Entering the Lower Floors

I chose two of them — Nam Eun-ju and Ha Yoo-jin.

Ha Yoo-jin still had growing left to do, and Nam Eun-ju was currently ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠short on Strength. That was exactly why they needed to pile on whatever experience they could during this scouting-and-hunting run. Ha Yoo-jin, in particular, needed to try his hand at a wider range of roles.

Given the boy's particular talents, I intended to keep him primarily on forward scouting, Trap Disarming, and reconnaissance rather than frontline combat — and when he did fight, to use him as an off-tank or secondary damage dealer. Not forever, of course. The enemy we would ultimately have to face was the Giants. Sooner or later, combat technique would have to take priority; it would become the first thing we trained. For now, though, he could contribute in other ways. And those other ways were far too important to dismiss.

The moment I made my choice, Joo Ha-yeon spoke up.

"So the rest of us should just take it easy, then?"

"That's fine, and I won't stop you if you'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rather keep training. But I'd recommend rest first. As I said yesterday — we've been running hard lately. Keep running without a break and exhaustion is inevitable."

"...That's rich, coming from the man currently heading out to pick up a request so he can scout the area."

"......Ahaha."

She had a point. My actions and my words were running in completely opposite directions.

"All right. We'll leave it to everyone's own judgment, then. Stay safe out there."

"Of course. I'll see you this evening."

"Come back safe."

"We will."

Joo Ha-yeon and Na-yeon saw the three of us off with warnings to be careful. Na Seoyun, for her part, didn't forget a reminder of a different kind.

"Oppa, we have a promise tomorrow!"

"I know. Don't worry. I won't forget."

Whether it was the promise that did it or not, she didn't try to hold me back any further.

"Wow, I think this is the first time I've gone out with you, hyung."

The pronunciation was still faintly slow, still unfinished — a child's mouth catching up to the words. I ruffled his hair, the gesture almost fond.

"You're right. We really haven't had a reason to go anywhere together."

I'd recruited him on the eleventh floor to begin with, and the others had been the ones to raise him and haul him up to the twentieth. There had hardly been any occasion for the two of us to move as a pair.

He'd asked to be let into this party with his eyes locked on me, and yet Ha Yoo-jin had never clung, never pestered me to take him along.

He wasn't much of a child, even though he was one.

Whether it was because he'd seen too many ugly things since coming to the Tower, the boy was prematurely grown. The only things still childlike about him were his face and that unfinished pronunciation. Everything else felt closer to a trainee — a being the Tower had already started to shape — than to a kid. Young as he was, the Tower was soaking into him at a frightening speed.

"Come to think of it, I haven't really gone out like this with you either, Shin-hoo oppa. Not until recently. We usually all went together... though I guess there was never a reason to split up."

"I'm jealous, nuna."

"Jealous of what."

The two of them seemed closer than I'd expected. Or rather, the women in the party had taken to Ha Yoo-jin more readily than I'd thought they would. The sudden, unchildlike killing on the eleventh floor, the slightly warped sense of morality, the faintly blind devotion toward me — any of it would have been fair grounds for unease, and yet they showed none of it. They simply took him in, with something like pity, something like welcome.

Na Seoyun had reacted more coldly than the others, but even she hadn't gone out of her way to snub him or do him harm. A touch of professional distance, that was all. As for the rest — the unchildlike decisiveness, the way he seemed almost blindly fixed on me — she didn't find it unsettling. If anything, she seemed to like it.

Then again, thinking about it, Na Seoyun isn't exactly normal herself.

Anyone who remembered what had happened on the eighth floor would have known there was something a little off there.

I pulled up the current condition of the two party members with the lowest stats.

The Strength stat, wrecked by the Minotaur's Handcuffs, was the first thing that caught the eye. The empty skill slot was the second.

If twenty points of Strength hadn't been shaved off, Nam Eun-ju's physical stats would have been excellent — genuinely excellent — relative to her potential. Her Mana was a little on the low side, but as a tank she had no real shortcomings. I was curious whether she would show that steep growth curve again on this floor.

Which was why I'd pulled her out in advance this time, too. We needed to start shifting gears up, little by little.

The others could rest. Nam Eun-ju, I didn't think, should. I believed the engine of her growth was that desperate drive of hers.

I moved on to Ha Yoo-jin's status window.

Ha Yoo-jin was getting stronger at a remarkable clip. Strength and Stamina that had been sitting in the single digits were now in the double digits — Strength more than doubled, Stamina not quite doubled but close. Agility and Mana had been climbing steadily as well.

The fact that Nam Eun-ju, with her current stats, could register Ha Yoo-jin so comfortably was a little remarkable in itself.

He was speaking up first now, staying close, acting in ways he hadn't before, and that seemed to be keeping Faint Presence from doing its job as easily. Was the lesson that he had to promote himself as hard as he possibly could? On top of that, Ha Yoo-jin had been quietly using mana to prod at Nam Eun-ju's awareness — not picking a fight, but asserting his own existence by whatever means he had. A sharp kid. He'd figured out fast that of everyone in the party, Nam Eun-ju was the one who had the most trouble noticing him.

The two of them kept up a light back-and-forth the whole time I was checking their status windows. Fortunately, neither of them looked to be in bad condition.

Before I knew it, we had arrived at the Mercenary Guild office we'd been aiming for. An office that doubled as a request center, more precisely.

The door was open, so we went in.

"Oh, you're the mercenaries who just came in, aren't you? I heard you arrived yesterday, and you're already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠here... That's some serious work ethic."

"Ah — I'm Yoo Shin-hoo. We arrived in the village recently, and we'll be staying for a while. A pleasure to meet you."

"Right. Good to meet you. You're only F-Rank, though?"

"Haha. Not at all."

"Name's Sirid. I'm the man in charge of the Mercenary Guild here in Monus Village. Branch manager, I suppose you'd call it? Not that 'branch manager' means much when I'm the only one working this side of things."

Heh heh.

The middle-aged man who had introduced himself as Sirid gave a light laugh, as if he found his own words a little funny. Fair enough — a branch manager who was also the branch's only employee was a bit of a joke.

It wouldn't stay that way, though. In a few years, once the trainees started showing up, this branch would become quite active. It would grow into the largest of the five villages, which said everything that needed saying. To be precise, every branch in all five villages was like Monus Village — a branch in name only, run by a single manager.

That was understandable enough. There were so few mercenaries operating in this region that one person could handle the workload without trouble. In a truly dangerous situation the nation would, once in a blue moon, send mercenary support, and there weren't zero active mercenaries, so the branches were being kept open as a sort of necessary evil.

"But you actually came to take a request?"

"Yes, that's right. We're here ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for a request."

"Pretty damn diligent for mercenaries."

"Not at all. You flatter us. Are there any requests available?"

He snorted.

"How many mercenaries do you think we have around here? Nothing special on the board. Just the standing requests. Monster subjugation, reconnaissance of the area. That's it. Pay's lousy, too."

"So... we're the only mercenaries in this village, then?"

"That's right. There were a few until recently, but they all left for Britus Village up the way. Said the yellow gnoll bastards were running wild up there and asked us to send some mercenaries."

Britus Village. The last of the villages to open. It sat in Area 24, and that was Golden Gnoll country.

"In that case, we'll take the reconnaissance request. We need to learn the surrounding terrain anyway."

"Good. Here. I'll throw in a map, too."

"...A map?"

I made a point of looking a little surprised.

"Heh heh. Of course I will. Out here on the fringe, fighting these monsters, maps aren't that hard to come by. Illegal, technically — but this is abandoned land anyway, so nobody much cares. And it's not as if the monsters are going to look at a map and come marching in the way we would, so a leak doesn't matter either."

The complete absence of hostile territories nearby was another reason maps were this easy to get. Maps were strategic assets; you didn't normally obtain them this freely. Here, though, they seemed to be producing and distributing them in bulk out of sheer necessity.

The map he handed me was quite detailed — same as it had been in the past.

"Village's here. From this point to that one. The gnolls use those routes a lot, so just check them as you go. Some of them hit us yesterday, so there's a decent chance you won't find any — but I'd still like you to confirm."

"Understood."

The pay was ten silver a head. Not a great sum. We weren't doing this for the money, though, so the pay didn't matter.

I took the two of them back outside, showed Ha Yoo-jin the map, and said,

"We're going to cover this whole section. You know how to read a map?"

"No. Not really."

"Then I'd better start with that. This here indicates direction, and this..."

I taught Ha Yoo-jin the basics of reading a map. Fortunately the map was fairly detailed, though it still fell well short of anything from Earth. Map-reading itself wasn't particularly demanding — you taught the fundamentals, and the rest you learned with your feet. It didn't take long.

"I think I've got the gist of it, hyung."

"Then I'll take the lead the first time. Rogues do a lot of scouting, so this will be your job later. Watch close and learn."

"Yes, hyung."

We headed out of the village.

There were three points to check. One was a forest; the other two sat along the roads leading to neighboring villages. As I remembered it, all three belonged to Area 21. None of them were far. We'd be roughly finished a little after noon.

That forest, in particular, was a place I'd owed a great deal to in my previous life.

I led the party around the forest's perimeter first, then started in — and a familiar message filled my vision, the same one I had seen so many times before.

A Hunting Ground.

A special zone designated by the Tower. A kind of dungeon, managed by the system.

What set it apart from a dungeon was the absurdly fast respawn rate — and the fact that the rewards were garbage. The monsters inside a Hunting Ground maintained a steady population. When one died, it dissolved into particles of light and vanished, and the ones that actually dropped loot were rare. The experience, at least, was decent.

The Goblin Forest was a Hunting Ground of the Lower Floors. Every village had one nearby, and each was stocked with hobgoblins scaled to the level of its district.

Without these Hunting Grounds, underleveled trainees would have found it nearly impossible to move on to other areas. They might have managed the occasional defensive fight against raiding gnolls, but heading out in a group to hunt on their own would have been a pipe dream.

If too many trainees traveled together, the gnolls would stop engaging and start calling in their kin instead. Low-level trainees couldn't handle gnolls once they'd massed like that. Go in small numbers, though, and each person was weaker than a gnoll to begin with, so hunting was impossible either way.

The hobgoblins in a Hunting Ground, by contrast, were a step below the gnolls of the Lower Floors. Even trainees who were still lacking could form a party and catch up on stats and a minimum level. In the end, these Hunting Grounds were something you simply could not do without — and they were also the place where these two, currently the weakest in the party, would need to spend a good while growing.

Which was part of why I had chosen them for this scouting run in the first place.

"A Hunt...ing Ground?"

"What's this, Shin-hoo oppa?"

"I've never seen one of these either."

I pretended to read the system message's explanation as I answered them. Nam Eun-ju was still calling me oppa — probably because we weren't in combat.

"It seems like some kind of field dungeon..."

"A field... dungeon?"

"Yeah. Regular monsters and dungeon monsters are different, right? Dungeon ones don't leave corpses when they die, that kind of thing."

"Ah, right. In the Labyrinth the bodies vanished, but the gnolls we killed yesterday left corpses."

"This place seems to work like a dungeon — monster corpses disappear. And going by the name, the monsters here are goblins."

"...Why would something like this even exist?"

"Who knows... I couldn't say for sure, but it's here because it's needed, I suppose?"

"Kireek!"

"Hyung! Monster!"

A goblin. Perfect timing.

"Get ready to fight."

Ha Yoo-jin and Nam Eun-ju. A good chance — especially — to see what Nam Eun-ju could actually do with her Strength in pieces.