Swordsmanship Training (2)
Name:Hyun Si-woon
Age:20
Weapons:Sword, Spear, Shield, Bow, Blunt Weapon, Staff
Floor:2
Stats:
Class:None
Skills:Fire Bolt, Healing Light
His stats finally looked halfway human.
Once the textbook specimen of a modern man who never exercised, he now had the stamina to run without immediately gasping for air.
“Hss… haah! Haah!”
The next day, after a full night’s rest, Hyun Si-woon stepped outside the moment morning broke and simply started running. From here on, consistent training was non-negotiable. Keep moving without laziness, and someday all of it would stack up and finally shine.
First, let’s go find Uncle Tae Min-seok.
The distance was short enough. Sweat rolled down his forehead in fat drops, but his breathing stayed even. It was different now—his body felt light, his muscles no longer stiff.
This should be the place.
The map led him to a small building. The sign over the entrance hung half-detached, and an old wooden training dummy jutted out from behind the glass window. Writing was still legible on the board.
Tae Min-seok Swordsmanship Institute
An institute with his own name on it. It reeked of a craftsman’s pride.
“Excuse me.”
The old door creaked open, and a sharp mix of metal and sweat stabbed his nose. The man sitting and polishing a blade looked up.
“Huh?”
Tae Min-seok. That was definitely him.
If he’s alive here…
It meant he had become a Climber as well. Tae Min-seok recognized Si-woon just as quickly.
“You?”
He was probably thinking the exact same thing.
“You’re alive? So you actually took down that gladiator?”
Only the second time they had met, and already the man sounded this relieved. A warm feeling settled unbidden in Si-woon’s chest. Of course, Tae Min-seok still thought he had only cleared the first floor, not the second… but that hardly mattered.
“You said if I came back later, you’d teach me the basics properly.”
“I did! I definitely said that! But if you managed to kill that gladiator, you must have learned some kind of training already?”
“I never learned anything. Just got lucky.”
“What weapon did you pick?”
“Sword.”
Si-woon lifted the Formless Sword. Tae Min-seok’s face lit up with unmistakable delight.
“You chose the sword after all. Smart young man.”
“It’s the best weapon for handling any situation flexibly.”
“Exactly!”
Some experts insisted the spear was supreme, but that only held when conditions were ideal. In tight spaces or short-range fights, a spear became nearly useless. Blunt weapons were too heavy to deal with agile foes and left openings everywhere. Bows? Safe at range, completely helpless up close—and they were at the mercy of wind and arrow count. In the end, nothing matched the sword for versatility and adaptability.
After a brief exchange of greetings, Tae Min-seok pulled a wooden practice sword from the wall and held it out.
“Here. Give it a try.”
Si-woon took it. The weight was solid; the grain was old enough that the grip felt rough under his palms. He stowed the Formless Sword in his inventory and wrapped both hands around the wooden blade.
“Let’s trade a few blows.”
“I’m a complete beginner. Are you sure?”
“It’s fine. I just want a rough sense of your level.”
Tae Min-seok picked up his own wooden sword. The moment he held it, the air around his fingertips seemed to shift.
He’s strong.
Pressure rolled off him. Definitely stronger than the rotting gladiator.
Absorb everything I can.
Knowing how to handle a weapon and not knowing were worlds apart. If he learned real swordsmanship here, the number of options he could deploy at the right moment in combat would explode.
“Here I come.”
Si-woon decided to go all out. He swung the wooden sword the way his body wanted. The trajectory wasn’t bad—the tip cut the air and aimed cleanly for Tae Min-seok’s side.
But—
Clang!
“Ugh!”
A sharp sting shot through his hands. He nearly dropped the sword without meaning to. Tae Min-seok hadn’t moved an inch; he had simply flicked his wrist, short and precise.
“Again.”
“Yes!”
This time for the chest. Again—
Clang!
The blade twisted. Same timing, same method.
“Again.”
Overhead this time.
Clang!
The spar continued. Si-woon attacked aggressively while Tae Min-seok only parried, and still the difference was overwhelming.
After some time had passed—
“Enough.”
Tae Min-seok nodded and lowered his sword. His honest assessment? The boy truly knew nothing of swordsmanship. He wasn’t swinging the blade so much as dragging it around, shoulders and whole body locked with tension. And his center of gravity? So poor it practically floated.
And yet…
Tae Min-seok saw the talent.
“Your sense is good. The movements themselves are crude, but your eyes clearly know where to strike.”
“……!”
Si-woon’s pupils widened. The man had read him perfectly—the exact situation where his mind calculated the ideal line and his body simply failed to keep up.
“And most importantly—”
“…….”
“You don’t flinch. Beginners usually back off the moment they get knocked away, but you’ve got the guts to keep coming in.”
Si-woon gave an awkward smile. Having faced death more than twenty times already had, in fact, burned the fear out of him.
“Hah.”
Tae Min-seok let out a bitter sigh.
Reminds me of that nephew of mine.
Eyes that didn’t know fear, a sense for the thrust—his disciple and nephew had been born with that same temperament… and had died a month ago. After clearing the first floor he had gone after a monster and vanished. More accurately, he had never returned. They never found a body.
Because of that boy, Tae Min-seok had refused to leave this ruined dojo. A desperate hope that someday he might walk back through the door. He had waited and waited until he finally challenged the Tower himself.
It was sad, but in a world where death had become common, even grief felt like a luxury. In this scrawny young man he caught the scent of his nephew.
“All right. Do you have a place to stay?”
“I’m living at the base camp.”
“Ah, the place the community keeps advertising. Is it decent?”
“……Not bad. A little expensive, though.”
“Hmm. Fair enough. From now on, come to the dojo every day at this hour. I’ll teach you step by step.”
“Thank you.”
Si-woon bowed his head. A master-disciple relationship had formed as naturally as water flowing downhill, yet he understood exactly how absurd that was. In a ruined world, meeting someone willing to pass on their craft for free was a stroke of fortune all its own.
I’ll repay this no matter what.
He made the vow silently. Every day he came, he would bring meals or bottled water without fail.
A week passed.
During that time Si-woon completely set aside any thought of the third floor and threw himself into swordsmanship alone. The third floor? No need to rush there now. According to the community, roughly eighty-four thousand people in Korea had cleared the first floor. Of those, fewer than five thousand had cleared the second. The third? Even fewer—around five hundred.
No reason to climb recklessly.
He planned to finish every preparation and assemble a full party before going. Running into an accidental party inside the Tower the way he had last time had been thoroughly inconvenient.
The problem is…
His stock of TC kept shrinking. Covering Tae Min-seok’s meals as well made the budget even tighter. To refill it, he might have to start hunting the monsters roaming Seoul.
“Hup!”
Si-woon kept swinging the Formless Sword. Basic overhead cuts. The straw dummy was already in tatters. After only a week he could feel strength and stamina slowly settling into his frame. No stat increases yet, but the shape of his body was changing.
Build the foundation slowly.
With the privilege of infinite regression, time was on his side. Better to master one thing completely than learn many things poorly.
“Haaah… haaah!”
After a full hour of pouring sweat he finally set the sword down and collapsed spread-eagle on the floor. Because of that, he never noticed—
A low, soft hum. The Formless Sword trembling, ever so slightly.
A few days later.
Yu Jae-jun’s party had postponed their third-floor attempt and were clearing the monsters that appeared near the Tower’s outskirts. The goal was to sharpen their senses before the climb. It was the right call. From the third floor onward the difficulty spiked hard. Especially for people like Yu Jae-jun and Baek Yeon-ho who had played the Tower of Despair before—they still needed to touch the hidden routes they remembered.
“Heh. See that? I finished it again.”
Yu Jae-jun yanked his rare spear free with a wet sound and laughed proudly.
“Damn, this thing is the real deal. You see that damage?”
Their hunting speed was clearly faster. The problem was that listening to the same boasting over and over got old fast.
“……Yeah, yeah. Good job.”
Baek Do-hee healed while answering without energy. She knew by now. The real core of this party wasn’t Yu Jae-jun—it was Kang Si-a. Without her arrows punching clean through eyes and other vitals, even a rare weapon wouldn’t produce this kind of pace.
“At this rate we could start looking at Grade 7s instead of just 8s and 9s.”
“That’s too dangerous.”
Baek Yeon-ho shook his head. The community ranked monsters by grade. Ordinary colorless ones were usually Grade 8 or 9. The ones wrapped in a yellowish aura were called Grade 7. They were far stronger and dropped more TC—and the chance of rare items rose with them.
“From Grade 7 onward it’s third-floor difficulty or higher. No matter how good you are, hyung, one mistake and it’s over.”
“…….”
Yu Jae-jun’s expression sharpened.
This bastard…
A kind of persecution complex. Is he still needling me about the mistake I made against the second-floor Phantom Horse? He had definitely felt the temperature of the team change toward him after that fight.
“Who’s making mistakes? Me?”
Yu Jae-jun laughed as if the idea were ridiculous. Baek Yeon-ho pressed his lips shut. The atmosphere turned strange, but the hunt continued.
Then—
Grrruk, grrruk!
They actually ran into a Grade 7.
“Everyone stop!”
Baek Yeon-ho shouted urgently.
“It’s a Grade 7 mutant—a Rupture Demon! A fourth-floor monster!”
Roughly two meters tall. Its upper body was a mass of tumors swollen to the point of bursting, lurching forward step by step.
“Yeah, it shows up on the fourth floor. But so what? It’s not a boss, just a regular monster.”
“We still shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t? Who made you party leader?”
That was where it started. The festering line of emotion that had been rotting since the second floor finally snapped.
“If something like that scares you, why’d you even join this party? A so-called Tower veteran getting cold feet over a Rupture Demon… Its patterns are pretty clear, aren’t they?”
Yu Jae-jun scooped a rock off the ground and set his stance.
“What are you—!”
“What do you think, you little shit!”
He hurled it with everything he had.
The stone whistled through the air and buried itself in one of the Rupture Demon’s protrusions. Yellow fluid gurgled out—and in the same instant both of the creature’s eyes flashed.
It had locked onto its enemy for certain.
“……Crazy bastard.”
Baek Yeon-ho’s face went white.