Salvation in the Hellish Boss Room
The vast stone gate marking the end of the tutorial's first floor had devolved into a living hell.
Slick pools of crimson blood and scattered human viscera coated the flagstones in every direction. Grisly, sickening crunches of splintering bone and frantic shrieks reverberated against the towering stone walls.
"Aaargh! My arm! My arm's been ripped off!"
"Chulsoo-hyung! Please, save us! Do something about that monster!"
Kim Chulsoo, who had strutted around with veins bulging in his neck boasting of his status as a C-Class shield warrior, was now reduced to groveling in his own blood. His prized steel greatshield—his proudest possession—lay snapped in two across the floor, while the mages and healers of his raid party lay strewn against the far masonry with their limbs torn to shreds.
In a corner of the gore-soaked chamber, a woman trembled like an aspen leaf, clutching a torn knit cardigan over her chest. It was Seo Yujin, a college student with soft, shoulder-length brown hair and wide, innocent hazel eyes.
"Hic... No... Please, someone save me... Please..."
Yujin had been dragged along by Chulsoo's crew purely for her non-combat buff skills. Yet back in the plaza, and through the winding corridors where Taehyun had been degraded as an F-Class porter and kicked into danger as bait, she had stood by in paralyzed silence, consumed by fear.
The price of turning a blind eye to someone else's sacrifice for the sake of survival was steep. In the end, Chulsoo had abandoned her without a second thought, leaving her behind as meat for the beast.
Looming before them was the tutorial floor's final gatekeeper and butcher: the Executioner Baphomet.
A four-meter-tall demonic goat creature wreathed in pitch-black hellfire, it gripped a massive, glowing red executioner's broadsword, advancing with earth-shaking strides toward the cowering figures of Yujin and Chulsoo.
For ordinary challengers, the trials of the Tower were a merciless nightmare—a brutal dark fantasy where a single moment of hesitation meant dismemberment.
Just as Baphomet raised its searing executioner blade to cleave downward through Yujin's weeping form—
Creak—
The blood-slicked stone gates swung gently open, and two calm silhouettes stepped leisurely into the carnage.
Kang Taehyun walked in with his hands casually buried in his pockets, his clothes completely spotless. Beside him strode Elena, her obsidian eyes radiating an arctic bloodlust beneath a white lace headdress and an audaciously revealing maid dress.
"Well, well. Aren't you the elite raid party that charged ahead so gallantly earlier? Why are your highnesses crawling through the dirt like dogs?"
Taehyun's low, cutting voice sliced through the butchery of the boss chamber.
"Y-You... Kang Taehyun?!"
Chulsoo's eyes bulged so hard they threatened to burst from their sockets. The F-class trash who was supposed to have been ripped apart as bait for the Blood Hounds stood before him without so much as a speck of dust on his collar.
From the floor, Yujin looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. The sight of Taehyun striding forward unscathed stole her breath, but the lingering memory of her own cowardice in the plaza seized her heart with suffocating guilt.
"You're... alive?! How the hell did a piece of garbage like you make it all the way here?!" Chulsoo shrieked.
"Oh, those mangy mutts you left behind? My personal maid took care of the cleanup," Taehyun sneered, gesturing with his chin.
Chulsoo's gaze snapped toward the woman standing at Taehyun's side.
Her revealing maid uniform left the sides of breasts far larger than a grown man's head daringly exposed, accentuating an impossibly slender waist. Beneath a neat, low bun, her cold obsidian gaze locked onto the scene with bone-chilling intensity. Overwhelmed by her striking beauty and suffocating aura, Chulsoo could barely breathe.
"Grrrrrr—!"
Sensing fresh prey, Baphomet hoisted its dripping broadsword and let loose a deafening roar. Black hellfire surged outward in waves, shaking the very foundations of the hall.
Chulsoo screamed hysterically toward Taehyun.
"Kang Taehyun! If that summon of yours is so tough, make her kill that damn thing! Protect us! We're fellow humans, aren't we?!"
Even on the threshold of death, his shameless hypocrisy remained—still trying to use someone else as a meat shield.
Taehyun's gaze chilled to absolute zero.
"Fellow humans? You treated me like a pack mule and kicked me into a monster pack when it suited you, and now you want to cry about being 'fellow humans'?"
Without sparing him another look, Taehyun issued a quiet command.
"Elena. Time to take out the trash."
"Understood, Master."
Elena's obsidian eyes turned glacial. The sweet, blushing maid who had leaned her head against Taehyun's touch only moments ago was gone. In her place stood a lethal assassin whose sole purpose was to slaughter anything that dared threaten her lord.
Swish—!
Elena's figure melted into thin air.
The instant Baphomet brought its colossal blade sweeping down toward Taehyun, a rift of pitch-black shadow tore through the empty space behind the beast's neck.
"How dare... a lowly demon bar my Master's path."
Her whisper fell like ice.
Slash—!
Dozens of shadow blades erupted from her fingertips, dicing Baphomet's massive frame in the blink of an eye. The boss of the first floor—an insurmountable terror to ordinary challengers—was carved into bloody ribbons in midair before it could even muster a dying scream.
Thud! Crash—!
The demon's severed head tumbled across the stones as a geyser of black blood splattered against the vaulted ceiling.
Landing with catlike grace, Elena smoothed the folds of her miniskirt, casually flicked a stray droplet of blood from her dagger, and knelt before Taehyun.
"Master, I have eliminated the vermin."
"Good work, Elena."
As Taehyun gave her shoulder an approving pat, a sweet, honeyed smile returned to Elena's lips.
Watching the effortless slaughter, Chulsoo and Yujin trembled so violently their teeth chattered. A boss they couldn't even scratch at the cost of their entire party's lives had been dismantled like a child's toy by the summon of a man they had written off as worthless trash.
[Notice: Tutorial Floor 1 Boss, 'Executioner Baphomet', has been defeated for the first time!]
[Special First-Clear Achievement Unlocked: 'Absolute Sovereign']
[Challenger Kang Taehyun's level has increased significantly. (Lv. 4 → Lv. 9)]
[Hidden Clear Rewards Acquired: 'Primordial Jewel' & Floor 2 Exclusive Premium Residence Key]
[The Boss Room portal has opened.]
Golden light cascaded from the air as the system dispensed its rewards.
Taehyun walked slowly toward Chulsoo, who was shivering against the floor.
"T-Taehyun...! No, Master Taehyun! Please, have mercy! Take me to the second floor! I'll give you everything I own! Anything!"
Chulsoo smashed his mud-smeared forehead against the stone, weeping in pathetic desperation.
Taehyun looked down at him with an expression of pure disdain.
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm not some bloodthirsty maniac who kills people for sport... but I'm certainly not soft enough to show mercy to a backstabbing parasite who kicked me into a pack of monsters."
"Eep...!"
"You used the cruelty of the Tower as an excuse to trample others, and now you beg for mercy? Disgusting. Savor your own karma right here, exactly as the Tower intended."
With a clean kick, Taehyun crushed Chulsoo's remaining weapon and supply pouch to splinters, then turned his gaze toward Yujin, who was quivering nearby.
The moment her eyes met Taehyun's cold stare, she bowed her head under the crushing weight of shame.
"T-Taehyun-ssi... I... I'm..."
"You're no different."
Taehyun's indifferent words pierced straight through her chest.
"When Chulsoo and his thugs treated me like a pack mule in the plaza, and when they tossed me out as bait in the corridors, you kept your mouth shut just to save your own skin. You might not have held the knife, but you were still part of the party that threw me away."
"I-I'm so sorry... Hic, I was just so terrified... I couldn't do anything..."
Tears spilled freely down her cheeks as Yujin collapsed onto her knees, pressing her palms against the bloodied ground.
Rather than extending a hand to help her up, Taehyun turned his back without hesitation and strode toward the portal.
"I have no intention of killing you myself. But don't expect me to play the hero and babysit you, either. If you want to live, crawl after me on your own two feet. This Tower isn't generous enough to keep weaklings who rely on others alive."
"Ah..."
Yujin stared blankly at his retreating back.
He hadn't raised a blade against her, nor had he offered empty pity. Yet that very ruthlessness sent a shock through her heart, awakening a desperate longing within a girl who had spent her entire life being pushed around by others.
I don't want to be left behind... If I lose him now, I'll die in this hell forever...!
Digging her bruised, bleeding knees into the stone, Yujin forced herself upright.
Wiping the tears from her face, she began to stumble forward with everything she had, desperately chasing the path carved by Taehyun and Elena toward the portal.
To the rest of the world, the Tower was an inescapable inferno.
For Taehyun, however, the curtain had just risen on a splendid, intoxicating harem life surrounded by extraordinary beauties.