Resolve (1)
“It’s getting lively in here now.”
“Looks like the latecomers have arrived.”
The plaza in front of Thebes’ city gate was packed with people.
With every boss from the first floor to the fifth gone, hunters who had climbed the Tower behind the vanguard had been able to reach this place far more easily than anyone had expected.
There was a burly man with a massive round shield strapped to his back, a robed woman holding a gem-studded staff, and a lean-looking young man with a pair of daggers at his waist.
Hunters armed and equipped in every imaginable way were passing through the gate one by one, entering Thebes.
“Who the hell already killed a dragon?”
“A dragon should be at least A-class. Why was it on the fifth floor?”
“Did they already go up past the tenth floor?”
“All the major guilds declared they were entering the fight, so it’s probably one of them.”
The people were whispering about the announcement that had echoed through the entire Tower hours earlier.
Everyone was curious about the dragon subjugation—and about the mysterious person who had somehow obtained that unfamiliar term, Hidden Class.
And no wonder. The Tower had only opened a day ago, and dragons were legendary beings that, even outside the Tower, appeared only rarely in Red Gates or mutated Gates.
“Welcome, hunters!”
A bright voice rang out from inside the gate. A resident of Thebes wearing plain clothes made of white cloth was waving and greeting the arriving hunters.
“I’m Celia, your guide in Thebes. I’ll give you a quick explanation for those of you who are here for the first time!”
The crowd gathered around Celia. Curious eyes fixed on her all at once.
“Here in Thebes, we offer you a special chance to become stronger. It’s called the class change system!”
Celia gestured toward the great towers in the central plaza.
“At those five temples, you can change into different classes. Warrior, mage, thief, guardian, and priest!”
“A class? This is like a game.”
“What changes if we class up?”
Questions full of skepticism came pouring in.
“If you change classes, you’ll learn powerful skills specialized to that class! And most importantly...”
Celia’s eyes sparkled.
“You can keep growing through leveling up. It’s completely different from the old fixed-rank system!”
“Yeah, we already know that.”
“It was in the notice when we entered the Tower.”
“You mean the level system? That’s why we came here.”
The hunters reacted with a lukewarm attitude, as if none of this was news. The leveling system had been explained to every hunter when they entered the Tower.
“The class-change trials for the other jobs aren’t difficult. But the Warrior trial is different! It’s truly dangerous. However, you can’t take it now. Someone already killed the dragon that was supposed to be the trial target.”
Each hunter wore a different expression.
Those who had planned to become Warriors by building on their original attributes looked disappointed, while others were thrilled by the new possibilities.
“First time here?”
Then a gentle voice came from within the crowd.
“You’re here for the first time, right? We arrived early. It seems like this is going to be a place we’ll have to stay for a while, so let us show you around.”
Several people wearing black hoods pulled low over their faces approached the crowd.
Their faces were hard to make out, but their voices were remarkably polite.
Some hunters showed interest.
Especially those who had come alone, without a guild or a party.
“We’d appreciate the help.”
“Please follow us. There are hidden places in Thebes, and a hidden leveling system too.”
The hooded figures led them away from the plaza and into a narrow alley.
A shadowed passage between buildings. Deeper and deeper, into a place where no one really passed anymore.
“What’s supposed to be here...”
One hunter turned back in confusion, only to freeze.
Slice—!
“...!”
A red line opened across his throat, and blood erupted like a fountain.
Before the others could even process what was happening, daggers flashed from every direction.
“Agh!”
“H-help—”
Thud. Thud.
They dropped one after another, never even getting the chance to scream properly.
Daggers drove between ribs and into hearts, and the wet, sickening sounds echoed through the alley.
Blood seeped through the rough gaps between the stones underfoot, and soon the whole lane was filled with the stench of it.
The hooded figures began rifling through the corpses.
“What the hell. A C-class punk had pretty decent gear.”
“And quite a few coins, too.”
As they stripped off the armor and weapons, and gathered the blood-soaked coins, translucent windows appeared before their eyes.
Beep—!
[Experience Gained]
[Level Up!]
With satisfied smiles, they left the alley in search of their next prey.
*
“Impossible.”
Valderion muttered in stunned disbelief.
Kim Jun showed him what was visible in front of his eyes.
Class Change Complete!
Hidden ClassDragon Slayer Acquired
“Impossible. This... this is the first time since Kaiser...”
Valderion’s voice trembled. It was an achievement no one had managed in hundreds of years.
The last person to single-handedly kill a Red Dragon had been Thebes’ founder, Kaiser.
“You really... really did it.”
“Yes. And that’s not all.”
Kim Jun answered calmly and took something from his subspace pouch.
A heart of immense size.
A Dragon Heart, still beating, gleaming like a red ruby.
Thump. Thump.
“Th-this is!”
Valderion stopped breathing for a moment. A Dragon Heart. And not just any one, but a complete, living heart still pulsing with power.
“Dr, Dragon Heart...!”
Since the dawn of the Tower, through a thousand years of history, it was said that only one hero had ever obtained this legendary treasure.
The ultimate prerequisite for the final awakening of a Dragon Slayer.
And above all, the one and only medium capable of implanting the destructive language that only dragons could use from the beginning of time—Dragon Tongue—into a human body.
It was the key to a miracle: the power that even the Absolute was said to have feared, made usable by a mortal human.
“Valderion.”
Kim Jun’s voice reverberated all the way up to the high ceiling of the temple. It carried absolute certainty.
“I’ll free them.”
“!!”
The black-haired outsider.
They had only just met face-to-face an hour ago, at most.
And yet how had he known? How had he understood the desperate yearning the residents of the Tower had held in their hearts for centuries?
The liberation of everyone trapped inside the Tower. Salvation from this endless trial. The hope that one day a true hero would appear.
That young man was looking straight at him as he spoke. He would do the very thing Valderion had longed for—free the residents of the Tower.
As if it were fate. As if it were a promise.
He didn’t know how much the young man understood, but for some reason, his heart felt lighter. It was as if the despair that had crushed him for so long was slowly lifting away.
Kim Jun put the Dragon Heart back into his subspace pouch and turned around at a measured pace. He walked toward the massive temple doors, his back broad and unwavering.
There was no need for him to come all the way here...
Valderion watched him for a long time.
His shoulders were square, his stride unshaken. More than anything, the aura surrounding him felt different.
If he really is the one...
Valderion’s heart began to pound. The dream he had given up on after being trapped here for centuries.
The liberation of Thebes. The conquest of the Tower. And the salvation of everyone.
Maybe he really can do it.
He, too, had once burned bright. In his youth, he had shouted for the Tower’s liberation with blood surging through his veins.
He had once vowed to arm all the people of Thebes as warriors, to turn their blades against the monster invasion, to plant the banner of Thebes atop the very summit of the Tower.
But as the years passed, letting go of things had become a habit.
The honor of Thebes, the Tower’s liberation... he had come to abandon them one by one as impossible dreams.
And yet look at that outsider. He had calmly declared that he would accomplish the grand dream even Valderion himself had surrendered.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Creaaak—
So the aging warrior had no choice but to rise from the seat he had occupied for so long.
I can’t dump all that burden onto that young man alone.
He had to prepare. He didn’t know when it would be, but he had to lay stepping-stones for the difficult road that young man would walk.
Thud.
Blood began to flow again through muscle long since left to rot. The soul of a warrior, once asleep, was waking once more.
“Draconis.”
“Yes.”
“The time has come.”
*
Implanting a Dragon Heart into a human body was a gamble with death.
The vast whirlpool of mana could wind around the entire body, twisting the organs inside out, and there was always the possibility that the body would fail to withstand the alien dragon mana and simply explode.
But Kim Jun had already experienced that hellish pain before. He remembered it clearly—how he had endured it with nothing but sheer willpower, without anyone’s help.
“So I have to go through it again.”
Kim Jun gave a wry smile. This time, he intended to do it differently.
His level was 30 now. When he first tackled the sixth floor before regressing, he had only been level 8, so his growth was already three times faster.
And if he implanted the Dragon Heart on top of that?
He could probably ascend to Kaldion, the fortress on the fiftieth floor, without breaking stride.
There was just one problem. At his current low level, it would be hard to suppress the Dragon Heart’s violent backlash on his own.
To offset that fatal side effect, he absolutely needed the help of S-class healer Lee Seoyeon.
Step, step—
As Kim Jun walked through the streets of Thebes, he released waves of mana outward. Tiny vibrations spread in concentric circles, rippling across the entire city.
It was a search for his companions.
“Hm?”
Then he caught it—an unmistakable surge of malice within the waves.
“Someone died.”
There was no way monsters from another floor had already infiltrated Thebes, which was located on the fifth floor.
And even if he searched through his memories of the previous timeline, this was something that definitely hadn’t happened at this point.
“Then...”
Kim Jun struck his own forehead hard.
How had he forgotten? How had he almost missed those bastards?
The ones he should have dealt with first.
“Dark.”
The assassin guild Dark.
A murder syndicate composed of agile, cruel bastards.
Even before the Tower appeared, they had been stabbing fellow hunters in the back inside Gates and taking all the magic stones and equipment for themselves.
Born rotten to the core, they treated betrayal and murder as nothing at all.
When the Tower appeared and the class-change system was introduced, they all switched to Assassins to make use of their filthy aptitude.
They hunted innocent hunters who had entered the Tower, and beyond that, they murdered the residents as well, plundering everything they could.
“Those bastards are the reason Suin died.”
Kim Jun’s fist clenched on its own. They were the ones who had killed Han Suin, his precious comrade and an S-class assassin, on the thirty-second floor.
Who could have imagined it? That, in front of a shared goal called the Tower, humans would stab each other in the back.
“Not this time.”
Kim Jun’s hand slid to the hilt of his greatsword.
Flash—!
At a speed faster than anyone else’s, he headed toward the source of that malicious aura.
6