F-Class Awakening
The year was 1980.
Towers appeared all across the world.
The towers called Awakeners "climbers" and imposed a one-year deadline for the conquest of each floor.
That one year ran from January 1st to December 31st.
Three years later—
The nations of Fiji, Kiribati, and Vanuatu have failed to clear Floor 3 of the Black Tower within the allotted time!
A penalty will now be enforced.
Intermediate-grade monsters will be released.
The message appeared before the eyes of every person on Earth.
It was as refreshing as a blue sea, and yet as ominous as bandits descending without warning.
A sleepy island nation in the South Pacific.
That was where the catastrophe began.
The tower collapsed, and hundreds of thousands of monsters came pouring out.
100,000 Blue Wyverns have been released.
100,000 Sea Serpents have been released.
100,000 Red Wyverns have been released.
Should this penalty also fail, the next will be 1,000,000 intermediate-grade monsters.
On that day, humanity came face to face with a single word: annihilation.
That day, Fiji, Kiribati, and Vanuatu—along with every island nation of the South Pacific—were erased from the world map.
Humanity fought back against the three hundred thousand monsters.
The pinnacle of human science and every Awakener from every nation on Earth rose to meet them, and their strength was truly formidable.
But even so, it took a full ten years before an official victory over the monsters could be announced.
In any case, tower climbing ceased to be a hobby for the Awakeners of the world. It became a duty.
Nations that struggled to climb their towers signed MOUs with countries fielding powerful Awakeners to manage their towers on their behalf.
The results were a success, and humanity wrote a new history of safe climbing.
2025.
The floors assigned worldwide stood at 45. Since no new floor opened before the one-year deadline expired, every country's progress was identical.
Time flowed on like a river, and the danger of the towers no longer felt as immediate as it once had.
But no matter how dull the memory grew, a fear of the disasters the towers could unleash still lay buried deep in the bedrock of the human heart, and society's dependence on Awakeners only climbed higher.
"F-Class."
"Are you sure? Could there be some kind of error?"
"No, sir. It's confirmed. Your main skill is Dream Soul Talk, the ability to converse with souls within dreams."
"So... isn't that an incredible power?"
"It's certainly a remarkable ability, but within the Tower it's essentially useless, so... I'm sorry."
"Ah..."
Yu Jaewoo turned away with a gloomy expression and trudged out of the Awakener Management Bureau.
I took a day off work to get my awakening confirmed, then burned a whole day of annual leave coming here to verify it—and this is what I get.
"F-Class. That's insane."
An Awakener was someone who climbed the Tower.
But not everyone who awakened was willing to risk their life climbing it.
The reason was obvious: every Awakener's abilities varied wildly.
"Status window."
Some people drew the Sword Master class and shredded the Tower's monsters to pieces with their Slash skill.
Others drew the Earth Shaman class and crushed monsters flat with Wrath of the Earth.
And I got Dream Master? And my main skill is—
Description: Allows the creation of the World of Dream Souls, a world within a dream. Entry is achieved through the act of falling asleep, and there you may converse with beings who are not physically bound to the waking world.
"Damn it."
Should I try raising my level? Except leveling up is only possible by conquering the Tower and opening new floors.
Yu Jaewoo briefly imagined entering the Tower.
Slaying monsters, grinding out levels.
But.
Utterly ordinary physical abilities.
A skill useless in combat.
Could I really take down a goblin horde with this?
Nope. Nope nope nope.
He'd count himself lucky just to come back alive.
Damn it, why did it have to be F-Class of all things?
It wasn't as though he dreamed of becoming an S-Rank Awakener.
Risk death to climb the Tower? The mere thought was terrifying.
In reality, most Awakeners never climbed beyond Floors 1 through 10 anyway—they just mined mana stones and farmed items. Yu Jaewoo's wish wasn't all that strange.
"Awakeners rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on mana stones alone."
There were strategy guides, after all.
The monsters on the lower floors were weak.
Which meant—
A relatively safe job with a fat salary.
That had been Yu Jaewoo's dream.
And then.
He awakened as F-Class? Uuugh.
"I'll just rest today and go back to work tomorrow."
He resolved to keep his office job.
It beat dying at the bottom of a Tower, didn't it?
The next day.
"I'm going to need you to clear out your desk starting today."
"I'm sorry, what? Wait... why all of a sudden?"
"Companies have their own circumstances, you understand. Your entire department is being dissolved. Try not to take it too hard."
"No, but still—"
"What can I do? The CEO ordered it, so I'm just the messenger. I have no choice either. None at all."
Bullshit.
The department head—a yes-man who did nothing but kiss up to the CEO of some two-bit family company.
"Understood."
It was a forced resignation.
And he wasn't even the only one hit by it.
The entire team was gone.
When Yu Jaewoo walked into the team office with a heavy heart—
"Son of a bitch. Should've looked into the fact it was a family company before I joined."
"'CEO's Direct Marketing, Sales, and Planning Division.' THAT'S what I should've looked into."
"Whenever we pitched a content direction, he'd change everything on a whim, and when he told us to jump we asked how high, and then he has the nerve to scream at us about why the numbers are down. God, what a shitshow. Never seeing this place again."
"So in the end, we were just playthings for the CEO's hobby."
"Delusional bastard."
Yu Jaewoo felt exactly the same as his teammates.
But what could he do?
He'd just have to hunt for another job.
That day, Yu Jaewoo went out for drinks with his teammates.
He came home thoroughly drunk and collapsed onto his bed.
"Damn it."
Drinking and blowing off steam had been easy enough.
But walking into his one-room apartment alone, the vast, empty reality of it all pressed down on him.
Maybe that was why—
"I need someone to talk to. Anyone."
Yu Jaewoo activated the skill, Dream Soul Talk.
Something he'd have been too scared to try under normal circumstances.
Fwoooosh—
A strange current of energy swept through his six-pyeong room.
Paying it no mind, he flopped face-down and fell asleep.
— Ever since I was young, there was nothing my body could not do.
— Beyond my exceptional physical gifts, my eyes were sharp as well. A single glimpse of any movement, and I grasped both its principle and its subtleties.
— My mother pleaded with me. "Never show such movements before the eyes of others."
— That was why my father left us.
"I... I see."
As the old man spoke, Yu Jaewoo looked around at his surroundings. He remembered activating the skill and falling asleep, and then—
An ancient pavilion, floating above the clouds.
Yu Jaewoo recognized at a glance that this was the world within the dream.
The problem was the old man seated across from him, robed in a violet dragon-silk garment.
One look into the old man's eyes, and Yu Jaewoo found himself seating himself demurely, unable to do anything but listen.
There was something in his presence that simply overwhelmed. An aura both sinister and auspicious at once.
Whoever he was, one thing was certain: this was no ordinary man.
So this is Dream Soul Talk?
What Yu Jaewoo experienced felt less like a conversation and more like listening to an old man pour out his grievances.
— Obeying my mother, the only family I had, I held myself back.
— When the village children tormented me, I endured. When the villagers tormented my mother, I endured.
"That must have been hard to bear."
Fortunately, Yu Jaewoo was the sort of person who listened well to others, so lending an ear to this suspicious old man wasn't particularly difficult.
— Looking back now, I should never have held back from the start. Suppressing my true nature did not suit me.
"Why is that?"
— One of the men of that village killed my mother. So what use, I thought, had all that endurance been?
"..."
— From that day on, I resolved never to hold back again. The first man I killed was the one who had taken my mother's life.
— Killing people was a terribly easy thing for me. And once I began, I found it rather enjoyable, too.
— When I had slaughtered every villager, I felt a pleasant lightness in my chest.
"..."
— Afterward, I washed the stench of blood from my body, changed my clothes, and set out to roam the rivers and lakes of the world. Of course, the scent of blood, once soaked in, never washed away—it followed me wherever I went.
— When I first visited a martial hall, my disappointment was immense. I watched the men wielding their swords, and they were astonishingly, laughably inept.
— Were they swinging so clumsily on purpose?
— Such were my doubts, so I went to see for myself. They were quite unnecessary.
"When you say you went to see for yourself..."
— I went to the martial hall and killed them all.
"...Ah. Haha. That's a 'test'? Haha. What a hearty fellow you are."
— It was then I understood I was profoundly different from other people, and wishing to know the reason, I sought out a scholar named Manbakja who lived in Wuhan, in Hubei, and asked him.
— The moment Manbakja laid eyes on me, he shook his head slowly from side to side.
"What did he say?"
— Ah, the Heavenly Killing Star walks among us!
"...Figures."
Yu Jaewoo finally confirmed it beyond doubt: the being before him was a man of Murim, and with overwhelming probability, the Heavenly Demon himself.
— Only then did I learn that I was a born slaughterer. So I killed the scholar, and set out once more to cradle the world in my hands.
— Manbakja of Hubei was apparently a man of some renown, for word of his death swept back through the martial world like an ill wind, and they gave it a name: the Murim Public Record.
— It scarcely mattered. Martial artists and government officials alike—anyone who came seeking me, I killed without distinction.
— As I wandered the world, I sometimes lent my aid to those who seemed to be struggling.
— Killing the weak was boring—not even good enough to whittle away an idle hour. So I left the weak be, and hunted only the strong.
— And then, at some point, great numbers began to follow me, and they took care of all the tedious matters on my behalf.
"And so it was born."
The Demonic Cult.
Yu Jaewoo was now certain the old man before him was the Heavenly Demon.
And he felt a strange, inexplicable familiarity.
Why is he so much kinder than I'd imagined?
— The epithets people gave me changed year by year. The ones I recall: Peerless Under Heaven. Heavenly Demon. Things of that sort.
"Impressive."
— Tch. I never cared for such things, but before I knew it, a residence called the Heavenly Demon Palace had sprung up around me, and there I took up my dwelling.
— Afterward, I passed my days researching martial arts of every kind, along with formations, sorcery, and the like.
Listening to the Heavenly Demon, Yu Jaewoo suddenly recalled the rival factions from the martial arts novels he'd read.
"Didn't the orthodox sects ever invade?"
— While I lived, they did not so much as dare to think of it.
"..."
So he was the strongest being in the entire setting, huh.
— Perhaps the life I led was not one inferior men should emulate. But I do not regret the years I have lived.
"You've endured much over a long, long time."
At Yu Jaewoo's words, the Heavenly Demon threw his head back and laughed heartily.
Then, the corners of his mouth curling upward, he spoke.
— And yet, of all souls adrift in the nine heavens, the one I meet is you. This must be another destiny bestowed upon me.
"Excuse me?"
— What is your name?
"...Yu Jaewoo."
— Then I shall take you as my disciple, and pass on to you my martial arts and all manner of secret arts.
"Y-yes?"
— Come to this place every night.
Just then—
A spear of deep blue light materialized before Yu Jaewoo.
The Heavenly Demon wishes to form a Dream Soul Talk contract with you.
Do you accept?
"...!!"
Yu Jaewoo was a man with good instincts.
And those instincts were telling him: this might just be the turning point of your life.
Yu Jaewoo dropped flat to the ground and bowed deeply to the Heavenly Demon.
"Then from this day forward, I will serve you as my master."
The Dream Soul Talk contract has been sealed.
Current Dream Soul Talk contractor: Heavenly Demon.
— Heh heh. The training will be grueling.
Yu Jaewoo flinched at those words, but he had no regrets.
This was the day he'd been fired from his job, after all.
Whatever came next had to be enjoyable by comparison, didn't it?
"I will train with the heart of a splinter being drawn from flesh, Master."
"Yes, yes. Still, my martial arts are by no means easy, so you would do well to steel yourself."
"Would I have it any other way?"
From that day on, Yu Jaewoo was able to learn the Heavenly Demon's martial arts within his dreams.