“So this is the first floor of the Tutorial Tower.”
It was fascinating.
Only moments ago, I had been standing in a pure white space, yet now I was suddenly in a forest.
After quickly surveying my surroundings, I looked at the system window floating in midair.
[Defeat 50 Goblins]
[0/50]
I had seen this countless times on the internet.
It was a mission to defeat fifty Goblins.
Clearing it would allow me to advance to the next floor, while failing or dying would send me back to the first floor.
The same rule applied to all the other floors, so there was no need to fear death inside the Tutorial Tower.
Even if I died, I could simply start climbing again from the first floor.
Perhaps that was why I was not particularly afraid.
Not that I had been especially frightened to begin with.
I lightly stretched my neck and clenched my fist.
My Unique Skill, Black Dragon.
I had wanted to test it once in the safe zone before coming here, but I had not been given the opportunity.
In that case, I might as well try it now.
Following what I had seen on the internet, I focused inwardly and fervently willed Black Dragon to activate.
A tingling sensation spread through my right hand.
[Black Dragon]
Scales began sprouting from the back of my right hand.
They emerged one after another, swiftly covering the entire hand.
My eyes widened as matte-black scales that did not reflect even a glimmer of light enveloped my right hand in an instant.
“So this is a skill.”
It felt strange.
My right hand had transformed into something inhuman, more like the limb of a monster.
I raised my left hand and lightly tapped the scales covering my right.
“Oh. They are hard.”
They felt as solid as a steel plate.
Even my fingernails seemed to have grown slightly sharper.
As I examined my transformed right hand, I sensed a presence ahead and raised my head.
A green dwarf stood there, holding a club as large as its own torso and flicking its tongue at me.
“Kirik! Kiririk!”
Seemingly excited, it slammed its club against the ground.
It then bared yellow teeth clogged with chunks of flesh and charged toward me.
A sharp, bestial hostility burned within its yellow eyes.
‘……Is that murderous intent?’
The Goblin’s grotesque appearance was one thing, but experiencing murderous intent for the first time was deeply unpleasant.
It made my skin crawl.
My face twisted into a scowl as I thrust my right fist toward the charging Goblin.
“Kieeek!”
WHOOSH!
The Goblin swung its club at the exact moment I threw my punch.
The long wooden club and my scale-covered fist rapidly closed the distance between them.
The instant they collided—
“Hm?”
The club shattered effortlessly.
“Kik—”
The Goblin behind it let out a brief death cry as its head burst into a spray of blood.
Its headless body staggered.
A moment later, the massive lump of flesh collapsed limply onto the grass-covered ground.
I blinked as I stared at the Goblin corpse I had killed with a single blow.
“I heard Goblins were weak, but were they really this weak?”
People said that Goblins were easy to deal with once one became accustomed to their revolting appearance.
That was why I had simply stood my ground and fought, but I had not expected it to die so easily.
Still, I probably would not have defeated it this effortlessly with an ordinary body.
Perhaps Black Dragon was a better skill than I had initially thought.
“Strangely enough…… I do not feel anything.”
This was the first time I had ever killed something.
Monsters were living creatures too, after all.
Yet it bothered me far less than I had expected.
Was it because I had felt no particular fear when I was about to fall to my death?
Or was there simply something wrong with my character?
As I seriously pondered the matter and flicked the blood from my hand, I glanced ahead.
“Kik, kiik…….”
Another Goblin was backing away, a frightened growl rumbling in its throat.
Well, whether there was something wrong with me or not did not particularly matter.
This was a sight I would have to grow accustomed to from now on anyway.
I should kill that one quickly and increase the count.
Defeating all fifty would probably take quite some time.
I took a step toward the retreating Goblin.
“Hm? What is wrong with it?”
I had heard that monsters were inherently hostile toward humans.
Yet the Goblin abruptly turned around and began to flee.
“Where do you think you are going?”
Since Black Dragon was a Growth-Type Skill, clearing the Tutorial Tower would probably take me a long time.
That was why I wanted to pass through the first floor as quickly as possible, yet the Goblin had suddenly started running away.
Frowning, I kicked off the ground and swiftly chased after it.
[Defeat 50 Goblins]
[1/50]
***
Perhaps that Goblin had actually been a Golden Goblin.
With that thought in mind, I concealed myself behind a boulder.
“Kiik! Kiiik!”
“Kik?”
“Kiiiiik!”
A group of Goblins chittered incessantly.
Judging by the crude huts scattered around, this appeared to be a Goblin village.
“One, two…….”
Chasing the fleeing Goblin had led me to many more of them.
Even a rough count suggested that there were at least fifty.
It seemed I would not need to search for them individually.
“One punch for each of them…….”
That meant I only needed to throw fifty punches.
Smiling, I slowly stepped out from behind the boulder.
“This cannot possibly be harder than carrying cement beneath the blazing sun in thirty-five-degree heat.”
After five years of construction work, I was confident in my stamina.
I repeatedly clenched and loosened my right hand as I walked forward.
“Kiik?”
“Kraaagh!”
The moment they spotted me, the Goblins released savage roars.
Every last one of them looked hideous.
Moreover, despite my having done nothing, hostility surged toward me from every direction.
We will tear you apart and feast on your flesh.
Reading the message contained within their hostility, I muttered quietly.
“I suppose the only good Goblin really is a dead Goblin.”
There was no helping it.
I would have to make them good myself.
The corners of my mouth rose as I faced the Goblin charging at the front.
“Hup!”
I poured far more strength into my arm than I had when punching the first Goblin.
[Synchronization Rate: 0.2%]
Then I threw my fist.
“……!”
KA-BOOOOOOM!
A deafening explosion thundered through the forest.
My ears felt as though they might rupture, and I stumbled backward with a frown.
A thick cloud of dust billowed into the air.
Covering the lower half of my face with my sleeve, I could not stop the words from escaping my mouth.
“This is insane…….”
Something had gone wrong.
No, seriously.
What kind of Growth-Type Skill—
[Defeat 50 Goblins]
[87/50]
[Success]
[Moving to the next floor]
—could do something like this with a single punch before it had even begun to grow?
I had only done it once.
I had merely thrown a punch with all my strength, yet the entire Goblin village had been annihilated.
And apparently, this was only 0.2% of its power.
I swallowed dryly and stared at my scale-covered right hand.
Black Dragon.
This was no ordinary skill.
I clenched my scaled fist tightly and closed my eyes.
A brilliant light was already rising from the ground to transport me to the next floor.
***
I reached the fifth floor in the blink of an eye.
That was largely because the missions from the second to the fourth floors had been simple monster-hunting tasks, such as defeating fifty Kobolds, just like the mission on the first floor.
During my climb to the fifth floor, one realization had become painfully clear.
“My right hand is too strong.”
It was far too strong.
A single punch solved everything.
I could not understand why a skill that was supposed to start out weak was already this powerful.
It left me utterly bewildered.
At this rate, I might become the fastest person in history to clear the Tutorial Tower.
Setting that aside—
“I heard becoming a Hunter improves your stamina. Is that why?”
I had swung my fist continuously without resting once on my way to the fifth floor.
Yet strangely, I did not feel tired at all.
Still, there was no reason to question a good thing, so I paid it little attention.
“And then there is this.”
I shifted my gaze away from my right hand and glanced to the side.
[Synchronization Rate: 0.2%]
My Synchronization Rate.
Unless I had seen it incorrectly, it had risen to 0.2% when I punched the Goblin village.
The problem was that it had not changed at all since then.
I needed to increase it to unlock other parts of my body, but how was I supposed to do that?
“Well, I can figure that out gradually.”
It would not be too late to investigate after becoming the first person to escape the Tutorial Tower.
For now, there was only one thing I needed to do.
Escape the Tutorial Tower.
To accomplish that, I first had to pass the fifth floor.
[Fifth Floor]
[Escape the Twisted Maze]
The conditions changed beginning with the fifth floor.
Until now, the missions had simply required me to defeat monsters. The fifth floor, however, required me to escape a maze.
There were no walkthroughs from this point onward.
The structure of the maze differed for every person.
Moreover, the maze walls were supposedly too durable to destroy, and even if they cracked, they repaired themselves almost immediately.
I had read online that anyone who lost their way here could spend an entire month struggling to escape.
“Hmm…….”
Still—
“Do I really need to use the conventional method?”
I could see a much faster shortcut.
I carefully ran my scale-covered right hand across the towering wall.
It was hard?
That meant it could not be destroyed?
Something about that did not make sense.
“How would anyone know it repairs itself after cracking if it cannot be destroyed?”
Someone must have attempted to break the maze walls before.
That attempt had simply ended with the wall cracking.
In that case, the walls were not indestructible.
There had merely never been anyone strong enough to destroy them completely.
I immediately pulled my right hand back.
Then—
“Hup!”
I struck the wall with all my strength.
KA-BOOM!
A tremendous crash echoed through the maze.
A dense cloud of dust rose into the air.
When the dust obscuring my vision finally settled, I smiled in satisfaction at what had been revealed.
“It worked.”
I had destroyed one of the fifth floor’s maze walls, something no one had ever managed to accomplish.
And I had done it with remarkable ease.
Smiling contentedly, I lightly leaped over the collapsed wall.
“Oh.”
RUMBLE!
The moment I crossed over, the maze wall rapidly regenerated.
I glanced at the wall after it returned to its original form, then turned my gaze forward.
I needed to move quickly. I did not have time to stand around.
Once again, I drove my fist forward with all my strength.
***
I continued advancing by smashing through wall after wall.
I felt as though I had been doing this for nearly three hours.
How long was I supposed to keep going?
Any expectation that I might find something beyond the next wall had long since shattered.
I was even beginning to suspect that I had taken the wrong path.
After destroying yet another wall and stepping through, I raised my fist to break the next one.
At that moment—
“……!?”
The ground abruptly vanished beneath my feet.
The entire landscape disappeared as though someone had flipped a switch.
No matter where I looked, there was no ground.
No matter where I looked, there were no walls.
Everything was engulfed in darkness.
Within that space, I began plummeting rapidly downward.
“Ugh…….”
Was this happening because I had refused to use the proper route?
That was far too cruel.
I reached out with my right hand, desperately trying to grab something.
However, there was nothing around me, and therefore nothing I could grasp.
‘I cannot breathe…….’
An inexplicable pressure tightened around my throat.
The air suddenly seemed to thin, strangling me.
My face twisted as I opened my mouth and desperately sought oxygen, but nothing entered my lungs.
My consciousness began to fade.
Only sheer stubbornness and determination kept me awake.
I felt as though I might lose consciousness at any moment.
I was suffocating.
Damn it.
I had finally made it to the fifth floor, and now I was going to be sent back to the first floor like this?
Clutching my throat, I grimaced.
I was going to die.
My vision blurred and spun.
Then, in the midst of it all—
I met the eyes of something within the darkness.
[…….]
Everything around me was pitch-black.
Yet a pair of eyes stared at me from within it.
The instant I met those orange eyes, my fading consciousness became clear.
Only then did I finally discern its silhouette.
It was not that the air had disappeared.
I simply—
Could not breathe—
Because the being before me—
[The Master of the Twisted Netherworld is watching you]
A single Black Dragon that silently stared at me—
Had overwhelmed me so completely that I could not even draw breath.
“…….”
I could not say a word.
My mouth refused to open.
I was afraid.
Terrified.
Cold sweat seeped from every pore across my body.
Was this what the word watching in the skill description had meant?
My mind went completely blank, leaving me incapable of thought.
And so—
And so—
The Black Dragon stared for a long while at my petrified form.
[The Master of the Twisted Netherworld warns you]
[Unless you satisfy it, it will take control of your body]
The Black Dragon slowly closed its eyes and disappeared.
***
“Gasp!”
I shot upright, drawing in a ragged breath, and frantically looked around.
“I-It is gone.”
Only then did I clutch my chest and breathe heavily, swallowing against my dry throat.
My entire body had long since become drenched in cold sweat.
“What was that?”
No.
Even asking such a question was meaningless.
I already knew.
The creature I had encountered was undoubtedly the Black Dragon, the skill I had received.
“The Master of the Twisted Netherworld…….”
It would take control of my body unless I satisfied it?
Damn it.
I had been pleased that my Growth-Type Skill was powerful from the beginning, only for some absurd restriction to appear.
My body trembled from the mere memory of it.
Even so, I covered the lower half of my face with my right hand.
“……Fine.”
The corners of my mouth rose.
It would take my body?
To hell with that.
I had no intention of surrendering a power I had finally obtained.
No matter what it took, I would protect my body and succeed as a Hunter.
“It said I needed to satisfy it, so it must have been referring to my Synchronization Rate.”
Increasing my Synchronization Rate.
I could not think of any other way to satisfy the Black Dragon.
I had to increase my Synchronization Rate to prevent it from stealing my body.
Something about that reasoning felt strange, but what choice did I have?
It was the only possibility that came to mind.
“Phew.”
I slowly released a long breath, shook my head vigorously, and rose to my feet.
[Tenth Floor]
[Defeat the ■■■■■■ Gu■dian]
[0/1]
The tenth floor.
After encountering the Black Dragon, I had opened my eyes and found myself here.
That was ideal. Once I cleared this floor, I could leave the tower.
However, whatever the Black Dragon had done had caused the system to malfunction.
I lightly tapped the distorted system window, which appeared to be riddled with errors.
“Well, it does not matter if I cannot read it.”
The tenth floor.
I already knew its clear condition.
“Defeat the Guardian of the Tutorial Tower.”
I slowly turned my head and looked toward the empty throne standing atop the ruins.
Behind the throne, an enormous serpent sat coiled with its eyes closed.