The Champion Gloves
With an irritated look on his face, Seong Yujin flicked the blood from his Heavenly Silk Thread [C].
"Ugh. Took a lot longer than I thought."
The Champion Gloves [C] meant for Park Ji-hoo had been hidden away with almost spiteful thoroughness. Even after finishing Zygoat, Yujin had been forced to wander the ruined city for quite a while before he finally found them.
And then he had fought.
Against the hidden boss: the Beggar Zombie.
That thing had been genuinely revolting. The fight itself hadn't been hard, but true to its reputation for coming back no matter how many times you put it down, it just kept getting up. Only after killing it about ten times did it finally stay dead.
"Yeah. Acquisition method's a real pain in the ass."
Any player who wasn't Yujin would never have gotten these. Even if they could, it wouldn't be now—it would be much later. The requirements were that brutal. You had to scour the zombie-infested 7th Floor for a hidden location, then take down the Beggar Zombie on top of it. Before level 50, it was pure fantasy.
And even then, it had only been mildly annoying because it was Yujin. For anyone else, it was hell difficulty.
"Anyway. Glad I got them before it got any later."
Despite the name, the Champion Gloves [C] looked nothing like boxing gloves. They were closer to gauntlets—heavy iron weapons built for crushing. A world apart from the oversized garbage currently strapped to Ji-hoo's hands.
"Once he puts these on, he'll get a bit stronger."
Yujin had been feeding him pointers on fist techniques here and there. At this rate, Ji-hoo would climb back toward the level he had once held as the Fighting Demon, and fast.
"Alright. Time to head back."
He had what he came for. It was time to go up.
"Taking the stone pillars from the 10th Floor should be fastest."
Yujin stuffed the Champion Gloves [C] into Chunbae's mouth, whistled to himself, and started walking. The 7th Floor that had once been such a nightmare was little more than a stroll to him now. A zombie wave might change the math, but at the moment nothing here could threaten him.
He was midway through that walk when he suddenly reached a familiar stretch of road—the same path where he had torn Zygoat apart not long ago. He had shredded the man so thoroughly there hadn't been a body left worth recognizing. Zygoat had deserved every bit of it.
Yujin's face went cold as he started to pass the place where the man had died.
Or rather—he tried to.
"…Ah, fuck."
Nothing. Not a scrap of flesh. Not a drop of blood. Not a single trace. It wasn't that passing zombies had licked the ground clean. There was simply no sign he had ever been there at all.
That meant only one thing.
"He didn't die."
Yujin had watched the breath leave him. Any player, no matter how tenacious, should have had the decency to die after being torn into that many pieces. Even Yujin himself wouldn't have survived that. But Zygoat, apparently, was the exception.
"How?"
A few possibilities came to mind. A resurrection trait or item, for one.
No. Impossible.
Things like that only showed up on the highest floors of the Tower, and even then at vanishingly low odds. Yujin had only ever heard of them; he had never seen one. The only thing of that caliber he had ever obtained was Chronos's Hourglass [EX], and that had come after clearing the Tower entirely. There was no way Zygoat already had something like that.
"…Still. Can't rule it out completely."
In the Tower, nothing was truly impossible. Whether it was pure luck or someone's interference, he couldn't dismiss the chance.
"Other options, then…"
Fusion [C].
A skill that let you devour other lives and take their abilities. That was all Yujin had known of it so far. But what if that wasn't the whole story?
"Life."
What if it could steal life itself? Then surviving even after being torn to pieces wouldn't be impossible. Hard to believe a mere C-grade skill could do that—but still.
"Anyway. The method isn't what matters right now."
Zygoat was alive. And he was carrying a vicious grudge against Yujin.
"This is a problem."
The man was strong. Strong enough that even first-timeline Yujin had acknowledged him and remembered the name. If someone like that went into hiding and quietly built power, the odds of him becoming a nightmare later were one hundred percent—and the worst kind of nightmare at that.
Yujin immediately spread his senses. Having Detection [B] would have made this far easier, but he hadn't obtained it yet.
"Tch."
Aside from the zombies, he felt no mana nearby at all.
"Either he ran… or he's just that good at hiding."
No way to know. No way to know when he had even come back.
Yujin raked his fingers through his hair in irritation. He was certain today's loose end would come back to bite him later in the ugliest way possible. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
"Guess I've got no choice."
Whenever, wherever, whatever Zygoat decided to do—Yujin would simply have to become strong enough that none of it mattered. That had been the plan from the start, hadn't it? He was already planning to chew through the entire Tower. Zygoat was nothing next to that.
"It'll work out somehow."
Yujin forced the worry out of his mind. It was time to climb. There was no room to look back and slow his steps.
He dropped his gaze and kept walking. The Heavenly Silk Thread drifting through the air around him sliced the surrounding air with razor precision.
"Huh? He's not here."
On the 15th Floor, Lee Sia arrived in the desert city of Ezhara and smiled.
"Don't tell me we got here first?"
Her face said she desperately hoped so. She was already imagining the material she could use to tease Seong Yujin with.
"Nah. No way."
Park Ji-hoo clearly didn't share the fantasy.
"He's probably somewhere else, right?"
Ezhara was huge. Not Terra-sized, but a true metropolis—nothing like the little town of Pine Breeze. The fact that a city of this scale even existed in the middle of a desert was impressive enough. Yujin wasn't the type to sit glued to the stairs waiting for them to arrive. He had almost certainly wandered off somewhere.
That was what Ji-hoo thought. It was also the reasonable conclusion.
"…Yeah. Probably."
Sia's dream shattered. She wilted.
"True. We never got a notification either."
If Yujin had been later than them, the first-clear reward alert would have gone off. It hadn't. Which meant he had reached the 15th Floor long before they did. The moment she stopped ignoring that fact, irritation crawled across her face.
"If this guy got here first, he should be standing right here waiting! What's a man doing wandering off?"
"I'm here."
"Aaaaaaah!"
The reaper's voice came from directly behind her. When had he even arrived? Yujin was standing right at her back.
"What was that? A man shouldn't be wandering off?"
He let out a dry laugh. Sia shook her head without a shred of shame.
"I never said that."
Full denial. She said it with such brazen confidence that Yujin couldn't even find the words. He just stared at her, looking exhausted.
"Hyeong, you're here."
Ji-hoo glanced at Sia's face and offered a careful greeting. Yujin nodded.
"Yeah. Everyone hit level 50?"
"Yes. Sia-nuna and I are level 51. Vivi-nuna's at 50."
"You leveled fast. I figured it'd take a few more days."
"The party system worked better than I expected."
Yujin could agree with that. Even though he hadn't done any real hunting on the 15th Floor aside from the Beggar Zombie, he had still gained a level himself—thanks to the daily quests and the 3 No's auto-hunting.
"I hit 52 myself because of it."
He ruffled Ji-hoo's hair as he spoke, then snapped his fingers as if remembering something and woke Chunbae.
"Kkyaaaang—!"
"Yeah, yeah, kkyaa whatever. Just open your mouth wide."
Still half-asleep, Chunbae yawned its jaws open. Yujin reached in and pulled something free.
◈ Heavy iron gauntlets built for crushing force
◈ Far superior to standard low-floor gauntlets
"Take these. Finally found you something worth using. They're decent enough. You should be able to make do with them for a while."
"Thank you."
Ji-hoo hesitated for a second, then took them. Some instinct told him that refusing would only earn him a scolding.
"What about me?"
Sia, still wearing that shameless look, suddenly cut in.
"What."
"Why don't I get anything?"
"You've got Black Wing [C]."
"It's Black Wing [B] now. It evolved. So? Where's my present?"
Yujin blinked. The word "present" hadn't even registered.
"It ranked up?"
"That's what I said. So—present?"
"…Didn't see that coming."
He had known the sword grew with its wielder. In the first timeline he had seen it climb all the way to A-grade—and even then the seal hadn't been fully undone. But this early?
She already evolved it?
Yujin's original estimate had put the first rank-up somewhere around the 50th Floor. B-grade was that much higher. And now, on the mere 15th Floor, she was already holding Black Wing [B]. If the Tower had been a game, people would have been screaming about broken balance by now.
"How does it feel after evolving? Better?"
"It got a skill, and it cuts a little cleaner. That kind of thing. But my present—"
"Keep working at it. If it evolves further, it'll become a real monster of a sword."
"Hey! Why are you ignoring me?!"
She looked ready to throw herself on the ground. Yujin simply stopped paying attention to her and turned to Vivian instead.
"You hit 50?"
"Yeah."
"Still got plenty left in the bank account, right?"
What Vivian needed most wasn't a skill or an item. It was dollars. Nothing else came close.
"…Yeah."
For a second, something almost like killing intent flickered through her vacant eyes.
"Then we're good."
Yujin grinned.
"I want a present too! A present!"
In the end Sia was thrashing on the floor like a hated five-year-old.
"Let's head in. We've got some time before the others show up. We'll clear a few quests here while we wait."
"Quests?"
Ji-hoo, still trying and failing to calm Sia down, looked over.
"Yeah. Big city like this has a lot worth picking up."
NPC quests, of course—and a solid number of hidden opportunities as well. By the time they finished collecting those, all ten members of the group would have arrived.
"First thing we're getting is your Subspace."
"…It's not something like Chunbae, is it?"
Ji-hoo eyed Yujin's arm with a dubious look. Chunbae immediately glared back and locked eyes with him in a staring contest.
"You couldn't get something like this even if you wanted to. This little guy's A-grade, for the record."
At that, Vivian's eyes went wide. She had already been eyeing Chunbae with interest; now the hunger in her gaze seemed to deepen. Yujin casually put a little more distance between them and continued.
"I can't keep storing everything for you forever."
He wasn't wrong. While he had been away, most of the junk items they had picked up hunting had gone into Vivian's Dimensional Mailbox [C]. Without her, they would have had to throw everything away.
"We're going to need Subspaces a lot from here on. So we get those first."
Leaving Sia still throwing her tantrum on the ground, Yujin started walking—toward the Alchemists' Guild in Ezhara.
"Give me a present toooo, you cheapskate!"
Listening to her wail, Yujin let out a long sigh.
She wasn't like this in the first timeline…
He truly had no idea what had changed her this much.
Really.