The Taste of Capitalism
Seo Arin's face flushed crimson with embarrassment as she sat sunk into the back seat of the luxury sedan, staring out the window.
She was looking out the window, but she wasn't really seeing it at all.
Replaying what had happened just moments ago, she shook her head vigorously, as if trying to erase the memory from her mind.
The guild's dedicated knight behind the wheel glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Feeling puzzled by her unusual behavior, he nonetheless thought better of prying.
It was an admirable display of deference to a superior — but far from reassured, Seo Arin only suffered all the more once she confirmed the driver was giving her strange looks.
Seo Arin, you've lost your mind. What on earth were you thinking, bringing up adoption back there...!
Marriage was one thing; she was still only twenty-three, in the very flower of her youth.
Granted, she was an executive of the Hanshin Guild, one of the finest in Korea — but an unmarried woman in her early twenties with no legal spouse couldn't possibly qualify for adoption, could she?
Every time she recalled the orphanage director's gaping mouth and the dumbfounded look in Ha Yuryeong's eyes as the girl had stared at her, Seo Arin wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.
But... I couldn't think of any other way to protect that child.
Once the shame ebbed away, a crushing weight and guilt rushed in to fill its place.
The crushing burden of having to protect Ha Yuryeong, a girl blessed with the impossible ability to absorb curses — and the memory of that child writhing in agony as she drank down Arin's curse — pressed down on her from every side.
Closing her eyes, Seo Arin let the memory surface: the source of the curse that had tormented both her and Ha Yuryeong. What happened on the 43rd floor of the Korean Tower.
The 43rd floor of the Korean Tower.
It was a scorched wasteland of burning earth and vast volcanic terrain, where molten lava could erupt from anywhere at any moment.
And to conquer the 43rd floor, the raid party had to deal with the masters of that volcanic region: the tribe of Flame Lizardmen.
Compared to ordinary lizardmen, they stood two heads taller with far greater bulk, and their resistance to fire-attribute attacks went beyond mere immunity — they absorbed them outright.
The massive volcanic zone was at once their home and, for the raid party, a relentless debuff zone — while simultaneously granting the Flame Lizardmen an enormous buff. It was the worst possible battlefield.
Under normal circumstances, the raid should have launched only after thorough preparation and reconnaissance.
But the recent surge from rival guilds, and the news that America had cleared the 47th floor of its tower, had made the guild leadership impatient.
The Hanshin Guild had cleared the 42nd floor with relative ease, and they had arrogantly concluded that conquering the 43rd was well within their power.
And that impatience came roaring back at them as a towering inferno.
Slowly, methodically, the Hanshin Guild carved its way through the Flame Lizardmen.
The creatures were undeniably strong, but not yet dangerous — and so the party never once doubted they would succeed this time as well.
But their strategy had been wrong from the very start, and it returned to them as the worst possible outcome.
That the High Shaman... would offer up his own life and the lifeblood of his tribe to summon a demon.
Thinking back on it, the correct approach to the 43rd floor had been to push straight through the line and kill the High Shaman first.
While the Hanshin Guild chipped away at the Flame Lizardmen one by one, the High Shaman bought himself all the time he needed — and at last, through human sacrifice, he summoned a demon into the world.
Confirmed by a guild member with sensory and detection abilities, the summoned demon was not the demon's true body — yet it wielded power enough to overwhelm the entire Hanshin raid party.
The one mercy was the constraints imposed by the Tower's laws: with only a High Shaman and a handful of lizardmen as sacrifices, the demon could manifest for barely a minute.
But that same minute was more than enough time for the demon to deliver absolute despair to the raid party.
With a single sweep of its hand it flung every substandard guild member aside, and against those who barely held their ground it rained down a ceaseless barrage of curse-laden attacks. The demon was, quite simply, an absolute being.
Five raiders were critically wounded. Two died.
And when only five seconds remained of the demon's minute, it gathered every last ounce of its power and hurled a final curse at the Guild Master.
Arin's affinity was physical — specifically, that of a beastkin — and so she grasped the Guild Master's peril on instinct and threw herself forward. In the end, the curse struck her instead of him.
The devastated raid party retreated.
The critically wounded in the most danger, along with Seo Arin, who had borne the curse alone, were hastily evacuated from the Tower.
Healers rushed to her side from every quarter — guild healers, Association healers, freelancers, and even specialists hired at staggering expense — but not one of them could lift a curse hurled by a demon from the Tower's upper reaches.
The searing pain that came in waves, and the nightmare of the demon nearly annihilating the raid party, tormented Seo Arin without mercy.
Days passed like that. And then, when she visited an orphanage sponsored by the guild to put on a decent face for the public—
That was when she met Ha Yuryeong.
Recalling the sight of Ha Yuryeong writhing in pain as she absorbed a portion of her curse, guilt stirred in Seo Arin's chest all over again.
She thought back to the conditions the girl had laid down.
Keep me safe until I've grown strong. And pay me enough money to live on for the rest of my life.
Bitterly realistic, ruthlessly pragmatic conditions — almost impossible to believe they came from a ten-year-old.
Seo Arin didn't stop at the conditions themselves. She grasped the truth hidden beneath them.
A child who understood the value of her own power, who knew she could be exploited or kidnapped at any moment, and who had worked up what courage she could — this was her defense mechanism.
The image of Ha Yuryeong putting on a bold front even amid the agony of absorbing the curse lingered in her mind like an afterimage, tearing at her heart all the more.
Right. If I can't be her guardian myself...
It was still too risky to bring the guild into this.
Not everyone in a guild could be trusted.
Her parents' faces flashed through Seo Arin's mind.
Despite wielding immense power, they had raised her with integrity — and when she chose to become a climber and ascend the Tower, they had opposed it so fiercely they hadn't spoken to her for a long while.
I can't leave that child in danger just to protect my own pride.
She couldn't explain everything, but if she swallowed her pride and went to them humbly, her parents would understand.
"Driver. Please take me to my family home — not the guild."
"Pardon? Ah — yes, ma'am. Understood."
Watching the car change direction and head toward her family home, Seo Arin steeled her resolve.
A child she had to protect — and perhaps, one day, the savior of all climbers.
Ha Yuryeong.
For that child's sake, she resolved to do whatever it took.
The night Sister Arin and the reporters who'd followed her left.
I lay on my bed, thinking back to the moment I absorbed the curse.
"...That was seriously spicy."
"Huh? What was?"
The kid sharing my room asked, but I just told her it was nothing and let the taste of the curse linger on my tongue.
The taste of nuclear-fire tteokbokki.
Unbelievably hot — and, by the same measure, unbelievably delicious. Just remembering it made my mouth water.
I wonder when I'll get to eat it again.
Sister Arin wouldn't be eager to go through that kind of agony again either, so it probably wouldn't take too long.
Looking forward to our next meeting, I called up my status window in my head.
Ding♪
Name:Ha Yuryeong
Class:King of Curses (EX)
Level:5
Unique Skill:Curse Absorption
Just absorbing a mere fragment of it — not even the whole thing — had raised my level by four.
I clenched and unclenched my little fists, over and over, feeling the power dwelling within them.
And there was the mana, too. I hadn't been able to sense it clearly at level 1, but now that I was level 5, it was unmistakable.
Rolling onto my side, I moved mana into my hand, careful to stay hidden from the kid sharing the room — and a dark, blood-red haze of mana, eerily similar to what I had swallowed, bloomed at my fingertips.
Considering that other Awakened users' mana glowed blue, I looked like a final boss straight out of a comic book.
I played with the mana, twisting it around my fingers like I was twirling a ball of yarn.
It's way easier to control than I expected.
Unlike newly Awakened climbers, who supposedly struggled for ages with the unfamiliar sense of mana, I handled it as freely as if I'd been born with the ability.
I shaped the mana into a butterfly, then into a tiny little skull, fidgeting with it for a good long while — until, somehow, drowsiness crashed over me all at once.
Oops. I overdid it.
Checking the mana inside my body, I found the reserves nearly scraped bottom.
I drew the remaining mana back in and surrendered myself to sleep.
Somehow, I had a feeling tonight would be an exceptionally sweet one.
The next morning.
The moment I finished breakfast, I got the director's permission to go out and play.
Maybe because of what happened yesterday, there was something complicated in the way she looked at me now.
Permission granted, I immediately grabbed the black card and a few other things and headed out.
The card was none other than the credit card Sister Arin had given me.
When I asked her for money, she handed me this instead and told me to spend as much as I wanted.
The first stop after leaving the orphanage was an upscale children's clothing boutique downtown.
"Oh my, little one. Did you come here all by yourself?"
"I'm not a little one."
"Of course, young lady. Did you come in alone?"
"Yes. I can browse, can't I?"
"Hmm..."
Facing the clerk's distinctly should-I-or-shouldn't-I expression, I reached into my pocket and showed her the black card Seo Arin had given me.
"!!"
"Is that not allowed?"
"No — of course not. Please, look around all you like, ma'am."
The moment she laid eyes on the card, her entire attitude flipped, and she flashed me her customer-service smile.
I'd figured the black card was something special, but seriously — what on earth did she give me?
I browsed the store and bought a set of clothes that looked good for running around, along with a pair of sneakers and a backpack.
"Thank you for your purchase! Please come again!"
"Will do."
Sweet, glorious capitalist shopping complete, I stepped out of the store and flagged down a taxi on the spot.
My destination for the day was already decided: the site of the Korean Tower.
The cab driver launched into a proud rant about his precious daughter — apparently she took after him — and I gave him the occasional polite mm-hmm until we reached the area around the Tower.
We were still in Seoul, no question — yet the pedestrians here dressed like someone had ladled a spoonful of fantasy into the city.
But the most striking sight of all was, without a doubt—
"Whoa."
The colossal tower soaring into the sky.
Its outer walls called ancient temples to mind.
After admiring the Tower's surroundings for a while, I headed for a building located not far from it.
Orbis Department Store.
A massive department store run by the Orbis Group, a worldwide operation that bought up and sold all manner of items and rare minerals that came out of the Towers.
I strode boldly into the enormous building — at least fifteen stories tall.
After all, I was carrying the black card Sister Arin had given me. What reason did I have not to walk in with my head held high!
And then, a short while later—
"I'm sorry, but I can't sell this item to a customer your age, young lady."
"Why not?!"
"Well — by law, items can only be purchased by adults, or by holders of a Climber Registration Card."
For all my bold entrance, I was forced to walk out of the item shop empty-handed.