After the flash, so intense they could not open their eyes, passed, all that spread before them was an endless white space. Pure white nothingness, where neither floor nor walls could be seen.
“Uh… there’s nothing here?”
“They’re probably opening the Channel.”
Go Gyeol pointed into the air. Thousands of translucent screens began rising over the empty white space. On each screen, the faces of Hunters participating in the Preliminaries appeared, and real-time viewer counts began ticking upward beside them.
[Republic of Korea Integrated Channel Viewer Count: 32,492,103]
[Broadcast begins.]
“The broadcast is starting now.”
The moment Go Gyeol finished speaking, the endless white space shattered like pieces of glass.
FLASH—!
As the intense light withdrew like an ebbing tide, what spread before their eyes was a barren land with no end in sight.
They were not the only people standing there amid the rough, flying dust. Thousands, tens of thousands of Awakened gathered from all across the Republic of Korea filled the plaza in a massive circle.
In front of them, where every gaze was directed, the ‘Tower of Truth’ stood in overwhelming majesty, rising high enough to pierce the clouds. Unlike on Earth, where it had been floating in the sky, the Tower here had landed heavily, as though rooted in the earth.
SCREEEEEECH—!
A sharp metallic sound that seemed to tear the eardrums shook the land. At the bottom of the Tower, the massive iron gates located in the four directions, east, west, south, and north, slowly began to open. As the inside of the gates, dark as the abyss, was revealed, a suffocating tension spread among the Hunters.
Then, dyeing the violet sky red, a massive System message appeared like a sentence being handed down.
[Selection Round Stage 1: Survival of the Fittest]
[Details: Only the first 10,000 people may enter the Tower lobby.]
[Time Limit: 10:00]
The moment the burning red number decreased from [10:00] to [09:59], the plaza began to surge as if caught in a massive storm.
“10,000 people?! Hey, how many people are here right now!”
“Move! I have to go first!”
In the plaza that had become chaos, the sound of tens of thousands of feet striking the ground shook the earth like an earthquake.
There were only four entrances, and the cruel race, where the odds of survival were not even a fraction, was about to begin. Go Gyeol blocked the way of the party members, who were about to step forward in panic, and stared at the open gates with coldly sunken eyes.
“Wait. Those gates aren’t a welcome greeting.”
“We have to go! 10,000 spots will fill up right away!”
Kang Hoon stamped his foot in panic, and Kwon Do-geun also prepared to run in a hurry. Even Lee Seong-ha, while maintaining his benevolent smile, had eyes that quickly shook toward Go Gyeol.
“Go Gyeol, what are you doing? We have to hurry….”
Just as the party members were about to break formation and rush forward, Go Gyeol’s cold hands grabbed Kang Hoon’s and Kwon Do-geun’s shoulders at the same time.
“Stop.”
“What?! Hyung! If we don’t go now, we’ll get pushed out of the rankings!”
Kang Hoon asked in a voice mixed with a scream. Even Kang Ji-hyun looked at Go Gyeol as though she could not understand. But Go Gyeol did not blink once and only watched the backs of the Hunters running ahead.
“Wait.”
“Why, exactly! At least tell us the reason…!”
“If you don’t want to die, just wait.”
At Go Gyeol’s firm order, the party members hesitated and stopped. In the meantime, the Hunters in the lead group had already reached near the Tower entrances. Since the number 10,000 was absurdly small compared to the huge crowd, the Hunters were shoving one another and creating an utter hellscape.
That was when it happened.
CRAAAASH—!
Right in front of the Tower entrance, the ground beneath the Hunters exploded and shot upward. Before screams could even burst out, a chain of explosions filled the plaza.
“……!”
Kang Hoon’s mouth fell open. Mana bombs buried like land mines detonated, and the Hunters in the lead group were blown away like autumn leaves before a gale. But hell was only beginning.
Kieeeeeek—!
From the smoke of the explosions, hundreds, thousands of gargoyles poured down like rain along the Tower’s outer wall. The Hunters who had been running toward the entrance were instantly trapped from front and back and became prey for the monsters.
“It’s worse than Arcadia….”
Kwon Do-geun muttered with a bloodless face. Only then did Go Gyeol release the hands that had been gripping their shoulders and added coldly,
“The Tower never said it would obediently let 10,000 people in. I told you. This isn’t a race. It said survival of the fittest.”
Go Gyeol’s gaze turned beyond the battlefield that had just become pandemonium, toward the invisible camera lenses. He could almost hear the real-time viewer reaction numbers exploding and shaking.
The scene before them was truly pandemonium. In the air, red numbers announcing the number of eliminated participants were soaring terrifyingly in real time.
[Current eliminated: 42,109]
Even amid the screams and explosions shaking the earth, Go Gyeol did not move at all. Unlike the party members stamping their feet because they wanted to rush out at any moment, he only stared at the flow of the battlefield like a stopped statue.
The Hunters in the lead group, who had rushed ahead in excitement at the heat of the first gate, were being swept up by the gargoyle swarm pouring down from the Tower’s outer wall and the mana explosions on the ground, collapsing like autumn leaves before a gale. Just as the survivors on the battlefield, now turned into chaos, barely came to their senses and tried to counterattack, Go Gyeol’s eyes flashed.
“Now. Grab your weapons!”
At the same time as Go Gyeol’s sharp shout, the air rippled like waves from the tip of his finger.
His “Subspace” opened.
From the black hole, Lee Seong-ha’s “Cross Staff of the Seven Stigmata” shot out and settled heavily into its owner’s hand. Immediately afterward, Kang Ji-hyun’s “Rose Staff” and the support equipment for Kwon Do-geun and Kang Hoon were delivered accurately into each of their hands at the promised timing.
“Seong-ha, 12 o’clock! Catch that blue-winged gargoyle!!”
“May the Lord’s mercy be with you….”
Lee Seong-ha maintained his benevolent voice while swinging the staff through the air and compressing powerful gravity, crushing the gargoyle’s entire head. It was merciless power hidden behind a holy expression.
“Kang Hoon! 11 o’clock, <Weakening> on the one with the broken wing! Mr. Do-geun, create ice spikes on the ground at 3 o’clock and fire them. Ji-hyun, save your arrows behind me and shoot only the ones I point out!”
Go Gyeol’s instructions moved the party members like precise gears. Every monster he pointed out had weakened defenses or an opening because it was fighting other Hunters.
CRACKLE—!
When Kang Ji-hyun’s arrow of light pierced precisely through the heart of the gargoyle Go Gyeol had indicated, an unfamiliar notification rang in her ear.
[Notice: Gargoyle Warrior defeated. Experience gained.]
“……Experience? Hey! What is this? My body suddenly feels lighter!”
It was not only Kang Ji-hyun. Experience gain messages appeared one after another before the eyes of the party members taking down monsters according to Go Gyeol’s orders. As they ran, asking in surprise, Go Gyeol shouted,
“It’s the Tower’s law! The experience gained here raises your Level and becomes ‘Skill Points’ that can strengthen your Skills! The ones we’re killing right now have the best point efficiency!”
Data from before his Regression. “Growth-type monsters” that appeared only at the beginning of the Preliminaries. While others were busy fleeing just to survive, Go Gyeol intended to push his party members’ specs to the limit in this brief section.
“You can strengthen Skills? Then we get stronger than before?”
Kang Hoon scattered curses in excitement. For the first time, desire appeared in the eyes of the boy who had been terrified.
“Yeah! So don’t think about anything else and make sure you kill only the ones I mark for you! And run faster! Look at how fast the numbers are dropping!”
The elimination count was racing toward 60,000 at a terrifying speed.
It was the Tower’s cruel process of filtering out the rabble and leaving behind only the true prey.