Chapter 1: From Humble Beginnings

Prologue

A meteor fell through the red sky.

Millions stood waiting for a single person's command.

“Master. Your orders.”

The one they called Master commanded millions of summons against the apocalypse.

He was the last summoner left in this world, a summoner whose equal had never existed and never would.

Without a word, he raised his hand.

The summons who had shared his joys and hardships roared as they charged toward the apocalypse.

Yet even he could not escape destruction.

This is the story of a great summoner who returned from the Sea of Souls.

The story of a savior who went from a lowly porter back to being a great summoner.

Chapter 1 — From Humble Beginnings

#1

[Climb the towers.]
[Those who are first to conquer the tallest tower will receive benefits in the next round.]

One day, the world changed.

An otherworldly space appeared without warning: the [Tower].

At a time when esports were booming, the towers' sudden appearance inspired terror, mystery, and dread.

Humanity could not even bring itself to venture inside.

But what finally led people to cast aside their fear was surprisingly simple.

[Avatars are used inside the towers.]
[Each person may create an avatar only once, after reaching adulthood.]
[All avatar stats and skills are generated at random.]
[Try your luck at the ultimate jackpot.]

The metaverse.

Dying inside a tower did not mean dying in real life.

That fact alone sent people around the world flocking to the towers.

Curiosity and excitement had overwhelmed their fear.

And so, those who stepped into this new world took the gamble of a lifetime and began climbing the towers that had sprung up like mushrooms all over the globe.

The reason people wanted to climb.

The reason they laughed and cried over a gamble they could take only once.

It all came down to the rewards the towers offered.

As one might expect of something from another world, the towers possessed a mysterious power.

Some of their rewards could be brought into reality.

Just as we turn game items into real-world goods, the same thing happened in the towers.

[Lux] and [Equipment].

Materials that would usher in a new age.

These rewards were the main reason people climbed the towers.

With Earth drying up and withering away, a material had appeared that was both environmentally friendly and overwhelmingly efficient.

And what about the equipment?

From gear for avatars to accessories and fashion items, things that had existed only in the imagination could now be used in reality.

For that reason, governments offered all kinds of support to push as many people as possible into the towers.

A profession born in this new age: [Climber].

An era had dawned in which everyone took the gamble of a lifetime, hoping to turn their lives around.

But as the times changed, there were inevitably those who fell behind.

Hwanung, lying here asleep in a drunken stupor, was one of them.

#2

Hwanung dreamed.

He was in a place where enormous meteors rained down through a red sky.

The earth lay split open, hideous chunks of flesh strewn everywhere.

Beyond that sickening sight, he saw familiar figures.

“You've come.”

“……”

He tried to say something, but his lips would not part.

Haven't we all had dreams where we couldn't act of our own free will?

It was like that.

All the wounded and fallen figures were familiar.

The lone figure still standing turned to look at Hwanung.

‘Ardor.’

A character from a game that was about to shut down, and his [Favorite], the one he cherished most.

Every one of those lying on the ground was a top-tier character with “seven stars.”

The so-called [Must-Haves], having just one of whom changed the difficulty of clearing the game.

Seeing them in such a wretched state was something he simply couldn't get used to.

The beautiful woman he had raised with love and affection looked at him, sank to her knees, and spoke.

“Grant salvation to those living souls who take the word apocalypse lightly. Raise up those already wounded and fallen, and save them.”

‘What...?’

He couldn't understand her words, but all Hwanung could do was move his lips. He could offer no response.

Her eyes reddened, and tears streamed down her face.

“You alone held fast to us and watched over us until the very end. Thus shall we call you our true [Master].”

Right.

At some point, I'd become the only player who still logged in.

My friends list was empty. So was the server's online player list.

Gazing into Hwanung's face, she moved her lips.

“We shall await you, Master. Summon us and gather us together. Please, grant us the chance to serve you.”

[Until then, we shall await you alone in the Sea of Souls.]

The moment she finished speaking, the sky turned crimson.

They both looked up. A red meteor was falling toward them, vast enough to swallow the world.

ROOOOAR!

With Ardor's final smile before him, Hwanung was engulfed in a massive blaze—and woke.

“Gah!”

He stared blankly up at the ceiling. Everything was just as it had been when he'd fallen asleep, much to his relief.

What was that dream?

It had been vivid, but he couldn't make any sense of it. He let out a long sigh.

He'd definitely dreamed about meeting a character from [Pestis Saga].

‘Ugh, my head. Come to think of it...’

Now that he was awake, his circumstances came back to him.

Why had he been sleeping again?

Right... He'd been kicked out of the [Climbing Club].

〈Hwanung, we're going to have to ask you to leave the club. You don't need to come in tomorrow.〉

He'd drunk himself senseless to escape that painful reality.

Then he'd fallen asleep.

Hwanung heaved a sigh as the memories surfaced, however little he wanted them to.

〈Your stats are too low for you to be any help. We have to protect you every time, you can barely carry anything, and you're slow... Working hard isn't enough to make up for all that.〉

〈We'll make sure your share gets deposited, so you don't need to come in tomorrow. Sorry. We think we'll need to change our lineup if we're going to move up to a higher rank.〉

〈Well, thanks for all your hard work. It's not like anyone hates you, so feel free to get in touch outside work.〉

This poor young man, Yeo Hwanung, was what people called a [Sherpa].

Sherpa.

The word had originally referred to people who helped others climb mountains, but these days it was often used to mean something else.

Someone who attended to Climbers' needs for a fee. A porter, in other words.

The way the word was used had changed a little.

“Ugh...”

They'd said that, but would they really be pleased if he called?

It was probably just because Changsu hyung, the club leader, was such a nice guy.

Right. His avatar had never belonged in a tower to begin with.

Hwanung opened the app linked to the towers and checked his avatar's status.

[Avatar No. 10207711]

[Strength: 10 / Mana: 10 / Stamina: 10 / Agility: 10]

[Skills: —]

[Growth Potential: None] [Equipment: None]

[Overall Stats: F]

His avatar's stats were truly appalling.

Climbers' avatars had no levels.

Instead, they could increase their combat power through stat gains based on [Growth Potential], along with [Skills] and [Equipment].

Hwanung's avatar was the shittiest of the shit.

He should have given up tower climbing without looking back and focused on his life in the real world.

With a heavy sigh, he closed the app.

Then, as if in a trance, he opened another.

[Pestis Saga]

But the following message appeared over the game's loading screen.

[Pestis Saga has shut down.]

[Thank you for all the love you have shown Pestis Saga.]

“Damn it.”

He'd wanted to see his characters' faces one last time.

And now the game had shut down without a sound.

Hwanung smacked his lips in disappointment, turned off his phone's screen, and closed his eyes again.

A sense of emptiness washed over him.

He was in his late twenties.

Since finishing his military service, all he'd been able to do was work part-time jobs or prepare to find full-time employment.

As the changing times shifted spending online, his family, who ran a shop, had fallen on hard times.

And the avatar he'd pinned his last hopes on had been a complete dud.

Some people cursed the towers' system, but what could you do? Those were the rules.

Was it the same for the characters in his game?

They'd worked so hard, but in the end, all that awaited them was being erased when the game shut down.

‘Ugh. Life is bitter. So bitter.’

They said time healed everything. Maybe he'd feel a little less miserable after some sleep.

Trying to comfort himself, Hwanung closed his eyes.

He was still groggy, probably from all the alcohol.

And so he lay with his eyes shut, his smartphone in one hand.

‘I want to make something of myself, too.’

[Yeo Hwanung, the player who stayed and enjoyed Pestis Saga until the very end.]

[The characters' will shall dwell within you.]

[We shall give you a small gift.]

[Round 1 begins.]

[365 days until the next round]

With that final thought, Hwanung drifted off to sleep.

He neither heard nor saw the messages chiming on his smartphone.

#3

“...Huh?”

There was no “I woke up and the world looked different!” moment.

Maybe it was because he'd slept on his stomach, but his neck was painfully stiff.

His phone's battery was dead.

But that was fine.

‘It's not like anyone will be looking for me now.’

Gently stretching his body, sore as though he'd overworked his muscles, he plugged his phone into the charger.

It soon powered on, and he began going through his apps to check whether he'd been paid.

Then a number caught his eye, jolting him awake.

A red ❶.

It was a notification on his avatar management app.

He'd thought he'd never need to open it again. He might as well check the notification one last time before deleting it.

The moment he opened the app with that thought, the real change began.

[An avatar update is available.]

[Updating avatar.]

[1%... 2%]

“Huh?”

Hwanung swallowed hard.

His neck hurt even more, but the change was so astonishing that he couldn't spare it a thought.

What if it was just an app update?

Or an update that would only drag him even further down?

“Ugh... F*ck, I can barely breathe watching this.”

He needed to let go.

He'd decided to quit, hadn't he?

Yet even as he told himself that, he couldn't hide his steadily growing hopes.

Fine. He'd get his hopes all the way up, then let himself be disappointed.

Maybe that was how he'd finally let go for good.

And so Hwanung watched the percentage creep upward.

Moment after moment passed, until he lost all sense of time.

At last, the update reached 100%.

[Update complete.]

[Avatar stats will change.]

[Avatar code will change.]

[Avatar No. 10207711 → 19930211]

[Mana Stat: 10 → 100]

[Skills: Draw, Summon, Evolve, Summon Invulnerability]

[This avatar cannot learn skills from skill books.]

[This avatar cannot equip anything other than exclusive equipment.]

“...A hundred?”

Avatar stats fell into two broad categories.

[Base Stats] and [Overall Stats].

Of the two, Climbers placed greater importance on base stats.

An avatar's inherent stats, without any equipment worn or skills used.

Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Mana.

If even one of these exceeded 30, people considered climbing better than a minimum-wage part-time job.

An average stat value over 50 made you a [Named Climber].

At 70 or above, you had the potential to become a [Ranker], someone who represented their country.

And at 90 or above? Then you were a [World Ranker], competing on the global stage.

So... what about a base stat of 100?

A Mana stat of 100.

A number that had never been officially recorded, and one everyone dreamed of.

And it had happened the moment the app updated.

‘What is this? No, more importantly...’

The stats were one thing, but what mattered even more were the [Summon]-type skills.

No avatar discovered so far had possessed a skill that summoned anything.

All their skills required them to fight with their own bodies.

After spending a long time searching for summoning skills on his phone, he could only stare at the screen in bewilderment.

No, no. This was no time to sit around.

“I need to test this right—argh!”

He tried to get up too quickly, and a terrible pain shot through his stiff neck.

Despite the agony, Hwanung headed for the nearest tower with a grin on his face.

If this was real, if this really was happening!

“I can... do it, too.”

He only had four skills and couldn't learn any others, but that was fine.

A summoner with 100 Mana.

Even if his other stats were all 1, that would still be incredible.

#4

[Entering tower.]
[Grade: Neighborhood Hill]
[Stages: 3]

There were countless towers, each with its own grade.

The highest grade discovered so far was [Everest].

Apparently, it was a fiendishly difficult tower with a total of 8,848 stages.

By comparison, a Neighborhood Hill tower could be cleared even by an avatar with no skills at all.

The downside, if you could call it that, was that it dropped no Lux and yielded no items.

“Still, it's perfect for testing things out.”

The sort of place you visited now and then to test your avatar's stats.

Hwanung entered the tower lobby in his new avatar.

The moment he entered, he could feel mana overflowing within him.

‘This is insane.’

An ocean of mana.

It felt as though no skill he used could ever exhaust it.

So this was what having an abundance of mana felt like.

It would have been nice to learn an attack skill... but this was already plenty.

Now it was time to examine his skills.

He went through the four of them slowly.

Understanding your skills was, in effect, understanding your avatar.

[Draw: Draw an N-rank summon.]
[Cooldown: 10 minutes. Resets whenever you enter a new stage.]
[Summons are stored in a dedicated inventory.]
[You cannot summon in a tower you have already cleared.]

[Summon: Call forth a summon.]
[Consumes mana.]
[A dismissed summon can be summoned again after 24 hours.]

[Evolve: Consume 10 summons of the same rank to summon a random summon of the next rank.]
[There are hidden special combinations. Try different combinations.]

[Summon Invulnerability: As long as a summon is present, the summoner takes no damage.]
[This effect does not apply if you deliberately position yourself ahead of your summons or deliberately take an attack.]

Insane.

Absolutely insane.

This ability was seriously insane.

How much mana would summoning cost?

When he'd searched online, there had been no such class as summoner.

At least, not that he knew of.

He was so excited that he let out a sharp breath through his nose.

“Let's go.”

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Hwanung stepped into the first stage.

[Stage 1]
[Eliminate all enemies.]
[Time Limit: 3 minutes]

An elimination mission.

He saw goblins being summoned—only five of them.

It was a challenge Hwanung the Sherpa could never have cleared.

But with a summon at his side, things would be different.

“Draw. Summon right away.”

[Novice Swordsman has been summoned.]

“Ready for battle.”

A swordsman in leather armor appeared.

A large figure carrying a longsword.

[Novice Swordsman]
[Strength: 20 / Mana: — / Stamina: 25 / Agility: 15]
[Skill: Imperial Swordsmanship]
[Imperial Swordsmanship: ‘Flash Slash,’ ‘Flurry’]

Mana drained away, but it felt like nothing more than scooping a bucket of water from the ocean.

Hwanung clenched both fists.

With this, he could do it.

“Krrk!”

Five goblins were summoned.

He gave the Novice Swordsman an order.

“You can handle them, right?”

“Yes. Leave them to me!”

The swordsman rushed forward in an instant.

Despite being a Novice Swordsman, the summon moved and swung a sword better than most novice Climbers.

[Flash Slash]

The longsword shone as it traced a single line.

To Hwanung, who had wandered in darkness for so long, it was a ray of light.