Viridgrave, City of the Dead
Viridgrave was a city of the dead.
Naturally, the NPCs who dwelled within it were the dead as well—ghosts, every last one of them.
Well, calling it “dwelling” was a contradiction in terms to begin with.
Been a while since I’ve been here, too.
Yujin stepped into the city and let his gaze wander, sinking for a moment into memory. After barely clearing the ninth floor, he had dragged his exhausted body through these streets. He had wasted so much time on the sixth floor that he had arrived later than most other players—and Viridgrave had already been crawling with the living.
Lee Sia had almost certainly been among them. In the first timeline, the Sword Empress had been one of the three fastest climbers to reach the tenth floor. Back then he had simply assumed she was that quick because she was that good with a sword…
Clack-clack-clack-clack—
Watching her teeth chatter beside him now, the more convincing explanation was that she had simply been so terrified she had moved as fast as humanly possible.
“This is the tenth floor. You know what comes next, right?”
“Obviously—we wash up!”
Remembering what had happened on the fifth floor, Lee Sia shuddered for an entirely different reason.
“Good. We’ve got a few things to do here anyway, so let’s find a place to stay first.”
Yujin set off along the broad central avenue as if he had walked it a hundred times. Silence pressed in from every side. For a city of such staggering size, not a single passerby was in sight.
Park Ji-hoo tilted his head.
“I thought you said ghosts lived here?”
He had clearly expected to see things drifting about. Finding the streets empty of anyone at all, he had every right to be confused.
“They do. They’re wandering around right now—you just can’t see them.”
They were ghosts, after all. Beings not so different from formless monsters. No shape meant ordinary eyes could never catch them. Interfering with them, however, was another matter entirely.
Like this.
Crash!
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
A stack of wooden crates beside them toppled without warning, barring Lee Sia’s path. Already wound tight, she let out a full-throated scream.
“You might want to check your pants. Sounds like you wet yourself.”
Yujin needled her. No reaction came back. Frozen with terror, she was too busy scuttling away from the fallen crates on all fours to spare him a word.
“See? They jump you like that every so often. Beyond the pranks they don’t actually hurt anyone, so just ignore them.”
“Ah…”
Park Ji-hoo helped Lee Sia to her feet and nodded. The tension that had been coiling through him eased, soft as a sigh. Unlike Lee Sia, he was not particularly frightened. Timid by nature or not, he seemed to possess a heart that held firm against fear—no doubt shaped by everything he had endured in the real world.
Not that I’m eager to dig into that.
Yujin glanced at him, then started walking again.
“Here we are.”
BONES INN
Roughly translated, it meant something like a bone inn. Unsettling name or not, the interior beyond the door looked surprisingly cozy—though neither guests nor proprietor were anywhere to be seen.
Yujin dropped into an empty seat and rapped the table a few times. Miraculously, a sheet of paper fluttered down from nowhere and settled on the wood.
“…A menu?”
Park Ji-hoo’s eyes went round. Just as Yujin had said, ghost NPCs filled this city. They simply remained invisible to living eyes.
“What do you want? Let’s get some food in us before we wash up.”
Ignoring Lee Sia, who was foaming at the mouth and still half-collapsed, he put the question to Park Ji-hoo.
“Uh—anything’s fine with me.”
Honestly, none of it would have made sense to him anyway. The cuisine of Viridgrave was a world apart from Terra’s.
“Three bowls of Moon-Halo Soup and three steaks of unknown meat. Make the portions generous.”
Yujin ordered into empty air—and as if it had understood perfectly, the menu sheet lifted and drifted away.
“Unknown meat… Is that really something we should be eating?”
Lee Sia muttered, half out of her mind. Even so, the unease lingered.
“The name’s weird, but you’ll want to eat it. It restores a fair amount of spent stamina and mana. The portions aren’t huge, but it’s enough to keep you from collapsing.”
It was a kind of food they had never encountered in Terra.
“The higher you climb, the more food matters. Buffs of all sorts come with it. That’s why the tenth floor is important—you can try things early and learn what they do.”
Park Ji-hoo nodded. Everything Yujin had ever said had proven true. Words he delivered in that tone were worth committing to memory. Lee Sia, of course, was barely listening.
They sat in a daze for a short while before several plates came floating toward them, as if carried by invisible hands.
“Oh, they’re here. Thanks, Moston. We’ll dig in.”
Yujin offered his thanks and thrust a hand into Chunbae’s mouth.
“Kku-a-a-a-a-ang—!”
Startled awake by a fist suddenly jammed down its throat, Chunbae burst into a wail. Yujin paid it no mind, fishing around until he pulled something free.
◈ Material item dropped by the Flame Dragon, boss of the 4th Floor
“This cover the bill? Includes bathwater and the rooms.”
It was one of the material items he had stockpiled through hunting. The ghost NPC called Moston seemed satisfied; it took the bone fragment and bobbed it up and down in acceptance.
“…You even know the owner’s name?”
Park Ji-hoo asked, watching the exchange.
“Don’t ask how. Explaining is a pain.”
“Yes, sir.”
The flat refusal left Park Ji-hoo no choice but to nod.
“Eat first. Then we wash and rest.”
As if he had been waiting for this moment, Yujin set into the food on the table. However unsettling it looked, he showed not a flicker of concern. After a brief hesitation, Park Ji-hoo and Lee Sia picked up their spoons and forks. They were far too hungry to refuse—and with stamina and mana on the line, holding out was impossible.
“Huh?”
Lee Sia took a spoonful of soup and her eyes flew wide. The deep green liquid called Moon-Halo Soup looked like it should kill any appetite on sight, yet it tasted wonderful. The woman who had been screaming moments earlier could not stop her hands from moving. The steak of unknown meat was the same. A slab of flesh still dripping red, it melted on the tongue—so good she regretted ever assuming it would feel like chewing raw meat.
Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo devoured everything in a frenzy. Even with generous portions, the plates were empty before long.
“Haaah—!”
Lee Sia scraped up the last drop of soup, patted her stomach, and sank back against her chair.
“This is actually delicious. And my stamina and mana really did recover a little.”
“Most of the other dishes are pretty good too. These two are the best of the lot, though.”
“I could eat food like this for days.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
Finished with his meal, Yujin set down his fork and shook his head.
“Why not?”
The explosion of flavor had briefly driven the fear from her mind; Lee Sia blinked at him.
“This is a ghost city, like it or not. Everything here is made by ghosts. Eating too much of it does you no favors.”
Viridgrave’s food was tasty and effective—but it came with a side effect. Consume it for more than three days, and you would pick up a debuff called Ghost Sickness.
Endless auditory and visual hallucinations.
Mildly disruptive in daily life—but in combat, it can force fatal mistakes.
Cure requires a troublesome process. Best avoided entirely.
In ordinary life it was only a mild inconvenience. In the middle of a fight, the story changed completely. It could trigger a fatal mistake. Curing Ghost Sickness was a hassle, so the best policy was never to catch it in the first place.
“Which is why we’re staying exactly two days. Then we head outside, come back, and climb straight to the eleventh floor.”
Two days of rest. Neither Lee Sia nor Park Ji-hoo objected. They were too exhausted, and neither wanted a repeat of their last mistake. They wanted to wash up, recover, and leave this place in one piece.
“All right. If you’re done, get up. Moston—show us to the rooms.”
At Yujin’s words, a lantern that had been burning on a side table lifted into the air. The three of them followed its light up to the inn’s upper floor.
Creeeeeeeak—
“Uwaaah.”
Lee Sia clamped her hands over her ears at the shriek of old hinges.
“It’s just the sound. Just the sound. The inside will be fine.”
Yujin snorted and stepped into the room assigned to him. True to his word, the chamber beyond the door was tidy. The green light filtering through the window was a little sinister, but inside the Tower a bed this decent was hard to come by.
“Oh—and watch out for nightmares. It is a ghost city, so everyone gets them as a free starter package.”
He tossed the line at Lee Sia with a wicked grin, savored her resulting scream for a beat, and shut the door.
Creeeeak—
“Huuuh.”
Looking worn thin, Yujin stripped off his clothes. The garments soaked in zombie fluids hit the floor and vanished a moment later—whisked away, no doubt, by some employee working under Moston. Bare, Yujin stepped without ceremony into the warm bath prepared in the corner. Fatigue seemed to melt out of him in an instant.
Rough.
The stretch from the sixth floor through the ninth had been anything but easy—nothing like the floors where simple hunting was enough. And Yujin had done it without a single sacrifice, cutting down tens of thousands of zombies, mutant zombies, and that colossal mass of flesh on top of them. Even stronger than he had been in the first timeline, exhaustion was inevitable.
A tremor he had been holding back finally surfaced.
“Tch.”
How long until he recovered his former skill?
“At this rate, maybe around the seventieth floor.”
His growth was markedly faster than before. A few more fortuitous encounters, and he might reclaim his old power even sooner. But he could not stop there. The end of the world was not his only enemy.
The Administrators. And whoever stands behind them.
The Apocalypse, the Administrators—in the end, they were only components of the Tower. Someone else had planned and set all of this in motion. That much was certain.
“If I can manage it, those bastards too.”
He wanted them all dealt with. Recovering his former strength would not be enough.
At least double. Or triple. More, if possible.
He had to become stronger still. And he could not grow strong alone. Lee Sia, Park Ji-hoo—and the third servant he had yet to choose. Only if they all grew evenly could they flip this Tower upside down.
“Huuuh…”
The third…
Yujin sank into thought for a moment, then made his decision.
“This time, we don’t go outside.”
There were things to do beyond the Tower—checking on the favor he had asked of Lee Ki-seok, gauging the reactions of the United States and the other great powers. But none of it was urgent. The other players’ climbing pace would still be sluggish. So instead of leaving, he would descend to the lower floors and search for the third one there—before Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo returned.
“Hopefully someone useful turns up.”
Ideally, someone with healing. No obvious candidate came to mind, which meant he would be starting from scratch…
Looking for a needle in a haystack.
Still, it had to be done. Yujin let the heat of the water work through his body and closed his eyes.