Chapter 3
What usually comes to mind when you hear the word "tower"?
A lunatic in a co-op game who stakes his mother's honor on a one-on-one duel and goes all out?
A purple-haired rapper who looks like he smokes weed?
Or the bald bros over in the LGBT Gallery...
...Okay, enough bullshit.
Back to the point.
In the beginning, there was the Tower.
Well... not quite the beginning.
It suddenly appeared about ten years ago.
A colossal tower, planted in the middle of the Pacific like a stake.
Inside the Tower were other worlds, people, and monsters.
There was only one way to survive: hunt monsters and climb the Tower.
Fortunately, the Tower wasn't completely heartless; it saw fit to hand out a perk called "Awakening."
Not to everyone, of course. Only to a select few.
Basically, it's like a restaurant having a chopstick sterilizer that you can only use at random.
...Even as I say it, I wonder what kind of nonsense that is, but that's really how it works.
And so, those who entered the Tower were naturally divided into the "Awakened" and the "non-Awakened."
The Awakened hunted monsters and climbed the Tower, while the non-Awakened could only watch.
But the people left behind still had to find a way to live, so the 0th Floor naturally became a residential area.
That's right, the 0th Floor.
The place I was just in.
So where am I now, you ask?
Where else?
The 1st Floor.
[ Would you like to enter the 1st Floor? ]
[ Yes ]
Vroooom──
Along with the entry message, dazzling beams of light enveloped me.
Then, as the beams faded, a landscape of lush green foliage spread out before my eyes.
It wasn't the concrete jungle I'd just been in, but an actual forest.
"Uegh... I'm dizzy..."
My body swayed uncontrollably from motion sickness.
How do I put it... It felt like my whole head was getting squished─?
It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation.
"Huu... Is this the 1st Floor...?"
Coming to my senses, I looked around while holding onto the aluminum dagger I'd brought.
Honestly, I never expected to end up somewhere like this.
Who would've thought I'd be dropped in an uninhabited forest right from the 1st Floor...
What? Why didn't I know when I was the one who entered?
Because the spawn location on the 1st Floor is random for each person.
[ Where did you guys spawn on the Tower's 1st Floor? ]
[ Posted by: Daehyeop ]
I started in some cave, got a fortuitous encounter, and made it to A-rank
- Anonymous: Why are you asking about that on Awakened Gallery?
└ (OP) Daehyeop: ? Isn't this Awakened Gallery?
└ Anonymous (39.7): Ooh, humblebrag
- Anonymous: Usually a village
- Sogatamyeontanso: I was in the Mage Tower
└ Mage Princess: Princess was in the Mage Tower too...!
- Air Raid Alert: ......
- Ice Fan: The North. Had a nice match against a polar bear.
└ Anonymous: If it's the 1st Floor, you don't have skills yet, do you...?
└ Ice Fan: That's why I beat it up with my fists
└ (OP) Daehyeop: You're not human...
In other words, it was map gacha.
And I'd absolutely botched my roll.
"I wanna reroll..."
Unfortunately, though, you couldn't reroll your spawn location.
If you could, everyone would spend all their time rerolling instead of climbing the Tower.
Besides, the spawn location wasn't entirely random; it was determined by the climber's class and stats.
Most people spawned in a village, while mages got the Mage Tower.
In special cases, you could end up somewhere like the North or the Demon Realm.
And in my case, it was a forest.
A forest that automatically played music that made you feel like you ought to train.
Of course, it wasn't bright and cheerful like a game. It was a gloomy forest where you half expected Slender Man to pop out.
"Ugh..."
A shiver ran through me for some reason, and I rubbed my arms as I walked on.
How long had I been trudging along without knowing where I was going?
The canopy overhead gave way, revealing a clearing about half the size of a sports field.
Not long after I found the clearing, a familiar notification chime sounded, and a status window appeared before me.
Ding!
[ Please select a difficulty. ]
[ Easy ]
[ Hard ]
[ Extreme ]
[ Insane ]
[ Lunatic ]
"W-what... Difficulty...?"
Come to think of it, I'd heard about this on Awakened Gallery.
The Tower had a difficulty system.
From Easy to Hard, Extreme, Insane, and then Lunatic.
The higher the difficulty, the greater the rewards for clearing a floor.
But in exchange, the difficulty of clearing it increased exponentially.
A classic high-risk, high-reward setup.
But even so, my pride wouldn't let me pick the easiest difficulty, Easy.
"What? Easy difficulty?"
Ah, you mean the haven for super cowards.
Picking Easy mode in a game is something only soy boys and pathetic losers do.
After all, Easy mode was made for elementary schoolers.
...Of course, my body was unmistakably that of an elementary-school girl, but inside was a warm, rugged manly man.
In the first place, Easy wasn't even an option.
So the difficulty I was going to pick was...
[ Hard ]
"Hard, obviously─"
Beep!
"...Huh?"
What?
Why won't it work?
Is it bugged?
"This is fucked."
Ah, fuck, System-ssi.
Did you spill tteokbokki sauce on the server again?
I know Earth Online gets bugs every now and then, but getting locked out of difficulty selection is way too fucking heartless...
Ding!
[ You cannot enter because the difficulty is too low for your current stats! ]
"Oh. Never mind."
Apparently my soft, squishy Awakened body was so powerful it could blaspheme against the gods, so I couldn't select Hard.
Smiling uncontrollably, I moved my finger down to the next difficulty.
"Sigh... Can't be helped. In that case, Extreme..."
[ Extreme ]
Beep!
[ You cannot enter because the difficulty is too low for your current stats! ]
"...Then Insane..."
[ Insane ]
Beep!
[ You cannot enter because the difficulty is too low for your current stats! ]
......
But no matter how many times I pressed the next difficulty, the same notification kept appearing.
I kept smiling, but started sweating bullets.
"...No way?"
No, Tower-bro.
You can't do this to me.
You're telling me to go into Lunatic?
Easy might be a joke, but the difficulties above it weren't.
People died on Hard every year, without fail.
From Extreme and Insane onward, even A-rank Awakened could be in danger if they made one wrong move. Lunatic was a difficulty only three S-ranks in all of Korea were climbing.
And yet...
[ Lunatic ]
This fucking Tower bitch was telling me to play on Lunatic.
"Fuck."
It was a truly fucked-up situation.
Even more fucked-up was that Lunatic was now my only option.
Once you entered the 1st Floor, you couldn't leave until you cleared it.
"...Well, let's give it a shot."
[ Lunatic ]
Ba-dum!
[ You have selected Lunatic difficulty! ]
[ Combat will begin shortly... ]
In the end, with no other choice, I selected Lunatic with the feeling of climbing into Eva, and a message appeared before my eyes along with a little fanfare.
Shortly after the message window vanished, a rotten stench suddenly began wafting from somewhere.
"Ugh... W-what is that?"
I reflexively covered my nose and went on guard against the disgusting smell.
How long had I been scanning my surroundings, gripping the aluminum dagger tightly?
Soon, something made of purple liquid crawled out from between the trees.
Kkyu!
"...A slime?"
Slime.
The weakest monster, commonly found in RPGs.
But the slime that appeared before my eyes wasn't a cute little creature like the ones in mushroom games.
Kkyuu──grrrghblrbleegh!!
"Ugh... Fuck..."
It had a horrifying appearance, like every kind of gore pic in the world had been blended together.
Maybe if you mixed my innards-and-blood-sausage soup with "Monggeul-monggeul," poured in dark purple paint, and made it move like an amoeba, it'd look like that.
In other words, it looked like something Nguyen would delete from the gallery within one second.
Ding!
[ Main Quest ]
Defeat a monster. (0/1)
- Reward: 2nd-Floor Pass, Random Skill Box x1
Just as the slime appeared, a quest window popped up before me.
I alternated my gaze between the window and the pile of gore in front of me, and muttered.
"So... I'm supposed to kill that...?"
Are you serious?
Fight? Me?
...That?
......
I really, really, really didn't want to, but I had no choice, so I raised my aluminum dagger.
The slime had already gotten so close that it was too late to run anyway.
"Ugh..."
But I couldn't help being viscerally grossed out, so I tentatively extended the aluminum dagger I was holding and lightly poked the slime's mucus.
And then.
Ppyt!
"Kyaaah──?!"
The moment I touched it with the blade, the slime immediately sprayed mucus at me.
A bucketful of it came pouring down on me.
Hiss...!
"......!!!"
And apparently it wasn't just ugly as fuck, because the moment the mucus touched me, it started melting my clothes with a sizzling sound, like it was corroding them.
The aluminum dagger couldn't withstand the slime's acidity either, and melted away miserably.
A bizarre sight straight out of a gore movie.
But...
"...Huh?"
For some reason, my body was fine.
Only my soft, snow-white skin was exposed through my badly melted clothes.
Unlike the aluminum and my clothes, it hadn't been corroded by the mucus.
And it didn't take me long to figure out why.
"Drug Resistance, buddy... Was it you?"
S-rank trait, Drug Resistance.
A trait that grants resistance to all kinds of drugs.
I immediately opened my trait window and checked its details again.
[ Drug Resistance ]
- Rank: S
- Ability: Grants resistance to all types of drugs.
"Damn, Drug Resistance-bro!"
I knew I could count on you, man!!
I didn't know exactly how broad "all types of drugs" was, but it seemed the slime's mucus counted.
As I thought, I'd known from the start that a skill with such a short, simple description would be ridiculously broken.
You know, like "Throw a spear to deal physical damage."
Easy to understand. Not boring or pretentious.
Gurrgl?!
Maybe it hadn't expected me to withstand it, because the slime looked deeply confused when its mucus didn't work.
Well, now it was easy.
Since it couldn't hurt me at all, I just had to walk up and stab it.
"Hngh, c'mere...!"
Thinking that, I reached out and started rummaging around inside the slime's mucus. Before long, I found something round, like a ball.
This was probably the slime's weak point, its core.
I picked up the bit of aluminum still in my hand and activated my skill by instinct.
"Transmutation."
Thunk! Crunch!
The aluminum shard shot up like a spike and pierced the core.
At the same time, the slime could no longer hold its shape and spilled onto the ground.
[ Main Quest ]
Defeat a monster. (1/1)
- Reward: 2nd-Floor Pass, Random Skill Box x1
[ Main Quest cleared. ]
[ You have cleared Floor 1 on Lunatic difficulty. ]
[ Issuing clear rewards. ]
[ You have obtained a 2nd-Floor Pass. ]
[ You have obtained Random Skill Box x1. ]
Along with the quest-clear message, an exit shaped like a portal appeared in midair.
But that wasn't what mattered to me right now.
[ The "Awakened Community" feature has been unlocked. ]
"Yay! Finally!"
The Awakened Community I'd been waiting and waiting for.
In other words, Tower Gallery.
Distracted by the message saying the feature had been unlocked, I left the other rewards alone and immediately logged into Tower Gallery.
[ Would you like to create a username? ]
"Hmm..."
I hesitated for a moment at the question of whether to create a fixed-handle account, but the indecision didn't last long.
In principle, only Awakened could use fixed handles on Awakened Gallery.
Thanks to that, I'd been forced to post anonymously until now, but I didn't have to anymore.
My goal, after all, was to become a Tower Gallery superstar, a beloved fixed-handle user.
With great power comes great responsibility.
If it was for attention-seeking, I could make a fixed-handle account anytime.
[ Username: 39.7 ]
[ Are you sure you want to use this username? ]
"Yes."
I chose the IP address that held memories of my time on Awakened Gallery.
Tower Gallery didn't have IP addresses, so this should serve well enough as a username.
After setting up my username and finishing all the preparations, I immediately took a proof photo with my face out of frame and made a post.
[ Isn't Lunatic just ez? ]
[ Posted by: 39.7 ]
< Clear message proof >
< V-sign selfie with slime corpse in the background >
One measly slime, and the clear reward's lousy too...
Hmm... Is this really that hard...
It was a classic humblebrag, the sort you'd expect to see on a cafe forum, not a gallery.
A humblebrag with the gas pedal floored in both forward and reverse—normally, the Gallery bros would be horrified, and the mods would ban the poster.
Having safely made my first post, I started walking toward the portal, rubbing at my melted clothes.
"Huu... Time to go home."
I'd done everything I needed to, and I was ready to go home and shower.
Even if I wasn't hurt at all, being covered in a slime that smelled like a sewer wasn't exactly pleasant.
[ Would you like to enter the 0th Floor? ]
[ Yes ]
I tossed my slime-covered body into the portal, surrendered to the floating sensation, and quietly closed my eyes.
Ding!
[ Isn't Lunatic just ez? (1) ]
Completely unaware of what was happening in the Awakened Community.
Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
......
...
[ ☆ Isn't Lunatic just ez? (278) ]