The Alchemy Guild
The Alchemy Guild.
Even among all the grotesque things that filled the Tower, they ranked first when it came to pure revulsion. Worse than the Zygotes, even. At least, that was how Seong Yujin saw it.
Other players did not share the opinion. They simply did not know the truth. Unless you climbed past the 80th Floor, you would never even begin to suspect. To them the Alchemy Guild was nothing more than a friendly set of NPCs who sold useful items to players.
Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo, of course, had no opinion at all. They had never even heard of the Alchemy Guild’s existence. The reason was simple: Yujin. From the 1st Floor until now they had never been given a proper chance to walk around a city. They had only been dragged along by his hand, hunting and nothing else. So now they stood with mouths open, staring at the marvels like tourists who had just stepped into a starry sky.
“What’s that?”
“That is an Strength Enhancement Potion [E]. Drink it and your Strength multiplies by 1.5 for ten minutes.”
“And that one?”
“We call it an Ice Spirit [C]. It orbits its owner and builds an automatic defense system, blocking hostile attacks within a five-meter radius.”
The clerks’ explanations made Sia’s eyes start to spin.
“Mister, mister. I think I need this. Can you buy it for me?”
Yujin looked at her the way a man looks at a country girl who has just arrived in the big city, and ignored her completely.
“I came to look at the Subspaces.”
“The Subspaces, sir? Right this way.”
The clerk guided him courteously to a display of rune fragments.
“They are sorted by size. How large a space do you require?”
Yujin studied the fragments in silence, then pointed to the one at the far end.
“How big is that?”
“Lowest-grade Subspace. Roughly the capacity of two large bags.”
Tiny. Compared to Chunbae it was little more than a speck of dust.
“And that one?”
He pointed to the opposite end of the row.
“The largest available on the 15th Floor. A perfect cube five meters on each side.”
About the size of a small warehouse. Still nothing next to Chunbae’s bottomless maw, yet more than enough for two people. The real question was the price.
“How are the prices set?”
He wiped the cold expression from his face and asked with the friendliest smile he could manage.
“Four Coins, or five thousand Credits.”
“Hmm.”
Filthy expensive. He had expected high, but this blew past every estimate. Yujin checked his own funds.
Five Coins. And…
Four thousand seven hundred Credits. Everything he had scraped together selling junk and trash items.
Damn it.
He could not even buy one, let alone two. Burning a Coin on something as minor as a Subspace made no economic sense either.
Just take the smaller one…
He was about to shift his gaze when he met the eyes of Sia and Ji-hoo, both shining with pure expectation. It felt exactly like watching children who had just walked into the toy section of a department store on Children’s Day. He did not have children of his own, but still. Looking at those sparkling eyes, the words “show me something smaller” refused to leave his mouth.
It was not guilt or obligation. Until now he had solved every problem they faced. He simply did not want them to see him crumble in front of a price tag. Pride. That was all. He refused to bend it.
“Nothing here catches my interest. I’ll come back another time.”
The smile had vanished long ago. Reading the clerk’s face—no discount of even a single Credit—Yujin turned without a shred of lingering attachment.
“H-hey, where are you going?”
Sia scrambled after him and even grabbed his arm. Judging by the grip, she had fallen hard for the thing.
But what could he do? He was broke.
“I don’t like it.”
“What’s not to like? That size, you could live in it.”
“There are way better ones out there. We’ll look around more and I’ll buy you one later. Later.”
While Yujin, sounding exactly like a mother, was trying to figure out how to peel this money-leech off his arm, a savior appeared from an unexpected direction.
“I’ll buy them. Two Subspaces for eight Coins, right?”
Vivian. She casually reached into empty air and pulled out eight gleaming blue-gold coins.
Even Yujin’s jaw dropped this time. Eight Coins? No player who had only just reached Level 50 should be carrying that kind of wealth. He himself only had five.
“Confirmed. Ingest these rune fragments and the Subspaces will be engraved.”
The clerk produced the fragments with the most beautiful smile in the world and handed them over.
“Take them.”
Vivian pressed one into Sia’s hand and one into Ji-hoo’s.
“Unnie! You’re the only unnie for me!”
“Th-thank you so much.”
The two of them bowed again and again, faces glowing with gratitude.
…Does she have the Blessing of the God of Wealth or something?
In reality and inside the Tower alike, her money never seemed to run dry. Yujin could not begin to understand how that was possible.
Vivian shot him a sideways glance.
Huh?
He could have sworn she just snorted. The look on her face almost said, You and I are on different levels.
Yujin shut his gaping mouth and stared with dark eyes at the two idiots who were practically dying of joy.
These little bastards.
How many things had they already received from him? Setting everything else aside, just Black Wing [B] and the Champion Gauntlet [C] would have cost dozens of Coins to buy. They took items like that for free and then treated him like this?
Deep inside Yujin’s heart, the Hellbound Express for the 3 No began to form its schedule. Completely unaware of that fact, the pair simply kept praising Vivian.
“We’ve got what we came for. Let’s go.”
He still hated the Alchemy Guild. He needed to get strong as fast as possible and smash every last one of these damned places into rubble. With that resolution he stepped outside.
The brown, desolate city filled his vision. Ezhara. This massive desert city held a fair amount of meaning for Yujin. It was where he had first obtained a sword worthy of being called a cherished weapon, and an NPC with whom he had shared something like friendship was still here…
“Whoa, check this out! Sick, right?”
His reminiscence shattered. Sia was stuffing Black Wing [B] into empty air and pulling it back out again like a child with a new toy. Ji-hoo wore a simple smile while doing roughly the same thing. Vivian stood with her chin lifted, looking down at Yujin.
I’ve got a lot to do, he thought. He still needed a mount, and he needed to find and finish any worthwhile quests quickly. Yet ahead of all of that, Yujin decided on something else first.
“Get ready to hunt.”
“…What, all of a sudden?”
Sia blinked, half of Black Wing [B] still hanging in the air.
“Didn’t you say we were doing quests? I thought you said no hunting for a while.”
He had said exactly that. But—
“Plans change.”
As if he had no interest in hearing objections, he strode forward. And so the three of them boarded the Hellbound Express after all.
“Haa…”
Kang Mu-hyun wiped away the blood. The cursed 7th Floor. Only after more than fifteen hours had they finally cleared the quest. Cheers rose around him from the other players who had climbed with him. But Mu-hyun and his companions did not smile. They could not.
Damn it.
He had sworn never to offer sacrifices, yet in the end they had sacrificed fifty people—half the survivors. It had happened while he was holding the front against the mutant zombies; the other players had made the choice. Buried under endless waves of ordinary and mutant zombies, he had been unable to extract himself, unable to stop them. It simply happened, completely unrelated to his will. They had survived and cleared the quest because of it, but…
I’m sorry.
Self-loathing crashed over him. Surviving through other people’s deaths filled him with shame.
“…It’s not your fault, oppa.”
Lim Ayeong rested a hand on his shoulder and tried to comfort him.
“Those pieces of trash.”
Kim Jihye glared at the cheering players with eyes full of contempt.
“No.”
Mu-hyun shook his head. He simply could not bring himself to blame them.
“They did what they had to do to survive.”
Of the seventeen players who had entered the 7th Floor together, only eight remained. Three had died in the first five hours of combat. With fewer people, the remaining time would have been even crueler. So they had chosen sacrifice. Even then, six more had still died afterward. Mu-hyun did not want to condemn the ones who made that choice. He only felt bitter that he had not been strong enough, that innocent people had lost their lives because of it.
“We’re alive thanks to them too.”
He had no right to judge them in the first place. That was how Mu-hyun saw it. Jihye and Ayeong fell silent. Deep down they had known the same thing; they had only been looking away out of a thin sense of conscience.
Mu-hyun looked down at the Dawn [C] in his hand.
Seong Yujin, wasn’t it?
How had that man cleared this place? Had he offered sacrifices as well? He hadn’t had a large group of players with him, so the odds were high. Maybe he had offered all one hundred. The thought made the spear in his hand feel suddenly heavy—guilt that the item might have been bought with lives.
No.
Mu-hyun shook his head the moment the idea formed.
He didn’t seem like that kind of person.
He had no real reason. Just a feeling. But he had seen the ease in Seong Yujin’s every movement. Someone like that did not feel like the sort who would clear this floor by throwing lives away.
I’ll ask him myself later. Jumping to conclusions beforehand never ends well.
Anyway, they had survived. They could keep climbing. If they kept advancing little by little, they would meet Seong Yujin again on the 15th Floor.
Ah, right.
Eliyah was nowhere in sight. He should have arrived around the same time.
Don’t tell me he already cleared it?
Mu-hyun’s brow furrowed on its own. Eliyah and his companions together only made five people. There was no way that group alone could have broken through the 7th Floor. Mu-hyun knew Eliyah’s skill level well enough to feel almost certain.
Which means…
They too must have chosen sacrifice. Eliyah was a man who would use any means necessary to achieve his goals—bold if you wanted to be kind, vicious if you did not. The Eliyah Mu-hyun knew would absolutely have offered the sacrifices. All one hundred of them. The thought left a bitter taste. If they had tackled the quest together, maybe things would have turned out a little differently.
Mu-hyun bit his lip lightly, let out a breath, and turned around.
“Let’s prepare for the next one.”
The moment the quest cleared, the next one had appeared. They would have to hunt mutant zombies and the boss monster. It would only be harder than what they had just finished, never easier. He pushed aside the distractions. Right now the only things that mattered were survival and the climb.
“Got it.”
“Yeah.”
His two companions began preparing for battle as well. Mu-hyun sat in the most comfortable posture he could manage and recovered his stamina and mana, watching the celebrating players with a dark expression.