lifted her head.
I tossed a few more raw chickens.
Even while staying on high alert, she didn’t spray acid at me.
I walked a few more steps deeper and threw down several of the huge raw turkeys I had ambitiously prepared that day. Then I gestured toward the giant centipede, signaling her to eat them.
The Queen Centipede seemed to hesitate for a moment.
She kept looking back and forth between me and the turkey meat.
But soon she couldn’t hold back. She slithered over, wrapped her body around the turkeys, and began frantically gnawing at them.
She laid eggs every day and had nothing to eat but her own children’s flesh, so it made sense that she was starving.
I took that opportunity to quickly move deeper into the spawning ground.
The last unexplored space in this vast Centipede Cave!
Please let it be here!
A hole leading downward,
Please!
And…
Sure enough, it was there.
The exact spot where the Queen Centipede always coiled up and refused to move aside whenever I came to the spawning ground…
Beneath it was a pitch-black passage.
As if it had been waiting for me.
When I got closer, I saw that the passage sloped gently downward at an angle.
I immediately threw myself in and carefully slid down the passage.
The passage soon came to an end.
The problem was that below it there was only a vast, silent darkness. Nothing entered my field of vision.
A giant space of absolute darkness with no light, no sound, and no wind.
The Queen Centipede had dug all the way here to escape, but she must have given up after encountering this void.
I shone my mana flashlight in every direction, but nothing was visible.
I snapped a glow stick and dropped it downward.
The glow stick fell endlessly, endlessly, until it completely disappeared from sight.
Just how deep is this?
I immediately secured myself firmly with Matdeu, operated the descender, and began dropping straight down.
Ziiiiiip—
Even after descending a full 200 meters, nothing still appeared in my surroundings.
The only thing that kept piercing my nose was an indescribable stench of decay.
This time I dropped a flare.
Hiss—
The flare also seemed like it would fall forever.
But this time was a little different.
The flare, which had been steadily shrinking in my vision, suddenly stopped getting smaller and became a tiny speck of light.
Anyway, there was a bottom!
I started descending again.
Thanks to receiving climbing ropes like crazy from random luck items over the past few days, I had plenty to work with.
225 m…
250 m…
275 m…
But something felt off.
The flare’s light kept flickering in and out of sight.
There was only one possible reason for that phenomenon.
The hypothesis that something living was moving back and forth across the spot where the glow stick had landed.
Another tunnel centipede?
Or what?
Ziiiiiip—
I continued descending.
That was when, through the light of my headlamp, I finally saw something for the first time.
It was…
A wave.
The floor below was rippling gently like the surface of water.
Was there some kind of huge reservoir where sewage collected down there?
Was that where this stench was coming from?
But that didn’t make sense.
This enormous space below had absolutely no wind.
So why were there waves?
Ziiiiiip—
When I passed 320 meters, I finally heard something.
By the time I passed 340 meters, the sound had become more distinct.
“Juuu~”
It wasn’t a sound made by nature.
The cry of a beast? Human screams?
What was certain was that it didn’t come from a single source.
The sound was rising evenly from the entire floor.
And when I passed 360 meters, I finally learned the true identity of the wave.
A vast sea of tentacles.
Countless tentacles protruding upward densely filled the wide space, slowly writhing.
“Juuu~ Jeeuu~ Juuu~”
Along with that hair-raising sound.
I descended further.
And when my naked eyes finally provided concrete information that helped me understand the situation on the floor, I was struck with horror.
Down there was hell.
The words I had just spoken were not a metaphor.
It was literally the hell we had imagined since childhood.
The enormous space was packed so tightly with humanoid monstrosities that there was no room to set foot.
And every single one of them had their hands stretched up toward the sky, staring upward.
Quietly exhaling screams into the empty air as if wringing out the last drops of their remaining souls.
“Kill meee~ Please~ Kill meeee~”
“Pleease~ Kill meee~ Kill me~”
“It hurts so much~ It hurts it hurts~”
Thud—
I stopped descending while floating in midair.