Space-Time Distortion, Causal Reversal, or Complete Hypnosis
The fact that a floor of the Tower could be conquered sent a shockwave around the world.
No one had ever conquered a Tower floor before.
The 5th floor held twenty thousand goblins. The precise number shifted a little from country to country, depending on population, but it was not a number any nation could hope to subjugate with a handful of hunters who had only just set foot on the floor.
And yet it would have been equally strange for high-floor hunters to throw their full strength at the 5th floor. Entry to the Tower was limited to a single ticket per day. If the high-floor hunters were not out earning points, humanity would miss the monthly Survival Tax payment — and that would mean catastrophe. Under those circumstances, spending a precious Tower entry on low-floor exploration was simply impossible.
Hunters were too busy surviving and growing to even think about uncovering the Tower's secrets. In the first place, the only people who had ever brushed against the Tower's hidden elements were a vanishingly small handful like Kim Bada.
Looked at that way, there was no nickname more fitting for her than Enlightened One.
China. A meeting of the Nine Dragons Alliance.
Hundreds of hunters packed the conference hall, but only the nine leaders had the right to speak.
"The 5th floor? Don't be absurd. What we should be aiming for is the 40th."
"But the 40th is only seven floors below the highest humanity has reached."
"Which means there's all the more to gain by conquering it."
"We can't let another country seize the rights to the 40th floor."
"Exactly. If not our Great China, who else would claim it?"
Meanwhile, the Korea-US-Japan Trans-Pacific Defense Summit.
This meeting had far fewer participants, and given the distances involved, it was held by video conference. In attendance were each nation's defense ministry, Hunter Administration, the presidents themselves, and a handful of high-ranking hunters.
"China is making moves to take the 40th floor."
"If they gain control of a floor that high, the fallout would be…"
"Even China wouldn't go so far as to make an enemy of all humanity…"
"Until we know what a Floor Master is actually capable of, shouldn't we stop them first?"
"So you're proposing we go to war?"
"If high-floor hunters start slaughtering each other, the cost will exceed anything we'd pay fighting with actual missiles and aircraft."
The meeting fizzled out without resolution. They simply did not have enough information.
The Korean Hunter Administration.
The Director summoned South Korea's strongest hunter and gave his orders.
"I need you to go take a look at whatever the hell is happening on the 5th floor."
Korea's advantage was this: they could reconnoiter a 5th floor that already had a Floor Master. Foreign hunters could not enter the Tower (Korea) 5th Floor, which meant this was intelligence only they possessed.
"I heard the Floor Master has barred entry."
"That's exactly why I'm asking you."
The man pressing her wore a neat suit, yet he looked far more like a back-alley thug than any high official. A deep scar carved across his face only thickened the impression. Mid-forties, perhaps. The aura he carried spoke not of decline but of hard-won gravitas.
And the one being asked — South Korea's strongest hunter — was beautiful. A face that looked as though it had only just crossed the threshold of adulthood, porcelain skin without a single blemish, set in stark contrast against a bob of deep, dark hair. A dobok cut for ease of movement, a sword at her hip. All of it together made her a woman like a drawn blade.
"I need you to find out what's happening on the 5th floor, even if you have to use force."
The man looked at the woman as he spoke.
The justification was a fine one. A very fine one.
The woman nodded, however reluctantly.
The structure of the Tower, as far as anyone had figured out, went like this.
A community floor (local) every five floors. A community floor (world) every ten.
Which meant the 5th, 15th, 25th, 35th, and 45th floors were spaces shared among climbers of the Tower (Korea). The 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, and — presumably — 50th were places where climbers from every Tower in the world could meet.
The 50th floor might be different. It was the 50th, after all. The reason the 50th was still a guess was that the highest floor humanity had reached was the 47th.
But perhaps the true nature of the community floors was that of a competitive arena. Just as I had become master of the 5th floor by conquering every last goblin, the community floors might have been designed from the start as spaces to be taken and taken back.
Maybe nobody had realized it simply because no one had the capacity to wipe out every monster. This was just a hypothesis, of course. The 5th floor might be a special case. But I had a feeling that when I reached the 10th, I'd be able to conquer that one too.
Five days from now was looking interesting.
"Mother, a powerful intruder has appeared on the 5th floor."
"I'm in the middle of a shower."
"It's extremely urgent!"
"Tch."
I shook off the water, pulled on the biggest long-sleeved T-shirt I owned, and draped a towel over my face. Identity concealment: complete.
Then I entered the Tower's 5th floor — the floor I owned.
The one who'd contacted me about the emergency was part of my abilities: Education and Training Officer Miki. I appeared directly in front of her and found myself face to face with the powerful intruder.
"…That's a rather peculiar outfit."
I could hardly tell her I'd been in the shower and come running in thirty seconds looking like a wreck.
"Don't worry. I'm not some kind of extraterrestrial."
Right. I had a towel over my face. Didn't matter. I had a mana radar installed, so I could read my surroundings with precision even with my eyes closed.
A strong one.
The presence I picked up through the mana radar was considerable. Ordinary humans couldn't wield mana. But climbers grew stronger the higher they climbed — mana accumulated in their bodies without them even realizing it. The presence she'd built up that way was stronger than anyone I had met in the Tower so far.
"The 5th floor is under construction. Please turn back."
"Now that I've come this far, I can't simply leave. I need to learn your name and your purpose, at the very least."
"When you ask someone else's name, you should introduce yourself first."
"My name is Seo Yul. Highest floor reached: 47. My specialty is swordsmanship."
Barging in and then introducing yourself politely does not, for the record, make the barging-in polite.
"I'm the Enlightened One, Floor Master of the 5th floor. I intend to establish a combat academy here to train climbers. That enough for you?"
"Not an alias. I need your real name. And I need to see the face behind that towel."
Seo Yul locked her grip around the hilt at her hip, settling into a drawing stance as though she might unsheathe and swing at any second. Guess I had no choice but to threaten her back.
"I don't have any non-lethal suppression techniques. Are you prepared to stake your life?"
"…!"
Seo Yul suddenly backstepped. And that single leap was no joke — she'd put nearly fifty meters between us. If she got that far away, we'd have to shout just to talk, which kind of ruined the image.
Seo Yul shouted that, then vanished through the escape portal.
The hell?
Then, in the corner of my vision, a strange message was floating.
Attacks from climbers who have been climbing for 30 days or more will not land.
Duration: 30 days
They had this?
But why was this alarm only popping up now?
"The Floor Master of the 5th floor was far stronger than I am. I wasn't able to learn anything."
Seo Yul's expression was dark as she delivered her report. She bit down hard on her lip.
"What did you just…"
The Director's face had gone equally stiff. South Korea's greatest military asset, Seo Yul, had gone and been defeated without so much as an answer.
"The opponent's appearance was… a little girl's ghost? No. I don't know if that even means anything. For someone that powerful, a simple deception would be trivial."
What Seo Yul had witnessed was a pair of stark white legs, an ill-fitting T-shirt thrown over them, and a towel draped over the head — a ridiculous picture from top to bottom. Seo Yul herself was a young beauty in her twenties, but no matter how she turned it over, that appearance could only be a trick, a joke. So she had meant to teach the other a lesson. She had meant to cut that insolent towel clean off.
But the sword she drew and swung was checked by an unknown force, and the strike itself became something that had never happened.
"The opponent's ability was… a reversal of causality? A distortion of space-time? At any rate, I drew my sword and swung. But the next instant, the blade was back in its sheath, and I was standing in the stance I'd held before drawing."
"It could have been hypnosis."
"Complete hypnosis that dominates all five senses? And that's the 'most ordinary' possibility for this opponent…"
The two of them fell silent for a long while, then reached the same conclusion without another word, and agreed.
They would leave the Floor Master of the 5th floor alone for the time being. This was not someone to provoke carelessly.
And at the same time, they were afraid. If he ever turned that power to malice, who could stop him? When that day came, they would have to fight with their lives on the line. But would that even be enough?
The two of them had, in fact, known of the newbie protection buff's existence. But that information lay buried so deep in memory that it never surfaced. Seo Yul had never attacked a newbie with fewer than thirty days in the Tower — she had no experience with it. And she could hardly have guessed that someone who had conquered the 5th floor was a climber of less than a month.
As a result, they had completely misunderstood their opponent — concluding that the Floor Master possessed at least one of the following: space-time distortion, causal reversal, or complete hypnosis.
And Kim Bada, who had come within a breath of having his bare face exposed, weathered the crisis without a scratch.