The Tower's Secret
“Aria, are you all right?”
“Ah, yes. I’m fine.”
Aria stood alone among the fallen bones, looking both relieved and strangely melancholy.
Was it because she was a priestess… a saintess, and even monsters dying like that felt pitiful to her?
I couldn’t understand why she looked that way. Those were monsters that had tried to kill her.
“Why do you have that expression?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. It just feels… empty.”
“Empty?”
“I was wondering… if someone like you, Seong-eun, had been there from the beginning, would things have turned out differently?”
Aria smiled bitterly, as if recalling the past. She felt different from when I first met her.
Back then she had seemed like an awkward priestess, a saintess. Now she looked exhausted, like someone who might collapse at any moment.
Was hunting monsters really that draining?
Or was it because she was thinking of her dead companions?
“…Thank you. Thanks to you, Seong-eun, everything can change.”
“It can change?”
“Yes. …Keep climbing the Tower.”
“What…?”
When Aria took both my hands and told me to climb the Tower, something felt off.
We had never talked about the Tower before. How did she know I was climbing it?
More than that, I had heard that NPCs who appeared from the Tower didn’t even know the Tower existed.
“Keep climbing and save everyone.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying…”
“If you keep going up, you’ll understand eventually. And… if you meet me again, it won’t be me.”
“No, I really don’t get it!”
“…One day you’ll understand. So thank you.”
With Aria’s words of gratitude, I was transported outside the Tower.
I hadn’t even thought about leaving, yet I was suddenly expelled. Flustered, I looked around and found myself back in my room, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Keep climbing the Tower and save everyone…
I tried to make sense of what Aria had said.
“…Is there some hidden secret in the Tower?”
The Tower was still a mystery, but Aria’s words only made my head spin more.
All I wanted was to climb the Tower, sell bugs, and make money…
What on earth was this…
“Ah, the rewards.”
I remembered the rewards I hadn’t checked yet and looked at the messages.
My head hurts… I’ll think about the Tower later. First, let’s check the rewards.
3rd and 4th floor rewards have been settled.
You have obtained a large number of rewards.
You have obtained 3 Class-type Skill Books (B~S).
You have obtained 1 Skill Book (B~S).
You have obtained 2 Extreme Reward Boxes.
You have obtained 3 A-grade Mana Stones.
“Oh… Huh? Why only the 3rd and 4th floors?”
I had cleared up to the 5th floor, yet the message only mentioned rewards up to the 4th. I was confused.
Did the Tower scam me? Is that even possible?
I worked so hard to clear the 5th floor, and there’s no reward? That can’t be right.
No matter how I looked at it, this was wrong. I had cleared it with so much difficulty… ahem, even using up points!
You have conquered the Extreme Tower’s 5th floor.
You have obtained the Extreme Tower’s 5th floor.
The record of the Sacrificial Saint ‘Aria’ has been liberated from the Tower.
The Sacrificial Saint ‘Aria’ has gifted you the last of her remaining divine power.
Your understanding of divine power has increased.
Your favorability with the Goddess of Light has increased.
You have obtained a Skill Book (S).
……
…
I stared in bewilderment at the flood of messages filling my vision along with my complaints.
Conquered the Tower? What did that even mean?
Was the Tower not just something you cleared?
More than that, there was so much information my head was starting to hurt.
What was divine power, and who was the Goddess of Light? More importantly…
“It says I obtained the 5th floor of the Tower?”
That was the hardest part to understand. The other things I could somehow make sense of, but obtaining a floor of the Tower…
You may freely enter, exit, and be expelled from the Extreme Tower’s 5th floor.
“…So I can enter the 5th floor whenever I want?”
I understood that I could enter the 5th floor, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
If I went in… wouldn’t the monsters appear again?
Being able to leave whenever I wanted didn’t seem particularly dangerous.
For now, I decided I would have to check the Tower later.
I was already exhausted from clearing three floors today. If I went back in and another fight broke out, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
“…Do all hunters get rewards like this?”
I wondered if other hunters also received rewards that were this hard to understand.
Honestly, without exaggeration, this was really strange…
You have obtained a different reward instead of the Class-type Skill Books.
Your understanding of carapace has increased, raising the grade of the Carapace Bug skill.
Your understanding of bloodsucking has greatly increased.
Your understanding of wings has greatly increased.
Your physical abilities have greatly increased.
“…Tsk, it seems good, but it’s also vague.”
Understanding itself wasn’t bad now that I knew what it was, but I still thought a skill would have been better.
If I thought about the future, gaining understanding to create more diverse bugs made sense…
But somehow it felt like a skill would have given me something better.
At least there was one good thing.
“Two skill books, and one of them is S-grade.”
I picked up the S-grade skill book that glowed with a brilliant light and examined it curiously.
It was clearly a black book, yet its surface shimmered with rainbow colors like oil on water.
Staring at it too long made me feel like I might be sucked in, so I looked away for a moment.
“…I’ll put it aside for now. Ha… Should I organize everything one by one?”
I needed to sort through everything I had obtained.
I had really gotten so much. If I had known, I would have left the Tower, received the rewards, and then climbed the next floor.
I thought receiving everything at once would be better!
Sighing wouldn’t change anything, so I began organizing everything carefully.
Still, these were rewards. None of them could be bad.
…
“Phew, finished organizing.”
I had sorted the rewards from clearing the Tower and the contents written in the messages.
It really wasn’t an easy task, but thankfully I finished quickly.
“First… divine power.”
The divine power Aria had gifted me was listed under traits.
It was a new trait that appeared after Bug Queen. Honestly, I didn’t even know if traits existed for anyone besides me, and I had no one to ask.
Divine Power - Aria (A)
— The divine power of Saintess Aria, chosen by the Goddess of Light.
— Though worn down by ■■□■, as long as there is light, its power is eternal.
— Where there is light, blessings can be manifested.
— (Insufficient faith.)
Compared to Bug Queen, this description made it clear what it was.
If there was light, I might be able to use the techniques Aria had shown in battle.
The problem was the last line about insufficient faith… but there was nothing I could do about that.
I didn’t particularly believe in any god, and trying to believe in the Goddess of Light that Aria had worshipped felt pointless when I didn’t even know who she was.
The only thing I could do with this trait right now was…
“Just making light come out of my palm?”
I looked at my palm glowing with pure white light and thought it was really ambiguous.
Well, could I use it when making bugs?
Then maybe a holy bug would be born.
A holy bug… that might actually be interesting.
You do not have enough points.
“Yeah, yeah. I figured you’d say that.”
I just shrugged at the message that answered even though I had only been thinking.
There was no way a holy bug didn’t exist. But apparently I didn’t have enough points right now…
When I checked the points in Mother, I saw I had several times more than what I had obtained so far.
B Points: 300
Even with this much, it wasn’t enough. I had no idea how many more I needed.
If I knew, I could save up points and try making one.
Well, my gut feeling was that I just needed a bit more points…
But climbing the Tower again was a hassle, and I had accumulated some ideas, so I wanted to make some bugs.
Creating them had become fun, and every time a new bug was born, I felt a strange sense of satisfaction.
Bug summoning addiction, huh…
“Well then…”
The long-awaited moment had arrived. Understanding of bugs? Traits? The Goddess of Light?
Honestly, none of that mattered. What was really important right now was this.
Skill books.
At least B-grade, and one was guaranteed S-grade.
I had hoped there might be one more S-grade, but based on the appearance of the books, there seemed to be only one S-grade.
Still, there was always a chance, though it didn’t seem likely.
Even so, I was hopeful. An S-grade skill… how strong would it be?
“Should I check the non-S-grade skills first?”
I examined the two books that weren’t glowing.
I hoped they would be somewhat useful skills.
Thought Acceleration (B)
— Temporarily accelerates your thought process.
Nature’s Grace (A)
— Increases growth speed.
“…Of course.”
I was speechless at yet another strange pair of skills.
Was I the weird one? Or were skills always like this?
But when I thought about how most skills I had seen online were straightforward, it seemed like the skills I obtained or drew were just strange.
Thought Acceleration was exactly what the name suggested, so I could understand it.
But Nature’s Grace, which increased growth speed, I had no idea what it meant.
Did it make me learn faster? Or did it speed up the growth of plants or something?
If it wasn’t either of those, then what kind of growth was it referring to?
“…Still, it’s A-grade, so it must be a good skill, right?”
It couldn’t be a bad skill, but I couldn’t help feeling dissatisfied anyway.
Other people were creating pillars of fire, shooting sword auras, and charging forward wrapped in electricity.
Meanwhile, I was going to have to fight with my bare hands again.
“No, I still have the S-grade left.”
My hope was the S-grade skill. Even if the other skills were weird, as long as the D-grade skills turned out well, it would be fine!
I swallowed hard and checked the S-grade skill.
Please, let it be a good attack skill! Something powerful that could sweep away enemies when they all come at once!
God’s Miracle has activated.
The grade of the S-grade Skill Book has risen to EX.
A skill suited to the user has appeared.
“Huh? Huhhh?”
Suddenly seeing the skill book’s grade rise, I felt a strange sense of faith welling up from deep inside my heart.
Was this the power of the Goddess of Light? Wow! This is insane!
The book now shone even more brilliantly than when it was S-grade, and a golden border had appeared around it. Satisfied, I checked its contents.
It had to be a good skill, right?
“…Haa?”