Chapter 1: The Top of the Tower
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 1: The Top of the Tower
A trash game.
It's a term usually reserved for games that are boring, have terrible character balance, or suffer from atrocious management.
But there is another case.
One with an utterly absurd level of difficulty.
The virtual reality game, Tower of Trials, was exactly that.
For a year after its release, Korean veterans—whose hobby was making a mockery of game developers—threw themselves at the game to conquer it.
Giving up both eating and sleeping, they kept at it 24/7, 365 days a year.
However, by the time three years had passed, people realized something.
This game was simply impossible to clear.
And that wasn't an exaggeration. It was the literal truth.
Want an example?
The Gate Guardian protecting the 10th floor is invincible.
Invincible.
Meaning, it doesn't matter if a hundred players spam their skills and beat it down with every weapon imaginable—it does absolutely nothing.
Seriously, on a human level, shouldn't they at least let it take 1 damage?
On top of that, the 7th floor was a polar wasteland at minus 60 degrees Celsius, where you'd freeze to death in an hour.
And the 8th floor was a labyrinth stretching well over 10,000 kilometers.
This wasn't made for fun; it was designed for torture.
Or perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to screw over Korean veterans.
Consequently, the game died.
To be precise, it almost died.
Because there was still a tiny handful of veterans challenging this godforsaken, hellish difficulty.
And among them...
Was a young Korean man named Kang Jinhyuk.
* * *
[You have conquered the 50th floor!]
[Congratulations! You are the first to clear the Tower of Trials!]
"Is this... for real?"
The 50th floor of the Tower of Trials.
Jinhyuk let out a sigh laden with a whirlwind of emotions.
He had done it simply because it was fun.
Conquering the tower in novel ways unlike anyone else, and the sense of accomplishment he felt after repeating it over and over until he had memorized every single detail.
But to think he would actually clear the very last floor.
Starting at seventeen when he first encountered virtual reality games, all the way to twenty-seven as an adult.
A whopping eleven years of his life flashed before his eyes.
'Haha. Maybe I should've streamed this.'
He was just a small-time streamer with barely twenty or thirty viewers, but a streamer was still a streamer.
But Jinhyuk soon shook his head.
Then again, even if he had streamed, no one would have watched.
Even his regular viewers had left after watching him repeat the exact same thing for three months.
Now, even if he tried to bait people with titles like "Boss Guide" or "50th Floor," no one would click if they saw he was playing Tower of Trials.
'Still, if I upload it to ViewTube, won't it get a decent number of views?'
If he edited the run down to under ten minutes, it seemed like it would perform pretty well.
It was then.
Ding!
[Thank you so much for playing our game all this time.]
[The Reboot Update is scheduled to take place in 12 hours. We hope you continue to enjoy our game.]
It was an administrator-only message.
He had thought they completely abandoned the game since they hadn't communicated or maintained it for eleven years.
'How unexpected. And a Reboot Update? Did they strike oil in a desert somewhere?'
It made absolutely no sense.
There shouldn't be a single dime of profitability in this game...
'...Whatever. They must have their reasons.'
It had nothing to do with him anyway.
Reboot Update or not, he had no intention of playing this game anymore.
Besides, he planned to quit streaming—which he had been doing as a job—after today.
Even if he didn't have a family to support, he was already twenty-seven.
He couldn't go on living on 500,000 won a month forever.
'I should tell the gym director that I'm taking a break from training for a while.'
Though he had once been told he should go pro in MMA, money was far more important than training right now.
-jjy77: Jin-ha! Jin-ha! Short for Jinhyuk hi!
-Eagle Owl: Oh, what's up? You started early today?
As soon as he started the stream, his twenty regular viewers quickly trickled in.
On his desk, he had set out chicken, pizza, cream shrimp, and yangjangpi, along with two bottles each of beer and soju.
-Dieting for 25 Years: Whoa, look at that feast. The table's about to break.
-Mukbang Means Tzuyang: As expected, mukbang suits you perfectly, hyung. Not gaming streams.
-Jinhyuk Is Best When He's Rolling: What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Streamer Jinhyuk?
-Coffin Dance Song: He eats the cow and then eats the barn!
-Homebody Twitch Viewer: He even taps a stone bridge before eating it!
-Two Chickens per Person: He got startled after eating a turtle, so let's eat the pot lid too!
Still, it was thanks to this small handful of viewers that he had been able to keep streaming until now.
As they laughed, chatted, and drank soju with the feast, dawn crept up on them before he knew it.
'I should post an announcement about quitting tomorrow.'
He just couldn't bring himself to say it right now.
Yeah.
Tomorrow is the day.
However...
Even Jinhyuk himself had no idea.
That when he opened his eyes, the world would already have changed.