The Magic God

His awakened class had changed. To EX-Rank.

A jump from B-Rank to S-Rank would have been shock enough. EX-Rank stood apart even among the ranks — a grade unto itself.

He had never seen it coming. Enough to rattle anyone, regressor or not.

Me... EX-Rank? The same as Minwoo?

Why it had changed, and how, he couldn't begin to understand. That didn't mean it was a bad thing. No — calling it bad would be an insult to EX-Rank. It could be wonderful. It could not be bad.

Magic God. A gaudy name, as if the class were afraid someone might miss that it was EX-Rank — the sort of title you'd expect at the very summit of the magic classes. One look at his status window turned the guess into certainty.

That's a lot of skills.

He could think of several reasons. The first was his level: already 5. The experience he'd earned climbing the Tower had apparently been settled all at once. If the usual pace was a single level per floor, this was a number that didn't even belong in the same conversation as before. Of course more than one skill had appeared.

The second reason lay in the class itself.

The early skills were built almost exactly like the ones from his previous life — a stereotype, if anything. The only difference was the word Ultimate tagged onto the end, and even at a glance it was obvious these were the better versions. Up to here, it still sat inside the range he'd expected the moment he saw EX-Rank.

What came underneath did not.

Well. If you can call these magic, then they're magic.

Thinking about it, the magic granted to Shin Haneul in his previous life had simply been far too narrow. Strange, for a class with the word god in it, to deal in only that. Depending on which skills he chose from here, higher techniques would probably open to him as well.

"Dad?"

"Dad—?"

"Daaaaaad—!!!"

He'd been staring into nothing. Right in front of his eyes, his son was calling him.

"What do I do now? I already finished moving my mana!"

Astonishing, even so. What would take others days, the boy had finished in a single go.

"Let's stop here for today."

There was no reason to rush. He'd told him not to force it — to take things slow.

And yet—

"But I wanna keep going."

"Hm?"

"This is fun!"

Fun. The word hit harder than it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠should have. In his previous life, he had never once heard it.

"What do I do next?"

"Hmm... then how about a little more of this?"

He walked his son through the next step, thoughts drifting.

A lot of things are different between then and now.

Back then, Shin Haneul had taught his son far more harshly, and the mood of the world had been entirely different. Tower-clear missions refreshed every single day. Fail to finish inside the time limit, and that nation was destroyed without mercy. You could say that part was the same even now — but in his previous life, the clear rates for Floors 1 and 2 had been miserably low. From this point on, a fair number of countries had met their end.

Korea had been no better off. A shattered economy was the baseline, and one thought hung over everyone: tomorrow, all of us might be dead.

Emigrate? Even now the barriers to immigration had climbed to absurd heights; back then they had been far worse. For an ordinary person, even sneaking in had been nearly impossible.

In the end, enduring in Korea was the only choice — a game of tag played with your life, where falling a single step behind meant dying on the spot. Doomsayers spilled into the streets. People who had given up on living went around making trouble. It had been pure chaos.

But now? He didn't know about Korea, but America felt reasonably at peace. At least Seattle — the neighborhood where he lived — was. Because of it, Minwoo's face was a completely different story. The boy was getting his money's worth out of a second life.

Well. Rather than training, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'll just think of it as sending him out for some exercise.

That alone would leave him strong, and then some. There was a difference between having already stumbled through the trial and error once, and never having stumbled at all.

Hector Azar — at present, the only SSS-Rank Awakener in the world — was in a thoroughly foul mood.

"Sure, I roughed the guy up a little. But is that really worth this much shit?"

"No — Mr. Azar...!"

James, a staffer from the Tower Countermeasures Headquarters. It was the way the man was treating him that Hector couldn't stand.

"All that person did was praise Mr. Shin Haneul. And you beat a civilian that badly?"

"That little shit's the one who called for a real fight! And that was me going easy! If I'd felt like it, he wouldn't even be breathing right now!"

"His limbs are shattered! He can't even move in the hospital!"

"I am Hector Azar, the only SSS-Rank Awakener on the planet! I can't even do this much when I feel like it?"

Right now, America was failing to recognize what he was worth. Starting with the James standing in front of him. The man had come out of that Tower Countermeasures Headquarters or whatever it was called, claiming he'd attend to Hector, and he wasn't doing a damn thing.

From the start, that guy gets Team 1's captain and the whole team thrown at him, and I get Team 3? And only part of it?

From what he'd heard, the Tower Countermeasures Headquarters had three teams in all. Team 1 looked after Shin Haneul. Team 2 managed the Tower strategy as a whole. Team 3 handled the odds and ends, so Teams 1 and 2 never had to spare a thought for anything else. That was as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠good as ranking Azar beneath Shin Haneul.

He'd even heard the man had been granted immunity — meaning he could throw around a fair amount of violence without the law ever touching him.

Must be nice.

He wanted to live that way too. And he believed he deserved to. After clearing Floor 1 and reaching level 2, he had known, bone-deep, that he had become something immense. No — he'd felt it the moment his class was granted. Leveling up had only made him certain.

Right now the world barely has any SS-Ranks, let alone an SSS. Which means? I'm the best!

But he was not being treated like it. Not by the United States government, and not by its people. It had to be because the Tower handed out scores like garbage.

"At the very least, you ought to clean up something like this so it doesn't come back on me. Keep treating me this cold and we're gonna have a problem. I'm only getting stronger."

"I'm sorry. Even so, that's a bit..."

"You're really gonna play it like this? On Floor 1 I barely had any skills, so my score was low, but on Floor 2 nobody beat me except that trickster. And how long do you figure his tricks are gonna keep working? I'm just gonna keep getting stronger. And stronger!"

He laid the threat out plain: get his hands on a Nationality Change Right later, one way or another, and he might simply walk out of America.

A death penalty? He didn't need anything like that. However much harder the Tower grew as it rose, he was sure he'd grow faster.

He had never believed Shin Haneul scored high because he was strong. Try to explain the spread any other way and the points stopped making sense. World second on Floor 1 had been 1,699 — and that one was dead. His own score, world second on Floor 2, was 1,723. Shin Haneul sat at 999,999 on both floors. A gap of two whole orders of magnitude? That was absurd.

The reasonable conclusion was that Shin Haneul was using something nobody else knew. And there was evidence. The Floor 2 clear — go by what the broadcast had shown, and all the man had done was face a dragon and solve a puzzle of mana. Everything else? He'd just stood there, and the trial had overcome itself. An impossible situation. In game terms, the only explanation was that he'd found something like a bug.

If I'd gone in after watching the broadcast, I could've done it too.

In the end, the only difference between him and Shin Haneul was whether you knew the trick.

So what about Floor 3?

I'll watch your broadcast, and then I'll go.

Other people apparently lacked even the skill to copy the trick after seeing it. He was different. He had more than enough ability to follow along — he was the world's only SSS-Rank class, after all. Know the method, and there was no way he'd lose to some jobless nobody.

I'll put up 999,999 on Floor 3 myself.

If he posted the top score too, how would the system rule? He wasn't sure. But at least the way people looked at him would change.

So Azar thought.

The same hour as always. Floor 3 of the Tower had opened.

Shin Haneul looked at the notification and smiled, just a little. Once, this hour had been a hell he prayed would come late. Now it was the opposite. Why was it taking so long? The wait grated on him.

If I had my way, I'd clear straight to the top of the Tower in a single day.

But even a regressor couldn't clear every floor with ease — least of all when he was gunning for the top score on all of them. Floor 3 was exactly that kind of floor. To break it for a high score, Shin Haneul had braced himself for every kind of hardship and prepared accordingly.

He no longer needed to. Not with a class called Magic God, EX-Rank.

Even so, this time he had to clear it without a hidden quest. To squeeze out even a little score bonus, he turned the broadcast on.

He'd left every setting exactly as it had been yesterday. All but one.

A hard warning. He didn't know how well it would land, but if someone watched and still copied him, that was their own fault. They would have to answer for their own choice.

With every setting in place, he stepped out of the Corridor and into Floor 3.

The mission was exactly as he remembered it. The way he meant to clear it was nothing like before.

KWOOOOAR!

The moment he stepped in, an ogre filled his view — a bulk easily twice the size of a grown man. A monster that made the goblins of Floor 1 look like nothing. However many levels a climber had picked up on the way to Floor 3, this was not an opponent an ordinary person could handle. So the first strategy anyone who arrived here had to choose was only one: run.

The single mercy was that an ogre moved in straight lines. The standard clear was to wring out every skill you had and play the matador, buying time.

But—

I don't need to do that.

The skill Shin Haneul had learned upon reaching level 5. He activated Fireball (Ultimate).

Fwoosh—!

The size was hardly different from before. The power of that fireball, which he had already confirmed, was another matter.

KWA-BOOOOM!!!

A little much, honestly, to spend on a mere Floor 3 monster.

Crackle, crackle.

From the burning ogre rose a faint smell of meat.

A rather shocking result. The chat window Shin Haneul had left open exploded all over again.

A hot response, worthy of a flashy performance. But the real thing came after.