I did not go home immediately. My back was stiff, and my head felt like it was filled with lead.
I needed a break before facing the subway crowds. I walked toward the vending machine in the corner of the lobby.
It was a dented, silver machine that only sold off-brand canned coffee.
I put in a few coins. A can of black coffee dropped with a heavy thud. It was cold. I grabbed it and moved to a quiet spot near the emergency exit.
I squatted down against the wall. This was my habit. Squatting made me feel small, which was better than trying to stand tall in a world that didn't want me.
I cracked the tab. The coffee tasted like burnt beans and sugar.
I looked at the floor. My mind wandered back.
I was a streamer back then. I played a gacha mobile game. It was a niche game. Most people found the mechanics too punishing and the drop rates too low.
Because of that, the game's popularity declined heavily. By the end, I was probably the only person still streaming it. I averaged 10 viewers on a good day.
I had to call it quits. My mother's health was deteriorating fast. The hospital bills were piling up. My father was an abusive man who had already left us with nothing but debt.
I needed money to come in fast for the sake of my mother. Streaming a dying game wasn't paying for her medicine.
This led to me wasting two years of my life. Thinking about it now pisses me off. I spent thousands of hours memorizing floor patterns, boss rotations, and everything needed to beat the game.
But who would've known? On the exact day I decided to quit, the world changed. Tower of Gehenna became reality.
People awakened with the same classes and skills from the game.
"Tsk..."
I took a sip of the cold coffee. It was bitter. I pulled out my phone and opened an app with a black icon.
[Tower-Net]
It was a high-stakes trading site for Tower information. Blueprints, monster spawn timers, hidden paths—everything was bought and sold here.
It was basically gambling for those who knew nothing and a gold mine for those who knew the meta.
I logged into my anonymous account.
I went to the 'Strategy Board' for the 4th Floor. It was the "Ice Cave" zone. Currently, a lot of C-Rank guilds were stuck there. They were complaining about the "Frostbite" debuff that ignored armor.
In the game, the Frostbite debuff wasn't caused by the cold. It was caused by a microscopic moss that grew on the cave walls. If you smeared the moss on your boots, the debuff wouldn't trigger.
I typed out a short, direct guide.
Target: 4th Floor Ice Cave.
Problem: Frostbite.
Solution: Blue Moss on the North Wall. Smear on footwear. Do not burn the moss.
I set the post price to 5 'Bits'. Bits were the site's internal currency. One Bit was worth about 10,000 Won.
I hit post.
Within minutes, my notifications started pinging.
Purchase successful.
Purchase successful.
Purchase successful.
I watched the Bits roll in. 10. 50. 100. Because of this, I earned more in ten minutes than I did in a full day of getting yelled at at the HA desk. This was how I paid for my sister's university tuition. She deserved a normal life, even if I couldn't have one.
I closed Tower-Net and opened my second most-used app.
[ManaX]
In this world, mana stones are essential. They are the batteries for everything. If a hunter wants to increase their stats, they need a mana stone. If they want to improve a weapon, they need a mana stone.
ManaX allowed both Awakened and ordinary people to trade these stones like stocks. The app opened in three daily sessions: morning, afternoon, and midnight. Each rank—from F-cores to the legendary S-cores—had its own fluctuating value.
I looked at the live price charts. The afternoon session was just ending.
Low-grade D-cores were trending down. This was because a large guild had just cleared a massive goblin nest, flooding the market with supply.
Because of that, the price had dropped by 15% in the last hour.
I shifted my focus to the 'Recent News' tab in the app.
Flash News: 12th Floor 'Volcano Zone' activity increasing. Heat-resistance gear demand spiking.
I checked the current market prices for mana stones.
In this world, mana stones were the only currency that mattered. They were ranked from F to S, and each rank had a specific color.
F-Rank: Grey.
E-Rank: Brown.
D-Rank: Green.
C-Rank: Blue.
B-Rank: Red.
A-Rank: Purple.
S-Rank: Gold.
There were no elemental stones. If you wanted fire resistance or a sharper blade, you just used the stones as consumables through the System Window.
You fed the stones into the item, and the system upgraded it. Because of that, higher-rank stones were always in demand because they provided more power for the upgrade.
I looked at the B-Rank Red stones. Their price was soaring because of the Volcano Zone news. Hunters wanted to dump them into their armor to survive the heat.
But I looked at the D-Rank Green stones instead.
In the Tower of Gehenna game, the 12th Floor Volcano was filled with poisonous sulfur gas. High-rank Red stones didn't help with poison.
To craft the 'Purification Filter' through the System Window, you needed a large quantity of D-Rank Green stones.
Everyone was panic-buying the expensive Red stones. Because of that, the price of Green stones had actually dipped as people sold them off to afford the higher ranks.
I checked the Green stone chart. It was at a weekly low.
This led to me making a decision. I took all the savings from my last Tower-Net sale and my remaining balance. I used the 'Buy' function on ManaX.
I bought 300 units of D-Rank Green stones at the bottom price.
I was going to wait. Tomorrow, the first wave of hunters would enter the 12th floor.
They would realize their expensive Red-stone armor didn't stop them from choking on sulfur. When the realization hit the forums, the demand for Green stones for purification crafting would explode.
The price would triple overnight.
I also did some 'pawn' trading on the side.
Sometimes, desperate hunters who needed cash immediately for a night of drinking or to pay off a debt would come to the Civil Affairs desk or find me in the lobby.
They would sell their low-grade Grey or Brown cores to me for a flat, low fee because they didn't want to wait for the ManaX session to open.
I bought them cheap, then I would proceed to trade them on ManaX during the midnight session when the supply usually thinned and the price spiked.
It was a fast-paced marketplace. It was the only way for a Level 0 like me to participate in the chaos of the Tower.
I watched the screen for a few more minutes. The lines on the graph moved up and down. Red and blue. It was a game of predicting trends and reacting to dungeon events.
I was good at it because I knew how most of...well everything worked. That and the fact I was essentially an addict.
I saw a small profit margin on a trade I had made earlier in the day. I clicked 'Cash Out'.
[Transaction Complete: 120,000 Won credited to your account.]
It wasn't a lot. It wasn't life-changing money. But it was enough to buy a nice dinner for my sister on the way home.
I stood up. My legs felt numb from squatting for so long. I stretched my arms.
I felt a little better.