Kwon Moon, or rather, his avatar Fletcher Green, dragged his blade through the corpse at his feet, wiping the darkened blood and ash from the edge before giving it a brief shake to shake away the beads of blood that were still on the weapon.
It was always a good practice to keep a sword as clean as possible, especially from blood, since that could cause corrosion.
The sword in his hands was one he had taken from his original body before entering the tower.
Although in his original body, when he had trained with the sword after regression, it felt natural to him as if he was awakening part of the muscle memory that he brought back to the past, with the talent [Weapon Master], it felt like the sword was literally a third arm, an extension of his body.
When Fletcher had first stepped into the tower, he had known where it would appear — that piece of memory had been necessary to retain during regression if he wanted to kill Ryuk Yongsun before he could grow into a problem.
But the contents inside the tower remained a mystery as future/past Kwon Moon must've deemed that it wasn't that important to bring back with him.
Each tower was unique.
Some towers ended after only a handful of floors. Others stretched on for hundreds.
You could leave the tower whenever you clear a floor, but if you wish to return, you would have to restart from the very beginning.
It made the tower a very coveted asset, as it could be used to train guild members constantly without having to worry about it vanishing, as opposed to a dungeon, which is a one-time thing where the monsters wouldn't respawn.
Plus, the materials you could collect from the monsters, as much as you could fit inside your arms or inside the small dimensional inventory that costs entire arms and legs to purchase, you could bring them into the outside world.
That meant if there was a monster with a valuable part to their body, you could kill them, take out the material, reenter the tower, get back to where they spawned, clear them again, and repeat the process over and over and over and over.
You could also return to a previous floor after clearing a floor so that you could train or farm on the same floor that you want, as long as you didn't step out of the tower, which would then require a fresh start.
However, towers had to be cleared eventually. Not only were there benefits to being the one to clear the tower, but if it wasn't cleared within a certain amount of time, gates would begin to open around the tower, and monsters would begin pouring out into the real world.
And a rule about the time limit is that, depending on how many floors there are, that's how many weeks you have to clear it before gates start to appear.
And once the first gate appears, more and more will appear until the tower is eventually beaten.
Every tower followed a theme, and it rarely deviated from it until the very end.
The theme of this one was obvious by the time Fletcher reached the fourth floor.
Fire & Ice.
If it had just been the former half of the theme, he might have considered himself absurdly lucky. One of his talents was [Fire Immunity], which made dealing with the enemies that wielded fire a breeze.
Unfortunately, the tower hadn't committed to just one half of its concept, and the ice was a pain to deal with.
However, he had made a coat using the fur of a fire-breathing wolf on an earlier floor, so the cold was much more manageable now.
Now, on the fifth floor, Fletcher split the skull of a Fire Goblin cleanly in two. Flames sputtered out as the creature collapsed, its body crumbling into embers. There was no loot for him to collect. Not even a body to see.
In the back of his mind, a familiar sensation stirred.
His EXP percentage ticked upward — just barely though.
It was something he had noticed almost immediately, even before entering the tower.
Unlike real hunters, who simply fought, survived, trained, and gradually grew stronger by unlocking abilities, evolving skills, and refining their bodies, his avatar didn't operate in the same manner as they did.
He, aka Fletcher Green, aka the first avatar of Kwon Moon, had a level.
And to raise it, he needed experience points almost as if he were in a video game.
What would happen when he leveled up?
He had no clue.
What he did know was that after clearing four floors and carving his way through most of the fifth, he had already killed over a hundred monsters. And yet, he was only ten percent of the way to leveling up.
"Forget about the experience points… I need to quickly clear this tower before one of the S-rank hunters enters."
For now, the major guilds were almost certainly locked in a bidding war, arguing over access rights. That delay was the only reason he even had a chance at being the one to clear the tower despite being an F-rank hunter. It could take weeks for the bidding war to end.
The number of floors the tower had could be seen on the outside, so taking too long to bid wasn't a concern for those guilds.
It was a race against time.
He was using the tower to grow stronger, yes, but more importantly, he needed to be the one who cleared it and claimed the reward at the end. If he failed to do so, his plans for the future would take much longer.
If an S-rank hunter entered, the lower floors would pose no obstacle to them. They could sweep through in a fraction of the time it took him and catch up, even if they started weeks or even months after him.
Fletcher could only hope the condition for beating this tower wasn't simply extermination of the monsters. That usually wasn't the case, but sometimes it was, and if that happened, he would be in a very bad spot in the race against the other stronger hunters that were bound to enter the tower.
At least every hunter who entered the tower had it to themselves, meaning that there was no way to encounter another hunter while in the tower, so he would never get exposed for being inside until it was too late.
In theory, a tower could be cleared even by an F-rank hunter as long as the conditions aligned.
Brute strength wasn't everything.
Like that one C-rank hunter who had cleared the tower that no S-rank hunter had been able to clear for half a year. The condition for beating the final floor was actually a scavenger hunt, but none of the other hunters had realized that except for him.
If it weren't for escape stones that allowed hunters to leave the tower even without clearing it, many hunters could've been stuck on that top floor forever without even realizing that killing the boss didn't matter.
Still, S-ranks held the advantage.
On floors where killing was the condition, they could clear faster, preserving time and stamina for the trickier floors where strength wasn't the solution.
When Fletcher felled the final monster on the fifth floor, and the staircase meant to guide him up to the next floor, as well as the door that would lead him back into the real world, failed to appear, his suspicions were immediately confirmed.
This wasn't a kill floor.
He exhaled slowly and tightened his grip on his sword.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Time to start searching for the way to clear this floor."
Thankfully, he had a feeling that whatever guild won the bidding rights to the tower, they wouldn't be focused on clearing it until as late as possible to maximize their gains for their guild.
That was another one of the advantages that he had.
* * *
Word around town is that some punk tried to mess with you during lunch
"And where did you hear that?" Kwon Moon asked.
He had his phone pressed to his ear, speaking to his little sister, three years younger than him, and somehow always informed about most things in the city as if she had ears everywhere.
I have my connections. So? Did he beat you up? Drag you behind the school and kick you around like a punching bag?
"You've been watching too many dramas."
Big bro, just say the word. I'll deal with him. I can ruin his reputation online within a day. I'll make him rue the day that he messed with my older brother.
"Thank you for the offer, but focus on your homework. If I get home and see it isn't done, I'm assigning you twenty more pages to read."
Nooooooooo!
"Hahahaha," Kwon Moon laughed as his sister's voice faded into the distance on the phone.
There was a brief pause.
…Big bro?
"Yes?"
Promise me that you'll come home.
"You're making it sound like I'm heading into a D-rank dungeon. It's just an F-rank dungeon, and I'll be with a couple of other F-rank hunters and even two D-rank hunters. It'll be fine."
She didn't care what he had to say.
Big bro, promise me.
"...Fine. I promise that I'll come home," he sighed with a smile on his face. Their relationship tended to be a lot of fighting and teasing, as you would expect from typical siblings, but when it came down to it, they loved each other a lot.
Safely.
"Yes yes yes. I promise that I'll come home safely. Is that good enough?"
Mmm.
"Okay. See you soon. Bye."
He hung up the phone, a small smile lingering on his face. She was younger than him, small in stature, her arms thinner than straws, yet she worried as if she were the older sibling who had to protect their cub.
If only she knew.
The ones who should've been worried weren't him, but the monsters.
A hunter's rank was determined by mana output alone. It didn't account for skill, experience, or battle IQ. If those factors were measured as well, Kwon Moon was far closer to a C-rank hunter than an F-rank despite never entering a dungeon before.
"Are you the student joining us today?"
Kwon Moon turned toward the voice. A middle-aged man sat on a portable chair, a cup of warm coffee steaming in his hand.
"Yes! That's me. Nice to meet you," Kwon Moon said, bowing politely.
The man chuckled as he shook his hand. "No need to be so formal. Newbie or not, we're all fellow hunters here. Right?"
He glanced back at the group behind him.
"Yep!"
"That's right."
"Nice to meet you, kid."
"Uh… I disagree," a woman added flatly. "I'd prefer he spoke to me formally. He's young enough to be my son."
"Ignore her," someone said without missing a beat.