Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: The Mountain Squirrel's Plea
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⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙
The Mountain Squirrel seems to want to become your companion. Do you accept?
I became a Hunter three years ago, right when I turned twenty.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙
You have received an invitation to the Trial Tower. Do you accept?
"Is this for real?"
A translucent alert window had suddenly appeared before my eyes.
It was proof of my awakening.
'Trial Tower.'
A mysterious structure that had sprung up all over the world one day.
Because it had an easy difficulty level even ordinary people could climb, it was also called the Tutorial Tower.
Every Hunter receives an invitation to the Trial Tower upon awakening.
And to those who climb all ten floors of the Trial Tower, it grants a 'skill' as a gift.
[Swordsmanship][Spearmanship][Archery][Ice Magic][Fire Magic][Summoning] and so on.
No one knows which skill you'll get, but one thing was clear: your future as a Hunter was determined by what first skill you received.
Before leveling up, an awakened person's body was hardly different from an ordinary human's.
In the low-level bracket, the first skill was what an awakener had to rely on most.
Your growth trajectory and even the number of zeros in your earnings depended on what skill you got.
Awakening itself was a stroke of luck, and then getting your first skill was another gamble.
Unlike games, there was no such thing as resetting.
So every Hunter, upon reaching the tenth floor of the Trial Tower, could only kneel, clasp their hands, and pray.
'Please give me an S-rank skill...!'
And so on.
That went for me too, of course.
Ahead of climbing the tenth floor of the Trial Tower, I'd done everything—churches, temples, shamans—to boost my luck.
And the result of me climbing the tenth floor after maxing out my luck like that was—
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙
You have learned the skill 'Monster Guidebook'.
Wow! A rare skill no one had ever heard of!
Did my prayers actually work?
Not even the Hunter sites had any info on a skill called 'Monster Guidebook'.
Light flashed, and something like a smartphone appeared in my hand.
This must be that Monster Guidebook thing.
So? What did this 'Monster Guidebook' skill actually do?
⚔ STATUS ⚔
Monster Guidebook Lv. 1 Allows you to learn about monsters' habits, traits, and drop items.
Oh, a unique ability.
So how do I attack with it?
...I can't, fuck.
No matter how hard I looked, there wasn't a single mention of 'attack' in the skill description.
My dawn prayers, 108 prostrations, and one million won shaman ritual had netted me an unheard-of trash skill.
No, actually, the skill itself might not be bad.
If it let me know monsters' traits and drop items, it could help with hunting and resource farming.
But damn it, this was my first skill.
Was I supposed to let my ancestors handle the attacking?
My mentality shattered when I realized I'd drawn a dud skill... but I couldn't just give up.
Not after awakening like this.
"Alright, if I grind like hell, who knows what might happen."
But for someone who'd steeled himself to die, all that came back was death.
I entered the next tower without an attack skill and nearly got my face smashed in by a monster, for real.
After that, I tried every trick in the book, challenging it over and over, but failed every time.
The tower wasn't forgiving enough to let you climb without combat skills.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Three years passed since then.
And...
"Chit!"
💥 DEFEAT! 💥
[Mountain Squirrel Defeated]
Today, like always, I took down a 'Mountain Squirrel', the monster on the first floor of the Trial Tower.
The Trial Tower gave no experience for clearing it, nor any rewards for repeats.
Then why bother?
You'll see if you keep reading.
⚔ MONSTER GUIDEBOOK ⚔
[Mountain Squirrel]
💪 Level: 1
🍀 Habitat: A squirrel living in the forests of Thunder Mountain. Its front teeth are intimidating.
⚡ Potential: F
✨ Drop Item: Low-Grade Magic Stone (0.1%)
The info on the Mountain Squirrel from the Monster Guidebook.
Ignore the minor details—see that?
The Low-Grade Magic Stone in the drop items.
Out of all the monsters on the Trial Tower's ten floors, this Mountain Squirrel is the only one with a drop item.
The other monsters in the Trial Tower all show [Drop Item: None] in the guidebook.
But only from this weakest monster, the Mountain Squirrel, comes a 0.1% chance for a Low-Grade Magic Stone.
I don't really know why it's only from this guy... maybe it's an Easter egg since it's the iconic first monster? Or a way to teach awakeners that drop items exist as part of the system. Nah, probably not, since it's just a measly 0.1% drop.
Honestly, who cares about the reason.
What matters is that this little guy drops magic stones.
The tiny Low-Grade Magic Stone shard it spits out weighs 50g.
With the current market price of Low-Grade Magic Stones at about 1,000 won per gram, that's worth 50,000 won.
At a 0.1% drop rate, killing about 1,000 gets me one 50,000-won stone.
And that's why I hunt these squirrels here.
1,000 squirrels a day for 50,000 won daily.
That's 1.5 million won a month.
But who has time to kill 1,000 squirrels manually? Might as well do day labor loading trucks.
Psh, that's why I've got an easy method for this grind.
"Chit!"
"Hmm, caught it here today, so I'll set the rat trap right here."
The first floor of the Trial Tower is a vast, empty white room.
A single Mountain Squirrel pops into existence there like it's teleporting in.
The spawn point is random each entry, but once you kill it, the respawn spot fixes to where you defeated it.
In other words?
If you stay put right there, a new squirrel respawns in exactly ten seconds.
I came up with an auto-farming method for Mountain Squirrels based on that mechanic.
1. Enter and kill the first Mountain Squirrel.
2. Once the respawn spot locks in, set a rat trap there.
3. While the trap auto-kills squirrels, catch up on sleep or kill time with a handheld game.
4. It kills one every fifteen seconds or so, so in 4-5 hours, you've got 1,000 down and a Low-Grade Magic Stone drops. Return as soon as you get it.
I made the rat traps myself.
Mountain Squirrels are the weakest low-tier monsters— a flick to the head kills them—so even crude traps enable infinite farming.
No matter how trash my skill was, there's always a way through even if the sky falls.
I found a way to make use of my awakener status.
"Chit!"
"Chit!"
"Chit!"
...
...
[Mountain Squirrel defeated.] [Mountain Squirrel defeated.] [Mountain Squirrel defeated.] ... ...
Time to play on my portable game console today.
Sometimes you just gotta dive back into childhood games and nostalgia.
I pulled out my sleeping bag from my pack, spread it, lay down, and turned on the game.
The tower only allows tower-specific weapons, but anything non-weapon is usually fine to bring.
While I gamed, squirrels kept chit-chitting away beside me, getting trapped and killed nonstop.
No corpses form.
When a squirrel's HP hits zero, its body fades like a hologram and vanishes somewhere.
Ten seconds later, a new one spawns.
About four hours later.
I was halfway through the game.
"Chiiiik-!!"
[Mountain Squirrel defeated.] [Acquired Low-Grade Magic Stone shard.]
"Ah, finally done."
Today's quota complete.
I picked up the blue gem-like stone the squirrel left and pocketed it.
Then I packed up to head out.
"Chit-chit!"
Another one respawned while I packed.
It spotted me, freaked out, and scurried away.
Scaredy-cat.
I wasn't planning to hunt more today.
"See you tomorrow."
"Chiii...!"
I waved goodbye to the squirrel.
Was it my imagination?
For some reason, its eyes looked more desperate today, like it had something to say to me.
Come to think of it, even during auto-farm, it kept reaching out its front paws toward me, which was weird.
Hmm...
Nah, no way.
It's a monster, after all.
"Oh right, almost forgot my proof post."
*Click-*
I used the system's screenshot to capture today's climb record, then opened the other feature, 'Tower Climbing Gallery', and posted the proof.
Then I quickly exited the tower.
"Return."
Even as I vanished from the white space,
the squirrel watched me with meaningful eyes.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
📰 Tower Climbing Gallery Post
Title: Huntbro's Climb Complete Today ☺
(Trial Tower 1st Floor Climb Record.jpg) Day 1,000 already today.
Chicken for dinner tonight ☺
Author: Squirrel Enthusiast
Posting my climb record to the Tower Climbing Gallery as proof.
That was my daily routine.
I'm not some attention whore posting consistent updates for kicks.
There was a reason.
Honestly, sitting in the tower for four hours a day isn't as easy as it sounds.
No internet inside, the first floor's white space has a hard floor, and the tower's stuffy air makes it no place to relax.
Four hours every day in a spot like that.
Especially for a double-job Hunter like me, grinding day labor by day and climbing at night—it's even worse.
After day labor, all I really want is to crash in my bed at home.
That's why I post proof pics.
To fend off that weak urge to slack.
You know how they say for diets, don't keep it quiet—shout it from the rooftops?
That way, public eyes force you to stick to it.
That's why I use a throwaway anon to post daily squirrel hunt proofs in the gallery.
Even if no one really cares about my posts,
knowing someone knows my routine gives me reason to keep going.
Thanks to that, I haven't skipped this routine once in 1,000 days.
A few minutes after posting, comments started rolling in.
💬 Comments
— Anon
This guy's insanely persistent. Already 1,000 days of these consistent posts.
— Anon
But seriously, who is this guy? Why farm nothing but squirrels in the Tutorial Tower? Spill it, damn it.
↳ Reply
Wake up lol. This guy's posted the same crap for 1,000 days and never replied once. Hardcore concept troll.
Like always, the comments hounded me about my identity, but I never replied.
It was just a routine proof post, and replying would only hurt me.
— Anon
Awakened and all this guy does is squirrel farming? Just die and pass the slot to someone useful.
↳ Reply
For real, dying would help the country. Total rice waster hogging an awakener slot.
— Anon
Lmao, trash-tier Hunters spamming crap in Tower Gal pretending to care about the country ㅋㅋ
And sure enough, the thread was already filling with toxic comments.
The number of awakeners per tower is fixed.
For a new one to appear, an existing one has to die.
If I died, a new awakener would be born, and unlike me, they might get a good skill and contribute to Korea's tower climbs.
So it was natural some saw guys like me as pathetic freeloaders.
Of course, I had no intention of dying, and most of those commenters were parked on comfy floors sucking honey themselves anyway.
In reality, only a tiny fraction of Hunters actually tackled the top floors for the country.
⭐ Top Comment
— Iron Fist
Congrats on 1,000 days! Rooting for you.
Not everyone despised me, though.
At some point, a consistent anon started leaving support comments every time I posted.
I had no idea what they were cheering for or if they even knew why I did this.
Naturally, I'd never replied to them either.
Appreciate the support, but replying would ruin the mysterious vibe.
"1,000 days, huh... I've really been at this grind a long time."
Chewing on a chicken leg, I stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in complicated thoughts.
Day labor on construction sites by day.
Squirrel grind in the tower by night.
How much longer could I keep living like this?
The tower meta shifted every year,
and magic stone prices were unstable lately.
On top of that, unavoidable fixed monthly expenses kept my savings from growing.
I was just barely scraping by, month to month.
Desperate for a breakthrough.
Lost in those bleak thoughts,
one comment caught my eye.
— Anon
Damn, 1,000 days of this. You're something else.
I figured it was just the usual curiosity.
Then a reply from what looked like the same anon popped up right away.
— Anon
↳ Reply
I'd love for you to keep entertaining me like this.
"What the hell is this psycho saying?"
Another hardcore concept troll, I guess.
I chuckled it off.
I never imagined something like that reply would come true tomorrow.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Entering Trial Tower 1st Floor."
Today, too, I finished my construction day labor, packed up, and headed to the tower district.
Arrive at the row of towers, mutter that to the system, and whoosh—you're inside instantly.
Open my eyes, and it's the same white space as yesterday.
"Little squirrel, where are you~?"
I pulled a rat trap from my bag and scanned around.
But no sign of the Mountain Squirrel.
What? Where is it?
"Chit!"
The cry of the guy I was looking for came from behind.
"Phew, had me worried you weren't spawning. Right on the head... Huh?"
I turned around with a grin, but my face quickly turned baffled.
The Mountain Squirrel was there today, sure enough.
But it looked a bit different.
"Chit!"
Flutter!
The little rat was waving a white flag.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙
The Mountain Squirrel seems to want to become your companion. Do you accept?
What kind of bullshit is this?
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