Dealer Info Gallery
The second floor.
Twenty melee goblins and ten goblin archers awaited them.
Floor Cleared!
They cleared it even faster than the first floor, largely because they sprinted from the very second they crossed the threshold.
The third floor had the exact same lineup as the second, with a single werewolf thrown into the mix. It made virtually no difference. Once pinned down in unbreakable chains and pummeled, a werewolf was fundamentally no different from a goblin.
The ogres that surfaced on the seventh and eighth floors proved just as helpless. No matter how densely packed with muscle an ogre was, an arrow planted directly between its eyes put it down in one shot.
And now, they stood on the ninth floor.
They had just finished neutralizing a swarm of slimes interspersed among the mob packs. Trapped in the binding chains, the slimes were completely stripped of their ability to divide.
“How many seconds?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Whoa.”
For context, the previous world record for the ninth floor hovered around the thirty-minute mark.
“Seriously, what kind of class is Support?” Sunwoo shook his head in sheer disbelief. “This makes no damn sense.”
“Heheh.”
The corners of Jiyu's lips curved upward on their own.
To be honest, none of it felt real yet. Becoming a woman was bizarre enough, but grabbing a broken, god-tier role and obliterating world records in rapid succession pushed it over the top. It would probably hit home only after she lay down in bed tonight. Too many impossible things had happened back-to-back.
“Go on, praise me more.”
Still, disbelief was one thing, and receiving due credit was another. Jiyu deserved some reward for all the suffering she had endured up to this point.
“Guess you’ve recovered pretty well, seeing you act like this.” Sunwoo walked right past Jiyu, completely ignoring her puffed-up, smug expression.
His footsteps led toward the Tower's interior shop, styled after a medieval banquet hall in a luxury hotel. It served as a safe haven before attempting the tenth floor, appearing right before every milestone floor divisible by ten—like the twentieth and thirtieth.
“Do Supports get different items too?”
Hunters could spend gold to purchase items here—single-use artifacts that functioned strictly within the confines of the Tower.
“Huh?”
However, an unexpected hiccup greeted them.
“What gives? This has never happened before.”
The kiosk selling disposable items was entirely grayed out.
Previous floor clear information has not yet been updated.
It appeared they had blown through the earlier floors so quickly that the system hadn't even finished registering the data.
“Let's just eat first,” Sunwoo suggested.
Fortunately, the food kiosk worked without a hitch.
“At least the Tower gets this part right.”
All food in the Tower shop was completely free. So long as a dish existed on Earth, the Tower conjured it out of thin air with magic. It allowed climbers to fill their bellies before tackling the tenth floor, though attempting to exploit the system by ordering items that granted combat bonuses was strictly forbidden.
High-ranking hunters must eat like kings in here, Jiyu thought.
Low-level damage dealers rarely earned the privilege of stepping inside the Tower. For them, this was one of the few chances to taste genuine luxury cuisine. Jiyu, too, had long decided what she would order whenever she finally entered the Tower.
Fried chicken, obviously.
Not just any chicken, either—the newest release from a top-tier premium brand. A special occasion demanded something extraordinary, specifically the very dish plastered across those unskippable ads she had been forced to endure because she couldn't afford YouTube Premium.
Just as Jiyu was licking her lips in anticipation, Sunwoo spoke up.
“I’ll have a T-bone steak. What about you, Jiyu?”
“Make that two.”
Her menu changed the split second she heard his choice. When it came to fine dining, a novice’s palate was no match for a veteran hunter who treated the Tower like his personal living room.
“You actually fight pretty well, you know?” Sunwoo remarked as they took their seats at an empty table.
“I barely did anything, though...”
Jiyu casually pulled out her smartphone. Despite conjuring meals through magic, the kiosk still required preparation time. Then again, considering cellular internet worked perfectly inside the Tower, a cooking delay was hardly the strangest thing around.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
Brushing him off with a vague mumble, Jiyu tilted her screen away so only she could see it. Even as LifelongDealer—a beloved, recognized regular on the Dealer Info Gallery—she still felt a twinge of embarrassment about browsing the board right in front of someone else.
Not that she could stop herself.
The entire front page was flooded with concept posts about her. Any gamer who could resist checking that had to be clinically insane.
Is this actually true?
That item was genuinely real?
A chance to escape the untouchable bottom-tier dealer caste was dangling right before my eyes?
And I just hit downvote on the listing and went to sleep???
— Stay a dealer for the rest of your life, bro.
— You dared downvote that? Lost your damn mind.
— You failed to recognize God when she stood before you.
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ROFLMAOOOOOO
— lmao
— Serves you right haha
— Why is this a top post? Did someone bot the upvotes?
↳ Look at his handle.
↳ Ah lol
The forum was in an absolute state of collective hysteria.
“Whoa...”
◈ [PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE]
◈ [Support, by definition, must be open to all hunters...]
◈ [I suddenly want to make the Hall of Fame]
◈ [So can Support beat foreign S-ranks or what?]
Nearly every single thread centered on Jiyu. What she was scrolling through wasn't even limited to hunter boards; it was the real-time popular feed across the wider web. Jiyu had vacuumed up the entirety of the internet's attention. Every forum had abandoned its usual topics to talk exclusively about her, and though people normally grew fatigued of viral trends by this point, the fervor showed zero signs of waning.
After months of seeing nothing but reptilian conspiracy theories and fellow dealers crying about their miserable lives, seeing positive news for once makes me feel alive again. Who knew scrolling the board could feel this wholesome?
— Fr fr lol
— Please let this hype last forever
— We need more info drops to keep the bait burning
In an online space previously plagued by hollow, exhausting arguments, the Support topic was sweet rain upon parched soil. Of course, that didn't mean contrarians were entirely absent.
What does a new class being discovered have to do with your lives? Nothing changed for you losers. Are you all projecting your self-worth onto someone else's achievement because your own lives are total failures? Typical basement dwellers, utterly pathetic.
Malicious comments were inevitable—people even left one-star reviews on the Pyramids, so Jiyu was hardly immune. Not that it bothered her in the slightest.
— Sounds like your life is the only pathetic thing here? lol
— This clown isn't even an Awakened hunter.
— "Too much sand at the Pyramids, 1 star."
The comment section rallied instantly, pummeling the troll on Jiyu’s behalf. There was good reason for their fierce defensiveness.
“She closed an S-rank gate for us, this is the bare minimum respect she deserves,” one reply stated.
Word of the gate Jiyu had eradicated had quietly circulated among the hunter community, even if its official rank remained undisclosed to the public. Furthermore, having received the worldwide system broadcast, no hunter could fail to recognize that something colossal had transpired.
Pretending you're hunters when you're just regular civvies.
— Fr fr lol
— All the posers who pretended to be Awakened are outing themselves today
In short, anyone dismissing Jiyu’s awakening as trivial clearly wasn't an Awakened hunter at all.
“Hehehe!”
“Food’s here. Stop staring at your phone and eat.”
Basking in the intoxicating aroma of online salt and inferiority complexes made the arrival of her steak all the sweeter.
“What on earth are you doing? Who cuts a steak like that?” Sunwoo frowned.
“Huh?” Jiyu looked up innocently.
“What? It still tastes good.”
A puddle of precious juices flooded Jiyu’s plate, leaking out in tragic quantities. She had fallen victim to those viral cooking shorts—the ones where creators pressed down hard on the meat to show off its juiciness. Having imitated them without an ounce of proper knife technique, she had effectively shredded the cut of meat into ragged ribbons.
“Open your mouth.”
Sunwoo slipped a cleanly sliced piece of his own steak between her lips.
“Mmph?”
A perfectly seared, delicately crispy crust brushed against the roof of her mouth. The moment she bit down, an eruption of rich, savory juices washed over her tongue, followed by the smoky kiss of flame and the deep, woodsy richness unique to prime beef.
She had lived her entire life without knowing meat could taste like this.
“Why does yours taste completely different?”
“Why do you think?”
Jiyu felt thoroughly wronged. She had already butchered over half of her steak; fixing her technique now wouldn't magically piece the meat back together.
“Say ah.”
“Ah.”
Wearing an expression of mild pity, Sunwoo quietly set about slicing the rest of his steak and feeding it to her piece by piece. Jiyu accepted every bite without hesitation. It was a little embarrassing, sure, but vastly more convenient.
“I’ll be able to eat stuff like this in the outside world now, right?” she asked, eyes glimmering with hope.
“Doubt it.”
“Really?”
Reality, it seemed, wasn't so generous.
“Buying an Awakened Palace unit is ridiculously expensive. Plus, there are tons of other hidden expenses.”
“Shouldn't they just hand out a house for free to active hunters?”
“That's the Magic Tower for you. Humans only work hard when they're kept perpetually in need of money.”
Exchanging idle banter, the two finished their luxurious meal. By the time they wiped their mouths, the item kiosk had finally blinked back to life.
“What item build does a Support even go for?” Sunwoo wondered aloud.
It was time to pick their gear for the upcoming boss fight. Sunwoo made his selection almost instantaneously; ranged dealer itemization had been thoroughly analyzed and optimized for years.
“I’ll just trust my gut.”
Jiyu casually swiped through the kiosk screen. It sounded reckless, but she wasn't actually choosing at random. Hunter’s Knowledge extended its guidance to equipment selection as well.
“Hmm... Death Crown?”
“You’re buying the Death Crown?”
While scrolling, one particular item had practically leaped off the display, hooking her attention with irresistible force. Still, Sunwoo's shock was entirely justified. The Death Crown was universally regarded as an artifact built strictly for ranged damage dealers.
“Well, do whatever you want. If your gut points to it, it’s probably right.” Having finalized his purchases, Sunwoo leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and drifted into meditation.
It was a standard drill all hunters were trained to perform: resisting the mental corruption inherent to Hunter’s Knowledge. As established, Hunter’s Knowledge was a form of psychological pollution that carried persistent side effects. Dealers grew increasingly ferocious, Commanders turned cold and detached, and Tanks became... well, somewhat masochistic. Purchasing artifacts worked the same way. Every item bought required enduring a unique brand of mental interference.
With sufficient mental training, the influence could be kept well within manageable limits. Alternatively, purchasing items with opposing affinities helped balance out the symptoms.
“Yeah, the Death Crown makes total sense.”
That was the exact reason Jiyu had locked her eyes on it. The Death Crown was designed to amplify damage output to absurd heights, making it an odd choice for a Support who possessed zero offensive skills and had yet to unlock her third ability. However, its psychological side effect stood in direct opposition to the mental pollution inflicted by the Support class.
Ugh... this feels so damn weird.
The mental side effect bestowed by her Starlight-Imbued Staff closely resembled maternal instinct. An instinctual urge to protect Sunwoo, an impulse to leap into harm's way and take hits on his behalf, a warm sense of reassurance whenever she watched his broad back lead the way—even a swell of maternal pride whenever he took down monsters cleanly.
Ew... goosebumps...
She desperately needed the Death Crown's personality shift. Known colloquially as the "Mesugaki Maker," the Crown of Death was infamous for turning its wearer into a condescending, arrogant brat who looked down on everyone. Mixing that with her sickeningly sweet Support maternal instincts ought to cancel things out nicely.
“Wait, can you even afford it?” Sunwoo asked.
“Heheh. I've got my ways!”
Jiyu beamed with pride. She had more than enough gold. Befitting its absurd stats, the Death Crown carried a staggering price tag. But while trailing behind Sunwoo, Jiyu had noticed something peculiar: every pile of gold dropped by slain monsters had flown directly into her pocket of its own accord. She had swept up every coin Sunwoo missed, functioning much like an auto-loot pet from an MMORPG. It felt slightly bizarre, but she certainly wasn't complaining about the utility.
“That's seriously unfair.”
“Feel free to be more jealous!” Grinning, Jiyu tapped the screen and purchased the Death Crown.
“Huh?”
Even after buying the crown, she had gold left over.
“Wait, does Support get boosted gold drop rates too?”
“It even does that?” Sunwoo let out a dry chuckle, looking visibly exasperated. True to his dealer nature, envy was practically radiating off him.
“Hmph~ You can put a little more heart into your jealousy, you know.” Pushing her chest out, Jiyu proudly thumped her collarbone.
“Right, good job. What a good little girl you've become.”
“Zero sincerity.”
Rolling their eyes, the two turned to buy their basic armor sets. A soft flash enveloped Sunwoo, clothing him in the sleek, hooded attire characteristic of a fantasy archer.
“Ugh... do I seriously have to wear this?”
“Don't wear it, then.”
Jiyu grimaced at the kiosk screen, her face contorting in pure agony.
“Ugggh... I hate this so much...”
The Support basic armor set displayed on screen was aggressively feminine: a sailor-style uniform dripping with excessive ribbons, frills, and a dizzying assortment of cute accessories.
No way... Absolutely not. Over my dead body.
She bit her lip, glaring daggers at the monitor. Yet, as a hunter, letting vanity waste valuable gold was out of the question. Even basic armor provided essential stat boosts, which meant faster clear times, which in turn yielded superior clearance rewards—more magic stones, and potentially new artifacts.
“Hah... Fine. It’s not like anyone's here to see it except you anyway...”
Pouting sourly, Jiyu finally tapped the purchase button.
“Huh?”
The moment the hyper-feminine outfit materialized across her frame, a violent shiver ran down her spine. Her entire body froze solid.
“What kind of clothes are—wait. H-Hold on...!”
While the basic Support set looked undeniably pretty, an unspoken, catastrophic rule govern equipment transformation in the Tower: the armor manifested by overwriting whatever outerwear the user currently wore, thoughtfully leaving only their underwear intact underneath.
“W-What is this...? S-Seriously? Why?!”
The outfit Jiyu had been wearing was Sunwoo’s childhood swimsuit.
And the Tower system had classified it strictly as clothing—not underwear.