Retry (3)
-KWOOOAAAH!!
Gurgorka shrieked and thrashed about. The arrow lodged in its chest must have really been bugging it.
It looked like it had almost fully recovered from the wound I'd just inflicted on its forearm, but I charged in regardless.
THOOM! THUD! The thing stomped its feet with its leg strength to threaten me, but, not caring about my body getting hurt, I dodged here and there and finished it by driving my sword into its neck.
THOOOM......!
“Whoo.”
Sitting on the Gatekeeper's corpse, I gulped down water. This time, I'd cleared it with my body barely hurt. That said, the bones in my left arm were smashed, and both my ankles were dangling, though.
[Apocalypse Tower 1st Floor retry complete. Calculating experience.]
[You have obtained 60 TP!]
[Level up!]
[You have reached Level 15.]
[You have recovered the skill 'Cold Weapon Mastery' from memory.]
I'd finally reached my goal.
'Level 15. So this is the soft cap? It'll be hard to go any higher.'
This damn Tower had a 'level cap' set for each floor.
What's a cap, you ask?
To put it simply in a word, it's similar to a 'level growth limit.'
Even if you grind your ass off on the 1st floor, once you pass a certain level line, 'halved experience gain' kicks in and the efficiency drops sharply.
So it was impossible to explosively raise your level through grinding and then easily challenge the upper floors by steamrolling them with damage.
Well, even if grinding for levels had been possible, the retry efficiency was so trash that it would've taken decades anyway.
In the Tier 3 Tower, you'd barely reach level 15 once you hit the 15th floor, so considering that the Apocalypse Tower allows level 15 on just the 1st floor, it wasn't bad.
I think if I break through just 50 or so floors of this Apocalypse Tower, I might end up at a level similar to the Tier 4 Tower 100th-floor graduates who supposedly soar and crawl out there.
When I get to the 80th floor, where all the level caps are lifted, just what level will I be?
Seriously, just surviving and getting out to Earth would be a jackpot.
Anyway, I'd hit the level cap of 15 and sucked up as much TP as I could, but I still had no plans to go straight to the 2nd floor.
I couldn't raise my stats or earn TP, but there was no limit on the number of retries.
What would I do here, you ask?
Skill proficiency grinding, of course.
Proficiency farming, proficiency grinding.
Even at the same level, combat power was worlds apart depending on skill proficiency.
Back when I was climbing the Tower, I'd emphasized again and again to people that 'grinding up skill proficiency and stats is important.'
It's just that not many people listened.
Repetitive grinding in the Tower had a chronic problem of pain and boredom on a whole different level from training your body.
Just like how working out at the gym makes your body healthy and good-looking, yet people still can't do it.
Even in the middle of life-or-death challenges, most challengers barely did any of this 'proficiency farming.'
Even at the same level, having more skills and higher proficiency made clearing the Tower easier.
Even knowing that, they couldn't bring themselves to do it.
Because the process was so painful.
But I wasn't going to rush.
This was the Apocalypse Tower.
I needed to be careful.
I considered this careful personality of mine a strength.
In fact, one of the reasons I, a dullard with no particular talent who had to suffer for a whole week to clear a stage others passed in an hour, was able to reach the top of the Tier 4 Tower was thanks to this grit and patience, composure and caution.
So far, through several retries, I had acquired 6 skills. Of those, a whopping 4 were weapon masteries.
[Basic Spearmanship]
[Basic Swordsmanship]
[Basic Archery]
[Basic Unarmed Combat]
I'd tried to acquire skills quickly by using as many different weapons as possible. As a result.
[Weapon Mastery skills are being merged.]
[D] Basic Weapon Mastery 1%
They were combined into a single skill. This was much better. Even if I raised the skill level using the crossbow, it had the effect of slightly raising my swordsmanship effects too.
The trade-off was that I lost the effect of intensively training just one weapon, but I could get [Specialized Weapon Focus] later for that. Not that I'd ever had a skill like that in the first place.
On top of that, I also acquired a skill essential for using a variety of weapons.
[Weapon Link: Weapon Swap]
A skill that let me swap between weapons quickly while using them. Having it or not made a huge difference. Once I got a main weapon later, I'd stop using it, but on the low floors it would serve me well.
[D] Pain Endurance 9%
The skill that made me tougher and raised my physical defense the more wounds I took had already reached 9%.
Probably only a tiny handful of players had ever raised this skill to C-Rank or higher.
I'd been the only player to succeed in raising Pain Endurance to B-Rank, and back then it even had the special effect of making me stronger the more I got beaten.
I considered this one of the skills I had to get as fast as possible. It raised your survival rate enormously.
Anyway, with this, my skills had been mixed, matched, and merged into a total of 7.
I'd complained about not being able to bring any Divine Powers or blessings with me, but specs like these weren't bad for the 1st floor.
All the skills were only D-Rank, but they were like the foundation that determined a player's strength. No matter how many S-Rank skills you had wrapped around you, if you didn't raise your basic combat skill proficiency, you couldn't fight properly.
......Ah, of course there were exceptions. There were guys who swung telekinesis around from birth, but that one was a special case.
“Hm.”
Looking at my status window in satisfaction, I snapped back to my senses.
Satisfied? With this?
[Apocalypse 1] Yu Hyun-sung Lv. 15
▣ Stats
[Strength: 23] [Intelligence: 18]
[Agility: 21] [Stamina: 21]
[Mana: 1]
▣ Skills
[B]
Emergency Evasion 4% / Rapid Recovery 1%
[D]
Basic Weapon Mastery 1%
Pain Endurance 9%
Mental Endurance 1%
Weakness Detection 5%
Big Swing 1%
What was there to be satisfied about with stats this trashy? Still, compared to when I'd just arrived at the Apocalypse Tower, I was much stronger now.
It was thanks to diligently grinding skill proficiency. But I didn't feel like I could challenge the 2nd floor in this sorry state, so I felt hollow.
At least it was a relief that I'd received additional stats as a first clear reward.
Because of my poor talent, my stats only went up by 4 even when I raised a level.
But thanks to being given an additional 6 stat points as a first clear reward, that part was eased.
First clear additional stats. With this much, it was as good as closing the gap with the geniuses by 6 steps.
But it wasn't enough. It wouldn't do as it was. I didn't even know what would show up on the 2nd floor, and I had far too little utility.
At least I was satisfied with the performance of [Rapid Recovery]. I hadn't been able to raise its level yet, but it healed scrapes almost instantly, and even cracked bones recovered after just a little time.
Plus, unlike the 1st-floor boss, which consumed 'muscle' to regenerate, it regenerated at the cost of stamina or mana, so there was no worry about getting weaker.
It consumed stamina as the price of recovery, but other than getting short of breath, there were no particular side effects so far.
[Many Celestials are looking forward to your next move.]
Even when I'd cleared the Tier 4 Tower's 99th floor, only a single Celestial had been watching me.
But suddenly, now that I'd come to the Apocalypse Tower, a pointlessly large number of Celestials had started staring.
And on top of that, once I cleared the Apocalypse Tower's 1st floor.
[A total of 149 Celestials are watching you.]
It had swelled to a number I'd never even heard of before.
So what?
They weren't helping one bit.
“Let's just grind the 1st floor~ I'm going to live on the 1st floor until I die~”
[Retrying the Apocalypse Tower's 1st Floor.]
[Many Celestials cannot hide their disappointment at your actions.]
[A minority of Celestials let out a sigh of relief at your actions.]
***
The fact that Yu Hyun-sung had challenged the Apocalypse Tower was quite a big shock to the Korean Hunter industry.
Just when they thought Korea was finally getting an SSS-Rank Awakener of its own, he suddenly put on a suicide show!
How hard had they worked to shape the press, exaggerating and packaging Yu Hyun-sung's childhood and school days as much as possible, even producing a documentary and airing it on all kinds of TV programs, and splicing together as many videos of his gameplay as possible into NewTube videos to even make highlight reels?
Currently, there were 2 prospects of Korean origin expected to be able to graduate from the Tier 4 Tower.
One was Yu Hyun-sung, and the other was Ahn Ho-young.
But one of them suddenly committed suicide by throwing himself into the Apocalypse Tower, and the other was holed up in the Tower with not even a word of news coming out.
The whole nation had been in a festival mood, but the atmosphere sank in an instant, and the Awakeners who hadn't liked Yu Hyun-sung seized the moment to curse his character wildly or dig up his past and tear him down.
Yu Hyun-sung was as good as dead anyway, and on top of that, after giving Korea nothing but high hopes, his image had already gone down the drain with his fucking idiot stunt, so what did it matter if they tore him down all they wanted?
But then came the news.
[Challenger Yu Hyun-sung has succeeded in the first clear of the Apocalypse Tower's 1st Floor.]
Yu Hyun-sung, who everyone thought had entered the Apocalypse Tower to suddenly throw his life away, came back with news of a whopping 1st-floor clear.
Since news had previously gotten out that the 10 heroes had all met defeat and died on the Apocalypse Tower's 1st floor, the 1st-floor clear was all the more dramatic.
[Taking on the world's first challenge to conquer the Apocalypse Tower?]
[A desperate struggle to single-handedly stop the scheduled 'Tower Break']
[On whether he deserves to be praised as a hero.]
[Even Tier 4 Tower graduates are at a level that threatens nations; how strong, then, would an Apocalypse Tower graduate be.......]
[Too early for hasty judgment. He's only cleared the 1st floor at best, the Chinese government's pointed remark.]
Even though he'd only cleared the 1st floor, nations praising Yu Hyun-sung as a hero were already appearing.
Mostly, the Awakener superpowers did.
The reason was obvious.
[Even so, Korea is an Awakener backwater. Even if an Apocalypse Tower Awakener appears, it won't be able to keep him.]
[It's practically impossible for Awakener-backwater Korea to take care of an Apocalypse Tower challenger.......]
Times were different from the old days.
Players challenging the Ascension Tower kept in constant contact with Earth and received care.
In particular, challengers of the Tier 3 Tower and above would sign contracts with nations or huge agencies even before graduating, in which case not only would hundreds of millions be steadily deposited into their real-world bank accounts, but their families would also be granted prosperity.
Yu Hyun-sung had no family, so he didn't get those benefits, but money was still deposited into his account. But that was all; it fell short of giving him continuous mental care.
But America and China were confident in this regard.
America and China had even made lurid, desire-driven offers to bring in Tier 4 Tower graduates.
Promising private jets carrying beautiful women, or granting a degree of immunity for crimes like drugs and murder.
One female Tier 4 Tower graduate had even demanded a promise of a same-sex marriage with a famous actress.
Astonishingly, the American side accepted that condition and even carried it out, which became a hot topic.
The famous actress named had already been married to a man and wasn't even an American citizen, so it had been considered a nearly impossible proposal, and when it was made possible, it became an incident that cemented the standing of Awakeners all the more firmly.
Now the world revolved around the Awakeners who had graduated from the Ascension Tower.
[The only Apocalypse Tower challenger, Yu Hyun-sung; the world is watching closely.]
[Can Korea really keep Yu Hyun-sung's nationality?]
And there was one more problem.
[Just how long is the grace period gained by clearing the Apocalypse Tower's 1st Floor?]
[How much longer will Earth be safe?]
[Will Yu Hyun-sung be able to keep clearing the Apocalypse Tower?]