The True Reward of Hellfire
The Hellfire difficulty has been cleared.
As a reward, you have obtained the skill Cold Blood.
As a reward, you have obtained a Training Wooden Puppet.
“They weren’t kidding about the Hellfire difficulty. The rewards are just as spicy.”
My lips curled up on their own.
I checked the rewards with a satisfied expression.
Cold Blood
Grade: ★★★
Type: Passive
Never loses composure under any circumstances.
Greatly increases resistance to emotional agitation and mental status ailments.
• Maintains a calm mind at all times.
• Mental Resistance +20.
• Skill concentration time reduced by 15%.
I never expected to get the Cold Blood skill during the tutorial.
Cold Blood was the superior version of Patience, a skill normally obtainable in the basic training grounds.
How important is it to stay calm in battle?
Impatience. Excitement. Fear. Anxiety.
Human emotions could sometimes create synergy in combat, but more often than not they acted as dangerous variables.
With Cold Blood, I would never be swayed by emotion again!
And that wasn’t all. It even came with the hard-to-get mental resistance option.
Mental resistance became more valuable the higher you climbed the Tower. Physical attacks could be blocked with any number of methods, but there was no escaping an assault on the mind.
It was an excellent option for the future rather than the present.
Normally, this is a skill you can only get after the 30th floor or higher.
I burst out laughing. “Haha—”
Even in the future where most of the Tower’s hidden elements had been revealed, there had been zero information about the “Hellfire difficulty.”
This too was one of the positive changes brought about by my regression.
If the reward was Cold Blood, then all that suffering had been worth it.
My heart was pounding.
The user’s emotions are fluctuating violently.
Cold Blood has activated. A calm mind is maintained.
The heart that had been racing with excitement returned to its normal rhythm.
“……”
Damn it. I’d forgotten.
Cold Blood applied to everyday life as well.
Any emotion—joy, anger, sorrow, or pleasure—that rose above a certain threshold would trigger the skill.
Looked like dating was off the table for the time being.
I gave a bitter smile and checked the second reward.
◈ Durability: 100/100
◈ A wooden puppet stationed in the basic training grounds.
◈ When activated, it copies one of the player’s stats and skills.
◈ The puppet recognizes the user as an enemy. Defeating it increases the proficiency of the copied skill.
◈ Understanding: 0
◈ Can be reused once every 12 hours.
It was small enough to fit in one hand.
I stared at the wooden puppet, blinking repeatedly.
Worried I might have seen it wrong, I even rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.
But no matter what I did, the item information didn’t change.
“Holy shit.”
So the real reward for clearing the Hellfire difficulty had been this all along.
The Cold Blood skill was impressive, but it couldn’t compare to this item.
At least, not for me.
I can summon this puppet anytime I want?
I pressed the button on the back of the puppet’s neck as a test.
Training Wooden Puppet has been activated.
Whoosh!
The wooden puppet rapidly expanded to human size.
A slimy substance covered its head and quickly morphed into my own face.
“Nice to meet you.”
The moment the puppet emitted killing intent, I swung my hand without hesitation and severed its neck.
I picked up the puppet’s severed head that had rolled across the floor.
Using Devour.
This target has already had 100% of its essence collected.
This target is not a living creature. You cannot recover HP or MP through Devour.
It reacted exactly like the wooden puppets I had destroyed before.
“This is insane.”
A wooden puppet that could copy one of a player’s skills.
If I was lucky, I might even obtain an incomplete essence of a Primordial species.
To an ordinary player, it would only be useful for training skill proficiency. But for me, this item was more valuable than any other reward.
After collecting the training ground rewards, I pushed open the closed door.
Gentle moonlight seeped through the gap.
I hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed while taking the training ground test.
“It’s already night?”
The sky was clear without a single cloud.
Silvery moonlight faintly illuminated Rainbow Island.
I looked up at the sky.
The moon was about four-fifths full, measured from the right side.
In another day or two, I would see a full moon without any darkness.
Perfect.
A faint smile touched my lips.
On the day the full moon rises, if you go to the summit of Mt. Emirate, a secret location will open.
The hidden space discovered by the explorer Laurent.
To obtain the hidden piece of the so-called Moonview Cave, I needed to prepare in advance.
One day would be enough.
After gazing at the sky for a moment, I started walking.
Before heading to Mt. Emirate, there was one place I needed to stop by first.
If I go to the lakeside, I should be able to meet that guy.
I picked up my pace.
* * *
Snein Lake.
It was the lake located at the center of Rainbow Island.
As I approached the lake, I saw the first-day players huddled together, resting.
This is the safest place.
It was one of the standard strategies for Rainbow Island.
This island was far more dangerous at night than during the day.
Even in the plains, the Silver Fangs that had stayed only in the south would expand their territory all the way to the north.
They were enemies that first-day players could never hope to defeat.
And that wasn’t all.
In the wasteland, the Ant Lions would widen their sand traps even further.
On top of that, the apex predators of each region would begin moving in earnest once the sun set.
It was a harsh environment for beginners.
Of course, that didn’t apply to the top-ranking players.
Since hunting monsters at night granted bonus points, they would move around to score even higher.
High risk, high return.
I didn’t pay it much mind.
As long as I kept going like this, claiming first place in the tutorial would be easy.
What mattered were the essences and hidden elements that could only be obtained on Rainbow Island.
A place I could never return to.
I had to devour every single thing I needed to obtain without missing any.
And for that…
Meeting the merchant comes first.
I walked around the lake, retracing my memories.
My destination was the small island in the middle of the lake.
To meet a merchant during the tutorial stage, you had to cross the lake with your bare body.
While walking along the shore, I found a spot where the water was shallow.
I stepped into the lake.
It was cold.
As I moved my arms and legs, the water parted little by little and I advanced forward.
Before my regression, I had experienced all kinds of environments.
Swimming like this was nothing.
What I really needed to watch out for was…
These bastards.
I glanced down at the bottom of the lake.
Dark shapes could be faintly seen.
There were several black things that looked at least five meters long.
The monsters of the lake.
They were predators on par with the Ant Lions in the tutorial.
With my current specs, I would be torn to shreds in less than a minute.
Even so, the reason I could still swim across the lake was because of their habits.
They’re fish, yet they’re diurnal.
Unlike the monsters in other areas, the ones living in this lake were only active during the day.
That was why I had come to the lake at night.
Still, I can’t let my guard down.
I swam while staying alert for any unexpected variables.
Fortunately, no fish-like monsters woke up before I reached the island.
“What? A player already made it here?”
A gruff voice reached my ears.
A short, stocky man.
The dwarf merchant frowned deeply as he stared at me.
Above his head, the name Joyke floated in green letters.
“That’s correct.”
You have discovered the Midron Merchant Guild.
You are the first player to make contact with a merchant guild member during the tutorial stage. You have gained 10 points.
There was no reason to refuse free rewards.
I ignored the system message with one ear and focused on the dwarf’s movements.
“Hey, player. Isn’t this still the first day of the tutorial?”
“It is.”
“You’ve got some guts. Crossing the lake on the very first day.”
The dwarf let out a dry laugh.
When you thought about the monsters living beneath Snein Lake, it really was a reckless thing to do.
“Are you the only one here?”
“What do you mean?”
“The rest of the merchant guild.”
“Hahaha, you already know everything, so this’ll be easy to talk about. Come this way.”
The dwarf waddled ahead on his short legs.
There was a lone house on the island.
The dwarf who had walked ahead flung open the front door.
Liron.
Hyrin.
The elf and gnome inside the house jumped in surprise the moment they saw me.
“A player?”
“A human?”
They had similar reactions to the dwarf I had seen earlier.
“As you can see.”
I smiled leisurely.
These three were NPCs.
Residents from another dimension who helped run the Tower of Babel.
Working as an NPC was basically like taking a high-paying part-time job back in my home country.
I crammed the information from before my regression into my head and turned my gaze to the three merchants.
“Name’s Joyke. You can see it floating above my head anyway.”
“I’m player Yu Jinho.”
“Kekeke. I handle weapons. The pointy-eared one next to me handles magic, and the shorty over there deals in miscellaneous goods.”
“S-shorty?! I-I’m bigger than a d-dwarf, you know?!”
“As expected of a race of the earth. How vulgar.”
The three of them growled at each other right in front of me.
Although they were all under the name Midron Merchant Guild, they were actually residents from different dimensions.
Even if they belonged to the same guild, the points each race earned differed depending on what they sold, so they competed fiercely over customers.
“T-today is the f-first day, right? O-our customer probably d-doesn’t have m-many p-points yet.”
The gnome stuttered but still managed to say everything he needed to.
The elf and dwarf narrowed their eyes.
“Now that you mention it…”
“Too bad.”
The Tower’s merchants traded using two currencies: CP and mission points.
CP was the currency earned every time a mission was cleared.
Mission points referred to the performance score upon clearing.
A player who had just entered the tutorial wouldn’t have any CP, so what they wanted was mission points.
The problem was that since it was the first day of the tutorial, the player probably hadn’t accumulated many mission points yet.
It was only natural that the three merchants looked disappointed.
“Mister Gnome.”
“Y-yes?”
“Please give me thirty-two Moonstones.”
“W-well, you see, customer. E-each Moonstone is 20 p-points…”
Man, he really stutters a lot.
“I currently have a little over 600 points, you know?”
“J-just a moment.”
The gnome merchant stuttered as he checked my points.
The gnome merchant hiccupped.
It was shocking.
Gathering 600 points on the first day of the tutorial was supposed to be impossible.
I had already broken past 400 points after defeating the hidden boss and the Deep Slime, and then I had hunted the Wolf King Serin on top of that.
My points were overflowing.
The elf and dwarf looked at me with strange eyes.
“Hey, shorty.”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“N-no, this p-person… he has over 600 points on the first day.”
The elf and dwarf’s jaws dropped.
“Six hundred?!”
“Is that even possible on the first day?”
“I-if you’re c-curious, c-check it yourself!”
The three merchants made a huge fuss.
It was a score that would have been impossible without the knowledge from before my regression.
It was only natural they were shocked.
I spoke while maintaining as calm an expression as possible.
“If you don’t want to trade, that’s fine.”
“Of course we do!”
The startled gnome forgot to stutter and hurriedly handed over the Moonstones.
◈ Consumable
◈ Repels monsters using the power of the moon.
◈ When used, monsters within a 10-meter radius are driven away for 10 seconds.
◈ Effect is canceled if the user is attacked.
◈ Monster repulsion effect only applies on Rainbow Island.
It was an emergency escape consumable item.
On top of that, it was packed with useless restrictions like only working during the tutorial.
It wasn’t something I needed very much.
However, if I took these Moonstones to Mt. Emirate, I could use them for a completely different purpose.
I just need to wait until the full moon rises.
I barely held back my laughter.