009
Drawing the array was easy.
It was simple to begin with.
‘If I draw a circle with Blue Dots, and layer it a few times...’
I moved the Blue Dots and placed them where they were supposed to go, one by one.
Like tapping dots into a computer paint program: click, click, click.
Before long, I had copied the array in front of me.
-Whoosh!
A mass of air compressed into a single point and hovered above my staff.
I’d learned the air-compression spell.
As expected. Too easy.
Of course it was easy. It was nothing more than drawing a few circles. What was there to struggle with?
Still, it was odd.
“Magic. Is it really supposed to be this easy?”
Usually in fantasy novels and the like, even a simple spell took days to learn.
You had to calculate formulas, recite incantations, do all sorts of nonsense just to get the hang of it.
But actual magic in real life? Just trace a dotted shape and click, you’re done.
It was a little deflating.
I shrugged.
Well, easy is better for me. If magic were really difficult and full of calculations, I’d never have learned it.
Anyway, I’d learned air compression magic.
I tried activating it once.
-Fwoosh!
Compressed air shot forward.
The force behind it wasn’t all that strong.
Then again, the original spell was meant to launch poison arrows, so it made sense that it would be weak.
That wasn’t really a problem.
After all, if I used more Blue Dots and increased the size, it was obvious it would get stronger.
What irritated me was something else entirely.
“But why is it so crude? It’s even more of a mess than the goblin shaman’s curse from the tutorial.”
The structure of the array was a disaster.
It looked like a blind man had tried to draw a picture by feel and gone at it with brute force.
And I, naturally, couldn’t stand stuff like that.
I immediately revised the array.
Make the gaps between particles tighter. Refine the overall shape. Increase the size, and...
-Whoosh!
Air compressed above my staff.
It held more air than before, packed together far more densely.
I fired it at the wall once.
-Crack!
The hard stone brick split and broke.
If it could crack brick, then it would punch right through a goblin’s flimsy hide.
I nodded.
“It’s weaker than a fireball, but it uses way less Blue Dots. It should be great for clearing trash mobs.”
Honestly, I’d been overkilling things for way too long.
It had always felt wasteful, blasting goblins apart with fireballs.
Like using a gun to kill a cockroach.
I’d tried to tone it down by using tiny fireballs, but even those were still way too strong against goblins.
On top of that, they were loud and bright as hell.
I’d been looking for a spell that was weaker than Fireball but still easy to use without all the hassle.
And then, just like that, I got the perfect one in my hands.
Low Blue Dot consumption.
Quiet.
So stealthy it was practically invisible.
And since the array was simpler than the one for Fireball, it was obvious the firing rate would be much faster, too.
“This is perfect for trash mob cleanup. Goblins are so dead.”
A spell that fired compressed air bullets.
Calling it an air bullet seemed about right.
What’s left is figuring out how to adapt this into some badass Wind Cutter type spell...
I couldn’t let Wind Cutter go. No way.
If I kept tweaking the array structure little by little, maybe I could make it work somehow?
Just as I was mulling it over—
-Grrrggle.
Suddenly, hunger surged up from my stomach.
I stopped thinking and got to my feet.
“All right. Let’s go home and eat first.”
I might not be able to resist Wind Cutter, but I definitely couldn’t resist being hungry.
Studying while starving wasn’t my style.
If I went home and thought it through slowly, I’d come up with an answer sooner or later.
I strolled toward the escape portal.
Baek Jiho (Republic of Korea: Floor 2)
Floor 2 of the Tower has been cleared.
48 Goblins have been defeated.
Points are being calculated.
Floor 3 of the Tower has been unlocked.
Returning now.
* * *
The moment I got back, I sorted through the loot right away.
-Clatter, clatter.
I tipped over my bag, and out spilled a pile of metal chunks that filled a ramen box to the brim.
Just thinking of all that as money made me feel rich already.
That was when—
“Hey! Didn’t I tell you to say something before you went into the Tower?”
My sister burst through the door.
She must have heard me sorting the loot and realized I was back.
“Sorry. I forgot.”
“As long as you came back in one piece, that’s enough. But still... all that stuff is from the Tower?”
“Yeah. What do you think? Pretty good haul, huh?”
“Metal parts, daggers... there’s a ton of it. The box is packed full, so it’s got to be at least forty kilos. That means, what, about four million won? After tax, two million.”
Two million won!
That was more money than I made in a month of night-shift convenience store work, and I’d earned it in a single day.
And if I added the 48 points I’d gotten from killing goblins...
My daily income came out to roughly two and a half million won.
It was so sweet it felt like my teeth might rot out of my head.
I have to brag about this!
-Click!
I snapped a photo and immediately posted it on the Hunter Gallery.
People still didn’t believe that I’d cleared Floor 2.
Well, that made sense.
To anyone watching, claiming I’d crossed a section that took others at least three days and sometimes as long as a week in just three hours was obviously a lie.
But it was the truth. Which also means my abilities have already gone beyond the realm of common understanding.
Ordinary mortals simply couldn’t understand geniuses.
Normal people, or lowly rookies who’d only come from Easy difficulty, couldn’t possibly understand someone like me, the one and only Extreme Lunatic Hell Mage Hunter.
It was only natural.
Someone as capable and kindhearted as me really ought to be considerate and enlighten them.
My honest comment drew a flood of insults and criticism, but I ignored them.
“I finished grilling the samgyeopsal! Come eat!”
It was dinner time anyway.
I shot up from my seat and headed for the living room, where the rich smell of fried pork fat hung in the air.
“Man, food after a walk always tastes amazing.”
“Since when is going into the Tower a walk?”
“For me, it is.”
Anyway.
Another day of climbing had ended safely.
Tomorrow was Floor 3.
* * *
At the site where Gwanghwamun Plaza in Seoul used to stand, a huge black tower rose into the sky.
The Tower of Trials.
A building that had appeared seven years ago without warning, as if it had torn through space itself.
Now, around that great tower stood a circular complex of buildings erected to encircle it.
The central headquarters of the Hunter Management Department.
Deep inside that headquarters, in the space nearest the tower itself—
“A lot of people died today.”
A civil servant muttered as he examined the tower’s surface.
His colleague answered.
“Yeah. There are a lot of new names up there. What is it now, around three thousand?”
“Exactly three thousand four hundred eighty-two. That many disappeared today.”
Countless names were engraved across the surface of the Tower of Trials.
They belonged to the climbers.
The moment a person cleared the tutorial and became a formal climber, their name and floor number were etched onto the tower’s surface.
And the moment a climber died—
their name vanished.
Then, in its place, the name of another person who had newly become a climber was inscribed there again.
In other words, by looking only at the tower’s surface, one could track the climbers’ status in real time.
Who had reached which floor.
Who had died.
Who had become a new climber.
For that reason, the government recorded the names engraved on the tower’s surface every single day.
The two civil servants talking now were the ones in charge of that task.
Their conversation continued.
“Three thousand four hundred eighty-two... That’s a lot of deaths in a single day. Mostly reserve hunters, right?”
“That’s right.”
“It couldn’t be helped, but... it’s still cruel. Forcing people who are basically civilians into the Tower.”
The reserve hunters—people who couldn’t work as hunters because they were too weak, too sickly, or had physical or mental issues.
Those people had been forced into the Tower.
There was no way the death toll wouldn’t be high.
The civil servants wore bitter expressions.
They’d forced hunters into the Tower to save the nation’s people.
But they were human too. They had feelings.
Watching countless people be shoved forward to die made it impossible not to feel guilty.
Especially for those two, who had to record the victims’ names every day with their own hands.
The mood grew solemn.
“...Ah. Come to think of it!”
Maybe he was trying to shift the atmosphere.
One of the civil servants raised his voice.
“While I was organizing—uh, going through the records, I noticed something kind of unusual.”
“An unusual hunter?”
“Yeah. A hunter who became a formal climber just four days ago, and he’s already cleared Floor 2. He registered as a hunter the day after the tutorial, cleared Floor 1 on the third day, and cleared Floor 2 on the fourth.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. He cleared Floor 2 in a day?”
The tower record keepers examined the tower’s surface every day and checked the hunters’ names and floors.
Which meant they were the fastest people of all when it came to tracking the hunters’ status.
For them to notice one hunter’s extraordinary growth first was, in a way, only natural.
The civil servant fiddled with his tablet screen and said, “Here. I’ll show you. The name is... got it. Baek Jiho. Look.”
“...According to the record, it really does say he cleared Floor 2 in a day. But couldn’t this be a recording error? The tower itself may be accurate, but maybe we made a mistake while logging it.”
“I thought the same thing, so I checked the tower photos from yesterday and today. It’s real. He really did clear Floor 2 in a day.”
“Huh...”
The civil servant couldn’t hide his admiration.
Clearing Floor 2 in one day?
That was the very same section where Kim Taeseok and Choi Yejin, both from Hard, had taken three days, and even David, the number one hunter in the world, had needed two.
And this guy had passed it in just one day...
“A new Hard recruit, maybe...”
“Should we report it to the minister?”
“Hmm.”
The civil servant stroked his chin and thought for a moment before answering.
“If he really is from Hard, then yes, we should report it. But... it’s too early to be certain.”
“He cleared Floor 2 in a day, and you still don’t think he’s from Hard?”
“Remember what happened on Floor 10 a while back? We found someone who was clearing it as fast as a Hard climber, so we went to check... and it turned out to be a Normal climber who’d just gotten lucky and finished early.”
That kind of thing did happen sometimes.
Sometimes absurd luck hit so hard that a Normal climber could clear a floor at a pace comparable to Hard.
This might be one of those cases.
Just one record being outstanding wasn’t enough to declare him a Hard climber for sure.
“Besides, look at the timing. With the Hunter Mobilization Order already making everyone so busy, it’s not the time to report something uncertain.”
“Fair. The whole department is in chaos right now.”
“Exactly. So for now, we watch. If we look at how long it takes him to clear Floor 10, we’ll know for sure whether he’s from Hard or not.”
Hard: twenty days.
Normal: thirty days.
Those were the average times it took to reach the Middle Floors.
If that hunter named Baek Jiho reached Floor 11 in about twenty days or less, then they could finally be sure he was from Hard.
“Still, I hope he really is from Hard. Then we could sell him off to the U.S. or Europe at a high price.”
“...Long term, that’d just be cutting into our own flesh. But we’re desperate for points right now, so we don’t have a choice. More importantly, how’s the rescue of Kim Taeseok going? Is America helping?”
“No. Word from upstairs is that America refused to send a rescue team. They say they’re too busy preparing for the Floor 50 raid...”
“What a pathetic excuse. So this is what an ally looks like? They sucked our promising hunters dry and helped wreck our country, and they still can’t even spare the decency to help us!”
“It’s every country for itself these days. Nobody’s trustworthy.”
The civil servants chatted quietly among themselves.
Deep in the Hunter Management Department, a small handful of officials had begun to watch Baek Jiho.
---