Welcome to Floor 100
Kim Han-ul led Jin-soo and Shin Sua to a building about the size of a modest office block.
"The first floor is common space. The rooms are upstairs."
They climbed to the second floor.
"These two are yours. The keys are here. Both rooms are safe zones where player killing is impossible, the same as the lodgings on Floor 50, so you can rest easy. Wash up and come down. I'll have a meal ready on the first floor."
"We're grateful for the consideration."
"Thank you."
"Not at all. Well, then."
Kim Han-ul headed back down to the first floor.
"Jin-soo, can we trust him?"
"Not unconditionally. But I don't think we need to turn down the hospitality just yet. He doesn't seem to be trying to deceive us, either."
"All right. Then let's meet after we wash up."
"Yeah."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua each went into their own rooms.
We really are a wreck.
Shin Sua looked like a vagrant, and Jin-soo was hardly any better. He took his time under the warm water, washing the grime from his body at his leisure.
Daehan Guild hasn't changed a bit.
Of all the guilds built around Koreans, Daehan Guild was the largest.
Floor 100 held far more than Daehan Guild alone. Players from every country on Earth had formed guilds of every kind—some bound by shared nation, race, or language, others thrown together for no better reason than that they got along.
It's not as if there are no players who still operate as parties.
Most, though, belonged to a guild. The reason was simple: the sheer scale and danger of Floor 100, and the long ten years allotted to clear it.
It doesn't help that there's no limit on numbers when you challenge the gatekeeper of Floor 100.
The people who founded the guilds believed that a large force could bring that gatekeeper down with minimal losses, and that climbing the Tower afterward would be far easier with numbers on their side.
And that is the single greatest misconception of them all.
The gatekeeper of Floor 100 was an undead monster: the Demilich.
It summoned skeletons, zombies, ghouls, specters, death wizards, dullahans—undead of every stripe. Faced with that host, players who had come in a crowd cheered, certain their decision had been the right one.
A mistake born of never having fought an undead boss.
The Demilich was undead and a dark mage both, and it wielded not ordinary mana but dark mana. Dark mana could be restored by drinking in the miasma that seeped from the bodies of the dead, along with negative emotions such as terror and dread.
The moment someone dies, the Demilich can keep recovering dark mana without end.
It could also raise a slain player as an undead monster. The others, witnessing that, poured out fear and dread—and those emotions became nourishment, restoring its dark mana all over again.
If every player were elite, it might still be manageable.
But a rabble stuffed with hangers-on turned sheer numbers into a liability, and annihilation followed in an instant.
Well, there's no way to know that on Floor 100.
NPCs let all sorts of information about the upper floors slip, yet they never leaked anything decisive—nothing like the truth of dark mana. It was as if some constraint had been laid upon them.
There is no absolute truth to conquering the Tower.
A large headcount could be an advantage. It could just as easily be a weakness.
In the end, surviving the Tower means growing your own strength.
Even if luck handed you outstanding skills and items, even if you found skilled and decent companions, the Tower was a place where you could not survive without ability of your own.
Clean from his shower, Jin-soo changed and stepped outside.
"You're out?"
Shin Sua was already waiting.
"You finished early. Were you waiting for me?"
"Yeah. Going down alone made me a little uneasy."
"All right. Let's go."
They went down to the first floor.
"Please order whatever you'd like."
Kim Han-ul smiled and held out a menu.
"Whoa! They have kimchi stew and soybean-paste stew!"
"Most of our members are Korean, so the menu leans heavily toward Korean food. The ingredients aren't quite what you'd find back home, but the taste comes reasonably close."
Shin Sua, thoroughly delighted, pored over the menu.
"But there aren't any prices listed."
"This building is for guild members only, so we don't charge points for lodging or meals. New arrivals who aren't members yet also receive free room and board for one week."
"The benefits are generous."
"They are, more or less. Let's get your order in first. I'll explain the rest at our leisure."
At his word, Jin-soo and Shin Sua ordered.
"Then, before the food arrives, allow me to give you a brief explanation of Floor 100."
Kim Han-ul laid the floor out for them in full.
Jin-soo already knew every word of it, so he feigned surprise and offered the occasional appropriate murmur. Shin Sua, by contrast, was genuinely astonished, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
Floor 100 ran with considerable order. When newcomers arrived, the guilds took turns briefing them on the floor and looking after them for a week. After that, the choice was theirs: join the guild that had hosted them, join another, or remain unaffiliated and live freely with the party they had climbed the lower floors beside. Any of it was acceptable.
"Why look after newcomers like that? They're complete strangers."
Shin Sua asked it with open puzzlement.
"As I understand it, someone first established the system of Floor 100. It has lasted this long because it helps people survive."
On Floor 100, banding together favored survival, and the larger the group, the greater the advantage. But players kept ascending to Floor 101, and others died while hunting, so a guild that stood still could only shrink. Maintaining its size meant taking in newcomers. Fighting the other established guilds over them hurt everyone involved, and forcing recruits in against their will never produced real results. Leaving the choice to them yielded the best outcome.
"That is why this system has endured."
"That's really impressive."
Shin Sua meant it. Floor 50 had a system of its own, but set beside Floor 100 it was little better than making things up as you went.
From Kim Han-ul's mouth, an account of Floor 100's order and the virtues of guilds flowed without a hitch.
Still nothing but the advantages. That hasn't changed either.
Jin-soo smiled bitterly to himself.
Floor 100 was where every player from Earth gathered. Its scale and population swelled to an overwhelming size, and you could remain for a full ten years. The system, accordingly, was far more refined than Floor 50's.
That is an advantage, often enough……
But the disadvantages were every bit as considerable. Vast scale and abundant hunting grounds cut both ways, because the choicest land and the best grounds were finite.
Small fights between players break out constantly.
If it ended at posturing, or a light skirmish, that was fortunate.
There are times when tempers peak and it turns into war.
The rest was no different.
A great many players?
They can cooperate. They can just as easily clash. Even people from the same country split into factions. Throw together every race and nation on earth, and what wouldn't follow?
Guilds have their merits and their faults.
The moment humans gathered into an organization, rank, hierarchy, and faction appeared—and rank was not decided rationally by ability. Connections and clique often mattered more than fairness.
An organization demands sacrifice, too.
There were times you had no choice but to do work you hated, times you had to move for the guild's gain rather than your own. There were times you were thrown into a fight to the death with another guild whether you wished it or not. The first to be sacrificed then were those without strength, without power, and without connections.
Money matters, too.
Daehan Guild offered lodging and meals its members could use free of charge, but even that could be maintained only so long as there were points—and the ones who earned those points were, in the end, the members themselves.
A guild takes people in because it needs players.
To keep the buildings it held, to hold its hunting grounds, to earn achievements, to win its wars, to obtain points, it required a steady supply of new players. The reason was the same as a company hiring staff. If both sides benefited, it was a win-win. Even if you came away a little short, with no other option it could become a choice you had no choice but to make.
Same on Earth. Same in the Tower.
There was no utopia of fairness and reason, where people thought of the other side first, yielded, and cooperated.
All the more so here, where there is no nation and no law.
Irrational, inhumane things happened more often, and in greater number. Even a person of genuine goodwill would find it hard to last. Jin-soo did not, for all that, believe the guild system itself ought to vanish.
Because this is still the best option available.
Not every player could be satisfied. But the guild system of Floor 100, as it stood, was something the majority could live with. Democracy and capitalism on Earth were not perfect either. They were riddled with flaws, and absurdities cropped up constantly—yet countless countries had chosen them simply because they were the best option at hand. Floor 100 was the same. The guild system was the best option available.
"If there's anything you're curious about, please ask as much as you like."
At that, Shin Sua asked what had been on her mind. Jin-soo wanted the current state of Floor 100 as well, and put several questions of his own.
"Hahaha, that is……"
Kim Han-ul answered them both with unfailing kindness.
He really is good at crafting an image.
His gift for talk was impressive, too. Without ever quite saying so, he lifted Daehan Guild up and pared the others down.
"For the week, think of this place as your own home and use it as you please."
His explanation finished, Kim Han-ul said it with a smile. Jin-soo also knew that the kindness would be over in seven days.
Can't have them walking off to another guild.
He was working hard to plant a favorable impression, as warmly as he could manage. And once you actually belonged to Daehan Guild?
You become a convenient little rookie, easy to work to the bone.
The worst jobs, the work no one else wanted, would fall to you. That standard was not applied fairly to everyone, either. In truth, the reason Kim Han-ul was being so excessively kind even now was that Jin-soo and Shin Sua were a mage and a healer—the classes scarcest among newcomers.
If I showed my real skill, I could probably be treated extremely well.
Jin-soo had no particular intention of joining a guild on Floor 100. The profit in revealing his strength and signing on was a pittance. The profit in staying out was a mountain.
"We've asked everything we wanted to know. Would it be all right if we turned in? We're exhausted."
"Yaaawn! I'm sleepy too."
Shin Sua chimed in at once.
"Ah, how thoughtless of me. You must be worn out from clearing Floor 99. Please, go and rest."
Kim Han-ul said it with a smile.
"Yes. Then."
"Come on, let's sleep."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua climbed back up to the rooms on the second floor.
Time to settle the accounts, then.
Now he could finally look over the spoils from the hunt—the queen ant angler, and the countless ant anglers that had come with her.