The Light-Ray Crow
The mountain once forbidden to players, Mount Bukmang, came to be called by another name as time went on.
Treasure Mountain.
Deep within that vast range, which rarely allowed human footsteps, slept more than a few things that would drive players mad with greed. Even Yujin in the first timeline had walked away with some rather decent hauls from here.
But this time was different.
He had taken far too much from the Tutorial Floor already. Most of what Mount Bukmang had to offer could no longer help him in the slightest.
“Still, I should grab a few things.”
Not for himself—for his slaves.
Raking through his memories, Yujin began scooping up opportunities at high speed. Had Didascalia or any of the other Tower administrators witnessed the scene, they would have coughed blood in outrage. Yujin did not hesitate for a second.
Better to raise two people properly than waste effort on ten thousand nobodies. At least, that was how Yujin saw it. Someone would lose their chance because of him, but what did that matter?
If they’re so upset, they should’ve been better.
They were all going to die anyway if left alone. Handing the goods to people who could actually use them was a hundred times smarter.
“Damn right it is.”
Conscience tossed to the dogs, Yujin swept up every worthwhile prize Mount Bukmang had to offer and pressed on. Unlike when he had claimed Sword Heart [D], his pace was blistering. Few of these treasures were buried all that deep.
“We’ll skip this one.”
He glanced at a skill book he found along the path, then dismissed it and hurried onward. For ordinary players the skill would have been good enough to spark a brawl the moment it was discovered; to Yujin’s eyes it held not a shred of value.
What skills you learn is what matters.
Ignorant players learned every skill they could get their hands on. More skills meant more options in a fight—or so they believed. Yujin had once thought the same. It was a mistake. Skills had to be chosen with the utmost care. Skills and traits did not operate in isolation; they formed an organic whole. One poorly chosen skill could become a massive roadblock on the path to higher realms.
Yujin had only realized it later, and had been forced to reset his skills and traits through a quest of insane difficulty.
Start down the wrong road from the beginning and there’s no fixing it later.
Without that penalty, he would have taken everything available from the Tutorial Floor onward. He had not. The same went for Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo. There was no reason to force them into mistakes they did not need to make.
Moved by the warmth of his own consideration for his slaves, Yujin lifted his head. Dawn was breaking. He had already secured Fighting Spirit [D] for Park Ji-hoo. Time to head back.
“Let’s go.”
“Kkyaaaaang—!”
At his word, Chunbae—belly stuffed round—burst into a wail.
Thoom—!
Yujin kicked off the ground and launched himself downward toward the base of Mount Bukmang. The climb had taken ages; the descent was over in a blink.
Gazing down at Mount Bukmang as it blazed red in the morning light, Yujin suddenly froze.
That is…?
The mountain earned its name from danger, and most of that danger came from monsters. In the early days, beasts strong enough to swallow every climbing player whole had nested here. While searching the mountain Yujin had not gone out of his way to avoid them, but he had not hunted them either. Kill them if you meet them—that was all. Clearing them out barely helped him level. So he had ignored most of them… until the creature that now filled his vision.
Even among the Tower’s most weathered veterans, Yujin had seen this rare monster only once on his entire climb to the hundredth floor.
“A Golden Goblin! A real Golden Goblin!”
It was shorthand for “Golden Goblin,” though the creature itself was no actual golden goblin. The nickname stuck because the monster dropped absurdly good loot.
“A Light-Ray Crow!”
Their numbers were vanishingly small, and they moved at speeds so extreme that most players could not even perceive them. Catching one was nearly impossible. Tracking them with the naked eye was already a struggle—how much harder, then, to land a hit?
Yet whenever word spread that a Light-Ray Crow had been sighted, players flooded in no matter which floor it was on.
Enhancement Stone.
They dropped one with one-hundred-percent certainty. Skill, item, or trait—whatever it was, the stone upgraded it by a full grade. The effect was monstrous.
I have to get it!
Growing his slaves mattered, but Yujin mattered more. He needed to become strong enough to leave his first-timeline self in the dust. An Enhancement Stone was exactly the kind of ridiculous tool that could make it happen.
Can I catch it?
Even upper-floor players rarely dared to try. For a mere level-fourteen Yujin it should have been a pipe dream. He did not hesitate. He had Surface-Essence as One [E].
A terrifying ability that accelerated thought and forced the body to move exactly as those thoughts flowed. With that, even a Light-Ray Crow could be caught.
Even if I can’t, I have to!
Yujin’s body dropped like a stone, as if gravity had suddenly multiplied several times over.
Shhhraaaak—!
Plummeting at near free-fall speed, he heard the air itself tear apart.
Kiiik—?
Had it heard him? The Light-Ray Crow, resting on a branch, raised its head. A single blink—visible. He was that close.
The crow tilted its head as if assessing the situation, then spread its wings.
Flap—!
One beat. For an ordinary bird it would not even have left the ground. The Light-Ray Crow was different. With a single flap it had already moved more than ten meters forward. The speed was shocking enough that even Yujin lost sight of it for an instant.
But—
He focused. He shut out everything else and poured every nerve into the crow alone.
His fall seemed to slow. No—the speed itself had not changed. Time had simply stretched. Extreme concentration accelerated his thoughts until the world crawled.
Then Surface-Essence as One [E] activated.
Yujin’s movement transformed. Like Quicksilver from the old hero movies, he alone moved at normal speed inside endlessly slowed time.
Bang—!
He kicked off empty air. Compressed atmosphere exploded and altered his trajectory. The Light-Ray Crow’s head turned in extreme slow motion. In that brief span the bird had already put another twenty meters between them—speed worthy of its name.
Yujin was no longer any slower.
Nngh!
Chasing after it, he furrowed his brow. A level-fourteen body could not fully absorb the strain of movements that flickered in and out of existence in the space of a heartbeat. One second? Two? Even that tiny interval of travel left his entire body feeling as if it were shattering.
Endure it!
A Light-Ray Crow was an opportunity among opportunities. He would not trade it for a million Sword Heart [D]s or Fighting Spirit [D]s. He was not about to quit over a little pain.
Yujin clenched his teeth and forced his body onward. Muscles tore. Joints ground and creaked. He did not stop.
Ten meters. Five. Three. One. Then arm’s reach.
Only then did the crow’s head finish turning, locking eyes with him. If a bird’s eyes could hold emotion, those pupils would have been filled with pure shock.
Yujin curled one corner of his mouth. The crushing pressure must have damaged his insides; a thin trail of blood streaked back across his cheek.
Got you!
He reached out. To the crow’s eyes, that hand must have looked like a ray of light itself. Even as the bird tried to twist away mid-flight, Yujin seized its neck.
Crack—!
Mass times acceleration equals force. By the laws of physics, Yujin’s hand now carried terrifying power. The Light-Ray Crow’s neck bones snapped clean through.
Kyaaak—!
A final death cry, and the crow went still.
“Haaah!”
Only then did Yujin release Surface-Essence as One [E] and return to real time.
KRAAAAAAASH—!
A colossal aftershock slammed into him from behind—the reaction of moving faster than air itself could part.
“Guh!”
Completely spent, Yujin could not dodge. He took the full brunt. Agony like his body being ripped apart flooded him as he smashed into the ground.
BOOOOM—!
The dirt cratered and swallowed his body. Any player still in Terra would have died several times over without it being strange. Yujin endured. All thanks to God-Infused Body [S].
Conversely, the fact that even a trait of that caliber had not let him walk away unscathed meant he had pushed far past his limits. None of that mattered right now.
“Heh… heh-heh.”
He had caught it.
Even first-timeline Yujin had never managed more than a distant glimpse of a Light-Ray Crow. Now its corpse hung from his hand.
“Holy shit, is this real? I actually caught one of these?”
He could barely believe what he himself had done. That was how rare a Light-Ray Crow truly was.
Through the bone-deep shock that felt ready to split him apart, Yujin raised his hand in front of his face. The limp crow dangled there. And then—
Plink—
Something fell free. A fingernail-sized jewel of luminous violet.
An Enhancement Stone.
Its appearance matched the ones he remembered with perfect exactness. He tried to hold it in, but he could not. Laughter kept spilling past bloodstained lips.
“An Enhancement Stone…”
Where should he use it? A skill would be fine. A trait would be fine. No matter where he applied it, the growth would be enormous.
“I’ll have to think this through carefully.”
An unexpected stroke of luck. No need to rush. Finding the method that produced the absolute best effect and efficiency came first.
“Everything’s just falling into place, isn’t it?”
What he had gained on the Tutorial Floor already defied imagination. On the first floor he had already met the Sword Empress and the Fighting Demon. And now an Enhancement Stone on top of it all. Things were going almost too well.
“Let’s ride this all the way to the hundredth floor.”
Apocalypse, sky lark, whatever—he would chew them all to pieces.
In the dawning mountain forest, Yujin unleashed a laugh thick with madness. It was a dreadful peal of laughter, so terrifying that the countless monsters dwelling on Mount Bukmang dared not even approach.