A Red Tide of Experience
Of all the monsters that thrived on the first floor, the sulfur deer claimed the greatest numbers by far.
Their habitat stretched across an immense range, and they existed in quantities beyond counting. Yet they never cooperated with one another. They simply lacked the intelligence for it. At best, when members of the same herd came under attack, they would respond together on pure instinct. Thanks to that, the most anyone ever had to face at once was twenty or thirty.
By comparison, the red goblins were so few that stacking them against the sulfur deer almost felt unfair. But those creatures possessed a faint intelligence of their own—the concept of kinship, and enough wit to form a rudimentary society. That was what made the red goblins dangerous. The moment they learned their own kind was in peril, they swarmed in like a hive of bees. They cared nothing for how strong the enemy might be. They always avenged their kin, moving with perfect unity as if it were the sacred mission of their entire race.
“Yeah. Just like that.”
Yujin lifted one corner of his mouth as he watched the crimson wave racing toward him from afar.
Ten? Twenty?
No. It was nothing so modest.
“That’s a lot of them.”
At least in the hundreds. Apparently the entire tribe of the one he had deliberately spared had come running.
“Let’s see…”
Yujin released his mana and gauged their exact numbers.
Roughly three hundred, huh.
More than he had expected. He’d figured maybe two hundred.
“Even better.”
Red goblins or not—no matter how many came swarming.
“If you want to level up fast on the first floor, there’s no better method than this.”
Shhhhring—.
Wearing an expression thick with anticipation, Yujin drew Black Wing [A]. The remaining distance was about two kilometers. He began preparing for the experience harvest in earnest.
“W-we did it!”
Park Ji-hoo let out a cheer. For someone so timid he had never once raised his voice, the fact that he thrust both arms high and shouted barely registered with anyone. They were all in the same state, after all.
“Whoa. I never thought we could actually take down two at once.”
Lee Sia looked down at the two sulfur deer carcasses sprawled before her, her face bright with exhilaration.
That old guy said they were dangerous and we had to stick to one at a time…
Was it because their own skills were solid? Or had Mullen simply been scaring them? Maybe both.
Well, who cares about the reason.
What mattered was that they had brought down two sulfur deer in a single fight. That meant their leveling speed had effectively doubled.
“Hahaha! At this rate we might reach the top in no time!”
Shield Guy laughed heartily. It was a bold claim for someone who had only just set foot on the first floor. The higher they climbed, the difficulty would soar far beyond anything they faced now. Even the monsters they had seen in the Tutorial Floor had been so strong that no number of sulfur deer—hundreds of millions—could have stood against them. How many levels would it take to fight something like that? No one could even guess.
And yet Sia felt confidence welling up inside her. If they climbed floor by floor, growing stronger step by step, someday they would reach the summit and clear the Tower.
It might not be as hard as I thought.
At least, everything they had experienced so far suggested as much. Games worked the same way, didn’t they? You repeated quests and hunts, and before you knew it you were watching the ending credits. This Tower would be no different. Of course there would be hardships and setbacks along the way…
But I think we can do it.
They had already taken a step ahead of everyone else still cowering inside the city. That alone would let them advance at a pace no one else could match. Maybe they really would be the ones to clear this Tower.
“But we didn’t level up.”
The healer looked disappointed even through her excitement.
“We just leveled a minute ago. The required XP probably went up.”
“Required XP?”
The healer asked at Shield Guy’s words. It was a term she had never heard before.
“Ah—we shorten ‘required experience’ to ‘req XP.’ The higher your level, the more experience you need to level up again, so we’ll probably have to kill a few more before the next one.”
“Ahh—”
The healer nodded in understanding. Sia, Park Ji-hoo, and the spearman already knew, so they showed no particular reaction.
“The real question is how much that experience actually is…”
Levels, skills, items—everything. The Akasha System resembled a game in every way. But it was not a real game. It was never particularly kind to players, offering no exact numbers or detailed explanations. Because of that, no one knew how much experience any given level required. Naturally, the experience from a single sulfur deer was just as opaque.
“Still, the gap won’t be huge. I doubt it suddenly jumps a hundred or two hundred times.”
If they hunted one or two more, they would get a rough sense of it.
“Then let’s rest a bit and try again.”
Taking two sulfur deer at once had definitely been harder than facing one. No truly dangerous moment had arisen, but the drain on stamina and mana had been impossible to ignore. Sia and her companions decided to rest a short while before continuing the hunt.
They cleared a patch of grass, sat down, and were trading idle talk when it happened.
“Huh?”
Sia tilted her head. Something felt off.
“Nuna?”
Had Park Ji-hoo felt it too? His eyes widened slightly as he scanned the surroundings and called out to her.
“What’s wrong?”
When the healer asked what was going on, Sia pressed her palm to the ground.
“Doesn’t the ground feel like it’s shaking a little?”
A vibration so faint that anyone less sensitive would never have noticed it.
“Oh… you’re right.”
“It does feel like a slight tremor.”
The others only registered it after she spoke.
“Maybe a weak earthquake?”
The first floor was a space so vast it was hard to believe it lay inside a tower—complete with sky and earth, almost a world of its own. An earthquake would not have been particularly strange.
“It feels different.”
At Shield Guy and the spearman’s words, Sia’s brow furrowed. This was less like an earthquake and more like…
“It’s the same feeling as when a sulfur deer is chasing us.”
When those three-meter monsters came thundering after them, the ground had shaken just like this. Sia’s expression hardened. She rose carefully to her feet and quickly scanned the area, worried a herd of sulfur deer might be stampeding nearby.
“Huh?”
What entered her vision was not a herd of sulfur deer.
It was a mass of grotesque creatures with vivid scarlet skin—beings she had never seen before. They were small, yet the murderous aura and sheer savagery rolling off them made the sulfur deer look tame by comparison.
“Wh-what are those? Monsters?”
“Looks like it.”
At the very least, they were definitely not human.
“Holy shit…”
“We can’t take those, right?”
The others had risen as well and confirmed the sight; their whispers were tight with tension.
“They’re way stronger than sulfur deer.”
The sulfur deer were the monsters Mullen had recommended for people who had only just reached the first floor—in other words, easy prey for beginners. Of course there would be monsters with higher levels and far greater power. Those red-skinned abominations were clearly among the dangerous ones. And it was not one or two of them—it was hundreds, packed together in a swarm.
The confidence that had swelled moments earlier melted away like snow. With their current strength they would struggle to kill even one, let alone hundreds.
“We should put some distance between us.”
It was a suggestion to run. Shield Guy’s voice trembled as he made it, and everyone nodded.
“Y-yeah, that sounds good.”
If those things spotted them and changed course, they would never survive.
“But where are they even going?”
As they carefully backed away, terrified of being noticed, Park Ji-hoo asked quietly.
“It didn’t look like they were just moving.”
“Yeah. Almost like they were heading into a fight.”
The healer agreed with him. Every last one of them was charging forward with weapons drawn, radiating pure bloodlust, as if marching to war.
“Maybe they’re fighting other monsters? Some kind of territorial dispute?”
It made sense. Even among monsters, sulfur deer and those red creatures were different species. If territories and food chains existed between monsters as well as against players, then of course they would fight each other.
“…So that means we’ll have to fight things like that someday.”
The healer’s words killed the last of the earlier excitement.
“W-well, among the players we’re still the strongest, right? They look terrifying now, but we’ll catch up soon enough.”
Games worked that way, didn’t they? High-level monsters that seemed impossible for a newbie later became nothing more than a single hit. Once their levels rose, those red things would die just as easily.
“For now it’s too much, so let’s prioritize hunting sulfur deer and growing stronger.”
“Yeah. If we keep hunting, we won’t have to run like this anymore.”
As if trying to reclaim the confidence they had lost, they repeated the words to themselves.
Then—
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhk—!
Far in the distance, scarlet liquid erupted into the air. Liquid even redder than the creatures’ own skin. It did not take long to understand what it was.
“…Blood?”
It shot upward like a fountain and rained down like a storm. Faced with that unreal spectacle, they all forgot they were supposed to be fleeing and simply stood frozen.
KWA-KWAAAAAANG—!
A tremendous aftershock of mana followed, completely overturning the grass around them.
“Ah—”
Sia’s mind went blank. The power was so far beyond imagination that she could barely breathe.
What in the world…
What was unleashing that much force out there? Was it one of the boss monsters said to appear once per floor? Or some terrifying existence like Didascalia? She had no idea. The distance was too great to see who—or what—was butchering the red creatures. The only certainty was danger. Those red-skinned monsters were already terrifying; whatever was tearing them to shreds had to be infinitely worse.
We have to run!
She needed to turn around this instant and sprint like mad all the way back to Terra. Only then would they live.
“R-run…”
Even as her body shook, she forced her mouth open to shout to her companions—when a voice rang out.
“Die, you bastards! Die! Die and become my experience!”
Someone’s roar carried across the distance. Sia shut her mouth and stared in that direction. It should have been impossible, yet the voice somehow did not feel unfamiliar. As if she had heard it very recently.
No. That can’t be.
When would she ever have met a powerhouse like that? Outside her companions, she could count the people she had spoken with on one hand. At most there was Mullen… and that total psycho murderer she had run into on the street…
“Huh?”
Her eyes flew wide open.
“Th-that lunatic?”