#1
The power of a spirit.
It was also the power of a higher dimension.
A power whose workings defied ordinary understanding.
Yet Hwanung understood it naturally.
It seemed as though it should hurt, but perhaps because he was inside a tower, he felt nothing beyond dizziness.
He closed his eyes for a moment. By the time he opened them, he knew exactly how to fight.
A spirit’s way of fighting—and a transformation for Hwanung, who had been unable to do anything himself.
“Oh!”
Strength surged through him.
Right now, he felt as though he could take on any enemy.
Hwanung joined his attacking summons to lend a hand.
BOOM!
He kicked off hard, and a refreshing wind struck his face.
It felt like opening the window of a moving car.
With the wind in his face, he drew on the experience and knowledge imprinted in him.
As a lesser spirit, it had no flashy techniques, but he didn’t need anything flashy to deal with Serban.
[Greater Element]
[Performs an elemental attack.]
[Scales with the lesser spirit’s and the summoner’s Mana stats.]
“—Huh?”
ROOOOAR!
He concentrated, creating fire.
A flame with neither a name nor a defined shape.
But he had overlooked something.
His Mana was 100.
The very pinnacle, even on a global scale.
A sun rose.
He had imagined a flame he could launch as a ball.
The moment he pictured it, a ball of fire appeared—no, a mass.
Something enormous, made of tightly compressed flame, hung in the air.
[Aaaaaaaagh!]
Sssssss!
Serban’s entire body sizzled as it burned.
The brightness of the flames alone was producing an effect like sunlight.
At the same time, the spirit’s scream rang in Hwanung’s ears.
[SCREEEECH!!]
He could feel it writhing in agony inside him.
It couldn’t withstand his overwhelming output.
Instinctively realizing that the spirit was suffering, Hwanung yelled the first thing that came to mind and hurled the flames without aiming.
“Everyone, get out of the way!”
“M-my lord!”
“I am deeply moved! Masteeeer!”
BOOOOOOOM!
Light swallowed everything.
The heat consumed not only Serban but the terrain itself.
Every summon was caught in the attack.
[‘Apprentice Knight Lucas’ has been unsummoned after sustaining critical damage.]
[‘Eyas, Warrior of the East’ has been unsummoned after sustaining critical damage.]
[…]
All his summons were gone.
Possession ended, and the spirit was unsummoned as well.
Hwanung fell in an undignified heap.
Fortunately, Possession had kept his own body from taking damage, allowing him to cling to life.
“…Holy shit.”
When he came to his senses, all he saw was a pitch-black space.
A pitch-black space where everything had melted away.
Faced with the disaster he had brought upon himself, he was speechless.
#2
“You’re dead. Seriously.”
In a room somewhere.
Only the glow of a monitor lit the man’s face in the darkness.
Wearing glasses, he hammered away at his keyboard and clicked his mouse.
He was writing a post.
<<People Are Exploiting the Towers>>
[Went to the Labyrinth Tower today, and there were clearly six or more people running around together. Got ganged up on and croaked;; What are the admins doing?]
[Screenshot_jpg]
[…]
That was the gist of it.
A post packed with maliciously edited screenshots and false accusations.
It made quite a splash.
Countless people had tried exploiting the system and teaming.
But none had ever succeeded.
The towers would resort to even the nastiest tricks to split them up.
This time, though, it was different.
- ?? They’re all moving around that guy.
- Those are obviously summons?
└ There’s never been a summoner before. End of story.
└ Maybe you guys just haven’t been lucky enough?
└ That’s a lot of them, though. lmaoooo But why’d you die? Did he hit you first?
└ (OP) Nope, I hit him.
└ Then you deserved to die. Quit whining, dumbass.
- lol You obviously jumped him because you thought he was alone.
└ fr lol
“…Huh?”
This wasn’t right.
Public opinion was taking a strange turn, quite unlike what he had expected.
What kind of age were they living in?
Wasn’t this an age when people looked into things a little more and tried to start from neutral, rather than blindly hurling abuse?
But wherever you went, there were people blinded by jealousy.
Some posted malicious comments under the guise of righteousness and reasonable suspicion.
- That’s fucking broken. Is it a bug?
- Guess we can team up and take him out, too. I’ll remember that face.
- Hope he keeps showing off like that and gets killed by the Rankers. lol
Malicious comments existed everywhere. The poster joined in, fanning the flames.
Before long, the post had become a battleground, with heated speculation about who the hell the guy was.
Then someone left a comment.
- Wait, isn’t that Avatar 19930211? Lord 93?
His fame had spread faster than expected, and the internet was much smarter than one might think.
The power of collective intelligence began digging into Hwanung’s identity.
Just then, another post went up.
Some people on the forum had a ‘ⓒ’ before their usernames.
An icon taken from the first letter of ‘Climber.’
It was reserved for famous Climbers who were practically celebrities.
<<Golden Axe Sigrul Has Personally Met This Climber. This Is Not an Exploit.>>
[Please understand that I cannot disclose the details of the encounter or the avatar’s abilities. I, Golden Axe Sigrul, met this Climber in person and heard about his abilities. And you, the bastard who wrote the post below—you’re Death Valley, aren’t you?]
Golden Axe Sigrul himself had written the post.
There was no doubt it was his real account, either, so naturally, people reacted immediately.
Questions flooded in. Was it really Lord 93? What was his ability? Where had they met? But Sigrul didn’t give away a single detail.
He merely confirmed that the man was a legitimate Climber.
The internet’s curiosity only grew, and naturally, people swarmed the original poster and began bombarding him with abuse.
And finally—
- This bastard really is Death Valley.
That one comment sent the whole thing backfiring on him.
Of course, Hwanung himself still knew nothing about any of this.
#3
A little time passed before Hwanung cautiously inspected the rewards lying on the ground.
One gleaming suit of armor, one skill book, and Lux scattered everywhere.
Quite a lot of low-grade Lux had dropped.
[Items you may take into reality: 2]
[You have cleared the Tower of Grief.]
[Congratulations.]
[You will receive a bonus reward for being the first to clear this tower.]
“Oh?”
That was a new one.
Apparently, a tower counted as a separate tower when its name changed.
Did that mean the Labyrinth Tower would count as a different tower, too?
The answer came immediately.
[Draw cannot be used in the Labyrinth Tower, the lower version of the Tower of Grief.]
[Additional Reward: 1 Random Skill Book]
[You have acquired the skill book ‘Bloodlust.’]
Bloodlust.
A skill that absorbed life force with every attack. Its skill book sold for quite a high price.
In other words, he’d hit the jackpot.
The gleaming armor had the following properties.
[Nameless Knight’s Armor]
[Stamina +1] [Strength +2]
[Skill: Firm Footing]
“Nice.”
It was perfect for Lucas.
He had contributed the most today, so naturally, it belonged to him.
Hwanung opened the avatar management menu, bringing up a holographic window.
There, he equipped the unsummoned Lucas with the knight’s armor.
One item and one accessory.
With just those two pieces equipped, Lucas’s Strength was already approaching 36.
“Still, that’s the rest of today wasted.”
Clearing the tower was great, but with all his summons unavailable, he couldn’t tackle another one.
Should he make do with running some Neighborhood Hill-grade towers?
As he considered that, a message caught his eye.
It concerned the unsummoned spirit.
[Rest is required due to excessive output.]
[Cannot be summoned for 3 days.]
“Wait, seriously?”
Apparently, he needed a higher-ranked spirit to handle his output.
Now he felt bad.
Should he save it as a sort of ultimate move?
Reminded once again of the power of 100 Mana, he thought that might work.
“Let’s get out of here first.”
Deciding to cash in his loot, he left the tower.
The exchange was packed. Hwanung took a number and quietly waited in line.
Bloodlust.
How much would it fetch?
‘The going rate is… about three million won.’
Perhaps because the tower was still in the lower brackets, the price was nothing special.
After cashing in his loot, he focused on towers with three to five stages, gathering twelve N-rank summons.
What would his sixth R-rank summon be?
For now, Hwanung tucked them safely into his inventory and went home.
“Ugh… Where should I go tomorrow?”
The R-rank summons were more formidable than he had expected.
Once he had cleared all the Sobaeksan-grade towers, he would try Taebaeksan.
By then, might he have an SR-rank summon, too?
With that thought, he opened YouTube.
He wanted to look up tower guides or find a tower to tackle next.
Coming back from his shower, lying on his little bed, and watching videos—this was his favorite time of day.
But the moment he opened YouTube to browse, a strange video caught his eye.
[A Summoner Appears? Death Valley Gets Taught a Lesson]
[Views: 250,000] [1 hour ago]
“…Huh?”
The thumbnail showed his summons, filmed from a distance.
Someone must have recorded his fight from afar.
It wasn’t the first battle. The footage came from the second.
Fortunately, it only captured silhouettes, so the details were hard to make out. But the N-rank summons emerging from thin air were perfectly clear.
That would explain the 250,000 views.
Most of the comments were along the lines of “the most broken character ever has arrived.”
“Hmm… Didn’t think anyone would get that on camera.”
There was also Avatar 1993’s first-place record from today.
And the existence of a tower called the Tower of Grief.
With all of that coming to light in a single day, it was easy to identify the person in the video as Lord 93.
Suddenly, everything fit: why he could climb alone, and how he kept taking first place.
Some called it a “sh*t game that’s all luck.” Others said they envied him. Still others openly displayed their jealousy and inferiority complexes.
Hwanung thought for a moment.
“I was going to start posting videos later… But if this is how it’s going to be, I’d better get ahead of it.”
Perhaps revealing himself on his own terms would be better than being filmed without his knowledge.
It happened fairly often.
An avatar captured on camera by chance would become famous and launch a personal channel.
Most became popular, provided there was nothing wrong with their character.
They could also reap the wealth and fame that came with it.
All thanks to the nature of the “metaverse.”
They broadcast through their avatars instead of showing their real faces.
That allowed them to become celebrities while keeping their personal freedom.
“No reason I can’t do it, too. Besides…”
His summons would provide all the chatter and spectacle anyway.
All he had to do was film properly from the back, just as he had when working as a Sherpa.
Almost without thinking, his hands began typing a search for “streaming equipment.”
A new star was rising in the increasingly stagnant age of Climbers.
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