Floor 6
Na Hyeji came home looking utterly drained.
Without a word, she stripped off her clothes, tossed them aside, and headed straight into the bathroom. After washing herself under warm water and changing into a luxurious silk pajama set, she flopped onto the bed with a dull thud, collapsing there as if she’d lost all strength.
Staring up at the ceiling, she murmured in a low voice, “Damn it. I still feel like I stink of blood. I washed myself clean and everything...”
Ugh.
Na Hyeji shuddered.
It was still vivid in her mind — that sensation of rummaging through disgusting blood-soaked flesh and bits of meat to dig out the loot.
Just thinking about the metallic stink of blood and the nauseating texture made goosebumps rise all over her.
It had been a hellish experience, through and through. She would probably never forget what she had gone through today for the rest of her life.
At the same time, though, it didn’t feel real.
Hyeji let out a tiny, disbelieving laugh. “A mage... in this world. Unbelievable.”
She thought back to the power Baek Jiho had shown in the Tower.
The moment he lifted his staff, a swarm of Fireballs had appeared, scattering bright light in every direction. Each one flew out with a thunderous blast, and the goblins were blown to pieces.
It had been an appalling sight. A gruesome one. But it had also been overwhelming.
My God.
To wipe out a group that even included a goblin warrior with a single attack?
In the end, she had no choice but to admit it.
“Those ridiculous posts... they were all true after all...”
Hyeji lifted her smartphone and searched the Hunter Gallery for BlueDot.
As she read through the post and comments, something suddenly began to boil up inside her.
I suffered all day because of you... and you’re sitting there acting all smug like that?
Her temper flared.
Hands moving fast, Hyeji began hammering out a reply.
She dumped out a string of curses with no rhyme or reason, giving in completely to her emotions.
Then a reply came almost immediately.
“Eep?!”
Horrified, she hastily deleted the comment.
Big mistake.
“I-I’m dead... I shouldn’t have deleted it! Now it just looks like I admitted I was the one who wrote that comment!”
Hyeji kicked the blanket a few times in belated regret and embarrassment.
After a while, she let out a long breath. “Haa...”
Totally drained, she sank back into the bed and muttered in a faint voice, “...No, wait. This is a chance, if you think about it. If I just handle the porter job well, I can get safely to the Middle Floors, right? I can even emigrate. If I can endure until Floor 11, I can go to Japan. If I can push it to the twenties, I can live in America.”
Collecting loot from corpses that were little more than slabs of bloody pulp.
It was disgusting, filthy, unpleasant, horrifying, repulsive work... but if she could survive, what couldn’t she do?
If she just kept trailing after Baek Jiho, she could climb to the Middle Floors and earn the right to emigrate, whether to Japan or the United States.
It was too good an opportunity to throw away just because corpses were gross.
She made up her mind.
“Yeah. I’ll endure it! Hyeji, you can do this! What’s a little porter work? I’ll just tough it out until Floor 20! I’m going to America!”
Her eyes hardened with a fierce light.
It was as intense as it had been during her brutal college entrance exam days.
No — even stronger than that.
* * *
In the morning, I went to the climber branch office and checked in as usual.
Please specify the amount of points to transfer to South Korea.
“All of them.”
550 points will be transferred to South Korea.
“...Hunter Baek Jiho. We’ve confirmed 550 points. We’ll deposit 5.5 million won into the designated account. South Korea will remember your devotion.”
“Take care.”
I left the branch office with the familiar farewell of a civil servant ringing in my ears.
Still, something felt odd.
Hmm... today they’re being way more polite than usual.
Unlike their usual businesslike attitude, the public servant’s manner today felt strangely deferential. It was almost as if they were sincerely hosting a guest.
Could they be under the impression that I actually had some of that so-called “high-ranking connections” stuff someone mentioned before?
Tsk tsk. I clicked my tongue.
“They really seem to be misunderstanding things. But it’d be weird to just flat-out say I don’t have any high-ranking connections... Man, what a bizarre situation.”
Was this what they called an “it’s a misunderstanding” story or something?
Dragging my feet, I left the climber branch and got into my sister’s car.
Then my sister informed me, “Good news. Hyeji said she’s going to keep doing the porter job. She’s coming to our place tonight.”
“See? I told you she wasn’t quitting. There’s no way my porter would be that irresponsible.”
“From her reaction, it looked like she might quit right away...”
“I’m just too handsome. Even if the work is rough and exhausting, she wants to stick close to a cool, handsome, capable man like me.”
“...”
My sister didn’t react to my bullshit at all.
She’d completely ignored me, as if I wasn’t even worth engaging with.
Tch.
Embarrassing.
Anyway, the reason Hyeji was keeping the porter job was obvious.
It’s for emigration.
For a hunter to emigrate to another country, they had to reach at least the Middle Floors.
But with her abilities, reaching the Middle Floors was effectively impossible, and there was no chance she had some precious connection to a High Floor hunter.
The reality for Hyeji was that she would have to die when South Korea collapsed in three months.
And in the middle of all that, a bus driver had appeared.
A bus — yes, maybe the ride was full of blood and the comfort level was garbage, but in speed and safety, it was the best in the world.
If she could just endure the rough ride, she’d reliably become a Middle Floor hunter and qualify for emigration.
So she definitely wasn’t going to quit before Floor 11, and maybe not even before Floor 20.
That took a load off my mind for a while.
Still, something bugged me.
“But sis, why is Hyeji coming tonight? Wouldn’t it be better if she came in the afternoon at the latest? If she comes at night and we go to the Tower, we won’t come back until it’s already midnight.”
“Oh, that. She said she’s going to buy hunter gear. Since she has to go to Teekno Mart, it’ll take some time.”
“Gear?”
Right. She wasn’t joining my party as an ordinary hunter but as a porter.
That meant she’d need new equipment suited to porter work — things like a big, sturdy bag and sacks.
And if she was buying new gear on top of that...
Could I take that as a sign she was taking the porter job seriously?
A good sign.
“Let’s head home, sis.”
“Anything you want to eat? Besides doenjang stew. I’m sick of that now.”
“Then let’s grill some pork belly.”
“Pork belly again? Eat a little less meat. You’re going to get fat.”
“You know I actually need to gain some weight.”
“Hmm... fair point. Then how about you exercise for once? You’re stronger now that you’ve become a hunter, but you still look like a bean sprout. Why don’t you bulk up a little and make yourself look more manly?”
“A true intellectual mage like me is supposed to be skinny. Muscular strength-mages are heretics.”
“What are you even talking about...”
And so my sister and I chattered away as we headed home.
Today’s target floor was Floor 6.
* * *
Back home, I looked up information on Floor 6.
The Hunter Gallery was full of vicious reviews about Floor 6.
Well, that made sense. The floor was notorious for its insane difficulty.
Floor 6 is basically an entrance-blocking floor.
The structure was simple.
Climbers were summoned into a large room. Behind them was a firmly shut door and a return portal; ahead of them, a narrow, long corridor.
From that corridor, goblins would come pouring in nonstop, and the climbers had to hold them off until the door behind them opened.
It takes about an hour for the door to open... and the total number of goblins is around four hundred, right?
Five people had to hold back 400 goblins for a full hour.
If you only heard that much, it sounded absurdly difficult.
But when I looked at the terrain itself, it honestly didn’t seem all that bad.
The corridor the goblins came through was just too narrow. At most, it was only wide enough for two goblins to squeeze through at once.
If five hunters formed a proper line and worked together to intercept them as they came out, they could wipe them out in no time.
On top of that, the goblin corpses would pile up and make the corridor even tighter.
As long as the team was coordinated, it was surprisingly manageable.
That is, if there weren’t goblin warriors.
-Click.
I moved the mouse and checked the posts about Floor 6.
Most of the posts emphasized teamwork.
The key was to deal with the goblin warriors as quickly as possible, then rapidly restore the formation and keep the entrance sealed tight.
But that was the kind of story meant for ordinary trash-tier easy-normal-hard climbers.
“As an Extreme Lunatic Hell Mage, I can clear this even without a team.”
To be exact, I did have one teammate going in with me.
But she was less a fellow fighter and more like an auto-loot pet, so I’d say she barely counted as part of the combat power.
Anyway.
“A small, narrow corridor... enemies pouring in endlessly...!”
-Thump thump.
I could feel my heart pounding hard.
Of course I could. I knew it at once.
At long last.
Finally.
The chance to make my dream come true had arrived!
“It’s Wind Cutter time!”
I’d always had one dream.
That dream was to pull off a ridiculously cool fight with Wind Cutter.
Endless waves of goblins charging in.
And me standing there in elegant style, slicing them apart with Wind Cutter like a swordsman hurling sword auras, neatly shredding them all to pieces.
That was the kind of badass fight I’d always wanted to have.
I’d failed on Floor 3.
Those goblin pussies had countercharged and run away through some rat hole, after all.
Thanks to that, I hadn’t been able to care about looking cool at all; I’d only been busy dumping every spell I had out in a panic.
But on Floor 6, it would be possible.
There was no rat hole to flee through here, and with goblins packed tight behind them, they wouldn’t be able to turn around and escape either.
The goddamn-cool Wind Cutter plan: fully feasible!
“Heh. You goblins are all dead meat.”
It was time for revenge for Floor 3.
I waited for Hyeji with my heart full of anticipation, and then—
-Ding dong.
“There you are! Hyeji! Let’s hurry and go to the Tower!”
At the sound of the doorbell announcing her arrival, I rushed to open the door and greet her.
And what I saw when Na Hyeji stood before me was...
“...Who are you?”
-Your porter.
Her appearance was completely different from the one I knew.
She was wearing a gas mask that hissed softly around the edges.
On top of that was a full-body protective suit with a strange sheen across it, and on her arms and legs were oversized gloves and boots.
To put it another way...
“Did a plague break out or something? What’s with that outfit? You showed up looking like you’re in a chemical warfare suit.”
She had arrived at our house dressed like something out of a movie about a chemical warfare response suit.
At my question, Hyeji answered proudly, “What do you think? This way, I can collect loot without getting a single drop of blood on me, right?”
“...That must’ve cost a fortune. How much did you spend?”
-I’ll just tell you that the total was over a hundred million won.
Huh.
All that for digging through a pile of corpses.
That was Na Hyeji for you, spending a hundred million won and more on it.
For the record, rubber was a precious material in hunter gear.
Inside the Tower, rubber could only be found from the Middle Floors and up, so gear made with a lot of rubber always came at a steep price.
And looking at Hyeji’s outfit now, it was absolutely loaded with rubber.
A gas mask made of rubber, a protective suit with rubber coating, rubber gloves, rubber boots...
It was pure, unadulterated rubber-overload.
She might even be able to use Gear Second.
Anyway.
“An outfit like that will definitely reduce the disgust factor from the corpses, but... aren’t you going to suffocate in it? It’ll be hard to work in the Tower like that.”
If she covered herself from head to toe like that, sure, she could collect loot without getting blood on her.
But wouldn’t that be insanely stuffy and uncomfortable?
There was a reason everyone in the military cursed their lungs out when training got to MOPP Level 4.
It was hot, humid, hard to breathe, and made your body feel twice as heavy...
Of course people started swearing nonstop.
And yet she was planning to crawl into the Tower wearing that kind of outfit?
Was she insane?
My concern was not misplaced.
-It is a little hot and stuffy, sure... but it’s still better than getting blood on my body... ugh.
With a dull thud, Na Hyeji wavered on her feet and then sat down, as if she’d gotten dizzy.
In this sweltering summer heat, wearing protective clothing that didn’t ventilate well at all and a gas mask that made breathing difficult...
It made perfect sense that she’d end up like that.
I let out a deep sigh and gave her orders.
“Then return that ridiculous gas mask and protective suit right now. Gloves and boots should be enough.”
-But then I’d smell the blood. And I might get blood on me too. I’m just going to wear all of it.
“...Do whatever you want.”
Na Hyeji smelled wrong.
She smelled like a failure.
I stared up at the sky, blankly reflecting on life.
So the Hyeji support build really is science, huh?
Anyway.
The Floor 6 clear began.
---