Chapter 6
of the Medieval West" Or "Like Something Out of the Middle Ages"to It has been finalized._TITLE: Reminiscent of the Medieval West
The scene before him called the medieval West to mind. Handsome buildings lined the streets, and among them moved people in leather gear and iron armor, crude iron swords hanging at their hips.
Yujun had come from the Waiting Room of the Tower of Infinity into the residential zone. He kept turning, taking it all in, until his eyes went wide.
What? They all look high-level.
It left him bewildered. Something's off. By all rights, the tutorial ought to have only just ended. Even granting that he had burned a fair stretch of time in the Hell-difficulty tutorial, that was a day or two at most — and yet the players' equipment was impressive. Most of them looked to be level 50 or higher. Was that even possible?
Yujun's gaze deepened.
If they started when I did, there's no way they'd be walking around in gear like that.
He tried to make sense of the situation he had landed in. There was no chance that everyone passing on the street had cleared a Hell-difficulty tutorial.
Just then, he caught the sound of people talking nearby.
"Hey, did you hear? Dozens died on that B-Rank dungeon expedition."
"They say some variable nobody expected popped up. I guess even a low-level dungeon gets just as dangerous the moment a B-Rank gets stuck on it."
"The raid failed, and the dead alone come to twenty. Whoever put that expedition together must have taken a serious blow."
"Want to know the funny part? The man who formed the party and led it, plus a few of his inner circle — they're the only ones who came back alive."
"For real? How?"
"Obvious, isn't it? It looked dangerous, so he dumped the expedition and ran. Used some special scroll, or stabbed them in the back. One or the other."
"Wow... what a piece of work."
"That's just how the ones with power always are."
Yujun pricked up his ears and edged closer.
"But isn't he afraid of what comes after? In a line of work where trust is everything, you abandon an expedition and run, and... there's no way he can weather that."
"There's no proof. They'll spin it somehow — say they were lucky enough to survive."
"Everyone can tell it's a lie."
"Doesn't matter. Hardly anyone around here is stronger than they are. The five-year players have all already gone up higher, and all that's left in this place are the first- and second-years. No lion around, so the fox plays king."
Yujun, listening closely, startled.
First-years? Five-years? What is any of that supposed to mean?
They weren't even speaking some other country's language. It was Korean. A bad feeling settled over him.
For now, I'll keep looking around.
From then on he roamed the residential zone of the Tower of Infinity without rest, hunting for information.
Three days passed that way.
"Hah..."
A deep sigh escaped him.
From everything he had dug up, five years — absurd as it was — had gone by since the Great Migration. That was the name for what happened when those who awakened to a player's abilities were dragged by force into the Tower of Infinity and shut inside. And it had not ended with a single occurrence. Once a year, new players flowed into the Tower, every one of them someone who had been living on Earth.
Once he had that much, doubt set in.
The world of War of the Gods was never just the Tower of Infinity.
The Tower had occupied a large share of it, yes, but he had never been trapped there. He had dealt with what unfolded on the Continent, and he had held off the Demon God's Invasion as well. The situation now diverged sharply from the course of the War of the Gods he had played.
Was I asleep for five years? Or did clearing the Hell-difficulty tutorial take that long?
He could be certain of neither. Only one thing was sure: five years had already passed.
I'm five years behind?
All the wind went out of him. He had been able to guess, more or less, that other users existed. Having five years simply skipped was another matter entirely.
What's wrong here? Why am I the only one who started late?
Counted by the date, he ought to have been a first-year player. For some reason, he had only just now come out of the tutorial.
"Hoo..."
The road ahead already looked bleak. He had thought himself several moves ahead of the rest, only to learn he was five years late. Even so, he couldn't sit here and brood. What he had to do now was grow stronger as quickly as possible — and so long as he had No-Pay Casual Gamer's inventory, that would not be especially difficult.
Think positive. Five years. It's only five years. I've got the inventory.
That inventory held value more than large enough to make up for five wasted years, with plenty to spare. Yujun ran through the items one by one, and his smile came back.
No need to rush.
He had the experience of playing War of the Gods, and he had a vast number of items. Reach a certain level, and he would climb soon enough.
First, settle what has to be done.
What lay ahead of him from this moment was obvious: raise his level. To bring his greatest advantage to bear, he needed that level high. From level 50 he could equip items in the accessory slots, and from then on he would grow as fast as if he had a booster strapped on.
I should look into the intermediate tutorial, too.
It might be information only he possessed. He had to be the first to clear the intermediate tutorial, before anyone else caught on.
Even so, I just can't get used to this.
People were going about their lives as if a reality turned into a game were perfectly ordinary. Buildings in an architectural style that evoked the medieval West. Players in iron or leather armor, weapons in hand. There were even those who hauled monster carcasses in and sold them at the shops.
To think the world changed in a moment...
Watching it, he felt as though he had truly arrived in a fantasy world.
Good thing I'm someone who's played War of the Gods.
If five years had passed with no information at all, he would not have adapted this easily. He began setting what he had learned from the game against what he had gathered while wandering the residential zone, and most of it matched.
I never expected to start inside the Tower of Infinity... but the dungeon information, the kinds of skills — they're largely the same as what I knew.
Yujun finished a meal at an inn he had taken nearby.
Here in the Tower of Infinity, the currency was Points — the monetary unit of the War of the Gods setting, earned by hunting monsters or completing quests. He, at least, had no need to worry about keeping himself fed. He had sold a single useless piece of equipment and closed his hand around fifty thousand Points, a hefty sum. Even a modest Heroic-grade item actually traded somewhere around that figure, and fifty thousand was considerable enough that the cost of an inn was nothing to fret over.
Common, Rare, Heroic, Unique, Legendary, Mythic — among those grades, Heroic sat third from the bottom. Even so, he was told, Heroic-grade items were quietly scarce. He had wondered how that could be after five full years, and then it came to him: this was not a game. It was reality. Unlike the days when he had thrown himself into dangerous dungeons without a second thought, items here were anything but easy to come by.
And they said there's no cash shop, either.
Above all else, there was no monetization system of any kind. Of course items would be precious.
Which means I'll be the one turning a profit.
The items of Legendary grade and above, sitting in his inventory — just calling them to mind lifted his mood. Yujun grinned, left the inn, and headed for a general store.
The people running the shops were those who had taken grave injuries while clearing dungeons or climbing the Tower, injuries that nothing short of an elixir could treat.
"Welcome."
A middle-aged man with a thick beard greeted Yujun as he stepped inside.
"What can I do for you?"
"Lowest-grade potions, please."
"How many would you like?"
"Five."
"Very well."
The man stepped into the storeroom at the back and returned almost at once, handing the potions over.
"That will be five hundred Points."
"Here."
"Thank you for your business."
"Yes. Take care."
Yujun finished the exchange as naturally as if he had spent years inside the Tower of Infinity. Point transactions were carried out through a System hologram, so there was no fear of Points being stolen. Cases did exist in which someone was threatened and had their Points taken by force, but under ordinary circumstances he didn't have to worry about being swindled.
He tucked the five potions into his inventory, left the general store, and set off down the road. His reason for buying the lowest grade was simple.
Using the potions in my inventory would be far too much of a waste.
The ones he had stored away were of excellent quality — costly enough that he ought to be past level 200, at the very least, before he touched them. In this residential zone for those under level 100, they were so rare that even laying eyes on one was difficult. These weren't serious wounds. Spending potions like that would be nothing but a waste of Points, and that was why he had stopped at the general store.
Well. If it's a real emergency, I'll use the expensive ones without a second thought.
His own life mattered more than anything else.
About time I headed out.
He wasn't thinking of a dungeon meant for raising his level. He meant to take the trial for reaching the next floor.
To climb higher in the Tower of Infinity, one had to earn the System's recognition — more concretely, to overcome the ordeal the System imposed. Manage that, and you could go straight up to the floor above, with no restrictions and no conditions. An ordinary player would grow by clearing the dungeons on the first floor, then challenge the next. Yujun had no need to. His level had already reached 31, and the quality of his items surpassed what level 31 called for by a wide margin. Going after the assorted dungeons on the first floor amounted to little more than a waste of time.
Was it the Equanimity trait? The situation was absurd enough that being rattled would hardly have been too much, and yet he was thinking of climbing the Tower of Infinity as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I'm not the only one.
Other players wanted to climb high in the Tower as well, and there would be any number of reasons. Reach the upper floors and raise your level, and the residential zone changed into a more luxurious one. You could live a wealthier life. The second reason was the Demon God's Invasion. Fail to reach the very top of the Tower within fifteen years, and the invasion would begin — and then not only the players inside the Tower of Infinity, but Earth itself, would fall into danger. When that time came, Earth might be destroyed.
No. Near enough to a certainty.
This, too, was something Yujun had learned while wandering the residential zone. The Demon God's Invasion: the first quest, and the last. In the end, to survive, one had to climb the Tower of Infinity all the way to its end.
The Tower of Infinity should only go to the fiftieth floor.
To be precise, it was not that the Tower stopped at fifty. Past the fiftieth floor, no further content had ever been developed, and so there had been no way to climb higher. Even so, by Yujun's measure, the difficulty of the fiftieth was not especially high. Which meant—
There's a good chance floors above the fifty-first exist as well.
Already, five years on, he had heard there were people clearing the fortieth floor. There was no way the fiftieth was the end. Clearing it within fifteen years would not be particularly difficult, so of course he thought there would be a fifty-first, and more beyond it.
Yujun let out a sigh.
The Demon God's Invasion...
Had reality come to this because of a game called War of the Gods? He recalled what the operator had told him — that no matter what happened, he was not to doubt it, but to accept the situation.
I wonder what that operator named Ner really is.
He had thought it before. Maybe the developer who created War of the Gods had, in fact, been a god.
Doesn't matter either way.
He couldn't remain as he was.
Level. I have to raise my level.
For the time being, he meant to focus on growing stronger, until he caught up with the other players.