The Tower’s Secret Door.
Kang Ha-min opened that door, stepped inside, and blinked.
Um, this was.
“......There’s nothing here?”
The room was completely empty.
Unlike what he had expected, there was nothing inside.
The only unusual thing was that the room was so vast that he could not see its end.
A strange sensation of white space expanding infinitely.
It was enough to make him feel creeped out if he stared at it for too long.
It felt as though, if he got lost, he would never be able to leave.
“There is nothing, you say.”
At that moment, Baek Cheon-myeong poked his head into the room after Kang Ha-min.
After surveying the room for a while, he picked up his wooden sword.
“What are you doing?”
“A test.”
Before Kang Ha-min could even voice his question.
Baek Cheon-myeong swung his wooden sword.
A gale crashed forward.
ROOOOOAR!
The current that sprang from the wooden sword shot across the space in an instant.
The current moved through the endless space.
Gradually, it disappeared from sight.
“Whoa! W-What did you do?”
Kang Ha-min looked at Baek Cheon-myeong with a bewildered expression.
How could he suddenly swing something like that without warning?
He had nearly had a heart attack.
“Even if it is a secret room, it is still part of the Tower. There is no need to worry about its durability.”
That was true, but.
“More importantly, it is impossibly vast. That current should have reached at least dozens of kilometers, yet I feel nothing.”
Dozens of kilometers.
And it had continued onward without even reaching the end.
This room really was endlessly vast.
“......What kind of room is this?”
“I do not know.”
Even Baek Cheon-myeong could not guarantee its purpose.
Why had the Tower given him something like this?
If it was going to give him a reward, it should have given him something good.
It was ramen again today.
“So, are you going inside?”
The white room stretching endlessly was unsettling.
But this time, Kang Ha-min decided to be brave.
“I left the Tower climbing to you, Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong. I should at least do this much.”
The Tower had given it to him as a reward.
Then there had to be a reason for it.
Besides, he would be too resentful to live with no reward at all!
After all that trouble! (Baek Cheon-myeong’s trouble.)
He had to get something out of it!
The moment he stepped into the room.
“Uh, huh?”
Beginning from where his foot touched, the room’s form suddenly began to change.
“Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong!”
The moment he called out, Baek Cheon-myeong immediately scooped up Kang Ha-min.
Then, just as he was about to leave.
WHOOOM!
The door connected to the outside suddenly disappeared.
“This is troublesome.”
The light swallowed them both.
It was so intense that he could not open his eyes.
“WAAAAAAAH!”
How much time passed within that light?
As his vision gradually returned, Kang Ha-min opened his eyes.
Chirp—chirp chirp—
Then, a familiar sound reached his ears.
Sparrows chirping.
Had morning come?
When he opened his eyes, he saw a forest and a grassy field.
The scent of grass carried by the wind was quite pleasant.
It felt like the natural ASMR he always played before going to sleep had become reality.
But what was this unexpected scenery?
Where had the endless white space from earlier gone?
Just as he wondered.
“......This place.”
Baek Cheon-myeong stood frozen in place.
“Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong?”
It made Kang Ha-min anxious when he froze up.
When Kang Ha-min carefully called to him, Baek Cheon-myeong dropped him.
“Whoa!”
No, why would he drop him so suddenly?
As Kang Ha-min lightly rolled across the ground and came to a stop.
Baek Cheon-myeong walked forward slowly with a blank expression.
“Wait, Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, wait!”
Kang Ha-min hurriedly got up and followed him. Before long, they reached a clearing in the forest.
A grassy field with few trees, allowing sunlight to pour in.
There was a single stone sitting there by itself.
It looked like a stone suitable for someone to sit on.
Baek Cheon-myeong stood there and quietly stared at it.
For some reason, he seemed to know this place.
“Where is this?”
“......This is where this body trained in the past.”
The place where he had trained in the past.
Then perhaps.
“Did we come to Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong’s world?”
“No, that is unlikely. It resembles it, but it is merely an imitation at best.”
Baek Cheon-myeong stretched out his hand and slowly stroked the stone.
“But it is real.”
The blowing wind and the scent of grass.
The chirping of birds and the sounds of insects.
Even the grass brushing against the soles of his shoes.
All of it was real here.
“I have roughly grasped it. It seems this space turns scenery remaining in one’s memories into reality.”
“What? Then.”
“Master, you have obtained a world that no one has ever entered.”
He had suddenly become the owner of an entire world.
But Kang Ha-min only felt uncertain about it.
He wondered what meaning this world held.
“It seems you still have not understood what this body said.”
Baek Cheon-myeong raised his wooden sword.
Then he immediately struck the stone.
CRUNCH!
Inside the fragments of the shattered stone.
There was something like an ore he had never seen before.
The ore, where violet and transparent light mingled, was as beautiful as the night sky.
Even Kang Ha-min, who had no eye for jewelry, could tell that it held value.
“Moonlit Stone. In our world, it was a precious mineral worth thousands for a piece the size of a finger joint.
Merely possessing Moonlit Stone awakens one’s vital energy, and those who have awakened vital energy can accelerate its flow.”
Kang Ha-min’s eyes gradually widened.
Only now did he understand what Baek Cheon-myeong meant.
At the same time, he realized why the Tower had given him this place as a reward.
“This forest is called the Heavenly Decree Herb Forest. It is a place filled with every kind of rare herb and resource.
I went through all manner of hardships to sneak into this place, yet I never thought I would encounter it again so easily.”
The place where Baek Cheon-myeong had trained.
This recreated place was.
“......Holy shit, it’s a motherlode!”
He had struck it rich!
This was a new age born with the Tower, an age in which new Tower resources had arrived.
And now, he had obtained a world full of resources that did not exist in this world.
“In the master’s world, those called Hunters cannot get enough of things that make them stronger, can they?”
Do not even get him started.
They were people who devoted themselves to building their foundations just to level up.
Tower Ascension beyond Floor 100 was not everything.
What came after was determined by how much they had built their foundations.
An age in which strength was everything.
The higher a Hunter ranked, the less they cared about means and methods.
“Yes, and Hunters have an enormous amount of money.”
“This body has grasped what kinds of things benefit Hunters.”
“H-Haha!”
Kang Ha-min finally laughed and clenched both fists.
“Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, let’s clear out everything in this forest today.”
Tonight, they would not leave until they had stripped this place bare!
***
Moonlight White Flower, Blood Dragon Root.
Sun Gold Flower, Black Spirit Mushroom.
Thousand-Year Blood Ginseng, Nebula Herb.
Herbs that sounded rare from their names alone.
Kang Ha-min came out of the Tower’s secret floor holding an armful of them.
Fortunately, when he worked the key again, a door appeared and opened.
After coming outside with Baek Cheon-myeong, Kang Ha-min’s eyes shone brighter than ever.
Naturally, he had gained an opportunity to make a great deal of money.
“Master, I will say this in advance.”
“Ah, do not worry. I do not plan to sell all of it at once.”
If he suddenly tried to sell all these rare herbs at once, it might create an unnecessary commotion.
“I plan to tell an appraiser that I obtained them as Tower rewards, then sell them one by one, slowly.”
That was just like Kang Ha-min, who always put safety above all and safety first.
After all, Kang Ha-min did not want the life of a rich man.
A life with no worries about the future.
That much would be enough.
“That is not what I am concerned about. Rather, I am talking about the secret floor we just visited.”
“What about the secret floor?”
“It seems this body’s memory-space was recreated there, but separately from that, I sensed several life signs.
They were life signs that even this body had never felt before.”
Kang Ha-min’s eyes rounded.
That meant.
“......There is something in the secret floor?”
“They seemed wary of us and did not reveal themselves, so I did not bother to catch them. But just in case, do not think of entering alone, Master.”
He did not think Kang Ha-min would ever do that with his personality.
Still, Baek Cheon-myeong warned him in advance.
Baek Cheon-myeong’s gaze had seemed strangely unsettling, so Kang Ha-min made sure to remember it.
“More importantly, selling!”
It was already morning.
Normally, he would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago, but his eyes were wide awake.
This was an opportunity to handle money he could never earn as a civil servant.
He was so eager to sell the herbs that he felt restless all over.
“Let’s go to the Trading Post.”
Once he filled his bank account, sleep would surely come easily.
He could not hide his excitement at the thought of selling the herbs.
“Let us.”
Baek Cheon-myeong did not object either.
After all, he had slept enough to be sick of it during his days as a corpse.
He was also curious about the streets during the day.
So, Kang Ha-min gathered the herbs and was about to hurry to the Trading Post.
‘Wait a moment.’
Kang Ha-min stopped.
If he went as he was, he would be registered as a Hunter.
And there was a chance that his identity would be revealed during the registration process.
‘I want to hide the fact that I am Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong’s master if possible.’
Hunters might live for attention.
But Kang Ha-min had no need for that at all.
His life motto had only one principle.
Safety above all, safety first.
A rich person who did not stand out in the eyes of others was exactly the life he had dreamed of.
But if his face became known as a Hunter.
‘Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong will surely keep climbing the Tower in the future.’
Baek Cheon-myeong’s existence would certainly be revealed to the world.
Kang Ha-min was sure of that much.
The moment it became known that Kang Ha-min was his master, every media outlet would swarm him.
Perhaps the country would even threaten him into climbing the Tower.
‘No. Absolutely not!’
He had to hide.
He absolutely had to hide.
He would hide it somehow and live a happy, safe life until the very end!
Having resolved himself, he looked at Baek Cheon-myeong.
“Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, I have one favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
Since he was not climbing the Tower himself.
He should stay safe all the way to the end.
As Kang Ha-min racked his brains in his own way.
An order was sent to every Hunter-only Trading Post.
[Hunter Management Association: Record and report every Hunter selling an item for the first time.]
Even a broken clock was right twice a day.
Had Kang Ha-min known about it, it was an order that would have made him praise his own foresight.