It Didn't Increase by the Weight of the Bullets.

Second floor.

I killed a few slimes.

I wondered if the difficulty of the first and second floors had been switched, but they melted away in no time when I roasted them with fire.

I'd heard that some slimes were a higher species and could make the difficulty jump, but I wasn't sure what that meant.

The drops were slime goo. It felt like eating some kind of fruit jelly.

The third floor had kobolds.

It was some kind of mine, and there was a spot in the corner where gas was spewing out. I tossed in a spark, and—BOOM!—a huge explosion went off.

The kobolds died instantly, and I got caught in the blast and was roasted crisp, but I recovered right away.

What a shame. For a moment, my skin and muscles disappeared and I was left with only bones, so I thought maybe...

The fourth floor was a cave, too.

The difference was that it was a goblin cave instead of a kobold one. They were using proper weapons—not clubs, but swords, spears, and bows.

They had something like paralyzing poison smeared on their weapons, so I deliberately let them hit me. Before long, I couldn't move my body. After that, they dragged me off...

"Ah. They dragged me here to butcher me. I thought they were going to rip my clothes off and jump me."

...It was pretty different from what I'd expected, so I just burned them all and left.

I'd read in a book at the library that intelligent monsters had sexual desire, too. I figured that if they were smart enough to use tools, they might have it, but apparently not the cave goblins on the fourth floor.

I'm a woman now, but if you ask whether I wasn't originally a man...

Well. I guess there wasn't much difference, whether I was a man or a woman.

The fifth floor had a pack of wolves out in a field. They were a little bigger than ordinary wolves. Were they direwolves or something?

My arms and legs were bitten off in an instant, and then, to top it all off, they bit through my neck. Chunks of flesh were torn away and blood gushed out. Of course, I didn't die.

The ones biting my limbs were caught in the flames that appeared as I revived and burned to death.

The one that looked like the pack leader saw me come back to life perfectly fine, even though one side of my neck had been torn off. It backed away in confusion, then got caught in the fire spreading across the field and died.

I hadn't controlled it, but the fire spread wildly across the field all on its own.

"...Should I just go?"

When you clear a floor, you can choose a skill or receive additional stat points as a reward. Since I'd only climbed floors one through five, I got just five points for each, for a total of 25. I also received some bonus lowest-grade magic stones, slime goo, goblin ears and paralysis poison, a kobold pickaxe, and direwolf fur.

The pouch holding the lowest-grade magic stones from all five floors jingled.

The Tower seems to take care of clear rewards; monster drops are put in their own containers.

Surprisingly, the containers are treated to prevent corrosion and decay, so apparently they're worth quite a bit on their own.

"...Tch. If you were going to give me something, you could've given me an inventory or whatever."

[You have acquired a new skill!]

As soon as I'd finished speaking, a notification popped up saying I'd acquired a skill.

Setting aside why it only gave it to me after I left instead of while I was inside, I checked it out.

[Skills]

-Pyrokinesis

-Immortality

-Agelessness

-Inventory

...Maybe the Tower really does have a mind of its own.

-Zip!

"Ooh... It goes in."

I put the pouch of magic stones and then the containers of drops into the black hole that appeared in front of me. They vanished as if sucked into the darkness.

There's a machine for putting magic stones into at the exchange counter in the Management Bureau.

You feed the stones into it like coins into a vending machine, and it checks their quality and quantity before paying you accordingly.

You can have the money deposited into a bank account, but my bankbook had burned up along with my card when my room caught fire. Fortunately, the exchange machine also pays out cash.

"That's 500,000 won. I should get a new bank account."

I'd only climbed five floors, but I'd already gotten this much. No wonder even ordinary people who weren't Awakened had their eyes on the Tower's magic stones.

Apparently, there were even cases of people targeting Awakened on the lower floors, but that would only work on people at floor five or below. After that, it was impossible.

Modern firearms worked on monsters, so they should work on Awakened people too, but apparently even those often didn't work on people with special classes.

-Pshk!!

"Ah."

I stuffed ten 50,000-won bills into my pocket and started to leave. Then my forehead stung, and my head snapped backward.

I pulled one hand out of my pocket and felt my forehead. There was something like a hole in it.

There was a hole all the way through to the back of my head, too. It went straight through.

Isn't trying to take someone's life over 500,000 won a bit much?

After confirming that the holes in the front and back had regenerated, I turned sideways to get back on my way-

-Pshk!

"Oh, come on."

This time, the bullet went straight through my temple. My body started to topple sideways, but I braced myself with a foot.

Let's just go somewhere crowded. If I do that, they'll give up-

-Pop!

"Th-the balloon!"

"Waaah!"

"......Sigh..."

I left the child crying after their balloon suddenly burst and went back to the Management Bureau.

Maybe that garbage sniper didn't have the guts. Once I entered the Management Bureau grounds, the shots stopped.

I walked up to one of the men in suits standing by the entrance.

"? The woman from earlier? What brings you here?"

"I got shot. Twice."

When I showed them the two bloodstained bullets that had passed through my head, the guards' expressions were something to see.

In the end, I spent the night inside the Management Bureau building.

Judging by how used to the situation they seemed, apparently several Awakened people in Korea had been hunted or nearly hunted before me.

I took one of the books from the bookshelf beside the bed in my assigned room, set it on the desk, and read.

The hunting of Awakened people was a phenomenon that emerged not long after the Tower appeared.

More precisely, apparently there were absurd claims that the Awakened were somehow connected to the Tower appearing and ruining people's lives, and some people actually believed them.

Even though they knew it wasn't true, they needed somewhere to vent the hatred born of their despair, so they killed low-level Awakened.

They even went so far as to shoot people dead just because they were suspicious, even if they weren't Awakened, or kidnap them, torture them, and dismember them.

In the end, the Awakened with special classes couldn't stand by and personally dealt with a large number of them. But apparently, the ones who remained became antisocial terrorists, and that problem continued to this day.

Come to think of it, how many Awakened with special classes were there in Korea? According to the doctor, I was an Awakened with a special class, too.

For reference, special classes were apparently also called unique classes... but that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.

'They're not going to charge me for lodging or meals, are they...'

I couldn't imagine a place where Awakened people's earnings circulated doing something so petty, so I read books about the Tower. A few hours later, a mountain of books had piled up beside me.

Since I lived without a phone or computer, I naturally found myself turning my attention elsewhere. Even when I was a man, everyone treated me like a weirdo.

These days, even little kids carried phones around, but I didn't have one.

"...Should I get something to eat?"

I checked the time on the digital clock hanging in the room, went out, and walked down the hall.

Surprisingly, ordinary people could eat at the Management Bureau, too. They also handed out food to people who'd lost their homes because of the Tower, so it had naturally become a regular thing.

Whatever the reason, it was free food, so I was going to eat it, but...

Surprisingly, it tasted pretty good.

The next morning, I was killing time watching the broadcast TV set up in the Management Bureau waiting room.

It was a channel that specialized in Tower-related news, like how so-and-so from a major guild had cleared several dozen floors, or how some party had cleared several dozen floors.

'Not that I care.'

The important question was what I should do after climbing the Tower and paying off my hospital bill.

For someone who'd practically been living like a corpse, suicide was no longer an option.

Of course, I could still try.

Ah, but that doesn't mean I should get hit by a truck just because I want to reincarnate in another world. Whether that's even possible is another question, and you'd just get the poor truck driver fired.

So at the very least, if you're going to kill yourself, don't do anything that hurts other people.

Right, mister who was too scared to die alone?

[Defeat 10 Wild Boars.]

As soon as the sixth-floor notification appeared, I saw the wild boars charging at me.

They don't look like they came out of some mushroom-themed game. I thought they'd be wearing iron armor or something.

I sprang up like a rabbit and landed on the wild boar in the middle.

-Squeee!?

The wild boar ran around, thrashing even harder, apparently never imagining I'd climb onto its back.

I made fire into arrows and shot them through the air at the remaining nine, visible in my wildly shifting field of vision.

-Fwooom!!

One wild boar struck by a fire arrow was engulfed in flames in an instant and rolled across the ground. By the time it stopped, it was roasted through and charred black.

If I lived in the Middle Ages, I'd probably get scolded for ruining the hide and meat like this, but this was inside the Tower.

I calmly took aim at them one at a time and shot flames at them, burning them to death.

The boars scattered to dodge my attacks, but I was faster at hitting them.

And to finish things off, this time I shaped the fire into a dagger.

-Shnk!!

When the fire dagger embedded itself in the back of the neck of the boar I was riding, flames instantly engulfed its entire body.

Me too.

"Ow, hot."

That's what I said, but it wasn't as hot as I'd expected.

Thankfully, my clothes regenerated, too. Good thing I'd put the money I'd earned into my bank account before coming. Otherwise, it'd be a real shame to lose all the money I'd just made, right?

Anyway, was that all of them?

[You have acquired the skill 'Flight'!]

"Flight?"

As if answering my question directly, a pair of glittering red wings spread out from my back.

Wings that brought to mind a phoenix, quite literally.

They'd sprouted around my shoulder blades.

So I control the muscles near my shoulder blades and use the wings like they're part of my body...?

-Flap

"Oh, it worked."

It felt strange to be floating in the air, so I flapped a few times before coming back down.

My muscles hurt more than I expected. Wings weren't exactly something ordinary people had, after all. It didn't seem to use mana, though...

Did the person who Awakened as a dragon feel like this at first? I heard that person had wings, too. Though I wasn't sure if I should call them a person.

For now, let's go up to the seventh floor and think about it.