Several hundred years had already passed since the Tower appeared in the world.
That colossal structure, soaring as though it would pierce the heavens, was both a blessing and a curse to humanity.
The monsters that poured out of the Tower ravaged civilization, but the mana stones and by-products harvested from their corpses ushered in a new golden age for mankind.
People called those who entered the Tower and risked their lives in battle “Hunters,” praising them as heroes.
But beneath those dazzling lights, dark shadows were always bound to exist. Bastards like me were those shadows.
We were bottom-feeders with no talent, no connections, and not even the luck to awaken a decent ability.
There was always debris left behind on the battlefields Hunters had swept through.
Tiny fragments of mana stones they had failed to collect, discarded equipment, and materials abandoned because they were worth too little.
We scraped by from day to day by gathering and selling them.
People called us “Scavengers.”
It was a derogatory name born from the way we fed on the battlefield’s scraps like rats rummaging through leftovers.
We were treated no better than garbage, but what else could we do? To survive in this damned Tower, we had no choice but to sell off our pride along with the mana stones long ago.
─Click.
I scraped the floor with the tip of my dagger and picked up a mana stone no bigger than a fingernail. Judging by its murky color, it would barely cover the cost of today’s meals.
“If I’m going to pick through this place, can’t there at least be something substantial?”
I combed through every nook and cranny with practiced hands.
A chipped dagger lay beside the slimy traces left by a melted monster.
“Analysis.”
[Activating the ability ‘Analysis.’]
As I activated my ability, information about the dagger was faintly etched into my mind.
[Old Dagger]
─A crudely made dagger.
‘Trash, just as I thought.’
It looked as though some newbie who had come in yesterday had worn himself out and left it behind.
The Tower’s first through tenth floors were known as the “Newbie Zone.” The monsters there were so weak that plenty of idiots charged in barehanded, let alone with proper equipment.
It was also where beginners entered with dreams, learned the cruelty of reality, and mostly left as corpses without ever managing to use their weapons properly.
I had once been just like them.
I had thought I would become a hero too. But the wall of talent was high. While others built their names by cutting down monsters, I had to pick up mana stones from between the spit and bloodstains they left behind.
“Hey! Lee Yeon-woo! Are you going to hurry up and strip the place or not? It’s not just your ability that’s worthless—are your fingers fucking useless too?”
While I was briefly lost in thought, a rough voice flew from behind and struck me.
I turned my head and saw a fat man grumbling in leather armor steeped in the stench of sweat.
Mr. Park. A typical rat bastard who had spent years crawling around the bottom of this business.
“Bullshit…… Says the guy who awakened a trash ability himself.”
Instead of answering him, I snorted.
He was not wrong. Not a single person doing this work had a respectable ability.
The world of Hunters was a brutal class society where everything was decided the moment one awakened.
Powerful abilities with high growth potential guaranteed a bright future along with an invitation from a guild, while failures like us could only skulk around the lower floors and eke out a living.
“A few mana stones again today, and that’s it. How are we ever supposed to save any money like this?”
Another man beside Mr. Park spat and muttered.
“Exactly. It’s this hard just to get from the third floor to the fourth. We’ll probably never even see the ninth-floor boss in our lives.”
“Of course not. If you can’t kill the ninth-floor boss, you can never climb any higher. I hear it’s a completely different world up there. The major guilds have taken over, so people like us can’t even go near the place.”
The Tower’s structure was straightforward. A powerful boss monster guarded every tenth floor, and unless one overcame it, one could not advance to the next floor.
The lower floors, where the barrier to entry was low, teemed with failures like us. The floors above were a privileged domain enjoyed only by a chosen few.
“If only my parents had been Hunters too. Ha, things would’ve been a little easier.”
“Idiot. How much better could it be, even if you inherited a decent ability?”
“Whatever you inherited, it’d all be about the same anyway.”
Abilities could be inherited, and supposedly grew stronger as their proficiency accumulated over successive generations.
In other words, the world was only worth living in if you had the right bloodline and talent.
The truth of this city was that a first-generation awakened like me had to live his entire life this way with nothing to his name.
“Hey, I’ve been thinking about something.”
Mr. Park spoke in a furtive voice. Base greed settled into his eyes.
“What if we just rob the people coming down from the upper floors?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“What do you think? I mean exactly what I said.”
The air froze in an instant. I stared at him blankly.
“Honestly, wouldn’t that be faster than picking up mana stones? If we catch just one exhausted Hunter at the right time……”
“Don’t talk crazy.”
I cut him off flatly. Mr. Park raised his eyebrows and growled.
“What? You need money too. Stop pretending you’re a good person. All we have to do is stab those Guild Youth kids in the back once……”
“Fuck off, you idiot.”
I raised my middle finger without hesitation. This was not a question of good and evil. It was a question of survival.
“I’m not pretending to be good. Use your damned head and think. What if we mess with the Guild Youth and a major guild starts tracking us? Or they put a bounty on our heads? Then it won’t be mana stones we have to hand over. It’ll be our lives, you braindead bastard.”
The deeper someone lived in the shadows, the more important it was to know which lines not to cross. The instant we crossed one, we would cease to be rats and become prey.
I could not believe this idiot did not even understand that……
Getting mixed up with lunatics like these was obviously going to shorten my life.
“Hey, forget it. If you want to kill yourself, do it alone. Let’s just say goodbye to each other right here.”
I turned around and walked out of the passage.
I felt as though I would go insane too if I remained exposed to that revolting atmosphere any longer.
In any case, today had been practically a bust, so I was thinking I should search another sector before leaving when—
─THUD.
My side suddenly grew hot and went numb.
I saw dark red liquid spreading beneath my field of vision.
It was a penetrating wound. The old dagger I had picked up and thrown away moments earlier was buried deep in my side.
“Huh……?”
“Y-you bastard…… Who do you think you are, acting all high and mighty? It hurts, doesn’t it? You fucking idiot.”
I heard Mr. Park’s voice. His eyes had already lost all reason.
“You crazy bastard…… You think you’ll get away with this……?”
“If you die here, won’t everyone assume a monster killed you anyway? We’ve got to get rid of the witness beforehand, right?”
“Yeah, this works out perfectly. Let’s consider it practice.”
I had known they were lunatics, but they had truly lost their goddamned minds.
─CRUNCH—!
The dagger twisted again.
The excruciating pain nearly made my eyes roll back, but I gritted my teeth, pulled the cheap gathering knife from my waist, and swung it.
─SLASH—!
“Y-you fucking bastard!! My eye!! My eye!!”
Perhaps because I had swung so quickly, the blade grazed the area around his eye.
Unfortunately, it did not seem to have cut very deep, but I had no time to check.
I immediately started running.
I want to live. No matter how wretched and fucked-up my life is, I refuse to let it end at the hands of trash like them.
─Tap-tap-tap!
And sure enough, furious footsteps chased after me from behind.
“Catch him!! We’re finished if that bastard gets out and reports us!! Kill him no matter what!!”
I had lost too much blood. Every time I ran, it felt as though life itself were draining from my side.
How long did I run like that? By the time I realized where I was, my flight had driven me to a sheer precipice.
A cliff behind me, murderous rats in front of me.
“Got you, bastard…… Huh? Where did you think you could run?”
“Heh-heh. Hey, get on your knees and beg. Then maybe we’ll let you live. Right?”
I knew perfectly well they were not the kind of men who would spare me if I begged. Men who had already decided to kill someone would never show mercy.
At that moment, my damned, miserable life flashed before my eyes.
At rock bottom until the very end…… It was so unfair I could have cried.
But.
“Since…… it’s come to this.”
I squeezed out the last of my strength and raised my middle finger at them.
“Rather than let bastards like you kill me like this, wouldn’t it be far more honorable to end it with my own two feet? Fuck you, you goddamned idiots!”
The instant I finished speaking, I threw myself backward.
Even as I fell, I spat at the bastards staring at me like idiots. Fierce wind battered my eardrums, and I quietly closed my eyes.
Until the final moment, there was only one thing I could see.
‘What are these things?’
It felt as though something strange was floating around me.
Something resembling worms crawled along the wall.
[The ability ‘Analysis’ is responding.]
[Otherworldly language detected.]
[Attempting Analysis.]
.
.
.
[Analysis failed.]
[Ability insufficient to analyze something of a higher dimension.]
[Analysis is evolving.]
─THUD!
***
“……Urgh.”
The coppery scent of blood and cold earth dust stabbed into my lungs.
How am I still alive? The question flashed through my mind, but the excruciating pain boring into my side immediately paralyzed my thoughts.
I had thrown myself from the cliff prepared to die, yet somehow I was still alive.
“Ha, haha…….”
Suppressing the hollow laugh that burst from me, I clutched my side.
Something hot gushed out between my fingers. My thirst for revenge forcibly roused my survival instinct.
I will get out of here alive, no matter what. Then I will put identical holes in those bastards’ sides.
But the moment I raised my head while vowing revenge, I was struck speechless.
“What the hell is this……?”
A vast gorge stretched beneath the precipice. Bizarre patterns covered the gorge’s walls and floor.
At a glance, they looked like scribbles, but they shimmered as they gave off a strange energy.
That was when it happened.
[The ability ‘Analysis’ is responding.]
[Analyzing otherworldly languages.]
[Analyzing.]
[Analyzing…….]
[Analysis proficiency has increased.]
“Urgh……!”
Pain surged through my head as though tens of thousands of needles had been driven into it.
My ability ran wild of its own accord and began scraping together every piece of information in the surroundings. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming.
Before long, the hazy characters sharpened into clear sentences and imprinted themselves upon my vision.
[I want to live. I want to return home and see my younger siblings…….]
[Those fucking knights. I found the treasure first.]
[I should’ve lived a good life. If only I’d known I would die in a pit like this.]
I had never seen those words before. Yet somehow, I could read them.
“Are these all…… last words?”
As though entranced, I began walking. The farther inward I went, the more desperate the sentences became, and the colder the air grew.
Deep within the gorge, at its very end, I witnessed an unbelievable sight.
Dozens of corpses.
Some had already become skeletons and crumbled to dust, while suits of armor that had decayed beneath the weight of time lay everywhere.
The Tower had appeared barely over a century ago. Yet the things strewn across this place resembled the attire of knights from centuries-old fantasy novels.
And from within that place, I thought I could hear something…… something like voices.
Slowly, I listened to those voices.
And when I analyzed the words burrowing into my mind—
[Recognizing the knights’ souls.]
[Analyzing the souls.]
‘It’s analyzing souls? It can do that?’
It felt completely different from the Analysis I knew.
Originally, all it could do was read objects or writing.
But it was analyzing souls.
What the hell was this……? Before I could finish the thought, something began to appear before my eyes.
[Analysis complete.]
[Analyzing the memories engraved upon the souls.]
─THUD!
That was the moment.
Something immense burrowed into my mind, and everything began blending together in chaos.
Knights.
Scenes from the Middle Ages.
And battles.
Their experiences.
All of it flowed through my mind and began spreading across my entire body. Then, at last—
[The knights’ experiences are being engraved into your body.]
The instant those words appeared—
[You have acquired the skill ‘Regeneration.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Light Footwork.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Grip Strength Enhancement.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Flexible Body.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Wits.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Presence.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Trained Body.’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Hardened Claws’…….]
[……acquired.]
[……acquired.]
.
.
.
“Uh, uhh…… Huh?”
I could not form another word.
Skills……?
Even veteran Hunters could spend decades accumulating experience without ever sublimating it into a skill, and yet—
I had received skills?
Beyond surprise, the tension made my body begin to tremble.
And it was not just one. More skills than I could count on one hand sprouted one after another and burrowed into my body.
This isn’t a dream, is it?
As if to prove that this was real, I felt the pain in my side begin to fade.
I lowered my gaze.
“Ha, this is real?”
[Skill ‘Regeneration (D)’]
─Effect: Enhances the body’s regeneration.
As though I had drunk a potion, the hole in my side was slowly closing.
The sight made me realize it instinctively.
This was not a dream.
“Holy shit.”
Those were the only words that came out.
How could something like this happen?
But that was not the end.
Gulp.
Traces of battle lay piled within my line of sight, and atop them rested a skeleton with a hood pulled low over its skull.
A pure white sphere floated over the skeleton, radiating a faint light.
My hand moved before doubt could stop it. As though drawn by a magnet, I touched the white essence.
At that moment—
[Contact established with the soul of the assassin, ‘Nameless Shadow.’]
[The unique ability ‘Analysis’ is analyzing the soul’s memories.]
‘So it’s the same as before.’
I smiled as memories flowed into my mind along with the message that they were being analyzed.
─FWOOSH!
The massive essence of memories scattered and seeped into my body.
Small bursts of pain passed through me, and places I had never visited and sensations I had never experienced swept through my mind like a panorama.
A man who silenced his breathing in the darkness and aimed for his target’s heart.
An assassin who became all the more legendary because he had not even left behind a name.
Even the memories of the man who entered this Tower to take the knight commander’s head, only to ultimately fall into eternal sleep here.
The instant the fragments of memory ended, a cold system tone rang in my ears.
[The analyzed soul is awakening a latent ability.]
[The analyzed soul’s memories are blossoming within your body.]
[You have acquired the skill: Shadow Step (A)!]
─Effect: Conceals your body in darkness. Distorts an opponent’s perception, allowing you to hunt enemies from within the shadows.
“……Holy shit.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
An A-rank skill. And that was not all.
There had been a strange sense of incongruity for a while now.
I carefully looked down at the dagger embedded in the wound below.
[Old Dagger]
─A crudely made dagger.
There is blood on the tip of the blade.
Owner of the blood: Lee Yeon-woo
‘It’s more detailed.’
The information it displayed had been broken down and analyzed in far greater detail than before.
My ability, which had only been capable of interpreting unfamiliar languages and analyzing objects well enough to identify their names, had advanced another step.
‘How……? No, could it be?’
But analyzing souls?
Sublimating their memories?
The ability I had used my entire life without it ever changing had transformed because of those otherworldly things.
I knew it instinctively.
This was the path I had to follow.
And the only power that could keep me alive.
“Urgh…….”
Was this the result of taking in too much information and too many souls at once?
Fatigue brought a headache crashing over me.
The pain pricked at my head again and again, but a smile still spread across my face.
Because I could feel that this moment was changing my life…… No, my destiny.
“Ngh…….”
I had not even staunched the bleeding, but it did not matter. Now I had a real weapon too.
I had to climb back up quickly. And then—
I slowly rose to my feet.
The shadows of the dark gorge wrapped around my body like living creatures.
When I activated the skill, my presence began to vanish from reality.
“Those damned bastards…… Just you wait.”
It was time to make the trash who had tried to kill me experience the same hell.