The Life of the 1%
Searching for precedent— none found.
Searching for similar cases— none found.
What the hell?
This had never happened before. A space like this existing inside the Tower, system messages flickering as if glitching with errors—all of it was a first.
Zzzt—
Applying a new standard to an unprecedented case.
All existing data will be converted into potential.
Overwriting with new data.
Zzzt—
This climber has engraved the boundary of the world into his eyes.
Trait Manifestation— Out-of-grade unique trait, Boundary Eye, is being granted.
"Boundary Eye...?"
And then—
Zap—
"Ggaaaaaargh…!"
A searing heat suddenly blazed through my eyeballs, as if they were on fire. I'd spent ten years as a hunter growing numb to pain, yet this was an agony I could barely endure.
"Hoo, hoo, hoo…"
My heart hammered and hyperventilation set in. Every nerve in my body screamed alarm, and cold sweat poured from my skin.
Doing my best to keep my mind ice-calm, I slowly closed my eyes.
"……"
I hadn't clawed my way to the 60th floor by pure luck. I had crossed life-or-death lines so many times that an ordinary person would have a panic attack just recalling them. Once I gripped my sanity back, my body, a beat behind, began to settle as well. With my eyes shut and my palms pressed hard against my sockets, the pain gradually subsided.
Zzzt—
Granting of Boundary Eye complete.
Processing of unprecedented case complete.
Lifting the veil of adjustment.
The gray mist hanging thick around me thinned, and the view of the Tower's 1st Floor—the Central Terminal, so familiar to me—began to emerge.
"Whew… whew…"
I took a moment of deep breathing to calm my still-racing heart. Cold sweat had soaked through my clothes.
A security officer handling entry procedures spotted me and waved his glow stick.
"High Mana Syndrome patient over here! Medical team!"
"On our way!"
The Tower's interior was far richer in mana than Earth. That meant first-time entrants could come down with High Mana Syndrome, and the symptoms varied wildly depending on constitution—ranging from a light cold sweat all the way to fever, heart failure, hyperventilation, and full-body convulsions.
To anyone watching, I must have looked like a textbook case… but I wasn't even an ordinary civilian. I was an awakener—there was no way I would get High Mana Syndrome.
The real problem was something wrong with my eyes. It had to be that trait the Tower's system had just announced—Boundary Eye.
"Are you okay?!"
As the medical team came sprinting toward me, their afterimages stretched into long, trailing lines. No—looking again, those weren't afterimages. They were trajectories. The path of their next step, the one after that—every route of their movement rendered vividly before my eyes.
As if I were peeking a few seconds into the future, the predicted paths of every motion drew themselves on their own. Like playing a rhythm game, the next movements snapped perfectly into the shapes forming before me.
Just watching it made my eyeballs ache.
"Ugh… it's going to take me a while to adjust to this…"
"That's High Mana Syndrome for you. It'll pass before you know it."
The medical team helped me over to a cot in the rest area and laid me down.
"Haa……"
About twenty minutes had passed, maybe. I was slowly getting used to the Boundary Eye as I took in the objects around me when someone spoke up beside me.
"Hey there, you doing okay?"
"Huh?"
I turned to see a man who looked to be in his early twenties. He also had a perfectly shiny bald head. His scalp, bouncing the rest area's light back in every direction, was positively blinding.
"Ah… yeah. I'm fine."
"That's a relief. They say the worse your High Mana Syndrome symptoms, the higher your chances of awakening. I convulsed so hard, but yours looked pretty rough too?"
"Did it?"
Apparently the man had mistaken me for a non-awakener. He seemed quite proud of the fact that he'd convulsed, puffing out his chest with a grin.
Ordinary people came to the 1st Floor both to tour the great city and—mostly—out of the hope that by absorbing the Tower's mana, they might somehow awaken. Plenty of hunters camped out on the 1st Floor like this and only awakened years later.
"I brought enough gold to last me about a month… please, let me awaken within that time!"
"I hope so too. You'll awaken for sure."
"You too! Become a dealer!"
"…Hahaha."
The words become a dealer drew a laugh out of me before I could stop it. In my old world, that phrase would have been nothing but a curse. Now, it was a blessing.
"You become one too."
"Thanks. When I become a dealer, I'm going to fill my party with nothing but pretty women supporters."
"……"
The man gave a lecherous chuckle. It was absurd—but honestly, thinking back on Kim Jia, the woman who'd expelled me from her party, it wasn't exactly impossible. If you awakened as a dealer, that was.
Having lived my whole life at the bottom of the totem pole, that kind of talk didn't sit entirely well with me, but his shameless desire was, in its way, simply amusing. As long as your skill backed it up, there was nothing wrong with filling a party entirely with women supporters.
Though of course, the most important thing was skill.
While I was making small talk with the bald man, one of the medical staff in the corner of the rest area came over to him.
"Heart rate's stabilized, and your rest area time is up. You're free to go."
"Ah… already?"
The man scratched his bald head and waved at me.
"I'll head out first! What's your name?"
"It's Cha Minhyuk."
"I'm Park Sehim. Let's meet again once we've both awakened!"
Park Sehim left the rest area and went through his entry procedures. I waited until Park Sehim had disappeared into the crowd beyond before going to complete my own.
"ID and visa documents, please."
"Dealers only need an ID, right? Is that correct?"
The moment I mentioned I was a dealer, I could feel the female clerk flinch—but her service stayed kind and composed.
"…That's correct. You're a dealer?"
"Yes."
"Then just show me your ID. No other paperwork is required."
"Here you go."
The clerk carefully accepted the ID with both hands and pressed it against the terminal at the counter.
Beep—
"…Excuse me. Cha Minhyuk-ssi, you've been verified as an awakened dealer. The dealer counter is over there."
The place she pointed to was, amid the bustling crowds thronging the terminal, the one and only quiet corner.
"Thank you."
The moment I headed for the dealer counter, gazes rained down on me from every direction. My sharp senses picked out the murmurs one by one.
"That guy's a dealer, I think."
"So goddamn jealous, seriously."
"Look at his face. Must be so much fun being alive."
"And here we are hauling in our entire life savings just hoping to awaken as a supporter…"
Reactions like these were, admittedly, still hard to get used to.
"Cha Minhyuk-ssi. You've been issued an indefinite residence visa within the Tower. The Korean government also provides benefits for dealer entrants—would you like to hear about them?"
"Benefits? You're just giving them out?"
"Yes. These are incentives to encourage dealers to climb the Tower."
"Tell me everything."
In my previous world I'd heard supporters got benefits too, but I'd never bothered to look into the details. Even if I had, it would only have made me jealous—they were perks I had no connection to.
"First, a certain monthly allowance—the Dignity Maintenance Allowance—will be paid to the dealer card issued in your name, Cha Minhyuk-ssi. The limit increases as you climb higher floors, and registering a Korean supporter on your party roster earns you an additional incentive."
Oh ho. So this is how they push you to hire Korean supporters?
Not that I cared about nationality. I planned to choose my supporters purely on skill.
"Also, for your first visit only, you're entitled to 5,000 Gold in complimentary services at the Goguryeo Workshop, and you'll receive a one-year complimentary stay at the Sejong, a 5-star hotel. For details, just read through this pamphlet."
I received a black dealer card and a bag stuffed with pamphlets—inside were the Goguryeo Workshop's product catalog, the Sejong Hotel's guidebook, and more.
"Wow……"
These dealer benefits are absolutely insane.
Any supporter awakener would be handed a mere 3-year residence visa and be forced to sleep rough in a back alley or pay a fortune for lodging. A Dignity Maintenance Allowance? Obviously not. Other people pay ME to maintain my dignity? I could never have imagined that I'd actually receive money with such a ridiculous name attached to it.
"Thank you."
I bowed to the clerk and left the entry counter. Spread out before me were dozens of aerial train rails, each stretching out toward its own destination—and beneath them, an endless sea of people, bustling and countless.
I stood still for a moment, just gazing at the scene.
Earth no longer felt like home. This place did.
A city with a cost of living so murderous that no wealthy district on Earth could compare, where illegal residents clung to life chewing on cheap protein bars, desperately dreaming of awakening with each passing day. Skyscrapers raised by hunters who trespassed even upon the domain of gods, and shadowed back alleys packed with non-awakened looking up at them in envy.
A place where those who crawled the lowest, most desperately, all gathered under one roof—on their way to the very highest.
The great metropolis on the Tower's 1st Floor. Acropolis.
I had come back here.
"…Hm."
Ten years' worth of time behind me, I found myself unexpectedly lost in sentiment for a moment.
Well then… check-in at the Sejong Hotel first, I suppose.
The Sejong Hotel. A ultra-luxurious high-rise hotel built in Acropolis by the South Korean government, certified 5-star by the International Hunter Association. In my past life, it had been famous as the place where Korean supporters stayed.
That was why so many dealers used to loiter in front of the Sejong Hotel, only to get beaten and chased off by the hotel's security. Now that dealers were the royalty, it seemed the hotel was offering complimentary stays to lure them in. The more dealers checked in, the more the hotel's prestige would rise, after all.
A 5-star hotel, huh… I couldn't even guess how many Gold a single night's stay would cost. I'd assumed I'd only ever look at it from the outside—who knew I'd actually be staying there?
I was heading toward the aerial train with a lightness in my chest when I noticed a woman up ahead drop her wallet and walk on. I hurriedly picked it up and called out to her.
"Excuse me! You dropped your wallet."
The woman turned around—and wow. She was so stunningly beautiful that it was hard to believe we'd just met by chance on the street. Admiration escaped me involuntarily. She had the kind of face that made you wonder if she were an advertising model or an actress.
"Oh, my wallet! Wow…! Thank you so much!"
She smiled radiantly as she took the wallet, then subtly caught my hand with hers.
"I'm really so grateful—would you let me buy you a meal?"
Of course, there was no such thing as chance in a situation like this. I knew perfectly well that this woman had dropped her wallet on purpose.
And that a group of grim-faced men was watching us closely from across the way.
I answered with a grin.
"You're that grateful?"