Before entering any floor of the Tower, challengers were brought to a small staging area where they could claim rewards earned from previous floors. Since I had received items outside the Tower, the same protocol applied to Floor 0.
[You have obtained the First Player Bonus!]
[You have obtained 10 unallocated stat points.]
[You have obtained a Low-Ranked Lootbox.]
[You have obtained a Low-Level Mana Stone.]
[Please make use of these items before beginning your journey inside the Tower.]
I had already planned how I’d allocate every single reward.
Starting with the Mana Stone, I crushed the pale blue rock in my hands and absorbed the flowing mana directly into my body. I could instantly feel my veins burning and opening up under the pressure.
[You have unlocked a hidden attribute: Mana Power.]
I couldn’t help but smile. The start of my journey was going to be infinitely easier this time around; I had already unlocked a stat that had taken me nearly a full year to awaken in my previous life.
Joining the Tower early really paid off, but this was just the beginning. I still had two rewards to process.
I called up my Status Window to check my baseline attributes.
[ Status Window ]
Name: Caliste Henry
Title: None
Difficulty: [Hell]
Level: 1
[ Primary Attributes ]
Strength (STR): 1
Agility (AGI): 1
Vitality (VIT): 1
Perception (PER): 1
Mana Power (MP): 0.05
Unallocated Stat Points: 10
That was one of the brutal penalties of selecting [Hell] difficulty: your starting attributes were hard-capped at 1 or below. In [Easy], players started with 10 across the board, and in [Hard], they started with 5. It was a massive gap, but at least I had the knowledge to bridge it immediately.
"Put all ten unallocated stat points into MP," I commanded without hesitation.
There was no point in wasting points on physical stats right now. The broken mechanic behind Mana Power was that every time it crossed a threshold of 10 points, it triggered a passive multiplier for every other attribute. Now that my MP had hit 10.05, all of my physical attributes received a free bonus bump. That made it by far the most efficient investment.
[Hidden Threshold Achieved! Mana Power has reached 10.00.]
[As a result, all primary attributes have gained +2 points.]
Instead of starting with 1 point per stat, I was sitting at 3 across the board. It still wasn’t as high as [Hard] mode, but it was a world better than where I had started in my past life.
Only one reward remained. While a lootbox wasn’t guaranteed to give me anything game-changing, pulling a starting weapon right now would make the upcoming floor far smoother.
Taking a breath, I opened the chest.
A flash of light blinded me for a few seconds. When my vision cleared, a tarnished, dirty golden ring rested in the center of the box.
I sighed in mild disappointment. I had really hoped for a blade, but I couldn’t complain too much about getting gear on Floor 0. As soon as I picked it up, the system identified it.
[Dirty Golden Ring]
Rank: Basic
Effects: +1 PER
Basic isn’t terrible, I rationalized. I could have ended up with Crude.
Equipment rarity scaled from Crude to Basic, Grand, Rare, Arcane, Heroic, Unique, Celestial, and Divine. Basic wasn’t impressive, but for a broke level 1 challenger, every single attribute point counted, especially in [Hell] difficulty. It was common knowledge in the future that the early floors were the most lethal, claiming over 90% of all challengers.
I spent the next few minutes mentally preparing myself before slipping the ring onto my finger.
It was time to face Floor 0.
While Floor 0 acted as a padded tutorial on other difficulties, [Hell] mode offered no such grace. Hell never took a break.
[Are you ready to enter Floor 0?]
I nodded immediately. I needed to move fast and secure enough shop points for a return ticket to Earth as quickly as possible. I couldn’t let [Easy] players corrupt the world like they did last time.
My vision cut to black. The next second, I materialized in the pitch-black center of a damp cavern. The only thing I could hear was the echo of my own breathing, and my line of sight was restricted to barely half a meter.
Then, the inevitable happened.
—Swish!
[You have been stabbed.]
"Argh!"
I grit my teeth, enduring the sharp agony of a blade sinking directly into my side. It was a calculated sacrifice. If I had pulled a sword from the lootbox, I wouldn’t have needed to take the hit, but this was the fastest way to get armed in the dark.
Reaching down, I grabbed the blade buried in my side, wrenched it out of my own flesh, and ripped it away from my attacker.
[You have acquired a weapon: Dull Stone Sword.]
Rank: Crude
Effects: None
"It’s not dull at all, dumbass system," I grunted, blood dripping down my leg.
—Creeeeek!
Sensory alarm bells rang out in the dark as more monsters closed in, smelling blood. Trusting two decades of muscle memory, I took a sharp step forward into the noise and thrust the stone blade blindly into the dark.
The tip pierced deep through soft flesh, and thick, green blood sprayed across my face.
[You have slain a Level 10 Goblin.]
I killed it in a single strike?
My eyes widened in genuine shock.
I knew my stats were optimized, but this was beyond my expectations. In my past run, I had to stab a single goblin more than ten times just to put it down, barely surviving the encounter.
Maybe this won’t be as painful as I thought.
A sinister smile, the exact same grin the Dokkaebi wore, spread across my bloodstained face.
Ignoring the wound on my side, I began a total slaughter.
The goblins stood no chance. The more of them I slaughtered, the louder they screeched in panic, attracting even more targets directly to my blade.
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
Notifications flooded my vision in an endless blue cascade. Covered head-to-toe in foul green blood, I started laughing out loud in the dark cavern like an absolute madman.
"T-This is fucking amazing!"
As I continued the mindless carnage, another system prompt flashed quietly in the corner of my eye. I paid absolutely no attention to it:
[Notice: You are currently being watched by over 1,000 entities.]