“We will send a text to your contact number once the item is complete. It should take about a week. It may take a little longer.”
“Yes, take your time. I will wait to hear from you.”
After finishing my business at TemDaPam, I returned home and immediately stopped by the first-floor Waiting Room.
The main purpose of my visit was to commission the ‘Veil of the Swamp’.
Thanks to that, the money deposited into my account today had done more than merely pass through it. I had also ended up spending a little over one million won from the money I used for living expenses, but I had no regrets.
‘Well, it can’t be helped. This is all an investment too. I can just earn the money back in the Tower.’
It stung quite a bit to see nearly ten million won enter my account and leave again within a single hour, but there was no helping it.
Money was only useful if I stayed alive long enough to spend it.
‘That takes care of the commission. Should I fill the empty slot I got from the third-floor EX+ reward now?’
That was the second reason I had visited the first floor.
I looked over the passersby and focused on my sense of smell.
Information about each Awakened immediately reached me in faint traces of scent.
‘Hmm, that person smells delicious. They seem like they are Awakened from a fairly high floor.’
In the past, I would have blindly stepped on the shadow of whoever smelled more delicious.
But I was different now.
‘I can smell something slightly burnt nearby….’
I had already decided which Skill to imprint in my new D Grade-or-lower slot.
‘Fire Resistance.’
I had not chosen the Salamander Leather Trousers at TemDaPam for nothing.
What I needed now was not some other extraordinary ability, but the power to withstand Crescendo’s insane heat, which seemed ready to devour even its own master.
Why else had I cracked open a potion the moment I emerged after clearing the third-floor Trial?
Those things were not cheap either.
‘Getting burned by my own weapon? Once was more than enough.’
Fortunately, the first floor had so much foot traffic that I soon found a suitable Awakened.
He was a man in a ridiculous pointed hat who gave off the faint smell of something burnt.
He was clearly a Fire Magic-Type Awakened.
‘Then excuse me for a moment.’
I quietly followed him and casually stepped on his shadow.
[New Shadow Contact detected.]
[Target: Awakened ‘Jo Jun-hui’]
[Activating Unique Ability ‘Shadow Mimic’.]
[Analyzing Skill information…]
‘So his name’s Jun-hui.’
The familiar messages continued, and soon a list of the target’s Skills appeared before my eyes.
[Fireball (D), Fire Resistance (E+), Increased Mana Recovery Speed (F)]
‘Okay, jackpot on the first try.’
There it was, just as expected.
The E+ Grade was slightly disappointing, but this was enough for now.
I could not spend all day wandering around the first floor just to find D Grade Fire Resistance.
I was a fairly busy man myself.
[Select a Skill to imprint.]
‘I’ll take Fire Resistance.’
[Imprint ‘Fire Resistance (E+)’ in the D Grade-or-lower exclusive slot?]
‘Yeah.’
[Shadow Imprint complete.]
[Shadow Imprint: Fire Resistance (Grade: E+ / Source: Jo Jun-hui)]
With that, I had finished preparing for the demonic sword that attacked even its own master.
‘Time to head up, then?’
To hunt the GoldenGoblin.
***
The fourth floor’s Basic Mission was to kill a ten-memberGoblin pack made up ofGoblin Wolf Riders,Goblin Scouts, and Heavily ArmoredHobgoblins.
With the successive Trials making me twice as strong as everyone else on each floor, I honestly did not care what the Basic Mission threw at me.
The new leather armor that fit snugly against my body and made movement much easier also played a part.
‘Equipment really is different from ordinary clothes. I should’ve bought some Tower equipment sooner, even if it was just Low Grade rags.’
The problem was what came next.
‘But where the hell is this bastard?’
It had been quite a while since I finished the Basic Mission.
No, to be precise, I had disarmed one monster, bound it alive, and was dragging it around with me.
If I completed the Basic Mission, the Trial would begin immediately, leaving no time for the GoldenGoblin or anything else.
“Grrk! Graaak!”
“Quiet. It’s not like I spared you because I like you.”
TheGoblin happened to put up a timid struggle.
I struck it on the head with Nocturne still in its scabbard, producing a sharp ‘BONK!’, and it fell silent again.
“Graa….”
The sight of it looking so dejected made me wonder if I should feel sorry for it. Then I remembered that even aGoblin like this was a monster that would tear a person apart and kill them given the chance, and my sympathy vanished.
“Hey, where’s your friend? Try finding it.”
I had spent roughly twenty minutes circling the vast wasteland and combing through its few possible hiding places.
However, my target, the GoldenGoblin, had not shown so much as the tip of its nose.
Dozens of sightings were already pouring onto the community forum, yet the very person who had triggered the event had not even laid eyes on one.
“Should I just clear the Trial and leave?”
The moment I was about to give up, the shadow beneath my feet wriggled, and Bami poked its head out.
“Mew!”
“Hmm?”
Before I could even react, it shot away like an arrow, its feet beating out a frantic patter.
“H-Hey?! It’s dangerous to wander around alone like that!”
There should not have been any monsters around, but this was still the Tower. Who knew what might leap out?
Oblivious to my concern, Bami raced excitedly across the wasteland.
I dropped the binding rope I had been dragging and sprinted after it at full speed.
‘Why’s that tiny thing so fast?!’
It was fast enough to leave even me, whose physical abilities had risen dramatically inside the Tower, shaking my head in amazement.
Fearing something truly terrible might happen at this rate, I barely managed to snatch its body and pull it into my arms.
“You little rascal, you need to be taught a lesson….”
“Mew, mew!”
Even while caught, however, Bami thrashed and desperately stretched a forepaw toward one side.
As though there were something there.
“…Huh? Wait.”
That was when I noticed something strangely raised about the ground in the direction Bami was pointing.
“SKRREEEE─!”
Sand erupted like an explosion, and aGoblin carrying a bundle on its back burst out from beneath it.
“…Ah! Found you!”
Our gazes collided for an instant.
The moment the bastard saw me, it bolted without even looking back.
Just as the rumors said, its speed was beyond imagination.
But.
“Where do you think you’re going?!”
It had picked the wrong opponent.
SWISH—!
An ink-black flash cut through the air.
I chased the bastard at full speed and cut it down with a single stroke.
TheGoblin’s head, sliced cleanly off, rolled away.
As I had heard, enough items to make my eyes widen spilled out beneath it.
“Oh, that’s Rare ore.”
As I gave the rewards a quick visual check, System messages suddenly streamed past one after another.
[Special Effect ‘Sly Swipe’ activates.]
[Specific conditions met. Plundering an item hidden by the target.]
[Condition 1: Directly caused this event.]
[Condition 2: Possess ‘Plunderer’s Red Breastplate’.]
‘A Special Condition? A hidden item?’
While I wondered what this was about, a tattered scrap of parchment popped into my Inventory.
[Acquired a Special Item from the Special Entity ‘Petty ThiefGoblin’.]
[Secret Map Fragment]
Grade: ???
Category: Miscellaneous Item
Description: A fragment of a map secretly copied by ‘Garr, Boss of the Sandclaw Raiders’ to betray the ‘Goblin Lord Goldin’ he served and seize Goldin’s secret treasure Vault.
After Garr’s death, his subordinates divided it into three fragments and scattered them.
(Currently Owned: 1/3)
“Oh-ho….”
The existing description of ‘Sly Swipe’ mentioned something about hidden items, so I had thought something like this might be possible. I just had not expected to see the effect so soon.
‘TheGoblin Lord’s secret treasure Vault? This is huge, isn’t it?’
To be honest, I had not been able to entirely shake the feeling that I had done all the work only to share the rewards with Awakened throughout the country.
And yet the Tower was taking care of me again like this.
‘As expected, our Tower doesn’t skimp when it comes to rewarding merit.’
Judging from the item description, there were three map fragments in total.
‘I can roughly see how this works. At this rate, will the map be complete if I catch the Petty ThiefGoblin three times, one floor a day?’
TheGoblin Lord’s treasure Vault.
Actual treasure, no less. I had found another reason to keep pushing hard.
Ah, of course, there was still something I had to do first.
“Bami!”
It was time to discipline Bami.
I was annoyed that it had run off alone and intended to give it a sharp BONK on the head.
‘There’s nowhere to hit it.’
But I could not praise it either.
We had been lucky just now, but if this kind of impulsive behavior continued, Bami would eventually get hurt.
I held Bami firmly in both hands and put on a deliberately angry expression.
It stared back with a bright, innocent expression, unaware of what it had done wrong.
‘Damn it, it’s so cute that I’m going soft.’
Its round purple eyes looked as though they had been carved straight from amethyst, and they made me waver for a moment. Still, I had to do what needed to be done.
“You could get hurt wandering around alone like that. Don’t do it again. If you keep doing it, I’ll leave you at home when I come to the Tower, understand?”
“Mew, mew, mew!”
Bami shook its head as though declaring that absolutely could not happen.
At times like this, it understood every word with uncanny precision.
The problem was that it rarely listened even when it understood.
“Promise me. Got it?”
“Mew!”
“Good, then it’s a promise. Hide safely inside my shadow for now because it’s dangerous. You really can’t come out again! If you come out before I tell you to this time, I’ll really say, ‘You little rascal!’”
“Mew!”
What a firm answer. I only wished Bami obeyed half as well as it responded.
Bami had gone back into my shadow, and my side job was more or less finished. It was time to get to my real work.
I approached the finalGoblin I had bound.
“Rest now. Thanks to you, I caught your friend.”
SLASH─!
As a reward for holding out until I caught the GoldenGoblin, I sent it off cleanly.
I flicked theGoblin blood from my blade and spoke.
“Gaze, let’s go.”
A System message answered as though it had been waiting.
[Challenge the fourth-floor Trial?]
“Of course.”
[Commencing ‘Gaze's Trial’.]
***
The arrivals hall at Incheon International Airport.
A woman strode out of the arrivals hall with confident steps, seemingly oblivious to the exhaustion of her long flight.
Her long, tied-back hair resembled obsidian, and her sharply defined features drew the gazes of those around her even without adornment.
She was Kang Yu-jin, the rightful heir of the Haetae Guild.
She had just returned after spending roughly three months traveling abroad to establish strategic alliances and conduct technical exchanges with overseas guilds.
‘The atmosphere at the airport is definitely different. Even abroad, all I heard was news about that.’
She also knew perfectly well what had happened in the Tower of the Republic of Korea over the past few days.
As Haetae’s heir, it was naturally news she could not afford to miss. Besides, it was so widespread that she would have heard it even if she had covered her eyes and plugged her ears.
‘It made things so exhausting.’
During the final stage of her business trip, everyone she met had asked her about the Bounty Lord until she was sick of it.
She did not know jack shit, and having to answer each person with, ‘What connection could there possibly be between him and me besides the fact that we’re both Korean?’ was an ordeal in itself.
‘Phew… At least that won’t happen in Korea.’
She quickened her pace, savoring the sense of comfort her homeland provided.
‘I need to hurry home, stretch out, and lie down. And for my first meal… I’ll ask Mom to make me soybean paste stew!’
However, amid all that, she felt something was out of place.
‘An Awakened over there, another Awakened over here… Is there some kind of event going on? Why are there so many?’
It was not as though Awakened walked around with ‘I’m an Awakened.’ written on their faces, but Awakened could sense something about one another.
Kang Yu-jin was confident that her own ‘Awakened Radar’ was quite accurate.
And right now, Incheon International Airport was crawling with Awakened.
By her estimation, one in every ten passersby seemed to be an Awakened.
Considering that Awakened did not even account for 0.2 percent of the world’s population, the density was absurd.
‘It definitely wasn’t like this when I left. Am I imagining things…?’
That sense of incongruity became even clearer as she took a taxi toward her destination, Haetae headquarters.
Seoul, to which she had returned after three months, looked slightly different from the city she remembered.
‘This is strange. Why is traffic so bad? And why are there so many people in the plaza?’
The changed atmosphere of the plaza brought Kang Yu-jin to a halt.
“Driver, I’ll get out here.”
“Haetae headquarters is right around the corner. You don’t want to go any farther?”
“Ah, I’d like to look around here for a moment first.”
Kang Yu-jin got out at the plaza before the Tower, the very place where Si-hyeon had once eked out a living, and slowly examined the people coming and going.
‘It isn’t just that there are a lot of people.’
The Awakened were seeking parties, trading items, and preparing for their next climb, every face flushed with excitement.
All their eyes sparkled.
They were filled with a desire to reach greater heights.
And with the hope that ‘I can do it too.’
“Hey, did you see today’s top post? Someone killed a GoldenGoblin on the fifth floor today and got Rare equipment.”
“Rare equipment on the fifth floor? Wow, I’m so jealous.”
“See? Parking on the third floor is ancient history now. We’ve got to climb.”
“Maybe… climbing is still a little scary.”
“Come on, why can’t we do it too?! The third floor, the fifth floor—what’s the difference? The Bounty Lord will be climbing the fourth floor soon, so we should work hard and follow him.”
“That’s… true, right? The Bounty Lord opened the way for us, so we should at least make a show of following him, shouldn’t we?”
“Exactly, exactly. We just haven’t tried. If we do, we can definitely make it!”
Without fail, the term Bounty Lord appeared in conversations all around her.
‘Even here, everyone’s talking about him.’
In a way, it was only natural.
A mere individual had granted a wide-area buff to the entirety of the Tower to which he belonged.
Taking advantage of the mood, public opinion had even begun to whisper that the Bounty Lord would be the next strongest Awakened in the Republic of Korea.
They said this bright green shoot of promise would grow tall and vigorous, succeeding Shin Yu-seong and protecting the Tower of the Republic of Korea.
Of course, Kang Yu-jin did not agree.
‘The Tower speaks in floor numbers. Still, I have to give credit where it’s due. He’s impressive. All this influence came from one person.’
Kang Yu-jin was the Mountain Lord’s only child, the youngest Climber in the country to reach the tenth floor, and had consistently achieved excellent results ever since. Yet even she had never heard anyone call her the next strongest Awakened in the Republic of Korea.
But now they were discussing a mere fledgling climbing only the third and fourth floors as the country’s next strongest Awakened.
‘Phew, this is worrying. It really is. What’s going to happen to the Awakened community in the Republic of Korea at this rate?’
Just as she pursed her lips in a fit of needless spite, the cell phone in her pocket vibrated.
“Hmm?”
It was a call from Secretary Kim, her father Kang Tae-san’s personal secretary.
Kang Yu-jin smiled at the welcome name and answered the call.
“Secretary Kim. It’s been a while.”
― Young lady, did you arrive safely? I was just informed. If you had given me advance notice, I would at least have gone to meet you.
“Oh, there was no need. You must have your hands full assisting Father. And you of all people should already know everything, so what advance notice? You knew I was coming tomorrow, didn’t you?”
― Pardon? This is the first I have heard of it.
“Never mind. Chief Min must have told you everything anyway. That’s why I beat you to it again this time. If I had come as scheduled, even the security team would have swarmed in… Ugh, I hate that sort of thing.”
― Ha ha… Are you not the main pillar of Haetae, young lady? It is only natural for them to escort you. Please do not dislike the members of the security team too much either.
“Yes, yes… I understand. I just don’t like it. By the way, Secretary Kim, what’s going on with the atmosphere in our country right now? I heard the news too, but I didn’t know it was this intense.”
― The atmosphere around the Tower certainly has changed a great deal over the past few days.
“Exactly. This is beyond anything I imagined. Anyway, I’m near the plaza and was thinking of stopping by headquarters. Does Father have time right now?”
― Ha ha, of course. Your father would make time out of nothing if you were coming to see him, would he not? He is already waiting for you.
“I knew he would, so I came straight here. Oh, and Secretary Kim. Chief Min suddenly started doing something I never asked for. Was that Father’s handiwork too?”
― Pardon? What do you mean by that…?
“The item search.”
― That is also the first I have heard of it.
Secretary Kim played innocent as instructed, presenting a proverbial duck’s foot.
But Kang Yu-jin had lived as a member of the Kang family for more than a decade. There was no chance such a shallow trick would fool her.
“Father obviously told you to keep it a secret from me. Haah… My own secretary follows Father’s orders more faithfully than mine. I can’t trust anyone.”
At this point, Kang Yu-jin pretended to admit defeat and raised the white flag.
There was no point pressing further when the other party would never admit it anyway.
“Fine. Since you’re doing it, make sure you do it properly.”
― I do not believe that is something you should be saying to me… but I will make sure the message is conveyed.
“Of course you will. Sec. Re. Tary. Kim. I’ll see you later when I come to see Father, Uncle.”
― Yes, I will be waiting. Please come safely, young lady.
After ending the call, Kang Yu-jin quietly looked up at the Tower looming before her.
A firm resolve settled into her eyes.
‘The emergence of a super rookie who can shake up the entire board alone… I can’t keep falling behind forever either.’
A turbulent era.
The ecosystem of the Tower of the Republic of Korea was changing.
Because of a single supernova.