He looked to be in his late twenties.
He was a man with striking, clean-cut features, well suited to the blue martial arts uniform particular to the Namgung Clan.
The first thought that came upon taking in Namgung Su-ho's appearance was.
'Thank goodness.'
It was relief.
The reason was the variables of Summon.
By Namgung Cheol's explanation everyone apart from the Namgung Clan was a martial artist, yet oddly, most of the Namgung Clan were ordinary people. Thirty of their forty people were ordinary. Since they made up more than half of the whole, there was a high chance that one use of Summon in every two would bring out an ordinary person.
Honestly, he had a question about that.
The other sects were effectively annihilated, so how had the Namgung Clan managed to keep so many people alive?
He swallowed down the question that had risen to the base of his jaw.
The faces of people who looked to carry many stories.
What he had learned from life among people was that curiosity that crossed a line could invite disaster.
'......As long as there's certainty that both sides gain, a relationship of mutual aid doesn't require perfect understanding.'
He put the thought aside.
He asked Namgung Su-ho.
"Introduce yourself briefly, please."
"I am Namgung Su-ho, Vice Captain of the Azure Sky Corps."
"Vice Captain?"
"Yes. The Captain, my direct superior, has died, so at present I fill the Captain's role in practice."
He was a bigger figure than expected.
Ten of the forty.
They all belonged to the Azure Sky Corps.
If he was the Vice Captain of the armed force that represented the Namgung Clan, there seemed no need to use Conscription just to clear Floor 1.
'The important point is what level a figure like Namgung Su-ho stands at.'
It was a standard he absolutely needed.
Murim.
It was a world with the strength to clear up to the forty-ninth floor, but there was no certainty that the survivors were necessarily skilled enough to match a grade of 'forty-nine'. The very fact that they had survived was also proof that they were not the sort who had faced the trial of the fiftieth floor.
He did not ask for much.
Only enough to be competitive.
If the [martial artists of murim] proved their own strength, Kim Tae-seong intended to live a new life from here on.
'The reason I became a hunter was my family's safety and money. If their help solves that problem, nothing could be better for me.'
He opened his mouth.
Just as he was about to explain what came next.
"Monsters are approaching."
Namgung Su-ho set his hand to his scabbard and warned him in a voice sharp as a blue blade edge.
Kim Tae-seong turned his head as well.
"What?"
The pitch-dark space.
With Kim Tae-seong's senses, there was no feeling whatsoever of what lay beyond it.
***
Tower Floor 1.
Of [Floor 1], which Kim Tae-seong had experienced himself, the most widely supported strategy guide explained it this way.
[The first gate that tests hunters. The monsters that appear are goblins, which even F-Grade can handle well enough, but past the early stretch they form packs and attack in coordination, which makes them very troublesome. The hobgoblins that command them are cunning strategists, and they drive climbers into difficulty not only with tactical movement but with traps and poison. For this reason, conquering Floor 1 requires two conditions without fail. The first is a holder of an area skill that can sweep away numerous enemies, the second a holder of a skill that resolves traps and poison. Only when both conditions are met will you finally grasp the thread to clearing Floor 1.]
Two conditions.
Kim Tae-seong had joined [A Squad] by satisfying the second of them.
Having no Unique Skill, he had scraped together every coin he could and acquired the [Search] and [Herbalism] skills.
This fact.
There was no time to explain it.
Barely ten seconds after Namgung Su-ho spat out his warning, the howling of beasts came from beyond the pitch-dark space.
SKREE.
SKRRRRK.
Goblins.
The distinctive, sickening stench and the cries were unmistakable.
Just as Kim Tae-seong was about to warn him.
"Please watch."
Namgung Su-ho said calmly.
"The Clan Head told us to prove our worth. I do not know by what cause our meeting across dimensions came about, but our Namgung Clan will most certainly bring benefit to you, Savior."
He walked with heavy, steady steps.
Whether he felt no fear or not, there was no hesitation in his steps toward the darkness.
WHOOSH.
The torches wavered.
The instant the darkness lifted a little, a pack of goblins revealed themselves.
KIIIEK! KYAAAK!
Three of them.
They hurled themselves forward and flew at him.
Against that attack of swinging, sharp claws, Namgung Su-ho's body moved.
Kim Tae-seong's eyes shook.
It was a very beautiful sight.
A crisp wind blew, and before he knew it the drawn sword cut swiftly through the air.
SHIK-SHIK-SHIK.
SPURT!
Blood scattered.
Taking the blood that drifted down like flower petals in a patter across him, Namgung Su-ho could be seen withdrawing his sword.
CLACK.
THUD, THUD, THUD.
Three goblins.
Stained crimson, they sprawled across the floor.
Without so much as wiping the blood from his handsome face, Namgung Su-ho turned an indifferent gaze on Kim Tae-seong.
"Let us go."
Certainty settled in him.
The contract with the people of murim.
"I will open the way."
This was a jackpot, without a doubt.
***
A single strike.
He had dealt with three goblins in an instant, but that did not make Kim Tae-seong, who had been through it all, trust him unconditionally.
No area skill.
No Search.
No antidote.
He thought Namgung Su-ho alone might have a hard time of it.
And yet.
"......Whoa."
He lost himself.
Namgung Su-ho's performance was nothing short of appalling.
TWANG.
FWISH-SHSH-SHK!
Arrows pouring in from every direction.
The instant the trap triggered, Namgung Su-ho moved with nimble speed and cut down every incoming arrowhead with his sword.
Poison?
That sort of thing did not even work.
Poisoning him was impossible to begin with, and even without the [Search] skill he broke through every trap in one go.
Then the goblins joined forces.
The clever hobgoblin gathered its forces into one and chose to press Namgung Su-ho with a human wave tactic.
It was the situation the strategy guide had warned of.
He had thought it might be hard without an area skill, but once again Namgung Su-ho showed something beyond common sense.
FLASH.
SHK-SHK-SHK-SHK-SHAK!
KREEEK!
KIEK!
The sword flashed.
The sharp sword technique of the Namgung Clan unfolded, and the limbs of every goblin in the space Namgung Su-ho set foot in were torn to shreds. Strategy meant nothing, numbers meant nothing. Whether one goblin charged or ten charged, the fact that they were all butchered in a single strike did not change.
This situation.
Before witnessing the performance before his eyes, Kim Tae-seong had thought this.
'......In a world that cleared the forty-ninth floor, what level would the Vice Captain of the Azure Sky Corps that represents the Namgung Clan be by our world's standard? B-Grade at the very least? Or maybe even A-Grade.'
S-Grade.
Since this was not even Namgung Cheol, he had thought it would not go that far.
He was not the strongest of a world, in the end was he not merely one master among many?
That was the realm of common sense, and yet.
[Human! Die!]
The final boss of Floor 1.
Before the hobgoblin could even finish casting its magic.
TAP.
THWACK!
Its head was blown off.
Watching Namgung Su-ho shoot forward like an arrow, Kim Tae-seong grew certain.
"......This is A-Grade at the least, isn't it?"
It was certain.
Their strength could not be explained by this world's standards.
It was then.
The moment Floor 1 was cleared.
[You have passed the trial of Tower Floor 1.]
[Personnel: 1]
[Record: 8 minutes 30 seconds]
[The minimum-personnel shortest record of 17 minutes 23 seconds has been broken. A special reward applying the value of the difference is granted.]
A voice he had never heard in his life bored into his ears.
***
Tower climbing had a peculiar structure.
Anyone who possessed a Unique Skill could climb, but towers were not shared, they existed as individual spaces.
Which meant.
When hunters A, B and C each attempted Floor 1 at the same time.
It meant they faced the trial in different first floors.
However, when they formed a party, they shared the tower.
That was precisely the concept of the 'five-man party'.
If one could climb the tower alone there would be no problem at all, but the tower's difficulty was normally far too high to handle alone. Yet increasing the number recklessly brought the risk that the tower's difficulty rose with the head count. So the whole world put its heads together and, after piling clear results atop countless corpses, concluded that a five-man party was the ideal number for climbing the tower.
That was not the only interesting fact.
For a one-man climb.
For a two-man climb.
Figures were recorded for each.
Those records were shared with climbers, so they became a kind of gossip that stirred hunters all over the world.
That was why.
A community used by hunters worldwide.
A post went up on Hunter Camp.
-What is this record? Floor 1 or not, they're saying a solo climb cleared it in 8 minutes 30 seconds?
One post.
It raised an enormous stir.
It was because anyone with sense who knew this world clearly recognized that the figure was impossible.
-Insane. 8 minutes 30 seconds?
-Does that even make sense?
-Absolutely impossible. The reason Floor 1 is so f***ing awful is that it's full of things that drag the time out, like head count, traps and poison. That's why a beginner party takes at least three hours, so how the hell does someone clear it alone in 8 minutes?
-Wasn't the record the 'Lion of Sweden' set back then in the 17-minute range? If he cut that in half, that's fucking unreal.
The Lion of Sweden.
It referred to Bjorn Gustafsson, an S-Grade hunter.
He was a highly unusual figure who went against the flow of an age in which five-man parties were the norm and chose solo climbs without exception.
As a result, his name was stamped on every one of the solo climb records.
Other S-Grade hunters tried to break the records through reverse climbs, but they could not surpass the records of Bjorn Gustafsson, who was specialized in solo climbing.
Which meant.
This was a figure that could not be dismissed as a mere Floor 1 record.
-Seriously, even Bjorn Gustafsson couldn't get past the ten-minute wall, so who on earth broke that record?
-Whoever it is, I hope they're Korean.
-Nope, he's British.
-Nope, he's American.
-You idiot bastards. He's definitely from a great power.
People went wild.
The reason they each claimed the climber as their own countryman was not simple patriotism.
That too.
It was a peculiarity of the tower.
The moment a tower's trial is cleared.
Over roughly one month, the 'Monster Wave' phenomenon occurs, in which the monsters that appeared in that tower pour out of it.
At that time, in the location where the person who cleared the tower's trial climbed, that is, in that nation, the Monster Wave still occurs, but its difficulty drops markedly, to about half that of other nations. It remains a mystery of the world whose cause has still not been found, and because of it competition between nations to secure high-grade hunters has grown extremely fierce.
Think about it.
Preventing destruction is one thing.
But the nation that cleared the trial gains a considerable advantage even in the Monster Wave.
International law required climbing when one month remained on a tower's limit both to guard against the difficulty rising rapidly from fast climbs and to regulate the competition between nations for the climbing benefits.
-If you ask me it's just a fluke. It's only Floor 1 anyway.
-I concur.
-Maybe so.
-True. If it's Floor 1, where the counters are worn smooth from use, a record outside common sense could come out.
-Are you dumbasses? If he made this record off counters that worn out, just thinking up that strategy makes him worth recruiting for any country.
Up to that point it was a small commotion.
Only Floor 1.
For a humanity that had reached the twentieth floor, a Floor 1 record left some room to be understood within common sense.
But three hours later.
[Tower Floor 2]
[Personnel: 1]
[Record: 6 minutes 58 seconds]
[Tower Floor 3]
[Personnel: 1]
[Record: 7 minutes 20 seconds]
[Tower Floor 4]
[Personnel: 1]
[Record: 7 minutes 33 seconds]
-???????????
-Is the tower bugged?
-Holy shit.
-What crazy bastard is smashing records on solo climbs?
At the records suddenly falling one after another, the world began to turn upside down.