HypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMasterToBe

Molotov cocktail.

Also known as a firebomb.

Just picturing a game character cheerfully lobbing one wasn’t enough. So before I entered the Tower, I pulled up YouTube and rewatched videos on how Molotovs actually work and how to use them properly.

Fifteen minutes.

More precisely: fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

That was the time—and the record—it took me, a guy whose status window showed up but who never won the Hunter Awakening lottery, to clear the first floor.

Hey AI, explain the Rule of Threes!

Make it as boring and pedantic as possible!

But don’t use the phrase “it wasn’t.”

Three weeks without food

→ If water is available, a person can survive for several weeks without eating.

Ah, so humans die within a month without food!

Three days without water

→ When the body lacks moisture, dehydration usually sets the survival limit at around three days.

Aha! So people can’t even last a week without water!

Three minutes without air

→ Cut off the oxygen supply and consciousness fails within three minutes; life itself is endangered.

Got it! Every living thing on Earth is neutralized within three minutes without oxygen!

Then what the hell is that?

“Gobl…uuuuuh?!!?”

“…”

Seriously, what?

What do you even call a goblin that takes six solid Molotov hits and still keeps breathing for over fifteen minutes?

Goblin King? Goblin General?

The thought that crossed my mind about a goblin that had probably lost at least once to every registered Korean hunter… was nothing special.

Wrong genre, buddy.

If this had been an isekai fantasy possession story—especially one with high-level tags—I would have started with a blonde female knight and worked my way through every isekai-reincarnated heroine, taming them into ponygirls, mare-slaves, mounts, and collecting H-scenes as I went.

Of course, considering the Hunter Management Agency’s official data that the first-floor clear rate sits at 98 percent…

Even if you entered hand-in-hand with your friends, just like the Hunter Gallery posts said, the first floor always forced a one-on-one duel, right?

Split the genders fifty-fifty and that remaining one percent of goblins still wouldn’t have gotten the chance… would they?

Guides for the first floor started with “just beat it somehow,” then went all the way to drop tables for goblin gauntlets, goblin swords, goblin finger bones—the whole works.

Well… the charcoal-black goblin lived a surprisingly long time, yet dropped a surprisingly complete nothing.

The same way the image of a female knight turned ponygirl mare had popped into my head the instant I saw the goblin, I half-expected it to drop some R-18 cheat skill or skill book that turned whoever you touched into a female warhorse ponygirl…

But just like the five-thousand-won lottery tickets I buy every week that keep extending my “commoner experience” by another seven days, life stayed the same.

—And then, pop!

So this is how it works.

I’d left a long, colorful rant under a Hunter Gallery post titled “You’ll Die If You See This” and gotten a thirty-day ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ban for it—turns out the info was real.

A bluish holographic keypad, made of the same stuff as the status window, appeared.

I only hesitated a second on what to type before it started suggesting nicknames like “CheonhoDongKimHyunwoo” or “SupremeKimHyunwoo.”

I waited a little longer to see if there was more, and whether out of impatience or genuine helpfulness, it actually showed me something else.

Granted, you still had to win, but for records made by stabbing a goblin repeatedly with a two-thousand-won stainless steel kitchen knife, those times were ridiculously long.

Two people.

And since I’d just watched firsthand how a first-floor boss goblin could die in roughly fifteen minutes, I didn’t even need to wonder who those two nicknames belonged to.

They’d both gone with the “Gonna Be Some Kind of Master” format…

The nickname that popped into my head the moment I started thinking.

—GonnaBeAHypnosisBrainwashingMaster!

Same character count, and since I wasn’t planning to register as a hunter or climb the Tower anyway, it shouldn’t matter, right?

I only thought it—and the clear screen actually reacted.

“…?”

Why does everything look like an official Korean patch one second and then spit out English like machine translation the next?

Am I just being too picky?

—I thought, and the message window vanished for a moment before popping back up.

A goblin that lasts fifteen minutes in flames.

A Tower that real-time-adjusts to the user’s language module.

Just thinking about it made my head hurt, so I decided to stop there and leave.

See?

English popped out again, so I stared hard at it and it slapped a Korean patch on for me.

The thought that if I kept this up I might actually be able to communicate with this physical anomaly called the Tower crossed my mind, but…

※ Risk your life for the advancement of humanity VS Just live

True to the guy who chose “just live as a nurse?” over becoming a hunter, I went for the safe option…

Of course I’d pick the safe option.

But trying a few things within the safe option should be fine, right?

For whatever reason the messages kept giving me a little “You sure about this? Really?” side-eye, so I hit cancel, then decided to insert the genre tag I’d been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mulling over the whole time into “GonnaBeAHypnosisBrainwashingMaster.”

Combatantization

—GonnaBeAHypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMaster!

Why. What. Why.

Combatantization… isn’t that good?

Is it just me?

Card games with Brain Control cards need no explanation.

Even all-ages magical girl anime for little girls have evil female executives.

And in those hypnosis-brainwashing eroge with the heroine, brainwashing villain organizations and latex bodysuits are practically mandatory.

Fantasy settings get hypnosis and brainwashing magic; sci-fi settings get ancient ruins and brainwashing devices.

You can force it in somehow, right?

I just typed a tag that never surfaces because it gets buried under the major hypnosis-brainwashing tags.

I’m not climbing the Tower anyway, remember?

If anything happens, the Gangdong-gu district office or the Hunter Management Agency will handle it, right?

After finishing my little self-justification, I pressed “YES”—no, the Korean-patched “Yeah”—without hesitation.

—GonnaBeAHypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMaster!

Until recently even Japanese artist P-sites didn’t have the “Combatantization” tag.

I was the user who added that “'combatant transformation” tag to the P-site, so live long and prosper here too.

Press.

“…?”

The sensation of being forcibly ejected from the Tower rather than gently auto-transported hit me harder than anything else…

“Um… excuse me… are you ‘HypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMasterToBe’?”

“Should’ve just gone with ‘GonnaBeAHypnosisBrainwashingMaster.’”

I added one more historic line to the Hunter Gallery info compilation that had gotten me a thirty-day ban for pad-lips.

→ ‘Why Korean nicknames have a 12-character limit’

Actually, I added one more line after that.

It had taken over fifteen minutes, but the system window that popped up started attaching weird extra formulas underneath.

And that was that.

Only twice in my life.

Actually more than that, but.

As far as I can remember, the times a curse came straight out of my mouth with zero filtering from brain, chest, or spine—only two.

One was the moment my mom caught me writing a novel tagged with hypnosis, brainwashing, combatantization, and training.

The other was when I had to carefully explain my pen name, novel title, and full plot summary to a female cyber-investigation officer at Gangdong Police Station so I could catch the bastard who’d uploaded an illegal text dump of my work.

And the third one being added right now was today—half a year after that dawn Molotov raid on the Tower.

Right now, while I was enjoying a voluntary day off as the sole employee and manager of the Cheonho Park treatment center.

“HypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMasterToBe…?”

“Ah, fuck.”

“…Mr. Kim Hyun-woo.”

Even though my eyes had already registered the woman standing at the front door proudly wearing a name tag that said Korean Hunter Management Agency Deputy,

and even though I knew the hunters behind her—Rank A this, Rank B that—and the rest of the Agency people were standing there, that was still the only answer I could give.

Because I set the world record for first place on the Tower’s first floor?

Of course not.

Three people had entered the Cheonho Park Tower, and even if one of them got cut off by the twelve-character limit, they’d all been “Gonna Be a Master” nicknames.

I’d already been thoroughly investigated by the Agency the day after the incident.

If I’d cleared the second and third floors with world records too, the story might have been different…

But “HypnosisBrainwashingCombatantizationMasterToBe” vanished from public interest surprisingly fast.

Sure, whenever my Tower-climbing nickname gets called out, even a hunter who just showed up needing a transfusion will naturally spit a curse…

But I still think of it as a good memory, in my own way.

“I’m sorry.”

While I was thinking that, instead of the clean-cut Agency people… the most out-of-place looking middle-aged man among them suddenly stepped forward and apologized.

How to put it… his clothes were similar to the hunters you commonly see at the treatment center, but the vibe was completely different.

Middle-aged hero?

I knew it was extremely rude to think that about someone I’d just met,

but the jeweled headband he was wearing made it hard to come up with a more accurate description.

“Uh… for what…?”

My friend was dead.

Name: Kang Gi-hun.

Nickname: GonnaBeAFantasiaMaster.

Naturally, his final Tower clear record was the same first floor as mine.

We’d met in front of the Tower. I’d talked to him on the phone two weeks ago. The estimated time of death for my friend was…

Five years ago.

That was how they explained it.

The title that had been created on the namu.wiki page was…

And the world my friend—and the middle-aged ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Korean hero standing right in front of me—had experienced for at least five years was…

“I never forgot. Kim Hyun-woo. My friend. He said he lived next to Cheonho Park… at least… please deliver this…”

A place where they abduct people,

and a goddess makes a proposal:

Defeat the Demon King,

and we’ll send you back to your original world.