Main Scenario 1
Han Sea had arrived and the quest had begun, but nothing about daily life suddenly turned frantic. I'd been practicing force control while holding off Horned Wolves — careful not to kill them by accident — and getting a feel for the reflected damage, while Grace and Han Sea started drilling on how to deal damage from behind a tank.
Just as we'd discussed at the inn, we still needed to grind Horned Wolves until we could outfit the two of them with Intermediate Adventurer gear. Checking the chat and the boards, it looked like a few of the players trailing after Han Sea had only just managed to find a frontliner who could tank the Horned Wolf for them.
She was clearly about half a floor ahead of the pack. I didn't know the game system well enough to say for sure, but if there were levels or skill proficiency involved, those had to be climbing fast too.
"Same as usual today?"
"Yes. Same as usual."
"Should we check the Temple sometime?"
"Would that change anything? The priests will come out when they're ready. Why don't we go recruit some of your old party members from the upper floors instead?"
The problem was that during this brief holding pattern while we saved up, recruiting new companions had stalled too. We were a party that could hunt Horned Wolves without breaking a sweat, which meant we couldn't just pick up some half-baked Novice Adventurer. A priest we'd take the moment one appeared — but nobody was coming out of the Temple.
If it were up to me, I'd have scooped Han Sea onto my back and sprinted straight to the top of the tower. How much easier would it be to gather up those bastards on the 43rd floor instead of Grace and just punch through? But ten years of living in this body had taught me, bone-deep, that impatience ruins everything.
"If that were the plan, I'd have taken Hanna to the 43rd floor already. She needs more experience."
"Is Miss Hanna really that good?"
"I think she's going to open the door to the 50th floor."
"Good heavens. To make lazy Roland actually say the words '50th floor' — she must be quite the mage."
So my job was simply to keep clearing that quest, day after day. We needed two more party members, and that wasn't something I could force just because I was in a hurry. Between gacha characters and non-gacha people, the performance gap that came with having stars or not meant I had to choose carefully.
Frankly, if NPCs had already climbed to the 43rd floor on their own, there was no way the tower topped out at 50. Thinking of it as a game, the 50th floor was probably where a big event kicked off, and the real ending sat at 100. We were trading this kind of morning banter when a notification chime rang out.
…What exactly was beginning?
Han Sea usually kept her stream titles straightforward. After learning a skill it was "Homework Check." After meeting Grace it was "3★ Archer." Titles designed so viewers could tell at a glance what was going on. Which was why I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be "really beginning."
Because today we were hunting Horned Wolves again. Same schedule as yesterday — so what tutorial had ended, and what game was starting? Anyway, the stream was live, which meant the guild doors would open soon and Han Sea and Grace would walk in.
I was sprawled across the table thinking that when the door slammed open.
"Hey, receptionist!"
"Look, if you're injured, you go to the Temple, not the guild."
The person who came through the door wasn't Han Sea or Grace — it was a blood-soaked middle-aged man. Judging by his shabby gear, he looked like a Novice Adventurer who took herb-gathering jobs on the lower floors. The blood pouring from his arm suggested he'd gotten greedy and taken a Horned Wolf hit.
A man at the next table, clearly annoyed by the morning ruckus, drawled without much interest. Start indulging one of these and you'd end up with a swarm of Novice Adventurers begging because they couldn't afford the Temple.
"That's not what matters right now! A Horned Wolf showed up!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The Workshop District! I went to deliver herbs to the Workshop District and there was a Horned Wolf there!"
"This bastard high on something?"
"Um… if an adventurer files a false report with the guild, it can affect your ability to take commissions."
Even under the Intermediate Adventurer's scolding and Alice's concerned warning, the Novice Adventurer raised his voice, looking wronged. The blood loss had him dizzy — his words tumbled out in a jumbled mess — but the content was clear enough.
He'd been wandering the tangled alleys of the Workshop District looking for the alchemist's workshop that had posted the request when a Horned Wolf suddenly burst out of a junk pile in the alley and attacked him. His jump distance hadn't been enough, and he'd been carrying a sack of herbs, so only his arm got pierced through — and he'd fled all the way to the guild.
"I'm pretty sure we wiped out all the junkies last time."
The Intermediate Adventurer clicked his tongue, looking at the wounded Novice as if the man had been on drugs. But I couldn't dismiss the man's words the way Alice and the Intermediate Adventurer had. Not when Han Sea's stream title had just mentioned "the real beginning."
…Would a game about nothing but climbing a tower be fun? Or would a game where main scenario events popped up while you climbed be more fun? If there was a status window, an inventory, and a quest log that organized accepted commissions, then of course the developers would have prepared a main scenario, right?
"Hey. You said the Workshop District?"
"Y-yes! It's true! My lantern doesn't even have a record of the 10th floor!"
And the most decisive point: Han Sea still hadn't arrived.
Even after Alice, unable to watch him bleed, brought bandages and stopped the bleeding, Han Sea and Grace still didn't show. The time it took to listen to the babbling Novice and wrap his arm should have been more than enough to walk from the inn to the guild.
The moment I opened the chat window, suspicion hardened into certainty. Han Sea must have run into a Horned Wolf near the inn on her way to the guild. Without even grabbing the mace I'd left leaning against the table, I slammed through the guild doors and sprinted outside.
Winding around my striding feet was mana tempered and re-tempered over ten years. I was a tank-type character with no mobility skills, but raw base stats and every scrap of mana I'd scraped together packed more punch than most skills.
"Roland? What are you doing?!"
Leaving Alice's scream behind me, I drove power into my legs and leapt — wind howled past my ears and my field of vision opened wide. The first step shattered the road in front of the guild. The second stamped my footprint into the familiar roof of the inn.
From road to rooftop, from rooftop into open air—
"EVACUAAAAATE!"
I roared as I leapt, expelling the breath I'd drawn until my chest nearly burst, pouring mana into the shout. Adventurers hurrying toward the tower and citizens bustling through the streets all flinched and looked around in alarm.
From high above I scanned the surroundings and spotted several large furry shapes prowling through the alleys. What I needed to do right now wasn't rush off alone to deal with the Horned Wolves — it was to mobilize the other adventurers.
"MONSTERS INSIDE THE CIIIIITY!"
Gravity pulled me down and my body left another scar on some poor building's roof. Sorry for only knowing how to brute-force mana into everything, I guess.
I fixed my direction toward the inn and launched myself again. The crack of splintering timber underfoot made a man with a swollen cheek jump and jab a finger at me.
Two more times, three — using building roofs as stepping stones, bellowing as I went — and the sharp ones started moving on their own. To ordinary citizens and Novice Adventurers, a Horned Wolf was a disaster you died from on contact. To Intermediate Adventurers, it was just another monster they'd faced countless times.
"What the fuck is this?!"
"It's real! Hey, grab the gear!"
"Don't let them into the buildings! Round them up with the merchant guild guards!"
My voice boomed loud enough that no one could miss it. The sheer volume of mana I'd slammed into the shout must have given the adventurers confidence, because armed forces started moving all over the streets. The kind of faith that said someone skilled enough to use mana like that wouldn't be spouting nonsense.
As adventurers strapped on their swords and moved out, the soldiers responsible for street security scrambled into action too, drawn by the commotion. By the time I reached the inn to the peal of alarm bells, five-man armed squads were already combing every alley.
"Hanna! Grace!"
"Ah — Roland?"
The Lucky Scoundrel should have been quiet at this hour of the morning. Han Sea stood planted at the entrance, her expression twisted hard. And no wonder — the area around the inn's doorway looked like a scene from a slasher movie, soaked in blood.
"What the hell happened here?"
"A Horned Wolf suddenly appeared, and an adventurer who was staying at the inn said he'd handle it, and then…"
I followed Han Sea's glance and saw an adventurer slumped dead against the wall. His young face was contorted in pain, streaked with tears, both hands clutching a blood-soaked belly. The weapon scattered on the floor was nothing more than a single longsword.
A Novice Adventurer who didn't even know what a Horned Wolf was, still half-drunk, charging in.
"You and Grace aren't hurt?"
"No, we're fine."
"The other adventurers at the inn held the entrance, and Miss Hanna and I attacked, so it never got inside."
As I listened to Han Sea and Grace, the guards arrived and cleared the body. The corpse of that reckless young Novice was loaded onto a stretcher and carried away. From the grumbling I overheard, more than a dozen people had already died.
Han Sea, looking a little pale, muttered under her breath.
"Ah, man… I thought this was an 18+ game because of the spicy NPC stuff, but they show it this raw? Even with the mosaic, it's a lot…?"
"Hanna, are you okay? Want to take the day off?"
"Mm, I'm fine, unnie. Don't worry."
Grace, who'd lived as a hunter in a slash-and-burn village, seemed used to spilled guts and corpses. Han Sea was not. Grace, worried by Han Sea's ashen face, tried to gently lead her inside the inn — but Han Sea softly shook off the hand and came over to me.
"Um, Roland? I, uh… detected the Horned Wolves' mana and tried tracking it…"
Her eyes kept sliding sideways, staring at empty air next to my chest the same way she did when reading a commission. She was looking at a quest window, no doubt.
"Lead the way."
"I think I need to go there… Yes!"
She really couldn't lie to save her life.