The Black Challenger

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

The sound of birds forced my eyes open. Once they were, I took my time surveying my surroundings.

A forest?

Just then, a system message appeared before me.

I'd earned an achievement simply for being the first to enter. And right after that, a string of messages followed in quick succession.

Having checked the quest, I immediately pulled a dagger from my inventory and began filling it with mana. Best to resupply before the fighting starts, after all. Once the mana was full, I strapped the dagger to my waist and looked deeper into the forest.

My current position was the forest's edge, close enough that I could step back outside if I wanted to.

Let's scout the outside of the forest first.

The quest told me to hunt a boss monster, which meant I couldn't be certain the boss was actually inside the forest. If anything, the odds were higher that the interior would be crawling with ordinary monsters and elites. The Tower of Trials gave no loot or rewards for anything outside the quest, so exploring the depths of the forest was better left for later.

I walked straight out of the woods.

"Wow!"

The moment I emerged, an exclamation slipped out of me before I could stop it. Beyond the forest stretched an expanse of blue-green grassland.

"Well then, shall we take a look around?"

This plain had to have an edge somewhere. This was only the first floor; it couldn't possibly be that vast. Getting a measure of the space was the priority.

I need to know the size before I can make an estimate.

Basic Footwork.

Speed.

I fell into the footwork and ran straight ahead. After about five minutes, a dark gray wall came into view.

"This is..."

That wall was deeply, unsettlingly familiar. And it had no business being here.

The Wall of Division.

Forged by the pact signed during the Great War against the Divine-Demonic Cult, it was the wall that split the world in two. That was the Wall of Division.

A dark gray wall means a wall of the Demon Realm.

The fact that the Demon Realm's wall stood here meant the Tower bordered the Demon Realm. Or that we were inside it already.

Don't tell me even the Red Door...

Before my regression, I had yet to meet Wrath, so I'd known nothing of the pact or the wall back then. Seeing the wall with my own eyes had come much later still.

I'll have to circle around along the wall, then.

The walk from the forest to the wall had taken about five minutes at footwork pace, so that was the distance between the grassland and the trees. The real question was how much of the forest the wall enclosed, because that would determine how hard the grassland was to search.

Basic Footwork.

Speed.

I stepped into the footwork and followed the wall around. A rough survey told me the grassland wasn't all that large.

At this size, a day of combing the ground should turn up the boss, right?

That was only possible because I had footwork. An ordinary awakened person dropped in here would burn most of their time and stamina just finding the boss.

Anyone who cleared the first floor was either lucky or skilled. Usually one or the other.

With the footwork carrying me along, I began hunting for the boss monster. An ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hour into the search, luck was on my side, and I spotted something that looked the part.

Boing, boing, boing.

A black thing bounding its way across the grassland. At a glance it might have seemed small and even cute, but the truth was anything but.

Just then, a rabbit hopped toward the black thing. Boing, boing, boing. The black thing moved to meet it, opened its mouth, and swallowed the rabbit whole in a single gulp.

"Squee! Squeak! Squeee!"

The rabbit, swallowed into the black thing, screamed in agony. A few seconds later, the screaming stopped for good.

That one's going to be a nuisance to deal with.

The black thing's name was a Demon Slime. A slime that lived in the Demon Realm.

The problem is its digestion.

Using its liquid body, a Demon Slime sucked in and devoured everything it touched. Even the demons who lived in the Demon Realm gave the things a wide berth.

"Whew."

I let out a long breath. This particular Demon Slime was still growing, and its fist-sized bulk proved it. An ordinary one was about my size.

I have to kill it before it gets bigger.

If I let it keep eating its fill here, it would soon be beyond me.

Basic Footwork.

Shadow.

I closed the distance to the Demon Slime with my presence suppressed to the absolute minimum. The most important thing when facing one was to settle it in a single strike. The longer a fight dragged on, the more it converted its opponent's attacks into fuel for its own power.

That's how the Demon of Gluttony was born.

The origin of every demon noble was, in the end, a demon. And once, I had stormed into the Demon Realm itself to kill one of them. That was when I saw the Demon of Gluttony's true body: a colossal Demon Slime. That was the Gluttony I witnessed, roaming the Demon Realm and devouring everything in its path.

I end it before it ever gets there.

Before I knew it, I had arrived right at the Demon Slime's nose. It kept bounding onward, bounce after bounce.

A little farther ahead is the forest.

Taking it down before it reached the trees was the correct play. I drew the dagger at my waist.

Boing.

And I cleaved the rising Demon Slime clean through mid-jump.

Crunch.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A shattering sound. Its core had to be broken, and a Demon Slime with a shattered core could no longer hold its body together.

Splat.

Released from its own cohesion, the body liquefied and poured down onto the ground.

Reading the message, I chose a different option.

"I'll substitute the achievement 'Founder of the Footwork' instead."

Achievements were useful exactly for moments like this. When you didn't want to reveal your name, one could stand in its place. As for why I picked Founder of the Footwork among all of them, the reason was simple.

Four years from now, I'm planning to make the footwork public anyway.

When that happened, the founder of the footwork would be me, inevitably. I could have used my real name then, but an achievement was the kind of thing that only got better the more it spread from mouth to ear, from eye to eye.

After checking the record, I shook the Demon Slime's residue off my dagger and strapped it back to my waist. Just then, another message appeared.

With the message, a gift box materialized in front of my eyes. No matter how many times I saw one, that box never stopped feeling strange. I opened it and inspected the contents.

A rare-grade item, but for me it was exactly the right reward. My sneakers had been falling apart at the seams already.

Awakener-exclusive sneakers.

They were designed with gate entry in mind, so their durability should have been high. And yet a few rounds of footwork had left them ragged. I pulled off the sneakers and slipped on the Featherweight Boots.

They really are light.

They hadn't earned the rare grade for nothing. I stored the sneakers in my inventory.

And the gift box's rewards don't end with the shoes.

The footwear had been the highlight, but it wasn't everything.

Tower Coins could be spent later in the rest areas, or on the tenth and final floor. The Stamina Potion restored stamina, not HP: the stamina we needed just to keep moving. Stamina mattered for footwork too.

I'll drink one before heading up.

I downed one of the Stamina Potions on the spot. Barely an hour and a half had passed since I entered the Tower, but the fatigue had already piled up.

The effects are solid.

Maybe because it was a Tower-issued potion, my stamina rebounded in an instant.

And at last, what you might call the main reward arrived: the quest payment, inflated by a full fifty percent on top of it.

Three hundred stat points in total.

Combined with what I already had, that brought me to 420 points. This single reward was worth roughly fifteen levels' worth of stat points.

Later on, grinding out even one level will be a struggle.

I eyed the stat points sitting just short of 500 and allowed myself a moment of satisfaction.

Apparently the system decided I was done preparing, because it asked. "Yes." I chose to ascend without a moment's hesitation. I'd drunk the Stamina Potion, so my stamina was nearly back to full, and with no real battle to speak of, my mana still had plenty of room to spare.

When I opened my eyes this time, I was standing before the gate of a fortress. As if he'd been waiting for me, a man who looked to be the commander spoke up.

"Soldiers, hear me!"

At the commander's shout, every soldier turned to look at him.

"Our hero has vowed to hold back the monsters' assault single-handedly!"

"Whoa!"

A hero, holding back the monsters' assault all by himself.

Whoever he is, he's in for a rough time.

I silently wished the so-called hero luck.

"All soldiers, gather your supplies and enter the fortress!"

At the commander's command, the soldiers began collecting their gear, one by one, and filing through the main gate.

Well then, I should head in too.

I moved to follow them inside the walls, but my body wouldn't budge. It was as if I'd been nailed to this very spot.

What is this?

"Then, hero, we leave it to you!"

Those were the commander's parting words, and with them, the gates of the wall swung shut.

What exactly is going on here?

It was absurd. Just then, the floor-two quest window popped up before my eyes.

"What kind of entertaining bullshit is this?"