Chapter 5
How long had I been running?
Panting hard, I stopped my sprint.
“Running away isn’t going to solve this.”
I leaned my back against the cave wall and drew in ragged breaths.
I was at my physical limit now.
I had to accept reality.
“Being in a woman’s body is way too weak....”
Of course, that was just an excuse.
Even if I’d been in my original body, things probably wouldn’t have been much different.
A life spent holed up in my room, pounding away at a keyboard all day.
I would have been just as out of shape.
Kerrk! Kerrruk!
The unpleasant noises the goblins made as they tightened their encirclement echoed through the cave.
They seemed to know I was exhausted.
At this rate, I would die.
‘No, goblins mean humiliation. Maybe there’s an ending even worse than death....’
Realizing that fact somehow cooled my head instantly.
I raised both hands.
I had used one pinky finger to make a single bullet.
That left eight fingers.
In theory, I could make eight more bullets.
The problem was whether I could do it all at once.
Even making one required all my concentration.
And to make several at once? Could I pull that off?
‘No. I have to.’
There was no choice.
I closed my eyes and focused every bit of awareness on the tips of both hands.
The sensation of eight fingers turning into sand at the same time.
I pictured the god inside my body.
The god’s form changed into that of a bullet.
I infused mana into each separate clump of sand, compressed it, and spun it.
It felt like my brain was about to burst.
It was like playing eight different games at the same time.
Drip. Blood trickled from my nose.
My head sent out a warning signal, telling me it was dangerous to focus any further.
“Still, I pulled it off, barely.”
There were no fingers left on either hand now.
Instead, above my palms, eight black sand bullets floated in the air, slowly spinning.
“All of you, die.”
I waved the air as if fanning myself, my hands now missing fingers.
Under my will, the eight bullets scattered in all directions like buckshot.
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh-!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I didn’t bother with precise aim.
There was no need for that with goblins packed tight inside the narrow cave.
The cave shook with the sounds of screaming and flesh bursting apart.
A while later, silence fell along with a vicious stench of blood.
Before my eyes, only the remains of goblins with their limbs blown apart lay strewn about.
And only then did a blue window appear before me.
[Congratulations on clearing 1st Floor EXTREME difficulty.]
“Wow, holy shit… this is hell.”
I sat down right there. The strength drained out of my whole body.
Once I relaxed, I finally noticed the eerie absence of my fingers.
Since they had only turned to sand, I should be able to regenerate them.
Sure enough, when I approached the goblins and manipulated my mana, the sand bullets I’d used were restored to my body.
After reclaiming my fingers, I sat on the floor for a long while, blankly staring at the ceiling.
Then, all of a sudden, I realized the most important thing.
“Ah, I need to take proof photos.”
I had to photograph this dreadful scene. A picture of me standing in the middle of a pile of goblin corpses, flashing a victory V sign.
One shot like that would shoot straight to the concept post in Hunter Gallery, and in every other community too.
“Ah, would that get blocked as a gross-out pic? I should think about it.”
But before I could even pull out my phone, the scenery around me warped again.
When I blinked, I was back where I’d first arrived, in a cubic room surrounded on all sides by seamless white.
And in front of me, a huge score sheet floated like a hologram.
[Tutorial Clear Record]
[Challenger : Unregistered]
[Selected Difficulty : EXTREME]
[Clear Time : 16 min 17 sec]
[Score Obtained : 14,729 points]
[World ranking has been updated! (Previous 1st place : 4,593 points)]
[World Rank No. 1 Achieved!]
[Please enter the name to register on the ranking.]
[Name : ]
“I’m number one?”
For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
For a brief instant of shock, a gallery addict’s instincts overtook my reason.
I fumbled out my phone and started snapping photos of the score sheet in front of me.
All the while, carefully thinking about which shot would draw the most attention when I bragged about it in Hunter Gallery later.
“Good, I’ve got my proof shot….”
Only after taking the pictures did I look at the name entry box.
World rank No. 1. A name that would be recorded forever.
There was only one nickname I could use here.
There was no need to hesitate.
Nothing else would be worthy of the half a lifetime I’d spent with it.
‘The nickname is obviously ㅇㅇ.’
I’m not the kind of man who uses a fixed nickname.
I typed ‘ㅇㅇ’ in with practiced familiarity.
[Name has been successfully registered.]
[1st Floor Ranking]
[1st place : ㅇㅇ 14,729 points]
[2nd place : DemiGoD 4,594 points]
[3rd place : Team_China08 3,123 points]
The moment I entered the name, the score sheet vanished and before me
a new window appeared.
Three books floated side by side.
All of them were a dull brown.
“Ah, so these are the skill books you get when your level rises.”
I’d heard of them before.
As you climb the Tower and gain experience, your level rises, and at certain levels you’re given the chance to obtain skills.
Usually, you had to clear around the 3rd Floor before getting your first skill.
Well, I had killed ten goblins, so I probably got several times more experience than others.
“That aside, my luck is absolute garbage.”
I frowned. They were all shit-brown, Bronze-grade books.
From the gallery posts, didn’t they usually say at least one Silver-grade book would show up?
I guess the lucky ones get it no matter what they do, and the unlucky ones can’t, no matter what.
That was when it happened.
[You are the first person to clear EXTREME difficulty!]
[The first-clear bonus has been applied!]
With a flash of light, the skill book in the middle changed to silver.
“Oh...?”
An exclamation of admiration escaped me.
But the surprise didn’t end there.
[The rank 1 bonus has been applied!]
The system window flashed once more.
“I never thought I’d end up saying a line like this...”
This time, the skill book that had turned silver emitted a dazzling golden light.
A laugh burst out on its own.
“I’m lucky.”
I reached out without the slightest hesitation toward the golden skill book shining before me.
The moment my finger touched the book, it turned into motes of light and was absorbed into my body.
At the same time, the white space around me began to whirl and collapse.
When I came to my senses, I was standing in front of the Tower entrance.
I hurried home before facing anyone.
***
Meanwhile, in South Korea’s northernmost region, near the 38th parallel.
At one site, tension was running high ahead of an operation.
At the center of a building with dozens of flashing monitors stood a man.
A man with a short buzz cut and a tracksuit.
Sitting among the soldiers, completely out of place, he just stared at his phone.
His name was Kim Suho.
South Korea’s only S-rank hunter, a wind mage.
Even A-rank hunters wouldn’t budge for just anything.
They were in a standoff with the government.
But S-rank Hunter Kim Suho was the exception.
He was the only high-rank hunter who faithfully responded to government requests.
But today, even his mind was elsewhere.
“Why isn’t he coming back...?”
What he was waiting for was the mage newbie he’d met in the gallery a few days ago.
A clueless weirdo who had awakened by copying the comment he wrote exactly.
He’d nudged him on, saying he had the talent to chew through Hard difficulty, but with no word from him, unease kept creeping in.
Wiiiiiiing-!
Then a loud alarm sounded throughout the entire bunker.
“Large monster sighted! Advancing south from the northern airspace!”
“Size: 12 meters! Code Red declared!”
The commander’s urgent shout shook the bunker.
A large monster over ten meters tall was a calamity just by existing.
Ordinary firearms couldn’t even scratch it, and even a decent A-rank hunter would have to risk their life against it.
Yet right then, not one of them showed any fear of death.
Because Kim Suho was at their side.
“Mr. Kim Suho! Please!”
All eyes turned to Kim Suho.
He let out a deep sigh and rose from his seat. He turned off his phone and put it in his pocket.
There was something on his mind, but it couldn’t be helped.
‘This is something I have to do.’
Because he was the only one in South Korea who could stop it.
Kim Suho stepped out of the bunker.
A huge shadow was already looming overhead.
It was a wyvern, notorious for flying through the sky and being highly intelligent, which made it extremely difficult to deal with.
But Kim Suho simply raised a hand lightly.
“Pacheon (破天).”
Invisible blades of wind instantly covered the sky.
Kwadududuk-!
The wyvern didn’t even have time to scream.
Its massive body was shredded in an instant like fruit in a blender, scattering into a blood-red mist.
Under normal circumstances, blood would have rained down.
Kim Suho manipulated the wind and blew even the scent of blood far out to sea.
It didn’t take even ten seconds for it all to end.
The commander who ran out of the bunker tried to heap on fawning praise, but Kim Suho ignored him and went back inside.
“Doesn’t Mr. Kim Suho seem really in a bad mood today?”
“Yeah, he usually even laughs at jokes... Did something happen?”
People whispered among themselves.
It couldn’t be helped that they were concerned.
Because today, Mr. Kim Suho’s mood looked especially bad.
And for them, an S-rank’s mood came before anything else.
Whether he liked it or not, the now-alone Kim Suho sat back down and turned his phone on again.
As if by habit, he logged into Hunter Gallery and painstakingly wrote dozens of comments in a row, each one starting with ‘Magic is open to everyone.’
Then he went into his real playground, Mage Gallery.
Sure enough, the other mages were waiting for that newbie just like he was.
[Title : Did that kid die or what?]
Author : p깟쮸
There’s no way it should take this long. If he died in the tutorial, that’d be legendary, nya.
ㄴ 냉장고 : Don’t jinx it ㄴㄴ
ㄴ 마법은화력 : Even so, would a mage really die to goblins?
ㄴ p깟쮸 : Still, it's weird that he's this late, nya. There's no other possibility, nya.
Posts worrying and bickering with each other kept going.
Just as Kim Suho was about to write a reply,
a new-post alert popped up.
At the very top of the gallery list, a brand-new post had just appeared.
The newbie had returned.
[Title : Verification) Came back after clearing EXTREME difficulty.]
Bringing news no one had expected.