Five's Goblin Symphony: Goblins, Raiders, and the Hunt for Unity
Kim Bada stepped into the fifth floor with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had already cleared four floors of the tower and knew exactly how this one would play out.
Guys, girls, newbies who just pushed through to the fifth floor—welcome. I know the climb has been brutal. Every single layer is a death trial, and you made it here anyway. That’s something to be proud of.
But the fifth floor isn’t like the others. It’s not a place you solo your way through anymore. This is a community floor. Not the kind of loud, chaotic party spot everyone assumes. It’s a shared space. Your fifth floor is the same fifth floor as everyone else’s. If you’ve been grinding solo up to the fourth, think of this one as online. Shared. Live.
Why does this even exist? Because the goblin population here has been counted at over ten thousand. That’s not small anymore. That’s a whole army. Everyone up here has to work together if they want to survive.
If you’ve got a reliable squad, form a party right away. If you’ve got a solid senior hunter, it’s not beneath you to ask for backup once in a while. On the fifth floor, human cooperation is the only way to stay alive.
To reach the sixth floor you have to take down one hundred or more goblins. Don’t try to rush it. One hundred is a big number, and rushing just gets you killed. Keep a steady pace, chip away at it day by day, and don’t force yourself. One hundred kills in one day would be a miracle, but you can do it slow and steady.
There are also days when the fifth floor is quieter than usual. Those are the days goblins feel bold enough to push all the way into the human settlements. Don’t be an idiot and challenge them. Fall back quietly. If your escape portal gets occupied, you already know what happens. Nobody is coming to rescue you.
So take care of your own life first. Then make sure you live to see tomorrow.
[5th Floor Must-Read — Essential Reading for New Hunters]
Seong Jae-won was a solid Normal Difficulty tutorial graduate. Growth speed on the tower was tied to difficulty. Normal hunters grew roughly three times as fast as those who had cleared Easy difficulty. He had been challenging the tower every single day for two months straight when he finally cleared the fourth floor and stepped into the fifth.
“Don’t let your eyes stray beyond the party line. Think of me as your navigator and myself as your safety officer.”
Eight-person party. Leader was Bae Jin-seong, the guy whose highest floor reached was ten. The kind of senior hunter who looked the part even if he hadn’t actually pushed that high. He dressed flashy, talked big, and somehow still managed to look like he belonged in the group.
“Jin-seong-ssi, I’ll protect Eun-ju. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Even while his party members rolled their eyes at his showy attitude, they followed him because he was the only one with real experience. But the moment a goblin appeared, everything changed.
“Huh?”
One of the party members tilted his head.
“I thought I saw a girl with long white hair wearing a school uniform over there.”
“A girl? In this tower?”
“Yeah, right. I must have been mistaken.”
But no one around them fit that description. The party member who had spotted the “ghost” looked genuinely shaken. Jae-won tried to calm everyone down.
“If tension gets too high you can start seeing things. Take a deep breath and steady yourselves.”
Meanwhile, one hundred meters away in the forest, Kim Bada crouched behind a tree and watched the scene unfold.
“Whoa, so normal hunters really look like that? I almost thought I was hunting primitives.”
The tower didn’t allow weapons. Every hunter had to bring whatever they could carry on their bodies. The sight of them—bows, swords, shields, armor—looked exactly like primitive tribesmen on the hunt.
Bada walked deeper into the goblin territory.
“Humans!”
The moment the goblins spotted him, a barrage of arrows flew. Bada pulled out his Hobgoblin Shield Soldier and raised it.
“I am a goblin shaman who has disguised myself as a human!”
“A goblin? That doesn’t make sense.”
“You said you were disguised as a human?”
The goblin guards whispered among themselves.
At that exact moment, the racial favorability system kicked in. The guards swallowed Bada’s lie whole.
“You’re from which goblin country?”
“Country?”
“This is the Body Country land! If you’re enemies, get out!”
“We’re just nomads.”
“Our three countries are at war! No goblin can just walk onto our land!”
“I see. So there really is a Body Country floor.”
Bada had been told that killing one hundred goblins would open the next floor, but the actual trial here was different. The three countries were at war. The real goal was probably to wipe out the other two and claim the Body Country for himself.
“But why is it called Body Country? Does that mean they’re holding the most important land?”
“Body Country is the place where our goblins eat fish from the body first! The Head Country and Tail Country goblins are our enemies!”
“What?!”
Bada’s face lit up.
“I actually like eating from the body first too! Let’s take down the Head and Tail countries and spread the Body Country eating culture!”
“It’s working! Let’s go straight to the King!”
Technically, Bada himself ate from the body first—skipper or mackerel, you started at the belly. But he decided not to mention that part. The goblins would lose their minds if they found out.
The goblin king wasn’t living in a fancy castle. He was just inside a massive tree fort, sitting in a big tent that had been tacked onto the center of it.
“You’re the goblin shaman? You look like a human to me!”
“You’re the goblin king? You just look like trash to me!”
Two gates opened above Bada’s head. Paper aircrafts took off and took down the king.
“Rebellion!”
“Your king is already dead! Are you trying to follow him to the afterlife?”
“We swear loyalty!”
Just like that, Bada sat on the goblin throne.
“Why are there no Hobgoblins on the fifth floor? That’s weird.”
He summoned the Hobgoblin Shaman Shauta along with thirty elite Hobgoblins and fifty regular goblins, and seized control of the Body Country.
The population count came in at around seven thousand goblins. If the other countries were similar in strength, the total across all three would be around twenty thousand.
“The outskirts are under attack! King!”
“Which country?”
“Humans! There are eight of them!”
“Humans are annoying.”
They looked primitive, but they were still tower hunters. Responding with regular goblins would get everyone wiped out. So Bada decided to handle them personally.
He led thirty elite Hobgoblins plus the shaman—thirty-one in total—on a surprise attack.
“Try not to kill them. Capture them alive.”
“Understood.”
The Hobgoblins pulled out ancient bolas. Rocks tied to the ends of ropes. Perfect for tripping and restraining enemies. Arrows were too lethal, so they had switched to these non-lethal options.
“I heard there were no Hobgoblins on the fifth floor!”
“And there are way too many!”
“Even one-on-one with us is pushing it! Thirty of them? We can’t win!”
The party panicked. They looked to their leader for answers.
“What are you doing?! Stop running away and fight!”
Bae Jin-seong was the perfect image of a cool guy—except he had already grabbed Eun-ju’s hand and was sprinting in the opposite direction with the others left behind to die or run.
“Kyah!”
One of the trailing hunters got tangled in a bolas rope and fell hard. The rest fled in pure desperation, but the goblins had already surrounded them.
And right in front of Bae Jin-seong stood the Hobgoblin Shaman Shauta.
“Shaman! A superior individual!”
Bae Jin-seong made his choice. He threw Eun-ju toward the shaman and ran the other way.
“Please use me as bait! I’ll survive in the future!”
But the lightning from the shaman struck him instantly, and he dropped unconscious.
Eun-ju fainted not from physical injury but from sheer mental overload.
“Keep your head straight. If you faint, it’s over.”
Bada clicked his tongue. He remembered his own tutorial hell days, when he had faced Hobgoblin Warriors without awakening yet. Bones shattered, muscles torn, but he had kept fighting anyway.
“Hunters these days are too weak. Tsk tsk.”
The fallen hunters in front of him were all senior to him, but no one was brave enough to point that out.
Bada gathered the eight hunters and tossed them toward the escape portal.
“Bad timing. Come back later.”
Go on ahead. Right now is war time.