Divine Tree (World Tree)!
Settling my resolve was all well and good, but first I needed to quiet the hunger with the food Seonghwa had ordered.
There was just one little problem.
"You ordered this much?"
"Yeah."
Sure, I had told her to pick whatever she wanted without holding back. But the delivery boxes stacked up like she was planning to host a full-on buffet inside the house—over twenty different dishes, easy.
What were we supposed to do with the leftovers…?
"What? You said order whatever I wanted."
"Well… yeah."
I was the one who had shoved the phone into her hands and egged her on, so I had no choice but to grin and bear it, stuffing myself bite after bite.
My worry about leftovers turned out to be completely unfounded. The moment the two of us started eating, a mountain of food that could have fed thirty people simply began to vanish.
By the time we finally stopped, stuffed to the point of discomfort, not a single dish remained.
"Ugh—I can't eat another bite."
We had polished off every last scrap. Sprawled out on the couch under the crushing weight of a bloated stomach, I was just starting to recover when Seonghwa casually stacked only her own empty plates, declared herself tired, and bolted for her room like she was fleeing the scene.
Tch. That little pest.
She still needed a lot more table manners training.
After roughly cleaning up the disaster zone, I sent a quick check-in to the seniors who would be wondering how I was doing. Then I stretched both legs out on the sofa and got comfortable.
"Alright. Time for a look around."
The Tower had rolled out new features after the update. First stop: the brand-new community board.
Other countries can wait.
I opened the Korea-only board the Tower had created.
Whoa—
It was pure chaos. With no real moderators in sight, the place had already descended into absolute bedlam.
Titles that already made the back of my neck tighten filled the board.
"Yeah… this is exactly the flavor it always had."
The early Climber galleries had felt the same way. Time really didn't change people.
I closed the nostalgia-inducing posts without bothering to open them and checked the newly added shop instead.
"Huh…"
Kinda mid?
There were a few useful-looking items, sure. But after tasting the rewards from Hard Mode, everything felt a little underwhelming.
A couple of options let you spend points to reduce Gate Break erosion or even prevent a Break ahead of time, but—
"That's the country's job."
In the end, almost nothing felt worth buying for myself.
"Come on, I at least expected some kind of elixir on the level of an ogre's heart."
I scrolled and scrolled until I finally reached the very top tier and spotted something that actually made my eyes light up.
Now that looks genuinely useful.
A Spatial Pouch. The description said it only held about three square meters of space, but any fantasy regular knew how insanely practical these things were.
There was just one catch.
"Why is this so expensive?"
The price tag sat at a soul-crushing 500,000 points.
Current exchange rates in the shop:
Lower-grade magic stone — 1 point
Mid-grade magic stone — 50 points
The superior-grade stones I carried — 5,000 points each
Back when a lower-grade stone went for about ten thousand won, that pouch already cost a clean five billion. With magic stone prices currently doubled, the real-world equivalent was closer to ten billion.
I nearly gave up on the spot. Then greed whispered again.
"But if I had that…"
At least I wouldn't starve halfway through a climb.
Clear times only got longer the higher you went. I had already been burned by hunger more than once. Today was a perfect example—if I hadn't been fighting on an empty stomach at the end, the whole run would have been smoother and faster.
"Aigoo… burning ten billion just to keep my stomach full…?"
With no other urgent uses for the points, the pouch sat in that awkward "nice but not necessary" zone. I mentally bookmarked it for later and closed the shop with a sigh.
The auction house had only just opened, so there was nothing worth looking at yet. That left the feature I had been looking forward to most.
"Yeah. This is the one I was waiting for…!"
Dimensional communication was live.
I opened NewTube. Every corner of the screen was packed with Climber live streams. NewTube had even added an entire dedicated category for Tower climbing, clearly ready for the traffic.
"They sure know how to ride a wave."
The current number-one stream alone had over half a million concurrent viewers, and below that countless more people were watching Climbers push floors in real time.
"Looking at this is making me greedy too."
I had already been planning to start streaming myself—partly to talk with fans after all the trolling, partly just because. I had even locked in a date and time with the gym I contracted with. Maybe I could do a little Normal Mode climb first as a soft launch, just to say hello to the subscribers.
I was about to settle in and watch a few more runs when my phone started vibrating nonstop.
Wondering what the hell was going on, I opened my channel and froze.
"What? Why did the subscriber count jump again?"
It had already blown past five million and was now eyeing eight. The endless flood of new comments was what kept the notifications screaming.
I carefully opened the comment section and found the reason was surprisingly simple.
People were pouring in just to confirm whether I was really the current Rank 1.
I never actually called myself the Heavenly Demon on camera, so I figured they wouldn't care that much.
Then again, every video showed someone with peak martial arts skill. At home I tossed the title around casually, but on NewTube I had never bragged once. Of course the subscribers would wonder if I was the real deal.
"I never deliberately went for the mysterious aesthetic, though."
I just kept my mouth shut because people said it looked cooler that way—or I cut any talking in the edit. Now everyone thought I was some silent, solemn master and the comments were begging me to finally speak the truth.
Should I just drop a verification post?
I had never planned to hide it. While I was considering going public, a delicious idea struck me.
What if I went live and casually dropped "I am the Heavenly Demon"? Would the servers actually explode?
Heh.
I imagined delivering that legendary line from the old movie that once took over the world.
I was still lost in the fantasy when I suddenly felt a sharp gaze. Seonghwa had appeared at some point and was staring straight at me.
"What? What is it…!"
"Nothing. Just thinking how simple you are."
I shoved down the wave of embarrassment and snapped back, asking why she had come out to the living room.
"Hand over the loot you brought back this time."
"The World Tree branch? Why?"
I had been saving it as emergency funds—something to dump on the auction house the moment I desperately needed a Spatial Pouch. Naturally I questioned her when she tried to take my rainy-day fund.
"Why do you suddenly need it?"
"To plant it, obviously."
She explained she planned to plant a World Tree inside the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons and fill the place with spiritual energy, then told me to hand it over nicely while I still could.
"You think it'll grow in a place that barely gets any light?"
"Don't worry about that."
She said she could replace sunlight with arts, and that the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons already sat on a dragon vein, making it perfect for a Divine Tree. Since the branch had no listed usage instructions and I had only been planning to sell it on name value alone, I handed it over without a fight.
Besides…
Yeah. Now that I've unlocked Spiritual Power, she's probably doing all this for my sake anyway.
I still wondered whether a single stick could actually grow into anything. Seonghwa carefully cradled the World Tree branch I had given her and spoke.
"It carries the energy of a Divine Tree. Just plant it and it will grow as much as it needs."
She added that once it matured, we would even get Divine Tree fruit.
"That tiny thing? When is it supposed to get big…?"
It was barely fifteen centimeters. How was something that small supposed to shoot up?
At my doubtful question she only smiled softly.
"Heh. You can look forward to it."
With that confident look she vanished into the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons.
The next day.
Seonghwa still hadn't returned, so I entered the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons alone, aiming to spar with the 10th Heavenly Demon and work toward the Flame Heavenly Demon arts.
The moment I stepped through the entrance, a sight that made me doubt my own eyes unfolded before me.
"…!"
A colossal tree stood planted right between the buildings.
The World Tree had already grown so massive it dwarfed the structures of the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons. Spiritual energy denser and more abundant than anything I had felt inside the Tower itself wrapped around the trunk. The air filled with thick clumps of that energy, soaking into my body.
"Hah. So that's why she looked so sure of herself."
A half-laughing, half-awed sound slipped out of me as I stared at Seonghwa's handiwork.