You Are Now an Aircraft Carrier

I'd heard rumors like that before — the kind that floated around like so much hot air.

That a tiny fraction of climbers awakened and became superhumans.

But I never bought it.

If someone really had that kind of power, how could they possibly keep quiet about it?

All a climber could gain from climbing the Tower was physical enhancement. That was the common wisdom, and I'd believed it too.

But now I knew better.

Awakening was real.

The Tower's tutorial wasn't limited to Hard Mode — there was Hell Mode too.

Hell Mode: an extreme trial no ordinary human could clear. Only those who refused to give up and fought their way through it could reach awakening.

Before the awakening, the system — or whatever it was — had asked me a question.

To picture the strongest existence I could imagine.

So I thought of the pinnacle of human science and technology: a Great American supercarrier, the kind that burned through a trillion dollars of defense budget.

And the ability I awakened as a result was…

An Aircraft Carrier Ability.

Or so I thought — until I was told that I was the aircraft carrier.

"Huh?"

Along with that unmistakably ominous message, my body caught fire.

An unholy flame that ignited in blue and burned all the way up to a searing white light. What temperature even was that?

The Hobgoblin Warrior that had been bravely trading blows with me took one look, panicked, and bolted.

"AAAAAARGH!"

And I was roasted to match the flames.

People said there was nothing more sacred than being reborn in fire. From the perspective of the person actually going through it, it was just hot, and hot, and hot, and painful, and hot, and so painful I could barely think.

When the spectacular burning finally ended, what remained was a body so beautiful it was almost blinding.

My clothes had burned away completely, leaving me as naked as the day I was born.

My body felt incredibly light. Not metaphorically — it genuinely felt like half my mass had just vanished.

And just as the message said, I was female now. With every scrap of clothing burned off and nothing left but bare skin, I didn't exactly need to check.

"I thought I was going to die, you damn system."

My awakened ability laid itself out in front of me, fully visualized.

There was an aircraft inside my body?

Please don't tell me it comes out of my mouth or my nostrils. That would be genuinely horrific.

The moment I thought about launching the plane, a prompt appeared.

"Deploy."

For all I knew, it really would come out of my nose. I steeled myself and gave the order.

Fortunately, the aircraft didn't emerge from inside my body. Instead, a miniature gate opened between my fingers, and out of it came… a paper airplane.

Not a sleek, impressive paper model — the kind of shabby thing you'd fold out of a scrap of A4 in five seconds. The only real difference from an ordinary paper plane was that it was black instead of white.

As the paper airplane soared into the sky, a transmission came through from its pilot.

Excuse me? I have never had a son who looks anything like you.

The paper airplane circled once over my head, then banked toward the enemy monster.

How exactly was a paper airplane supposed to finish off a Hobgoblin Warrior?

Half-skeptical, I gave the order anyway.

"Authorized. Take it out."

Alex answered simply and opened fire with mana rounds from beneath the paper airplane.

BRRRRRT!

After the machine-gun roar, the Hobgoblin's body collapsed, shattered, burst, and tore apart until it was barely recognizable as anything that had once been whole.

I couldn't answer right away.

That toy of a paper airplane had just reduced a warrior that had nearly killed me into a pile of unidentifiable rags.

It was funny enough when you were the one controlling the ability. From the receiving end, though? There was no black comedy more grotesque. Getting gunned down by a paper airplane — what a pitiful way to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠go.

Lieutenant Alex's prompt finally snapped me out of it.

"Who are you? Where did you come from? Are you from another world?"

So you're a zero-year-old baby Lieutenant Alex right now?

He did seem to reflect my idea of an ideal pilot, at least.

"Return authorized. Come back."

I'd nearly died, and the searing agony of the reconstruction had been worse than dying. On top of that I was still naked, and I had zero desire to stay here any longer.

Time to go home.

The Paper Crow slipped back into the miniature gate that opened between my outstretched index finger and thumb.

So the combat experience from fighting the Hobgoblin only counted once the carrier aircraft returned?

Either way, the ability I'd just gained had already leveled up. That felt good.

So — what changed at Level 2?

Surprisingly, the only thing that increased from a single level was the crew count.

"Home first."

I headed for the clear portal that had appeared in the center of the Colosseum.

I collected the settlement and stepped through the portal, returning to the corner of my room where I'd started.

I looked in the bathroom mirror.

A breathtakingly beautiful girl stood there — so pretty it was almost unnerving.

Standing around naked any longer would just make me look like a pervert, so I pulled out the school uniform my little sister had left at home and put it on. It was the only thing that fit, so I didn't have much choice.

I was about to share this incredible experience on the Hunter Gallery — something like "Shocking True Story That Stunned the World: Tutorial Difficulty Doesn't End at Hard!?!" — when I suddenly came to my senses.

Anonymous galleries aren't actually anonymous. A professional hacker or a government agency that wanted to track me down could do it in no time.

Secrets like this probably shouldn't be written down.

Right then, a woman's voice tickled inside my ear — different from Lieutenant Alex's.

"Who are you?"

The voice belonged to the crew member who'd been added when I hit Level 2.

An information and communications officer — exactly the kind of talent you needed to survive the internet age.

"You're sure I absolutely won't get tracked? You're certain?"

Just to be safe, I threw up a test post — and got back a bizarre IP address I'd never seen in my life. I ran it through a lookup tool and the location came back as Alpha Centauri.

Our Simona clearly had the skills to back it up.

I went back to the post I'd started and abandoned, and finished writing it.

Perfect. I'd left a useful tip on the Hunter Gallery. Hopefully someone who got dragged into Hell Mode would see it and survive.

"This world's internet is primitive, Simona?"

Being called "Mother" when I was unmarried and — originally — a man felt deeply, deeply weird.

But the fact remained that my body had become a mother ship, and finding a way back to my original form didn't look easy. So first things first: identity.

"Can you access the Republic of Korea resident registration system and insert a new identity for me?"

"Then put me in as the third child in my family."

"For now, just change the Chinese characters."

It took maybe ten seconds.

Simona displayed my newly completed resident registration certificate in a system window.

Just hitting Level 2 had put the internet under my control.

If my ability kept growing… what exactly was I going to be capable of?