Swordsmanship Training (5)
“Hah.”
Hyun Si-woon let out a long breath.
Still, the feel of it is coming back now.
Who was he, after all?
EndSeeker—the man who had shattered the tenth floor no one else could break and pushed all the way to the thirtieth.
A Rank 7 Rupture Fiend?
In the old days, he could have taken one with his eyes closed. No exaggeration.
Two of them? Forget it. Even twenty of the things would not have been enough to handle him.
It all came down to whether the clear strategies lived in your body or not.
“I just used to watch Yeon-ho hyung play and dabbled a bit in the Tower of Despair myself. Back then I took Rupture Fiends down easy, like that.”
He could feel their eyes demanding a fuller explanation, but Si-woon waved it aside with a vague answer.
Every climber in the world was hunting for EndSeeker. He had no intention of outing himself.
Keeping quiet and never showing your hand was always best.
That was more than a little dabbling…
Whatever he is, he’s incredible. No wonder he was running the second floor alone.
They had enough sense not to dig any deeper.
Except—
“Um.”
Kang Si-a raised her hand.
“Please take me with you. I’ll do exactly as you say.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve seen me fight a few times already. I won’t get in the way. And I shoot well.”
She drew a wooden arrow from her quiver and loosed it into the empty air.
Thwip!
Then she raised the bow again and fired a second shot, tracking the first arrow as it fell.
Hm?
Si-woon’s eyes followed both shafts without thinking.
The first had climbed high and was just beginning its free fall; the second tore after it with vicious speed.
For a frozen instant, time itself seemed to stop.
Crack!
A dull, clear note split the sky.
Holy shit.
An impossible sight unfolded before them.
The second arrow had driven clean through the nock of the falling first.
Genius.
Heaven-sent talent, plain and simple.
“…Do national team archers train circus tricks like that too?”
“Of course not.”
Kang Si-a shook her head.
“My father’s hobby was hunting. I’ve been shooting since I was little. That’s when I practiced this.”
Even so—
It was good enough to raise goosebumps.
Building a team with someone like her?
Not bad at all.
No—genuinely good.
She had the skill, and more importantly, the spine to keep faith when lives were on the line.
Someone he could trust at his back even in the Tower’s higher floors.
“All right. You said you’d listen?”
“Yes.”
“Then teach me how to handle a bow too. Do that and I’ll take you with me.”
“Archery?”
Si-a looked briefly puzzled, but the condition wasn’t a bad one when she thought it over.
“Okay.”
She nodded and held out her hand.
Si-woon clasped it.
Kang Si-a had just secured an extraordinary opportunity. Si-woon’s head was packed with top-tier destinies any archer could claim.
“Uh…”
As the party took shape in a single clean stroke, Baek Yeon-ho slipped in as well.
Now’s my chance.
Especially for him—he had played the Tower of Despair himself. He knew exactly how absurd the performance Si-woon had just put on truly was.
He might just be a stagnant pool who’s farmed the lower floors forever…
But even if that were true, right now he was nothing short of a benefactor from heaven.
“Could you take us siblings too?”
Baek Yeon-ho. And Baek Do-hee.
Hm.
Si-woon considered it briefly.
Yeon-ho’s abilities he knew better than anyone. Instant pass.
Do-hee’s, though—he wasn’t sure.
But then again—
They’re a package deal. One plus one.
Besides, back when he was gaming he could spin up alts to clear content together. Reality didn’t work that way.
I need six party members eventually.
Only then could the higher floors climb smoothly. There were countless hidden elements that only opened for a full team, and every scrap of that knowledge was already organized in Si-woon’s head.
I have to recruit people anyway. Building trust from the start isn’t a bad idea.
“Fine by me.”
Si-woon nodded and accepted them.
There was a condition, though.
Simple: drop the honorifics with each other.
Not so much for friendship as because Si-woon was the leader, and orders needed to travel fast on a climb.
Do-hee was twenty-seven, Yeon-ho twenty-four, but—
In a ruined world, what did age matter?
“You’ll still call me noona, though, right?”
Do-hee actually seemed happier with the arrangement. Calling someone who looked so much younger “Si-woon-ssi” over and over had felt awkward, she said.
Four including me. That’s the core set.
Two spots remained.
He felt no urgency to fill them. They would travel like this for now; if fate delivered more companions, so be it.
Si-woon took their UIDs and added them to his friends list.
Three days passed.
Baek Yeon-ho had hunted for Yu Jae-jun in a white-hot rage, but the man had vanished without a trace.
As for Si-woon?
His schedule had changed.
Mornings still belonged to sword training. In the afternoons he began archery practice with Kang Si-a.
“You already have a climber’s bow?”
“I’ve got everything.”
A weapon master who could wield all six arms. That was the privilege Si-woon had received.
What he liked about Si-a was that even when she was curious, she never pried until he spoke first. She simply did her part with quiet reliability—a temperament he thoroughly approved of.
“You need to hold the bow like this.”
Si-a demonstrated, gripping the bow and drawing the string in a smooth, clean motion. Not a single wasted movement. Her body and the weapon seemed to fuse into one natural whole.
Si-woon copied her at once.
“If you try to pull with arm strength alone, you’ll wreck your shoulder. Think of using your back muscles…”
She corrected his form with meticulous care—the angle of his arm, the pressure in his grip hand, the placement of his fingers on the string.
Si-woon had been tempered by the sword, but a bow used entirely different muscles and senses. At first the awkwardness was obvious.
Twang!
The first arrow, predictably, sailed well wide of the makeshift target marked on a tree and sank limp into the dirt.
“It’s fine. Everyone starts that way. Breathing matters. Inhale, hold for a moment, then release.”
As she spoke, Si-a drew again. Her motion was fluid as water.
Thwip!
The arrow punched dead center in the target. It had looked effortless; the result was anything but.
If I keep at it, I’ll get there someday too.
No need to rush. For now, simply having the best teacher imaginable at his side was comfort enough.
Beneath the sunlight, the two of them drew and released in silence, over and over.
Two weeks later, on a morning like any other—
Strength has increased from 7 → 8.
Wait—
Si-woon felt a jolt of quiet wonder.
My Strength went up?
Stats had climbed before—when he fought the Rotten Gladiator past his limits, and when he cleared floors. Never once from plain training like this.
Good news.
If training could raise stats, then none of this grind was wasted effort.
And stats accumulate.
Even if he died here, the process of that work would not vanish.
Si-woon set his sword aside for a moment and dug through the community boards.
No one had posted about raising stats through training. Not yet.
One of two possibilities: either he was the first to experience it, or someone already knew and was simply keeping quiet.
He weighted the second option more heavily.
In the end this society was a field of survival competition. Some would cooperate; others would move only for personal gain. The rarer the information, the less likely it would be shared freely on the boards.
Doing so would only strengthen potential rivals—or future enemies who might stand in your path—with your own two hands.
It was the same reason Si-woon told no one about his Privilege.
As for the third floor…
He would challenge it only when every stat sat at eight or higher. Until then, endless training.
His plan was simple: drill sword and bow until both moved like his own limbs.
The new companions each used different base camps as their hubs.
The Baek siblings belonged to the Iron Shelter in Mapo-gu.
Kang Si-a stayed at Elysium Square in Yeongdeungpo—a shopping complex converted into a camp.
They shared information through the chat-room function.
And so, in the end, everyone gathered at the Samjeon-dong camp.
It was surprising. Si-woon had grumbled thinking this place was expensive—only to learn the others had been paying even more.
Still…
Something had been bothering him for a while now.
Who ran these camps?
Anyone who could organize operations this cleanly in such a short time was no ordinary person…
When he asked his companions, none of them knew. The truth was buried under airtight secrecy, they said.
I’ll have to dig into that later.
His gut said these were not ordinary beings. They might even be entities who had descended from the Tower’s upper floors.
There were those standing before the Tower as well, after all.
The Executors.
Bizarre figures wearing blank masks with no eyes, nose, or mouth.
Whoosh, whoosh!
This morning, too—
Si-woon kept swinging his sword. Sweat poured from him like rain as he worked in the center of the dojo.
The stance that had once been painfully awkward now looked halfway respectable. Arms and shoulders that once screamed as if they would tear had adapted; the blisters on his palms had formed and burst and formed again until they hardened into proper calluses.
“Enough.”
Tae Min-seok stopped him there.
“Compared to when you first arrived, you’ve come a long way. Your form has settled. Power is starting to reach the tip of the blade.”
“Hah… is that so?”
“Steady work without slacking has paid off. I think it’s about time you learned the next step.”
Tae Min-seok rose from his seat and picked up another wooden sword from the yard.
“Until now you’ve practiced cutting from a fixed stance. But no real fight lets you stand still and swing. From here on, you will learn to cut while moving your feet—footwork together with the sword.”
“…Footwork.”
Si-woon’s eyes lit up.
The swordsmanship Tae Min-seok taught produced real results. Advancing to the next stage was welcome news in itself.
Hmmmm—
Huh?
Right then, the Formless Sword gripped tight in his hand trembled—faintly, but unmistakably.
What was that?
In the moment of his confusion—
—Yaaawn.
A childish, drowsy yawn, as if a little kid had just woken from sleep, rang clear beside his ear.
Startled, Si-woon spun on reflex and scanned the surroundings.
Tae Min-seok still stood there, expressionless as ever.
Hunting for the source of the sound, Si-woon’s gaze finally dropped to the sword in his own hand.
And he saw it.
Floating just above the hilt of his Formless Sword was a translucent spirit, hovering in midair.
Amazingly, it wore the shape of a small, adorable little girl.
Still half-asleep, she rubbed her eyes with tiny hands and let out another soft yawn.
—What is this place… and who are these amateurs?
…
What the hell is this now?
Don’t tell me—
Is that the sword spirit sealed inside the weapon?