Everyone Has a Plan
"What the fuck."
"What is this?"
Hector Azar had been watching the broadcast of the third-floor clear. The world's one and only SSS-rank Awakener — on a limited-time basis — let a groan slip out of him before he even knew he was making it.
He had, to be fair, believed he could clear the Tower's third floor with room to spare. The man he had been on the first floor and the man he was now might as well have been strangers. Goblins? He could hunt those all day.
But that ogre…
Can I beat it?
He wasn't sure. Honest answer: he thought he'd lose. The pressure rolling off the thing's looks alone told him he wouldn't be able to stand against it unless he raised his level a good deal further.
Still. You never knew.
But this place was nothing but ordinary people, and every one of them was busy deifying the existence known as Shin Haneul.
It wasn't because he was EX-rank. It was the opposite. Nobody yet knew exactly how tremendous an EX-rank truly was, but because Shin Haneul was EX, they simply took it as something unconditionally good.
And if, from here on, they came to feel the weight of that rank for real? They would lose their minds even harder. Not only the American public. The government. Entire foreign nations.
Azar hated that.
He wanted to insist the whole thing was foam. Naturally, it didn't take. People weren't idiots.
He kept staring at the chat right up until Shin Haneul ended the broadcast, and not one person so much as mentioned Azar's name.
The only one in the world. SSS-rank, damn it!
And yet all anyone cared about was some pedigree-less grade called EX or whatever — a rank nobody could even say was good or bad.
Azar could not stomach it.
These bastards.
Meet them in person and they weren't worth a single punch. The moment he tried to settle it in chat, though, he kept losing ground. Not one person took his side.
So Azar made up his mind.
Then I'll just show them.
Thanks to Shin Haneul's exploits, America was already living without a death penalty. He ought to be able to peel the bluff off that ogre with a lighter heart. He had no thought of taking Shin Haneul's help. He was going to win anyway.
"KWOOOAR!!"
But the instant he came face to face with the ogre, Azar realized he had miscalculated something.
A line from the legendary boxer, Michael Tyson, came back to him.
And then he realized what he had forgotten.
The Tower had certainly said it would erase the death penalty. It had never said it would erase the pain.
"Gyaaagh!!"
SSS-rank Fist Lord Hector Azar screamed a scream unworthy of his class, and met the first death of his life.
After the return from the third floor, his disciples — Jessica, Graham, and the rest — made an enormous fuss.
"What! Since when did you receive a class?"
"As expected. You're incredible."
"You tore the Tower apart even while Jobless, and now that you're EX-rank, from here on…"
Ted, for his part, looked at Shin Haneul's class and found a great hope in it.
"Hyung. Then I'll get a class someday too, right? I will, won't I?"
Others received Shin Haneul's teaching and rose to S-rank, even SS-rank, while he was still Jobless. He hadn't said it aloud, but he had been seriously wondering whether talent was simply something he didn't have. Watching Shin Haneul, he found that hope again.
"I hope I awaken as EX-rank too. A cool class, and a cool name!"
"……"
For the moment, Shin Haneul decided to hold his tongue. There was something more urgent than this.
The clear rate… it's fallen far too low.
On the third-floor broadcast, he had made an announcement, and he had made it plainly.
And yet — would you look at this. Tell a human not to do something, and they only want it more.
Among America's Awakeners, people who went and tried it anyway came pouring out. They weren't going to die, so they wanted a taste.
The average clear score is going to fall off a cliff.
The Tower allowed retries, so long as you stayed alive. That was why an Emergency Escape Scroll, or Death Penalty Immunity, meant anything at all. But that was not the same as there being no downside.
The more runs you stacked, the more your score was shaved to account for the repetition, even if you turned in the exact same performance. Shave the score, and the rewards shrank, and so did the experience. In the end it would hinder the clear of the next floor as well.
He was certain he had passed this on to everyone under the cover of AARC's research results…
Every last one of them, swallowed by greed.
At least none of his disciples had ignored his words. That was a mercy.
"They're all so stupid. Nothing good comes of going against Master's words."
"I tried talking them around, this way and that, but it wouldn't take."
With that, Ted told him to look at a post he had written.
Author:Anonymous
Posts Written:999+
"So that's what you've been staring at so hard lately."
"Hehe."
Ted had acquired a new hobby. It was an extra function of the status window that had come into being with the Tower: the community.
Looking over the log of what Ted had written, Shin Haneul felt his head start to spin.
He definitely wasn't this kind of person.
Ted Kim. Korean name, Kim Jongwoo. The gym rat who used to say a man speaks with his actions had filled up, where the muscle used to be, with the swollen heart of a middle-school edgelord. The greatest cause of the change was, in all likelihood, himself, and Shin Haneul felt a debt he couldn't quite name.
But what was he supposed to do about it. This was what overcoming trauma looked like. The man himself was happy.
"Look at this. It's a complete circus. Every one of them."
They looked ready to fling themselves at the ogre like moths into a flame.
Well. Take a few hits and they'll come to their senses.
He had warned them, plainly, and word of the ones who kept failing ought to be circulating by now. If they copied him even so, that was their choice. He had no intention of stopping them that far.
Nor was the community entirely meaningless. There were parts of it Shin Haneul himself was putting to use.
He was buying drop items from the Tower. Even knowing the future, you couldn't pick up every item that fell only by chance.
America was prepared to buy Shin Haneul anything he wanted. In practice, he had already received a great deal of support for the things daily life required.
Drop items from the Tower were a different matter. The rare ones, especially.
If Shin Haneul wanted it, America would have backed him with a hundred times that sum. A thousand. He hadn't asked. Name a price too high, and the other party grows wary as a matter of course — decides the item holds something even they don't know about, and balks at the sale.
Or you got a case like this one.
A light tap of keys.
They wouldn't take money. Which meant they had the item. It was a piece that rarely dropped on the Tower's lower floors, and he resolved not to let this trading partner slip.
……
So that was how they meant to play it. Both of them anonymous, neither able to see the other's hand — this was what came of it. All he could know for now was that the other party wanted something more than money. In that case, they would most likely be hoping for an item that helped a Tower clear.
This, too, was a rare item of sorts. It had every chance of being worked into something reasonably useful, but he had no need of it. Plant beans and you harvest beans; plant red beans and you harvest red beans. Do what he might, an ogre's horn was never going to become an item of the quality he wanted.
The other party, however, seemed decently satisfied.
They seemed a little suspicious. And if they were, what exactly were they going to do about it. He covered his face well enough and went to the meeting place.
Welcome. You have entered the Corridor (U01227).
The other party was his exact opposite. They appeared without covering so much as a face, and thanks to that he recognized them at once.
Canada's Flame Witch. Chloe.
Someone who would be famous in the days to come. Her class was an ordinary (?) S-rank, but she had something special.
The ability to bring home better gear than other people without ever posting a particularly high score.
As the joke went, the most important stat for an Awakener wasn't strength, and it wasn't magic. It was luck.
Of course, it wasn't a stat that actually existed. At the very least, it didn't show. But with a trait like hers, you never had to worry about coming up short on the rewards after a hunt. Which was to say there was no harm in getting on good terms.
"Um, excuse me. You… you wouldn't happen to be…"
"Yes. It's probably exactly what you're thinking."
He hadn't meant to show his face. This time was different. With an eye toward good trades for a long time to come, he let her see who he was. Not that much changed because of it. An autograph, at most.
"Just one! Please, just one more!"
That much was far too easy.
"Next time I pick up a rare item, I'll contact you for sure!!"
A small price, set against having secured a source for good items — or for materials.
Once the trade was done, Shin Haneul stepped out of the Corridor and entered again. He wanted to come in somewhere empty, and the method wasn't particularly difficult.
"No need to spread this around."
He walked to a tucked-away corner of the Corridor and stopped before the cracked stretch of wall in the third passage. The moment he drew out the Dimensional Necklace, the cracked wall shivered. He brought it closer, and the wall split wide with a grinding crack, opening onto a new space.
A second way to buy and sell items. The road to the Dimensional Shop. At this point in time, it was a means of obtaining goods beyond any comparison with petty barter.