Unprecedented Rookie (7)

The sensation of gripping a sword had changed.

From E+ to C-. With every rise in rank, what reached his hand was something different.

Right—C-rank and above was the realm of the seasoned practitioner, wasn't it?

Judged by the standard of climbers ascending the Tower, it was the level of someone who couldn't quite crack the Vanguard, yet could still hold his head up anywhere as a genuinely capable hand.

And Eunho had become exactly that the instant his fingers closed around the hilt.

How does that even make sense?

Leaving the corpse of the slime he'd caught behind him, Eunho gave the blade a flick, as if shaking water from it. A sensation rose to meet him.

The steel clinging to his palm as though it had fused with his arm. The texture of the air shearing along the edge.

Sensing it, Eunho adjusted his grip a fraction.

Here... looser than a stranglehold. Just a touch of slack.

The speed of his swings changed. The blade that had been hacking stiff as a board until moments ago now swayed through the air carrying a hint of suppleness.

And the reward for it came at once.

Proficiency, surging upward without warning. Seeing it, Eunho knew that chewing the problem over alone would get him nowhere, so he called upon his all-purpose answer sheet.

"Arin. So, uh... a swordsmanship skill showed up."

But before he could get another syllable out, Regressor Arin's shriek rang out.

"What?! Swordsmanship? How do you already have one of those?!"

"Maybe it's my trait? They say a great vessel takes time to shape—mine's still being forged. Every time I do something, a skill just... appears."

"That is absurdly broken..."

For all her words, her face was lit up with nothing but wild, gleeful celebration.

"Humanity really might get saved at this rate. No—forget that. Conquering the Tower might not even be out of reach..."

He had no idea what she was muttering to herself, so for now Eunho simply decided to wait until her excitement settled. Before long, she spoke again, her expression composed, as though she'd reined herself in.

"So? What about the swordsmanship?"

"It started out at E+ when the skill first appeared. But the more I swung, the higher it climbed—up to C-. A few more swings and the proficiency leapt too. Is that normal?"

Climbers would disclose their traits, but skills they guarded as strictly classified. Streamers went so far as to switch off system messages about skills, proficiency, and acquisitions before going live—so that said something.

Well, they had their reasons.

Anyway. The moment Regressor Arin heard him out, her expression melted into a dopey grin.

"Haaah... Eunho, you really are... the best!"

When she abruptly tried to pounce on him yet again, Eunho slipped sideways. But her pre-regression instincts hadn't gone anywhere—she read him clean and bent her trajectory into the exact direction his body was tilting.

One move in, and his move had already been read!

"No—I'm asking, is it normal or not?"

Having apparently evolved from regressor into cicada, she had mistaken him for a tree, pinning him in place with all four limbs—and now, at last, she began to whimper.

"Of course it's not normal! You swing a sword a few times and proficiency climbs that fast? Then in the future, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would hit S-rank? Absolutely not! Even in my era, only a handful of people ever held S-rank."

"That rare?"

"That rare. Remember the guy with the Boost trait I told you about last time? His swordsmanship was probably S- rank."

"Did his proficiency shoot up like this too?"

"Nope? I asked him, and it didn't seem to balloon the way yours does. Even at C-rank, a big jump for him was six, seven percent? That's how it went, he said."

Hmm.

Eunho realized, all over again, just how broken the Boost trait was.

Without it, I'd have gained about 10.7%.

No small figure, of course. According to Regressor Arin, even that Boost holder from before her regression had topped out at six or seven percent.

Which meant that, Boost aside, Eunho had still out-gained the man outright.

"I keep realizing it all over again—your talent, Eunho. More than that, you're clearly built for the sword! Maybe even more than the Sword Star himself!"

Eunho gave a noncommittal smile at that. In that instant, present-day Arin, who had been listening in beside him, chided him.

"I can't hear any of that, you know? Why am I the only one being left out?"

"Ah, sorry. There were a few things I needed to check. Let's get back to clearing the floor."

He prodded at the slain slime's corpse with his sword a little, then collected the magic stone inside.

"Lowest grade. But... the purity is absurd."

You can tell that just by looking?

"Obviously. I've seen my share of magic stones. Take it to an Unmanned Shop and it'll fetch a fine price. Or refine it into an elixir, or smelt it into a weapon. Whatever you do with it, it'll outperform your expectations."

Listening to Regressor Arin's explanation, Eunho stored the magic stone in his inventory.

"Then let's move. Floor 2 needs wrapping up, quick and clean."

"Got it."

"Oh yeah!"

For all the big talk about finishing quickly, their exploration hit a delay.

"Ugh. This is why I hate swamp terrain. Everything slows to a crawl—it's giving me cancer."

True to the proud hurry-hurry spirit of her homeland, the regressor was dying of frustration.

Just bear with it a little longer. I think we're nearly there.

Just as he'd said, the end of the floor was gradually coming into view in the distance.

Floor 2 ends when you reach the mouth of a cave—right, that was it?

"Yeah, that's the standard route. But... I can't speak for this place. The road here already felt at least twice as long as a normal Floor 2."

She was right.

The achievement: Unprecedented Rookie.

Of the two paths it had offered, Eunho had chosen the harder one—and Floor 2's difficulty had risen accordingly. The slimes he'd cut down so far alone numbered well past forty.

A standard Floor 2 run meant around twenty slimes, if I remember right.

Ordinary, adorable RPG-game slimes at that—not the bizarre mutants he'd been dealing with.

"The first three floors exist to train climbers, after all."

And thanks to that, my proficiency's shot up plenty too.

Eunho's swordsmanship proficiency had already climbed past fifty percent. It no longer leapt the way it had when he'd first changed his grip, but it rose steadily with every swing.

As my proficiency rises, the way I use my body shifts little by little. And naturally, the way my mana moves is changing with it.

According to Regressor Arin, weapon arts like swordsmanship, spearmanship, and archery became bound ever more tightly to mana as their grades rose. In other words: with his half-finished circuit, no matter how fast his proficiency climbed, a wall would stop him eventually.

I'll have to do something about the circuit problem too.

The moment he steeled himself and quickened his pace, something wriggled in the distance.

What is that?

Something with just its head poking out of the very middle of the swamp. A slime.

It's a little different from the mutants so far.

If the slimes before had been mere tentacled abominations, this one bore the unmistakable shape of a living creature.

A catfish, to put it plainly. You know the one—two long whiskers trailing from its face? It looked exactly like that.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Though the fact that its body was transparent, organs and eyeballs and bones drifting suspended inside it, set it apart from any ordinary catfish.

Gwaah—

The thing pulled its mouth free of the swamp and let out that cry. What the—? Since when do slimes cry?

Eunho sensed something deeply off. A creature with no vocal cords, and it was wailing. There was no way this was an ordinary mutant slime.

"Arin. Barrier. Now."

"Okay."

At his word, Arin finished her prayer in a heartbeat. A translucent golden veil draped down around them.

The next moment—

Kzzzkrack-!!

Something burst from the creature's tentacle and hammered against Arin's barrier.

Electricity?

Glowing blue, it was unmistakably electricity. It didn't travel as fast as the real thing, but watching it cling to the barrier, crackling-!, there was no calling it anything else.

And it doesn't look weak, either.

Was this thing claiming to be the big boss of Floor 2?

Eunho turned to Arin.

"Arin. How long can this barrier hold?"

"All day, if it has to."

"Okay."

Her brimming confidence drew a smile from him. The catfish-like slime's whisker of a tentacle shuddered once more and spat out electricity.

Once. Twice. Three times. With every discharge, Eunho simply stood and watched.

"Arin. Keep your focus on the barrier. And do you happen to have a technique that can pull the enemy toward you?"

"There's one called Guiding Rope... it reels in a target I designate. Why do you ask?"

"If I give you the signal, can you pull it in?"

Eunho went on with a flash of a grin.

"Trust me."

Looking at that face, Arin nodded.

"Yeah. I trust you."

"Good."

With her answer, Eunho turned his gaze back to the catfish. The tentacle that had been spitting lightning suddenly sagged, ugly and limp, and with a wet slurp it began sinking back into the swamp.

Seeing it, Eunho immediately drew a single item from his inventory and snapped it in two.

Wind gathered around Eunho. More than that, his senses seemed to sharpen—even the grain of the surrounding ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠breeze began registering faintly against his skin.

Eunho's body, kicking off the swamp, floated up into the air. As though gravity had simply stopped applying to him.

But it was only a temporary state.

The half-finished circuit. That was why he couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠draw out the item's true effect.

It's fine.

All he needed was a single opening. He had every confidence that once he bit down, he would never let go.

Gwaah-!

The catfish-like slime, spotting Eunho suspended in midair, strained its tentacle upright and loosed a bolt. Crack-! The lightning-shaped thing shot toward him in a dead-straight line.

Eunho's foot stamped on empty air. No—to be precise, he crushed the wind beneath it. Grazing past the bolt by a hair's breadth, his body slipped clear of the slime's lightning.

Such was the effect of Wind Step: a skill that allowed a second jump from midair, exactly as he had just done. The number of jumps scaled with its rank—and Eunho could manage only one.

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But I've memorized the flow.

How the mana moved when the skill activated—he had burned it into himself through sensation alone.

"Arin! Now!"

At his shout, Arin loosed the Guiding Rope. Shrrak! A sound closer to iron chain than rope split the air, and snared in its binding, the main catfish slime came reeling in.

Three, two, one... now!

Mana raced down into Eunho's feet. The image in his mind: the Wind Step he'd used moments ago. No—let's take it one step further.

Spiritual power stirred, etching a circuit up through his ankles, all while recalling the movement of mana Wind Step had shown him at the very beginning.

A circuit newly completed. Mana coursing along it.

Borrowing nothing from the skill itself, Eunho had reproduced it through nothing more than his own command of mana.

His body stamped down upon the wind once more.

Crack-!

As though he'd called it in advance, his body slipped past the catfish slime's flailing last resort.

It's over.

Eunho's body inverted in midair—held perfectly upright, as if heaven and earth had traded places.

His knees coiled, and from that position he triggered Wind Step once more.

PA-ANG!

His body drove straight down.

Both hands locked around the hilt.

His plummeting blade caught the sunlight and blazed—like a thunderbolt falling from a clear sky.

THUD!

It struck true, dead center on the head of the catfish slime the Guiding Rope had hauled up over the swamp. KRAK! The core that formed the slime's body shattered from within.

"Whew. That's everything."

"Eunho-yah. Eunho-yah. Why were you counting in your head just now?"

With the battle over, Regressor Arin floated to his side and asked, all too casually. She surely knew the answer already—she just had this habit of confirming everything one piece at a time.

"I kept the barrier up and studied its attacks. Every time it fired off a bolt, it rested for exactly three seconds. That was the window—right when its tentacle went limp."

Regressor Arin couldn't suppress her admiration at his judgment.

An eye you'd never expect from someone who only just set foot in the Tower. And on top of that—knowing is one thing, but the daring to dive straight in the instant it counts.

Arin smiled. The best thing she had ever done in her life, she thought, was returning to the past and saving Eunho.

"Anyway—shall we head up to Floor 3?"

"Yeah."

Looking at Arin, who had drifted to his side at some point, Eunho asked,

"Actually, think it's about time I turned my stream back on?"

"...Your stream? Do you really have to?"

"I do. Can't exactly go through life illiterate. Sooner or later, we're heading back to Earth either way, right? Better to get a read on the situation ahead of time."

There was another reason, too.

Streaming meant donations from viewers.

The real-world cost of donating a single coin differed from country to country, if I remember right.

Those drowning in money, he'd heard, sometimes raised climbers through the so-called "whale-funding" meta. A spectacle most often seen from Middle Eastern, Chinese, and American corporate coffers.

"Hmph! Even all that, and it amounts to nothing before talent. That's the limit of coins, in the end."

Listening to Regressor Arin's overflowing pride, Eunho worked his status window and switched the stream on.

Red letters flared, and a window unfolded before him.

The chat window.

He was gazing at it—still barren, not a single soul inside—when...

...gazing at it, when...

What is this?

Eunho doubted his own two eyes.

From a single viewer, the count had suddenly exploded into the thousands, then blown clean past the tens of thousands.

Fifty thousand.

That was how many people were watching his stream, right now.