Making Preparations
0. If you're new here, for the love of god, read the damn rules.
1. No excessive bragging posts.
2. No clickbait titles.
3. Keep the flexing reasonable.
We get it — you earned that stuff the hard way in the Tower. But if you're clearly just trying to rub it in people's faces, that's a 30-day ban. Do it again and you're gone for good.
4. Most of us hunters already know each other well enough. Don't go starting drama that makes people lose face.
"…There's all kinds of weird stuff out there."
The link she'd followed opened onto a lively gallery. Its name: the Hunter Gallery — a place where people who'd finished awakening gathered to talk about this and that.
"…Look at that refresh rate."
Every time she reloaded the page, at least three new posts appeared.
The atmosphere was a little different from the galleries she knew. Nickname reveals and open socializing were technically banned, but the mood was… almost friendly, somehow. Like everyone was being careful with each other. A community for hunters only — a place where those who'd experienced awakening traded information.
Having stepped into this place on an anonymous invitation from someone she didn't know, she started by checking the posts as they came up.
Title: Looking for people to grind Floor 6 (women preferred)
Title: Boss dropped this, is it any good T_T
Title: Took another day off. Upvote if you're still out there hunting lmao
Title: Money's slowly running out
Title: Unique item drop? lolol
Title: Why does my skill look like this
Title: Sword-saint types trying to hog all the gear is so damn infuriating
Looking at it like this, it almost seemed like a normal gallery. The fact that the people churning out garbage posts were actually hunters pulling in two thousand a month was a strangely unsettling thought.
"…"
There was a feeling of territory to it — like there was no room to squeeze in. A subtle current that seemed ready to shut out and dismiss any newbie who wandered in.
"This guy's here too…?"
Lurking for a while, she started spotting fixed nicknames she recognized from the Awakening Gallery. The ones who were always flexing their items. The ones posting bank-balance screenshots. Here, those same people had become earnest young hunters asking genuine questions and climbing the Tower.
"Huh…"
What kind of place was the Hunter Gallery? From what she'd seen so far, people came either to find party members for the Tower or to show off the items they'd gotten.
…At its core, it wasn't all that different from the Awakening Gallery. Anywhere people gathered ended up the same, really. The difference was that this place actually had useful information.
"Found it."
She dug for anything on the Tower. Hunters, she figured, had to know something special — so she went looking through older posts. A little effort paid off quickly. She found a guide someone had written: a post for freshly awakened newbies, a write-up organizing everything known about the Tower. Useful posts like that sat right alongside the rules.
"Alright then."
Read all of them. Information mattered. All she knew was that if you didn't climb the Tower, it would come crashing down.
"…Hmm."
…For a gallery, there were a surprising number of helpful posts. That was a relief, at least.
She wanted to climb the Tower right away. Ideally safely — pick up a few decent items or Magic Stones, and live for a while without worrying about money.
But she had one enormous problem.
"They're not going to believe me."
Her ID card had become a worthless scrap of plastic. The tool that once proved who she was might as well not exist anymore.
"Ah, dammit…"
She'd gone through every single post. Read them all without skipping a one. And every post had the same common thread: the things you needed to prepare before entering the Tower. The essentials you had to have on you.
"…This isn't going to work, is it?"
She checked the ID card with her old face on it. An ugly man's photo she couldn't stand looking at. But the name engraved on it was Han Seohyun — the same name she'd seen on her status window. That was the only thing proving this man was her.
But still.
Nobody's going to believe me.
Twenty-four years old — not exactly young. A man's face that looked older than it was. If she shoved that card forward looking the way she did now, who on earth would buy it? Would anyone even consider that there might be a story behind it?
"Isn't there some way around this?"
Identity turned out to matter more than she'd expected. The Tower had appeared and — without exaggeration — twisted the foundations of the country, and yet ID still held its full legal force. A means of proving who you were only grew more valuable by the day.
"…I just need to get in."
She didn't think she needed a proper identity right this second. She just needed to get into the Tower. Nowhere was the information she was looking for written down. Digging through the gallery any further would only waste time. Everywhere she looked, only the honest methods were listed. Well — of course. Most people didn't turn into women when they awakened…
That was the normal way of things, after all.
"Should I just ask?"
Her small head couldn't settle on an answer. Someone out there had to know a way around losing your ID.
"…Mm."
What followed her muttering was the clatter of a keyboard. She was writing a post. She uploaded it with a desperate heart — please, just give me something to go on.
"…You could've said that sooner."
Slip in during the early hours when security got lax. …It was a method that sounded extremely appealing. If something like this existed, they should have written it down. Instead of making her suffer for nothing…
Her place was a semi-basement — too shabby to call a decent home by any stretch — but it did have one advantage. The Tower was close. Sneaking in would be relatively easy. The problem was that she had nothing to wear.
Clothes from when she'd been a man were never going to fit this small body. And going out in the T-shirt and dolphin shorts she'd been wearing when she became a woman… the shame of it… Wait. A guy who transformed into a magical girl had no right to say that.
"…"
Starting anything new was always overwhelming. She'd wanted to awaken so badly, and now her class and her entire situation seemed to be mocking her one after another.
Should she just transform and go out? If she was going to be embarrassed either way, wasn't a transformed state where she could at least use magic the better option? More than that, the terrible state of public safety — the real possibility of someone jumping her — became a reason she had to transform. Without transforming, this body of hers couldn't even use magic. It was completely helpless.
Not like I've got anything to lose by doing it.
Embarrassing or not, transforming was the better call. She had nothing to wear anyway, and if she was going to step out late at night in clothes that showed off this much of her body, the post-transformation outfit was preferable. At least it didn't expose anything. It just looked weird.
"…Fuck."
Think positive. Her outfit suited her better than expected. The long black robe — not very magical-girl-like — had a certain charm to it. It went well with the staff that was taller than she was. For a magical girl, it was a pretty cool-looking outfit.
If it just didn't have those dress frills, it might have given off a hero-suit kind of vibe. If the skirt panels didn't flare out on both sides, wearing it might not have been quite so embarrassing. There were people who strutted around in suits the moment they awakened like they'd become somebody — maybe she could think of it that way…
"What choice do I have."
She had to start adapting to this changed world. There were things you had to do whether you liked them or not — things you forced yourself to accept. Transformation was one of them. She would rather die than look like that. A full-grown man, transforming? Into a magical girl? And yet.
If she wanted to live, she had to do it. Like it or not, she had to become a magical girl and climb the Tower. With no living expenses to her name, she had no other options. If anything, she was lucky. She'd awakened. She had a way to earn serious money with relative ease. She just needed to be able to enjoy this situation. That was the hard part, though.
"Transform…"
A word she would never get used to, no matter how many times she said it. Once again, brilliant light blooming with color began to wrap around her body.
"Nejeri, appear!"
…Ha. Was this for real. Every time she transformed, her mouth moved on its own. It wasn't something she could suppress. Like it or not, she struck the pose, and the words came out. She felt a genuine fear of that compulsion — knowing that no matter how hard she resisted, it was impossible for her, and so she simply accepted it.
"…Let's go."
It was only once the late hour had edged into early morning that she finished getting ready. People out on the streets… fortunately, there didn't seem to be any. Ever since the Tower appeared, this hadn't been a country where you wandered around freely, so that was only natural.
"Hoo…"
She took a deep breath. Stepping outside the house in this outfit required a certain resolve, after all.
"Time to climb the Tower…"
There was no turning back from this. Not anymore.