To the East (1)
One week had passed.
There was no rest in their training.
They gathered at dawn and only scattered once the sun had set.
Meals were kept as simple as possible using the TC they had saved, and sleep came in shifts while standing watch, just as before.
It was still a harsh environment compared to their old shelter, yet not a single one of them complained.
Under Ha-wol’s guidance, each of them solidified the foundations of martial arts suited to their own path.
First, Hwang Dae-un.
“Grrrgh…!”
He held a horse-riding stance, repeatedly raising a heavy blunt weapon high and bringing it straight down again.
The root of Taesan Sect martial arts was an unshakable lower body and the crushing power that erupted from it.
And Jang Cha-yul?
She crossed back and forth over patterns drawn on the floor of the abandoned building.
The most basic step drills of the Butterfly Dance Steps!
“Haaah!”
Baek Yeon-ho roared with spirit as he drove fists and knife-hand strikes into a building pillar in turn.
He was the tank.
To use a shield properly, his body first had to be rock-solid.
Kang Si-a drew and released her bowstring while weaving through the rubble of the ruined building, training so that almost no footfall could be heard.
And last of all—
Baek Do-hee was silent.
The Clear Heart Primordial Art began not with outward training but with looking inward and sensing the flow of qi.
Ha-wol had said that later they would amplify her Healing Light with that very energy.
Of course it was a painful process.
Yet not one of them gave up.
Without a word of complaint!
At times they simply clenched their teeth and threw themselves into the work.
They had no other choice.
To them, Hyun Si-woon was more than just a leader.
Even looking only at what he had already shown them, it was a continuous string of miracles—and on top of that, he worked harder than anyone.
He endured processes that looked far more grueling than theirs without a single complaint, and he even carved out time to learn archery from Kang Si-a without hesitation.
When the leader charged that far ahead, who would dare think of falling behind?
“Hoo.”
In the midst of that relentless training, Hyun Si-woon suddenly sank into thought.
When should we climb again?
The fourth floor was crystal-clear in his mind as well.
He could clear it even now.
But was racing forward like this really the right answer?
As the night grew dark, Hyun Si-woon accessed the Tower Community system.
Amid the flood of chaotic information he hunted down a set of statistics he had once glimpsed.
Yeah. This one.
Hyun Si-woon pulled a worn notebook and pen from his coat—something he had picked up off the ground earlier.
Scratch, scratch.
He compiled the data and carefully wrote it out, character by character, across the pages.
Of course they were only estimates.
But what those numbers meant was unmistakable.
We’re clearly in the lead now.
Roughly a million people had challenged the floors, and they had landed inside the top five hundred.
If they cleared the fourth floor right away from here?
They would become genuine top-tier climbers.
That was what worried Hyun Si-woon.
I still don’t know this world.
The crocodile-headed Ranker they had met at the camp had clearly been only the tip of the iceberg.
How many of them were there, and into what factions were they divided?
What were their true goals, and how did they regard the climbers?
The TC trading had been an obvious cover.
Beings like that would never hang around a place like that just to scrape together pocket change.
So the dilemma remained.
If at all possible, he wanted to keep climbing quietly without drawing the eyes of people like that.
“….”
Hyun Si-woon’s gaze shifted to the sixth floor this time.
Six people.
He could see those who had already cleared the sixth floor and were preparing to challenge the seventh.
A party, most likely.
The odds were high.
Who were they?
What kind of beings could they be to have broken through the sixth floor when only half a year had passed?
And more than anything…
Who was providing this kind of information?
It certainly wasn’t ordinary climbers.
They would never be able to gather individual clear statuses and remaining numbers with this level of precision.
—You look burdened by many thoughts.
A low voice resonated directly inside his mind just then.
It was Ha-wol.
Asking her rarely yielded anything useful.
Most of the time she simply avoided answering.
The rule forbidding Rankers from disclosing Tower information to climbers was the reason.
—Heh. It’s like watching a frightened puppy that has stepped into a predator’s territory. Yes, it can be frightening to race out ahead.
“….”
Hyun Si-woon gave a bitter smile.
The reason she understood his state so precisely…
Was probably because Ha-wol herself had walked this same road before him, wasn’t it?
—However, at this particular moment it is a rather wise fear. There is a saying: a tall tree catches the wind. A tree that grows too quickly and too high is the first to meet the storm, is it not?
“…!”
Hyun Si-woon’s eyes lit up.
Ha-wol was clearly giving him advice.
Do not climb rashly.
—The Rankers this lady has known were far from noble seekers of the Way. Arrogant and greedy, most of them treated the lives of insignificant climbers like the lives of flies whenever it suited their amusement.
Her words brought the nightmare they had suffered at the camp vividly back to life.
The crocodile-headed Ranker had not been an exception—he had been the average.
—Right now you and your companions are perfect prey in their eyes. You have talent but have not yet matured; you show promise, yet no powerful backer stands behind you. Such tender shoots are either transplanted into their own gardens to be raised as loyal dogs… or, if that proves inconvenient, trampled into fertilizer from the root. That is their way.
“Then what should we do?”
—This lady has one recommendation.
Ha-wol murmured as if tossing the words out casually.
—How about leaving the vicinity of the Tower?
“The vicinity of the Tower… you mean leave this place?”
Seoul and its outskirts.
What would they find if they stepped beyond that?
Would people even be living out there?
Information that the community treated as established fact rose in Hyun Si-woon’s mind.
Around the Tower, high-floor climbers have at least cleaned things up so it’s relatively safe. But the farther you go from the Tower, the rank and strength of the monsters that appear defy imagination. Heading into the countryside is basically suicide.
The farther from the Tower, the more hell gates opened.
That was common sense proven by the experience of countless climbers.
So there really is something out there.
Ha-wol wanted what was best for Hyun Si-woon.
To end her exile and rebuild her power, she needed his strength as well.
Nodding, Hyun Si-woon decided to accept her advice.
The next morning.
“We’re relocating our base soon. We’re leaving Seoul.”
“…!”
“What?”
“Seoul?”
Confusion spread across the members’ faces.
They knew it too.
The farther from the Tower, the greater the danger.
There were no camps outside Seoul, either.
It meant they would no longer be able to buy meals with TC as they did now; they would have to begin a fully self-sufficient life of hunting and foraging.
“I’ll give you today. Scatter and spend every last TC you have left. Stock up on emergency rations that will last as long as possible, water purification supplies, and daily necessities. Tomorrow morning, we leave this place.”
His declaration was absolute.
It was a command already decided, with no room for debate.
“Yes, sir! Understood, hyeong-nim!”
“Well, if the leader decides, we follow.”
Not a single member resisted.
They did not even ask where they were going.
It was absolute trust, pure and simple.
They accepted it at once and began scattering in perfect order.
The Towers of Despair in the Republic of Korea were not limited to Seoul.
There were eight in total—quite a few, actually.
First, the one in Jamsil, Seoul, where Hyun Si-woon operated.
Next, one atop Hallasan on Jeju Island.
The rest stood squarely in the centers of the major metropolitan cities.
Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, Ulsan.
First of all…
After sending the members off, Hyun Si-woon settled into a corner of the abandoned building and considered.
It’s decided we have to go to a region outside the Tower’s sphere of influence… but where exactly?
Even if they left Seoul, they could not simply wander without a destination.
Ha-wol’s advice had given them a direction, but she had not provided precise coordinates.
Hyun Si-woon dug through the community.
He scoured even the oldest posts on the Free Board.
Most were worthless—monster sightings near Seoul or complaints about camp prices.
Then, in that moment—
“Hm?”
A post that caught his interest appeared.
I was heading east from Seoul along the national road for a long while, and at night I looked toward the mountains and saw something really weird. It was way off in the direction of the mountain range? There was this blue pillar-like thing shooting up into the sky. Kind of like an aurora… Does anyone know what that is? A monster?
Two comments were attached.
Hyun Si-woon began searching again with the keyword “blue pillar.”
A few more similar sighting reports popped up.
They were all fragmentary bits of information with low view counts, yet they shared a common thread.
Every witness had been a low-floor climber on the first floor, and all of them had seen it while coming to Seoul!
Hmm.
A faint smile touched Hyun Si-woon’s lips.
Shall we go there?
The existence of witnesses was proof that the phenomenon was real, and the fact that no one knew what it was meant it was still an unexplored region no one had reached.
It definitely pulled at him.
Even back when he had played Tower of Despair, he had never let something like this slip past.
—Heh heh heh.
Seeing Ha-wol laughing beside him only deepened his certainty.
Ha-wol never gave a direct answer.
She never said “go” or “don’t go.”
Yet her metaphors were clearer than any explicit confirmation.
As time passed, the team members gathered again in front of the abandoned building.
“I’m back!”
“Hup!”
Each of them carried several enormous backpacks on both shoulders; when they set them down, the packs hit the ground with solid thuds.
Even so, it was no burden for them.
Their average Strength was fifteen.
By ordinary standards an elite athlete sat at ten and the rare monsters of the sports world around twelve, so this was effortless.
“Hyeong-nim, I went all-in on food. Combat rations and canned goods. Chocolate too. This should easily last us at least a month, right?”
“I stocked up a bit more on medical supplies.”
Baek Do-hee’s bag was packed with disinfectant, antibiotics, pressure bandages, and the like.
“I don’t know about inside the Tower, but outside we should be able to use these pretty well.”
Beyond that there were climbing ropes, multi-tools, bottled water, lighters, waterproof tarps, solid fuel, and plenty of other essentials for survival.
“I grabbed every piece of clothing I could find.”
Jang Cha-yul likewise staggered under a massive sack.
“Only the practical stuff… I mean, odds are we won’t be washing for a while, right?”
Hyun Si-woon was impressed.
Even with the sudden order, their preparations far exceeded his expectations.
Every gaze naturally turned toward Hyun Si-woon.
Baek Yeon-ho spoke as the representative.
“So, where do we go from here?”
Hyun Si-woon pointed east.
“That way.”
From this point on, even he was no longer the stagnant water he had been.
Outside the Tower!
A true unknown where he could not predict a single step of the dangers that might lie ahead!
With a soft motion, Hyun Si-woon took several of the heaviest-looking packs and distributed them.
“Then let’s go.”
At the same time he took the first step.