The Safe Floor
A vast tropical rainforest stretched out before my eyes.
I was standing in a cave on the edge of a cliff.
What am I looking at right now? Is this really inside the Tower?
Seeing a jungle and an open sky inside the Tower was something I could scarcely believe even while staring straight at it.
Ssshhh—
I slid down the cliff face. Damp earth met my feet. Dense jungle filled my vision, and the humidity was thick enough to taste.
I began walking slowly. Even more astonishing sights unfolded ahead. Monkeys chattered in the trees, small lizards skittered across the ground, and the endless cries of frogs and cicadas filled the air all day long.
Then a monkey caught my eye.
“Huh? What’s that?”
It was holding a banana.
They have bananas in this world too?
I sprinted across the soggy ground, hunting for more. After about five minutes of running I found them—clusters of green bananas.
Banana
Edible
I picked a few, peeled one, and popped it into my mouth, stowing the rest in my inventory.
“A bit astringent.”
It tasted underripe. Still, I kept searching for other fruit. After wandering a while I found several kinds. Some of them carried poison.
Dark Berry
Contains a small amount of poison. Sweet.
Extreme Bliss Berry
Contains a large amount of poison. Sweet. Causes full-body paralysis; three hours after consumption one may depart for paradise.
“Poisonous fruit?”
Yet both were described as sweet. Fruits that traded flavor for a life?
I stared at them for a long time, wrestling with the temptation. I was curious. And I did have a poison resistance skill. In the end I settled on only the Dark Berry. The other looked far too dangerous. Resistance and immunity were different things, after all.
It looked almost exactly like a blueberry. I tossed a Dark Berry into my mouth and bit down. Sweet juice flooded my tongue.
Poison Resistance Passive has activated.
“Mmm~ sweet.”
The Dark Berry was genuinely delicious. Was I the only person who could freely eat poisonous fruit like this?
“Heh heh…”
I wore a faint smile as I continued walking. Tall grass rose thick around me; I slashed a path with my dagger. Snakes appeared, and other beasts, yet no matter how far I went I never saw a single monster.
How many hours had I walked? The forest began to thin. Trees looked as if someone had deliberately cut them down. When the woods finally ended, a proper path appeared—one clearly made by people.
“A road… inside the Tower?”
I followed it. Small buildings came into view, then a fence. Before long I found myself staring at something that had no business existing here.
“This is…”
A village. And not a small one, either.
I walked the path all the way to the entrance. No guards stood watch.
Why is there such a large village inside the Tower?
The crowd was larger than I expected, and the races were varied—humans, dwarves, beastmen. Elves outnumbered them all, pointed ears everywhere. Fair-skinned, slender elven women… Elves aged slowly and lived long lives; every one of them was strikingly beautiful.
If this was an otherworld fantasy, didn’t every man dream of dating an elf girlfriend? Reality was less kind. Tebe had its share of elves, yet befriending them was never easy. Dwarves were far simpler to get along with.
I was still walking when a woman’s cry cut through the noise.
“Thief!!!!”
A beastman dashed past me, a box clutched in his hands—a canine-type.
“Someone stop him!!”
I spun and sprinted after him.
Acceleration.
Beastmen possessed physical abilities far beyond humans. A canine type would be especially fast and tireless. Ordinary people could never catch one.
Unless that ordinary person was a former youth track-and-field silver medalist with Acceleration.
I drove my legs into the ground again and again, building terrifying speed, and closed the distance. Just as I was about to overtake him I seized his waistband. His pants ripped clean off.
“Ugh…”
The beastman toppled face-first into the dirt, pants gone. The woman whose belongings had been stolen came running up—short purple hair, fair skin, neat brows, a high nose, a tall slender figure, and pointed ears. An elf.
“Damn it, let go of my pants!!”
The beastman shouted, but my eyes stayed fixed on the approaching elf.
She’s… beautiful…
She reached us, snatched up the fallen box, and thanked me over and over.
“Thank you. Truly, thank you so much.”
“It was nothing. Heh heh.”
“If you hadn’t been here, Adventurer, it would have been a disaster.”
The beastman thrashed wildly.
“Where do you think you’re going? You’re not getting away!”
Onlookers gathered, murmuring. More than ten people had already formed a crowd. An elderly dwarf looked me up and down.
“You’re quick on your feet, lad.”
“No kidding! Beating a beastman in a foot race…”
A merchant who had been selling cloth nearby came running.
“Hold on—that’s the same bastard who stole my fabric last time! Got you now! Get over here!”
The thief was seized and dragged away.
“S-save me…”
He looked exactly like a dog being hauled to the slaughterhouse. He was in for a thorough thrashing.
“I’m glad you got the box back.”
I brushed the dust from my clothes and stood.
“I’m so sorry. Your clothes got ruined because of me…”
“Don’t worry about it. They were already falling apart; I was going to buy new ones anyway.”
I looked at her and asked, “By the way, where exactly is this place? I never expected a village inside the Tower.”
“You don’t know where you are?”
I swept my gaze around once more.
“Isn’t this the sixth floor of the Tower?”
“That’s right~ The sixth floor.”
“Then why is there a village here?”
Surprise flashed across her face.
“D-don’t tell me… you defeated the boss and came up?”
“Yes… I did.”
Of course I had. The sixth floor required clearing the goblins first, didn’t it?
“This is a village that formed inside the Tower. Most of the people here are ordinary folk who never managed to defeat the boss.”
“What? Then how did everyone else get here…?”
So all these people hadn’t climbed by conquering the boss? Looking back, something had felt off from the moment I entered the village: their clothes. Adventurers rarely removed their gear on hunting days. I could stash mine in my inventory, but most people simply left it on out of laziness. Yet nearly everyone here wore casual, comfortable outfits—unnatural if they were all adventurers. They were ordinary people.
How had ordinary people even entered the Tower?
I tilted my head. The elf spoke again.
“You don’t know about Transfer Stones, do you?”
“Transfer Stones?”
I’d never heard the term.
“The white stones? Oh, my name is Bartier, by the way.”
“Kim Ki-seok.”
Right then my stomach let out a loud, traitorous growl. Damn you, clueless gut—making noise in front of a beauty like this!!
She laughed brightly and caught my sleeve.
“Let’s get something to eat first. My treat, as thanks.”
“If you insist. Heh heh.”
I let myself be led to a restaurant.
“Welcome. Please have a seat.”
The owner was a human man currently grilling chicken in a pan. I glanced at the menu, then at Bartier. She read my expression perfectly.
“Order whatever you like. Meat’s fine too!”
I let out a quiet breath of relief. I had half-expected I’d need to eat grass just because she was an elf. Leaves never filled me up.
A server approached.
“What can I get for you?”
“Pork neck steak for me.”
“Tomato vegetable salad, please.”
“Understood. We’ll prepare it right away.”
The server left with the order.
“Are you sure? You’re not sensitive to the smell of meat or anything?”
“It’s fine. I’m not that picky. And not every elf is a strict vegetarian—some of us eat eggs, at least.”
In Tebe, elves almost never ate at ordinary restaurants. They had their own separate eateries, largely because of dietary differences. That made befriending them even harder.
We chatted lightly about food until the dishes arrived.
“Here you are.”
The food looked delicious. We continued our conversation while we ate.
“So the people living here didn’t all defeat the boss?”
“Some did, but most of them used Transfer Stones.”
“What exactly are those stones?”
She explained carefully. A Transfer Stone was an item that moved you to a designated floor of the Tower. It looked like a white stone engraved with a blue number. Shouting “Warp!” while holding one sent you to that floor. There was also a Return Stone that sent you straight back to the first floor.
“That’s incredible. I never knew such items existed.”
“I was surprised when I first learned about them too. But Transfer Stones and Return Stones only work on the Tower’s Safe Floors.”
“Safe Floors?”
“Floors where no monsters appear.”
Come to think of it, I had seen animals on the way here but not a single monster. Was that why? Because this floor was a Safe Floor?
Bartier continued. Every fifth and tenth floor of the Tower held a boss. The floor immediately after a boss was always a Safe Floor. After the grueling fight to defeat a boss, the next floor offered safety… Was that the Tower’s form of mercy?
I chewed my steak as a new question rose.
“Why did you choose to live inside the Tower?”
Yes—why stay here of all places? This village seemed decent enough, but outside the Tower you could travel freely without needing Transfer Stones. Wasn’t that better?
“That’s…”
Her expression darkened and her hands stilled. Seeing her face, I quickly backpedaled.
“If it’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to.”
“It’s all right. It was a long time ago…”
She set down her fork.
“I used to live in a place called Green Holt. A peaceful village deep in the forest.”
Her sudden seriousness made me swallow hard.
“It was an elven village. But when I was seven, an incident reduced the entire place to ash. It was… horrible.”
“What… caused it?”
Pain flickered across her face before she continued.
“Slave traders.”