Receipts from Every Tower

"Hah..."

It was an astonishing notification. I'd been sitting in the living room, watching TV and clicking Heal over and over, and this was the experience and loot that came pouring back.

Of course there was a reason. Two hundred fifty-nine heals. Something like 2.75 million HP of effective healing. Thirty-seven successful dispels of spells, curses, magic, and poison. I couldn't even begin to guess how many times I'd dragged him back from the edge.

Well, thanks to that, Daejeon had made it. No — the whole of South Korea had.

The world went wild.

"Hmm."

My identity didn't seem to have surfaced. Kim Minsung didn't look like he understood any of it either.

The sour set of his face told me the experience and loot I'd received really had been a distribution, plain and simple. He'd saved Daejeon and cleared all the way to Floor 51, only to walk away with a tenth of the reward. Of course he felt hollow.

For me, it was a slightly ironic feeling. Watching my parents, I'd always assumed heroes like that never weighed fame or profit — that they simply acted for the greater good. Turns out even heroes get angry. Even heroes feel cheated when the reward doesn't come.

Not that I'd had a choice. I needed to live, too. There hadn't been a spare second to ration heals while I watched his health. If anything, a ten-second cooldown had felt absurdly long.

You'd think an EX-rank Heal shouldn't have a cooldown at all.

A heal with no limits of distance, space, or dimension. That alone was already far too broken.

"More importantly, I've awakened, but..."

By all rights, an Awakener is supposed to register with the Awakener Management Agency. You can receive all kinds of training and support, and you can trade through official government channels, so there's no reason not to register. Flip it around, though, and if you don't need the training, the support, or the trade access, there's no particular reason to register either.

Training is a nonissue these days. The wikis and Nutube are more than good enough. Support amounts to a few potions and some basic gear that's only useful through about Floors 15 to 20. Which leaves trade. Lately, if it doesn't go through an official government channel, it basically doesn't happen. Smuggling mana stones, or moving them out at all, is treated as a serious felony.

But wherever people live, there's always a loophole. And this one isn't a space the government can put a hand on, because it sits inside the tower.

Every tenth floor has a Communal Area. A place where every climber can meet freely — and through special techniques like dimensional gates, you can even reach towers in other regions, other countries. Out of that grew a black market that ignores borders. Strictly illegal. Practically impossible to punish.

"In other words, I only need to clear through Floor 10."

Floor 10...

"My level right now is 37."

As a rule, if a climber takes every floor in a single push without failing, floor and level stay nearly lockstep. That's how it is for most S-ranks. So level 37 ought to mean that even at worst, Floor 20 isn't much of a problem. But that's the story of people who awakened something that can fight. All I have is Heal. An excellent Heal, yes. Combat is an entirely different country.

"Might as well raise my level a little more before I think about it..."

Remember this. You only get one life. And I was hopeless in a fight.

Deep night.

Once my thoughts were in order, I turned on the computer and the tablet.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

The search term was live tower clears. With a translator's help, I ran it in every language I could think of. On Nutube alone, a hundred and forty-six climbers were live. Add the smaller sites and nearly two hundred people were climbing a tower at that very moment.

"The passion is something else..."

This was the age of streaming, through and through. The devices that work inside a tower are supplied by production-type Awakeners. Early on they ran to hundreds of thousands of won, even tens of millions, but now they cost less than a Nutuber's basic three-piece kit. Plenty of them show up on secondhand apps after barely being used.

And thanks to streamers like these, my ability was about to pick up terrifying speed.

"Hah—!"

Eyes on the monitor. Focus.

On the screen he was locked in a death match with an enormous minotaur, blood glazed over every inch of him. Then the same brilliant light that had swallowed Daejeon crashed down over his head like a waterfall.

I had no idea what the viewers were yelling, but it was probably something nice. I moved on to the next stream with a satisfied smile. The cooldown was a mere ten seconds. Wasting time was a sin.

Her face had gone a bloodless blue; poison, by the look of it. She was holed up in a safe zone, angling for a natural recovery while shooting the breeze with her subscribers. A waterfall of light fell on her too, and the detox was over in an instant. Marie patted herself down with a look of pure disbelief. The moment she slowly pushed herself upright, I clicked the mouse again.

Click. Click. Click.

Once every ten seconds, as tight as I could manage. As fast as possible, and as efficient. I dumped Heal on everyone in sight.

Of course, quite a few of them didn't need it at all. Someone past level 30 still working on Floor 15. Someone just showing off the tower scenery and running an ASMR stream. Even so, spraying heals indiscriminately had to be more efficient than burning time investigating each one.

After about thirty minutes of clicking:

One after another, receipts began flying in from every corner of the world.

The receipts kept arriving for roughly two hours. Then a single consolidated results window appeared on top of them.

"Whoa..."

I couldn't keep the shock off my face as I stared at the final tally.

"This ability is actually insane."

A lunatic who hit level 40 on his first day of awakening? Last I knew, the average Awakener level in this country wasn't even 40. Sure, that's because there are so many easy-floor farmers and people who've given up climbing. Even so. And close to four tons of mana stones, plus more than eight thousand coins. Honestly, none of it felt real.

"Summon one kilogram of mana stone."

With the command, a shard whirred into being before my eyes. Barely the size of my thumb. And this single kilogram went for about a hundred thousand won. Prices had settled a lot lately; that was the going rate.

"So one day of clicking is four hundred million won...?"

Unless I registered as an Awakener, turning it cleanly into cash wouldn't be easy. Still. I was rich now.

"Would it be all right to splurge on Shin Ramyun Black?"

It would be all right, wouldn't it?

...Strange. I'd always thought that once I was rich, the things I'd want to do would be endless. Money actually rolls in, and I have no idea what to do with it.

"My imagination really is that poor."

Too many years spent strangling myself with poverty, I suppose. No parents. No adult to stand in front of me. Thrown alone into this rough world, I'd done nothing but endure, one day at a time.

"All right. Then, for now."

Let's spend it. Properly. This heavy poverty. This starved imagination. I'll beat them somehow, even starting now.

"I'm ordering two golden olive chickens!"

I opened the delivery app with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.