Before the blood had even cooled.
The two rats rushed toward the corpse as though they had been waiting for this moment.
Greed had consumed them so thoroughly that even their eyes already reeked of beasts. Their hands busily rifled through the bloodstained pockets.
Weapons, bracers, a mana-stone pouch.
One by one, the objects that still retained their owner’s warmth fell into their greedy hands.
In the end, they had lured a Hunter descending from the upper floors into a trap and killed him. They had waited until his Magic Power was depleted and his strength had left him.
They were so excited that they scattered evidence everywhere, caring only about the spoils. What consequences their actions would bring, what future awaited them…… They did not appear to possess the brains to consider such things in the first place.
“Haha, see? I told you this was the way to do it. You only need one big score in life, right?”
“This really was the answer. We never should’ve invited that fucking idiot. He would’ve been nothing but dead weight anyway.”
“Exactly. What use was a bastard whose only ability was some trash skill like identification? Killing him was the right choice.”
They snickered as they checked the mana stones inside the pouch.
But seemingly unsatisfied even with that, their eyes burned an even deeper red.
“Hey…… Want to go after one more? It’d be a shame to stop after just this one.”
“Hmm…….”
“We’ve already killed one. What difference would a second make? Once we finish taking all this…… we can leave this fucking city, and no one will ever know.”
“Should we? That doesn’t sound bad, does it?”
The two rats were still dreaming rather than facing reality.
They had no idea their dream would soon become hell.
─SLASH—!
“Fuuuck!!”
“What? What the hell is it?!”
Blood burst from both men’s eyes at the same instant.
Clutching their faces, they only then realized what had happened.
Something had cut their eyes. Without a sound. Without the slightest presence.
From where? Who had done it?
Only then did terror descend upon them.
Amid the silence, devoid of all other sound, nothing but the faintest footsteps rang out several times.
And then—
─SLICE—!
“Aaaaaagh! My leg!”
His leg had been cut.
As though that were not the end, a thin red line continued along it, slicing through his heel in an instant.
─SWISH—!
“Aaargh!”
“Who the fuck are you? Stop hiding and come out! ──Ghk!”
The attacks did not stop.
Little by little—ever so slowly—they sliced into the men’s limbs.
As every tendon was severed one by one, even their hope of escape was mercilessly cut away.
In the end, they fell to their knees.
“You son of a bitch! What did we ever do to you?! At least say something!”
─Tap.
The footsteps suddenly stopped in front of them.
“Did you miss me, you fucking bastards?”
“Huh……?”
“L-Lee Yeon-woo? You…… How the hell?”
A familiar voice reached them through the darkness that had already swallowed their vision.
The moment they heard it, their entire bodies began trembling like aspen leaves.
They had undoubtedly sent him falling over the cliff. He should have died.
Yet he had returned alive and well and was now dragging them into the abyss.
That bastard could not possibly have possessed this kind of power in the first place──.
But reality was merciless.
As if he had no intention of waiting for a response, Yeon-woo merely moved the hand holding his dagger in silence.
“Ghk! Ghhk!”
The men shrieked and flailed their arms, but their resistance cut through nothing but air.
Slipping like a ghost between their swinging arms, the dagger slowly but surely severed what remained of their lives.
─Snap.
At last, their necks went limp and lolled to the side.
They no longer moved.
Yeon-woo looked down at them for a moment.
“Huff, huff…… Fucking bastards.”
He was gasping for breath.
Even though he had been the only one attacking, the effort had nearly exhausted him.
He probably could not have dealt with them so easily without his newly acquired Shadow Step skill.
Being invisible was tremendously powerful in and of itself.
At that moment, something flashed through his mind.
─BZZT!
[Experience has accumulated for the skill ‘Grip Strength Enhancement (F).’]
[‘Grip Strength Enhancement (F)’ has increased to ‘Grip Strength Enhancement (E).’]
─Shatters even stone with a powerful grip.
‘Well, it had every reason to improve.’
He had climbed that cliff with nothing but the determination to take revenge on those sons of bitches.
There was no conceivable way that would not have earned him experience.
He had never acquired a skill before, so he had not known, but this taught him one thing.
Skills evolved too.
‘So this is why Hunters were so strong.’
It felt as though he had taken one step closer to those who lived in an entirely different dimension from him.
Once his thoughts settled and his head cooled, his gaze naturally began to wander.
“Haha…….”
He spotted another corpse lying beside the bodies of the two rats as they rapidly cooled.
It was the Hunter they had killed. Resentment and terror remained mingled on his stiffening face.
So those idiots really went through with it.
Nothing could be done about what had already happened.
As though briefly paying his respects, Yeon-woo closed the dead man’s staring eyes. That was all he could do for him.
And then—
“In any case, I still have to do what needs to be done…….”
With a sigh, he placed his hands on the corpses sprawled across the ground.
Those who were still alive had to keep living, didn’t they?
More importantly, the wound from when he had been stabbed earlier was still there.
If he did not treat it, he would be in danger too.
“Let’s see…… I knew these bastards had a potion stashed away somewhere.”
As if proving that greed had driven them out of their minds, an ampoule of sloshing blue liquid was hidden deep inside their clothes.
He had noticed them reaching into their clothes despite panicking under his attack.
He immediately removed the cap, drank half, and poured the rest over the hole in his side.
The bleeding stopped, and his vision, which had been hazy from blood loss, gradually cleared.
Once his body felt a little better, he carefully collected the remaining items.
[Using the ability ‘Analysis.’]
[Analyzing the items.]
[Rosco Combat Knife]
─A knife bearing the touch of a master craftsman.
─The fingerprints of its previous user, Rovien Behim, are present.
[Silver Guardian]
─A new-model bracer designed to protect the wrist. It has a small, recently acquired scratch.
─Standard-issue defensive equipment belonging to the Eoram Guild.
……
…
.
Every item was of excellent quality.
The victim appeared to have been a newbie from a fairly respectable guild.
In fact, several of the items bore the guild’s emblem.
‘Those are out.’
The greedy bastards had taken everything without caring about such things, but Yeon-woo threw all those items away.
Taking them would only get him tracked. Even if he tried to dispose of them, the process would be complicated and cause him more trouble than they were worth.
He was sorting out only the materials and relics collected from the Tower when—
─Clunk.
─Rattle, rattle.
An object rolled out of the victim’s pocket.
It was a strange structure made of brass.
It had no particular ornamentation and was not shaped like anything that could be used as a weapon. It was simply a collection of intricately interlocked brass rings.
He did not know what it was, but something so intricate would surely fetch money if he sold it.
He carefully picked it up, dusted it off, and was about to stuff it into his pocket when—
─BZZT!
[The ability ‘Analysis’ has activated.]
[Sage’s Key]
─The final key left behind by the Last Sage ○○○○.
─Fragments of memory are contained within the key.
‘Fragments of memory?’
The moment his skill activated, previously invisible characters engraved upon the relic slowly surfaced.
Countless memories then began forcing themselves into his mind.
[Analyzing the fragments of memory contained within the key.]
[I left the final workshop on the fifth floor. Our wisdom shall not slumber here until the age of oppression comes to an end.]
A final workshop? Oppression? Research?
It was a combination of unfamiliar words rarely heard in everyday life. Yet he instinctively understood what they meant.
“These characters. Could this be? Just like before…….”
Just as he had acquired a skill from the assassin’s memories beneath the cliff, could this relic also lead to something?
─Gulp.
Swallowing dryly, he looked at the lump of brass once more.
Obtaining just one Shadow Step skill had allowed him to subdue two grown men in an instant. If he could seize another extraordinary opportunity this time……
“I can change it.”
He might be able to leave this damned life behind and advance to somewhere better.
His feet began to move. His instincts told him that this choice would become the crossroads that divided his life.
And so he ran.
He had almost never gone beyond the third floor, known as the tutorial, but at this moment, he simply took each step upward.
─TAP—!
***
‘It’s been a long time since I climbed above the third floor.’
The instant he left the farthest edge of the Newbie Zone—the tutorial area—the atmosphere changed.
First, the density of monsters was different.
If the first through third floors were old battlefields crammed with trash and desperation, then from the fourth floor onward, the stench of beasts began to thicken.
The goblins encountered here did not wander around stupidly like those in the Newbie Zone.
The way they held their weapons was different. The looks in their eyes were different.
One clumsy move, and they would quickly surround him and turn him into a cold corpse.
But—
[Using the skill ‘Shadow Step.’]
I’m different now.
Using stealth to evade the monsters’ eyes, he carefully moved behind one and brought his dagger down upon its head.
─SKREEEEEK!!
Purple blood sprayed everywhere from the sudden attack, but he paid it no attention and continued striking.
Until it died. Until it could no longer resist in the slightest, he continued driving the blade into it.
When its vitality was finally exhausted, its mangled body melted like black liquid, leaving behind only a small gem.
“Whew, that makes another one…….”
Thanks to his new skill, he could finally conduct a proper hunt for the first time in ages.
Without stealth, he would have had to face it head-on, and then an injury would have been unavoidable.
To Hunters with combat skills, it would have been nothing more than a minor monster. But for Yeon-woo, whose means of attack were limited, even dealing with a single one took forever.
‘Just as I thought, I don’t have enough firepower.’
He felt the deficiency keenly. A strategy of hiding and launching ambushes had clear limitations.
The instant he was discovered, or the instant he encountered an opponent he could not kill in one strike, it would be over.
He had to exercise the utmost caution.
‘Well, hunting isn’t my goal this time anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’
His only reason for climbing the floors now was to obtain the relic’s reward. In other words, there was no need to go out of his way to kill monsters.
And stealth was the ideal method for doing that.
He moved quickly while stealth remained active, launched ambushes before it wore off, killed what he could, and avoided larger groups as he made his way through the maze.
He had visited the fourth floor before. Even if he had not, he had heard so many stories about it that finding his way was easy.
The moment he passed the fourth floor and set foot on the fifth, the atmosphere changed once again.
────.
Silence. Unlike the fourth floor, which centered around a forest, the fifth was a space strewn with what appeared to be collapsed stonework.
Beneath the scent of dust and weathered stone lingered traces of something ancient.
The scent of something that had slumbered at this depth for a very long time.
“The fifth floor. I never thought I’d make it this far.”
The memory of venturing onto the fourth floor long ago with nothing but bravado, nearly dying to a goblin, and fleeing brought a hollow laugh from him.
At that moment—
─BZZZZZZZ.
The brass structure inside his pocket vibrated faintly.
The relic was responding.
He took it out and followed the vibration. Like a compass, the strength of its response changed whenever he turned in a different direction.
It was guiding him.
In the end, the relic led him to…… a wall.
A dead end.
No matter how he looked at it, it was nothing more than an ordinary stone wall of the Tower.
But the relic pointed unmistakably toward it. This way.
He unconsciously reached out and ran his hand over the wall.
─WHOOSH—!
[The analyzed relic is responding.]
At the same time as the message appeared, characters began engraving themselves upon the previously blank wall.
[The ability ‘Analysis’ has activated.]
[Deciphering writing left long ago by a Sage of the Labyrinth.]
Yeon-woo traced the characters on the wall with his hand and read them one by one.
[O you who have fled the Light’s persecution, prove your identity.]
“Hmm, persecution…….”
His palm caught on a small groove at the end of the characters he had been tracing.
Prove my identity? Could it be?
[Sage’s Key]
─The final key left behind by the Last Sage ○○○○.
He immediately brought the brass structure to the groove.
Click. It meshed perfectly, as though it had been made for this from the very beginning, and the relic quietly sank into the wall.
Then came a strange sound, like a mechanism beginning to move.
─RUMBLE—!!
A heavy vibration traveled up through the soles of his feet. The walls and floor rumbled together, and a massive door slowly began to open its jaws.
It’s opening.
The Sage’s Workshop that no Hunter had ever found. I opened it.
A smile spread across his lips as he gazed at the fully opened door and the dark staircase descending beyond it.
“Good.”
He advanced one step at a time. If he had obtained stealth from the assassin’s soul, what would he gain from the Sage’s Workshop?
As he descended the stairs, the rough cavern texture characteristic of the Tower vanished, and an artificial space that had long borne the touch of someone’s hands revealed itself.
It was an old workshop.
The space resembled an alchemist’s laboratory and a mage’s study at the same time.
Books and research records densely packed the walls.
Ancient books that looked ready to crumble if touched and research notebooks that could not be read in any language of this world stood in rows, blanketed by the dust of ages.
He naturally picked up the old notebooks and examined them by eye.
[The ability ‘Analysis’ has activated.]
[Analyzing the research notebook.]
[Magic-Inscribed Research Notebook]
─A copy of the magic researched by the Sage.
─It is severely damaged, making it impossible to fully discern the research contents.
‘Is this magic……? There are a lot of formulas in this.’
The research revealed through the analyzed characters and language concerned magic.
But just as Analysis had explained, the damage was so severe that he could not determine the exact contents.
Magic existed in the city as well, but he had never seen it studied like this before, so it felt unfamiliar.
“Should I take these for now?”
His instincts as a Scavenger reacted first.
An old collection like this would fetch a decent price from a fence…….
Besides, he might need it later. There seemed to be no harm in taking it with him.
And then—
─!!
Small, soul-like wisps began to appear before his eyes.
This was also similar to the knights’ grave he had seen earlier.
The small souls approached him.
He gently brushed them with his fingertips and quietly held them in his gaze.
[Using the ability ‘Analysis.’]
[Analyzing the souls of the nameless scholars.]
[Their experiences are being engraved into your body.]
‘Scholars…….’
He felt something like the bitter resentment of those who had suffered persecution and died here slowly embed itself deep within his chest.
He closed his eyes and sorted through it.
The experiences that seemed to pierce his entire body gradually settled into place.
At their end, he encountered memories that quietly coiled around him.
[You have acquired the skill ‘Crude Magic Power (E).’]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Spirit Affinity (E-).’]
“Magic Power? What the hell……?”
A shiver ran through him at the words Magic Power.
Is this the Magic Power I know?
He had heard that successful Hunters used Magic Power to cast magical skills.
Some also used it to enhance their bodies.
That kind of power had been placed in his hands?
His shock was so great that his body began trembling little by little.
‘It’s faint, but I can feel it.’
[‘Crude Magic Power (E)’]
[Proficiency: 0.]
─Holds a small amount of mana within the body.
Just as the skill said, he could feel another kind of power inside his body.
It was so slight that he could not even describe it, but the mere fact that he possessed it filled him with joy.
He was moving forward, little by little.
He, too, could slowly advance like the Hunters he had always longed to become.
But this was not the end.
Traces of souls, as though beckoning him onward, pointed toward one room.
It was a narrow room containing nothing but an old quill and a research desk. Something pure white floated slowly at its center.
It was the same as what he had seen before.
A soul. Probably that of the Sage who had owned this place.
He reached out with a trembling hand.
─Tap.
─FLARE—!
[Contact established with the soul of the Sage of the Labyrinth.]
[The ability ‘Analysis’ is analyzing the soul’s memories.]
At that moment, an immense flood of memories surged into his mind.
A colossal Tower.
Mages who called it the Labyrinth and lived within it.
The sight of them establishing workshops and hunting monsters for their research was engraved upon his mind. Their faces as they laughed and cried whenever they completed new magic.
And finally, the monster assault and the fall of the Labyrinth.
─SNAP!
The memories abruptly cut off, and sparks erupted before his eyes.
[The analyzed soul is awakening a latent ability.]
[Latent experience is being engraved into your body.]
[You have acquired the skill: Enfeeblement (B)!]
─Enfeeblement (B): Greatly reduces the target’s stamina and strength. A fixed degree of the effect applies even to higher-grade targets.
“…….”
He remained silent for a moment.
It felt different from when he had acquired stealth. As though a new circuit had formed somewhere inside his body, unfamiliar energy gathered at his fingertips.
Merely hiding and launching a surprise attack had not been enough.
But now he could weaken his enemies. Hide, wear them down, and finish them with an ambush.
A smile spread across his face.
“With this…….”
He was certain.
He could escape this damned hell of quotas and the clutches of his creditors.
He could finally be free.