The next morning.
The first thing I did was file for leave at work.
I had to develop the first-floor wasteland, so I could not spend my time on anything else.
“Enter the Tower!”
FLASH.
My territory, the first-floor wasteland, appeared.
According to the interview with Spirit Master Wol Ha-yeon, Tower-grown vegetables and greens held immense value.
For starters, Tower plants could not be cultivated on Earth. The Tower and Earth were different worlds.
The soil, magnetic fields, gravity....
They were so different that even if you tried growing crops on Earth, they died off one after another.
Cultivation was impossible.
“Since Wi-Fi works, it’s so convenient to study.”
Long live the internet.
Long live smartphones.
“Whew. How do other people climb the Tower?”
Just knowing that they had to part with electronic devices while climbing let me imagine the hardships Tower Climbers faced.
Conversely, if the restriction on electronic devices inside the Tower were lifted, the difficulty of climbing would drop dramatically.
Someday, I would build a cellular base station and bestow my favor upon Tower Climbers.
“Don’t be drinking the kimchi soup already. For now, vegetables first.”
From a vegetable garden to a cellular base station.
The road ahead was long.
“Open the Exchange!”
Was this how it worked?
The Exchange was a remote marketplace where Tower Climbers traded with one another. As long as you paid, the merchandise was transmitted to you.
What incredible technology.
“Ah, right. You can’t use the Exchange inside the Tower either, can you?”
It was simple logic.
If you could purchase items through the Exchange inside the Tower, it would be easy to exploit the Tower.
You could simply buy potions and items in real time. The Tower would not permit such a loophole....
POP!
The Exchange store window opened.
“Uh, what?”
[Lord of the First Floor Han Ja-in]
[Tower Exchange Access Granted]
Wow.
Was I allowed to do even this because I was a Lord?
The perks were truly alive and well, were they not?
All sorts of benefits followed a Lord.
Except for actually climbing the Tower.
“Let’s see... Wow. These prices make me gasp.”
Most items started in the tens of millions of won. Even a worn dagger cost several million won.
I put my commoner shopping wisdom to use and sorted [All Products] by [Lowest Price].
Scrollllll.
Only then did products worth looking at appear.
\=======
[Seller: Moonlight Beauty]
[Cherry Tomato Seeds X 5]
Description: Practically new, yeah. Twenty percent discount possible for a quick transaction.
Price: 10,000 won
\=======
Oh-ho. Just in time, cheap crop seeds had been listed.
At this price, they were worth buying.
FLASH!
The Tower’s teleportation technology activated, and cherry tomato seeds appeared before me.
The cost of 8,000 won was automatically deducted from my account.
The moment I thought I had bought them rather cheaply, a hollow laugh escaped me.
‘To think I consider this cheap.’
This was not even a basket of cherry tomatoes. It was 8,000 won for five seeds.
And the condition of the seeds?
Soggy~.
A sticky liquid coated the seeds.
[Aqua.... Aaaah! (꜆꜄•o•)꜆꜄꜆]
Damn seeds.
In an industry where people bought and sold worn daggers for five million won each, 8,000 won for seeds was cheap.
Not just cheap.
Too cheap.
Why?
“This fucking seller bastard... They spat out the seeds from the cherry tomatoes they just ate and sold them!”
Had business ethics fallen underground!
Even if I let it slide that they sold something they had left over from eating!!!
Their spit was still dripping from it!!!!
“My money!”
The Lord of the First Floor was furious.
I had to mete out severe punishment.
I immediately gave the seller [Moonlight Beauty] a one-star rating.
What a shame. Their seller temperature would become freezing.
While I was at it.
I wrote a sincere review as well.
「I trusted the description saying “practically new” and bought it!!! A soggy, sticky product arrived T_T」
The moment I enacted my revenge, the seller contacted me.
[Moonlight Beauty: Hey.]
[Moonlight Beauty: Hey, you!]
[Moonlight Beauty: My seller temperature, wh-what are you dooinggg[?]
Get lost.
I closed the chat window.
Then a direct message came in, so I set the message option to [Do Not Use] too.
Now it was finally quiet.
I carefully buried the cherry tomato seeds in the wasteland. The seller was the worthless one. The seeds had committed no crime.
“Aqua. Water.”
Aqua stored five hundred liters of water inside its body! Truly, a Water Spirit.
When necessary, it could even serve as a watering can.
[Aqua.... Pew, pew, pew! ︻╦̵̵͇̿̿̿̿══╤─]
Aqua sprayed water everywhere.
This was its water-gun mode.
Even so, the first floor did not become properly damp. The soil here was truly dry.
It was impossible to even guess when it had last rained.
“I planted cherry tomatoes, but... Can plants grow in land like this?”
It was so dry that no matter how much water I sprayed, it merely seeped underground.
GUSH, GUSH, GUSH....
How much more water did we pour in? At last, water began pooling in the wasteland.
Even then, it would be difficult for life to sprout.
“This won’t work.”
According to a Lord’s intuition, the seeds were certain not to germinate.
“Ghk. Is this a failure?”
I had even gotten someone else’s spit on my hands, yet I had gained nothing. But they said failure was the mother of success.
“I’ll have to use a workaround.”
I took out the workaround machine.
My smartphone!
If I used this device, packed full of Earth’s latest technology, I could search all the knowledge in the world!
“Inside the Tower, no less!”
Click!
I took a picture of the wasteland and posted it to <Plant Gallery>.
Plant Gallery was a place where kind hobbyists who cherished plants lived. I planned to ask them for advice.
\=======
[Title: Lol, guys, this is my front yard.]
(Photo)
I’m thinking of growing something.
Taking recommendations!
\=======
Replies appeared instantly.
As expected of Plant Gallery.
↳ Lol, is that soil quality for real?
↳ I feel sick. Look at how fucking red that dirt is lollllllllll
↳ Are you on Mars?
↳ Do Martians browse the Gallery these days? This Gallery is fucked....
↳ Noted: Mars IP.
↳ OP, even if you became fertilizer yourself, you couldn’t save that.
Everyone was so serious about plants that they were instead horrified by my wasteland.
Was the first floor that hopeless?
Farming would not be easy.
At least a few helpful comments appeared.
↳ Lol, just grow cyanobacteria.
↳ Even cyanobacteria is too luxurious.... At best, you could barely grow black beard algae.
“Ah~.”
Cyanobacteria was the culprit behind the green algae phenomenon that floated around every summer. So you were that thing?
Black beard algae was a soft, black thing like seaweed, and I recalled seeing it somewhere before.
“Where was it? Maybe in the neglected aquarium at school?”
But black beard algae was a superstar.
Because of its unique, tenacious vitality, it was the archenemy of aquarium hobbyists who raised aquatic plants and ornamental fish.
“How incredible could its vitality be?”
This time, I entered an aquarium community.
It was no joke.
I was able to understand right away.
\=========
[Title: AAAAAARGH! My aquarium got black beard algae!!!!! What do I do?]
↳ Yeah, smash the aquarium with a hammer.
↳ You’re infected.
↳ Welcome, infected Terran lol.
↳ Starting today, you’re a Black Beard Mom.
↳ Set your house on fire immediately.
↳ If black beard algae gets into your aquarium, your constitution changes.
↳ Every fish you raise from now on = food for black beard algae, yeah.
↳ Black beard algae: Lol, get wrecked.
— BLACK BEARD —
\========
Holy shit.
Black beard algae.
Did it really grow that well?
When I looked it up, it said that as long as it had water and light, it propagated endlessly.
How was that possible? Was it an alien life-form?
They said that if water merely pooled somewhere, it established itself and grew on its own.
Its survival ability was even better than mold, so Elon Musk had apparently made growing black beard algae the first task of terraforming Mars.
“What kind of demonic plant is this...?”
It was a little creepy, but it was perfect for growing in the wasteland. To obtain black beard algae, I would have to search dirty streams.
At that moment....
Aqua and I both flinched.
“!!!!!”
[Aqua.... Startledled! (；・ε・)ᕤ]
There was ‘that’ in the wasteland where we had sprayed water.
A floating, soft, black thing....
Goosebumps spread across my body.
“Bl-Black....”
Water had pooled in the wasteland for only a moment.
I recalled an aphorism from the aquarium community.
「Black beard algae is everywhere and nowhere.」
***
Seoul at night.
The headquarters of 「Cheongyeol」 was splendid again today.
Cheongyeol Group was a giant in the climbing industry that employed Tower Climbers. It had dozens of subsidiaries alone.
All of them casually generated hundreds of billions of won in net profit.
The secret was Cheongyeol’s vicious elitism.
Because Cheongyeol hired the best Tower Climbers, the odds of joining the company were extremely low.
Therefore, society revered Cheongyeol employees.
At marriage agencies, they were the number-one prospective brides and grooms.
Furthermore, banners went up in the neighborhoods where new employees lived.
A Cheongyeol employee was better than a judge or prosecutor!
But once they actually joined Cheongyeol, its employees suffered under grueling work.
For example, group night training was being conducted today.
Many employees had gathered, and there was only one person they had to face.
Cheon Ryu-jin.
He was part of Cheongyeol’s Royal Family and a Division Director currently third in the line of succession.
A powerful man in every sense.
And also a crazy bastard in every sense.
Crazy bastard. Madman. Vermin. Son of a bitch. Trash. A bastard with a fucked-up personality. A man you wanted to kill. A delinquent son of a bitch....
And so on.
Cheon Ryu-jin had many nicknames.
And Cheon Ryu-jin had always proven that his nicknames were not exaggerations. Every single one was a matter-of-fact true fact.
Among those nicknames!
There was not a single malicious slander!
“Aren’t you coming? Should I come to you?”
Cheon Ryu-jin, his red hair fluttering, walked into the center of the training hall. The air in the training hall sank heavily.
The employees surrounded Cheon Ryu-jin, but they could not easily attack.
Cheon Ryu-jin was a delinquent, but his skills were the real deal.
He had been famous ever since he attended the Academy as a child.
“Now...! Attack the Director!”
At the team leader’s command, all the employees charged Cheon Ryu-jin and unleashed their finishing moves.
Cheon Ryu-jin was enveloped in a radiance.
“D-Did we get him?”
Of course not. Cheon Ryu-jin walked out of the radiance with blood streaming down his body. He survived that?
It was difficult to tell whether he was part of the Royal Family or a monster bastard.
“Stupid bastards... How did you get hired with skill like this?”
Cheon Ryu-jin released mana.
Was his mana truly infinite, or was even he unable to contain his own mana?
“Today, I’m going to weed out every last one of you salary-thieving bastards.”
BOOOOM!
Mana exploded like an active volcano.
“Stop the Director!”
“Team Leader, your salary is too high too!”
“Argh!”
Several hours later.
The employees limped out of the training hall, and Cheon Ryu-jin, left alone in the training room, sat upright as he regulated his breathing.
“Hmph. Useless bastards.”
If he did not train them like this, he could not possibly be satisfied.
In this enormous company, there was not a single person worth using.
At that moment.
A handful of mana escaped from inside his body.
This fucking—.
His mana was dissipating.
Every time Cheon Ryu-jin breathed, his mana shattered into pieces and dispersed through the air.
This feeling.
You could not understand it unless you experienced it.
“Heh-heh. More mana dissipates naturally than I used in training. I want to beat someone to death.”
Mana Dissipation.
It was a chronic illness of Tower Climbers.
The Tower’s air was rich in mana, helping Tower Climbers grow stronger quickly. But the moment Tower Climbers returned to Earth.
Earth’s bleak air began tormenting them.
Earth’s air sucked their mana right out of them.
The sensation was incredibly shitty. It was like Earth was sucking the marrow from their bones.
“Heh-heh. This fucking vermin Earth... Your greed is so filthy.... Hey! Secretary Lee!”
“Yes, yes. I’m coming.”
Secretary Lee, Cheon Ryu-jin’s right-hand aide, hurried over and handed him carrot juice.
The moment Cheon Ryu-jin drank the carrot juice, his Mana Dissipation was suppressed. It was because it had been made from premium carrots from the Tower.
“Ugh. It tastes awful... How many carrots do we have left?”
“We are nearly out of stock. You need to obtain more quickly.”
“Who says otherwise? No one is selling them, even if we offer a premium!”
It was a world where money could buy anything.
Yet even when they offered money, no one was willing to sell.
The reason was simple. High-floor Tower Climbers lacked even enough vegetables to eat themselves.
Low-floor Tower Climbers were no help.
“However, Director. A strange rumor is circulating among ultra-high-floor Tower Climbers. They say someone has appeared who sells Tower-grown vegetables every day.”
Cheon Ryu-jin’s eyes flicked sharply. As I said before, those high-floor bastards consumed their own vegetables, and low-floor climbers were vermin.
But some guy was selling Tower-grown vegetables every day? With what ability?
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Director. I need to confirm it first. If it is Tower-grown vegetables, how much can you endure?”
“? They’re Tower-grown vegetables. What’s there to endure? I’ll eat anything.”
“Really?”
“Have you ever seen me care about taste?”
“You will this time. I’m not even sure it’s right to call it a vegetable....”