TFN C60

Chapter 60

『You have entered the Tower.』

『An achievement will be awarded for the first entry.』

A string of notifications flickered across Wonhyo’s vision, vanishing before he had the chance to read them. He coughed, throat rasping at the heavy, murky air.

He was not alone. From across the cavernous chamber came the sounds of hacking and gagging, some retching violently as though their throats had seized.

“Slow your breathing. That will help.”

The steady touch on his back guided him—Cheongmun’s hand, calm and deliberate. Wonhyo matched his breathing to that rhythm. Inhale, exhale. Again.

His throat burned, his nose stung, but as breath after breath passed, his lungs gradually adjusted. Blinking back tears, he forced his eyes open and surveyed their surroundings.

They had been notified of their entrance into the Tower, yet it did not feel like any floor proper. Rather, it was as if they had been dropped into a transit corridor.

“The waiting chamber,” Cheongmun explained.

“The wai—ah.” Wonhyo nodded as recollection dawned. “Right. Ten minutes from now, yes?”

“Correct. Think of this as a loading state.”

Wonhyo exhaled in understanding. For a moment he had believed they had already arrived at the first floor, but this was merely the holding zone.

The clusters of people nearby explained themselves too—others waiting to be dispatched.

“In about four minutes we’ll be dropped into the cave. No light. It will take time for your eyes to adjust.”

Wonhyo frowned. He had crammed the mandatory online safety lecture and passed the test, but the Tower’s layout shifted so often that much of what he remembered contradicted itself.

Perhaps instead of scribbling talismans at dawn, he should have studied the latest updates on HunterNet.

“I thought caves started at the third floor?”

Cheongmun shook his head.

“They’ve been moved down. From the first floor through the third, it’s all ant-nest terrain now. Little difference between them. Just wait it out.”

All around them, others checked their portable lanterns, beams of light piercing and wavering. Cheongmun alone remained motionless, unconcerned.

A ripple of unease passed through Wonhyo, but then he recalled where Cheongmun worked. The Special Authority—surely, his knowledge was more reliable than any crowd of half-prepared adventurers.

I trust him.

At the appointed time, their bodies lifted and dropped once more.

Wonhyo stumbled upon uneven, sloping ground, but the firm grasp on his hand steadied him. His breath came steady now, his pulse calming.

Then came the dark—pitch-black, absolute. He could see nothing.

He tested the ground beneath his feet, pebbles and rocks crunching faintly. Careful, he thought. One misplaced step into a pit could end in disaster. He strained, willing his eyes to adjust.

Hadn’t they said that with each floor, a quest would appear—?

『A quest has been generated.』

『“Prepare for the Ambush”

Difficulty: Very Hard

During your exploration of the cave, repel the assault of ten goblins.』

The quest window lit the darkness faintly, a welcome glow.

Another followed.

『You have adapted to the Tower’s mana.』

The acrid air that had seemed to strip the moisture from his lungs now felt lighter, cleaner. His eyes too, adjusting, caught the faint contours of stone walls.

He parted his lips, ready to tell Cheongmun—

Bang!

A searing flash of blue exploded before him, scorching the air itself. Light blazed and vanished in less than a heartbeat, leaving his eyes watering.

Then:

『Quest complete.』

『Reward granted.』

“…?”

What?

Wonhyo gawked at the message.

He turned, confused—yet no question was needed. Cheongmun stood calm, one hand holding a weapon that looked far too menacing to belong in any beginner’s zone.

“On to the second floor.”

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

A single shot per floor. The weapon bore a silencer, not fueled by powder but some arcane force—its sound small, its effect absolute.

In under a minute, the sixth floor lay emptied. Wonhyo could only stare, dumbstruck, at the sprawling plains now cleared.

They had said that the Tower resembled an entirely different world, each floor a realm of its own. Staring across this vast grassland, he felt the truth of it. And with the sight came an odd easing of tension.

Though, the monsters had been no trifling matter.

“You said there is an NPC on the seventh floor?” Cheongmun asked.

“Yes. The quest mentioned a place called Ghostslayer Valley.”

They called them NPCs, but the beings within the Tower were no mere illusions. They lived. They moved. They spoke. They could be killed, but never remained dead.

When the Tower first appeared, someone had struck one down—only for the figure to rise moments later and greet them as though nothing had occurred.

Denied even death, they whispered among themselves.

“I have never been,” Cheongmun admitted. “It has been a long time since I last reached the seventh floor.”

After completing their sixth-floor quest and waiting ten minutes for the transition, Cheongmun used the pause to extract every detail he could from Wonhyo regarding his profession quest.

Yet Wonhyo had little beyond what the quest log had given him.

“Fortunately, enough has been uncovered. We should not struggle to find this figure.”

“Well… I did hear the seventh floor is larger than here.” Wonhyo glanced around the endless plain.

Cheongmun inclined his head.

“It is. Vast, and as yet, without end. On the sixth floor, outer boundaries can be seen, even if impassable. On the seventh… no such borders have been found.”

“…Oh.”

For Wonhyo, tasked with finding an unknown NPC in such a place, it was grim news.

By his count, including transition waits, they had spent one hour and thirteen minutes thus far. He had half-hoped the seventh floor would be just as swiftly handled. Clearly, that would not be so.

“Still… we are moving very fast, right?”

Cheongmun lifted a shoulder.

“Faster than average. If you are tired, we can pause. Shall we?”

“N-no, no!”

Wonhyo flailed in protest.

Ordinarily, a single first floor run took two or three hours. For novices, ten was the norm. Yet here they were, at the threshold of the seventh in scarcely an hour. To call that tiring would be madness.

“Well, I…”

He faltered. Should he even call him Team Leader here?

He realized he had never properly addressed Cheongmun by any title at all. Their conversations had been so often private that he had only ever mumbled things like “um, sir” or “uh, team leader.”

Meanwhile, Cheongmun had always called him by name.

Stumbling through his hesitation, Wonhyo finally said, slowly, “I just wondered if… you were all right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, with how fast we’re going. Each floor usually takes hours, right? I was worried you might be burning expensive items just to get through so quickly.”

Guided tours for novices typically cost a thousand credits per floor from one to three, two thousand each for four to seven. Condensing that into a single strike per floor—surely the expense was enormous.

“If that is your concern,” Cheongmun said with ease, “it is merely skill use. No cost. Now—let us proceed.”

He opened the path to the seventh.

Wonhyo breathed out in relief, though curiosity remained. If they were already this swift, what kind of monsters were the ones who set true records?

And as he turned the thought over, the portal opened at last.

The sky was dim, a weight of thick stormclouds pressing low as though rain might fall at any moment.

Mountains loomed black against the horizon. The forest was dense with leaves of dark, ashen green—nothing of the fresh brightness of the plains below. The soil itself was shadowed, a faint sheen of black upon its surface.

“This…”

Wonhyo’s breath caught. At once he understood why the quest had named this place Ghostslayer Valley.

“It really looks like something out of a ghost story.”

The air was heavy, like a perpetual eclipse. Even under day’s light, the atmosphere was that of an eternal waning moon.

“Ghost-type creatures appear most often here.”

Cheongmun’s voice was level as he summoned forth a map from the system window, sharing it between them.

The greater part of it was still cloaked in shadow, undiscovered territory, but even the revealed swath stretched wide.

“Already charted, this covers roughly thirty-seven thousand square kilometers—the size of Gyeongsang Province, north and south combined.”

Wonhyo, who had worked exorcisms in every province across Korea, could picture it at once. He nodded fervently.

“Our entry point is here, near the northeastern mountains. Any new quest prompts?”

“Ah… wait.”

Each floor had brought fresh notifications, yet this time, silence. Wonhyo pulled up his system logs, seeking the separate panel marked “Profession Quest.”