Entering the Lower Floors

After I'd given the party a collective heart attack by saying something utterly unlike myself, we found an inn and took rooms.

Money, at least, was not a concern. I had poured most of our gold and jewels into learning and reinforcing skills, but more than five hundred gold coins still sat in my possession — a sum no one at this stage of the Tower had any business holding. Labyrinth monsters dropped food, not coin. Even the 15th Floor had yielded nothing but iron scraps and rations. The only real item we'd obtained was the Minotaur's Handcuffs, claimed from the 20th Floor boss.

The thought prompted me to check my Strength.

It had already climbed past thirty-five. Recovering from twenty to thirty-five had taken a little over two months. The others would need less time than that — Nam Eun-ju especially. Her Strength would drop into the single digits, which meant she would bounce back even faster.

I turned to Na Seoyun and Nam Eun-ju.

"Both of you, put on the Minotaur's Handcuffs. The correction on these isn't ordinary."

"What?"

"I've almost fully recovered. Took a little over two months, roughly. A bit more and I'll be back to my original stats, and that's when the real growth starts. Information is far too scarce here. I intend to take things slow, so you'd be better off putting them on early."

"Got it, oppa."

"...Shin-hoo oppa, I'm a little... if I wear those, my Strength drops to nine..."

Unlike Na Seoyun, who agreed without a second thought, Nam Eun-ju seemed afraid of becoming dead weight. That she could even say so out loud was a product of how close we'd grown since the 12th Floor. Her speech had loosened considerably compared to before, and outside of combat she used my name comfortably now — a change I considered a good one. The way formal and casual still mixed in her sentences was a little awkward, but still.

She was right that Strength 9 would make her next to useless on the current floor. But a number like that, with the right training at our present level, would climb back into the mid-tens in no time. Unlike Na Seoyun and me, she was short on mana, so that much Strength would be cutting it close — but if she leaned on Joo Ha-yeon's barriers for defense and poured every drop of mana into Strength enhancement, she could scrape by.

I layered my own hypothesis into the explanation I gave her.

"Mana... growth?"

"That's right."

Mana growth. Every class needed mana. That much was obvious just looking at us now. Mana served a dozen purposes, and amplifying one's stats was among the most universal. Nam Eun-ju's mana grew on the slower side, and I was telling her to wring every last drop out of what she had.

"Using mana to push your Strength up might slow the Strength growth a little. But it will grow. And if you keep using mana steadily — at full power, without letting up — there's a real chance the mana itself will grow. That's what happened to me."

It was the truth. Building Strength meant working the muscles; mana was no different. Overdo it and you paid in mental fatigue and strain on the circuits, so you had to be careful — but healing could patch most of that, and with a gap like Nam Eun-ju's between her physical stats and her mana, pushing hard wouldn't even touch the circuits. She didn't have enough mana to overload them. The worst she would get was tired and a headache.

That was why I told her to use as much as she possibly could. And this was an order coming from me. I would not use it as an excuse to cast her aside as dead weight. She was still afraid of that. It probably had nothing to do with my character and everything to do with a bone-deep wariness of being abandoned the moment circumstances demanded it. After we'd grown closer, she had let that fear slip, just once, in passing.

"It's true that after I use a lot of mana, the growth afterward does feel a little faster."

"Same here. It was like that when I practiced my magic, too."

The Na sisters lent my words their own weight. Both of them had high potential, so they would have felt that kind of growth more clearly than most.

"I-is that so? I just feel like I grow every time I fight, so I never really noticed..."

Nam Eun-ju couldn't quite bring herself to agree. She wouldn't think we were lying — not when the Na sisters and I were all saying the same thing. She simply couldn't feel it herself, and so she couldn't be sure it would happen for her.

Even in something this small, the gap in talent showed. I hid the bitterness that rose in me and spoke.

"Just put them on for now. Every single stat matters. When you think about the numbers that'll ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠come in later, you want to lock in every one you can. If you fall short because of it, we'll cover you."

"That's right! I'll help too, Eun-ju unnie!"

"Mm... okay. I'll do that... Shin-hoo oppa. Thank you too, Yoo-jin."

Na Seoyun and Nam Eun-ju put on the Minotaur's Handcuffs at once.

Their stats dropped, and would stay that way for some time. Once both of them were geared, we headed down to the restaurant on the inn's first floor.

"But what are you really thinking? I don't believe you've ever suggested we rest the moment we arrived on a new floor."

Joo Ha-yeon had a point. Until now, the instant we hit a new floor I had been busy preparing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for whatever came next or pushing us toward the floor after that. I was not the type to tap the brakes just because unfamiliar information had surfaced.

"We've been running hard, and this isn't a problem that gets solved overnight. More than that, the Lower Floors are far larger than you'd expect. Nothing's confirmed yet, but if District 35 really is the 35th Floor, sprinting from the starting line would just burn us out."

I looked around at the party.

"That doesn't mean I intend for us to loaf around. We'll do what needs doing. Daily training. Information gathering. We still have money, so we won't go hungry — but I think we should take on commissions and favors anyway. If we're going to be living here for a while, reputation will matter."

I thought back to the tutorial. Even when Johann tried to frame us at the trial, the knights and soldiers had spoken a few words in our defense. Words were all they could offer, and that was the limit of what they could do — but even that much would have registered with the lord. Building a reputation here would be just as important. The bigger, more valuable commissions almost always went to people who could be trusted. As of now, our party was the only group of trainees to have reached the Lower Floors. That made this an unusually easy environment in which to raise our standing, and we had the combat strength to match. The level cap you could reach down here was fixed, and we were already strong enough to sit well above it. If our reputation was solid, every genuinely worthwhile commission would flow our way.

Among those, I needed to secure the Mine Survey commission. Then I needed to raise our name and our ability high enough that we could invest in developing that mine.

The investment would not be money. It would be force. We would cooperate with the castle lord, put our strength on the table, and collect our price. Why call the use of force an investment? Simple. The payment was a share of the mine.

In the first timeline, someone else had taken the mine survey commission and walked away with very little to show for it. They had done exactly what the job asked — surveyed, cleared the monsters, and stopped there. Only much later did the truth come out: the mine survey had been one of the hidden quests. A player from the Middle Floor, sent down by the Empire after the Gnoll Hero founded a nation, had come to the Lower Floors on a punitive campaign and happened to discover that the mine in question was no ordinary vein. The Empire simply swallowed it whole. The player who found it received just enough coin to save face. By then the castle's power had already withered, and they had traded away the mining rights in exchange for more support.

The mine turned out to be a Magic Crystal deposit — and when the lord learned that, the shock hit even harder. A Magic Crystal mine was worth more than a gold mine. He had every right to feel cheated.

That was the first reason. The second reason we needed to stay and move slowly was information.

I knew all of this because this was my second time through. My party members did not. Neither did the people who lived here.

The Golden Gnoll tribe was already on the move, working to resurrect the Gnoll Hero. That resurrection had to be stopped. If the Gnoll Hero returned, the gnolls' power would swell and the five tribes that currently spent their time tearing each other apart would unite. Give it a little more time and the Gnoll Hero would style himself a king and start playing at nationhood. Declaring a country did not make one, but the gnolls' strength would grow too enormous to ignore, and the Empire's help would become unavoidable.

And the third.

Legendary skills and equipment.

They were hidden all across the Lower Floors. I had to find them. I had a rough idea of where they were, except—

I didn't know the locations.

Which sounded absurd, until you remembered that gnolls were not a people who settled in one place. It was more accurate to say they moved around constantly. They had territories, and they operated inside them — but those territories were vast. The Legendary skills and items I wanted were split among the five tribes. So I needed information.

That was the shape of what I meant to accomplish in the Lower Floors. Everything required to reach the Middle Floor could wait. Those three things came first. Arriving at the Middle Floor early would never compare to arriving after all of this was done. Pushing the party to get stronger faster and climb to the next floor, the next district, would only work against us. Which was why I was laying the groundwork now.

Once they had heard my excuse, the party's faces eased into understanding.

"That's not wrong. Being too impatient can turn into poison."

"Then I'm in, oppa. I think going slowly could be good too."

"...If that's the reason... all right, Shin-hoo oppa. I think it's a good idea."

"If that's what Shin-hoo thinks."

"Hyung, so what am I supposed to do now?"

Once they realized I was serious — that this was not a joke — the party looked almost glad. We had been running without a break. A proper rest, just once, would do us good, so long as we didn't go completely slack. I had already made it clear this was not about playing around, so they wouldn't.

I told them we would be using this inn as our base for a while. The village had a small mercenary guild office as well, which was convenient. With their minds finally at ease, the party ordered a meal, filled their stomachs, and drifted back to their rooms to sleep.

The next morning, I laid out the day's plan.

"I only intend to take two people with me today."

"What's this about?"

"Apparently this village has a mercenary guild office."

Mercenaries were rare, but not unheard of. Just extremely uncommon. This was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the frontier. People who had nothing to sell but their swords found their way to places like this sooner or later. The problem was that the pay never quite matched the difficulty.

"I figure we'll take a reconnaissance or hunting commission — learn the terrain, pick up some information, and clear the job while we're at it."

I already knew most of it, but this would feel more natural to the party. Recon and hunting commissions also sat on the harder, more dangerous end of the board, which made them excellent for reputation work.

Na Seoyun's hand shot straight into the air.

"Me! Oppa, me! I want to go!"

"Sorry. No. I've already decided who I'm taking."

"Whaaat?"

She tried to talk me into it, insisting she would be the most useful, that taking her would get the best results. She was still young enough to throw a tantrum over it, but she didn't. Not even close.

"I'll hang out with you tomorrow, so rest up today."

"...That's a promise?"

"It is."

And of course she folded the moment I offered to spend time with her tomorrow. I had no intention of running recon and hunting commissions every day in any case. Tomorrow I just wanted to walk around and put some faces to names, so bringing Na Seoyun along then wouldn't matter.

I named the two who would be coming outside with me today.