A Splendid Stalker in the Making
The atmosphere froze solid.
The Sword Empress was looking at Yujin as if she had just spotted a cockroach. Hatred filled her gaze to the brim.
…Ah, hell. I really screwed this up.
The words had slipped out of him in a moment of pure idiocy.
"Seems you've lost your beauty," huh?
Wasn't that basically just telling her she looked ugly to her face?
She was already shaken enough. Of course she'd get furious if some stranger she'd never met walked up smiling and dropped a line like that. Even someone as fundamentally decent as the Sword Empress was no exception.
If her palm came flying at him right then and there, Yujin would have no choice but to take it without dodging. Well — if it actually came, he'd dodge. But fortunately, it seemed her fear of the creature known as Yujin outweighed her anger. She didn't say a word, just started backpedaling at an incredible speed, desperate to put distance between them.
"Ah — wait! Hang on a second!"
There was a concept called the primacy effect: the phenomenon where information presented first exerts a stronger influence than anything learned later. It was the word that explained just how critical a first impression was in any human relationship.
And Yujin had just annihilated his.
He had to salvage that last remark somehow before it was too late.
Right. A gift! A gift is the only way!
The one method that might reverse a first impression he'd thoroughly wrecked. And luckily enough, the bribe he'd prepared for exactly this purpose was still dangling at his waist — Black Wing [C].
Hiding his panic as best he could, Yujin shot his hand toward the sword with blistering speed. At the current players' level, not a single one of them would even be able to track the motion properly.
And in that same instant—
"You fucking bastard!"
The Sword Empress suddenly spat a curse and drew her blade in a wild swing.
Whoooooosh—!
The sword path was clumsy beyond words. But as he'd already felt a moment ago, her blade was razor-sharp regardless of that clumsiness. Yujin casually took a single step back and slipped past the cut.
"Next time I see you, you're dead, you son of a bitch!"
She screamed it, then simply bolted at a dead sprint.
"Huh?"
A powerful sense that something had gone terribly wrong washed over him.
"No, wait — I said hang on!"
Reflexively gripping Black Wing [C], he took off after her.
"A psycho killer is chasing me!"
The farther he chased, the louder her curses got. Naturally, every NPC and player nearby turned to stare.
Why the hell is she running?
Yujin's face was pure confusion. All he'd done was grab his sword so he could hand over the bribe even one second faster…
Ah.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
What the hell am I even doing right now?
In the Sword Empress's eyes, Yujin would have looked like nothing short of a lunatic. Whatever his actual intentions had been, all she'd seen was a psychopath yanking out a sword to swing it at her.
He stopped dead.
Running into the Sword Empress at such an unexpected moment had made him move far too hastily. He needed to cool his head and settle his nerves first. At her current level she was barely Level 2 at best — catching her would have been trivial. But that would accomplish nothing. She wasn't his enemy. She was a slave he absolutely had to get along with. No — a potential companion.
Standing motionless in the middle of the main thoroughfare, he quietly watched her retreating back grow smaller in the distance.
Don't approach her carelessly right now.
Coming at her the same way again would only make things worse.
And I can't risk another misunderstanding, so I should get Subspace first after all.
Walking up with a sword and saber clanking at his hip was a lot worse than storing everything in Subspace and then approaching. That way he might at least ease a fraction of her wariness. For now, he would simply keep tracking her location and watch from a distance until the right time and circumstances presented themselves. When the chance came, he'd try greeting her again.
"Huuu—."
He let out a long breath, ignored the piercing stares boring into him from every direction, and started walking again.
And so Yujin was well on his way to becoming a splendid stalker.
"Hah— hah—!"
Lee Sia had been running for what felt like forever. She finally ducked into a shop that looked crowded with people and gasped for breath.
"…A player?"
"It's a player."
The people who saw her began to murmur. But Sia had no attention to spare for any of them. All she could think about was whether that lunatic might still be on her heels.
That absolute psycho she'd randomly run into.
He didn't follow me, right?
She carefully checked outside, but there was no sign of him.
What even was that…?
Only then did relief hit her. She covered her face with both hands and sank into a crouch where she stood.
How did it come to this?
Up until yesterday, she'd been living a perfectly ordinary life that was just a little special. It had been her first Christmas since becoming an adult. She'd sworn to herself that she was going to have more fun than anyone that day. Then a strange voice had suddenly spoken, and she'd been forcibly summoned into this place called the Tower.
The slaughter that followed. Sia had tried to deny reality, insisting it all had to be nothing more than a nightmare. But dreams always ended eventually.
Except this one didn't.
Which meant the situation she was in right now was real. From that moment on, she had faced reality head-on and clawed desperately for survival. The person fleeing beside her had been torn apart by a monster's jaws. Someone else had whooped with joy over finding a treasure chest — only for their entire body to explode. Blood and flesh, corpses, corpses, corpses. No matter where she looked, the dead were everywhere.
She had been terrified. Horrified. Utterly despairing.
And then time passed…
In the end, Lee Sia survived that hellish Tutorial Floor. She couldn't claim it was talent or skill. Pure luck. The only reason she was still alive was that she'd simply been lucky. In a situation that nearly drove her out of her mind, she had somehow managed to grab a single sword and climb up to the first floor.
Unlike the chaos of the Tutorial Floor, here there were beautiful castles and kind-looking people. And countless other players in the same situation as her. Somehow, it made her feel a little more at ease. She had no idea what would come later, but for the moment, at least, it didn't look dangerous.
And then…
She met a lunatic.
Some guy who awkwardly said hello, walked right up, casually insulted her looks, and then pulled a sword on her.
If this had been downtown Seoul instead of the Tower, Sia would not have held back. She would have driven a fist straight into his face. Or maybe driven a knee into the most important part of a man's body. But she couldn't move recklessly here. This was a bizarre space where unrealistic, nonsensical things happened as a matter of course.
I have to be careful of people like that.
It had been the same on the Tutorial Floor. There were scum who shoved others into the pit just so they themselves could live. She could understand that they felt they had no other choice — but she could never empathize with them.
Sia steeled the heart that had begun to loosen just a little.
Every player I meet from now on is someone who survived the Tutorial Floor. I absolutely cannot take them lightly.
That lunatic from a moment ago might well have been one of those scumbags.
What did he look like again?
In case she ran into him again and needed to run, she tried to recall the madman's face.
Age… early twenties? Late teens?
He hadn't looked old. Around her age, or a little younger.
We might even be the same age.
His face had been ordinary. Nothing particularly distinctive about it. But the air around him had been anything but. Something about him was different from every other player she'd seen so far. If someone asked her to put it into words, she couldn't quite find them.
Experienced? Familiar?
Sia and the other players were still completely unadapted to this alien situation. Of course they were. They'd only entered the Tower a single day ago. Everything was strange, and everything was terrifying.
But that lunatic had been different. As if he'd already lived here for years, somehow…
He looked completely at ease.
Yes. At ease. Strolling toward her as casually as if he were just out for a walk around the neighborhood.
"He's not just some ordinary psycho."
To fully adapt to this hellscape in a single day and then draw a sword in the middle of a crowded street — just how far gone did you have to be? The thought crossed her mind that he might even be some famous serial killer from the outside world.
I need to be careful not to run into him again.
She carefully stroked the sword in her hands. The blade she'd lucked into by opening a chest during the treasure hunt — Crimson Lotus [E]. Strangely enough, she could feel her mind settling just from touching it. It was the first sword she'd ever held, yet it fit her hand with an uncanny rightness. She wasn't sure she could actually fight with it, but she had the baseless confidence that she wouldn't be completely helpless either.
On the Tutorial Floor, Didascalia had said it: kill monsters, complete quests, raise your level, and you could grow stronger. You would gain the power to climb floor after floor. Then she could grow stronger too. Strong enough that she wouldn't have to run even if she met those monsters from the Tutorial Floor again — or that lunatic from a moment ago.
"Alright. First goal: level up."
If she kept at it, someday she'd clear the fifth floor and, even if only briefly, be able to go home.
She sprang to her feet. After waiting a long while with no sign of the madman following her, she stood. It was hard, but this was no time to sit around crouching. She had to get stronger as fast as possible. Only then could she survive and see her family and friends again.
And the first thing she needed for that was…
"Where are the monsters?"
She had to start hunting. But she didn't even know where to find them.
"Do I just go outside and wander around looking?"
Nothing better came to mind.
"Um…"
That was when a careful voice spoke from behind her. Sia jumped and spun around. Even in that flustered state, her hand snapped reflexively to the hilt of Crimson Lotus [E]. It was pure instinct — but so swift and precise it would have drawn admiration from anyone watching.
"Who are you?"
Remembering her experience from moments earlier, Sia piled every scrap of wariness she had into the question.
"I am the owner of this establishment. I simply wondered whether you might be in need of some assistance."
"Ah."
Come to think of it, she had barged in without even knowing where she was, and without asking permission.
A bar?
It looked like the kind of BAR she'd only ever seen in movies. Toward the back, five or six customers sat in silence, watching both the owner and Sia. She'd stormed into a place like this and crouched on the floor for ages… How awkward must they have felt? And yet they'd waited quietly without saying a word until now.
"I'm so sorry!"
She bowed deeply at the waist.
"No, no. It's quite all right. You seemed to be dealing with some sort of trouble, so I simply remained silent."
Fortunately, the owner waved it off with a smile.
"More importantly — I believe I overheard you saying you were looking for monsters."
"Yes, that's right."
"Oh my. You've only just climbed to the first floor, and you're already talking about monsters. Do you intend to go hunting?"
"Yeees—. I want to get stronger a little faster."
Sia answered with a faintly embarrassed flush on her cheeks, and the owner nodded.
"An excellent attitude. If you wish to survive in this Tower, that kind of drive for improvement is absolutely essential."
"I-is that so?"
"Of course. In that spirit, allow me to teach you a few of the things you were wondering about."
The owner went behind the bar and came back out holding a large sheet of paper.
"A map?"
It was a map of the area centered on the city of Terra.
"If you leave through the city gate and head east, you'll reach a habitat of monsters that even inexperienced players can still hunt."
Tap—.
He pointed to a single spot.
"The Sulfur Deer habitat. Dangerous creatures, those. To face even one of them alone, you'd need to be Level 7 at the absolute minimum."
Level 7. She had no real sense of what that even meant. Sia had never leveled up even once. But one thing was certain: she couldn't face them alone as she was now.
"So don't go deep into the area. Stick to hunting the ones that have wandered out to the outskirts. Preferably one at a time — two at most."
Sulfur Deer. What kind of deer had a name that vicious?
"You'll also absolutely need to find companions. It may have 'deer' in the name, but they are very strong monsters."
The owner's voice grew a little heavier.
"…Can I even kill a monster like that? Is there anything a little weaker and easier to catch, maybe?"
"They're dangerous, but they give a great deal of experience. Nothing else on the first floor even compares. And if roughly five or six Level 1 players gather together, they should be able to take down a single Sulfur Deer somehow."
Ah. In that case—
For Sia, who wanted to grow stronger as quickly as possible, a little danger was something she was prepared to accept.
"Th-thank you."
To show this kind of kindness to a complete stranger… The thought that this was the first goodwill she had received from anyone since entering the Tower made her eyes sting faintly red.
"No need to thank me."
The owner shrugged as if it were nothing and continued.
"Instead, if you ever find yourself in need of information again, please come see me."
With that, he held out a single business card.
"The finest information at the lowest price."