001. Mental Immunity

The dangers of Outer God Artifacts had been verified beyond any doubt.

The vast majority who laid hands on one fell into raving madness, spent their days seeing countless things that weren't there, and then dropped dead without warning — practically an everyday occurrence. Even the rare few who claimed to actually put one to use lived on saddled with mental illness, some of them eventually murdering their own psychiatrists. Their endings were never pretty.

And yet right now, one of those very Outer God Artifacts…

"…What the hell is this."

…was sitting in my hand.

Ten years ago, Towers had suddenly appeared across the world.

Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, New York, London, Paris, and on and on. Above the skies of densely populated cities rose abnormally massive Towers — impossible to touch, yet perfectly observable. It was nothing short of a calamity.

Fail to clear one within the time limit, and the monsters inside would boil out and reduce the city below to rubble. And just as Korean men were dragged off to the military against their will by the draft, anyone who 'awakened' — indiscriminately, at random — was hauled into the Tower and forced to raid it, whether they liked it or not.

But as time went on, the raids made progress, the system took shape, and humanity greeted an age of prosperity it had never known before. The mana stones and assorted artifacts pouring out of the Towers proved genuinely useful on the outside as well, driving explosive leaps in technology across countless industries.

So what did any of that have to do with me?

"Phew. That'll do. Upload."

The Tower was somebody else's story, as far as I was concerned.

'View counts are looking decent across the board this week.'

I was what you'd call an AI video creator. I'd grab some plausible-looking footage, slap AI-generated subtitles on it, layer in a text-to-speech voiceover, and that little assembly line pulled in about seven hundred dollars a month.

I mean, I'd apparently lived with some ambition once upon a time, but somewhere along the way the drive had just… drained out of me, in every sense. And no wonder — the Tower had blown my entire career plan to pieces.

What was the point of speaking English, Japanese, and Chinese? One click on a Translation Artifact settled all of that. Hell, these days even a run-of-the-mill AI translated flawlessly. Earning my bread with my major? That ship had sailed and sunk.

'Not dead but alive. Couldn't die, that's all.'

No purpose to my life — just a body kept running by the survival instinct's stubborn refusal to quit. That was me, these days.

And then, that me…

I had awakened, out of absolutely nowhere.

"Huh?"

Which meant, in no uncertain terms, that I was about to be dragged into the Tower.

"Ha, fucking hell. If I'd awakened before I did my military service, I could've gotten an exemption—"

——FLASH——!!

And so, in a thoroughly foul mood, I found myself summoned into a new space.

First, one thing was crystal clear: I didn't particularly care about the Tower.

No — "didn't care" wasn't the right word. "Was filled with rage" would be more accurate. I mean, people whose jobs got eaten by AI resent AI, don't they? Viewed from that exact angle — as a foreign language high school graduate, no less — I had despised the Tower.

"Hoo…."

And now here I was, that same man, standing in the middle of a forest you could never, ever see in Seoul.

I looked around.

"Ah, aah! Enough!! I said enough!!!"

"Why— why me, why is this happening to me…!"

Apparently about four people besides me had awakened at the same time and been dragged in here. One middle-aged man was busy shouting with what sounded like delight, while the other three watched the scene unfold through eyes tangled up in confusion and fear.

'What's the point of awakening at this late date? The first generation already squatted every spot on the rankings, and everyone beneath them gets to fight over crumbs for a living.'

No matter how I turned it over, it felt monumentally unfair. But what's done was done. At worst it was unfair — it wasn't a bad thing, all things considered. Awakeners got treated pretty well out in the world even if they never climbed the Tower, didn't they? The credentials I'd earned at a foreign language high school and a university of foreign studies had become, for all practical purposes, worthless scraps of paper — but awakeners were a different story. Becoming a ranked climber in the Tower might be a long shot, but becoming an SSS-rank awakener on a construction site sat comfortably within the realm of the possible.

I was mulling all this over — planning to share what I knew about the first floor with the group, clear the raid, and get back outside as quickly as possible — when—

"Oh, oh…! It's working!"

One of the men — the one overjoyed to be inside the Tower — was making some strange hand gestures at a young woman.

'…What is that?'

His hand movements were, hmm… similar to the hand seals from that old Japanese ninja manga. He wove some rhythmic sequence of shapes while staring hard at the woman, and her body slumped over as if her soul had been sucked out through her eyes.

"Wh-what the hell did you do to her!"

Another man rounded on him, ready to read him the riot act, but—

"What do you think? It's hypnosis, you dumbass!"

He wove another seal, and something violet spilled out from between his fingers.

"Ah, aaagh…! N-no, noooo…."

And just like the young woman before him, the man's mind was torn away.

'Oh. Interesting.'

My very first thought at the sight was: interesting. It was my first time being an awakener, and my first time watching one in action, too. Maybe that was why seeing something this surreal with my own naked eyes — not through a TV or a phone screen — felt so strangely fresh.

Which raised one obvious question: would my Mental Immunity actually hold up against that man's ability?

To put it bluntly, whether Mental Immunity was even useful remained an open question. Well, this was a situation where I could die. That made it worth testing at least once, no?

"Sir, why don't you try it on me too?"

Besides, if my memory served, about twenty goblins were supposed to spawn here, and we'd all have to take them down together. So my judgment was this: maybe having the hypnosis man puppet us around like units in a MOBA wouldn't be the worst option. Following that line of thinking, I opened my mouth, and—

"…? Keh-heh-heh. Sure. You can be my meat shield too."

Our friendly neighborhood hypnosis man said that, then wove another seal with his fingers.

And then—

—Saaaah….

Something violet swam into view and drifted toward me. It seeped into the air like mist, circling the tip of my nose and giving off a sickly-sweet scent.

But sadly for him, my mind stayed exactly where it was. My arms and legs moved precisely as I willed them to, and I went right on staring the man down without a hitch.

"…Hmm."

"Uh, uuh…?"

"You did say I'd be your meat shield, remember?"

And honestly — whether his brain was slow or his tongue simply slipped — the man had fumbled. A meat shield. A meat shield, of all things. The moment those words left his mouth, hadn't he openly confessed that the word "cooperation" didn't exist anywhere in his heart?

So I clenched my fist hard and walked forward.

—THWACK!!

"Gahk—!!"

My fist buried itself squarely in the man's cheek, and he went sprawling across the ground. And remarkably, the hypnotized ones began moving under their own power again.

"Take up positions, more or less. Goblins will be here soon."

I had zero interest in soloing twenty goblins like a lunatic, so I barked the order at them at once, and then—

"Argh, for fuck's sake. Making me waste time on this bullshit over nothing."

"Gnnghok…!!"

I drove my foot hard into the crotch of the man still rolling around on the ground, then settled back into my stance.

————….

But it didn't take long to notice that something about the situation had gone sideways.

'…What is this?'

Twenty goblins were supposed to appear. What revealed itself before us was something else entirely.

⟁∴ѮϞ⋮Ϟꙮꙮ.

As for what it looked like… to put it charitably, an eyeball squid; to put it bluntly, an eyeball monster. A single colossal eye swaddled in layers of writhing flesh, with tentacles like intestines plastered all over it.

'…Ah.'

I had heard the stories — how, on very rare occasions, something other than goblins would spawn on the first floor. The cause was unknown. As I recalled, even the Association simply filed the phenomenon away under the label Anomalous Raid.

Just as it occurred to me that this might be exactly that situation, the eyeball squid began to shriek — and every time its cry washed over us—

"Kehk, kehk…?!"

"Kill me, kill me, please kill me, kill—"

"O-ourFatherwhartinheavenhallowedbethynameThykingdomcomeThywillbedoneonearthasitisinheavengivensusthisdayourdailybread—"

Everyone except the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hypnosis man, still sprawled on the ground, began to go about half mad. One of them retched on all fours, blood spraying from nose and eyes. One babbled an endless stream of words — impossible to tell whether she was begging to be killed or begging someone to kill the squid. The last one recited the Lord's Prayer, trembling with terror, fists clenched, holding a stance facing forward — but it was obvious he would collapse at the slightest touch.

….

And yet, strangely enough, unlike the rest of them, I felt absolutely fine. Their forms registered with perfect clarity. I could see them drawing closer, inch by inch, right there in my field of view.

Paradoxically, though, that meant I would have to put them down alone. Granted, unlike the twenty goblins, there were only five of the eyeball squids. Still, the thought of facing those monsters by myself sent fear creeping up over me.

And yet.

'Not bad.'

My mood was better than it had any right to be. Like I'd stumbled onto a new stimulus. A new toy. The sensation of being handed something — anything — I could actually do, after all that listless, pointless drifting.

"Phew. Let's do this."

At length, I scooped up a branch lying on the ground, gripped it tight, and stepped forward.

"Hah!"

I closed the distance bit by bit, then drove the branch straight into the dead center of the foremost squid's pupil.

——————!!!!!

The squid let out a sound that didn't even qualify as a shriek — something no human ear could hope to parse — and collapsed to the floor.

…!

At the same instant, the other four squids lashed their tentacles out at me. But their attack speed, at best, was that of an ordinary person — a level any awakened climber could dodge in their sleep.

"Hup!"

I twisted my body, barely slipping past the tentacle, and drove the branch into the eye once more.

—SHLAK!!

I stomped the eye flat against the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ground to pin it, yanked the branch free, and thrust it toward the next eye in line.

————?!! ———!!!!

Ahh. Now I understood. These things were mental-type specialists. Physically, they were probably weaker than goblins. If I hadn't been carrying Mental Immunity, I'd no doubt be sharing the same fate as the poor bastards behind me — but sadly for them, I had gone and awakened the perfect counter to their entire branch of abilities.

As of this moment, they were nothing but prey standing in front of me.

Which left two squids.

ѮϞ⟁ѮϞѮ∴!!!

ꙮ⋮⟁ѮϞ⟁ѮϞ!!!!!

The pair stared at me and bellowed something — but to a man with Mental Immunity, it was nothing more than meaningless thrashing.

—THUNK——SHHHK———!!

I punched through their eyes one after another, successfully mass-producing squid corpses across the floor.

"…Ha."

I should have been thrilled. Somehow, I wasn't. This peculiar environment had clearly been rigged in my favor — but thinking long-term, it didn't amount to much. Why? Because how many mental-type attackers did I expect to run into after this? The type existed, sure, but it was an ambiguous niche that never claimed much of the field. Just an ability with one standout stat on an otherwise lopsided hexagon.

But that was the very moment—

—Shhhh….

The eyeball squids crumbled into something like ash, then began swirling together. The ash soon compacted from powder into a solid — and the solid took the shape of a box. Yet violet air, something one might call mana, billowed off it like fog, as if to warn: do not touch.

—It flinched.

Solid as it plainly was, the box pulsed and shuddered like a body gripped by rigor mortis.

"…Huh?"

And as I stared at the box, a notification window bloomed before my eyes.

…An artifact.

There was an artifact inside that 'box.' If I didn't reach for it, one of those four still rolling around back there might end up claiming it instead. Artifacts varied by effect, but some of them sold for whatever price you dared to name.

And I was supposed to hand that over to someone else? Yeah. Not happening.

I closed in on the box on something close to pure instinct, reached out, and opened it.

Once again, my trait fired — and in the same instant, I realized a dagger was already sitting in my grip.

"…What is this."

I studied the dagger for a long moment, focusing hard. What kind of effect could it possibly carry, for a thing like this to have landed in my hand?

Then the dagger's tooltip began to unfurl across my vision.

A dagger with no effects listed anywhere — nothing but the single phrase: Severance.

From what I'd heard, a standard artifact's tooltip read something along the lines of [A-Grade: Dragon King's Spear]. This one… was not that. And on closer inspection, its appearance was every bit as wrong as its description.

'What the— there's no gap between the handle and the blade? It's joined together like two same-pole magnets forced into contact—'

….

And the moment I saw that cascade of 'Mental Immunity' activations, I arrived at a single conclusion.

This artifact might just be an Outer God Artifact.