Murim.
The reason Kim Tae-seong knew that world was not simply that he had come across it in novels.
The skills that formed the foundation of hunters today came in a great many kinds, and among them were all the mysteries of the world, martial arts, magic and sorcery included. In 'China' especially the proportion of martial arts skill holders was overwhelmingly high, and a paper had even been published arguing that a person's origin was directly connected to their Unique Skill.
'Murim, of all things.'
It was bewildering.
Predicting something by logic and facing a world that actually existed were entirely different matters.
Kim Tae-seong looked at the people slowly.
The man who had identified himself as Namgung Cheol.
Behind him were dozens of people, and if most of them wore matching clothing, a few wore something entirely different.
'......Judge the situation calmly.'
A ninth-year D-Grade hunter.
Low as his grade was, he had been through it all, mountain and water alike.
Those who could not respond to unfamiliar situations were already sprawled in some corner of the tower, giving off a foul stench.
'The fact that it's called the E-031 dimension means there are other dimensions besides the world I live in. One of them is this murim of theirs, and if Namgung Cheol's words are true, it was destroyed because it couldn't withstand the trials of the tower. What I need is a clear timeline, and exactly what benefit cooperating with these people can bring me.'
The skill's ability.
He could summon them.
If so, there was a chance this relationship could become one of mutual aid.
Kim Tae-seong spoke.
"If you want my help, then from beginning to end. Explain everything about why it is that we have come to meet."
"Understood."
Namgung Cheol nodded.
They were the ones who wanted help.
There was no other way.
"It was a day no different from any other. Suddenly the thing called the 'tower' appeared......."
Namgung Cheol's story began.
It was the same as Kim Tae-seong's world.
The tower's appearance was sudden.
Murim fell into chaos over a tower that had appeared without any special omen, but the difference from modern civilization was that the martial artists of murim already possessed formidable force. They cleared the tower's trials in an instant. It took them less than five years to break through the 'twentieth floor' that Kim Tae-seong's world now struggled against, and as they solved every problem with the momentum of splitting bamboo, it seemed they would soon clear even the final gate of the fiftieth floor.
That was human arrogance.
And human delusion.
The fiftieth floor.
Murim failed the climb.
Despite a generous limit of a full ten years they failed utterly, and the moment the deadline passed, the ecosystem collapsed.
Meteors fell from the sky.
The seas overflowed.
Volcanoes erupted.
A world where countless people had lived fell in an instant into a hell where not a single living thing could survive.
"What we faced on the fiftieth floor, and why we failed, not a thing of it remains in my memory, as though it were a lie. What is certain is that we are all the humanity that survived. With nothing to eat and nothing to drink permitted us, I wished to give up on life, but before I am Clan Head of the Namgung Clan, I am one grown man, and as such there is a reason I cannot give up."
His gaze slid aside.
Kim Tae-seong's eyes moved with it, and in them appeared a newborn cradled in a woman's arms.
"In truth, this situation bewilders us as well. We cannot be certain that those sudden words asking whether we consented to the 'Link' will save us, but if this is the will of a god telling us that this world is not yet over. Then please, help us. We need things that will answer our hunger and thirst at once."
The story ended there.
Every gaze was fixed on him.
The choice was Kim Tae-seong's.
***
The series of events.
He fit the puzzle together.
The people before him needed help.
With nothing they needed to survive, they had permitted an unknown being to set foot in their world.
'Their demands aren't excessive. The important point, in the end, is that this situation arose from my Unique Skill.'
Summon, Conscription, Salvation.
The context of the skills was clear.
Summon these people.
Conscript them, and solve the problems of reality.
If so, Kim Tae-seong's skill would help in saving this world.
Kim Tae-seong spoke.
"That part I can help with. However, there is a condition."
"Name anything."
"My ability lets me temporarily summon people of this world into 'the world I live in'. If you answer that call, you must gladly take up your weapons and fight for me. That is the condition I ask for."
Namgung Cheol's story.
As he listened, lightning had struck inside his head.
Think about it.
These people had lost.
At the same time, they were the ones who had cleared up to the forty-ninth floor.
In Kim Tae-seong's world, still struggling at the twentieth floor, they were a cheat code that destroyed common sense.
Namgung Cheol turned his head.
He met the eyes of several figures among them who wore different clothing rather than the matching kind, and nodded.
"Understood. If you will save us."
CLENCH.
He ground his teeth together.
"We gladly pledge, upon the name of the 'Namgung Clan', that we will lay down our lives for you."
That answer.
It was enough.
Kim Tae-seong and murim.
It was the moment the deal between two worlds was struck.
***
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
SWING.
The door opened with the familiar electronic tone.
The patter of running feet came from the living room, and then his mother's worried face caught his eye.
"You're back?"
That expression.
He knew what it meant.
By rights, today was the day of the sixth-floor climb.
He had left the house that morning after a meal his mother had put her heart into, and barely an hour later he had sent a text saying the climb had been canceled. So she must have waited until the sun went down. That first greeting, which did not even ask what had happened, showed how much his mother worried about his situation.
"I'm a bit late, aren't I?"
"You've had a hard day. Have you eaten?"
"I've eaten."
"Go on in and rest."
It was an everyday conversation.
At his mother's unbothered response, Kim Tae-seong smiled awkwardly and made his way to his room.
His father had passed away over a decade ago.
As the head of the household supporting his mother and two younger siblings, he would normally have offered some excuse to ease her worry.
In fact, while throwing back drinks, he had agonized over how to say it.
His values had not matched the team leader's.
He was thinking of joining a better team, and so on.
But now there was no room for that.
Kim Tae-seong opened his door and stepped in, dropped into his chair, and stared blankly at the ceiling.
"......This is bewildering, seriously."
The conversation with Namgung Cheol.
The deal had been struck.
Afterward, he had heard a further explanation from Namgung Cheol.
"The people living here number a little over fifty. Those of the Namgung Clan are about forty, and the people of the Jaegal Clan, Shaolin and Mount Hua together do not even reach ten. The three in black martial arts uniforms over there are of the Heaven-Breaking Fortress of the unorthodox sects, and there are also about five people of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult who are not present here."
The final fiftieth floor.
The orthodox, the unorthodox and the demonic joined forces.
This was the result.
Of the forces called the Nine Sects One Gang and the Five Great Clans only four sects remained, and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and the Heaven-Breaking Fortress that had once commanded murim were left with numbers too embarrassing to call 'sects'. Having clung to life even as the world was destroyed, they had no choice but to choose compromise in this barren land where not a single blade of grass survived.
It was a small murim.
With their situation like a lamp before the wind, Kim Tae-seong had used the Salvation skill at once.
He intended to share out the food in his [Inventory] as well, but from the start he had known that Salvation was the way to resolve this situation.
What happened afterward was nothing less than a divine miracle.
A green light rose.
It spread outward, and the earth and undergrowth the light touched came alive, the gray clouds were pushed back and clear air filled their lungs, and the murky, stagnant, rotten water regained its original clarity.
The area was limited.
Sixteen hundred square meters at most?
But it was enough.
Facing the miracle, Namgung Cheol lowered his head and spoke.
"Thank you, thank you! I, Namgung Cheol, will lay down my life for the Savior from this day forward!"
That was an hour ago.
A scene that had been vivid until moments before.
When the three-hour link time was exceeded, Kim Tae-seong returned to his original world.
'While I was over in the E-031 dimension, not a single second passed in this world.'
How did he know that?
Thanks to the stall owner who came out right after him.
The owner, who said he had given the wrong change, treated Kim Tae-seong as someone who had been inside the stall until a moment ago.
He was still dazed.
The unsealing of his Unique Skill.
The deal with Namgung Cheol.
He had not yet experienced in any practical way what it meant.
What was clear.
'I need to check it right away.'
Today it was late.
As soon as day broke tomorrow, Kim Tae-seong organized in his head a plan for how to move.
***
The next day.
Kim Tae-seong left the house early.
It was to climb the tower.
The tower was not bound by place, but there were several rules set by international law.
1. It must be an open lot.
2. It must be prepared for an Overflow.
In fact, the first and the second came from the same context.
There was no strict need for an open lot, but when a tower challenge failed, a phenomenon called 'Overflow' sometimes occurred.
It was a phenomenon in which the tower's monsters burst outside, so a safeguard against a possible disaster was necessary.
For that reason the government created climb points.
A climb point was set for each floor.
In exchange for guarding against overflowed monsters there, they took a set fee.
'Just in case, I'd better prepare for an Overflow.'
This climb.
He intended to do a solo climb.
On the way to the climb point, an anchor's voice came from the bus radio.
[......News that Team Archer, one of Britain's official expeditions, has failed the twentieth-floor climb. With twenty-eight days now left on the limit, experts are expressing concern that the world governments have yet to establish a clear solution.]
Team Archer.
A national official expedition.
The failure of Archer, which included an S-Grade hunter, was certainly shocking news.
Even so, people including Kim Tae-seong went on living their daily lives.
There was no other way.
The deadline shrank by a day every day.
This time it was the twentieth floor's deadline, but for over a decade the deadlines of other floors had always pressed down on people.
When the tenth floor was cleared in particular, the 'Dead Wave' phenomenon had occurred with less than a week remaining, and so people, worried as they were, had adapted to this world that might be destroyed as soon as tomorrow.
He was worried.
He could only hope that the world governments would solve it.
Kim Tae-seong buried his worry in a corner of his mind as well and got off at his destination.
[Korean Hunter Association]
The climb point was inside the association.
He stepped inside and was assigned a zone right away.
[F-23]
F was the grade.
23 was the room number.
It meant room 23, where people challenging floors one and two, which fell under F-Grade, made their attempts.
It was familiar.
He had used the place all along, so he found the room marked [F-23] and went in.
It was a space of barely thirty square meters, but more than sufficient for summoning the tower's entrance.
Preparations were done.
Therefore.
"Floor one, climb."
[The tower's gate has opened.]
[Enter Floor 1?]
"Yes."
FLASH-
Light flared.
Kim Tae-seong stepped inside at once.
Where a moment before it had been a space covered in drab concrete, the space expanded and the interior of an enormous tower filled his sight.
'To come here alone.'
Inside Floor 1.
He had entered the tower.
Kim Tae-seong drew a deep breath.
The dark ceiling and walls, the torches wavering at even intervals along them and the gloomy wind blowing through, the rank stench peculiar to monsters that stabbed at his nose, all of it proved how dangerous this space was.
Floors one and two were zones suited to F-Grade.
Judging by grade alone, Floor 1 might look easy.
In reality it was different.
No matter that he was D-Grade, climbing the tower alone was an entirely different matter.
Had the government not published its data on five-man teams only after countless solo climbers had died?
'If it goes wrong, I just give up and leave.'
The reason he climbed alone.
He needed to confirm what he had obtained.
[Summon] lv1
[Unique-Bound Skill]
-Summons a being of the 'E-031' dimension at random.
-Cooldown: 6 hours
-Duration: 1 hour
-Special Effect: If the duration is exceeded, the summon may be maintained by applying 1 hour of cooldown per 10 minutes.
First of all.
He planned to use Summon.
At first he had wanted to summon 'Namgung Cheol' through Conscription, but in truth he needed to check Summon, with all its variables, first.
The target of Summon was random.
If the random target was unsatisfactory, using Conscription then would not be too late.
"Summon."
FWOOSH.
Light flared.
Beyond the light rising like smoke, the silhouette of a person slowly walked out.
['Namgung Su-ho' of the E-031 dimension has been summoned.]
It was different from the plan.
Not Clan Head Namgung Cheol.
"You called for me, Savior?"
An unfamiliar face, apparently a member of the Namgung Clan, had been summoned.