Pain
“Baek Seol. I'm sorry, but I can't take this job.”
“Director Gong—!”
“Save it. There's nothing left to hear. The client's the desperate one here, yet somehow I'm getting treated like a debtor. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Get out. I'm not taking any work for the time being.”
"……."
Oh Yong-gu still had a smile plastered across his lips, but his eyes were wavering badly.
“What are you still standing there for? I said no, that's why you're leaving.”
An unmistakable order to clear out. Under that flat, unyielding stare, Baek Seol and her party had no choice but to file out of the office.
“Director. Are you sure about letting them go like that? Word is he runs a pharmaceutical company around these parts…….”
Nobody in the crew was ignorant of what pharmaceutical companies did for a living.
“Forget it. That bastard isn't a company rep.”
"……?"
"……?"
Everyone wore the same startled expression.
“Come on. You think I'd never run a background check on the outfits operating around here? I've been quietly compiling intel on Baek Seol's company all along. But that guy just now? One hundred percent not the CEO. He's upper management at best. Or maybe not even that.”
“Then why bring him inside, is the part I'm asking.”
“No idea. Big money was moving, so maybe he needed clearance from above.”
“Or perhaps the part where surveillance was required?”
“Other people's family business is best left at exactly this much.”
“But more information is a good part to have, no?”
“Digging into this right now would get us nothing. That isn't information, it's just speculation. All we need to do is write up a clean contract when Baek Seol comes back around.”
“You're that certain she'll return, Director.”
“She'll come. So everyone get ready.”
A few hours later, Baek Seol came back.
She was alone this time, and she brought a backpack stuffed to the seams with gold coins.
At a flick of Won-goo's eyes, Lee Hyun-sung counted out the coins from the pack.
“Confirmed. Hyeong-nim.”
“Then all that's left is a trip to Sanghae's to write up the contract.”
“That won't be necessary.”
"……?"
“I brought the contract with me.”
Baek Seol held out the document. The moment they laid eyes on it, everyone visibly stiffened.
Normally, a broker mediated the terms of a deal and skimmed a commission off the top—but on rare occasions, contracts closed without one. The deal the crew had struck with Rafael out in the Dwarf Elf Forest had been exactly that kind.
A contract drawn on special paper. And since that special paper commanded an exorbitant price, nobody used it unless the deal truly warranted it.
“It's a vision-blurring contract. It's a curse, so there's no weaseling out of it, either.”
“Cursed contracts are hard as hell to get your hands on. Where'd you dig this up?”
“That's not what matters, is it? You can sign, can't you?”
“We keep our contracts, so of course we can. But what about your side? Paper this potent doesn't come cheap.”
“Orders from the company.”
“This contract would fetch more than twenty gold coins at market rate…… and they're burning twenty on paper for an eighty-coin deal?”
"……."
“Ah! Confidentiality. That's what this is about, isn't it?”
To Baek Seol's company, eighty gold coins were pocket change. They were a substantial organization, pulling in money on an entirely different scale. Losing eighty coins wouldn't so much as make them stagger.
“Director Gong.”
“I know. Sign it. Bring me the contract. Let's do this properly, line by line.”
Once the contract was signed, Won-goo gathered the crew.
They clustered around him in a loose circle.
“The coins we just got are going entirely into this upcoming raid. Which means—no dividend this time.”
It amounted to a decree, but not a single member raised an objection. Even Mu Beob-sa, a man who treated complaint-making as a hobby, kept his mouth shut.
“In exchange, don't worry. We're going to use this to crack that Tower wide open, the easy way.”
The crew no longer bothered asking how he knew. Won-goo had explained enough along the way to be believed, and then proven it beyond doubt. At this point, they simply didn't ask anymore.
At the Coin Exchange, Won-goo spent without hesitation.
The upgrades came in waves—he poured a considerable sum into his physical abilities, and put equally substantial investment into the Trailer.
On top of that, he upgraded the shelter-related functions he'd been putting off all this time.
The Temporary Shelter was, by design, a trait capable of an enormous range of upgrades and modifications—but until now, almost nothing had been invested in it.
Won-goo dropped five coins into reducing the time discrepancy with the Temporary Shelter, and spread more across its other facilities.
To the crew, the Temporary Shelter was as good as a resort. Which meant that inside it, they needed to be able to do things an ordinary shelter wouldn't allow.
With all eighty coins spent, Won-goo put in one more.
Two hundred coins would have been enough to purchase a third Milestone Trait outright. Spending one extra was purely to keep himself on schedule.
He finished the configuration and hit confirm, and light spilled from the machine, wrapping around him as if scanning his whole body.
Won-goo's chosen third trait.
A function branching off from the Trailer line.
[Miniaturization].
An intuitive trait—it did exactly what it said, shrinking the Trailer down to a tiny size.
One could argue it was absurdly simple for a third Milestone Trait, but dig into the details and it was far more than that.
For a regressed survivor like Won-goo, one of the fastest ways to pile up coins was clearing structures.
Towers and dungeons.
He knew the clearing methods for a great many of them by heart, so even running only the structures he recognized would have let him grow far faster than he was now.
The reason he'd never touched them was the Trailer—his single greatest weakness.
The Trailer was the core of his entire ability set. It supplied his weapons, served as his shield, doubled as his home, got him from place to place, and worked as a refuge when things went sideways.
It was both the beginning and the end of everything Won-goo had.
But its sheer bulk meant it couldn't enter a standard dungeon or tower. Clearing one meant doing it without the Trailer, and that was a risk he couldn't justify.
Towers and dungeons were lethal ground even for someone who knew the method cold. Won-goo never moved without favorable odds.
Nobody understood better than he did that dying meant game over.
But with the third trait, [Miniaturization], he could walk in and out of towers and dungeons whenever he pleased.
That was no small advantage. Depending on how it was used, it bordered on an outright cheat.
Coming out of the booth after spending everything, a familiar face popped up in front of him.
“Director! Direeeector!”
Il-chul came bounding up, grinning ear to ear.
“Tsk. Don't make a scene. Didn't I tell you to keep a low profile?”
“Director! I dug up some huge news, that's why!”
“What news? A tower showed up on Cheonchu Mountain?”
"……?"
Il-chul froze solid, stunned.
“That a no?”
“Uh…….”
“It is, right?”
"……."
“It is! It's not!”
“It…… it is, though.”
“Right. Then it's a match.”
“Huh?”
“You said it matched. So it matches.”
“W-wait, hold on, Director. I have other news too—”
And with that, Il-chul spun on his heel and bolted.
Won-goo snorted a laugh and headed for the office.
“Jeon Hye-ji.”
Thwack!
He tossed a gun into her hands.
“I'm using this from now on?”
“No. You're using it from now on. Permanently.”
"……?"
“I've got mine. So that one's yours. You won't get all the functions mine has, but for clearing out trash mobs, nothing beats it.”
The gun Won-goo carried was an ability derived from the Trailer—which meant that paying coins could multiply the number of guns, too.
“Right now it's just a bit more firepower, but later on it'll fire heavier rounds as well.”
“So it links to your own ability, Director.”
“That's right. But there's plenty more important than that. And—Rafael.”
This time it was clothing he handed over. The reinforced padding the crew wore into combat.
Rafael had been making do with an inferior version of the same gear until now.
“Her measurements are close to Hye-ji's, so it came together fast.”
Rafael changed right there on the spot.
“If everyone's ready, we move. The more time we've got, the better. And—Dan-shin.”
“Yes, Director!”
“Keep an eye on the goblin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shutters down, period, until I'm back. Anyone knocks, you don't open. Nobody goes outside either. Can you handle that?”
“Of course. I'll get the cleaning done.”
“Cleaning…… there's more of that to do?”
“Plenty. Wherever people have been, traces remain. So then I must do it again…….”
“Fine. Handle it however you like.”
From Sabbath to Cheonchu Mountain was a short hop, and they arrived in no time.
At the entrance, Won-goo shrank the Trailer on the spot.
Clank. Whump! Creak—
The Trailer began folding in on itself, and in moments it had compressed down to the size of a briefcase.
The crew stared at it with their eyes practically bugging out.
“Hyun-sung. How long'd that take?”
“Precisely thirty-seven minutes and forty seconds, Hyeong-nim.”
“Still barely any investment in it, so it's slow. Jo Mu-sa.”
“Yep!”
“This is yours to carry from here on out.”
“Me, sir?”
“Yeah. That's your role. You're the healer, so once we're inside you'll be hanging back anyway.”
“Yep.”
“Keep it close. Use it well, too. It's compressed, which makes it even tougher than the full Trailer. You catch my meaning?”
“It can be used as a shield, sir?”
“Exactly. Here, take it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See the button on the handle? Press it, twist, and dial in the number to pull out what you need. When I tell you to retrieve something, you retrieve it.”
“Ah. Yep.”
“And number 119 is yours. Save it for when it counts.”
“Mine, sir?”
“There's an emergency kit in that slot. Better stuff than what you carry, by a wide margin. But it's expensive. So you use your judgment, and only in a genuine emergency.”
“Ah…… then shouldn't I check what's inside first……”
“Checking costs money. You'll find out when you crack it open later.”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
“Now, briefing on the Tower. This one runs on the keyword 'Pain.' Uncomfortable from the keyword alone, right? But it's nowhere near the worst. Here, pain means sharing.”
“Sharing, sir?”
“Yeah. Sharing pain. Everyone who enters this Tower is built to share each other's pain.”
An unusual rule, to say the least.
“Hard to picture exactly, isn't it?”
“If it were only a matter of sharing pain, the difficulty would hardly be……”
“No. Get careless, and the difficulty spikes sky-high.”
“How so, Director?”
“It means you bleed if you don't know this Tower's rules inside and out. It doesn't simply share pain—it stacks it.”
"……?"
“Say a hundred people enter the Tower. All hundred of them feel the physical pain every one of those hundred endures. If five of the hundred get hurt, all hundred feel those five injuries at once. Following me?”
“Then that means……”
“Right. A small team is always, always better for clearing it. Which is why this Tower has to fall before its floors climb. Otherwise the difficulty goes straight to hell.”
“Director.”
“What. Hye-ji.”
“Then if a crowd stormed in without knowing any of this……”
Won-goo answered with deadpan calm, spitting out the words with cynical precision.
“What do you think? They all die together.”
Gong Won-goo 120 → 201