Chapter 7
Quicksand. A Gold-rank mage skill.
It creates a sand pit in front of the user that makes feet sink into it.
Normally, an AoE crowd-control skill would be treated as a precious asset in itself.
Because it can create variables on the battlefield and set up an overwhelmingly favorable situation for allies.
But this skill was different.
A skill whose evaluation could not be more ambiguous.
[Title : Why Quicksand Is Bad for Newbies EU]
Author: 냉장고
Pros: AoE slow. Low mana consumption.
Cons: No friend-or-foe identification.
This one line explains everything. Game over.
If you disagree, you're wrong.
ㄴ p깟쮸 : If you use that skill, it'll catch our tank's ankles too.
It's a stupid skill that ties up the feet of allies who are tanking up front.
If you don't want to get chewed out by the tank even after topping the damage charts, don't use it.
ㄴ 마법은화력 : You actually took a Gold-rank skill at face value like that? No wonder you're a newbie.
Only then did the whole situation become crystal clear.
An AoE crowd-control skill that renders even allies unable to act.
There was probably no worse skill than that in Tower clearing, where party play was recommended.
But I was still puzzled.
Because their premise was wrong from the very beginning.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ : But I'm going to solo anyway, so it doesn't matter, right?
ㄴ 마법은화력 : That's only true on the lower floors.
How was it when you faced ten goblins?
Honestly, don't you think it'd be nice to have one sturdy tank to take hits up front?
At that, I was briefly at a loss for words.
The nail-biting moment from the tutorial flashed vividly before my eyes.
Eight bullets created by pouring every ounce of concentration into them.
If I hadn't been able to control them, or if even one of them had missed.
The result would have been horrifying just to think about.
I obediently agreed.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ : ...Yeah, that was true.
ㄴ 마법은화력 : But then the CC you used would have hit that tank too. Don't you get it?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ : Fair point.
But my real thoughts were still the opposite.
Tank? You need a tank because your damage is lacking, right? If I just kill everything in one shot, why would I need a tank?
I'm going to be an extreme burst mage.
My party doesn't need a tank.
Their logic was flawless and beyond criticism.
But only on the assumption that you fight the way they do.
The way I planned to use it was different from what they were thinking.
“But there's no point explaining it here.”
I had no intention of going into my plan in detail here.
Doing so would only make for a boring, pretentious answer.
“And there's a 100% chance of starting an argument.”
And I had no confidence I could win a keyboard battle against A-rank or S-rank mages.
At best, I'd just get treated like a brat and ignored.
I quietly closed the browser window.
Proof was something I could simply show with actions, not words.
***
You only get one chance to challenge the Tower per day.
Used to a life where my nights and days were reversed, I woke up again at dawn the next day while everyone else was still asleep.
I sat up in the unfamiliar girl's body and began preparing differently from yesterday.
This time, I wasn't going to charge in recklessly like before.
“The first through fifth floors are supposed to only have goblins... but my difficulty is different.”
The first thing I packed was sand, the biggest problem in my last run.
In the tutorial, I hadn't brought any sand in advance, so in a pinch I broke apart my own fingers and used them as bullets.
As a result, I only had ten bullets.
That was nowhere near enough to handle ten goblins.
“Now that I think about it again, that was seriously close. If even one shot had missed....”
Hitting every bullet in live combat without any practice at all—no matter how I thought about it, I had just been lucky.
I had no intention of repeating such a foolish mistake this time.
I tied a small sand pouch tightly around my waist.
Inside it was plenty of soft sand I had taken from the school athletic field.
“Well, if everything goes according to plan, I won't even need to use this myself.”
Next, the important thing was a camera.
I securely fastened the body cam I had bought online to my shoulder.
Last time, I had been too flustered to leave behind a proper proof shot.
When the tutorial ended and I returned to the white room, all I had was the score sheet photo I'd hastily taken.
I was secretly disappointed that I hadn't captured the scene of that brutal goblin slaughter.
“I can't post it in Hunter Gallery because of my identity, but it's fine to post it in Mage Gallery.”
At that thought, a cold doubt suddenly reared its head.
The people in Mage Gallery. Why were they being this good to me?
Just because I was another mage?
Because they were happy to have a rare newbie, one of only five in South Korea?
“No way.”
I let out a snort.
I was someone who had spent ten years crawling through all sorts of internet communities and seen every kind of person there was.
There was no way I'd believe in human goodwill that naively.
In internet terms, goodwill without a reason is either a scam or bait for something bigger.
There had to be something I didn't know.
Some gain coming back to them.
Either way, it didn't matter.
What mattered was using their goodwill without being swept along by it.
“One thing they said is definitely true.”
I had to get stronger. Overwhelmingly so.
At the very least, I had to become strong enough that other hunters, or even the government, couldn't lay a hand on me carelessly.
Like 풍뎅이 said, until I became an A-rank hunter that everyone acknowledged, I had to keep acting like I knew nothing.
According to what I'd picked up in the gallery, the standard for an A-rank hunter seemed to be whether you could break through the Tower's 20th floor.
Until then, endure and hold out.
“Yeah, since I already got a golden-spoon job, I might as well take it that far.
...Then I'll become a name in the gallery too, and live however I want.”
If I kept climbing like that and eventually became S-rank, how would I live?
No, how do S-ranks live right now?
Curiosity suddenly stirred in me.
I opened the gallery app on my phone.
“Could they still be talking about me?”
I logged into Hunter Gallery.
Unfortunately, my story had been pushed down and vanished over the course of a day.
The gallery's hot topic had changed to DemiGoD, the strongest hunter on Earth.
“No, after reading it, this is my story too.”
[Title : DemiGoD Goes Berserk After Losing 1st Place lol]
[Title : DemiGoD's Current Face lol]
[Title : If DemiGoD Is Just a Water Rocket, Upvote lol]
All the posts were screenshots of things DemiGoD had written on his SNS account.
I read DemiGoD's SNS posts with a satisfied smile.
His account was plastered with angry posts written at one-minute intervals.
[Show yourself, coward. Don't hide behind anonymity.]
[I will find and trample the insect that dared challenge the realm of gods.]
[I don't know which country it is, but it's infuriating.]
[There's definitely a hunter secretly trained on a national level.]
[China? Is it China after all?]
[I don't know what trick was used, but it was definitely some kind of bug exploit. Their real skill is probably pathetic.]
[There can be no one stronger than me.]
ㄴ DemiGoD is raging hard lol
ㄴ How pathetic, Migat....
But people's reaction to DemiGoD's rage was cold to the bone.
No one was taking his side.
Even among DemiGoD's fans, there were people openly trying to stop him.
ㄴDemiGoD, I understand how you feel, but it's only the 1st floor, so please calm down for a moment....
But he never stopped posting on SNS.
His reply to the concerned comments was as follows.
[How dare a nobody like you give me "orders"?]
“What a total psycho attention whore....”
I clicked my tongue and closed the window.
Seeing someone even more addicted to SNS than me felt like mirror therapy in itself.
“I should never end up like that....”
After wandering the empty dawn streets and doing pointless things, the silhouette of the enormous Tower came into view before I knew it.
A pitch-black pillar as if it were devouring every light in the city.
I stepped inside without hesitation.
[Entering Tower 2nd Floor (EXTREME).]
[You will be moved to the designated location in 60 seconds.]
Along with the familiar sensation of floating, the scenery before me changed.
The same damp cave as yesterday. The 2nd floor of the Tower, a space like an extension of the tutorial.
“Everyone said the number of monsters doubles starting from the 2nd floor.”
I remembered reading that on Hard difficulty, four goblins appeared on the 2nd floor.
Then for EXTREME difficulty, I had to assume at least twenty would pop out.
“Kerrk!”
Just as expected, a while later I started hearing the goblins' uniquely unpleasant kerrk-kerrk sounds.
It wasn't the sound of one or two of them.
The number of glints from the darkness had long since passed twenty, then thirty.
But I wasn't worried.
My heart was strangely calm.
Rather, a thrilling excitement washed over my whole body.
“Quicksand.”
I cast the spell as prepared.
The cave floor in front of me instantly turned into a huge sand pit with a radius of several meters.
“Kerrruk!”
Several goblins who were first to charge in had their feet caught in the sand and came to a halt.
The ones behind them were no different.
The monsters moved forward slowly, tangled up with one another.
I severed my right hand and threw it into the quicksand.
The hand turned to sand and blended in well with the pit.
Soon, I could feel my senses linked with the quicksand.
It felt as if the quicksand had become my hand.
The goblins felt like ants crawling over my hand.
“Now, shall we begin the experiment?”