Virtual Reality (6)
The monsters that appeared in the Trial of the Tower all shared one thing in common.
They were identical to the monsters that came out of the gates.
So familiar it was almost sickening, really.
This is the first time I've had to fight these things myself, so I'm a little nervous...
Which meant I already knew every strategy for clearing them cold.
Back in the days when recovery items from dungeons weren't fully stocked, any wound you took in a gate that didn't heal on its own meant death on the spot. Of course, past a certain point I'd mostly just provided support from the rear.
Physical performance has been readjusted to match the 66th floor.
How could someone with the weakest body among all Awakened even fight in the Trial of the Tower?
Because your body got readjusted to match the floor's level.
My only real weakness was physical ability. With that weakness gone, monsters I'd already cleared before were the kind of thing I could finish off in an instant...
"Hgyaaaaaah—!!!!"
"Wooooooorgh—!!!"
KWAANG—!!!
Lies! All lies!
I was actually thrashing my way through this with pure desperation!
Hyaaaaah!
"S-stop chasing meeeee!!"
"Wooooooorgh—!!!"
A giant thundered after me, footsteps pounding at my back. One of the titans I'd seen during Titan Impact.
I remember doing nothing but running back then, too...
I'd run until my feet were practically on fire. Gotten a lot of help from that guy as well. Honestly, you could pretty much say Uncle Haseong was the one who cleared that gate.
They called that a kind of trial back then, too, I think...
It had been half a joke. The rumor that every first-generation Awakened had their own personal trial. America's time-stop Awakened solo-cleared a vampire gate, and Russia's S-rank hunter fought a bloodbath against the named entity Nidhogg and earned the moniker Dragon Slayer.
Don't tell me they used that as a benchmark?
"Eunha! You can do it~!!!!"
"Yeah... let's do this. Come on."
Soph was cheering me on from way off in the distance. Thankfully, she was classified as an NPC, so the monsters didn't attack her. Still, flying boulders and the like were dangerous, so she was watching from far away.
"H-hyaaat—!!"
I let out a shout and twisted my body at the last second. I'd run all the way here on purpose, knowing this would happen!
"W-woooorgh—?!"
Vines woven between sturdy trees. The giants themselves used those trees as clubs and those vines as rope, so they were more than tough enough — making a body that massive trip was surprisingly easy. I'd hunted giants the same way the first time I entered the Titan Gate, too. Yep.
Kugugugugung—!!!!
"Whoa... it's a spectacle no matter how many times I see it. A real spectacle."
The giant went down and a cloud of dust billowed up. Could you even call that dust, though? If it happened on a mountain it'd be a landslide; on flat ground, an earthquake.
"Gotta move fast. Up we go."
Question: what happens when a person sprinting at full speed catches their foot on something and goes down?
Same thing with a giant. Get them good and riled up, run, trip them on something, and they couldn't move for a while. Destroy the head or sever the spine in that window, and the hunt was over.
Doesn't work once there are two or more of them, though...
Well, there was only one on this floor. If there'd been two or more, it might have gotten tricky.
"Let's never meet again."
Seogeok—
The sound rang out, and the giant's movement stopped. Its spine had been cleanly severed, leaving it unable to move.
If only I had this kind of physical ability in the real world, too.
Ah, well. No point dwelling on it. I shook my head and brushed the thought away. In a way, I was helping people with this too, right?
RichHikineet has overcome the trial of the 66th floor of the Trial of the Tower.
"Haaah... I'm wiped..."
"You worked hard, Eunha."
"Ah, thank you."
Water and a towel, same as always. After running until my mouth tasted like metal, those two things were worth their weight in gold.
"Four floors left. Hang in there, Eunha."
"Yeah, well... if I push it, I should be able to finish in about four more days at the latest."
The reason I couldn't say that with confidence was that I had no idea what monsters would show up on the next floors. Don't tell me more giants? That would be a nightmare.
Two giants are as strong as four giants' worth of trouble...
Sounded ridiculous, but it was true. Having two giants together was roughly as hard as hunting four of them one at a time. That was why, if there were two, you usually split into two teams and lured them apart. But two was the limit.
From three onward, one of them seemed to act like middle management — no matter how much you baited or annoyed them, they wouldn't leave their post.
In that case you'd hunt the leader first, but...
How many people could actually pull that off? In Korea alone, I couldn't think of anyone besides Uncle Haseong.
"Ugh..."
I'd thought I'd finally found a fun game, and it turned out to be basically a gate. I wiped the sweat off my whole body and gulped down water. Feeling a gaze from the side, I flicked my eyes over — and Soph startled and looked away.
What's with her?
"Are you all right, Soph?"
"Y-yes, I'm fine... I was just thinking you looked incredibly cool, Eunha."
"...I'm not particularly cool, but thank you."
A few days spent with Soph. After hearing nothing but praise the whole time, even my compliment allergy seemed to have cleared up.
I wonder how that guy's doing.
Maybe I should drop by the neutral floor for once. Crowds were the absolute worst, but I at least wanted to check how things were going. I also needed to report the situation inside to Uncle Haseong.
But then.
W-what is this...
Let us praise our hero, RichHikineet.
The center of the plaza. On a platform that used to be completely empty, a statue now sat in plain view. And it was enormous. Of no one else but me.
"Wow, it looks exactly like you, Eunha."
Of course it did. It was a statue modeled after me. I had no idea who was responsible, but they'd done something incredibly embarrassing.
"That person is going to save us..."
"Please, let us go home, RichHikineet..."
I couldn't watch any more of this. At the sight of people kneeling in prayer before a statue of me, I turned on my heel. Goosebumps were prickling up my arms — if I stayed any longer I was going to have a fit.
After putting some distance between myself and the plaza, I messaged Namgung Min with a little spite mixed in. If something like this had happened, he could have at least said something. Was I supposed to report this to Uncle Haseong myself?
Did he really not know? I stared at the chat window full of suspicion, then decided to just meet him in person and talk. How do you miss something that huge going up?
"Oh, hyung, you're here?"
"Hey."
"Have you been well?"
"Yes. I'm glad you seem to be doing well too, Soph."
After running into each other a few times, Namgung Min and Soph had gotten to the point of exchanging greetings. Not that that mattered right now.
"Hey. You knew about the statue that went up in the plaza."
"Statue? Oh, that thing?"
"Haaah... If something like that went up, you should have told me!"
Of course it wasn't really Namgung Min's fault. If you had to pin the blame on someone, it would be whoever put the statue up.
"Did I not tell you?"
"Tell me? You didn't say a word."
"I was the one who put it up."
"...What?"
For a second I thought I'd misheard and tilted my head. Uh... so... what?
Namgung Min put up that statue?
Why? How? For what reason?
"Well, you know. People find peace of mind when they've got something to believe in during a crisis."
"So you made a statue of me?"
"You're famous anyway, hyung. They're calling you the Gallery Master of the Trial of the Tower Gallery."
That was news to me. I pouted and grumbled for a bit, then let out a sigh. What was the point of nagging over something already done? Think positive. Think positive.
If people calm down looking at a statue of me, that's a good thing. Yeah.
Besides, once this whole incident was over, I'd never have to see the thing again.
"By the way, I heard you cleared the 66th floor. What came out?"
"One of the giants from Titan Impact."
"Whoa."
Pure awe. Fair enough. It had been big enough to make the news back then. People had looked at giants the size of buildings and wondered if the footage was CG or AI-generated.
"You cleared that? For real?"
"I'd hunted them before, so it was easier than I expected."
"You'd hunted them be... fore?"
"Ah."
Shouldn't have said that. The fact that I'd operated alongside Uncle Haseong was a secret — and so was the fact that during that period the government had dragged me off to work as an unpaid slave.
The government and the media had wanted heroes, not the person hiding behind those heroes and scrambling just to survive.
"...Forget what I just said. It was a slip of the tongue."
"..."
Namgung Min wasn't the type to have a loose tongue, but the fewer people who knew about this kind of thing, the better. I hated hassle.
There were even rumors lately that the government had been reaching out to early Awakened one after another. My true calling was unemployment. Rich unemployment, specifically.