A Hunter’s stats were determined by the number of Tower floors they had cleared.
For example, a Hunter who had cleared the first floor of the Tower would have 1 in every stat, while a Hunter who had cleared the fifth floor would have 5.
And yet……
[Vitality: 5 → 79]
[Magic Power: 5 → 79]
[Strength: 5 → 79]
[Agility: 5 → 79]
‘Seventy-nine?’
Was this for real?
By selling my experience points, my stats had instantly reached 79.
Normally, those were stats one could only attain after reaching the seventy-ninth floor.
The current world’s No. 1 Hunter had only reached the fifty-ninth floor, so there was no need to explain just how absurdly powerful stats corresponding to the seventy-ninth floor were.
And that was not all.
[Vitality is below 5%. ‘Undying Vitality’ has been activated.]
[You will not die for 10 seconds.]
[Vitality is below 30%. ‘Second Wind’ has been activated.]
[Vitality recovery rate increases by 1,000% for 1 minute.]
The tremendous vitality and various special effects I had gained after my Vitality surpassed 70 restored me in an instant, despite the fact that I had practically been a corpse moments ago.
“Hoo……”
No, it went far beyond simply recovering.
Power surged throughout my entire body.
It gave me an overwhelming sense that I could do anything.
Perhaps that was why the Kobolds, who had looked like grim reapers only moments ago, no longer frightened me.
It could not have been merely my imagination.
If the stats displayed before my eyes were real, then I currently possessed stats equivalent to the seventies—heights that no one on Earth had ever reached.
-SKREE… SKREEE……
The Kobolds seemed to sense it instinctively as well.
The creatures that had been gleefully beating me moments ago had begun inching backward at some point.
I still had no idea what exactly had happened.
But I knew what I needed to do.
“Where do you think you’re going, you bastards?”
I lightly pushed off the ground.
“Whoa!”
The force was far greater than I had expected, and I went flying an astonishing distance before crashing into the ground with a tremendous BOOM!
“Ugh……”
A thick cloud of dust obscured my vision.
The old me could easily have died from full-body fractures and severe trauma after an impact like that, yet I was absurdly unharmed.
“Haah……”
My physical capabilities were almost impossible to believe.
It would probably take some time to become accustomed to them, but before that, it was time to deal with those things.
-SKREEE!
Now utterly terrified, the Kobolds threw down even their weapons and turned to flee.
Watching the creatures that had frightened me so much run away was almost ridiculous.
At the same time, a thought crossed my mind.
‘Could I do it?’
During my twenty-five years as an F-rank Hunter, I had seen countless Hunters.
There had been A-rank Hunters, and even S-rank Hunters who displayed abilities that seemed almost divine.
I did not possess any impressive skills like theirs.
But I had something else instead.
Overwhelming power.
“Hup.”
I held my breath and assumed a stance.
To be frank, the stance itself was terribly clumsy.
But the power contained within it was undeniably real.
BOOOOM!
The shockwave created by my swinging fist swept through everything before me like a raging storm.
The fleeing Kobolds could not escape its reach.
Once the storm passed, countless notification windows appeared before my eyes.
[You have defeated a Kobold Warrior!]
[You have defeated a Kobold Slinger!]
[You have defeated a Kobold Raider!]
[Experience points acquired.]
.
.
.
[You have cleared <Tower 6th Floor>.]
[All stats are ‘6’ or higher. Additional experience points will be awarded instead of stat increases.]
[You have achieved SSS-rank.]
[A special reward for achieving this rank will be granted.]
[You have broken the clear record for <Tower 6th Floor>.]
[Leaving the Tower.]
As I exited the Tower, the scenery around me changed back into my rented room.
Even after returning home, I remained dazed for a while.
Too much information had come crashing down on me all at once.
Achieved SSS-rank?
Broke the clear record?
Me?
I had no idea what was going on, but I might as well check.
“View the sixth-floor Tower records.”
[Displaying the 6th Floor Tower Records.]
[6th Floor Tower Records]
1st: Strongest
2nd: Jeff
3rd: Will <A+>
.
.
.
“…It’s true.”
My nickname, Strongest, was really sitting proudly at the top of the sixth-floor Tower records.
And not merely by a small margin.
I had achieved SSS-rank, overwhelmingly surpassing the previous first-place record of S-rank held by Jeff.
‘Wait. Come to think of it……’
Had it not said I had received a special reward for achieving SSS-rank?
There was no reason to put off checking it.
“Inventory.”
[Displaying Inventory.]
And among the items listed in my inventory, I found one that had never been there before.
────────────
[Medal of Transcendence]
A medal awarded to those who have reached the realm of transcendence.
────────────
“What is this?”
It was an item whose purpose I could not even begin to guess.
Just in case, I searched for it on a Hunter information site.
[Search: Medal of Transcendence]
[No search results found.]
Perhaps there were limits to the information I could access because I was F-rank, but I could not find anything about the Medal of Transcendence.
“Well… I can deal with this later.”
I examined the other items I had obtained from clearing the sixth floor.
What mattered to me right now was not some mysterious item whose purpose I did not even know.
What mattered was something I could immediately turn into money.
[Kobold Fang]
[Kobold Hide]
[Worn Club]
.
.
.
I checked the market-price section of a Hunter community.
When I saw what the materials were worth, my jaw dropped.
“If I sell all of this… th-three million won?!”
Even considering that first-clear bonuses granted more rewards than subsequent attempts, every single item was worth an amount that could not even be compared to the materials I had obtained from the first through fifth floors.
Then again, considering that the difficulty of the sixth floor could not even be compared to that of the fifth, perhaps it was only natural.
‘Wait. Then what if I keep going to the seventh floor and beyond?’
I quickly checked the prices on an Awakened community, and sure enough, the higher the floor, the more outrageous the value of the materials obtained there became.
I might not have a single impressive skill, but with stats of 79, surely there was no way I would fail to clear those floors.
‘This is… incredible.’
I had thought everything in my life had fallen apart.
Driven into a corner, I had challenged the sixth floor as though grasping at my final hope.
I had never dreamed something like this would happen to me.
And once my thoughts reached that point, I naturally began thinking about the miracle that had occurred.
‘It definitely said that I sold the experience points I had accumulated until now.’
The experience points I had amassed came to nearly three billion.
After selling them and converting them into stats, I had obtained the astonishing average stat value of 79.
In other words, the twenty-five years I had spent living as a Hunter had never been meaningless.
Even if I had not been able to see it, all those years had been steadily accumulating within me.
And now, I had finally been rewarded for them.
“…I guess all that hardship was worth something after all.”
I had never endured those years expecting a reward.
Yet receiving compensation for all the time I had spent struggling stirred an indescribable feeling within me.
‘I’m starting over from here.’
My life as an F-rank Hunter was over.
I made that vow to myself.
**
News spread that the all-time record for the sixth floor of the Tower had been broken.
Because it was merely a low-floor record, it did not attract overwhelming public attention.
Even so, word gradually began circulating throughout Hunter communities.
-The sixth-floor record got broken. Did you guys see?
-Oh, yeah. But is SSS even possible? What the hell is this?
-Wow, what the hell is SSS? LOL
-Jeff’s record got broken.
-What is this? Did some monster rookie just appear?
Until now, the best record for the Tower’s sixth floor had been the S-rank record established by Jeffrey Lewis of the United States, who had once been the world’s No. 1 Hunter.
Ever since Jeffrey Lewis died two years ago while attempting to climb the sixty-first floor, no one had managed to surpass the record he left behind.
And now the sixth-floor record had been broken?
Put another way, it meant that a Hunter had appeared who potentially possessed greater growth potential than Jeffrey Lewis, a man who had since become a legend.
-Who the hell is Strongest?
Fortunately, the nickname of the Hunter who had broken the sixth-floor record was written in Korean.
That alone significantly narrowed down the range of possible candidates.
It was unlikely that a foreign Hunter had suddenly barged into the Seoul Tower and cleared the floor.
-The nickname is pretty badass, though. SSS-rank and his name is Strongest LOL
-For real.
-Doesn’t the Management Agency have a database? They’ll probably figure out who it is pretty quickly.
Who was Strongest?
Public interest in the mysterious Hunter gradually began to rise.
***
The Korean Awakened Management Agency.
Deputy Commissioner Park Gi-yong pressed the employee who had come to deliver a report.
“So? Did you find out?”
The recent incident in which the sixth floor’s highest Tower record had been replaced by an SSS-rank clear.
It had yet to attract much attention among ordinary civilians who were not Hunters, but governments and guilds across the world were already paying extremely close attention to the rising star using the nickname Strongest.
The Awakened Management Agency was naturally paying close attention as well, and it had immediately launched an investigation into the Hunter using that nickname.
The first person ever to establish an SSS-rank record.
He might currently be nothing more than a low-floor Challenger, but considering that Jeffrey, the previous S-rank record holder, had climbed beyond the sixtieth floor, there was no need to explain the potential of someone who had achieved SSS-rank.
The Agency needed to identify this Hunter immediately and, if possible, sign him directly under the Agency.
If they were too late and another guild took him first, it would be a disaster.
If another country took him, it would go far beyond a mere disaster. Heads would roll throughout the Agency.
“I’m sorry. We did investigate, but the nickname Strongest itself is so common that identifying him has not been easy.”
“Still, if he had that much potential, there should have been some sign of it. An unremarkable Hunter couldn’t suddenly achieve an SSS-rank record out of nowhere.”
It was not that there were no Hunters using the nickname Strongest in the Agency database.
If anything, the problem was that there were far too many.
Approximately forty-eight Hunters in Korea used the nickname Strongest.
Park Gi-yong had no idea what was so appealing about the name that so many people used it, but the problem was that the vast majority of them had been assessed as Hunters between F-rank and D-rank.
“So we’re currently focusing our investigation on Hunters using the nickname Strongest who have awakened recently, but we still haven’t identified him.”
“Is that so? Fine. Find him as quickly as possible. It’ll be a disaster if another guild gets to him first.”
“Understood. Ah, but is there any possibility that he isn’t a newly awakened Hunter, but someone who was already active?”
At the employee’s suggestion, Deputy Commissioner Park Gi-yong shook his head.
“Impossible. If a Hunter had that kind of monstrous potential, then logically, he should have broken records from the first through fifth floors as well. At the very least, he should have shown some sign of exceptional ability.”
But someone who had failed to establish any records whatsoever from the first through fifth floors, only to suddenly set a record on the sixth?
That was clearly abnormal.
“Could it be because he wasn’t accustomed to using his abilities yet? Maybe his proficiency was too low to achieve SSS-rank from the first through fifth floors, but by the sixth floor, he had gotten used to them.”
“Even then, if he was capable of setting a record like this, there should have been some change within at least the top hundred rankings, even if he didn’t take first place. But the nickname Strongest never appeared anywhere in the records from the first through fifth floors, did it? He isn’t an existing Hunter. There’s no way.”
It was no exaggeration to say that a Hunter’s future was effectively determined by which traits or skills they obtained when they first awakened.
Those who gained neither traits nor skills became F-rank and lived out their lives as mediocre Hunters.
Those who had at least something might rise to D-rank, while those with genuinely useful abilities could reach C-rank or higher.
And yet an existing Hunter who had spent their career languishing between D-rank and F-rank suddenly established an SSS-rank record?
It was absurd.
That was why Deputy Commissioner Park Gi-yong completely ruled out the possibility.
It was common sense, and the Awakened Management Agency did not have enough spare resources to invest in possibilities that defied common sense.
“That does make sense.”
“Anyway, I know you’re busy, so get back to work. Report to me immediately if you uncover anything new.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the employee left, Deputy Commissioner Park Gi-yong went up to the rooftop and smoked a cigarette.
He sprayed himself with enough deodorizer to mask the smell, then headed toward the Commissioner’s office.
It seemed things were about to become busy.