The Fruits of Tower Climbing (2)
Lee Jiyu’s house was the kind that made you gasp the moment you saw it.
A penthouse apartment on the top floor with ceilings so high they looked like something straight out of a drama. It wasn’t just a billion-won apartment. If anything, it was probably twice the price of the one Choi Junseok had seen.
What did they call this again?
A premium penthouse apartment?
The uppermost floor of a luxury high-rise. Massive, crystal-clear windows stretched across the walls, offering an almost surreal view of Seoul’s skyline and the towers below. Compared to the sixty-billion-won ultra-high-rise he’d visited earlier, this place felt like an entirely different dimension—parts of the ceiling itself were transparent, as if the house had been built in the sky.
Choi Junseok’s jaw dropped in genuine awe.
“Whoa…… This is insane.”
A half-flight of stairs led up into the interior, and a chandelier that looked obscenely expensive hung from the high ceiling.
Lee Jiyu smirked, clearly enjoying his reaction.
“Feel free to be impressed. You’re the first man I’ve ever let into my home—aside from my summons, that is.”
“Then wouldn’t that make me the first even including the summons?”
“……Now that you mention it, yes. Aside from the staff who manage the place.”
She explained that the staff had ended their contracts before moving to the Player Management Agency’s residential zone.
“Isn’t it a waste to never invite anyone to a place like this?”
She hesitated for a moment before answering.
“I can just look at it from outside, can’t I? Why bring people all the way up here?”
Choi Junseok, Lee Nayeon, and Song Hana all began wandering around, marveling at everything.
Lee Jiyu seemed oddly delighted by their reactions and started showing them around.
She casually mentioned that one of the paintings on the wall was worth 1.3 billion won.
Choi Junseok felt a strange hollowness as he toured the house. He had once dreamed of living in a place like this too. But even with sixty billion won, Seoul’s real estate market wouldn’t allow for a penthouse straight out of a drama.
“My sixty-billion-won luxury apartment suddenly feels shabby in comparison.”
“Don’t be too jealous. Even among rankers, I can only afford this because of the money I made from my business…… You can’t buy a place like this just by climbing the Magic Tower.”
She was right. The money earned from climbing towers was in the hundreds of millions annually, but even a billion-won salary wasn’t enough for something like this. Choi Junseok had already felt the terrifying weight of taxes—especially government-related funds—within his first month of climbing.
Lee Jiyu led Song Hana and Lee Nayeon to their rooms, then showed Choi Junseok his own.
“By the way…… You have a guest room ready, but you’ve never actually invited any guests?”
“……”
Lee Jiyu flinched slightly.
“I-I just didn’t want the extra room to go to waste, so I named it that in case of emergencies…… That’s all.”
‘Hmm……’
At Choi Junseok’s knowing smile, she quickly looked away.
The guest rooms were simple—just beds and bedding. Two of them. It gave the impression of someone quietly preparing for a loneliness she didn’t want to admit.
Lee Jiyu had entered the towers in her mid-teens, long before the Incheon Magic Tower appeared, and had already been a veteran player for several years. In an interview, she’d revealed that her first awakening happened in her mid-teens. From that point on, her parents had pushed her into rigorous training and government-sponsored player development programs. Naturally, she’d dropped out of school and drifted away from her friends.
‘She probably never had normal human relationships.’
It was inevitable that friendships would fade. Anyone she grew close to would eventually die. The average life expectancy for players climbing the middle floors and above was less than a year. People she met or grew attached to would either die within months or become nothing more than subordinates or employees.
Her skill, level, and strength had allowed her to claim the hidden reward as the fastest solo clearer of the first floor of Suseo Magic Tower. She had also leveraged her fame and capital to launch the Super Sonic brand, becoming a successful businesswoman overnight.
It made sense that she had no peers she could truly call friends. Choi Junseok also understood why she seemed to harbor a strangely human interest in him.
‘It’s not just because I’m Function.’
She was probably glad to meet another player in his early twenties—someone rare in the player world who could stand shoulder to shoulder with her. More than that, Choi Junseok didn’t treat her with the usual awe or tension.
“You can use this room, Junseok.”
Lee Jiyu’s tone had cooled slightly.
When she opened the door and turned on the lights, a spacious room came into view. It looked more like a study than a bedroom. Unlike the rooms given to Song Hana and Lee Nayeon, this one felt lived-in, as if someone had been staying here until recently.
“Is this the room you mentioned earlier……?”
“Yes. Until a few weeks ago, it belonged to my former comrade who climbed the tower with me. Choi Byeong-ryeol, the S-grade summon.”
The room was neatly organized, with an unusually large number of books. Since summons didn’t need sleep, he had probably spent his waking hours reading.
Lee Nayeon also preferred gathering information through television. It might have been a similar desire.
Choi Junseok noticed the absence of a bed and asked,
“Where’s the bed?”
“You weren’t seriously expecting a bed, were you? I’ll give you a blanket and pillow. Sleep on the floor.”
“……?”
Song Hana immediately raised her hand.
“Then I’ll sleep with you!”
Lee Jiyu and Lee Nayeon both stared at Choi Junseok and Song Hana in shock.
“Wait…… Have you two already reached that kind of relationship?”
Lee Jiyu shot Choi Junseok a look as if he were some disgusting insect.
He waved his hands frantically and backed away.
“W-What kind of weird, dirty imagination is that? It’s not like that at all!”
“If it’s not like that, then just say it’s not. Why are you stuttering?”
“Because you suddenly put me on the spot……”
Song Hana tilted her head in confusion, as if she had done nothing wrong.
Lee Nayeon’s face flushed slightly as she quickly left the room.
“What…… Why is Nayeon’s face red? Don’t tell me……”
Lee Jiyu glared at Choi Junseok with genuine disgust, but he drew a firm line.
“We used separate rooms even in the residential zone. We used separate rooms in the place the Player Management Agency gave us before that too. Don’t misunderstand.”
If something had actually happened, he might have felt less wronged. But Choi Junseok had never even come close to crossing that line.
He was a healthy young man in his twenties, after all. Living with two beautiful women like Lee Nayeon and Song Hana made it difficult to remain completely indifferent. Some men might have lost control and tried to exploit the summon-master relationship, but not Choi Junseok.
Of course, that didn’t mean he had no romantic interest in them. He simply maintained the boundary he had set. His goal was to treat them as comrades climbing the tower together—so that nothing would interfere with their ascent.
Besides, it had only been a month since he met them. They had spent a lot of time together during their climbs, but it wasn’t as if they had known each other for years.
“You know we’ve only been a team for less than a month, right?”
“……Has it really only been that long?”
“A lot happened in between, but yes.”
Thinking back, it was true. Just a month ago, this kind of life had been unimaginable. A month wasn’t much time at all—barely more than two weeks had passed.
From a container box to a luxury apartment in just two weeks. At the same time, they were now facing the 30th floor of the Magic Tower.
“So how exactly are you planning to earn 500 million won in three days? Even I would struggle to make that much in three days.”
“Well, the Magic Tower always has an answer. Floors 31 through 35 are the martial artist floors, aren’t they?”
“……That’s right.”
It was a floor that left an unpleasant aftertaste.
While other floors featured monsters in obvious monster shapes, floors 31 and above spawned humanoid enemies. Martial artists and swordsmen straight out of a murim world would appear, forcing players to fight and kill what looked like humans. Many players avoided the 30s precisely because of that psychological burden.
But not Choi Junseok.
Even if they looked exactly like real people, they weren’t. They were constructs repeatedly generated by the Magic Tower. There was no reason he couldn’t kill them.
It might seem like he had lost some humanity, but Choi Junseok was not that fragile.
“Some people even farm the early-to-mid 30s repeatedly. The items the humanoid monsters drop are actually useful.”
“Even if you farm there for three days straight, 500 million won would be tough. It’s not like valuable items drop in bulk……”
“It’ll work.”
“……How can you be so sure?”
Lee Jiyu assumed he was speaking from inexperience with the middle floors.
“Then let’s start with a light run from floor 29.”
“……”
Lee Jiyu stared at him, speechless. Was floor 29 supposed to be light?
Far from it. Even experienced raid parties that repeatedly cleared floor 29 occasionally suffered casualties.
And floor 30 was even worse. Most guilds formed full raid parties and coordinated meticulously before attempting it. Even then, they entered expecting deaths.
Yet Choi Junseok was already transforming into a swarm of light, preparing to enter floor 29 alone.
Lee Jiyu shook her head at his recklessness and glanced around Choi Byeong-ryeol’s old room. Just as she had instructed, nothing had been touched. The traces of his presence remained exactly as they were.
“Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I came in here.”
Choi Byeong-ryeol had seemed to sense his own disappearance and had predicted Choi Junseok’s arrival. He had asked her not to grieve and instead help that man clear Suseo Magic Tower. It had been his final request.
Though they had only known each other for a little over a hundred days, he had been the person she had grown closest to.
As she gently touched the book Choi Byeong-ryeol had been reading, with its bookmark still in place, she felt a presence behind her.
A swarm of light gathered, forming Choi Junseok’s shape.
Startled, she turned around, her mouth falling open.
‘……Already?’