Tutorial - The Eighth Floor
"Th-that's how it happened. I-I've told you everything I know. Please, please..."
How could this be... so it had all been an illusion...
The party stood there, stunned. I ignored them and spoke to the man groveling at my feet.
"Why the long faces? You make it sound like I actually killed you. You all received recovery potions, didn't you? Use those and you'll live just fine. Look — they're already using them."
But a severed arm was not going to reattach. I had made sure of that, deliberately wrecking the cut surfaces with mana. Once a wound was pulverized that thoroughly, a mid-grade potion wouldn't even come close.
They claimed they had arrived ahead of us and already met the Floor Master. There, they had been told about the tutorial and given a mission.
This was Zone 2. Zone 1, they said, was already full.
Zone 2 was more than fast enough. In my previous life, I had been Zone 46.
Each zone held roughly two hundred people. Of the Koreans summoned to the Tower, a little over ten thousand had survived. Of those, fewer than half would reach the Middle Floor alive.
I turned to the last of them — the one whose arms were still intact.
"Then where is this Floor Master?"
"I-if you wait, he'll come find you. He usually comes to greet newcomers... but since there are people who were summoned first... it won't take long."
"I see..."
I had extracted everything worth extracting. Leaving loose ends was never wise... but the hesitation lasted only a moment.
"One more thing. Listening to you talk about Johann and those kids... there are four of you. How did you get through?"
"Th-that's... we, we ran. So..."
"With skills like yours? The knights would have caught you in a heartbeat."
"Th-th-that's..."
"That's?"
"I-I'm sorry! It's just! I didn't want to die! So... I was wrong, please, please spare me."
"I'm not going to kill you. Don't worry."
A flicker of relief crossed his face. I swung my sword.
A wet, heavy shnk.
"Aaaagh! Why?! Why?!"
Instead of an arm, I had severed the Achilles tendon of one leg — wrecked it badly enough that, like the other three, a mid-grade potion would never put it right.
Honestly, killing them would have been the correct call. But if I went that far this early, the party would see me as half a psycho. Na-yeon especially.
It was time to let them go.
I looked at them.
"Go."
Tear-streaked faces stared back at me.
"We're not murderers. I'll let you go. But if you come looking for revenge... I won't forgive you then."
It was a lie. They had a high chance of dying on this floor. Or maybe they would get lucky and survive. Even then, there was no telling how long that luck would last.
I let them go, quietly hoping we would meet again.
When that time comes, I'll deal with them properly.
No loose ends was always best.
After the thugs had all fled, the party's awkward gazes settled on me. Only Na Seoyun stepped forward.
"Oppa, are you okay?"
"...It's a bit rough, yeah."
Mostly mentally.
"Ah."
At that, the others seemed to realize — or thought they did — that this was my first time dealing with something like this as well. It was a misunderstanding, far from the truth, but it was more than enough.
"Why... why did you do that? You didn't have to go that far..."
"And if they come back? What then? They could bring more people next time. I... I'd rather... chase them down even now..."
"No! Shin-hoo, don't."
"...I don't want to either. But if they come back and I lose? Then..."
Damn it. This doesn't suit me at all.
Only then did the women seem to picture what would have happened if we had been the weaker ones, and their expressions darkened. They had every reason to.
If we had been weaker? The women would have become those men's playthings, and I would have died or been crippled depending on their mood. If I had simply let them go the way they first asked, maybe we would have walked away unharmed. But I had no reason to trust a word they said.
The party was torn. Part of them thought I had gone too far. Another part, remembering what I had said about what we would have suffered if we had lost, wasn't so sure it had been too far at all.
Through all of it, I had to keep up the act of a man who was struggling. I stroked Na Seoyun's hair as she stood close, told her she had worked hard too, that I hadn't wanted her to see something this ugly so soon, that I hoped we could find a place to rest for the day — a slightly inconsistent stream of words, unlike my usual self. At the same time, I let myself lean on her, just a little.
Na-yeon's expression darkened, as if she could guess what I was feeling.
This shock was necessary. Helping others came after we were safe, and only within the limits of what we could afford. Anyone who harmed us had to be cut down without mercy. Even if they hadn't, we were allowed to fight if they got in our way.
Fairness, justice, honesty, concession, morality — those things had been essential in the modern world. Of course, not everyone had followed them, but they had been preferred, recognized as the right way to live. They weren't wrong here either. But they could not be the top priority.
This was not a world ruled by law the way the modern one had been. Power. Only power proved anything here. That was why Na-yeon and the rest of the party had to adapt to the Tower. They had to change.
Before I knew it, time had passed, and the surroundings had gone quiet.
At some point, a man was standing in front of our party.
A gentle voice. I lifted my head, and a handsome young man stood before us, his body wrapped in a neat robe, his eyes soft as they regarded our group.
We snapped into a defensive stance in an instant. After what we had just been through, it was the most natural reaction in the world.
But I knew.
There was only one being who could fool my senses on a mere eighth floor.
The Floor Master.
At last, I had met him.
"My name is Epathos. I'm the Floor Master who oversees the tutorial. Floors one through ten are under my charge."
The Floor Master. I looked at him and offered a greeting.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Yoo Shin-hoo."
"Hmm... well now. Yoo Shin-hoo, is it... A pleasure."
Epathos regarded me with a curious, unreadable expression.
"Well... since you've come to the eighth floor, I ought to give you a trial, but... hmm. You all pass."
You have passed the 8th Floor trial.
Reward — An Admission Ticket has been issued.
An Admission Ticket. The ninth floor was a kind of dungeon. You entered it with the ticket earned by passing the eighth floor's trial, cleared the dungeon, and moved on to the tenth.
"...What?"
The party looked incredulous.
"The trial here is to reach Level 10, after all. You've already passed. A rare case even in the Tower's long history."
He glanced over our group.
"Let's see. Nam Eun-ju, Joo Ha-yeon — Level 10. Na-yeon, Na Seoyun — Level 11. Yoo Shin-hoo — Level 12. Hmm... Level 12. That's among a handful in the entire history of the Tower. What in the world did you do down below?"
"...We earned an Achievement."
"Remarkable."
He looked genuinely impressed.
Success. I had succeeded in catching the Floor Master's interest. If I could make him curious about me, I could extract all kinds of information. Floor Masters, like the Tower itself, favored talented trainees.
The rest of the party, however, all wore the same dazed expression. Fair enough. They had no idea how significant an Achievement actually was.
"Haha. You don't seem to understand yet. An Achievement is the sort of thing where it wouldn't be strange if you never earned another one for as long as you live in this Tower — until the day you die."
Until the day you die. The party flinched at those words.
"Now, now, don't look so frightened. If you climb the Tower without dying, you can go wherever you wish while still alive. So give it your all until the end. Those who've earned an Achievement... have a real chance."
Epathos spoke while looking mainly at me.
"Incidentally, those who earned an Achievement of this caliber received additional rewards. Let's see..."
An Achievement. He had said Achievement. But no system window had appeared. Even among Achievements, ones large enough for the system itself to hand out a reward were vanishingly rare. Confirmed Achievements were uncommon for that reason. They simply remained in the records, and later, when you became a Hero, they added bonus points. The real compensation, I had heard, came then.
In my first life I had made it as far as the Upper Floors, but there had been so much about the Tower I simply didn't know. If I hadn't contracted with Gaia, I would have gone to my grave without ever learning it.
Reach Level 10 quickly on the eighth floor, and you received an Admission Ticket plus the privilege of choosing a dungeon first. That privilege mattered more than it sounded. I had a specific dungeon in mind from the start, which was exactly why I needed it.
I had figured I could manage it by leveling up on the eighth floor itself, but the competition here was fiercer than you'd expect. I wanted to avoid that kind of hassle. I also hadn't wanted to draw attention while hunting.
But on top of that — if your level already exceeded 10 at the moment you arrived on the eighth floor? There was an additional reward.
In my first life, on the Middle Floor, I had heard that exactly one person had entered the eighth floor having already reached Level 11. It was a famous story. That person had gone on to become a Ranker, after all.
I had heard there was an additional reward involved. I had been hoping for that. Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered if I didn't get it. I had already found Na-yeon and Na Seoyun, and besides, that reward was hard to obtain even if you wanted it — luck played far too large a role.
"Here we are. Now, I shall open the shop."
A shop. And not just any shop — the System Shop. A place you needed a usage ticket to enter even once, a place that had been difficult to access even much later on.
"The two who reached Level 11 may each purchase a single item, and Yoo Shin-hoo, who achieved Level 12, may purchase two. The points you need accumulate by selling items to the System Shop or by earning Achievements. Of course, there are scarcely any items the System Shop will actually buy."
Even after you got in, you still had to have points to spend. And the items you could sell were severely limited.
"Well then. I shall open it."
There were a great many categories. Rare minerals and magical reagents sat under Materials. Consumables ran from potions to a staggering number of other goods.
But even I could only see as far as Super Rare.
Insufficient Information Level. The System Shop required Information Level merely to view its listings.
I smiled wryly and checked my points.
...???
I doubted my own eyes. Seven thousand points? I had never even touched a number like that in my previous life. I had spent them at every opportunity, mostly on consumables.
I tried selling the Mid-Grade Armor Exchange Ticket I had held onto from before.
...You've got to be kidding me.
The price was identical to the first round. One point bought a mid-grade potion. The lowest-quality item the System Shop carried was a mid-grade potion.
That was why I had grabbed two Armor Exchange Tickets on the first floor in my previous life. Sellable items were so limited that stacking even scraps like these, one by one, was how you bought better goods later. It was only a single point, but you had to scrape them together like a miser. Ten points bought a high-grade potion. A hundred points bought a supreme-grade potion. And supreme-grade potions were nearly impossible to purchase with money unless it was the System Shop.
What I could actually buy right now...
There were plenty of items, but these two were the only ones even remotely worthwhile. With an Information Level of 60, Super Rare was the ceiling of what I could see. And the prices were genuinely outrageous. Spending points on items like those was close to a waste.
I turned to the sisters at once.
"...Can you see the list?"
"...No. I can't see anything, Oppa. It says I have 2,500 points, though..."
Na-yeon still seemed uncomfortable, and didn't answer.
Thanks to the Achievement, they had 2,500 points. I would have preferred they at least buy potions, but without Information Level, they couldn't even see them.
I looked at Epathos. He was smiling.
"As expected, this hardly counts as a reward, does it?"
A knowing, understated voice.
"Well. You have to know what you're looking at to buy anything."
"...You are... hmm. Never mind."
I smiled wryly. I already knew how this ended. That was what the Ranker had done in the past. The answer had been decided from the start.
"Ahem. Quite right — this way, it doesn't function as a reward at all. Therefore, you have two options. One: I shall randomly open a list of five items, and you may purchase one of them. Of course, I will only reveal items you can actually afford with your given points. The other: you may spend every point you currently hold to purchase a single item recommended by the Floor Master. Which will you choose?"
An item recommended by the Floor Master. Of course, as Floor Masters — and given that we had already proven our talent — they would not make a choice that would harm us. The Tower had sanctions for that.
And here was the interesting part. It was something the man who later became a Ranker had said.
Even now, he claimed he had no idea why he had received that item. He had obtained something he absolutely could not have afforded with the points he held at the time, and it was thanks to that item that he had become a Ranker.
In other words, this was not a trap. It was an opportunity.
I didn't hesitate.
"I'll take the second option."