At her blood relative’s absurd, sudden action, Jeong Hyeon-a immediately leaped in as well.
Then flames coiled around her.
But there was nothing to fear. She already knew well that these flames would not harm her immediately.
The intense fire made her mind grow hazy, as if she were falling under hypnosis.
However, Jeong Hyeon-a recalled and reflected on exactly what she had been taught.
‘My name.’
What the Tower demanded was a name. Not a simple name, but a True Name.
Because of this, hunters in the early days of the Tower who had given aliases or false names were said to have had their names stripped away, their selves erased, and become slaves of the Tower.
SSSSSS.
Something began crawling up before Jeong Hyeon-a’s eyes.
It writhed, arranging its twisted joints like an undead, and what took form was none other than “herself.”
“You are saying you are Jeong Hyeon-a?”
It looked like a doppelganger that might appear somewhere in the Tower or a Gate, but the conclusion of the senior hunters was that this was not a magic beast.
It was a test of the Tower.
A certain memory from that day suddenly came to Jeong Hyeon-a.
At that same moment, Jeong Hyeon-su was facing the same situation.
“Jeong Hyeon-su.”
When he gave his name, black mist began to cover his surroundings.
— Is that really your name?
The one who walked out from the darkness was none other than Jeong Hyeon-su himself, draped in a black cloak.
He was the King of Night, radiating a more savage and tyrannical air while also revealing gloom.
The black-warrant criminal called the Dark King. The enemy of the Association, called the worst criminal in history, asked him.
— It is not, is it? I am you.
Past memories flowed from the Dark King’s eyes.
The most terrible time of all.
After he had been expelled from the Association, Garam had been massacred that night by unidentified assailants claiming to be Hunter Knights sent from Hunter Association headquarters.
Jeong Hyeon-su had watched, unable to do anything, from inside the stealth magic circle into which Jeong Cheol had forcibly pushed him.
— You are a coward. Not Jeong Hyeon-su, but a coward. You could not do anything that day, could you? Am I wrong?
A younger version of the Dark King appeared, looking like Jeong Hyeon-su as he was now when reflected in a mirror.
It was said that the 1st floor reproduced one’s trauma.
He had faced many life-and-death crises and had wasted his life through mistakes, but without question, the most terrible and regretful memory was himself on the day Garam collapsed.
“You say I could not do anything. You truly do not know what you are talking about.”
Jeong Hyeon-su calmly recalled that day.
“…In the middle of it all, I thought I was fortunate to have survived alone.”
Humans were selfish.
While watching the sacrifice of his family and the massacre of the guild members, Jeong Hyeon-su had thought such a thing as well.
Then, shuddering with self-loathing and burning with fever, he had fled.
On the back of his head as he hid himself in the world of night was the wanted poster the chairman had branded upon him, and in that harsh world, the nineteen-year-old had lived a truly hellish life.
Just to survive. Unable even to harbor the resolve to take revenge, he had first struggled simply to live. Jeong Hyeon-su did not deny the memories of those days.
He merely accepted them.
Before Jeong Hyeon-su stood other Jeong Hyeon-sus.
The nineteen-year-old Jeong Hyeon-su, shedding tears of blood. The Jeong Hyeon-su from his early days as a wanted criminal at the very bottom, all the way to the black-warrant criminal Dark King.
Before those alter egos, Jeong Hyeon-su calmly took a starting stance.
— Are you going to stand against us?
Instead of answering the Dark King’s words, Jeong Hyeon-su merely concentrated his mana.
The other Jeong Hyeon-sus did the same.
— Give up. There is no way for you to win.
In terms of numbers, and even at a glance from the realms revealed by his future selves, he was at a disadvantage.
— Offer up your name. Only I have the right to possess it.
— Hand over your name.
Seeing the alter egos reveal their fighting spirit, Jeong Hyeon-su merely laughed.
— You laugh?
— Can you laugh in this situation?
To begin with, they were not even true alter egos.
They were merely a lowly trial of the Tower.
He did not know how it was possible, but it reproduced a person’s trauma. It asked whether one had the right to climb the Tower.
If one spoke a false name, or surrendered one’s name out of fear, then from that moment, that hunter became a slave of the Tower.
A name was no different from the symbol of oneself. One could call this a stage that tested the pride one must not lose even in death.
He did not like being tested by the Tower.
He was merely playing along for the moment so that one day he could clear it, erase it completely, and see the face of the bastard who toyed with the world.
BANG!
A tremendous slash flew from the other side.
Jeong Hyeon-su immediately rolled across the floor to avoid the attack, rose, and seized the face of the nineteen-year-old Jeong Hyeon-su before him.
Mana concentrated into his hand.
The power within it was not Illusory Heaven True Energy.
Instead of Illusory Heaven True Energy, the most harmonious and flawless power, it was the most tyrannical power among the Five Kings’ Martial Arts that he had recently received from Jeong Cheol.
For Jeong Hyeon-su, this was merely an excellent stage on which he could apply Tyrant Heaven Energy in real combat.
CRUNCH!
The destructive force concentrated through Tyrant Heaven Energy smashed the head apart at once.
Without delay, Jeong Hyeon-su launched an attack toward his next target.
BANG!
The place his fist struck was none other than an alter ego that appeared to be in his late twenties.
“Hand that over, you bastard.”
The power of Tyrant Heaven Energy, which had been powerfully condensed, was released in an instant.
The gentle yellow energy of the flexible Illusory Heaven True Energy coiled like a snake and wrapped around the arm of the twenty-something Jeong Hyeon-su.
— Foolish. Do you think that will be possible?
The alter ego in his twenties attempted to respond to the situation.
In terms of objective combat strength, the alter ego that had survived ten years in the rough world of wanted criminals naturally had the upper hand.
However, the Jeong Hyeon-su who had regressed and returned now possessed something that the twenty-something version did not.
Experience.
Jeong Hyeon-su had glimpsed the realm of an absolute being, and his refined mana control and bodily command, matured to the extreme, were several steps above what he had possessed in his twenties.
Predicting the attack of the twenty-something alter ego, who drove his knee upward in an attempt to shake him off, Jeong Hyeon-su merely tilted his chin slightly. At the same time, he let the attack flow past and succeeded in seizing the weapon.
After that, he naturally switched his output back to Tyrant Heaven Energy and brought the greatsword down.
CRAAACK!
Watching him eliminate two alter egos in an instant, the alter ego from his Dark King days opened his mouth.
— Do you think that will change anything?
Jeong Hyeon-su looked at that Dark King and grinned.
“Of course it will change, you bastard.”
It was an overwhelming alter ego that had reached the absolute realm.
However, that would only be despair-inducing in a sincere, single life-or-death duel. No matter how dangerous it looked here, this was ultimately the 1st floor of the Tower.
“As long as I do not forget the absolute premise, you cannot do anything to me.”
As long as he did not give up his name, and as long as he preserved that pride, he would never die on the 1st floor of the Tower.
In other words.
“Where else would I find a training ground like this?”
What training could be more encouraging than sparring against himself after reaching the absolute realm?
As always, a change in perspective was necessary.
Jeong Hyeon-su raised Tyrant Heaven Energy to its limit and madly charged toward the alter ego from his Dark King days.
BOOM!
Naturally, he was finished in a single blow.
No matter what he did, he would not be able to surpass that one strike.
Even so, there were certainly things he could do.
What should he do when placed at the limit? In particular, he could devise numerous ways to respond using Tyrant Heaven Energy.
How could he miss such an excellent opportunity to turn those ideas into reality?
Correcting weaknesses. Strengthening advantages.
In a place where he could do everything, Jeong Hyeon-su tasted the extreme agony of having his body below the neck blown away by the Dark King. Then he merely shook his head once and charged again.
— You are not sane.
“This is who I am.”
His arm was severed, and his entire upper body was blown away.
His leg was cut off, and his head was destroyed. Such one-sided situations continued.
But it was not meaningless.
Each and every exchange was real combat.
Through the combat sense of surviving a ruthless life-and-death duel against an overwhelmingly powerful opponent who would kill him no matter what, his operation of Tyrant Heaven Energy grew more precise.
Within that, Jeong Hyeon-su leaped into the merciless Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art displayed by the Dark King.
A slash flew in at a terrifying speed impossible to follow with the eyes.
‘Slow.’
Yet he felt it was still lacking.
It was not enough to cut off Seon Woo-hyeon’s head, completely destroy the Three Calamities, and go on to face the master of the Tower who would stand above them.
Supplementation and improvement.
Along with those thoughts, Jeong Hyeon-su finally received the attack.
His waist bent at a right angle. The pain was as if his spine had snapped outright.
Amid the sensation of losing all feeling in his lower body, he used the recoil to move his still-living upper body.
SLASH.
It was an attack possible only because he was fighting “himself.” As Jeong Hyeon-su succeeded in cutting off the end of the hem, a smile appeared on his face, and the system notification sound burst out.
[Unpredictable circumstances of stat increase have been discovered.]
[Determining whether this violates the laws of the Tower.]
In that instant, he felt a colossal presence.
A distinctive gaze looking down from above swept over him.
It was an overwhelming presence that made a single moment feel like eternity.
‘Was there ever something like this?’
Even in his previous life, he had never seen a message like this.
Especially the man who had devised this training method using his own alter ego on the 1st floor had never explained such a situation.
He had extracted that information through direct torture, and since that man had been a vicious black-warrant criminal, there was no way he would have lied.
[We are notifying you of the judgment result.]
[It has been determined to be an act that violates the laws.]
“What?”
[However, taking into account that this had not previously been presented as a prohibited rule, the use of this expedient method is forbidden as of this moment.]
[Furthermore, agreement has been completed to maintain the experience and stat increases accumulated until now.]
[As of this moment, hunter Jeong Hyeon-su has been determined to have succeeded in climbing the 1st floor.]
Curses rose naturally from Jeong Hyeon-su’s mouth.
“Hey, you bastards! Who said you could decide that?”
[Look directly at your stats. This is a level that violates natural growth.]
The Status Window naturally appeared before Jeong Hyeon-su’s eyes.
[Name: Jeong Hyeon-su]
[Stats: Vitality (15), Strength (13), Technique (15), Mental Strength (32), Endurance (18)]
[Skills: Five Kings’ Martial Arts—Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art (4-Star), Illusory Heaven True Energy (10-Star), Tyrant Heaven Energy (8-Star)]
“…Ahem!”
Thanks to repeatedly experiencing many deaths and wounds, his vitality had risen by 4.
His Strength and Technique, which corresponded to agility and reflexes, had also surged upward after receiving system-level correction for facing the Dark King, an existence at the absolute realm.
As he endured countless deaths and challenged again, his Mental Strength had risen to a truly insane degree. And because he had watched the Five Kings’ Martial Arts with his own eyes, broken them down, and struggled against them, the Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art had risen to 4-Star, while Tyrant Heaven Energy had leaped all the way to 8-Star.
“No, even so.”
[Congratulations! Hunter Jeong Hyeon-su of South Korean nationality has cleared the 1st floor of the Tower in the shortest time and with the highest score.]
[Strategy Grade: SSS]
[Jeong Hyeon-su will be transferred to the 2nd floor of the Tower.]
Even during that time, Jeong Hyeon-su tried to land one more hit on the Dark King, but he was swallowed by the spatial magic circle that formed between them.
It was called a clear, but for some reason, it felt as though he was being kicked out.
[As an SSS-grade clear reward, the “Seal of Name” will be granted!]
[The skill “Existence Engraving” will be granted.]
[An opportunity to confirm a hidden truth will be granted!]