Chapter 3
“What on earth is this...?”
Is this for real?
Is the news really talking about me?
There isn’t someone else who went into the basement, is there?
“Cheonwoo, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Mom, I’m going to pack some things.”
“Oh, okay.”
I hurried into my room.
Had I really become a person of interest the whole world was watching?
Was this actually true, and not just some overblown, nationalistic Korean news story?
News... I can’t trust the news!
The Korean media and all that! I won’t believe them!
The ‘real truth’ exists only on the Gallery!
Let’s open the Gallery, where actual Hunters gather and only Tower climbers can log in.
‘Now that I think about it, I must have access to the Gallery, right?’
When you enter the Tower, you become a climber and gain access to a community called the ‘Babel Tower.’
You don’t need a device or any other medium to use it.
It’s like a status window that every climber can access.
The language is automatically translated, so climbers can freely share their opinions.
I was about to head straight to the Gallery to see the Hunters’ unfiltered reactions.
Just then, something appeared before my eyes.
[Would you like to ‘spy on’ the Babel Tower Gallery?]
‘Spy...?’
Not just log in, but spy on it?
What does that mean?
I’d read Hunters’ posts about the Babel Tower Gallery, and they said you just get a personal ID and can use the Gallery right away. Why am I getting this message?
Could it be because I’m from the basement?
Come to think of it, when I got administrator privileges, there was definitely...
A message saying [You can spy on the Gallery!]
So my method of accessing it is different from that of ordinary, run-of-the-mill climbers.
Maybe being from the basement sent me down some unofficial backdoor route instead of the regular one?
“Spy!”
I activated Gallery spying.
Then another message I’d never seen before appeared in front of me.
[Secret Mode activated.]
[A guest account has been issued.]
[Observer rank assigned.]
“Ooh?!”
Secret mode.
Even the Gallery moderators can’t view my information anymore.
Guest account.
If I get blocked, I can just click and log in with another account.
Observer rank.
I can view other people’s information whenever I want.
“This is totally...”
A feature optimized for trolling, isn’t it?
No one knows who I am.
I can make burner accounts with a click and spam the board endlessly...
And I can dig through other people’s information without permission?
Even if I post anonymously, I’ll know who they are.
Constant surveillance...!
=====
[So this is how you get into the basement? (51)]
[Checked after seeing the top post (86)]
[Cleared Floor 32, proof included! (17)]
[I keep telling you, diving into holes is wrong from the ground up (45)]
[Some freak showed up in this tiny-ass country (139)]
=====
I managed to get into the Gallery...
How should I put it? It feels like I snuck in.
‘Is everyone really talking about the basement?’
There are hardly any ordinary Tower-clearing posts.
Everyone’s arguing over how to get into the basement...!
More than anything, the way Koreans are treated on the Babel Tower Gallery is... way too nice.
‘Well, of course. We’re slow at conquering the Tower.’
Hunters are national assets, and the higher you climb the Tower, the more resources you can get.
So the more skilled Hunters a country has, the more resources it can acquire, and the stronger that country becomes.
From that perspective, Korea is a Tower backwater.
We’re good at making products out of Tower byproducts,
but we’re a Tower-conquest backwater that’s slow to make progress.
When it comes to the Tower industry, we’re barely scraping by on byproducts imported from Japan and China.
Of the three East Asian countries, South Korea is the furthest behind...
I guess that’s what you get from a country that’s always had few resources and put all its eggs in the manufacturing basket.
So that’s why they’re openly mocking us on the Gallery...
====
Title: How did a freak like that come out of such a tiny country?!
Posted by: Japan’s Strongest Yoichi
For a Tower-conquest backwater like Korea,
it’s hilarious that the person who opened the basement came from there www
Basement Niki, if you’re reading this, escape that backwater right now
and come to the Tower-conquest powerhouse that is Great Japan
[Upvotes 83 / Downvotes 12]
└BaguetteDemonic: Stop picking on the little country lol
└CaptainPhilippines: Sushi bullying kimchi is a long-standing tradition
└Jang Honglin’s Ass: Basement big bro, come to the Middle Kingdom. Become a Party member.
└Half-Panic: Isn’t Nippon just an ordinary country that’s only made it to Floor 49...
└Muramasa: Floor 49 puts us a glorious ninth in the entire world. Don’t compare us to a tiny country struggling on Floor 27. There’s a difference in class that can never be compared...
====
I can’t read any more.
I’m so mad! But I can’t argue back!
Korean Hunters...
Have they really been treated like this?
This is miserable! Absolutely miserable!
The Chinese and Japanese Hunters especially bully us like crazy.
It’s like they’ve found themselves the perfect punching bag.
They’re relentlessly piling on Korea, the Tower backwater...
No wonder the Korean government’s information restrictions on the Babel Tower community were bizarrely strict!
I never thought we’d be treated like a tiny country and picked on like this...
The moment I faced the unvarnished truth of the foreign reaction, some inexplicable anger began welling up inside me.
‘But... our country really is a Tower backwater...’
It can’t be helped!
To move forward, you first have to look at yourself objectively.
If we’re struggling on Floor 27, then objectively speaking, we have no choice but to admit we’re a tiny country.
We are a Tower backwater.
Japan is already working on clearing Floor 49.
And China has apparently just reached Floor 52.
Meanwhile, Korea is still only on Floor 27.
Does this country really have so few talented people?
No, we do.
Our country has talent...!
“I’m annoyed, so I’m definitely going to wreck you!”
I’d better punish ‘Japan’s Strongest Yoichi,’ the first one to post a thread mocking Korea.
“.....108 burner accounts. Report and delete.”
A mass-reporting spree.
If I use guest accounts to make a mountain of burner accounts and pile on reports like crazy...
“I win.”
Japan’s Strongest Yoichi’s post gets deleted.
And if I pile up reports on his account, too...
Clickclickclickclick--!!!
I just keep clicking until he gets blocked!
“Hehehe. So long, Yoichi. You’re just an ordinary nobody from before I showed up.”
Fixed nickname - Japan’s Strongest Yoichi.
Blocked for 31 days due to accumulated reports.
Before the moderators could even step in, I used the Babel Tower Gallery’s system to get him blocked.
Now I feel a little better.
What? The Gallery moderator will show up and undo the block?
‘Then I’ll just do it again.’
Japan’s Strongest Yoichi, using the Gallery is going to get pretty difficult for you from now on.
I’ll be watching you.
“Hehehe.”
After getting my petty revenge out of the way, I finally noticed the information I’d been looking for.
Wait, Korea’s Tower Management Bureau really is searching for me,
and rankers from all over the world have even formed a team to find out who I am!?
The news wasn’t lying. The media in this country was actually doing its job..!
There really are so many people looking for me. It’s kind of scary.
No, what is the basement that they’re this desperate to find it?
Is it really that incredible and amazing?
But it isn’t.
The basement I saw was a stalker monster with a horse’s head and an office worker monster, both whining their asses off while they worked.
What could there possibly be to see in a place like that...
‘Lost items?’
Clink!
There are lost items in the basement!
====
Title: I’ll explain why the basement matters for the lower floors who don’t get it.
Posted by: Garlic Yaksha
The reason everyone’s making such a fuss about the basement
is that rumors about lost items being there have been floating around for a long time.
You all know about the floor guardians, right?
If you meet the floor guardians often, they sometimes slip a few valuable bits of information in among all the useless stuff, you know?
One of those valuable bits of information is the lost items.
====
Lost items. They’re a kind of worldwide rumor!
The Tower has extremely high-level NPCs called ‘floor administrators’ who are ‘impossible to kill,’ ‘impossible to fight,’ and ‘impossible to dine with?’
But sometimes these guys spill information about the Tower, little tips, and all kinds of rumors.
And one of the rumors they drop goes like this.
====
└Garlic Yaksha: There are hidden places in the Tower.
└Garlic Yaksha: We call one of them the basement.
└Garlic Yaksha: In the basement are things the Tower discarded, things that disappeared, and things that were forgotten.
└Garlic Yaksha: We call those things lost items.
└Garlic Yaksha: That’s what a floor guardian told me. Yeah.
====
And every one of these lost items has incredible value and power, so the Tower shoved them into the basement as a balance patch.
In other words, the Tower sealed away a basement packed with errors and bugs, cramming it full of cheat-level items to rein in power creep!
“Wait, is this actually true?”
The basement was an incredible place after all!
And lost items... Now I finally understand why every Hunter in the world is desperate to find the basement entrance!
I didn’t know about the lost items before.
I couldn’t understand why everyone wanted to enter such a creepy basement.
But now I do.
I understand the situation I’m in.
‘Am I the only one who can monopolize the Tower’s lost items right now?!’
I’ve turned out to be even more amazing than I thought!
I’m not just a superstar. I’m a cosmic-level star!
‘This is insane..!’
The scale of this is so huge my brain can’t keep up..!
‘W-wait. This isn’t the time to be celebrating.’
It’s clear I’ve become the beautiful girl the whole world wants.
In other words, everyone wants me,
and everyone is looking for me...
‘They might kidnap and imprison me to use me.’
You know how there are rumors like that?
Rumors about outstanding Hunters disappearing overnight.
“Mom!”
“Huh? What’s wrong, our son....daughter?”
How many people know I was taken to the Tower?
“Well, everyone around here knows by now, right?”
You were taken off the street in broad daylight.
Everyone who was around must have seen it.
The Hunters’ Management Bureau must have come by already, too.
There’s no one in this neighborhood who doesn’t know.
Have I already become the most famous person in the neighborhood?
‘I heard that once you enter the Tower, you can’t leave until you’ve cleared at least Floor 10.’
And even if you choose the easiest difficulty, it takes a week.
But I came back in one day?
And my sex even changed?
They’d investigate just because it was so strange.
And if someone happened to question the fact that a Korean climber opened the basement on the very day I was taken to the Tower...
I have no idea how messed up things could get!
I don’t know what kind of trouble the Tower-conquest powerhouses might cause!
They absolutely must not find out that I’m the one who opened the basement!
“Mom. It’s a secret that I came out of the Tower.”
“Huh? Why?”
Just because. It’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone, okay? Absolutely no one!”
“O-okay. But you really are our Cheonwoo, right? You don’t look anything like him... Our Cheonwoo was a burly boy. Mom’s having a hard time adjusting.”
“Aw, Mom! I’m your son... I mean, daughter now. Anyway, I’m telling you, I’m Cheonwoo!”
Mom was still confused, but I kept insisting until she reluctantly accepted it.
‘If they find out I’m the one who opened the basement... Mom will be in danger, too.’
There’s no way I can trust this country’s Tower Management Bureau.
There are so many incidents, and it’s full of nothing but screwups. It makes me uneasy.
They even leaked the personal information of Korea’s rankers earlier this year.
And when Hunters go missing, they don’t investigate properly. They just write them all off as having died inside the Tower.
For all I know, they sold them to another country—or marked them dead because they didn’t want the international mess of admitting they’d been kidnapped!
I don’t believe this country can protect me.
I have to protect myself.
‘For now, I should pack a bag.’
I have 22 hours and 11 minutes left!
A change of clothes.
Food.
I should bring a pillow and a blanket, too.
I’ll take everything I can bring into the break room.
I’ll survive to the end and claim all the lost items for myself!