Hall of Fame

A book of familiar shape dropped from the sky with a soft thump.

The rewards granted by the Tower of Trials were precious enough in their own right, but for some time now Do-yun's attention had been elsewhere.

A Hall of Fame bearing only Do-yun's name. Grasping what that meant was not particularly difficult.

"So I cleared it in first place."

Apparently the Tower of Ascension awarded its prizes on a first-come, first-served basis. If it didn't, there would be no reason to invent a Hall of Fame system and stoke competition in the first place.

Ding.

While he was still turning the situation over in his mind, a clear chime rang out and the Hall of Fame refreshed.

The name glittered as if inviting him to click it. Curious, Do-yun reached out, and a video began to play before his eyes.

— What the hell. The layout is identical to the Tower of Trials?

A woman with cat ears rising from her head. He had definitely seen that face on Floor 0.

The lunatic who slit the throat of the guy standing next to her the second things started. So her name was Kaya.

Do-yun settled in calmly and began to watch. Given that she had deliberately provoked a free-for-all on Floor 0, it was entirely possible they would clash again. Memorizing a rival's traits in advance was only prudent.

— Hmm. It's been downgraded to F-rank, but I can still use the blessing.

Wind whipped up around the woman called Kaya. Watching the gales spiral in time with her breathing, Do-yun understood at once why she carried the epithet Gale.

— Shall I go for a record?

A wicked smile curved Kaya's lips—and in the next instant her figure vanished. The screen jolted. In the footage that followed, her form registered only as a blurred afterimage. The glimpses of scenery showed traps firing late, hopelessly unable to keep up with her speed.

"Good grief."

Do-yun stared at the video, speechless. He rewound and replayed it several times, but his eyes could extract nothing useful.

"Is that kind of speed even possible on F-rank skills alone?"

Coming from the man who had obliterated the corridor with an F-rank skill of his own, the question was a little rich—but even so, that velocity defied any ordinary explanation. As he puzzled over it, a thought flashed through his mind.

The Tower of Ascension entry reward.

The system that had granted skills based on Floor 0 performance. She must have received an additional skill that compensated for speed. Having reached that conclusion, Do-yun closed his mouth and focused on the recording. There was still time left before it ended.

The next scene opened with Kaya returning to the starting point, just as Do-yun had.

— Huh?

As she surveyed her surroundings, Kaya's pupils went briefly unfocused. She was looking somewhere, but her gaze wouldn't lock on. She furrowed her brow as if trying to stare at a notification window, yet she was clearly struggling to read anything.

Only then did Do-yun grasp the situation. Kaya's vision had been sealed.

You've got to be kidding me.

Sight was the sense that carried the greatest weight in perceiving the world. It didn't seem as though they had rendered her completely blind, unable to see an inch ahead—but even so, the penalty was enormous. It was enough to make him feel grateful that only his mana had been sealed.

What was more astonishing, though, was Kaya's attitude.

— Aha, got it. So I have to run it again with my vision blocked?

Even though she was fumbling just to read the system window floating right in front of her face, Kaya simply nodded as if it were nothing.

— No big deal.

Do-yun nearly doubted his ears. Her sight was sealed and it was no big deal? But as the video continued and he watched Kaya move, he understood that her confidence had not come from nowhere.

— Around here is where the arrows came out, I think.

Her movements were terrifyingly precise. Even without sight, her body showed not a fraction of hesitation. As though she had already carved the route and the trap patterns into her mind during the first run, she maintained a steady pace without ever colliding with a wall.

That said, no one could memorize every trap.

Whoosh.

An arrow fired from a blind spot streaked toward her back—

— Too slow.

—and Kaya ducked as if she had known it was coming. The floor gave way a beat later; she leapt a tempo early. A spear thrusting from a gap in the wall missed her by a hair's breadth.

Watching in disbelief, Do-yun soon realized the truth. She had not memorized every path. Even the sharpest mind couldn't hold all of that. Kaya was simply reacting in real time. Her ears twitched at the whistle of an approaching arrow and locked onto its direction. Her sense of balance, detecting an unstable foothold, launched her body upward. Pure animal instinct.

The recording cut off as Kaya seized the white crystal. Do-yun, who had been watching as if at a circus performance, finally tore his eyes from the screen and looked up. In that time, many more names had been added to the Hall of Fame.

Considering how long he had spent watching Kaya's recording, it seemed only the top five made the Hall of Fame. Do-yun watched the others' videos one by one.

A cyborg whose body was half replaced by machinery. Red sensors where eyes should have been swept the corridor, analyzing its structure.

— Target structure pattern: complete match. Calculating optimal route.

Heavy footsteps thundered down the hall. Having recognized that Floor 2 was identical in layout to the Tower of Trials, the machine systematically avoided every trap trigger and passed through the corridor with ruthless efficiency.

From the second challenge onward, the cyborg lost every record of Floor 2. Only then did Destroyer live up to its name.

— Intelligent pathfinding offline. Switching to destruction mode.

A flamethrower erupted from the cyborg's left arm, spewing fire that began to melt the walls outright. Confronted with heat hot enough to liquefy steel, the traps lost their original forms and ceased to function.

A man with his hands shoved lazily into his pockets, his face a study in indifference. The moment the trial-start notification appeared, his body melted into the darkness. Transformed into something like a shadow, he passed traps that could not even detect him.

On the second challenge, he could not travel nearly so comfortably. Grham's brow twitched slightly. He drew a dagger from his coat and flung it forward.

— Haa. What a pointless pain in the ass.

The dagger spun through the air and punched into a seam in the wall. Crack. A hidden arrow launcher coughed out a plume of smoke and died. Grham drew a second dagger, then a third. Each one traced an uncanny arc through the air and neutralized another trap.

A hulking man clad head to toe in full plate. He put his shield forward and bulldozed through every trap in his path.

— Hup!

Petty traps could not bar his way. Spears that rose to block him snapped like dry reeds.

On the second challenge he was stripped of the shield and armor that had been absorbing damage for him—yet the man simply barreled down the corridor bare-bodied.

— Kwahahaha! You think this garbage can stop me?!

His behavior almost made one wonder whether it was his intelligence that had been confiscated rather than his shield. The arrows, for their part, simply bounced off his skin without piercing it.

"Honestly. Not a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠single one of them is normal."

Do-yun muttered under his breath and shook his head. He had to wonder whether these people were even the same species. The way each of them cracked the trial on their own terms went past admiration and into pure astonishment.

But something else was more surprising still.

His own name, sitting proudly in first place. Compared even to second-place Kaya, the record was more than twice as fast. Stacked against the names listed below that, the gap was practically dimensional.

Of course, the reason was simple. What everyone else had to clear twice, Do-yun had passed in a single run.

What will those monsters think when they see this record?

Would they write it off as a cheap trick? Wave it away as luck? Just imagining competing with them made his head spin—but fortunately, Do-yun had something of his own to put forward. Namely, his absurd skill coefficients.

The skill selection ticket awarded for an S-rank clear of the Tower of Trials. The book opened of its own accord, and a flood of text rose before his eyes.

On Floor 0 the situation had been too desperate to examine anything properly, but now that he had time to spare he intended to look through every skill with care.

First, dump every attack-related ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skill.

Right now, Bash alone gave him more than enough offensive power. What Do-yun needed was a skill that would expand his survivability—especially something that could restore health.

I need the ability to hold out once beginner protection disappears.

He had felt it when the arrows hit him on Floor 2. Thanks to beginner protection he had only lost single-digit health—but without it, more than half his HP would have vanished in an instant. A genuinely dangerous situation.

I don't know what happens when health hits zero.

If he could return to Earth the way other returnees did, that would be fortunate. But if not—if death simply claimed him on the spot? Do-yun had no intention of staking his life on an uncertain possibility.

In the end, the skill Do-yun chose was First Aid—the one that restored health instantly.

"Anyone else who saw ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this would say I'd lost my mind."

Do-yun read the description of First Aid and snorted a quiet laugh. He was remembering the footage of returnees recoiling in horror at anyone who picked that piece of trash.

— Every so often someone panics about losing HP and picks First Aid. Do not do that. Ever.

— Think about landing one more hit, or dodging one more hit, instead.

— Why on earth is your first thought recovering after you've already been hit?

It was a video uploaded by a returnee who had climbed all the way to Floor 75—a piece of conventional wisdom treated as gospel even among returnees who argued about everything else.

— It's five HP per one mana! What kind of exchange rate is that?

— If you want to be a healer, grab Light of Healing among the B-rank skills.

— That one restores fifty HP per one mana. Ten times the efficiency, people!

The face of the man ranting on the screen overlapped with the numbers floating in the system window before Do-yun's eyes.

Numbers that could stand beside a B-rank skill. No—numbers that outright crushed a B-rank skill. In practice, it was no different from carrying several spare lives.

"With this, I can finally breathe easy."

As Do-yun gazed with satisfaction at his newly acquired skill, enough time must have passed, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠because a fresh set of notifications appeared before his eyes.