Chapter 41
#41. The Unknown
Even the dumbest beast will change its behavior after enough beatings.
After being pounded for a good while with my mithril wand, spear specialist Choi Gil-hyeon no longer charged at me.
“Fuck, fuck......”
He just glared at me with bloodshot eyes, grinding his teeth.
“You little shit... you think you can handle this? Do you know who my dad is?”
Choi Gil-hyeon was saying things like that now. To think some guy’s backing had a backing of its own—amazing.
But no matter how I thought about it, that bastard’s backing didn’t seem like it could do anything to me.
Frankly, what could that backer even do to me?
When the event ends, I’ll go back to the Trial Tower on server 2661, and for the next three years I won’t run into any other challengers.
Even if he tried to threaten me in the Festival map, I wasn’t desperate enough about this event to care; I could just head back to the Tower.
I don’t have any ties in the outside world either, so even if he tried to harm people around me out there, it would be pointless.
Whether that backer is a conglomerate chairman, the President of South Korea, or God in heaven, none of it works on me.
“Why, didn’t your fucking mom tell you?”
So I boldly threw back the family insults they’d been hurling at me.
“You, you fucking bastard!”
After flinging mother insults at other people like that, he couldn’t stand hearing them himself, so Choi Gil-hyeon flared up and tried to rush me.
But maybe because he was traumatized from being beaten by me for so long, he shrank back the instant I casually raised the mithril wand.
-Pfft.
Seeing that, one of the onlookers couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.
“Which bastard was it, which bastard laughed!”
Choi Gil-hyeon’s face turned bright red as he screamed at the top of his lungs. Despite how pathetic he looked, being a ranker meant the area quickly went quiet.
“Fuck, who the hell laughed just now? Get out here, get the hell out here, you fuckin’ bastard!”
-Clang!
“I laughed, you fucking asshole.”
After giving the raging Choi Gil-hyeon one last whack with the mithril wand, I pushed through the crowd and left the crumpled bastard behind.
Thanks to all the attention this commotion drew, there was nobody standing in front of the portal I’d originally been heading for.
“Shall we go back into the dungeon?”
“Huh? Ah, uh, well...”
As I walked over after putting away the mithril wand, Kim Jina looked flustered and deathly pale.
Not only Kim Jina, but Kim Min-hyeong and Kim Jin-seok also looked bad. No, Kim Min-hyeong even had a slightly bitter smile on his face.
Maybe it was because Kim Min-hyeong knew he’d almost been beaten like that himself.
“With the mood like this, today’s a bit... maybe another time, another time.”
Kim Jina shook her head and backed away from me with stumbling steps.
With the atmosphere like this, it probably was a bit much to head into a dungeon so casually today.
I nodded and left the area for now.
**
Kim Jina sent me a message in friend chat, suggesting I should take it easy today.
I replied that I understood, but when I actually thought about resting, it felt weird.
After entering the Trial Tower and swearing I’d never stop, I hadn’t once taken a break.
Every day had been a continuous string of challenges and growth, and every moment had blood and blades with it.
The same went for sleep and meals.
I cut my sleep down to the bare minimum my body could endure, and I deliberately avoided comfortable beds.
As for food, I’d only been eating White Roll—whose sweetness was so intense it numbed my tongue—and a fixed dose of poison.
Except for the gukbap I bought because I got swept up in the festival mood, it had been a very long time since I’d eaten anything that really counted as a proper meal.
Because if I lost the dopamine that came from the sense of accomplishment in growing stronger, it would be over; if I ever lost my momentum, I’d just slack off.
Without stopping for a single moment, I’d been living by driving myself onward.
But yesterday’s serotonin—the comforting feeling that made me think, “Maybe something like this is okay once in a while”—didn’t really wreck me.
If anything, after taking a light breather, I felt even better.
On fitness forums, they say even eating and resting count as part of training.
Maybe I was at the point where I needed to rest and regroup once in a while, too.
“Still, what the hell should I actually do?”
The problem was that I did feel the need for a break, but I had no idea what to do while actually resting.
Should I just lie down and do nothing while browsing the community?
But that would be less rest and more just wasting time.
Rest is one thing, but shouldn’t I at least be doing something productive while I rest?
“Hmm...”
Thinking it over, I opened the Open Community and looked for a list of events I could do on the Festival map.
Other than mini-dungeon clears, it was all simple mini-games and quests challengers could enjoy together.
Every one of them was pretty unappealing, and in the first place, they weren’t things I could do alone.
As I kept scrolling, one event on the schedule suddenly caught my eye.
[Trial Tower Strongest Tournament - Qualifiers]
Today was the qualifiers for one of the festival’s main events: the tournament.
Of course, I had never intended to participate in the tournament from the start, so I hadn’t even applied for the qualifiers.
It was obvious there’d be no place for someone at my level to shine in a tournament where formidable rankers and high-floor challengers were competing.
But events like this are just as fun to watch as they are to join.
Watching high-floor rankers display their skills, broadening my horizons, and getting some rest at the same time—it sounded like the perfect content.
I should go watch this today.
**
I bought some popcorn and soda from a street stall and took a seat in the stands.
Even though this wasn’t the finals, there were a tremendous number of challengers here to watch. It was practically a pro baseball game crowd.
Come to think of it, if you think of it as a sports tournament that only happens once every three years, that makes sense.
There probably isn’t any entertainment in the Trial Tower world more exciting than this.
The tournament qualifiers are battle royale matches where five participants are grouped together.
Since they’re held simultaneously in four arenas to the east, west, south, and north, popularity apparently varies a lot depending on the challengers involved.
Judging by how many spectators were here, it looked like one of the more attention-grabbing qualifier matches had been scheduled.
“Who’s in this bracket? Anything worth watching?”
“Apparently Kang Tae-jin and Lee Young-won are in the same bracket. This is practically finals-level.”
“Seriously? Those two are fighting in the qualifiers?”
Listening to the chatter from the challengers beside me, I could hear names I’d seen on the community being mentioned.
I didn’t know who Lee Young-won was, but Kang Tae-jin was a strategy-minded challenger who’d started making a name for himself on the community around last year.
A wannabe hunter and former amateur boxer, he supposedly had a fighter-type unique class called [Storm Striker].
If he were the only standout, the match would be over quickly, but it looked like there was another formidable challenger in the same bracket.
[The match will begin shortly.]
“Ah, it’s starting.”
While I was listening to the neighboring challengers chatter, the qualifier match started before I knew it.
All five challengers who appeared in the arena were men. Among them, I could immediately tell who Kang Tae-jin was.
The short-haired man standing there alone, with no weapon and wearing gauntlets, looking completely relaxed—that had to be him.
And the challenger named Lee Young-won... was that burly warrior, the one wielding a greatsword as big as himself.
Since the other three challengers were either scared stiff or clutching their heads in despair, it was easy to guess.
So, what kind of fight were they going to show me?
**
The three challengers who’d gotten stuck in the same group with the strong ones immediately declared forfeiture the moment the match began.
They said all injuries during the match would be healed, but I guess they had no intention of trying their luck against ranker-level challengers.
And just like that, the match quickly turned into a duel between Kang Tae-jin and Lee Young-won, but the flow of it was, how should I put it...
“Aw hell, they’re fighting like pathetic cowards.”
Yeah, that was it.
The spectator in the next seat put exactly what I was thinking into words. Kang Tae-jin, who’d been called a promising prospect, really was fighting like a coward.
At the beginning of the match, it was still somewhat watchable. Against Lee Young-won, who boasted high defense and one-shot power, Kang Tae-jin boldly closed in.
And true to the name [Storm Striker], he unleashed attacks so fast they were hard to track even with my eyes.
Then, after allowing one strike from Lee Young-won’s greatsword, he abruptly changed tactics.
-Whoosh, boom!
The wind bullet fired from Kang Tae-jin’s fist slammed into Lee Young-won.
Apparently unique classes really are different, because as a fighter, Kang Tae-jin actually had a ranged attack skill.
But it didn’t seem especially strong, and Kang Tae-jin simply kept widening the distance while continuing his ranged attacks.
Dodging the bulky melee warrior Lee Young-won’s advance with movement skills and pure AGI, he just kept chaining wind blasts from afar.
You could call it exploiting the matchup, but for a fight between a rising prospect and a ranker, the skill level was embarrassingly low.
[Match Over]
[When time runs out, the challenger with more remaining HP wins.]
[Winner : Kang Tae-jin]
The ending was an automatic win for Kang Tae-jin by time limit. Of course it was; he’d just kept firing wind blasts from far away without taking a single hit.
“Aw hell, my eyes are ruined. If he was going to fight like that, why did he even drag himself out there?”
“Watch your mouth. Someone might hear you.”
The words of the challenger in the next seat, muttered as he left the arena, once again voiced exactly how I felt.
He hadn’t shown any amazing technique or skill at all, just a pathetic display of brute-forcing things with his class’s raw power.
And Choi Gil-hyeon was no different; honestly, I couldn’t even tell whether he was using a spear or a toothpick.
The reality seemed a lot different from how challengers on the same server rated things on the community.
-Ding.
While I was sulking and waiting for the next match, the friend chat alert rang in my ear.
[Kim Jina : Jin-hyuk, are you free a little later?]
Ah, perfect timing.