Super Star

Meanwhile, at that very moment, the main character of the drama setting the Awakener community on fire was...

"Mommy~! That noona over there is weird! She walks around with no clothes on!"

"Shh! Quiet now."

"But—"

"You must never make eye contact with her. Understood?"

"......"

Strolling down the street in a body completely drenched in slime, while random strangers pointed fingers at her.

...Son of a bitch.

After a whole series of mishaps, I somehow made my way home in the nude, and once I'd finished a shower and dried off, I immediately turned my attention to the Floor 1 clear rewards.

"Claimed."

The moment I accepted the items, a box materialized out of thin air with a flash of sparkling effects. It looked a lot like the magitech chests you'd find in that one game.

"Well then, I guess that's what Lunatic difficulty gets you — the rewards are seriously solid."

I never expected to get a skill as early as Floor 1. For Awakeners, the only paths to power were traits, skills, and items — and of those, traits and skills were notorious, even inside the Tower, for being a bitch to acquire. Unless you went hunting for hidden quests or rare opportunities, you could only earn them by taking down the bosses waiting every ten floors.

But apparently because I was on Lunatic difficulty, a skill had just dropped straight into my Floor 1 clear reward.

"Bless you, Tower! I always believed in you!!"

Ah, what an impartial and merciful system thou art! Suddenly I could feel the very philosophy and mysticism of the Tower welling up inside me...

...Anyway, moving on.

"Shall I open it right up?"

Without delay, I cracked the box open. A system message floated into the air, and the names of countless skills began to dance before my eyes.

Whirrrrr!

Golden, purple, and blue skills spun past like a roulette. At the dazzling display, I bounced in place and let out a small gasp of awe.

"Oooh...!"

This was exactly like... that thing... a slot machine!

Granted, since what was on the line was a skill, this was very much a life-or-death gamble — but then again, betting money or betting your life is the same game in the end, so what's the difference?

Whirrrr...

And so, while I was off in my own little world, the skills gradually began to slow down.

Where the roulette finally came to rest, a single skill was glowing purple.

Ding!

"Whoa...!"

Inventory? THE Inventory? The legendary busted skill that gets recruitment offers thrown at you from the Association and guilds just for having it?

The A-rank skill, Inventory — a skill that nobody on earth hasn't heard of. One of the basic convenience features provided in countless RPG games. Except these motherf***ing Tower devs went and turned it into paid DLC.

Thanks to that, Awakeners without this skill had no choice but to haul every weapon and consumable around in a backpack while climbing. That was the very reason I'd just walked all the way home butt naked.

Sons of bitches, every one of them.

Flash!

I immediately pulled up my skill window and checked the description. One cubic meter of storage space. Not quite as roomy as I'd hoped, but useful all the same — and it had outstanding synergy with me in particular, since transmutation required materials above all else.

"Hehehe."

Chuckling happily over my brand-new skill, I grabbed my phone and checked the Awakener Gallery.

My IP was still blocked, as expected. And when I combed through the notices and the post list, there wasn't just no end date — there wasn't even a stated reason for the ban. Forgetting my age entirely, I cried out to the moderator, consumed by the sheer injustice of it all.

"You moderator bastard, you've genuinely lost it."

Come here, sit down, and look me in the eye. A full day has already passed — is this really acceptable? Does a lazy mod who won't even disclose the reason for a ban deserve to wear that badge? Because I don't think so...

"...Whatever. That's the Awakener Gallery for you."

Those long hours of persecution and banishment had been truly sickening. But there was no need to obsess over the Awakener Gallery anymore. I had an alternative now.

I opened the Tower Gallery right away — the true Awakener Gallery, one that could only be reached after actually climbing to Floor 1 of the Tower. Then, as was my habit, I started lurking, ready to stir up drama and divide the masses the natural way. I was just about to check the trending tab when I spotted a post with a very familiar title.

"...Huh?"

The brag post I'd mindlessly thrown up right after clearing Floor 1. And yet somehow, there it was, sitting on the trending board — with 294 comments attached to it.

"......???"

Ding!

"Okay, hold on just a second..."

Before I could even form a question, another notification chimed and the comment count climbed again. Panicked, I checked the general tab instead of trending, but the posts there were no different.

"......"

The protagonist of the Tower Gallery's latest firestorm. I, it turned out, had become the gallery's superstar.

The moment that fact registered, my heart started beating faster and faster — no caffeine required.

Thump, thump...!

"Haa... haa..."

Calm down. Calm down first and foremost. I, Kim A-yeon, the proud beloved unregistered user of the Awakener Gallery. Flipping out over a bit of sudden bait was amateur-hour behavior. An intermediate troll would panic-buy some junk stock with a similar name and go check the water temperature of the Han River. And a true master?

He sets the fire.

And what we call that act... is a shitstorm.

A classic bait-and-switch question post with a template clickbait title. As luck would have it, a few gallery lurkers took the bait, and before long the replies started rolling in.

"...I was the one asking the questions here."

Somehow I'd become the one being interrogated. Well, fair enough — I'd been the center of a burning controversy for a solid hour since coming out of the Tower.

For the record, I breezily ignored the head mod's plea to go read the announcements. Gallery notices are strictly for when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you're getting a fixed-nick torched or when you've been banned unjustly. That's the rule.

Ding!

"Hmm?"

I was happily refreshing away, grinning at each new comment as it popped up, when suddenly an alert rang out — a private message had arrived in my inbox.

"Wh-whooa."

Turns out over a hundred messages had piled up while I wasn't looking. Most of them were gold-diggers, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠scammers, or photos that absolutely must never be opened, but it didn't take me long to find one familiar nickname among them.

— BurntCowIsCarbon: 39.7...? That's you, isn't it...?

"Huh?"

BurntCowIsCarbon. A familiar fixed-nick from the Awakener Gallery. And having a fixed nick on that gallery meant one thing: they were an Awakener. Which naturally meant they were active on the Tower Gallery too. So it wasn't all that strange for this person to recognize me.

No, actually, since I'd been flaunting it from my very first post, it would've been stranger if they hadn't...

— BurntCowIsCarbon: I know everything you're doing

"Ngh..."

The follow-up message drew an involuntary groan out of me — it hit a little too close to home. But regardless of my conscience, BurntCowIsCarbon's interrogation continued.

— BurntCowIsCarbon: Answer.

"......"

Something, it seemed, had gone very, very wrong.

Meanwhile, while the Tower Gallery blazed away with the Lunatic firestorm, the Awakener Association was thrown into a live emergency alert.

"Control room report!! Floor 1 clear record confirmed — it's been BROKEN!!"

"Where the hell did a monster like that come from? Have we identified the Awakener's identity?"

"Contain the press and the communities!! Not ONE word of this leaks out!!"

Shouts rang out from every corner. Rushing footsteps, papers flying through the air, new hires getting joint-locked mid-panic by their superiors. And into that chaos — a bedlam that reminded one of nothing so much as a fish market — a dark-circled, red-haired woman strolled leisurely through the doors, coffee in hand.

"...Well, this is a full-blown Tang dynasty army if I've ever seen one."

Hong Yeon-hwa. Gallery handle: BurntCowIsCarbon. A-rank Awakener and senior executive of the Association (a.k.a. grad student).

And she was in an extremely foul mood. She'd been in the middle of a long-awaited training session when the Association President had dropped a bus-trek summons on her out of nowhere.

'Ugh, damn it... I was just about to find my rhythm, too...'

Recently, she had been undergoing closed-door training. Going up against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ironclad monsters of the 10th-floor range with ordinary firepower was simply not possible. And above all, beheading the Floor 20 boss demanded overwhelming, crushing firepower.

"...As I thought. My firepower is lacking."

There was nothing better than firepower — except stronger firepower. More explosives. A more violent detonation...!!

It was the sort of thinking you'd expect from a certain Eastern nation obsessed with the power of danmaku, but she meant every word of it. After all, her entire approach to the Tower up to this point had been all-in on firepower.

...Never mind that her glass cannon drained her mana dry after a single shot. That was a minor problem, easily solved by raising her firepower further.

Then Hong Yeon-hwa snagged an Association employee walking past and asked, "Hey. What's all this ruckus about?"

"W-well, you see..."

Faced with a sudden question from her boss's boss's boss, the employee froze up, unable to manage an answer. The sluggish response suggested a rookie who'd joined not long ago.

Just as the employee's direct supervisor was quietly preparing to chew them out, a bald middle-aged man abruptly materialized between the two and picked up the thread.

"It appears a certain Awakener just cleared the Tower on Lunatic difficulty."

"Ah, there you are, Association President, sir."

The bald man — addressed as the Association President by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hong Yeon-hwa — continued his explanation.

"And apparently they went and bragged about it on a community forum. Without our knowing a thing."

"What kind of bulls*** is that? The Tower is... we have it under monitoring, don't we?"

"And it appears they are an unregistered Awakener."

"...Ah."

There was good reason for the President to have a seizure. After all, unregistered Awakeners were the Association's PTSD given form.

In the past, immediately after the Tower's appearance, during the so-called Age of Chaos, the Tower's interior — beyond the reach of public authority — had been a paradise for criminals. No laws, no institutions, a genuine lawless frontier. And once those people were granted the blessing called 'Awakening,' the days that followed were an unbroken chain of horrors.

Civilians died in droves. A war on crime erupted. Countless sacrifices were made, and out of that bloodbath, the Association was born. A mountain of corpses piled up to purchase the peace of the present day.

Recollecting that blood-soaked past, the Association President looked at Hong Yeon-hwa with a face grown slightly weary.

"...I'm well aware we cannot control every single Awakener."

But this case was different. An Awakener who had chosen Lunatic difficulty. Quite possibly the fourth S-rank ever born in Korea. The President did not even want to imagine the fallout of letting such a person roam free, unregistered.

"A provisional registration would be acceptable."

Even if total control were impossible, they had to at least know who this person was. He could not stand by and watch history's tragedy repeat itself.

"They seem to want to hide their identity, so rather than provoke them needlessly... it would be wiser to accommodate them."

And yet, he continued, his voice hardening.

"You must find them."

Trembling eyes beneath a grave expression turned toward Hong Yeon-hwa. Within them lived the fear of someone who had lived through an entire era of war head-on.

"Yeah... sure."

Hong Yeon-hwa, by contrast, replied with a look of utter indifference. She'd had a pretty good guess about the newbie's identity since long ago.

"......"

It was roughly thirty minutes later that she sent her message to 39.7.