Unstoppable Momentum
Hyung's Ranch, after the staff had gone home for the day.
Once the sun slipped beneath the horizon, Dohyeon's nightly transgression began — almost without fail.
Crunch!
Dohyeon had grabbed a whole basket of apples and bit into one of them.
Munch munch munch.
"Mm. Tart and sweet."
He was headed for the stables to carry out Operation Secret Friends with the animals of Hyung's Ranch. His ultimate goal was for them to come back to life and stay by his side when their lifespans ran out — which meant getting close to them now, while they lived, was crucial.
Dohyeon held out an apple to Volcano first.
Crunch! Munch munch munch.
Even Volcano, who normally carried himself with the detachment of an old man who'd seen it all, lit up like a child whenever he tasted an apple.
"There, there. Look at you being adorable — eat up."
Dohyeon set down a couple more apples where they'd be easy to reach. Letting an animal gorge on sugary food wasn't good for it — but that went for creatures who still had long lives ahead of them. There was no need to hold a strict yardstick up to a retired old horse who'd already done everything he ever had to do.
Crunch! Munch munch munch munch.
"Good. You too, Snow — enjoy."
Dohyeon had meant to give Snow just the one apple, but one look at those big, glistening eyes, and she ended up with the same portion as Volcano.
Neigh-hee~
The spotlessly pure white mare nuzzled her head against him. Dohyeon was a pushover for this kind of thing — it had happened all the time back when he was raising Goldie, too. Whenever that adorable Golden Retriever whined at him, he'd squeeze his eyes shut and look away. The Dohyeon of today was different.
Well, it's me who loses out if the kids live too long, after all...
That was the line he fed himself. In truth, since he could turn the animals' deaths into new beginnings, he'd simply decided not to be too strict about it.
"Sleep tight. See you tomorrow, little cuties!"
Chomp!
Just as he was stepping out of the stables, Lightning clamped his teeth around Dohyeon's clothes and shook.
"Whoa↗ whoa↘ whoa↗ whoa↘— you rascal! You're gonna knock your big bro over!"
Only after Dohyeon barked at him did Lightning stop shaking — but he wouldn't let go, just blowing hot breath through his nostrils instead.
Snort— snort!
"Yah! It's not that I'm withholding them because I hate you! I keep telling you — you're sick, you can't eat apples!"
That much was true. It wasn't that Dohyeon was playing favorites because Lightning was a young foal with plenty of life left in him, or because the horse wasn't his own — he was restricting the foal's treats for Lightning's own sake, because the poor thing suffered from developmental orthopedic disease. And Dohyeon was a Climber who raked in money like leaves; he had no reason to be stingy over a few apples.
......
Lightning stared at him, unblinking.
You might wonder whether a beast could really follow such complicated talk — but Dohyeon, awakened as a Climber, was different. Ever since he'd been joined with Goldie as summoner and summon, since he'd come to understand, one hundred percent, that animals had hearts too, he could feel conversation flowing even with animals that weren't his summons, the higher his level climbed.
Lightning released Dohyeon's clothes.
"...Hey. Are you sulking?"
Lightning's lower lip was draped right over his upper one.
Pbrrt!
He even whipped his head away with a parting snort.
"Fine. You win. You win."
Dohyeon held out an apple. Lightning — as if he'd never sulked a day in his life — eagerly pushed his muzzle forward. With the hand that wasn't holding the apple, Dohyeon pushed the muzzle right back.
"Hold on! Promise me — half. You eat exactly half. Your mom said even half of that was only allowed with her permission, you know? But since I'm just handing it over, you bite off half and stop. Got it?"
Nod nod.
Lightning bobbed his head, as if to bundle his worries up and put them away.
"Here."
Chomp! Munch munch munch munch!
"Yah!"
The cunning little schemer had moved like lightning, stuffing the entire apple into his mouth and chewing. Startled, Dohyeon stepped into Lightning's stall and tried to pry the mouth open, but a Strength of 7 was no match for a foal's bite force.
"Good grief. Fine, I wash my hands of it. But if your legs bend any more crooked, don't come crying to me about how sad your mama's going to be. Not my problem!"
The moment Dohyeon gave up and turned his back, Lightning's ears drooped, even as he kept chewing. The sight melted Dohyeon's resolve, and he reached out to stroke the foal's neck.
"Look — I'll let it slide just this once. But you need to learn a little self-control. You know our Goldie? Back when he was alive, if I said 'Wait!', that boy would wait a whole hour."
Pbrrr— snuffle...
Perhaps he felt a little guilty too, because Lightning nuzzled his face against Dohyeon's chest. Dohyeon stroked him, then went on his rounds through the other enclosures. The large dogs from the Jeju animal shelter, the strays once slated for euthanasia, the cats picked up by animal control, the hamster some elementary schooler had left in his care — every kind of animal huddled together, and Dohyeon stopped in front of the last remaining pen.
Hum— hum!
It was the shaggy alpaca family.
"What on earth kind of place is Jeju Island? Abandoned alpacas roaming the countryside..."
The male and female alpacas he'd named Bokdol and Boksun had supposedly wandered all across Jeju with their three babies in tow before the firefighters finally caught them. When they'd first arrived at Hyung's Ranch, Boksun had been close to death — but more than a week on now, she'd roughly recovered her strength.
Though she did say she doesn't think they'll last much longer...
Kang Eunseo, the ranch's veterinarian, had diagnosed that the parents' lifespans were nearly at an end — and that Boksun, the female, had been badly drained by delivering triplets, something normally considered impossible for the species.
Mwaaah—!
Dohyeon gave Bokdol and Boksun an apple each, then handed one apiece to the triplets he'd named Ilpaca, Ipaca, and Sampaca.
Munch munch munch munch—
"All gone already? Here — one more each. You're supposed to be happy."
Bokdol and Boksun were singularly gluttonous. Dohyeon figured their long years of wandering through a world where food was never plentiful probably had something to do with it.
Having successfully carried out Operation Secret Friends across the whole ranch, Dohyeon stepped out of the stables.
"I really need to hire more staff soon — then I could at least give the alpaca family a bath."
A week later, three new employees joined Hyung's Ranch.
"Chaea, Jun-seong, Yu-na — I'm counting on you all from here on out. If there's anything you ever need my help with, don't hesitate to say so."
"Yes, sir! Thank you!"
Yoon Chaea, a former dog groomer; Min Jun-seong, a former doggy daycare worker; and Seo Yu-na, a former cat cafe barista — bowed their heads in greeting to Dohyeon, Climber and ranch owner.
"Now then. First I'll walk you through the whole ranch, and after that you can each get started on whatever's in your wheelhouse."
Shearing, bathing, and tending to the nails of the ranch's bustling menagerie — the three of them were going to be busy.
With the staff hired to keep Hyung's Ranch running smoothly, Dohyeon threw himself back into climbing the Tower.
Once a day. One floor at a time.
Floor 13. 14. 15. 16...
The Climber community stressed it over and over — pour real care into your party's size and composition based on your own class and connections. But nothing in the teens floors seemed able to slow Dohyeon's stride.
The orc shamans of Floor 15 — the first wall ordinary Climbers ever run into — were likewise helpless against the Elephant Punch dropping from seven meters overhead. Orc warriors buffed by their totems collapsed as if they'd come down with heatstroke, and the ones clutching their heads and rolling on the ground fared far worse.
Elephants are, at their core, four-legged animals. When four hundred kilograms of weight concentrated onto pointed toe bones, orc hide punctured easily. In life, elephants had soft, padded soles built to bear their own bulk — skeleton elephants were different. They carried no weight that needed cushioning, and bone damage meant nothing to them. The Cranial Organs floating inside their vast ribcages mended cracked bone in the space of a breath.
The shamans' fireballs were the one attack that might conceivably have interrupted Dohyeon's smooth ascent — but from where the orc shamans stood, Dohyeon wasn't even visible. With two colossal skeleton elephants rampaging about, that was only natural. The fireballs that left Climbers at their wits' end did no more than singe a jade elephant's skull a little — and there was no second fireball. The flustered shaman caught a foreleg from the elephant couple and died with its neck snapped.
And so Dohyeon came to Floor 20.
KRAAAA!
A monster not as large as the elephant couple, but roughly at eye level with them. A being that didn't lose to Dohyeon's summons on weight class. The very embodiment of overflowing vitality. The gatekeeper of the twenties floors.
A troll.
TADUMP! TADUMP!
Dohyeon held his breath and moved toward the exit portal — no sense becoming a target for nothing.
KRAAAA—!
The battle with the troll unfolded in a way nothing before it had. These were Taesan and Soran, who could fell even the orcs that stumped Climbers with a single thump to the head. But a troll whose bulk roughly matched the all-bone skeleton elephants did not fold easily. It seized Taesan's tusks and matched him in a test of raw strength, and dodged every downward stomp Soran aimed at its head with nifty little sidesteps.
Click-click!
Goldie's small teeth could barely draw troll blood, and even that closed up in moments. Goldie was fast and strong — just not enough for it to matter against a troll.
The fight looked like a stalemate. Goldie, Taesan, and Soran couldn't deal the troll a fatal wound, and the troll, for its part, couldn't bring down Dohyeon's skeletons. As long as the Cranial Organs held, they would not fall.
So we just grind it out until the troll wears itself down, and then we win?
That was when an unexpected clean strike burst out of Goldie's corner.
SHLAK—!
Goldie's claws had opened a deep wound across the troll's ankle.
It was unmistakably different from everything that had come before. Something about Goldie seemed to have changed.
GRUOOH!
The troll, thrown off balance for an instant, lost its contest of strength against Taesan and toppled backward — and the elephant couple did not waste the opening.
Click-click!
Taesan pinned the troll under tusks and forelegs so it couldn't rise; Soran hammered it again and again with her sharp-set feet; and Goldie whirled his razored claws, shredding everything near where the arteries ran. The troll, thrashing on its back, moved less and less as the blood poured out of it. And once Taesan and Soran — catching on from Goldie's example — too began landing real damage through that tough troll hide, it was finished.
From the limbs of the Jade Bone Skeletons, wherever they had pierced the troll's hide, mana was rising like heat haze. Aura — the power that physique-type Climbers were said to come to wield. It wasn't the finished article, but as a beginning it left nothing to be desired.
Dohyeon had only vaguely sensed that there was a reason he'd remade the Cranial Organs from the heads of the orc shamans they'd encountered from Floor 15 onward.
Ding!
Tower Floor 20 Cleared!
Cumulative Points Earned — Q3 2035: 501,672
Level Up! Distribute your stat points.
Level 20 Reached! Choose a new skill.
Three skill cards floated up before Dohyeon.
❖ Soul Shaping
❖ Living Creature Procedure
❖ Advanced Jade Bone Processing
Dohyeon reaches out.