The Tower Truly Is a Goldmine

Amid the flood of data pouring into my vision, that permanently boosted resistance stood proudly on my status screen.

"If I keep downing these... could I actually push it all the way to a hundred percent?"

Probably impossible. Resistances weren't some cheap giveaway you could just game infinitely.

"Still, I had a hunch, but the cold really didn't touch me."

No frostbite, exactly as planned. I had worried that the buff might not even kick in, but my fire resistance had indeed shot up by thirty percent. Time was ticking away every second, so lingering here was out of the question.

"Time to move."

The time limit was one hour. In that span, I either had to clear the floor or scramble back to the safety zone. Stepping past the black pillar totem that demarcated the safe area, a brand-new atmosphere slammed into my lungs. A blast of sweltering air rushed up my nostrils, carrying a stench so pungent it felt like a crate of rotten eggs had exploded right in front of me.

Sulfur.

"Damn, this resistance is putting in work, though."

The thirty-one percent fire resistance made all the difference. Aside from the misery of breathing rotten eggs, even the blistering heat radiating off the pillars of flame bursting sporadically throughout the gorge felt downright warm and cozy. Fortunately, those fire pillars didn't actively track or lunge at people. The only real threat was catching a stray ember ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bursting out from them, which could inflict brutal burns.

At the mouth of the canyon, chunks of stone hovered in midair, completely defying modern common sense.

"Those must be the Floating Stones."

It brought back memories of childhood, stepping across stone slabs over a neighborhood creek. The only hitch here was that I had to navigate these tiny airborne footholds suspended over an abyss. A tower was still a tower, after all.

"Nothing's ever easy, is it...?"

First and foremost, the advice said to watch out for stray embers from the fire pillars. When your foot touched a Floating Stone, there would be a strange sense of buoyancy, a slight dipping sensation like stepping onto a trampoline. Hunters on the forums had strictly warned never to panic and lose balance when that happened. Bracing myself, I took a deliberate step forward and brought my foot down onto the very first stone.

Whoosh.

A mild sensation of floating into empty space swept over me, and the stone sank an inch or two. But just as the forum hunters had advised, centering my core leveled it right back out.

Don't look down....

Beneath those roaring flame pillars, the canyon floor was undoubtedly churning with molten magma or something equally lethal. Eyes forward. That was all that mattered.

Forty-nine Floating Stones left.

Can I really make it? The doubt crept in, but I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ruthlessly crushed it. I had to make it. There was no going back.

"Right, Minseok, you piece of shit?"

I took another step. Stable. No issues. The first one was the hardest; the second came easily.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh....

By the time I reached the halfway point, a sudden wall of blistering heat slammed against my face.

FWOOOOSH! CRACK! BOOM!

Right beside me, a massive pillar of fire roared skyward.

'Holy shit! Too close...!'

Accompanied by dazzling visual pyrotechnics, sparks and embers exploded in every direction. Luckily, it didn't look like any embers would arc quite far enough to hit my perch. But in a place like this, you never gambled on luck.

'Better safe than sorry. I'll wait until the pillar settles down.'

I stood frozen with my legs spread wide, one foot planted firmly on each of two neighboring Floating Stones. An utterly ridiculous, undignified posture, sure—but a hell of a lot better than plummeting into the fiery abyss below.

"Finally gone."

Once the eruption subsided, I resumed my steady advance. Even with a thirty-one percent resistance buff, the ambient air was roasting; without it, someone would likely suffocate or burn to a crisp within minutes.

"No wonder people say this place is hell."

The nerve-wracking tension of treading carefully on floating slabs, combined with sporadic geysers of fire detonating without warning, pushed adrenaline to its peak. With only about thirty minutes left on my resistance buff, impatience began gnawing at me. Fortunately, having cleared the halfway mark, I seemed to be on schedule, but I couldn't afford to dawdle.

I needed to pick up the pace.

Whoosh, whoosh!

I ignored the fire pillars bursting in the distance and pressed on. Just then—

BOOM! CRACK!

Another pillar erupted, violently spraying clusters of fiery slag.

THWACK!

A dull impact smacked against the edge of my Floating Stone, and the concussive shockwave slammed hard into my torso.

"Ugh! Damn it!!"

My footing wobbled, but because I had paused my stride, I barely managed to absorb the momentum and keep my balance.

FWOOOOOOSH!

As if the entire Tower had gone completely mad, multiple fire pillars erupted in unison all across the canyon.

BOOM! CRACK! BANG!

Embers rained everywhere. And right through the swirling chaos, a sizable fireball shot straight toward me on a dead-on trajectory.

FWHIIIISH!

'I... I have to intercept that!'

As long as my legs held their grip and my arms braced the impact—

SWOOSH! SSSSS!

A burning mass half the size of a Floating Stone smacked right into my palms. Steam hissed against skin.

"...Wait, that's not even that hot."

My palms felt warm, sure, but it was roughly the temperature of a heated canned coffee freshly pulled from a convenience store warmer. With that, the fire resistance granted by the Ice Flame Poison proved its worth beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Beneath the gorge, the ocean of fire raged and threw a fit, but aside from that one hairy moment, no further crises threatened my path.

"Phew...."

One false move could have sent me tumbling to a gruesome death. Shaking off the lingering stiffness in my limbs, I steadily hopped across the remaining Floating Stones.

Thud.

"I almost bought the farm back there."

Safely crossing the floating bridge brought me directly before the clear gate. The first floor of the Black Tower was definitely not something to scoff at. Simply traversing the stones drained massive amounts of physical stamina, not to mention having to dodge stray embers along the way. Without fire resistance?

"Man...."

Climbing this place wouldn't have even crossed my mind. The people who endured this grueling trial were the ones who cleared the Red Theme. And now, I was standing among their ranks.

'Time to get out of here quickly.'

The buff duration had dwindled to its absolute final minutes. Directly before my eyes, an inscrutable azure gate swirled with ripples of luminous energy.

"Whoa... so this is a gate."

The realization hit me all over again: I had truly become an awakened hunter.

"Getting to witness stuff like this in person is pretty neat."

People often said that climbing the Tower exposed you to so many bizarre natural spectacles that you never needed to travel for sightseeing, and they were dead right. Just looking at the fiery red flowers blooming beside the gate proved the point.

"Haven't seen Fire Forget-Me-Nots in a while."

Its blossoms resembled flickering tongues of flame. With yellow stems trailing up into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠delicate calyxes, their striking beauty had once drawn research from production-class ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠awakeners, but having yielded no practical utility, they were ultimately dismissed as nothing more than pretty ornamental weeds.

'Should I grab one as a souvenir?'

The moment I reached out a hand toward a blossom—

Ding!

A fresh cluster of data floated before my eyes.

A brand-new poison recipe utilizing the flower, and...

"Ten percent Mana Conductivity?!"

Considering the Freezing Herb sold by the Hunter Association scraped by with an abysmal two percent, a ten percent conductivity rating was utterly massive. Gears turned frantically in my mind.

'Fire Forget-Me-Nots can be an ingredient, too....'

Since a full recipe existed, these flowers held guaranteed practical value. Was there any way to preserve this high conductivity rating after hauling them outside?

"Probably not right now."

Still, I had stumbled onto crucial new insight: ingredients harvested inside the Tower possessed dramatically higher Mana Conductivity.

"Maybe I should brew them directly inside the Tower...?"

I would figure that out later. The bottom line was that with a verified recipe in hand, these flowers were bound to become a lucrative resource.

"Time to harvest every single one!"

I swept up every single ten-percent Fire Forget-Me-Not within arm's reach, shoved them into my inventory, and threw myself straight into the glowing gate.

Fshhhhh!

Ding!

Having safely returned from the Tower, system notifications detailing my rewards greeted my gaze.

Flump.

I collapsed onto the sofa. Now that the intense tension of the past hour had dissipated, bone-deep exhaustion crashed over me all at once.

"So this is how rewards are delivered...."

Inside my awakened hunter inventory, a crimson chest and a crimson badge appeared on the item list. But before digging into those, there was something else to check.

"The Fire Forget-Me-Nots."

I pulled a single blossom from my storage.

"Wait... why does it look completely identical?"

Even to the naked eye, its freshness didn't look any different from when I had plucked it in the dungeon. Or was ten percent just the natural conductivity of a baseline Fire Forget-Me-Not? No, that couldn't be right. Any specimens I had seen before were never this vibrant; at the very least, the bright yellow tint of the stems usually degraded instantly upon exiting a dungeon.

"Is this an effect of my trait?"

Since my EX-rank trait was completely unprecedented, there was no reference material to confirm it. Regardless, it was a good problem to have. I could compare the flowers properly tomorrow; for now, drying them took priority.

I laid the harvested blossoms carefully across the drying racks mounted along the laboratory wall. Every single petal would serve as raw material for brewing Pyre Poison.

Next up were the clear rewards. Resting before me were the crimson chest and the crimson badge. These were standard issue for every awakened hunter who scaled the Tower. Engraved upon the badge were the numerals 1-3, denoting Floor 1 with a grade rating of three. Having no immediate use for the badge, I stashed it away.

All the unboxing threads I had browsed on the hunter forums made my heart race with anticipation.

Screeech!

With a metallic groan, the lid of the chest swung open. What would emerge? One thing was certain: it would be something directly tailored to my awakened trait—a golden opportunity to expand my class build.

"A skill stone!!!"

My fingers snapped forward, snatching up the crimson orb. A skill stone, notorious for having an abysmal, near-impossible drop rate! My hands trembled uncontrollably. Had luck of this caliber ever graced my miserable life before?

"...Use Skill Stone!"

Faint radiance leaked through the hairline fractures as the sphere shattered in my grasp. Brilliant light seeped directly into my skin.

For the first time in my entire hunter career, I had successfully used a skill stone.

'I don't know what its exact effects are yet, but... Myriad Poison Toad!'

Fwooooosh!

Deep violet light converged across the floor. As the ambient glow coalesced into a dense sphere of illumination, a quiet, gurgling sound echoed from within.

"Ggureuk—."

Wait, Myriad Poison Toad was a summoning skill?

A soft pastel gradient of orange and yellow washed over its rounded back. It sported a plump, glistening belly bulging with pure blubber, paired with completely blank, unfocused eyes that seemed to gaze into the void.

"Ggureuk— ggureuk—."

"Holy shit... it's a Pacman frog...."

A round amphibian roughly the size of an open hand had popped out. Lacking the energy to actually hop around, it crawled along the floorboards, sniffling about as if searching for something.

"Where are you going?"

The toad waddled straight toward a discarded scrap of Freezing Herb left over from crafting the Ice Flame Poison.

Slurp!

"Whoa, hey! You can't eat th—"

"...."

A toad that literally eats poison...?

"Gguryk— gguryryk—."