Chapter 8
#8. Learned Helplessness
I no longer went hunting.
I didn't go looking for treasure in the labyrinth. I didn't clear quests either.
After fleeing the boss room with my tail between my legs, I did nothing but wait for a new challenger to come in.
And before I knew it, half a year had flown by. No challengers had come in during all that time.
[Tower of Trials #2661 (1/1)]
The Tower of Trials is basically cut off from the outside world, but even so, you can still get a glimpse of current events through the new challengers who come in.
On the open community, they even serialize something like a newspaper that organizes the outside news brought in by those newbies. I read it faithfully too.
According to that newspaper, the 2661st Tower of Trials, where I was trapped alone, is a tower that rose up in a backwater village in Yangpyeong County, Gyeonggi Province.
I even heard the exact address, but it's a region with no connection to me at all. I've never been there, and I'd never even heard of it.
I heard that challengers who receive invitations are usually sent to a tower near where they live, so why was I sent to a place like this?
There are exceptions to the rule that you get sent to the nearest tower, but even so, most people supposedly do.
“Fuck.”
I got irritated and spat out a curse for no reason. After spending so long alone, I had almost nothing left to say out loud besides swearing.
Even before I entered the tower, I was jobless... no, a job seeker, so I hardly ever talked to people, but it wasn't this bad. I had my mom.
The village NPCs only spit out fixed lines like machines, so they don't feel human, and real conversation never actually happens.
- Trudge, trudge.
I left the lodging and headed to the village restaurant. The food came out as soon as the employee NPC took my order.
[Cheese Tonkatsu Lunchbox]
The signature dish of Tokkijeong, a Western-style diner; the stretchy cheese is the best part.
It's delicious, though a little pricey. A special meal for adventurers with money to spare!
It fills you up a lot.
I was already sick of eating the inn's meals every day. Since I had plenty of gold anyway, I was trying all kinds of different food.
This cheese tonkatsu lunchbox was apparently recommended even by rankers who've been stuck in the tower longer than I have. Sure enough, it's worth eating.
Of course, those rankers are crazy bastards who eat nothing but White Rolls every day because of their Luck-stat buff.
[Author: Seojinhyeok#2661]
[Title: How's my breakfast?]
(photo)
This is getting old too, so recommend something else.
- Sick of cheese tonkatsu? This guy's a psychopath.
- This bastard is stuck on the first floor, so what money is he using to buy that?
- ㄴ Oh, I have tons of gold. I can spend it all and it still doesn't go down. Jealous?
- ㄴ Like hell I am lol
- ㄴ Fucking piece of shit.
- Jinhyeok, dude, just eat White Rolls or something too. If your Luck goes up, maybe a newbie will come in.
- ㄴ If that would bring one in, fuck, one would've shown up ages ago, you motherfucker.
- ㄴ Whoa, why are you so toxic today?
- Why is his post/comment count like this?? Doesn't he hunt and just sit on the community?
- ㄴ You don't even know Jinhyeok? Newbie?
After I snapped a photo of the cheese tonkatsu lunchbox and posted it to the community, comments started pouring in again in no time.
It's a pointless post, but my posts always get a good response. That's because I've become a notable name on the open community, almost on par with rankers.
After the defeat in the boss fight, I had holed up in the lodging every day, spending all my time on community activity.
Right now, I'm a complete community ghost.
**
Even before entering the Tower of Trials, I'd spent every day glued to the community.
The place I mainly hung out was a drama-hound humor community that covered social and political issues. Those places are full of so-called deadbeat losers.
It's a good place to take comfort in watching thirty-plus real-life failures spend all day on the community, or to lament your dirt-poor fate and curse society.
Venting my frustrations from the shadows of anonymity, with nowhere else to go, was my biggest hobby. It still is.
Born dirt-poor, the invitation I thought was my chance to turn my life around turned out to be a trap card, followed by six months of forced confinement.
It was a fucked-up life full of nothing but things to complain about, and the open community users took those complaints at face value.
To challengers who've been promised a hunter's life reversal, my situation must have looked truly pitiful.
[Idiot, so you just sit in your room and do nothing but hang around the community every day? Instead of spewing crap posts, why don't you at least try hunting or something?]
Of course, there were also the occasional guys who pitied me like this. But I had more than enough material to rebut them.
Have you spent half a year on the first floor? Have you been alone without talking to a single person? I almost died trying to clear the boss solo, and so on.
Because it was an unprecedented situation no one else had ever faced, naturally there was no one who could fully counter my rebuttals.
Besides, who in the world could beat me in a flame war when I'd been forcibly turned into a "time Bill Gates" with nothing but time on my hands?
“That fucking bastard.”
I started hurling every insult I could think of at the challenger who'd picked a fight with me while I chewed on the cheese tonkatsu.
[Instead of always whining on the community and posting nothing but complaints, do something, you idiot. You keep blaming the server and the newbies every damn time, so you're still on the first floor]
No matter how many goblins I killed at my level, the experience went up barely at all, so what the hell did this bastard know to be spouting off?
Does he think effort can somehow overcome this hopeless situation? Does he think a little hunting on the first floor would let me beat the boss alone?
It seems he doesn't understand that the efficiency of effort itself is different. It's not as if he's stuck on the first floor just like me.
He's no different from the silver-spoon brats I'd sometimes seen before entering the tower, the ones who cursed out dirt-poor people.
They don't even realize how good their own environment is, and they push poor people around as if poverty were just a lack of effort and willpower.
Because I knew all too well about this difference in starting conditions, I had spent my entire job-seeker life desperately waiting for the tower's invitation.
My one and only chance to turn my life around—that was the only way someone born dirt-poor like me could repay my mom.
[Sigh, yeah, fine. Go live like that for the rest of your life, moron]
The challenger who'd been picking a fight with me ultimately couldn't win on logic and ran off. The cheese tonkatsu tasted even better.
“……”
The good mood lasted only a moment.
**
Another month passed without me ever leaving the first floor.
Unless they're rankers deliberately staying in the tower long-term, every challenger eventually leaves someday.
Even the ghosts who seemed like they'd cling to the community forever aren't really any different. Today, one of those ghosts left the tower too.
[Author: Kim Minhyeong#1451]
[Title: Graduation) It was fucking awful being with you, and let's never meet again]
(photo)
I'm leaving too. It's kind of ambiguous whether I'll be B-rank or A-rank, but I'm just gonna go lol.
To my party members Yongju, Minhyeok, and Seongcheol-hyung, thanks for all your hard work.
I won't forget the comments that cheered me on along the way.
Especially 1247 Park Minseok, who gave me tips when I was stuck on floor 50—hit me up when you get out; I'll buy you a meal.
I'm really out now, thanks for everything~~~
- Is this bastard graduating too? A lot of people have been leaving lately.
- Congrats on graduating
- Congrats on graduating
- Grats on graduating
- You worked hard too.
- Definitely just a B-rank scrub lol
Kim Minhyeong on server 1451 was a guy living the semi-ranker life, aiming to become an A-rank hunter.
And he was also a community ghost who kept posting daily updates about how he was in year n of closed-door training and such.
When a challenger of that ranker level graduates, the open community gets noisy about it for a while. Click, I close the community window.
I don't really want to see talk about graduation. The items left behind by the graduate, news to pass on to the outside world—none of it has anything to do with me.
Unless there's a server merge event, there's no way for me to receive a graduate's items unless the mail and auction house systems are merged with the other servers too.
Same with news to relay to the outside. I've already told my mom everything I could tell her.
That I was trapped alone on the first floor of the Tower of Trials and couldn't get out.
After hearing the news from me, my mom apparently went to government officials and hunters, begging them to do something. I wonder what she's doing these days.
Anyway, if there ever is news to pass on from now on, it'll be one of two things. Either a newbie came into this tower, or I died.
This fucking sucks.
In a bad mood, I went back to the lodging, buried my face in the pillow, and slept the day away.
**
A few days later, I woke up to a dinging alarm after once again staying up on the community until dawn and falling asleep.
The alarm kept going off from the open community window I hadn't closed, calling for me.
“Fuck... what the hell.”
Rubbing my half-awake eyes, I checked the community. The post telling me to check my messages was covered with a ton of tags calling for me.
I closed the open community and opened the message screen.
The name of the person who sent the message was familiar. They were the one who had mediated between me and the graduates a few times, passing news to my mom.
[May the deceased rest in peace.]
It was too long and complicated for someone like me, who likes three-line summaries, but the conclusion was simple.
Today, my mom died. No, was it yesterday? I don't know.
The conclusion I had reached on my own seeped out of my brain and flowed away like water.