Tower of Despair, Floor 2 (1)
Countless lines stretched before the Tower of Despair.
They were the ones who had gathered to take the challenge.
Roughly several thousand people.
Under ordinary circumstances, that many bodies would have turned the place into pure chaos.
And yet—
Clack. Shuffle.
The lines were immaculate.
People stood in perfect order; not a single person cut ahead.
Why?
Because of the Executor.
It was a bizarre entity that seemed to have descended from the Tower’s higher floors—something even a veteran like Hyun Si-woon was seeing for the first time.
Its silhouette was almost human, yet not quite. Roughly three meters tall and unnaturally gaunt, it wore what looked like a black uniform and a pure white mask. The mask had no eyes, no nose, no mouth—just a blank surface that somehow radiated pure dread.
And its presence?
Overwhelming.
Si-woon had felt that gaze once before. The pressure that followed had been enough to lock every muscle in his body solid.
Early on, some fool had tried to pick a fight with it.
The result?
Boom!
One casual flick of the hand, and the man’s head had exploded into a fine mist of blood. After that, no one so much as raised their voice.
Hyun Si-woon quietly took his place at the very back of the line.
The real problem was this: even though it was his turn to challenge the second floor, he still had to stand here and wait with the rest of the challengers.
Well, it is still early days. Makes sense.
As time passed, fewer people would come to challenge the Tower, and bottlenecks like this would ease.
The wait dragged on, tedious and endless.
Challengers vanished one by one through the entrance, yet the pace remained painfully slow.
About thirty minutes had passed when—
Tap-tap.
Someone lightly tapped his shoulder from behind.
He turned to find a solidly built middle-aged man standing there.
“Hey there, young man.”
“……Yes?”
What now?
“You sure you’re okay? You look way too skinny for this place.”
The man’s eyes ran up and down Si-woon’s frame, full of genuine concern.
“Haha, I’m fine.”
He answered half-heartedly.
The guy probably had no idea Si-woon was already an Ascender. Just some bored stranger sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.
Most Ascenders announced themselves loudly—weapons out, parties already formed. Even now, a noisy group of them was making a racket in the distance.
“You just reminded me of my late nephew. Though I suppose anyone who comes here ready to die has a story of their own.”
Suddenly the man fished a business card out of his pocket.
A business card?
In this day and age, who still carried those around?
Si-woon took it on reflex, and his eyebrows rose a fraction.
Tae Min-seok
● Full Member of ARMA
● President of the Western Swordsmanship Association
● Two-time HEMA Tournament Champion
● Gladiator Trainer
What the hell is this guy?
He had looked like just another neighborhood uncle, but the résumé was impressively stacked.
And gladiator trainer?
If that was true, the first floor would be a cakewalk for him.
“I’m no con man, but they say even brushing sleeves is fate. Figured I’d give you this while we’re stuck in line together. If you make it through the first floor, come find me. I’ll teach you the basics properly.”
“……Thank you.”
Si-woon slipped the card into his pocket, and Tae Min-seok smiled in satisfaction.
That was the end of it.
Once Si-woon put his guard up, the man didn’t press for more conversation. Clean and straightforward—Si-woon liked that.
Time passed, and when Si-woon finally stood before the door, the man only called out one short line.
“Hey! Let’s meet again alive!”
You have entered the 2nd Floor of the Tower of Despair.
The moment he stepped through the door, an unfamiliar landscape unfurled before his eyes.
A swamp thick with dense fog and a stench that punched straight into the sinuses.
The second floor—the Basin of Oblivion—was an enormous expanse. One wrong step meant instant death from traps or the powerful beasts that prowled within.
“…….”
The heavy fog also limited vision to a fraction of its usual range.
Privilege ability activated.
Save point has been set to the current moment.
Hmm.
There it was again.
He was fairly sure the same message had appeared when he was ejected from the Tower as well. It seemed the system automatically saved both on entry and on clear.
“Hoo.”
Hyun Si-woon drew a deep breath.
Facing in reality a scene he had only ever seen inside a game still made his chest seize up for a moment.
Mottled patterns were carved into the ground; stepping on them would trigger traps. But Si-woon’s mind held a perfect map of every route through this floor.
First, seize the six randomly placed strongholds and shatter each seal stone. Shatter them, and the final boss—the Wraith Knight—would appear. Kill that thing, and the second floor was cleared.
With a soft sound, Si-woon drew a sword from his inventory and began to walk.
With every step, the damp mud swallowed his ankles up to the calves. The unpleasant sensation made him scowl automatically.
The thick fog made visibility miserable, yet if he simply followed the brown patterns he would reach the Stone Gate of the Dead by the shortest safe path.
First priority: learn the skills.
The Stone Gate of the Dead.
It was the place where staff-using characters could learn skills—and every major guide ranked it as the first destination the moment you set foot on the second floor.
One careful step after another.
Then Si-woon’s movement stopped.
Something enormous was writhing beneath the surface of the swamp.
Poison Swamp Devourer.
The most infamous monster of this marshland. It lay in wait with its jaws open wide under the mud; the moment a player stepped above it, it launched upward and swallowed them whole. Its shell was so hard that no second-floor force could kill it by any means. The creature itself was a living trap.
Normally the smart move is to go around it.
Unfortunately, the brown pattern led straight across its territory. If he detoured now, he might never find the path again.
Silently, Si-woon swapped his sword for a bow.
The answer lay with this weapon.
“Hoo.”
He exhaled, nocked an arrow with a creak of the string, and drew.
Whoosh!
The arrow sank into the swamp.
Miss.
It had to strike the exact center. Only then would the Devourer mistake it for prey and leap. The instant it did, he would have to sprint across before it could settle back into position with its mouth open again.
Again.
He kept firing. He had never properly learned archery, so every shot was clumsy—and every arrow was precious. The quiver held only twenty.
But there was no other way.
Whoosh!
On the twelfth arrow—
KRAAAAAAANG!
The massive Poison Swamp Devourer exploded upward through the mud at terrifying speed.
Holy shit!
It was huge enough to make him swear, and its speed was just as absurd. Its form was nightmare made flesh: fossil-hard black carapace, a long crocodile-like snout packed with rows of razor teeth.
Even with regression on his side, he had no desire to die inside that mouth.
The creature bit empty air, then began to sink back down.
Now!
Si-woon launched into a full sprint without a second’s hesitation.
Squish, squish, squish!
Mud sucked at every footfall. Gaining speed in a swamp was nearly impossible—yet missing this window meant death. He had five seconds before the beast finished repositioning its jaws below.
He ran with a silent scream in his throat. Hot breath tore from his lungs; his heart hammered like it wanted to burst free.
Please, please, please.
Roughly fifteen meters. On flat ground it would have been trivial. Here it demanded every last ounce of strength he had left.
“Hah, hah!”
Two steps remaining.
A chill scraped down his spine. Directly beneath the surface, those merciless teeth were rising—ready to leap.
He was too late.
“HRAAAAAAH!”
With a raw shout he simply threw his entire body forward.
KRAAAAAAANG!
The Devourer’s teeth grazed his ankle by a hair’s breadth as it erupted again.
Thud!
His body slammed face-first into the swamp. Thick, freezing mud swallowed him whole; grit and slime forced their way into his mouth.
“Kh—khah!”
Ugh.
The stench of the swamp punched into his lungs—like centuries-old corpses churned into the mud. His stomach heaved.
“……Fuck.”
Every inch of him felt filthy. His clothes were soaked through; black swamp water dripped and seeped into his skin.
Still, one bright point remained.
……I made it.
If he had been even a tenth of a second slower, that ankle would have been gone.
“Haa.”
A long sigh escaped him.
In the game that stretch would have been nothing. His inadequate physical stats had turned it into a nightmare.
“Ha… haha.”
Half-buried in the swamp, Si-woon laughed.
Alive was alive, right?
His hands and feet still shook from the adrenaline. His mouth was smiling, but he really just wanted to cry.
The Stone Gate of the Dead appeared sooner than expected.
Aside from the Poison Swamp Devourer, nothing else had given him serious trouble. The worst part had been the clothes now plastered with cold mud.
There were two stone gates: a red one and a white one.
A character with a staff had to choose.
Open the red gate and learn Fire Bolt, then later class-change into a Mage. Open the white gate and learn Healing Light, then later class-change into a Healer.
That was the publicly known strategy.
But Hyun Si-woon knew better.
A hidden route existed inside this choice—and the odds were high that he was the only person on the planet who knew about it. No forums, no famous guide sites had ever mentioned it.
He had been a hardcore player who dug into every corner of the game. Early on he could brute-force floors with pure mechanical skill, but the higher he climbed the clearer it became that skill alone hit a wall. To reach the upper floors you needed hidden routes; you needed to snowball advantages from the very bottom. Otherwise the high floors would remain forever out of reach.
So he had remade characters over and over, mapping the Tower’s structure through sheer repetition.
And he had discovered it:
The colors of the stone gates change with time.
Exactly twenty-four hours. If no major strongholds had been claimed by the moment that full day elapsed, the red and white stones reacted with each other and both turned orange. The change lasted only two minutes.
Completely insane.
What lunatic would park themselves here without clearing the floor just to wait? And even if someone did wait, how would they ever pin down that exact two-minute window?
Si-woon had found it by pure luck.
Leaving a staff character parked here while I scoured other zones with a sword character turned out to be the divine play.
If you waited long enough, a new keyhole appeared between the two gates. Insert a staff, and both doors opened at once—letting you learn both skills. Later, at the tenth-floor class change, you became neither Mage nor Healer but a Magic Adept: the hidden class that could learn every skill without restriction.
“Hoo.”
Si-woon sank down in front of the gates and exhaled.
Now he simply had to wait—
Growl!
His stomach protested.
This was where the real ordeal began. The physical hardship of cold and damp was bad enough, but staying sane in a place like this was its own kind of torture.
Still—what choice did he have? A hidden class was on the line. He couldn’t just walk away.
“Let’s tough it out.”
He gripped his sword tightly.
He closed his eyes for a brief rest—
Thud. Thud.
Faint footsteps reached him through the mud.
At first he thought it was imagination. Then the sound grew clearer. Unfamiliar voices. Not mere muttering.
“Is this it? The staff route?”
“Yeah, probably. Should be coming up soon. You just follow the brown patterns.”
Si-woon’s eyes snapped open.
……People?
The voices were distinct. Conversation was happening only a few steps away, slicing through the fog and the swamp’s silence with unmistakable clarity.
His expression shifted into something complicated.
He had been certain this field was for solo use only.
So what the hell was going on?