Tutorial — Floor 8
The moment we arrived on Floor 8, I found myself facing a situation that had nothing in common with the first cycle.
Well. We had come out faster than last time.
Floors 3, 6, and 7 ran on fixed schedules, but Floors 2 through 5 had no set duration. Those came down entirely to how you handled them. We had cleared Floor 2 in a single day, same as before, but Floors 4 and 5 depended on the trainees' capabilities. You could stumble across something on recon and hurry back, and while we had finished the Floor 5 dungeon in three days, it had taken over a week in the previous cycle.
Anyone who had beaten us here was almost certainly trash.
The Floor 2 trial was to grant a request from someone living on that floor. Most people ran into Johann first, but there were other NPCs, and unlike him they usually did not stab you in the back. The problem was simply that Johann was the closest. Even so, I had chosen to work with him, because meeting any other NPC would have meant dying for some other reason entirely.
If Johann had not sold us out and sent us toward the north gate, we would have had almost no room to shine. The Floor 4 lord's commission would have been a hired garrison job instead of recon, and the next floor's mission would likely have been some easy dungeon inside the castle. The quality of those inner-castle dungeons was painfully predictable. We would have wasted our time inside the walls with no experience and no information, then died to a man when the Floor 7 goblin horde hit.
In other words, I had chosen Johann because if you knew him well enough, he was actually the route with the highest survival rate and the best payoff.
But these bastards knew Johann. And they had reached Floor 8 ahead of me.
They had cooperated with him. There was no other way they could have gotten out faster than we had. They had probably sold off some of their party, survived, and cashed in — taken their payment and walked out of the castle. I knew that route existed. Which meant I could easily guess what had happened to the people who had been in their party.
A considerable number of survivors actually made it out that way. There were a few chances to cooperate with Johann on Floor 4 or 5. Even though I had been active from Floor 3 onward and changed a great deal, Kim Insil and Park Nam-young had still gone over to Johann in the end.
In the first cycle, Kim Insil had taken that route out of our party. He had betrayed us with what he called a decisive testimony after our guilt was essentially already confirmed, then run. Of course, he had been too late, and he had died anyway. I had planned to just finish the Floor 4 commission, refuse the dungeon request, and slip out of the castle with my companions — but I had stumbled onto the location of the secret warehouse and stabbed them in the back instead. That had even earned me a second hidden quest.
Surviving by catching on midway, or by taking some other route, was actually the rarer outcome. One of the extremely rare examples was a guy who had granted Johann's "request" by beating him half to death, forcing him to beg for his life, then sparing him — only to kill him the instant they moved to Floor 3. Survival routes came in many branches.
"The hell are you doing? You scared?"
The idiots in front of me snapped me out of my thoughts. They looked like they had been traced from a textbook on how to be a thug. Was there a manual for this somewhere? A threat that pathetic did not even register as a threat. I had not so much as flinched. If they had actually come at me, I would have reflexively killed them or crippled them — but they had not even done that. They were just talking.
I figured I would rough them up a little and go look for the Floor Master.
Still, just in case, I checked their potential and stats with the Administrator's Eye.
Average Level:4
Average Potential:Low-Mid
...What a waste of my mental energy.
I wanted to make sure they never crawled back up again — hell, honestly I wanted to just kill them — but Na-yeon still had not adapted to the Tower...
Huh?
I glanced at my party members. Every last one of them looked tense, even frightened.
Ah.
They had no idea how elite a path we had been walking. Nam Eun-ju, whose potential was only Low, already had average stats of 10 at level 10. These girls had no idea how strong they were. They had nothing to compare themselves against. The most they could do was measure themselves against each other... and I was completely off the scale. I could kill all four of those men by myself. Na Seoyun was a monster with Supreme potential, and Na-yeon was one of those rare spirit contractors. More than half the party was not even a fair point of comparison.
They did not have the experience to gauge an opponent's strength. Na Seoyun, though — even through her tension, she wore a faintly puzzled look, as if her instincts were telling her she could wipe these men out on her own. She just did not have the experience to be sure. Time would take care of that.
An idea flashed through my mind.
This... if I play it right...
I started acting immediately.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"Ha, you still haven't figured it out? You sure you even made it to Floor 8?"
"This pretty boy still thinks this is Earth. What, you some art-school oppa from a fancy university? Or a church boy? Walking around with four girls — guess you've got some game."
Watching them snicker among themselves, I was reminded all over again what it meant to have no idea what you were doing — and just how dangerous ignorance could be. They were sticking their heads into a lion's mouth.
"So how about you don't hog all those pretty things to yourself, huh? Share a little. You the only one who gets to have fun?"
"It's nothing like that. They're comrades who've shared life and death with me."
"Sure, sure. Together day and night, huh? Skin on skin and everything. Heh heh."
Ah, fuck. Should I just kill them?
I swallowed the rising anger and checked my companions' faces. The filthy talk was getting to them, but they were also very aware of the weapons at those men's hips. Bodies gone rigid. They were tense — no, they were a little scared.
As the men slowly closed in, I took a half-step back and spoke.
"Don't come any closer. If you do, I'll take it as intent to harm."
"Or what? What're you gonna do if we don't stop? Huh?"
"Ooh, scary. Gonna take one of us down? Huh?"
There were four of them. Seven of us. But Kim Insil and Park Nam-young were half-crippled from the torture. They were not even party members anymore. That left five of us combat-ready. The funny part was that even Nam Eun-ju, the weakest of us, could easily take two of them by herself.
From where I stood, with an objective view of things, it was like watching four rabbits charge five full-grown lions.
And the even funnier part was that the lions were the ones who were scared. They did not know they held the objective advantage. Because they did not know, four grown men were plenty terrifying from a modern civilian's perspective. And no matter how well-armed we were... the fact that the other side was still human made my companions shrink back.
But even then, I could see Na Seoyun twitching — the only one of them. Na-yeon must have thought she was frightened, because she pulled Na Seoyun behind her. I did not think that was it.
"I don't know how you made it to Floor 8, but we haven't exactly come through easy trials ourselves."
"Ahh, Johann, right? Wow, you went at him head-on? No way that worked. Did you sell your people? Though, yeah, that Johann guy really is a freak about women. Real particular taste."
"Heh heh, what, you make those four girls spread their legs to get up here? You're basically a pimp..."
That was when it happened.
A whisper of movement — then a dull, brutal thud.
"Gah!"
"Wh-what the hell!"
Na Seoyun, who had been hidden behind me and the others like a screen, spun around in an instant and dropped one of them.
Steel hissed from a sheath.
"Y-you crazy bitch! What the— how are you so fa—!"
She did not stop there. Na Seoyun charged the ones who had drawn their weapons, and before they could even swing she slashed a wrist and swept a leg, destroying their balance. The product of an overwhelming gap in physical ability, and the bodily amplification that came from the difference in mana.
A weapon hit the ground with a hollow clang.
"Gaaah!"
"Ghk! Guhh!"
The man whose wrist had been cut dropped his weapon, clutched the wound, and staggered back. She drove the hilt of her dagger into the solar plexus of the one she had swept and dropped him in a single blow. The last man edged backward, fear written all over his face.
Having dropped three of them in an instant, Na Seoyun looked at them with something like puzzlement.
"...It actually worked?"
I allowed myself a faint smile. Unexpectedly, Na Seoyun had the least resistance to attacking people. She adapted frighteningly fast. It was almost uncanny.
"S-Seoyun!"
"...What's wrong, sis?"
"Y-you attacked a person— I mean, that was dangerous...!"
"It's not dangerous. These guys are super weak. Even Eun-ju sis could take one of them one-on-one."
She tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled.
"Why are they so weak? Oppa's insanely strong... I guess not all guys come from the same stock?"
I nearly lost it. I almost burst out laughing. I barely held it in and looked at Na-yeon. She looked stunned — both that we had gotten through the crisis, and that Na Seoyun had handled it entirely on her own.
Na Seoyun started toward the remaining man. Na-yeon stepped in front of her.
"W-wait, Seoyun! Y-you can't just swing a weapon at people!"
"Why not, sis? They came at us first. Sexual harassment, and they kept threatening us even after Oppa warned them plenty. They're the bad ones, aren't they?"
"Th-that's true, but... still..."
That's it, Seoyun. Just a little more!
"Y-you crazy bitch! You swung a blade at a person! You're a lost cause, you little—!"
The man who had been about to run jumped into the conversation the moment he saw the party arguing among themselves. Not that it would have mattered — given the speed gap, he would not have gotten far anyway.
Ridiculous. They did not spare a thought for what they had been about to do, and they were blaming Na Seoyun.
"And what were you about to do? Do I look too young to know? You sexual predator bastards. Who the hell do you—"
"Seoyun!"
Na-yeon recoiled at the roughness in Na Seoyun's language. So that had not been her usual personality.
"Wh-what's gotten into you? You weren't like this. Why all of a sudden..."
At Na-yeon's words, Na Seoyun's face flickered with a flash of oh-crap, then immediately crumpled into a pout.
"I-I'm sorry, sis... I just... I didn't mean to..."
It felt like watching a fascinating little performance. That shift had been so natural. The Na Seoyun that Na-yeon knew and the real Na Seoyun might not be quite the same person.
I stepped in between the sisters.
"No, it's fine. You did well, Seoyun."
"Shin-hoo...?"
"If Seoyun hadn't stepped in, I would have. They threatened us first."
Sensing the situation turning against him, the last remaining man looked ready to run. I poured mana into my legs at once.
A heavy crack of impact — then a wet, bursting sound.
"AAAAAGH!"
A single downward slash, delivered in an instant. That one stroke took the man's arm clean off.
"Aagh! AAAAAH!"
The pain of having a limb severed is immense. The man rolled on the ground, screaming.
"Sh-Shin-hoo... why..."
Na-yeon was horrified. I looked at Na Seoyun instead of her.
Na Seoyun... looked startled, but not afraid.
I see.
This was going to be easier than I had thought. Na Seoyun was not normal. No — in this place, this was normal. She had a mind perfectly suited to the Tower.
I had known Na-yeon's personality, so I had been focused on that and been a little slow to notice. Being sisters was no guarantee they would be alike. I had assumed they had grown up loved, in a normal home. Of course their heads would be full of flowers. That was what I had believed.
But that did not seem to be the case. Or maybe Na Seoyun was simply an anomaly. I needed to look into it a little.
At my unflinching demeanor, everyone but Na Seoyun tensed up. The three on the ground flinched too.
I did not hesitate. I cut an arm off two of the remaining three.
"GAAAAH!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please, please spare— AAAAGH!"
"No! Stay away! Don't come near me!"
I approached the last one and asked.
"You mentioned Johann... we ran into a Johann ourselves. I'd like to hear the details."
I already knew the facts, but my companions did not. That was why I asked — after creating a situation where he had no choice but to answer.
I had begun, a little ahead of schedule, to adapt my companions to the Tower.