In the Palm of Master Do's Hand

Helicopters and transport planes swarmed the skies over Washington, D.C. — the escape routes of the rich and the high-ranking.

Below, people and cars packed every street. The hellish gridlock had set in long ago. Evacuation columns filled the city to bursting.

Drian, a 55th-floor Hunter, was working himself ragged directing the scene.

"Please follow all instructions! Stay calm — everyone will make it out!"

Then someone came flying in through the air. A junior Hunter from the 49th floor.

"Whoa. Senior? What are you doing here?"

"Huh?"

Drian flinched.

Every Hunter of the 55th floor and above had been emergency-conscripted — manpower to be stuffed into the 57th floor the moment things went south.

"I—I'm not feeling well. I got reassigned to the disaster team."

"…Is that so?"

"Yeah, man. They only called up the 55th-floor guys as a formality anyway. The ones they actually want are the 56th-floor Hunters, right?"

"Well, yeah."

A lie.

I'll die before I set foot on the 57th floor!

A floor where everyone who entered had died. And now this — the Urgent Life-Shortening Decree? A new breed of monster that used a special skill.

Going in meant certain, miserable death.

I'm not going. Clearing the 57th floor is impossible.

American public opinion ran the same way. The prevailing view was that it couldn't be done.

Hopeful takes weren't entirely absent.

Most people were already bracing for failure.

And then, in the middle of all that, a single post tore across social media.

The post spread at an incredible speed. Then it was buried just as fast — dismissed as baseless nonsense with no evidence to back it up.

It had been a while since I'd last set foot in the Hunter Management Headquarters. Today, apparently, I was going to see a place of a different kind.

"A secret conference room?"

My father answered.

"That's right."

A space built to resemble the interior of the Tower — one that received the Tower's own "judgment," and so was freed from a great many physical laws. A room that permitted communication only along designated lines.

"A Hunter with a special ability made it."

"There was a skill like that!?"

It was an ability that hadn't even existed in Hunter Management.

"It's classified. The government has a few Hunters they manage under special protocols. Like Master, you see."

Jo Paldeok, walking alongside us, added an explanation of his own.

"You know how there's someone who can extract Tower messages? Same kind of thing."

"Now that you mention it, yeah."

Messages only displayed inside the Tower. Until Master and the Dark Emperor, that had been the rule.

So how had Jo Youchan and Lee Yeonhwa's SS-Rank clears been certified? Message Extraction. A skill that could take a message someone had received inside the Tower and print it onto paper or some other physical medium.

It belonged to a civil-servant Hunter attached to the Hunter Management Headquarters. Every country had a handful of them, apparently.

Same family of skills, then.

A state secret — even the Hunter Management devs wouldn't have known. That's why it never made it into the game. Pretty wild.

A unique skill, huh… I want it.

What kind of teams, compositions, and strategies could you build around a skill like that? My heart was racing the way it used to when Hunter Management dropped a new update.

"That my son would come here… no. That I'd come here with my son. I'm overwhelmed."

Father opened the door. A black space unfolded beyond it.

"Ah — this is…!"

The way to check whether a given country had cleared the 54th floor: try to enter the 55th. And for anyone who wasn't a 55th-floor Hunter? You could still enter. You just came face-to-face with this black void, and then you were thrown out.

They recreated it.

A black space with no sense of depth or distance. A table, chairs, and a screen sat in the middle of it as if they'd been dropped there from nowhere.

The video conference began almost immediately.

Their side: the TASH Director, one researcher, and one veteran Hunter.

A secret meeting, so the headcount was kept deliberately small.

Our side was three as well — me, Father, and Uncle Paldeok.

The footage had been wrung out of them. They couldn't just leave Kang Minji to die. Korea had to do something.

In other words, this meeting hadn't been arranged because anyone was counting on me.

"Understood."

Uncle Paldeok answered on our behalf. Uncontested acknowledgment. Neither Father nor Uncle Paldeok expected anything from me.

It was pretty out of left field, to be fair.

A low-floor nobody who'd never even set foot on the 57th, swaggering in to offer help. Who was going to believe that?

The only reason this meeting existed at all was because my influence and backing inside Korea were so overwhelming they couldn't refuse.

A fishing expedition.

Master was, as far as anyone knew, a low-floor Hunter. He'd never even been near the 50s, let alone accumulated any high-floor experience. Skilled with techniques, sure — but he wasn't a Climbing Studies PhD. He just happened to clear the floors he was on very well. That was the public record, at least.

So what help could he possibly be? They'd found a convenient pretext and were trying to pin down Master's identity while they were at it.

"In accordance with America's request that we keep the roster to an absolute minimum, the three of us present were judged to be the most optimized selection. Please rest assured."

Oh, Uncle Paldeok. Silver-tongued as ever. Father would never have been able to say something like that.

Right. I've got credentials of my own, thanks.

I'd produced four SS-Ranks, after all.

Footage of the 57th floor. Pulled out of China via intelligence work, apparently. Their capabilities were no joke.

The owner of the viewpoint thrashed for about ten seconds before managing to exit.

But that last frame — everyone in the room caught it.

"If the exit had been even a fraction later, a blade would have been buried in their brow."

The Dark Emperor's dagger, striking from stealth.

Neck. Heart. Brow.

I smiled to myself, deeply satisfied. Exactly like the game. The attack patterns, the priority targeting by position — even the skill cooldowns.

I looked down at the documents I'd been given: profiles of every Hunter currently available for deployment to the 57th floor.

A strategy assembled itself in my head at speed.

This should be enough…

First, send these two for verification. Then optimize it like this… And at the end, Kang Minji…

The meeting rolled on while I thought.

"It's an assassin type."

"There's a similar monster on the 17th floor, but the quality is entirely different."

"What about using the same strategy as the 17th?"

"The attack-power ceiling hasn't been measured, so tanking itself can't even be established…"

The American researcher's points, and the veterans' — Father's and Uncle Paldeok's included — were all perfectly reasonable. There just wasn't enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠information.

Alternatives kept being proposed. Father remained skeptical throughout.

"Even if it were me, I don't know if I could tank that. It might be an instant-death judgment."

Okay. Strategy done. I set the documents down and corrected the one thing that was wrong.

"It's not an instant-death judgment."

"Hm?"

"A single entity can't use an instant-death skill again within an hour. That's the nature of instant-death skills."

Official Hunter Management lore. When the 70th-floor Guardian launched, it had an instant-death spam pattern. The community tore the devs apart, and they emergency-patched it. This rule had been added along with the apology.

I didn't answer. Even if I cited a source, it was a game that no longer existed — and once you'd stepped in to backseat, you didn't argue.

The doctor looked at me with something like surprise.

"Hyeonseok, you read papers too?"

I didn't answer.

Not a chance.

Thirty minutes in front of a book and my whole body started aching. Instead, I added a remark and papered over it.

"It's not a hypothesis. It's a fact. Beyond the two reported cases, it's a principle that applies to every instant-death skill."

Ah. Slipped.

Up through the 57th floor, those two were the only ones. I stuck with silence.

The American veteran Hunter's interest was piqued. His voice climbed a register, like his eyes had spun around in his head.

"What kind of outrageous request is that? That is Hunter Do Hyeonseok's secret art. Of course it cannot be shared!"

Uncle Paldeok really did have a way with words. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and open it only when I had something to say.

After that, I started pouring out everything the strategy needed.

"The tanker's neck was severed in a single stroke. Given the nature of the Tower, the difficulty cannot spike that sharply all at once."

"It looks like a conditional damage-amplification type. Probably on-hit while stealthed. There's a skill with a similar judgment. I taught it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to Director Jeong Sangguk, so I'd suggest requesting research cooperation from his office."

"Every melee mob in the 50s is a Dark Elf. Look at the footprints captured at the twenty-three-second mark in the footage — the stride length is exactly Dark Elf."

"When a Dark Elf's dark mana binds to an existing skill, it produces judgments of a similar type, and the exact same weaknesses. It's a Dark Elf racial trait. It appears to have been bound to the stealth used by the 17th-floor Elf assassin, so the counter is…"

At some point the conference room had gone quiet. I was the only one talking. I lifted my eyes from my notes and looked around the table.

The Americans were staring with their eyes round as coins. Father too — was this the first time he'd seen me backseat someone? His expression matched theirs exactly.

Uncle Paldeok looked thoroughly pleased. He nodded. He'd heard pieces of this from the guild members I'd trained, no doubt.

So… do I just keep talking?

They'd be writing it down on their own, right?

"Finally, I'll lay out a concrete strategy and team selection."

"First attempt is a two-man team: tanker David, mage Joseph. The objective is to confirm whether the hypotheses I just outlined are true…"

I ignored the question and said only what I needed to say. So they went quiet and listened.

First principle. Don't argue. If they don't want to believe it, fine.

And just like that, the plan to clear the 57th floor was set.

David, the tanker who had sat in on the meeting. And Joseph, the mage who had cleared alongside Kang Minji.

The moment they entered, both of them shouted for the exit.

"Exit!"

"Exit!"

"D-D-David, if I die, I am actually going to curse you. I-I mean it, I will curse you."

"If you die, I die too. You gonna curse a corpse?"

"F-fucking TASH, fucking Director, fucking David… why me, why the hell is it always…"

He muttered the whole time, but his hands were already drawing a magic circle. Flippant as he was, Joseph was still a top-floor veteran.

"Still. I respect your courage on behalf of the country."

"If you're g-grateful, then p-please just keep me alive. I don't want to die."

"Don't worry. If that man was right about everything, I can hold for twenty seconds on my own."

But Joseph, whose mouth was famous for never stopping, could not keep the negativity in.

"Who even is that guy. I-is he the Dark Emperor's mom or something? I still don't get it. This operation is insane. H-how do you even come up with a plan this specific with zero information?"

"I thought he had zero information too. Turns out he didn't."

"W-what's that supposed to mean?"

"That man took what we saw and pulled out everything we didn't. Like…"

Ten seconds in. Here it came.

Behind. Neck!

He swung the shield.

CLANG!

"H-hyaaaaah! He's here! He's HERE! We're all gonna die!"

"Calm down and look! I blocked it! I blocked the Dark Emperor's attack!"

"Huh…?"

"Damn it — that man was right! The pattern is consistent!"

A tanker's blood was boiling. Back when he was a rookie, when he'd stared death in the face on the 10th floor — when he'd decided to walk the tanker's path. His heart was pounding harder than it had even then.

"D-David, how did you— China's entire first team died to that attack in one hit…"

"It was just like — like a Master!"

"Huh?"

"In those Eastern movies, they call someone like that a Master, right? That man seemed more skilled than anyone else in the world!"

The adrenaline was dumping so hard that David was getting as talkative as Joseph.

"He cracked every skill off that short clip, and he even read that Dark Emperor bastard's psychology. He had the whole attack pattern mapped. Watch — five seconds, Target Two's heart!"

CLANG!

"Hyaaaaaaah!"

"Hahahaha! I-I tanked it again! Right now I am the greatest tanker in the world!"

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

"Target One again…"

In the footage, it had been the brow. But more than the footage, he trusted the man's word.

"The neck!"

CLANG—!

Two seconds to exit.

One second.

Joseph shouted.

"Ho— Holy Shine! Attribute Conversion: Darkness!"

The two magics were never used together in actual combat. A completely unfamiliar combination. That man had told them to do it this way.

And then something astonishing happened.

The stealth peeled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠away. The Dark Emperor's form was laid bare.

The Dark Emperor's eyes flew wide. The two of them locked gazes with him.

"A B-Black guy?"

"You idiot! Master Do said he's a Dark Elf!"

Every word Master Do had spoken was right. From the first to the last.

"W-we made it! We're exiting alive!"

"Wait right there, you fucking pointy-ears! We'll be back!"

And last of all—

Whsshk—

CLANG!

David knocked the strike aside and grinned.

David raised his middle finger. Then both of them vanished.

America's second reconnaissance was a resounding success.