I headed straight to the sixth-floor armor specialty hall.
A whole new world immediately unfolded before my eyes.
“…Oh. This place feels like a clothing store.”
There were gleaming, stylish suits of plate armor fit for knights in a medieval fantasy film, wizard robes adorned with splendid embroidery, and even black thieves’ hoods that would conceal their wearers in the darkness.
Just looking at them was a feast for the eyes.
…At least, until I checked the price tags.
‘Jeez, what’s with all the zeroes on these price tags?’
I stopped staring at trees I could never climb and entered a store specializing in leather armor.
“Welcome, sir. What sort of item are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a decent leather set. Something Common Grade or Low Grade.”
At that, the employee subtly looked me up and down while pretending not to.
“Common… or Low Grade, you said. I will show you this way.”
I followed the employee farther into the store, where shabby items unlike anything I had seen so far greeted me.
Though they were made of leather, perhaps because they had not been properly maintained, they gave off a stale odor similar to the stench of mold back home.
‘Yeah, this actually puts me more at ease.’
“Please choose from among these.”
Most Low Grade items cost between one hundred thousand and three hundred thousand won.
Once I moved on to Common Grade items, the prices jumped by at least two or three times and as much as five times.
‘Low Grade and Common Grade really are as different as heaven and earth.’
Perhaps that was why Low Grade and Common Grade items were treated differently too.
The Low Grade items were carelessly piled in a corner like out-of-season clearance stock at a clothing store, whereas the Common Grade items had at least been neatly arranged.
‘Well, this is more than good enough.’
I didn’t need exceptional equipment right now.
Anything I wore here would be more useful for climbing the Tower than a tracksuit.
I carefully examined the items for quite some time, mulling over my options.
I checked the quality of the leather, the finish on the seams, and, most importantly, the Special Effects.
“Sir? How about this Common Grade ‘Goblin Tracker Set’? If you equip all three pieces—the breastplate, trousers, and combat boots—you will receive an Agility bonus. It is especially tailored for huntingGoblins, so it is quite popular among newly Awakened customers. It offers truly excellent value for the money as well.”
For once, it was a piece of equipment I recognized.
Supposedly, it was the uniform of salaried Awakened who had settled permanently on the third floor.
‘A slight reduction in damage taken fromGoblin-type monsters and increased movement speed when trackingGoblin types… The craftsmanship isn’t too bad, and the effects are pretty decent.’
There was a reason everyone wore it.
On top of that, the full set—including the breastplate, trousers, and combat boots—cost two million won.
It was well within my budget.
‘Should I go with this…?’
For some reason, I hesitated. It felt a little lacking.
It wasn’t like I planned to spend my whole life hunting nothing butGoblins like some salaried worker.
“Thank you for the recommendation, but I’ll look around a little more.”
“Of course. Please take your time.”
After excusing myself to the employee, I began another circuit of the store.
‘Hmm?’
That was when a mannequin with a faint layer of dust caught my eye.
It was not a set item.
It was an assortment of mismatched pieces made from different materials and in different styles.
The breastplate was made of wolf hide, the trousers of Salamander hide, and the combat boots hadGoblin leather as their base with cave spider leg carapaces layered over them.
‘…What a bizarre combination.’
It was truly a ‘rootless’ combination without the slightest hint of cohesion.
Yet even at a glance, the quality of each piece far surpassed that of everything I had seen so far.
“Manager? What’s different about this set here?”
“Ah, this is what we call an ‘Assembled Set’ made by our store’s artisans from leftover materials. It has no Set Effect, but each individual piece is guaranteed to perform well. Customers looking to combine them with other equipment they already own come by for them from time to time.”
Judging from the explanation alone, it was perfect for me.
I already had a decent breastplate, after all.
Intrigued, I checked the information for the armor pieces.
“Item Information.”
[Salamander Leather Trousers]
Grade: High
Category: Leather Armor
Description: Trousers made from the supple hide of the fire-attribute monster ‘Salamander’.
Designed not to hinder the wearer’s movements; possesses a minute degree of Fire Resistance.
‘A minute degree of Fire Resistance….’
As it happened, I had already been feeling the need for Fire Resistance.
Crescendo did get awfully hot, after all.
The boots I examined next also passed muster.
Their Special Effect, ‘Slip Resistance’, was nothing remarkable, but the workmanship and durability were in an entirely different league from thoseGoblin-whatever boots.
I found myself leaning toward these.
“How much would everything cost without the breastplate?”
“As you requested… it would be 3.6 million won.”
‘Three-point-six million….’
They were more expensive than the recommendedGoblin set and had no Set Effect, but both were High Grade equipment.
‘Well, this doesn’t seem like a bad price for two High Grade items. I’ll go with these.’
I didn’t hesitate any longer.
“I’ll take them.”
I completed the payment without a second thought.
I put the purchased items directly into my Inventory.
“Next up is….”
Following the kind appraiser’s advice, it was time to put the helmet up for auction.
‘If I set the minimum bid at six million won and list it, I probably won’t lose money.’
I had no idea whether this useless helmet would truly land me a windfall.
‘Great if it does. If not, whatever.’
***
Nowadays, when anyone thought of the Tower of the Republic of Korea, Shin Yu-seong was the first person who came to mind.
However, the Republic of Korea had been different roughly twenty years ago, when not even three years had passed since the Tower first rose upon this land.
At the center of it all stood five pioneers.
It was an era when five heroes vied for supremacy over a single throne.
Whenever one surged ahead by conquering an uncharted Highest Floor, another, refusing to be outdone, became the first to conquer the floor after it.
Through fierce yet friendly competition, they lifted and pulled one another along, ushering in the ‘Golden Age’ of climbing the Tower of the Republic of Korea.
In those days, when no Collapse Countdown existed, climbing was not an obligation for survival but a challenge to reach greater heights and an adventure into the unknown.
Yet no ‘Golden Age’ could last forever. It was called a ‘Golden Age’ precisely because it was the finest of times now gone by.
As the years passed, the Tower became a time bomb, and two of the five pioneers lost their lives inside it.
Of the remaining three, two founded massive guilds representing the Republic of Korea and became living legends.
One of them was ‘Haetae’, which stood tall upon its long history and noble spirit and proudly claimed a place among the Four Great Guilds of the Republic of Korea.
There was surely nothing the mighty Haetae lacked… and yet an unexpected air of gravity now hung over its very heart.
“……Thus, the young lady’s Summoned Creature is frequently falling out of control due to the enemy’s Special Ability, which is hindering her attempts to clear the floor.”
Once the secretary finished the report, silence lingered in the room.
Haetae’s Guild Master, Kang Tae-san, stared at the Tower beyond the floor-to-ceiling window without a word for some time.
“Hmm….”
Most of the report concerned his daughter, Kang Yu-jin, and her climb up the Tower.
The key point was the news that she had once again failed to clear the corridor of the ‘Wraith Knight Order’ on the forty-sixth floor.
It had already been half a month.
‘Wraith Knights… They certainly are troublesome creatures.’
In his youth, Kang Tae-san himself had struggled against the wails of those wraiths.
The roars of the cursed—dead yet unable to die—broke the fighting spirit of the living and planted terror in its place.
That threatened any Awakened, but it was quite literally the worst possible matchup for a Summoner, for whom the bond and morale between the Awakened and their Summoned Creature were especially important.
‘However, it will not do for the daughter of Kang Tae-san to be held back by a mere place like that.’
Every Climber ascending the Tower encountered a point of stagnation at least once.
Even knowing it was a wall she had to surmount herself, a parent could not help wanting to extend a hand.
“I cannot simply stand by and watch forever.”
After murmuring softly, Kang Tae-san turned back toward the secretary.
“Secretary Kim.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am thinking of giving my daughter a small gift. Could you help me?”
“Just give the order, sir.”
“I would like you to find some equipment. An item capable of directly granting a Summoned Creature either ‘Mental Resistance’ or a ‘Morale Boost’ effect would be ideal.”
The secretary immediately understood his intention.
“Understood. I will begin searching at once. Is there a particular Grade you would prefer?”
Kang Tae-san waved his hand dismissively as he answered.
“Ha ha, listen to you. How could we afford to be selective about the Grade when searching for Summoner equipment? The Grade does not matter, so procure everything you can find.”
Few people sought Summoner items, few sold them, and even the Tower itself rarely spat them out.
That was only natural in a way, given how few Summoning-Type Awakened existed in the first place.
No one knew that better than Kang Tae-san, the ‘Mountain Lord’, who had once vied for the highest seat among the Awakened of the Republic of Korea with a Great Tiger as his Summoned Creature.
“Yes, sir. Then I will proceed with a search for every available item.”
After hearing the secretary’s reply, Kang Tae-san added one more thing.
“Keep this a secret from Yu-jin. She dislikes receiving help from her father. When she was little, she used to say, ‘Daddy, do this for me. Do that for me,’ without a second thought. But as she grew older, she lost that adorable side of herself. That little rascal. Heh, heh.”
Despite his words, a broad smile spread across his lips.
As her father, how could he not find his daughter precious when she refused to rely on her father’s reputation and strove to overcome the wall with her own strength somehow?
“Yes, I will tell the young lady that it was an independent decision by her personal secretary.”
“Thank you, Secretary Kim. Keep up the good work.”
Their conversation soon ended, and the secretary withdrew, leaving Kang Tae-san alone.
He picked up the framed photograph resting in the most prominent spot on his desk.
In the picture, a young Yu-jin with a childlike face beamed brightly.
She held the new game console she had received as a gift in her arms.
‘She said it was the first time she had ever had something of her own. She was so delighted.’
The day Kang Tae-san first met his daughter at the orphanage, he knew instinctively.
She had the makings of someone who would shoulder the future of the Tower of the Republic of Korea.
‘At first, it was nothing but greed.’
He himself had failed just short of his goal, and so he had desired to take in a promising uncut gem who had Awakened at a young age and raise her into the next generation’s ‘strongest’.
But that base desire faded before the years they spent together.
The day she shyly called him ‘Father’ instead of mister for the first time.
The crooked picture of their family she drew with clumsy hands.
The moment she ran toward him with her tiny arms spread wide, cried, ‘Daddy!’ and nestled into his chest.
As all those moments accumulated, she ceased to be a ‘talented uncut gem’.
She had simply become his daughter, so precious that even putting her in his eye would not hurt.
‘They say the bond forged by raising a child runs deeper than the bond of birth. This is exactly that.’
Thinking back on Yu-jin’s childhood inadvertently brought to mind a young boy he had forgotten within those memories.
‘Ah, come to think of it….’
It had been when he was gradually getting acquainted with Yu-jin while going through the adoption process.
Feeling guilty about giving a present only to Yu-jin, he had ultimately given a game console to every child in the orphanage.
All of them had been equally busy tearing open their gifts and enjoying them, except for one child.
That child had not even opened his present. He had merely stood at a distance, silently watching Yu-jin rejoice.
‘Right, there was a child like that.’
The photograph in the frame had originally been meant to show Yu-jin and that child together.
However, the child refused to have his picture taken, so Yu-jin ended up alone in the photograph.
‘He must have been terribly sad that his friend was leaving forever.’
For quite some time after her adoption, his daughter never asked him to do anything. The first thing she ever requested was to send a letter to that friend.
Of course, Kang Tae-san had not allowed it at the time.
He had believed that, for the sake of her new life, it was right to sever her ties to the past.
Back then, he had thought it was for the best.
‘I wronged that child. Whatever the circumstances, I essentially took his friend away from him….’
Now that his daughter had grown into a fine young lady, the boy from back then must have become a young man as well.
‘He was not an ordinary child either, though in a different way from Yu-jin. I wonder where he is and what he is doing with his life.’
Kang Tae-san set down the photograph with a bitter smile.
The past was only the past.
What mattered right now was his daughter Yu-jin’s future.
“…I wish she would stop climbing that dangerous Tower.”
He had brought her in to raise her as an Awakened, yet now he wished she would no longer live as one—an irony.
However, he knew things would not go as his heart desired.
“Who could ever break that stubbornness? She is the daughter of Kang Tae-san, after all.”
No matter what anyone said, she was his daughter.