An Apple for a God

Is she a crazy bitch?

Von Grote had never believed in gods. To be precise, he wasn't radical enough to go around shouting that God was dead — but he did consider trekking to some temple to drop coins in an offering box a fundamentally meaningless act. Weren't gods just intangible phantoms, invisible to the naked eye?

The young daughter of a serf who hadn't survived the winter after last year's failed harvest went to the temple to pray every single day. The blacksmith who had lost his son to monsters that came over the border believed in god more devoutly than anyone. And yet — when had a god ever looked upon them? Even if a god truly existed, Von would never live long enough to see proof of that existence.

...That had been his thinking, right up until a few months ago.

"What is it You ask of me?"

Perhaps it was the moment he had believed himself dead. The miracle that had been worked upon him. A phenomenon that admitted no other explanation. That miracle — who but a god could possibly have granted it?

But Von had been unable to find any way to express his gratitude to that 'god.' And so he had decided to pray in his own ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fashion, however clumsy.

"Will this do?"

He offered up apples from the Gotan region — his favorite — arranged on a silver dish, and laid them down in that forest, on the very spot where that brilliant glow had flickered for an instant. It was a ceremony he himself put no particular faith in—

"...It's gone?"

Had his improvised ritual actually worked? The next day, Von confirmed that the apple atop the silver plate had vanished. There were no tracks of any beast, no sign that another person had come and gone. Only the apple on the plate was gone, clean and complete.

After that, once a month, Von laid an apple on the silver dish. And so roughly half a year passed—

"...Wh-wha—?"

A radiance from somewhere seeped into his body. And in the very next moment, Von came to a realization.

"Impossible. What in the world...?"

That his body had grown somewhat stronger was astonishing enough on its own. But that change would soon be dismissed as trivial beside the sight he witnessed next. With his own two eyes, Von beheld the second miracle: aura — the power that had refused to manifest through all his long years of training — wreathing his sword in a faint but unmistakable blue glow.

"Someone's sure happy about it."

Watching Von Grote bounce around the screen, I snorted a laugh. Was it really that wonderful? Well — from where he stood, it had to feel like I'd just conquered the 5th floor.

Crunch, crunch—

"Mmm. This is genuinely delicious."

The tangy juice flooding my mouth drew a small gasp of admiration out of me. It would have been no exaggeration to call it the finest fruit I'd ever eaten.

Apparently, in the stretch I'd spent away from the screen preparing for the 5th floor assault, he had gone and sent up a tribute of some kind. The very fact that he worshipped me as some sort of deity was a little absurd... but from Von's standpoint, I suppose it made sense. Whether I was actually a god or not — what did a detail like that even matter? That said, one thing I could personally vouch for: his faith was anything but misguided.

Of course, Von's reaction aside, it wasn't exactly a lavish gift. Roughly a single day had passed since my ability awakened, and in that time Von had spent more than a hundred days of his own grinding out points for me. Two hundred fourteen of them, even setting aside what came from achievements. Tally in the blessing I'd bought him last time, and the whole thing amounted to nothing more than spending on him exactly what he had earned for me.

"Kind of embarrassing, honestly."

Watching Von pray right there on the spot, tears streaming down his face, made the back of my neck itch. ...It wasn't as if I'd asked for a reaction this dramatic. If anything, I was closer to a crooked boss who worked his heroes while keeping a strict ledger of break-even.

"Go earn me plenty."

With that, I ended my brief stint as a spectator and returned to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠main interface — and reminded myself of the original purpose I'd been putting off.

A trait had grown. Which meant a new hero could now be registered in the expanded slot. And that raised a question: could I perhaps register the characters I'd used in the original game? I tried it on the spot.

And, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, I was blocked. Well, fair enough — the so-called SSR heroes had absurdly overpowered lore. Take Seria, the launch-window SSR who was both ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my treasured favorite and written off by the meta as powercrept: her level of strength simply existed on another plane. You could field a Von Grote for every human on Earth and they still wouldn't beat her. Presumably the points they'd rake in would differ by just as many orders of magnitude, too. Maybe if I grew the trait, I'd get to see it someday.

The original eight members of my main roster were all SSR. Of the remaining twenty-seven, nineteen had come from that final gacha pull — and among those, presumably only the Normal-grade ones would be registrable.

"...Huh. There's even a Murim guy in here."

The surprise was Go Jung-hak, sitting in the middle of the list — an Eastern warrior with a severe, hard-bitten face and a long blade scar that made him look properly dangerous. Going by appearance alone, he seemed plenty strong... but a 'third-rate escort' surely wasn't actually strong, right?

"Hey, don't look at me — I don't know the first thing about Murim!"

My knowledge of the Murim was, admittedly, a little thin. I knew that the Heavenly Demon zipped around firing death beams, and that he was an all-around prodigy equally gifted at cooking, massage, healing, and childcare. And that 'breath cultivation' was, apparently, something you paired with breakfast — not lunch, not dinner, breakfast. And so Mr. Go Jung-hak was passed over for the time being.

I turned the remaining candidates over in my head for a good long while, until the words slipped out on their own.

"...She's kind of a steal, actually."

Judging by Von Grote's example, points flowed better the bigger the incident. Slaying monsters, resolving some crisis — that sort of thing. Day-to-day living alone wasn't going to earn points. So among a retired old-timer, a girl peddling wild herbs, a hired porter, and a factory girl, there wasn't exactly a wealth of better options.

Or... could I maybe pull a brand-new hero?

"Okay! Nope. Forget it!"

Five thousand points even at the discount? Give me a break. Having scrubbed away every trace of temptation, I coolly selected one from the list.

"I choose you."

My reasons for choosing her, specifically, were nothing special.

"...Not that I'm the type to pick by looks."

First: of the profiles that had popped up, hers was the only impression that seemed even remotely decent. Second: since this world's time flowed a hundred times faster than mine, having someone who would stick around longer seemed better for learning the system, too. Surely this girl would outlive a mercenary or a retired soldier? Even if this factory girl, who looked to be in her twenties, eventually died of old age, barely half a year would have passed on my end. Besides, I already had Von covering the dangerous-work division. He was stronger now than he had ever been, so the point supply would only speed up.

The first rule of asset management, after all, is separating your safe assets from your risky ones.

The Tower had what were called main stages on every floor divisible by five. Normal stages were simple affairs — monsters popping up, or clearing a mission or trial in some small pocket of territory. Main stages, by contrast, were entire worlds unto themselves. Each nation's main stage even took a different form, and once first-clear players conquered one, it thereafter transformed into something like a save point. There were people, in fact, who spent more of their lives inside the Tower's main stages than outside of them.

And the main stage that stood for them all was, as a rule, the 5th floor. Anything below the 5th floor was, for all intents and purposes, the tutorial! There was even a saying that you couldn't call yourself a real player until you reached the first main stage. Never mind that only about twenty ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠percent of all players ever reached the second one — or that the low-floor players camped out on the 5th contributed precisely nothing to the Tower's conquest, a fact that stirred its share of controversy. From the 5th floor up, sheer diligence alone earned you at least two to three hundred thousand won a day, and the diligent pulled in over five hundred thousand — so plenty of people simply stopped right there.

On the community forums especially, they were sneered at under names like "climbing-hiatus kids" or "grind-leeches."

Of course, none of that mockery ever gave low-floor players any motivation to climb. Naturally, if you had the ability, higher floors were better. Social standing and treatment changed with every floor, and it was possible to become not merely a comfortable high earner but a genuine near-chaebol.

But not everyone could become a top-tier player. Innate stat growth, trait grades, natural nerve, combat sense — the list went on. For any number of reasons, the majority of players were content to settle at around this altitude.

And this was where such players clocked in every single day. The government's official request office on the outskirts of the 5th floor of Korea's Tower of Time was, at the moment, rather crowded.

"No, that's what I'm saying — why is this half price? It's only the outer leather that's a little scuffed."

"Fuck, the adds going berserk was your fault! Ugh, this is such bullshit."

"Disputes are prohibited within the request office—!"

"Man, goblin grunt work is straight-up dead."

"I'm telling you, you run the Black Den with a five-man party, what's even left to split?"

To be precise, it was closer to a marketplace. Noise and people, each with their own grievances, were tangled together in a dizzying din.

"Good grief."

Shin Hye-rin, who had been watching the scene for a while, let out a sigh. The 5th floor of the early days surely hadn't looked like this.

"...Maybe it really is a waste of time."

It had been different back when Shin Hye-rin first awakened. Even then, a good deal of time had passed since the Tower's appearance, but everyone still had the will to climb. The climbed floors weren't nearly as high as they were now, and the absolute number of players was far smaller, so monsters spilling out of the Tower were an everyday occurrence. People shared a strange, unspoken sense of mission — protect your family, protect your country. There had definitely been such a time.

But now, whichever way she looked, all she saw were people steeped in stagnation. It was bad enough that of all the players awakened in the past five years, those who had reached the upper floors could be counted on the fingers of two hands. So maybe her guildmates had a point — that scouting rookies on the 5th floor was a fool's errand. These people were dead behind the eyes before anything else.

"Tsk."

She had just clicked her tongue and was stepping out of the request office when—

"Oof, shit! Nngh—ughk— AAAAGH!"

"...?"

A man came trundling into the request office, trailing a ridiculous racket of groans. By his appearance, and by the strength she could sense off him, there was nothing special about him at all. But if anything caught her eye, it was this: he was almost certainly a player who had only just climbed the 5th floor. The pink slime from the entry trial assigned to every climber since the 5th floor's full conquest — its remains were caked over him from head to toe. Apparently he'd come through quite the desperate struggle. Watching him stagger, half-dead, barely hauling himself to the desk, she smiled a little.

"Cute."

"...?"

Whether he had heard her voice or not, the man turned slowly to look her way. Shin Hye-rin curved her lips into a soft smile at him, then resumed walking. Her mood had lifted, if only a little.

"He'll never make the upper floors, but..."

He was weak even by the standards of a player fresh off the 5th floor. Never mind the entry trial's pink slime — he was barely scraping by against the goblin packs of the 5th-floor climbing exam. But the living fire in his eyes warmed Shin Hye-rin's heart, just a little.

"There ought to be more kids like him."

Given his apparent age, the phrasing was more than a little absurd — but given that Shin Hye-rin was, at present, a twenty-seventh-year player, there was nothing wrong with it. And so she cheered on the future of a junior impossibly far below her, if only in her heart. Unfortunately, the sentiment did not appear to have been conveyed with any clarity.

"Is she a crazy bitch? Why the hell is she smiling at my face?"

Lee Seongmin, for his part, was feeling rather hot under the collar.