Tower of Despair — 6th Floor (1)
Clearing the 7th floor in one push…
Yoon Tae-shik swallowed dryly before he could stop himself.
A party that had only just reached the 5th floor a month ago was now talking about blowing past the 6th and going all the way to the 7th?
And speaking of it as casually as if they were hiking the neighborhood hill?
It wasn’t that he thought it was impossible.
The raw force that had slaughtered the Solidarity Guild without a second thought. The mysterious power that commanded Pungjo. Kang Si-a, who had single-handedly wrecked a medalist. Even the brand of a wandering merchant attached to Eden Camp…
If he had to pick the absolute frontrunner on the Korean server right now, he would have raised his hand for this party over the ones that had already broken through the 7th floor.
Still.
An unease he couldn’t shake took root in one corner of Yoon Tae-shik’s chest.
Because of his daughter, Yoon Seo-a.
The only reason she could smile and run around healthy was a single person.
Hyun Si-woon.
What if he failed the climb?
Yoon Tae-shik didn’t want to imagine it.
“Don’t worry so much.”
As if he had read the man’s heart, Hyun Si-woon spoke quietly.
“I keep my promises. Seo-a is your daughter, but she’s my disciple now as well.”
“I’ll trust you, Boss.”
Yoon Tae-shik bowed his head deeply.
Trusting him was all he could do.
The 6th and 7th floors.
There was another reason Hyun Si-woon meant to clear both floors in a single run.
The shield and the bow.
Just as he had obtained the Formless Sword and the Thunder Dragon Spear, he needed the hidden items waiting on those two floors as well.
Items that had only been marked as ??? back in the game!
Looking at it, getting them early is the real gain.
Both items were growth-types.
They were still Normal grade for now, but they would grow the more they were used. That was certain.
Which meant the later you got them, the more growth opportunities you threw away.
The hidden items sealed on the 6th and 7th floors are probably the same kind.
Items housing sealed Rankers.
And if that was true?
Depending on which Ranker was sealed inside, the entire direction of their training and growth from here on could change.
The Ranker in the shield might teach the secret arts of absolute defense. The Ranker in the bow might open their eyes to the principles of archery bordering on the divine.
Just like Ha-wol.
“Hraaah!”
KWAANG!
When Hwang Dae-un slammed the Rock Giant’s iron mace into the ground, the earth shuddered and the tremor ran all the way to the tips of the other members’ toes.
“Hey! Bear!”
Baek Yeon-ho, who had set his shield aside to train Diamond Fist, barked at him.
“Take it easy! You’re wrecking my focus!”
“Hehe, sorry, hyung-nim! This thing just sits so nice in my hands I can’t control the power.”
“You’re having way too much fun.”
Baek Yeon-ho clicked his tongue and fixed his stance.
A massive boulder sat in front of him—training equipment.
“Hoo.”
He steadied his breath and threw a punch.
Thud!
A dull impact cracked the rock—or seemed to—and then nothing changed at all.
“Ah, damn. Still a long way to go.”
Baek Yeon-ho muttered, shaking out his hand.
He wasn’t sure training fist arts without his shield was the right call, but Si-woon had ordered it, so he stuck with it stubbornly.
“Yeon-ho. The form looks decent, but you’re packing way too much force into it.”
Jang Cha-yul had somehow wandered over to needle him.
“I know, I know, but my body won’t listen. I’m not a unique-weapon owner like some people.”
“Huh? You’ve got one too. Unique.”
“Mine’s armor. Yours is a weapon, noona.”
Baek Yeon-ho answered gruffly.
Dae-un, Si-a, Cha-yul noona…
Every one of them carried a unique weapon. He was the only pure tank.
“Even so, you’re the most important one, Yeon-ho.”
Baek Do-hee, reviewing the formulas of the Calm Heart Mantra nearby, spoke up.
“Because you hold the front, the rest of them can attack without a care.”
“I know, noona. I do.”
Baek Yeon-ho scratched the back of his head.
“It’s just… sometimes I want to smash everything to pieces myself.”
“Hyung-nim, if you want to smash things, how about suggesting we hit the Tower? Lately my body’s been itching so bad I could die!”
“Right? Cobwebs are going to start growing on my spear.”
Whoosh!
Even Jang Cha-yul, mid-swing with her spear, chimed in.
One month.
Hellish training had repeated itself, and the members could feel their bodies changing day by day.
Strength and speed they couldn’t have imagined before. The energy pooled in their dantian now circulated through them on its own, surging without conscious effort.
They had grown strong.
Too strong—so strong that this peaceful training ground was starting to feel stifling.
They itched to know just how far they’d come, and what would happen when they unleashed that power in a real fight.
“Hey. You guys really don’t get it.”
The one who dumped cold water on their excitement was Baek Yeon-ho.
His expression had hardened into something serious, as if the joking had never happened.
“Do you have any idea what the 6th floor is? You think I smashed my keyboard and quit for fun? That place is on a different dimension from the 5th. It’s… designed to drive people insane.”
Baek Yeon-ho’s personal best had been the 5th floor.
The 6th was where he, a pro gamer, had first felt a wall.
“Sure, easier clears have come out since my time, but it’s still going to be brutal. Ugh, and the final boss… this time we could actually die.”
It was advice with teeth.
But Hwang Dae-un just snorted a laugh and fired back.
“Even that hell’s just a walk in the park if we go with Si-woon hyung-nim, right?”
“Mm…”
Was it?
Their Si-woon was EndSeeker, the one who had cleared thirty floors.
It wasn’t exactly wrong, so he was about to nod when—
From a distance, Kang Si-a approached.
“Leader says to gather.”
“Gather?”
“Out of nowhere?”
As everyone looked puzzled, she continued, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly.
“He says get ready.”
“Looks like we’re finally going to punch through the 6th floor.”
“……!”
A brief silence.
And then—
“WOOOOOOO!”
Hwang Dae-un roared first.
“Finally! We’re finally going!”
The eyes of the other members, too, were full of excitement rather than worry.
In their minds, they were already butchering the Tower’s beasts.
Before departure, Hyun Si-woon finished his preparations thoroughly.
First, he called Yoon Seo-a aside.
“While I’m gone, don’t slack on your training. Circulate your energy twice a day—once when the sun rises, once when the moon rises. Outside of that, do whatever you like. Read books, help the camp residents. But nothing that strains your body. That’s absolute.”
“I’ll remember, Master.”
Next was Park Du-shik.
“This is roughly two months’ worth of goods, just in case. Keep the business running while we’re gone, and keep buying materials steadily.”
“Leave it to me, Boss.”
He did not reveal Lumi, who stayed in the abandoned building.
Even within Eden, that place had been designated forbidden ground, and he had deliberately set Pungjo’s nest there to stand guard.
Anyone who approached would face Pungjo’s threat—and anyone who forced their way through would simply become the divine beast’s meal.
On top of that, he packed emergency rations, scrolls, and potions deep into his inventory.
And early that morning, they flew once more toward the Tower of Despair.
The entrance was the same as ever.
Countless climbers stood in line waiting, and once again they were guided by an Executor and passed through on a high-priority lane.
You have entered the 6th Floor of the Tower of Despair.
They surrendered themselves to the light that wrapped their entire bodies, and when they opened their eyes, they stood in an unfamiliar space.
The field was a fortress wall.
Below it stretched an endless plain thick with fog, and something like the weeping of restless souls drifted faintly through the air.
The top of the wall was a ruin.
Collapsed watchtowers, weapons abandoned to rust, and bleached bones scattered everywhere.
“Hah.”
Baek Yeon-ho clenched his teeth.
“Nostalgic. This goddamn defense map.”
That was right.
The 6th floor of the Tower of Despair was a kind of defense game.
If the swarming enemies breached the wall and seized the keep, you lost.
If you held every wave before that happened, you cleared.
Easy to say.
Baek Yeon-ho smiled bitterly.
Back when no proper solution existed, this 6th floor had been pure despair for every player.
First of all, the number of enemies was beyond imagination.
From the very first wave, thousands of skeleton soldiers poured in like a swarm of ants.
And if you barely held them off?
The second wave brought tougher, faster ghouls. The third brought headless knights—dullahan.
With every successive wave the enemies grew stronger and more cunning.
Giant spider monsters that scaled the walls, undead worms that burrowed up from below, even liches that cast magic.
It was total war.
Just reaching the 10th wave was a miracle.
Even the top-tier veteran parties of the time routinely wiped at the 7th or 8th wave.
And even if you somehow lucked into clearing the 9th, what waited at the final 10th wave was pure catastrophe.
Wraith Knight-Captain Valerius.
The final boss, astride a warhorse of giant bone, his entire body sheathed in pitch-black armor.
The cursed greatsword he swung sheared through the fortress walls like tofu, and a single roar from him froze every player on the ramparts in terror.
He even had a wide-area instant-death skill—a monster with no answer.
Baek Yeon-ho remembered it clearly.
The despair of finally reaching the 10th wave after dozens of attempts.
Facing Valerius with the entire party already half-dead had been an unclimbable wall.
Well… back then there was no real solution.
Only after he had thrown his mouse did the solution surface.
As it turned out, ancient siege weapons were hidden all over this wall, and waking them up dropped the difficulty sharply.
“Si-woon.”
Baek Yeon-ho asked,
“You’re going to repair the siege weapons first during the first wave, right?”
At that question—
Privilege ability activated.
Save point set to current moment.
Hyun Si-woon, who had been watching the save message, shook his head.
“No.”
“No?”
Baek Yeon-ho’s eyes went wide.
He’d expected some other way to clear it… but not using the siege weapons?
What’s he planning?
“You know it too, right? The first wave is your window. From the second on, there’s no time to repair siege weapons. You’re already drowning in the flood of mobs.”
“I know. But we can’t touch those. If we do, I can’t reach the hidden scene I know.”
“……There’s another hidden?”
“Yeah.”
Hyun Si-woon closed his eyes and cast his mind back.
Memories from a distant past.
Nights spent sleepless in front of a monitor—recollections of the EndSeeker days.
As he’d mentioned before, Hyun Si-woon never looked at guides.
So he, too, had crashed into Knight-Captain Valerius countless times.
Naturally, without siege weapons.
He must have died dozens of times—no, hundreds.
Something’s off.
Hyun Si-woon took his hands off the keyboard and sank into thought.
This wasn’t simply high difficulty.
It felt like malicious unfairness, as if the developers were telling you this method would never clear it.
There’s another way.
From that moment, Hyun Si-woon’s relentless investigation began.
He abandoned the fight.
Instead, the instant the first wave started, he dodged the skeleton soldiers and raced like a madman through every corner of the keep.
Hidden clues.
Missed items.
Or interaction with a specific NPC.
There had to be something.
After dying dozens of times that way, he finally found it—in one corner of the wall, before a collapsed chapel, a single stone statue.
A knight’s statue, praying in grief.
Something he had seen somewhere before… a statue.
Wait. Grace?
Yes!
That was it.
The 5th floor.
The queen who had been frozen solid when he obtained the Saint’s Prayer in Ash-gray Avalon!
A statue you would inevitably walk past if you hadn’t found the hidden on the previous floor!
Back then, using Healing Light let her find rest, so…
Wooong!
Just in case, he used Healing Light on a staff character.
And then—
The soul of Knight Carius finds rest.
The curse upon the keep is faintly released.
Nice!
Hyun Si-woon’s eyes lit up.
He had found the first thread of the hidden.