Chapter 3
◎ Climbing Rules, Chapter 0.
All Awakened are called Climbers by the Tower, and the minimum criterion for being chosen as a Climber is whether they can kill a living thing.
◎ Climbing Rules, Chapter 1.
Although nine out of ten Awakened comply with social norms, anyone who clearly recognizes themselves as superhuman is encouraged to report their Awakening to their country's Association.
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The Tower's interior cannot accommodate modern technology or firearms. More precisely, the conditions required to use them have not been met. The number of people who meet those conditions and can receive the aid of modern science can literally be counted on one's fingers.
That is why filming inside the Tower is naturally difficult as well, so its interior can only be recreated based on Climbers' accounts. The only exceptions are a few Awakened with special professions who bring back samples of the Tower's environment, or those who bring cameras inside after meeting the conditions I mentioned—conditions so rare they can be counted on one's fingers.
Only about 2 percent of humanity are Climbers.
No, wait, 2 percent of eight billion people is roughly 160 million, so that's not actually all that few.
Anyway, although helping those who climb the highest floors is difficult, the nations are cooperating, sharing information, and devising all sorts of countermeasures to reduce the casualty rate among novice Climbers who have only just begun climbing the Tower.
That is why information about the Tower can be obtained from outside as well.
In novels, it is common for people to be forbidden from revealing anything about the Tower's interior, unable to leave once they enter, or forced into killing matches against other Climbers inside. But the Tower in our world... no, the Tower in our reality is quite kind in a way.
"Whoa..."
Every Climber says they can never forget the moment they first entered a Tower.
Wakamo could feel the truth of that, too.
A surreal landscape stood alone in the middle of a forest where not even birdsong or the sound of insects could be heard. Modern VR equipment couldn't reproduce this level of realism. The textures and colors themselves were different. Since I'm a clipper, I used virtual reality as my analogy, so bear with me.
'Still, it really feels like I logged into 『Virtual Chat』 as an avatar.'
If I had entered in my original body, I would have truly felt that I had become an Awakened.
But with a hastily made 3D model, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had logged into 『Virtual Chat』 and wandered around a world whose quality had been upgraded to absurd heights, so I wasn't all that excited.
Even stories about people with terminal illnesses these days give them at least a month to a year, but I had less than a day—only 19 hours to live, a life shorter than a mayfly's—so perhaps that was why I felt even more depressed.
"No! Some Climbers have professions that don't require them to enter the Tower, so why am I stuck with this???"
As I explained earlier, not every Climber's profession involved fighting the monsters inside the Tower. Wasn't the [Artist] far removed from combat? There were Awakened who brought materials in from outside and crafted things to help, as well as many Awakened who served as [Porters], entering to extract and collect the Tower's resources even without meeting certain conditions.
Of course, there isn't actually a profession called [Porter].
Climbers have ways to enter floors regardless of how many floors they have climbed, and some are called 『Companions』 and share things like 『Common Skills』 from specific groups designated by the Tower. Thus, Awakened could be active in all sorts of ways outside the Tower, not just inside it.
Exactly! As incomprehensible as it was, the Tower called them Climbers without forcing them to climb!
If you want to climb, then climb, I guess? What, leave it alone? Yeah~ I'll die. It would collapse in a heap, if anything.
Tower! How much of my lifespan do I have left?
19....
19 days?
19 hours.
What the fuck, you son of a bitch?
There are no cases where it holds a knife to someone's throat and threatens them into climbing like this! At least, that was true according to everything I knew about the Tower and Climbers!
"What am I, an idol's idol? The Tower's chosen greatest idol? If it says something like 'You're Earth's greatest VTuber,' it'll brand me with that title, and everyone will spend all day raging about what qualifications a bastard like me had to be a VTuber...?"
"It's scary... It's exhausting enough dealing with people who send emails all day, chewing me out over why I didn't clip this, why I clipped that, and whether I'm an anti-fan, even though I haven't committed any crime. If I provoke the entire world by being declared the Tower's chosen greatest VTuber, a new Voldemort might be born on the internet. Seriously."
"Uuuugh...."
Being publicly ridiculed by internet users wielding invisible knives was more frightening than the pressure of having to climb the Tower!!
"Calm down... Count the VTubers..."
Virtual Live and its male-only division, Virtual Stars... their second- and third-generation members, and the otherworldly idols... Stellamis.... I decided to accept reality while muttering the full names of about 70 VTubers. I had spent time watching streams, then wasted another hour denying reality after entering the Tower.
"There really isn't a Tutorial Fairy...."
Nice to meet you. I'm the Tutorial Fairy.
The time limit is 24 hours. Then, best of luck.
There really wasn't any of that nonsense where I shouted, "Don't mess with me~ Let me out!" and had my head explode with a pop, making someone watching think, Is this where it starts...?
There was no such thing, and yet here I was, a clipper who had to climb the Tower with my life on the line in a VTuber's body......Was this really happening?
'For now....'
The Tower I entered using the [Tower Entry] skill was the Incheon Tower, the 100-floor Tower that was currently the highest and had the most information available. Towers varied from 30 to 99 floors, but 100 was the maximum. I had chosen this one because many Awakened in Korea were working to conquer it.
'The only way to leave a Tower I've chosen without conquering it is to give up climbing.'
If I did that, all the stats I had gained while climbing would reset, and I would never be able to climb the Tower I had abandoned again.
Taking even that into consideration, I had deliberately chosen the 100-floor Tower, where I could climb as far as possible.
"A collab café is opening in Incheon... If things get dangerous, I can come out in Incheon through the Tower, so I can cut down on the time it takes to ride a bus. With a body this huge, taking a bus would be a problem anyway...."
I had agonized over the choice and selected it with the utmost care. The 70-floor Tower in Busan had tempted me, but it would be meaningless if I couldn't go to Japan. The problem was that, as a Korean national, I could only choose Korean Towers. There was also the issue that people of other nationalities had to go to the Tower they wanted to enter in person. If that had been possible, with only about 19 hours left to live, I would have VTubed in Japan until I died, if only to vent my sense of injustice.
"But this is truly pathetic. I only have one skill, [Idol's Body]... Even the most common [Fighter] class gets combat-support skills like [Heavy Strike] and [Light Footstep], apparently."
Wasn't I the Tower's chosen idol? Shouldn't it have given me a little more?
After finishing my complaints, I took my first step onto the first floor. With a cheerful ding♪, a translucent window appeared.
[You are climbing in the Incheon Tower's Floor 1 World]
-First step as a Climber! To get used to it, let's catch an [Oil Slime] and light a fire.
[Platinum Achievement Conditions]
-Light a campfire using the slime you caught (0/1).
".....Huh?"
My ears perked up. Then they drooped again.
"U─um??"
I opened my eyes, raised my eyebrows, tilted my head, and frowned in confusion. This was showing me information about clearing the first floor, right? It was showing me the quest I had to complete, right?
"A Platinum achievement, you say?"
I could hardly believe my eyes. Did that really count?
According to the information I had gathered, the way to clear the Incheon Tower's first floor was simply to kill one of the slimes that appeared. Immediately afterward, when going up to the second floor, the basic procedure was to choose the direction in which I wanted to develop from the reward I received.
"The achievement condition...isn't it too easy...?"
Perhaps this was a matter of information. Once the slime was killed, the Tower judged that there were no monsters left on the floor and considered it cleared, creating a door to the second floor. So there was hardly any reason to light a fire with the dead slime's body and sit down to rest.
"I heard 『Legendary Classes』 were truly extreme....Is this really okay?"
I had heard that [Wizard] and [Archer] classes came with a staff or bow and arrows in their inventories. Since others didn't have those, I had to have something good, too.
Boing, boing.
While I was worrying, a black liquid monster came wriggling and undulating out. I wondered if I should step on it, then simply gave it a light stomp. With a crunch like stepping on a ripe banana, the slime was crushed. It felt like killing a bug, but...if I kept climbing, I would probably have to fight and kill things shaped like humans, too, wouldn't I?
There was a reason the minimum standard for becoming a Climber was the mental fortitude to kill a person.
"Wait, then was I turned into one because I have no interest in anything but VTubers...?"
Because even a VTuber who met the qualifications to become a Climber would have trouble fighting directly?
Even as I grumbled, I picked up dry twigs and other things from the floor, gathered them, and placed the slime's corpse on top. Then came the fire... I had to go through all sorts of ridiculous bullshit before I finally got it lit. I rubbed my hands together to create friction and start a fire. Perhaps because it was flammable, even an ember quickly made the fire flare up.
"I really don't get tired at all!"
I should have been tired after rubbing for 30 minutes, but I didn't have a single muscle ache! On top of that, when the fire suddenly flared up and reached my face, it wasn't even very hot. Was this what it meant for my entire body to be made of 100% mana? Figuring that a good thing was a good thing, I stared into the flames at the first campfire I had ever made.
'How many views would this get if I filmed it and uploaded it...'
About five minutes passed like that.
[The Incheon Tower's Floor 1 is opened to all humanity upon achieving its Platinum conditions!!]
Though no one could tell whose voice it was, a lovely voice—one that made it sound as though its owner must have a beautiful face—echoed through the Tower. Everyone near the Incheon Tower could probably hear it. And the color of the Tower's first floor as seen from outside would have changed as well.
And this was one of the exceedingly few conditions I had mentioned.
A floor cleared with a Platinum achievement could be entered even by people who had not Awakened.
All the resources and supplies inside could be extracted by bringing in construction equipment, and the first floor of the Tower could also be used as a kind of bunker. The only condition for maintaining this status was that the Climber who had achieved Platinum had to remain alive.
Yes, the person who now owned this first floor was Wakamo!
I had acquired Tower real estate—something that surpassed ordinary real estate!
Just by staring into a fire for five minutes!
[Would you like to climb to the Incheon Tower Floor 2 World?]
My business here was done, so I decided to climb to the second floor immediately.
[Mana : 49,371].
I didn't even have time to enjoy the joy of clearing a floor!
As I hurried up to the next floor, an alarm proclaiming that all my wounds had been healed sounded, and I let out a sigh of relief when my mana returned to [Mana : 70,587]. What kind of fate was it to have only 19 hours left to live—not even a full day—and have to climb the Tower like this, chased by time every day?
"Now that I look at it, this mana number is my channel's subscriber count."
Looking closely, the fact that it had increased by only three was absurd in more ways than one.
"Let's check the reward for clearing the first floor first."
Now that I had some breathing room, I felt a little more at ease. No! I was actually looking forward to it!
I had even achieved Platinum, so the reward would be incredible, right?
Whether it was an attack skill, a weapon, or anything else, I would definitely get at least one good thing!
[The reward has increased due to the Tower's Platinum clear].
[The Tower is reviewing the Climber's information again....].
[The Tower revises its information on Earth's professions through the Climber].
"Hm..?"
[Choose 1 reward]
[Idol's Flame]
-Consumes stored mana to create a flame.
[Video Recording]
-Links the Climber's channel to the inside of the Tower, enabling recording.
"Obviously number 1, for crying out loud. Did the Tower really revise the profession after seeing me without even knowing what a VTuber is? Is this okay, Tower?"
It had felt ominous from the moment it said it was revising its information on Earth's professions, but it was clearly misunderstanding the idol known as a VTuber. I had never imagined it would give me such a bizarre skill—but of course it was an attack skill!!
[Acquired the skill [Video Recording]!].
"Ah, haha, I can't resist this, haha."
I decided to debut as a Tower VTuber starting today.
This was a matter of survival for me!
Anyway, this was my blue pill(?)! If I insisted shamelessly, somehow it would work!
"A VTuber whose red pill could never be exposed—I'm invincible!!"
If I ran into people outside, I would insist it was a VTuber cosplay.