Chapter 4
I remembered the comment Pungdeongi had left in the Mage Gallery.
[With talent and power like that, you could probably chew up the Tower's tutorial. Go take a look inside the Tower sometime when you have the chance.]
Even if he hadn't said that, it was a place I had to go anyway.
Because this was exactly why I'd spent thirty days eating dirt and even endured the agony of having my gender changed.
A total deadbeat's life with day and night completely flipped.
I woke up only when it was nearly midnight, after everyone else had finished their day.
As soon as I got up, I turned on the computer and checked the posts in the Gallery.
Before I knew it, I'd burned through hours and it was dawn.
Outside the window was a deep blue sky, with the sun still not up, but for me it was the most familiar time to start moving.
I threw on some clothes and headed outside.
The chilly dawn air seeped through the ill-fitting T-shirt and touched my skin.
The body that had been covered in thick muscle and fat just a few days ago was gone.
Moving my thin, fragile limbs felt unfamiliar.
“I guess I'll have to buy some clothes online later. Underwear too....”
I just didn't have the courage to go into a store and buy clothes myself.
Though honestly, that had been the case even when I was a man.
‘Why are clothes store clerks so desperate to strike up conversations? They make people so uncomfortable.’
The dawn air was refreshing.
My destination was the black tower standing in the middle of Daejeon.
The Tower here was a far cry from places like Seoul, where security and control were tight.
A gigantic black tower rose up through the city's buildings.
The area around it was empty.
No one would be coming to the Tower at this hour, and I couldn't see any government officials or Hunters guarding it either.
I walked into the Tower's entrance without anyone stopping me, as casually as if I were taking a stroll in the neighborhood park.
The Tower.
An unidentified structure that had suddenly risen five years ago in major cities around the world—Seoul, New York, Tokyo, London, and more.
No one knew why it appeared.
People only spread all sorts of wild speculation, saying it was a gift from God or an invasion from another world.
But one thing was certain: if the Tower was left alone, a horrific disaster would follow.
The regime in the North was proving that fact very clearly.
If the Tower isn't cleared at regular intervals, it collapses.
And I mean collapse literally.
Everyone knew full well what would happen if a building in the middle of downtown came crashing down.
What's more, portals are born from the rubble.
Portals that spew out all kinds of monsters.
No method has yet been found to close a portal once it has formed.
Even at this very moment, near the 38th Parallel, Hunters serving in the military were desperately holding back the monsters pouring down from the North.
The posts I'd seen in the Mage Gallery flashed through my mind.
[Pungdeongi: Once you're registered as a Hunter, they call you out for all sorts of dirty work, saying you're a vital national asset.
At least A-ranks have the power to push back once. B-ranks and C-ranks get drafted without exception.
So register as late as possible. Only when you're absolutely certain, 'Yeah, this is definitely A-rank,' should you do it.]
[ㅇㅇ: And until then?]
[Pungdeongi: You just live as an unregistered illegal Hunter. What else? No need to act surprised.]
Pungdeongi's advice was extremely reasonable.
I decided to follow it, and that's how I ended up at an empty Tower.
“I can't see anything inside....”
When I opened the Tower's door, the inside was pitch-black darkness.
I had heard that once an Awakened entered, they could move to a floor suited to their level.
I swallowed once more and took a step forward.
In that instant, a sensation like my whole body being sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner overwhelmed me.
I screamed, squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again, I was standing in a completely different space.
A cube-shaped room enclosed on all sides by seamless, smooth white surfaces.
And a blue system window floating before my eyes like a hologram.
[You have entered the tutorial field.]
[Please select a difficulty.]
[EASY] [NORMAL] [HARD]
Just as I expected. The first hurdle was choosing a difficulty.
Easy, Normal, Hard. Three choices.
But I had no need to think about it.
Because I'd already heard a clear answer to this question in the Mage Gallery.
[Title: What difficulty should I pick for the tutorial?]
To my question, the mages unanimously gave the same answer as if they'd rehearsed it in advance.
ㄴ Pungdeongi: Obviously Hard.
ㄴ Magic Is Firepower: Hard. Anything below that is a disgrace to mages.
ㄴ pkkatju: It has to be Hard, for sure.
Feeling uneasy deep down, I asked again.
ㅇㅇ: But what if it's too hard and I die?
ㄴ Refrigerator: Then that's unfortunate.
ㄴ Pungdeongi: But with your level of talent, you definitely won't die. Look at us. We're all alive and well, still hanging around on the Gallery, aren't we?
ㄴ pkkatju: Since you've beaten my record as a super genius, of course you can do it.
ㄴ Magic Is Firepower: Why raise the difficulty? Because the rewards are different. The Tower never betrays effort and risk.
The growth rate isn't even comparable. Honestly, if you're not going to run Hard, there's no reason to be a mage.
ㄴ Refrigerator: Well, it's your choice. If you want to make a safe living like a salaryman, Easy isn't bad either.
Of course, you'll never even dream of becoming an A-rank Hunter.
ㄴ pkkatju: High risk, high return! If you chicken out here, you'll be a third-rater for life!
“They're saying it this much, so of course I have to go Hard.”
Repeating their words to myself, I reached for the [HARD] button without hesitation.
I'd endured a whole month of eating dirt; I couldn't back down in front of a mere tutorial difficulty.
That was when it happened.
Just before my finger touched the button, the system window flashed and displayed a new message.
[System: The user's total mana greatly exceeds the threshold.]
[The hidden difficulty, EXTREME, has been unlocked.]
Along with the new message, an ominous red button appeared next to the existing three options.
[EASY] [NORMAL] [HARD] [EXTREME]
“Huh?”
My finger froze in midair.
Extreme? I'd never heard of anything like that.
It wasn't just the Mage Gallery.
I'd never heard anything about an Extreme difficulty in the Hunter-related galleries, on the news, or even on YouTube.
I fell into deep thought for a moment.
Was this really okay?
Hard difficulty already had the implication that only damage dealers could clear it, and now there was something even higher than that.
“Should I go outside and ask Brother Pungdeongi...?”
But I quickly realized I couldn't do that.
Once you were in, it was impossible to leave until you finished the tutorial.
No matter how I looked around, I couldn't see a door or any other exit.
A complete sealed room.
“....”
I stared intently at the blood-red [EXTREME] button.
High risk, high return.
Their words echoed in my ears.
If it was a difficulty higher than Hard, that meant the rewards would be that much more incredible too.
'But if I die doing that, it's over.'
My rational self warned me.
But immediately, deep within me, the soul of a Gallery addict refuted reason.
'Hey, this is basically a featured-post ticket. If I post, “Did you know there's a difficulty beyond Hard?” the title alone would already make it a featured post. How am I supposed to resist that?'
Yeah, this bait would work.
It wouldn't just work in the Hunter Gallery.
The Mage Gallery would definitely go wild too.
“What the hell, let's give it a try.”
In the end, the mindset of the Gallery addict inside me completely crushed my cool reason.
I swallowed hard and pressed the Extreme button down firmly.
[You have selected EXTREME difficulty.]
[You will be moved to the designated location in 60 seconds.]
'All right, what will come out now.'
With tension building, I immediately began preparing for battle.
First, I spread out my palm. But this room was coated with an unidentified material.
There wasn't a single grain of dirt or sand around to gather.
'Oops.'
But I didn't panic. A mage's body changes in accordance with the attribute they handle.
From what I'd heard, it was something like the process of becoming a kind of spirit?
I was still inexperienced too, but I could at least transform parts of my body.
I focused my consciousness on the pinky finger of my right hand.
As the sensations of flesh and bone dulled, I felt a strange feeling of my fingertip crumbling and turning into fine sand.
There was no pain. I only felt the alien sensation of part of my body transforming into something else.
I placed the small amount of sand I had made onto my right palm.
Then I imagined a deadly bullet—hard, fast, spinning, and capable of piercing through anything.
Following my imagination, the sand gathered together, and before long a small bullet was complete.
I spun the finished sand bullet around on my palm, waiting for the monsters to appear.
Easy spawns one unarmed goblin.
Normal spawns one goblin wielding a dagger.
Hard, they said, would have two goblins like that.
“So does that mean I'll get three goblins?”
Taking down three at once would probably be a bit much.
And I didn't know how long it would take me to prepare the next bullet after making one.
I wasn't even sure if I could run away properly in this fragile body.
During the remaining wait time, I experimented to see if I could make a sand bullet in my other hand too.
This time I sacrificed my left pinky to make sand and practiced controlling it.
At first, using both hands at the same time wasn't familiar.
The sand kept scattering whenever my concentration slipped.
But on my fourth try, I succeeded in making the same kind of sand bullet on my left palm as well.
“For now, this must be my limit.... Well, fine.”
Now I had one bullet in each hand.
With this, I could take down two of them at once, create some distance, then finish off the last one.
It was the perfect scenario.
[Movement complete.]
At last, the countdown ended and the space before me distorted.
The surroundings had become a cave.
In front of me were ugly monsters with green skin.
They were goblins carrying crude weapons.
Before I could even count them exactly, I instinctively fired the bullets in both hands.
Swish-!
Boom! Boom!
The two bullets struck the heads of the two goblins in front with perfect accuracy, without the slightest deviation.
A gruesome sight unfolded as their heads burst apart like watermelons.
Blood and brain matter splattered everywhere.
“Ugh, disgusting.... Anyway, is there just one left now?”
I was just about to sacrifice another finger to leisurely make the next bullet.
Kyaaaaaaek-!
Keruk! Keruk!
The goblins' ear-splitting shrieks filled the cave and erupted from every direction.
And the number of goblins emerging one by one from the darkness was definitely not just one.
One, two, three... four, five, six, seven, eight.
“What the fuck? Why are there so many?”
Since I just killed two, had a total of ten been summoned?
Hard difficulty was supposedly only two goblins.
But here there were ten. A simple calculation made that five times as many.
But in combat, facing two enemies instead of one is not twice as hard—it's three or four times harder.
If you thought about it that way, the real difficulty of facing ten goblins far exceeded five times.
Extreme difficulty.
Hell difficulty, confirmed.
“Let's run for now.”
I started running at full speed.