Sunfish

"The amnesia bit is kinda cringe..."

I hadn't liked the web novel I'd read today. A hero from Earth saved another world and made it back home—only to return with his memories gone.

"Hmm... I'll give it a few more chapters. Whatever."

Even so, it got better from the very next one. The people he'd saved in that other world came looking for him on Earth, and everything after that was about catching the evil god that had shown up here too, and holding off the end of the world...

"I'll keep reading. The elves and beastkin came back."

When it came to other worlds, it really did come down to elves and beastkin.

"I should get going."

Somehow it was already time to meet my friend.

And that day, I got into an accident.

A whole year.

That was how long I had been in a coma. A tower had erupted out of nowhere, right where I'd been standing, and the disaster left me unconscious.

Status windows. System windows. Yes—that tower. The hunters' tower.

After the towers rose, the world was unrecognizable. Hunter had become the most envied, most popular job there was, and you could even summon the elves and beastkin I'd only ever seen in web novels.

The news kept pouring out stories about the otherworlders—elves and beastkin.

"...Why do otherworlders know how to speak Korean?"

With the language no barrier at all, plenty of them were naturalizing as Korean citizens.

Towers, hunters, elves and beastkin. All of it was everything I'd loved in web novels, and I still loved it now that it was real.

But how could a tower possibly have risen in the exact spot where I was standing? The accident hadn't stopped at a coma. I could barely use anything from the waist down. I was stuck in a wheelchair.

What was I supposed to do from here?

Well. There was one thing I was holding on to.

That year unconscious, I'd had a strange dream. In it, I fell into another world as an overwhelming powerhouse, and after a brutal struggle I struck down an evil god and saved that world. By sheer coincidence, it was the same story as the web novel I'd been reading the day of the accident.

Back when I had a terminal case of middle-school protagonist syndrome, I used to daydream about this kind of thing all the time...

At that age, I doubt I was the only one. Loyal elves and beastkin trailing after me with "Shall I eliminate them, Master?" Lines like "Right. I saved them in the end. Even if nobody ever knows, that's enough..." Things that, back then, had felt unaccountably cool.

The dream I'd had in the coma was a lot like that.

When I first woke up, I thought I'd never seen a dream that garbage. But...

Then I watched towers rise all over the world, and saw the elves and beastkin who had crossed over from another one, and I changed my mind.

What if everything in that dream wasn't just a dream...?

There was a reason I'd come to believe it.

Prayer. The power otherworlders used—elves and beastkin. It matched the dream exactly.

Something I'd first learned about inside a dream turned out to be something only otherworlders could use...

Doesn't that mean it's real? All of it?

The day I grabbed the strap hanging from the ceiling and managed to get into the wheelchair by myself, my rehab had gone far enough that they discharged me. I rolled outside and went looking.

A kind elf, a kind elf, a kind beastkin, a kind beastkin.

I stuck the word "kind" on the front of every one and prayed while I searched. Please, let me meet an otherworlder with a decent personality.

It didn't take long. In front of a flower shop I found an elf with a gentle face, holding a bouquet and breathing in the scent. The middle-aged woman who owned the place stood before him, hands politely clasped.

The moment I actually laid eyes on an otherworlder, my heart caught fire.

I'm the hero who saved their world! I don't have any power right now, nothing I can prove it with, but—!

In the dream I'd thrown Prayer around without a second thought. Back in reality, I couldn't use a single one.

But what if I tell him something only the hero would know?

I wrestled my runaway heart back down, wheeled up beside the elf in front of the shop, and spoke.

"Um... mind if I ask you one thing?"

Whether the flowers had charmed him or not, the elf never so much as glanced my way. He just kept smelling them. It was the shop owner who turned, eyes wide with surprise.

It's all right, ma'am. Otherworlders are arrogant, sure, but once he hears me out, that attitude is going to flip completely.

I steadied my voice and tried again, louder.

"Ahem! Excuse me, Mr. Elf? I just wanted to ask—"

"Are not only your legs crippled, but your eyes as well? Can you not see that I am busy?"

"What?"

Was smelling flowers really that urgent? Pretty face or not, this elf had a foul mouth.

"Ah, I'm sorry. Still, if it isn't any trouble, if you could just hear me out for a—"

"It is trouble!"

The elf flicked a gray shard no bigger than a fingernail at the shop owner, spun on his heel with the flowers still in hand, and walked off.

Just like I'd heard. Otherworlders had absolutely no manners!

Even so, I couldn't let him leave like this. There had to be some subject that would catch an otherworlder's interest.

Right. This.

"Do you know the Hero!?"

At my shout, the elf turned his head.

"The Hero? What nonsense are you spouting. Do not bother me any further, human."

...What?

He had the look of a man who'd just been stopped on the street and asked if he knew the Way.

This couldn't be right. This couldn't be right at all.

I stared blankly after the elf's retreating back until I finally came to my senses.

Fine. There was bound to be at least one person out there who didn't know the Hero.

The dream only came back in scraps. The things that actually mattered—who I'd met in that other world—I couldn't remember at all. But one scene had stayed perfectly clear: the one where I saved the world, and everyone in it blessed me and lifted me up...!

It was too soon to give up.

This time I tried a dog beastkin who looked friendly. Aside from the animal ears and tail, he was identical to a human, which made him seem cute.

"And here I wondered what you were so desperate to say! The Hero?! Don't spout baseless nonsense!"

"I-I'm sorry."

Same thing.

"See that you are more careful from now on!"

I bowed my head from the wheelchair and apologized with everything I had, and the dog beastkin let it go without another word.

I found one more after that and asked again. Useless.

"...Was it really nothing but a garbage dream? Just coincidence?"

Coincidence didn't explain why Prayer kept snagging in my mind. Not a single hunter class could learn it. Prayer belonged to otherworlders alone. And yet it had come out of my dream—and in that dream, I had been using it myself.

How could that possibly be a coincidence?

"Status."

I got home and opened my status window.

What was that folded bit in the upper right?

That was strange, too. No matter what I tried, it wouldn't budge, and mine was the only status window that refused to screenshot. When I asked on the System Gallery, people mocked me for talking nonsense as some unawakened nobody.

"Haaah."

The two who'd actually posted had both flashed awakened status windows, just to make fun of me.

"It's not that I didn't awaken. I couldn't, because I was stuck in rehab."

You could only bring things that had come out of the Tower into the Tower. Which meant I had to go in without a wheelchair. So for a while I'd practiced the low crawl, and punching a pillow.

Killing the Floor 0 monster meant crawling about five meters, and if someone whose toes barely wiggled was going to clear it in time, he needed the practice. Rehab, drills, months of it. Today, at last, I was entering the Tower for the first time. I'd even bought Tower-issued clothes ahead of time and put them on.

I checked the tip post on the gallery one more time. Floor 0 was nothing special. Time to actually go in.

"System."

The moment I called the System, a blue hologram bloomed right in front of my eyes.

"Enter the Tower."

The instant I touched Floor 0, I was transferred from my bed straight into the Tower.

The first place I arrived was a space called the Preparation Room. It was about the size of a classroom, and one side was sealed by a transparent wall I still couldn't pass. Beyond that wall was the field where the monster waited. Preparation Room and field sat flush against each other, with nothing but the transparent wall between them.

A faint light leaked down from the ceiling, just enough to make out the monster of Floor 0.

"So that's the Floor 0 monster. A sunfish..."

Beyond the wall, about five meters away, a single sunfish lay on its side, glaring this way. Flat on my stomach, I met its eyes.

I looked at the dry, toneless window and touched Yes.

From here on, the transparent wall would let me through. I crawled.

Shff. Shff. Shff. Shff.

"Wow. Dirt tastes amazing."

The field was bare earth, and as I dragged myself along, soil kept pushing into my mouth.

"Hah... hah..."

With my legs useless, crawling a few meters was enough to leave me badly out of breath.

· · ·

More than forty seconds later, I finally arrived.

The sunfish, right in front of my face. Except this thing was hard to dismiss as just a sunfish. Bloodshot eyes, mouth gaping open and shut, glaring straight at me—there was no way this was an ordinary fish...

Thwack!

Whatever. Ordinary or not, it didn't matter.

Why was I forcing myself to become a hunter in a body like this? Because the Tower's rewards were enough to drive a person mad. They could fix my ruined lower body—something modern medicine had no hope of curing.

Thwack!

Plenty of people gave up. Some couldn't stand to take a life. Some got scared the moment the sunfish ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stared at them.

So why do I want to kill this thing, something I'm seeing for the first time today, this badly?

The beating went on.

· · ·

Ding!

A cheerful chime, and a system window telling me I'd cleared Floor 0. Thanks to all that practice at home, I'd made it in time.

Choose right away.

I touched Yes, and classes rose in front of my eyes as letters of light.

"Ngh—!"

One of them blazed bright enough to blind me, then turned gray. Gray meant Iron. Every other class was written in a coppery color. Bronze.

Aptitude came in five grades: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. How severe the aftereffects were when you climbed the Tower depended on it.

What I was going to choose was...

Summoner.

Luckily, it had come up Bronze. The truth, though, was that Summoner came with a mountain of problems. How did otherworlders cross over to Earth in the first place? Through a summoner's summoning.

If the dream had been real, I could've picked this with an easy heart...

Even so, there was nothing else to choose. No matter what class a man with ruined legs took, nobody was going to let him into a party. In the end, I'd have to climb sprawled across a summon's back.

"I'll give you everything, liver and gallbladder both. Just climb with me until my legs are fixed."

All I had left was the prayer meta. I just hoped whatever came out was even a little less arrogant.

I touched Yes on "Will you summon?" at once.

And then, to a blare of fanfare—pa-ra-pam!—names floated up.

...?

Out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of nowhere, the descriptions were telling me to get my head cut off. None of it made any sense.