The Republic of Korea’s Tower Climbing Special Agency. Known simply as the Agency.
Established just months after The Day of Upheaval two years ago, this central governnt body oversaw all climber-related affairs, and to this day it still ran in a perpetual state of chaos, overwork, and seat-of-the-pants improvisation.
It wasn’t just Korea, either. Every other country was in the sa boat.
Humanity still knew painfully little about the Tower, and simply keeping pace with a world that shifted by the hour was exhausting enough.
“So much work Drowning in blessings Oh, how wonderful, oh, how happy~.”
One employee muttered to herself as she hamred away at her keyboard, eyes hollow.
Perhaps she had constructed her own psychological defense chanism to endure the extre stress. Or perhaps she had simply lost her mind.
The workload had already been mountainous, but after the Nightmare second floor was cleared, the Agency’s tasks had multiplied several tis over.
And this ti was even worse than when the first floor had been cleared, because on top of the new climbers, the Tower had announced a new rule.
Anyone who does not climb the Tower within three years will die. Climbers who had never intended to set foot inside the Tower suddenly found themselves with a fire lit under them. The Nightmare tier especially.
Sorting through the ensuing chaos naturally fell to the Agency. Registering new climbers, classifying them, organizing records, planning expansions and new training facilities, drafting budgets, fielding an endless flood of complaints… No matter how much work they finished, why did it keep growing? Was this a bug?
The fact that humanity’s lifeline had been extended by another year was certainly good news, but the lifelines of Agency employees might well have been shrinking in real ti. There wasn’t a single departnt that wasn’t drowning.
“I’m seriously dying here. How is it possible that there isn’t a single day out of 365 that’s not busy?”
“Just bla your fate for getting dragged here.”
Employees savoring a fleeting mont of rest in the hallway, sipping instant coffee.
A handful had volunteered for the position, but they were the minority. Most of the Agency’s civil servants had been semi-forcibly conscripted from other departnts. It couldn’t be helped.
“I’ve been genuinely, seriously considering quitting lately.”
“Hang in there. It’s a little more bearable if you tell yourself you’re doing it for the cause.”
“Ha, for the cause… Oh.”
Just then, soone passed through the hallway, and the employees dipped their heads in greeting.
A woman with features so composed they bordered on cold. She returned their greeting with a nod and continued on.
Watching her walk away, one of the employees spoke.
“…Speaking of doing it for the cause, isn’t she the real deal? If anyone’s actually working out of a sense of duty, it’s her.”
There was one departnt within the Agency composed entirely of climbers. The Tower Monitoring Division.
And the person who had just passed by was Shin Su-jin, section chief of the Tower Monitoring Division.
Their duties included managing the fifth-floor Common Zone and coordinating on climber-related cris, and by nature of their work, the division operated as an island unto itself within the Agency.
Even so, there was a reason Section Chief Shin Su-jin was a household na among Agency staff: she was a level 20 climber who had reached the eleventh floor on Normal difficulty.
A high-level climber who could live lavishly just by selling the Magic Stones she brought back from the Tower was here, working as a civil servant, shouldering the grunt work. It was hard to understand by any ordinary logic.
“If I beca a climber, I’d quit this job on the spot. I an, the odds of becoming a climber are way better than winning the lottery, right?”
“Sure, but the difficulty tier matters. What if you end up with Nightmare?”
“Well then… guess I’d just jump. Heh heh.”
“Fair point. Easy tier might be fine, but even Normal is rough these days. I heard even Normal first floor is no joke.”
The employees chatted a while longer before trudging off in various directions, back to their desks. Another night of overti.
*
Over a month had passed since I cleared the second floor.
What I’d been doing lately was a quest to befriend the dark spirit Bandiul.
“Diul, what I’m trying to say is that we’re best friends, one of a kind. Soulmates, you could say. It’s not just who thinks that, right?”
This was the forest outside the Tower on the second floor.
Normally, finishing a Repeat Clearing would automatically transport to the Reward Room, but if I ca down from the castle without defeating the Minotaur, the clear sequence simply didn’t trigger.
I kept trying to bond with Diul as I walked through the dark forest.
I’d even given it a nickna. Treating “Ban” as a surna and “Diul” as a first na, I just called it Diul.
The problem was that no matter what I said, the little thing remained thoroughly indifferent, so none of it seed to be working.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just take a walk. Want to run a bit?”
I headed deeper into the thicker undergrowth.
The moonlight was blocked, and the darkness of night grew dense.
But the scenery around was perfectly visible to my eyes.
This was Dark Vision, Diul’s baseline ability to see through darkness.
To describe it more precisely, it wasn’t like looking through night-vision goggles. Instead, objects appeared as if drawn in white chalk on a black chalkboard. A rather unusual field of vision.
Not exactly a groundbreaking power, all things considered.
But at least darkness was no longer an obstacle for .
I sprinted along the forest path, letting the cool night breeze wash over my whole body.
Diul floated beside my head, bobbing along after .
Even this perpetually dry little creature occasionally showed a flicker of sothing like contentnt, and that was when it was surrounded by darkness.
More precisely, it liked natural darkness. Maybe because it was a spirit.
If I just sat in my room with the lights off, it didn’t seem particularly pleased.
That was why I’d been coming to the second floor for evening walks so often lately.
Apparently, I needed to raise my affinity before I could unlock new abilities, but I had no idea how to actually do that.
My plan was basically: just do whatever it seems to like, and the number will go up eventually. Right?
The sense of connection did feel the tiniest bit stronger compared to the beginning, but that might have just been my imagination.
For the record, Heilin no longer appeared on the second floor.
Unlike the old man on the first-floor hidden route, I hadn’t killed her, so I’d wondered if that might make a difference. It didn’t.
Even when I went all the way to the bridge where I’d made my escape from the Black Knight, there was nothing but the collapsed bridge.
I thought about crossing, so I tried climbing down below the cliff, but the bottom never ca and I gave up.
After running around the forest for a good while, I returned to my room.
I flopped onto the bed and opened the Communication Channel out of habit.
“Hm?”
There was a new Whisper.
The sender was Chicken Sandwich. Bilon Must.
We had exchanged a few brief ssages after I cleared the second floor, and this was the first contact since then, a full month later.
[Chicken Sandwich: How have you been? I’m reaching out because I’ve managed to acquire so new Skill Stones.]
[Chicken Sandwich: The skills are ‘Swing,’ a Normal-tier skill, and ‘Minor Poison Resistance,’ a Normal tier skill. Swing is an active skill that enhances the power of swinging attacks, and Minor Poison Resistance is a passive skill that provides slight resistance to poison.]
[Chicken Sandwich: If these are skills you don’t already possess, I’d like to deliver the Skill Stones to you as before. Of course, if you’d prefer not to et in person, we can arrange another thod.]
Oh… well, how about that.
He was offering to give Skill Stones again. Two of them this ti.
I’d already t him once, so there was no reason to refuse.
“If he’s giving them, then sure, thanks, but…”
The thing was, while the Swing skill was relatively common, resistance-type passive skills were supposed to be pretty rare.
Was it really okay to just keep gobbling these up?
So people feel uncomfortable receiving anything for free from others, and I was one of those people.
Of course, strictly speaking, this wasn’t free.
Bilon Must was investing in , and in return, I was climbing the Nightmare tier and extending the Ti Limit.
Right. Might as well take what’s being offered.
Besides, I’d already made up my mind by now.
I sent a reply.
*
We arranged to et the sa way as last ti.
When the day ca, I triple-wrapped my face with a hood, a cap, and a mask, then headed for the designated spot.
An ordinary black sedan parked along the curb of an alley.
After one more confirmation through the Communication Channel, I approached and knocked on the window.
I opened the rear door and climbed in.
This was only the second ti seeing him, but seated in the next seat over was a man whose face still didn’t feel quite real. Bilon Must.
“Hello.”
“Good to see you. It’s been a while.”
We exchanged a light handshake, skipped the small talk, and got straight to business.
Bilon reached into a bag, produced two Skill Stones, and handed them to .
“Thank you.”
I acquired the skills right then and there.
[You have acquired ‘Skill: Swing (Normal).’]
[You have acquired ‘Skill: Minor Poison Resistance (Normal ).’]
[Skill: Swing (Normal)]
Montarily amplifies the power of swinging attacks.
Type: Physical
Willpower Cost: 10
Cooldown: 10 seconds
[Skill: Minor Poison Resistance (Normal )]
Grants slight resistance to poison.
Type: Physical (Passive)
Willpower Cost: None
Cooldown: None
[Difficulty: Nightmare]
[Floor: 3]
[Level: 30]
[Willpower: 600]
[Skills: Teleportation (Rare ), Sixth Sense (Rare ), Fla Strike (Rare)( 1), Exaltation (Rare), Minor Poison Resistance (Normal ), Leap (Normal), Swing (Normal)]
The Status Window’s looking a lot fuller now, huh.
After finishing the skill acquisition, I t the gaze of Bilon, who had been staring straight at .
Well. This is awkward.
I was about to speak, but Bilon beat to it.
“I’d like to continue delivering Skill Stones and items to you whenever I acquire them. What do you think?”
He wanted to keep up these strange clandestine etings.
I asked.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“By all ans.”
“Why go this far for ? Do you really believe that strongly that I can keep climbing the Nightmare tier?”
Bilon nodded.
“I believe you are the only one who can save humanity.”
“But why…”
“You are the one who achieved the world-first clear of both the first and second floors of Nightmare. Without any information whatsoever. Arica’s Nightmare climber had the full backing of the state and still failed. You succeeded. Looking at the facts alone, isn’t the answer crystal clear?”
Bilon spoke as if stating an absolute truth.
“That’s why, Person123, I want to invest everything in you. I believe it is the most probable path to humanity’s survival. All you need to do is use however you see fit for the sake of clearing Nightmare.”
I fell into thought.
When the silence stretched on, Bilon added gently.
“Of course, your own will is what matters most.”
“There’s sothing I realized while clearing the second floor.”
“…Yes? What is it?”
“That there’s no way anyone else can take the lead on clearing this insane difficulty.”
In other words, I felt the sa way Bilon did.
It wasn’t that I wanted to pump myself up like I was sothing special.
I didn’t have an ounce of confidence that I could keep clearing Nightmare.
Still, I was the person with the best odds of pulling it off. Slim as they were.
No matter how much I wanted to look away from reality and dump this on soone else, that was the truth.
“Honestly, I’m not confident. The first and second floors were lucky, and I have no idea how far I can go. But at the end of the day, soone has to do it, so…”
I gave a nod.
“Screw it. I’ll give it a shot. Fine. Invest everything in , Bilon.”
Bilon stared at blankly for a mont, then broke into a bright smile and extended his hand.
As if a deal had been sealed, we shook hands once more.
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