#1
Countless avatars stood scattered across a vast grassland.
Hwanung had been summoned onto a hill, where he could take in the terrain at a glance.
Looking down, he saw people forming crews and watching their surroundings, while others rushed off to gather information.
“Activate drone.”
[Activating drone.]
[Please select a filming mode.]
“Action mode.”
[Recording in Action Mode.]
[Please monitor the drone’s battery.]
Naturally, the drone’s battery was Lux.
Even the lowest-grade Lux could power it for up to twelve hours.
After checking that the transparent drone was flying around, Hwanung waited for the stage to begin.
[Stage 1]
[Find and defeat the boss somewhere in the area.]
[Time limit: None]
[Victory points: 30]
[Hidden Objects are present.]
[Number of Objects: 5]
[Victory points: 20]
[Each team may obtain an Object only once.]
The rules appeared, and the stage began.
The hundred avatars scattered, fleeing from Hwanung.
Had they realized there was nothing to gain by fighting him at the start?
“What a bunch of cowards. Anyway… Dame Eyas, you’ve gotten incredibly strong, haven’t you?”
“Thank you, Lady Jina.”
“Oh, no need to be so stiff. Let’s drop the formalities. We’re in the same boat, after all. What do you say?”
“Very well.”
Meanwhile, Jina and Eyas, whom he had already summoned, were chatting away.
So his summons interacted with each other, too.
Hwanung was privately delighted. He wouldn’t have to worry about dead air or dull footage.
Their avatars had such distinct personalities that he could afford to stay in the background.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
“Okay~.”
Lucas took the lead, with Hwanung and the other summons keeping formation.
The field was vast, and the forest ahead teemed with monsters.
There was a simple reason Climbers called this place the [Farming Tower], even though its name was the Forest Tower.
The area right in front of them was an excellent place to harvest Lux.
The swarming monsters had a chance to drop Lux, and they appeared in entire settlements.
Yet the monsters themselves weren’t particularly strong, making this a popular place to practice large-scale combat.
On the other hand, some people used it to run farming sweatshops.
‘There’s one over there.’
Farming sweatshops.
Operations that harvested Lux and items using people they held something over, people who had even lost the protection of anonymity.
An open secret among those in the know, these businesses were usually run by former loan sharks or gangsters with good avatars.
Hwanung soon looked away.
They would have their own circumstances.
These days, wasn’t even taking an interest in such things considered a nuisance?
Getting involved for no reason could turn into a headache, too.
‘I’ll worry about it when I have some breathing room.’
In the end, only those who seized a lifeline could be saved.
Hwanung had no intention of offering himself as theirs.
Not yet.
“Huh? This place… The terrain looks pretty familiar.”
“Hmm?”
Jina’s voice reached him while his thoughts were briefly occupied with the sweatshop.
She had been crouching down, studying something intently, before she spoke.
The drone followed her, and Hwanung listened with interest.
Jina put her nose to a leaf and sniffed.
Then she spoke with conviction.
Information poured from her lips, things he had never heard before.
“Yes. This place is what they call a sea of trees. The name was… Right, this is the entrance to the [Komatia Sea of Trees].”
“How do you know that?”
“Because… this is ■■ ■■ ■■■■■.”
“I can’t make out any of that.”
Jina frowned.
Apparently aware that her words had come out strangely, she sighed.
Then she addressed Hwanung.
“Don’t tell anyone about this, Master. And… I suppose it needs a little more time.”
“All right, for now. Does that mean you can guide us?”
“Yes. ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■■■■. Damn it, there it goes again. Anyway! I can show you the way. Come on.”
“Okay.”
Quite a few of Jina’s words had been filtered, but this was good news.
He could unravel the mystery later.
There was something he needed to do first, and he decided to focus on that.
Hwanung and his summons ventured into the sea of trees.
The trouble started a little later.
#2
“Move it, move it!”
“At that rate, you think you’ll make today’s quota!?”
Choi Hanryang was hard at work, bending over to pick up fallen Lux.
At a glance, Hanryang might have looked like a customer accompanied by a Driver, but not a single piece of that Lux belonged to them.
Their overseers drove them relentlessly, leaving them no time even to rub their aching back.
With poor stats and no skills worth mentioning, Hanryang kept gathering Lux, sighing deep inside.
The workers’ job was simple.
Hand over a set amount of Lux and items, and their debt would be reduced.
But as was always the case in the underworld, the interest was extortionate. With stats that never improved, they had no way to keep up with their mounting debt.
What choice did they have?
Here or in reality, all they could do was work themselves to death.
And so, once again, Hanryang toiled like a machine, struggling to escape this hell.
They had ventured quite deep into the forest.
The bosses here weren’t aiming to win. They wanted to harvest as much Lux as possible.
“Let’s set up here and hunt.”
“Sounds good, boss.”
“You lot, stay back. Can’t have you getting hurt and unable to pick up Lux, can we?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hanryang moved behind the swaggering men.
Orcs poured out of this entrance, and they intended to kill every one as it emerged.
It was, in fact, the most common method these sweatshops used.
But this hunt wouldn’t go so smoothly.
With a rustle, a group emerged behind them.
There were quite a few of them at a glance, avatars in strange attire, and a shabby-looking man.
“Are you sure this is the way?”
“I told you it is. Just a little farther.”
“Let’s get past them.”
They tried to walk by without paying any attention to the group stationed there.
When Climbers encountered one another, they generally either gave each other a wide berth or fought.
It seemed these Climbers simply intended to move on.
It would have ended as a peaceful, utterly trivial encounter.
If one of the Climbers preparing to hunt hadn’t picked a fight.
“Hold on! You folks there. You meet some fellow Climbers and just walk on by?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“Well, well. You people have no professional courtesy at all. You need our permission to pass through here.”
There was neither logic nor justification to the claim, but he probably just wanted an excuse to cause trouble.
Hanryang sighed quietly.
The bosses here had avatars with average stats approaching forty-five.
That made them practically apex predators in a Sobaeksan-grade tower.
‘Just their bad luck.’
There were some pretty avatars among the newcomers, and Hanryang worried they might be harassed.
Then a sharp voice rang out.
“What are these lowborn wretches?”
“…What did you say?”
“Let’s just go. We don’t have time.”
“All right.”
“Hoooold it!”
The thugs couldn’t possibly let that pass.
Scowling, they blocked the group’s path.
They rested their weapons on their shoulders and spoke, looking as menacing as they could.
“Say that again. What did you call us?”
“Lowborn wretches. Why? Are you scions of a knightly house?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Then a family of mages? Or perhaps… some distinguished merchant family?”
“I said, what the hell are you talking about!? You crawl out of the Middle Ages or something, you bitch?”
Watching them, Hwanung had to struggle to keep from laughing.
They were angry, but they were speaking as though they came from different eras, leaving both sides equally frustrated.
Jina, the one doing the arguing, sighed and shook her head.
“Just as I thought. There’s no reasoning with you. Your gutter upbringing is plain for all to see.”
“Ha. I’ve been trying to let this slide, but you little bastards—”
“Stop. That’s enough. Jina, you step back, too.”
As things turned ugly, Hwanung intervened.
The fuming thugs looked ready to pounce at any moment, and Eyas, who had remained still, quietly rested a hand on her sword hilt.
Hwanung only wanted to pass through in peace, but he had no intention of backing down from a fight they picked.
Strangely, both his body and mind urged him to stand his ground.
“I’ll ask you one last time. Are you going to let us pass, or are we fighting?”
“Didn’t you hear what that bitch said!? Lowborn? She called us lowborn!”
“But it’s true. Clearly, your ability to accept facts is lacking…”
Jina sneered from behind him.
Then she met Hwanung’s eyes, flinched, and shrank back before turning her head away.
A summon with a lot of pride.
With that thought, Hwanung tried one truly final time.
“Don’t mind what my summon said.”
“What? Summon? Give me a break.”
“A summon? Ha… Now I’ve heard everything… That does it, boys!”
They had already lost their heads. There was no reasoning with them now.
Hwanung sighed and offered one last act of mercy.
“Gentlemen, which Climbing Club do you belong to?”
“Us? The Chilseong Gang, you little shit!”
“I see.”
Fwoosh.
A small flame bloomed in Hwanung’s hand.
He could sense his summons trembling in fear, but it was all right.
Today, he intended to control it carefully.
[Possession]
Fwoooosh!
Flames engulfed Hwanung.
Someone shouted at the sight.
“F*ck! Get him!”
“How dare you lay a hand on my lord.”
The wind blew.
Before anyone could even say “Huh?”, an avatar split in half.
At the same time, a small sun rose in the forest.
[SCREEEEE!]
Once again, the spirit let out an agonized shriek.
But he was using far less power than last time.
Having felt what it was like to pour mana into it once before, he could now make it respond to his will.
Compared to last time, perhaps half of half of half as much?
“Gah!”
“Wh-what the f*ck is that!?”
“You gentlemen were the ones who wanted a fight, remember?”
“…”
They had nothing to say.
Sure enough, overwhelming power was the answer to every problem.
F*cking KABOOM!
#3
“Those idiots just wasted our time.”
“Still, don’t go making enemies when you don’t have to. Understood?”
After that very minor incident, Hwanung laid down some ground rules for the grumbling Jina.
Crestfallen, she nodded.
This wasn’t the sort of world she had lived in.
The place where she had opened her eyes again was proving rather difficult to adjust to.
But what choice did she have? She couldn’t let this second chance slip away.
Jina bowed her head and apologized politely.
“I’ll be more careful next time, Master.”
“Good. Anyway… you said there’s a special place up ahead?”
“Yes. If I remember right. It’s probably… Never mind. You’ll see when we get there.”
Apparently realizing that trying to explain would only frustrate them both, Jina took the lead.
At the end of their path stood a small cave.
Ooooooh.
An eerie sound drifted out of it.
“This is it. Hmm… I think there’s a troll living in the cave.”
“The stench is strong.”
“Let’s go.”
He had plenty of summons.
He was adding to his forces every ten minutes, so they would manage somehow.
Besides, with Eyas, Jina, and Lucas there, it hardly seemed dangerous.
‘We didn’t kill any monsters on the way… but we can do that in the next stage.’
The drone was still busily flying around, capturing footage.
The party entered the cave to film a proper battle.
This fight would be the debut of Hwanung’s summons.
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