The City of Mud Huts
First City greeted us in an unexpectedly shabby manner. “This isn’t it, right? Mud huts. It’s mud huts…” Yoo Dahui muttered with a disbelieving expression, the one who had received a proper college education. Mud huts. Yeah, mud huts. The structure here was surprisingly simple, as far as I knew. Dozens of roughly six-pyung mud huts scattered at regular intervals. The ones in front and behind were identical, left and right were identical. Everything looked exactly the same, just with slight variations in size. The biggest one among them was the shop displaying items from the upper floors. I remembered that space-expansion magic was applied, making it look tiny on the outside but actually huge inside.
“Whoa, what’s that?” Amid the big and small mud huts, in what I supposed was the central plaza, a single massive gate stood alone in an otherwise empty, barren space, sparkling faintly. The only players who would use this teleport gate were those scouting fresh recruits for the academy. This floor held no meaningful value, so there was no reason to descend here.
[This is a Safe Zone.]
[PK Actions Are Impossible.]
The moment I entered First City, the message appeared. Unlike the academy, this place was definitely safe.
“Is this funny? Hehe, of course it is. Why? I found it funny too. Are you saying you won’t laugh if you see this? You’re sick. Mentally ill.”
“Fresh recruits straight out of the academy? Welcome! Welcome to this damn hell!”
“Uhhihihihihihih! Kahahahahahaha!”
“……”
The players who spotted us greeted us with intense enthusiasm. Their expressions were all off. Their eyes looked like something had broken inside them. They were slowly going insane. Trapped in this run-down facility, isolated and unable to escape, that thought drove people mad. Even the army made me think of suicide, but here—years in a worse place than the one I served a year and a half in… I didn’t even want to imagine it.
“First, let’s find a place to stay…”
Yoo Dahui couldn’t finish her sentence. The place to stay? Mud hut. Even searching for differences, every single one looked identical. The answer didn’t exist. Reality was crueler than the novel. Still, if I poured coins into it, I could survive somehow. Just buy one mud hut and live life like filling a house. That’s how the novel Yoo Dahui survived. Thinking of her smiling while buying a bed made tears come to my eyes for some reason. I wiped the corners of my eyes with my sleeve and followed the group.
“An inn… doesn’t exist, right?”
All I saw around me were mud huts. Inn? None. “What if touching the hut sign triggers the system?”
Instead, an automated system was in place.
Small (1 person per day) — 10,000 coins
Medium (1 person per 10 days) — 90,000 coins
Large (1 person per 30 days) — 250,000 coins
To use a mud hut, you had to pay coins. The system only accepted coins; it didn’t care how many people shared one. “Dahui! What’s written on that sign? The system… doesn’t pop up?”
Elysha wandered around, touching every sign between the huts. The letters on the signs were names. With one sign attached to a mud hut, you could tell who the owner was. I checked the sign on a roughly six-pyung mud hut. Shit. Five names were carved into it. That meant five people had pooled their coins to pay. To save on sleeping fees, they squeezed in together to sleep. Facing this horrifying reality, the Yoo Dahui in the novel immediately regressed back to the 0th floor. Unable to join a guild, she started from scratch, grinding coins like crazy, then returned to the 1st floor and started out quite comfortably. One year’s lump-sum payment, though she didn’t use all of it. She died midway and had to regress again.
“Let’s check how much coins each of us has.”
“The smallest hut is twenty-five thousand coins a month. The medium one is thirty-five thousand.”
“Ah… I only have sixty thousand coins right now. Jinwoo, how much do you have?”
“I have seventy thousand…”
“Wow, that’s pretty good. Lucky.”
Yoo Dahui had sixty thousand. I had seventy thousand. The three elves combined had twelve thousand. Pulling it all together gave us barely two hundred fifty thousand coins. That was the amount I had to pay for renting a grade-F mud hut for thirty days. I would earn coins on this floor too, but right now the situation was dire. I shot Elena a glance. Elena looked like she had no intention of intervening in this situation. The princess was rolling around on the ground and she didn’t care.
‘She’s really strong.’ I understood. In the ecosystem of the Tower of Struggle, you had to be strong or you got eaten. But could she really not guarantee a place to sleep? ‘Use a command?’ I had the chance with Elena. If I wished for it in my mind, she would handle it automatically. It was tricky. Was it better to board a bus and go smoothly, or should we stick together and fight it out? ‘Sticking together…?’ It sounded fun. There were mud huts with five people in them; there was no reason we couldn’t do the same.
“…Dahui, Jinwoo is laughing weirdly.”
“Sometimes when he does that, it’s scary, but I don’t mind.”
“It’s not scary, it’s just gross…”
“That sounds like it would hurt more.”
Elysha and Yoo Dahui whispered to each other. It was about me, and the content wasn’t pleasant at all. I quickly urged Yoo Dahui to make a decision. With her judgment clouded, she grabbed the thirty-day option and started rubbing against me.
“We’re taking a mud hut for twenty-five thousand coins? If we’re doing it, let’s do it quick. Time is ticking.”
“…Then let’s grab it for just ten days.”
“Eh?”
“Ten days should be enough for us to adapt. Once we adapt to the 1st floor, we can think about it.”
Yoo Dahui’s logic was correct. As a regressor, there was no reason to rent for too long. Live a little, regress, repeat—then when the clear path became sharp, head straight for the boss monster.
‘Shiva.’ It seemed like I had been controlled by my balls for a moment. It was a natural thought, but I couldn’t recall it.
“Yeah… I guess two mud huts for ninety thousand coins would be enough.”
Three men, three women. Two mud huts would be plenty. We split up. We found empty mud huts and registered our names. The signs now showed Kim Jinwoo, Eloin, Elbaren, and our names. Until ten days passed, these mud huts were protected by the system. We bent down and entered the mud huts. The inside was surprisingly spacious. Three people could comfortably stay here.
‘Surprisingly cozy.’ Annoying that I felt that way.
“Sleeping on the dirt floor?”
“We should buy a sleeping bag.”
Eloin explored every corner of the mud hut interior and grumbled with a dissatisfied voice. Sleeping on the dirt floor. There was no way it would feel good. Me? I could sleep anywhere as long as I was put to bed. A blanket would be enough. I stepped outside. Eloin and Elbaren followed me. The women had finished looking around inside and were waiting.
Yoo Dahui approached me and asked, “We’re going hunting, right?”
“We have to. We can’t afford to waste an entire day.”
Even with regression, time wasn’t unlimited. The world would discard you if you didn’t keep moving forward. You had to run without stopping. There were hidden pieces to obtain. No time to rest. We left First City. A flat stretch of land about three hundred meters wide opened up, and beyond it began the forest.
Scrrt—. How long had it been? Right behind us, a safe zone. The toads rose up. No weapons, the weakest monsters on the 1st floor.
“There are five. We can assign one each?”
One-on-one deathmatches, excluding Elena. I fought once and found it wasn’t hard.
“Wryaa!” With shadows around me, there was nothing to fear.
[1,000 Coins Earned!]
Because it was my shadow, it understood exactly what I wanted. Even a couple who had lived together for thirty years couldn’t keep up with our breathing rhythm.
“We should name it.”
“Name? What name?”
“This one.”
Yoo Dahui slipped beside me and started poking my shadow spirit, alternating between me and the shadow.
“They’re exactly the same. Kim Jinwoo, your body is completely identical.”
“…Hey. Don’t touch it like that. It feels weird.”
Yoo Dahui kept fiddling with the shadow spirit’s body. Her snow-white hand moved across the pitch-black, extremely black spirit body. Because it was a 100 percent match to my body, the feeling felt strangely erotic. It was like my own body was being touched.
“Nipple.”
“Yama!” Yoo Dahui teased the shadow spirit with her index finger. I watched the pitifully glowing spirit’s eyes. I immediately banished it to escape Yoo Dahui’s lewd hand.
“Uhhuhuhu, that was fun.”
“Fun?”
“Ehh. Seeing the kid act shy was so cute.”
She licked her lips while looking at me. Her gaze was intense. Like a mischievous kid. Thinking of the mask girl made me unconsciously look away.
“Dahui, let’s go farther.”
“Okay.”
Elysha, unable to watch, pulled Yoo Dahui away. Thanks to that, I escaped the torment. We continued hunting. We steadily earned coins. Our skill was skill, so we didn’t take reckless risks. We only played near First City. Then we met the players I wanted to see. I had expected it would take time, but luck was on our side.
“No way, that’s not possible.”
“It’s possible. Crossing the sea isn’t nothing.”
“So? Are you taking the quest they gave? What’s the reward? The master said there’s no need to do it.”
“I hate swimming. I’ll never do it.”
Players passing by at the exact moment I wanted to talk. I immediately asked them.
“Excuse me. Where did you meet that kid?”
“Jinwoo! Where are you going!”
Surprised by my sudden departure, Yoo Dahui followed me. Her eyes were blank, like she didn’t understand why.
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you say a moment ago that you crossed the sea?”
“Ah. That one?”
Sirens. The power of sirens varied depending on how much their bloodlines mixed during reproduction. “About an hour in that direction? There’s a lake. They’re there.”
One siren raised its bushy arm to show the direction. The rumor that they could cross the sea was false. Meeting the boy involved in that rumor meant the boy would give me a request. I needed that request. The boy was probably training right now, splitting the lake for practice.
“Thank you for telling me.”
I gave a polite thank-you and approached the elves. The elves glared at me like I was out of line. “Why did you leave suddenly? Who were you looking for?”
“……”
After I spoke, a storm hit. Yoo Dahui bombarded me with questions, her face full of curiosity. Was this a hearing? I had to make something up.
“I saw it in a dream.”
“Dream? What did you see in the dream? Tell me everything you know!”
Regressors have an insatiable hunger for information. It’s the only weapon a talentless regressor has. “What should I say… It was like a scene from a movie. A boy splitting the lake, and then handing us a crystal sphere he found inside…”
“Crystal sphere?”
Yoo Dahui urged me. She grabbed my arm and shook it vigorously, tormenting me to say something.
“You’ve been weird since last time. You don’t remember the events from the previous cycle, and you don’t even recognize that you regressed… If you think that way, seeing the future doesn’t sound strange.”
“Eh? Future? I think the same, but what did you just say?”
“Nothing. So? You don’t know what to do with the crystal sphere?”
Yoo Dahui subtly slipped in the events from the previous cycle. The moment the word regression appeared, the elves’ conversations faltered, as if they had heard nothing.
“I don’t know… but it felt important.”
“Hmm…”
Yoo Dahui fell into deep thought. There were five lakes on the 1st floor. One of them held a single artifact locked inside. That artifact would become the hidden piece that granted passage to the 2nd floor. We had to find and climb it no matter what. “Then let’s go meet him first. Jinwoo, you haven’t lost anything by listening to me.”