Snow-white drifts blanketed the ground, and pale pink cherry blossoms fluttered through the air.
As Jin-hyeok watched the breathtaking scene—something you could show anywhere and no one would complain—
Slurp.
He tipped his teacup back, letting the warm aroma of black tea slide down his throat.
"Haaah…"
With a satisfied sigh, Jin-hyeok nodded.
He'd realized something.
That sensation of soaking in.
"Nice."
"Very nice."
Camilla, who was sipping her tea as well, wore a pleased smile. It looked like she'd taken quite a liking to this little tea time paired with flower-viewing.
"It'd be perfect if we could just get rid of that."
Following her gaze, Jin-hyeok saw it.
Kanchou the yodel ranger, acting like he'd possessed a mole, was digging around between the snow and the blossoms. Meanwhile, Momo was chasing him with a frying pan, determined to catch him.
Why was she holding a frying pan?
Jin-hyeok stood up and gently rotated Camilla's body to the right. It wasn't a direct view of the cherry tree anymore, but it was a perfect vantage point where the entire panorama of Frostheim spread out before them.
"Much better," Camilla said.
They took a few more sips in comfortable silence.
Then Camilla spoke again.
"Why do you climb the Tower, Master?"
Jin-hyeok turned at the sudden question.
Camilla smiled softly and elaborated.
"I've been curious. You aren't short on money, and you aren't weaker than others. Yet you climb the Tower so relentlessly. And… you genuinely seem to enjoy it."
From Camilla's perspective, Jin-hyeok's climbing wasn't simply "working hard."
He enjoyed the climb itself—and beyond that, he looked restless whenever he couldn't climb. Like he couldn't stand losing even a single day. Like he wanted to reach the next floor as soon as possible.
"Hmm…"
Jin-hyeok rubbed his chin.
Now that she said it, she wasn't wrong.
He'd already surpassed what he used to imagine back when he was stuck in that semi-basement, tapping away at a keyboard.
After a moment of thought, he nodded.
"I guess human greed really has no end."
"You still aren't satisfied?"
"No. Not even close."
With his hand pressed to his forehead, he searched his memory. Then he continued.
"I don't remember exactly when it happened. But it was probably while I was climbing the Myth Tower. One day, it just hit me out of nowhere—'This is insanely fun.' And ever since then, I've been living every day with anticipation and this constant thrill."
Thinking back on it, a smile naturally formed.
"What will the next floor be like? Who will be there? What's waiting at the very top? Just imagining it makes my heart race."
Camilla's lips curved upward too, as if Jin-hyeok's passion was contagious.
"But didn't you say you'd already climbed ahead through a game when you awakened? Wouldn't you have experienced it all already?"
Jin-hyeok waved his hand quickly.
"I did climb up to the 100th floor in the game. But it's completely different. First of all, the floor count and the entire structure of the Tower changed. And the gap between 2D pixel art and real 3D reality is huge."
"Yet you identified the weakness of the Plague of the Earth immediately."
"I haven't climbed that far yet, so I can't say for sure… but it's kind of like this. The floors changed, but the elements that make them up stayed the same. So I might not understand an entire floor perfectly, but I can still use bits of knowledge here and there."
"Hm. But if there are a hundred floors… that's still a long way off."
"Way longer," Jin-hyeok said. "There were more than a hundred."
After clearing the 100th floor, he distinctly remembered it.
That button asking if he wanted to proceed to the next floor.
Leaning back, Jin-hyeok stared up at the sky.
"I want to reach the end and see every world that exists. And to do that, I need to get stronger than I am now. Even in the game, there were enemies that were just… ridiculous."
Just thinking about it made him grimace.
There were plenty of floors with absolutely brutal difficulty.
'Thank god I didn't have money back then.'
If he had, he would've rage-quit with a shotgun and destroyed a dozen keyboards.
"Hm."
At some point, Camilla had produced a long pipe. She took a slow pull, then exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.
Then she reached out and gently patted Jin-hyeok's head.
"It's good that your goal is clear. You won't waver. And… hearing you, I find myself wanting to see it too."
Camilla followed Jin-hyeok's gaze up into the sky.
"What's on the next floor. And what lies at the very end."
For a moment, the two of them simply looked up together in silence.
Just as they were about to sink into the mood—
KWAAAAANG!!
The glacier in front of them split clean in half.
A deafening roar shook the area.
Rattle, rattle.
Tiny shards of ice rained down from above.
Apparently, someone was still furious about getting beaten up earlier.
Dark, who had picked a fight with Seira the moment he obtained a new treasure, was now battling in midair. Eternal Frost and Tarkan's power mixed together, painting the sky in dazzling light.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-KANG!!
Lightning too?!
This was nothing like how Seira acted when she trained Jin-hyeok.
When fighting Dark, she was going at it with two hundred percent seriousness.
After watching for a moment, Jin-hyeok brushed the ice fragments off his head.
Then he calmly turned his body in the other direction.
If the view in front wasn't peaceful…
Just turn around.
Slurp.
'Now this is peaceful.'
As he returned to savoring his tea—
Ding!
[You have cleared Myth Tower Floor 12!]
[Myth Tower Floor 13 Entry Requirement: Clear Despair Tower Floor 65]
[Exiting Myth Tower!]
Perfect timing.
Judging by how everyone looked…
It was time to leave.
Seoul Central Player Hunter Administration.
Jin Yoon-ho, who had been about to head home, stopped in his tracks.
Yoon Mi-ri was still at her desk, typing away.
He checked the time.
3 a.m.
That was unlike her.
No one loved clocking out on time more than Yoon Mi-ri.
He walked over.
She was so focused she didn't even notice him approaching. A faint light glowed in her eyes—she'd even pushed her awakened ability to its limit.
"What's going on?" Jin Yoon-ho asked. "Whenever I tell you to work overtime, you act like I'm committing a war crime."
Only then did Yoon Mi-ri stop and turn around.
"You're still here, sir?"
"Yeah. Just looking into something."
He held up his phone.
"A dimensional storage bag?" she asked. "Why are you searching that?"
"Cheon Se-yeon tipped me off. Apparently Jin-hyeok is trying to get one."
"Didn't he already take Flix's bag? That thing should hold basically everything."
"He did. But if he needs another, he needs another. So I'm going to do what I can."
Freelancer Yoo Jin-hyeok.
Annual salary: sixty billion won.
Plenty of money—but if the item in question was a dimensional storage bag, that changed things.
It wasn't just that they were hard to find. Even if one appeared at auction, the price would shoot past tens of billions with ease.
The Administration needed to help.
As Jin Yoon-ho nodded, Yoon Mi-ri subtly pointed at her monitor.
"You saw this, right? The Strategy Division spent a ridiculous amount."
"I heard from Director Lee Chang-gi."
"This is the first time, isn't it? That the Administration has spent that much."
"Yeah. What on earth did they buy?"
The purchase list and storage location had been blacked out, approved under Strategy Division authority and the Hunter Commissioner's signature.
"The Commissioner really made a huge decision," Yoon Mi-ri said. "Wasn't he already struggling to secure next year's budget?"
"He looked pretty unhappy today," Jin Yoon-ho replied.
Commissioner Kang Young-hoon had demanded an increased budget from the government.
But the Ministry of Economy and Finance and other departments were reluctant.
The Hunter Administration already received an absurdly large budget compared to other agencies.
And it wasn't like the government didn't understand how important player recruitment and Tower climbing were.
But even so, they hesitated—because despite several exceptional budget increases, there hadn't been any obvious improvement in results compared to the previous years.
"And we even established a connection with the Runner," Yoon Mi-ri muttered. "You'd think that would count for something."
"It's not like we recruited him," Jin Yoon-ho said. "We only have a connection. From their perspective, that's unstable. Still… with the budget tight, what did they buy that justified spending like this? Our Strategy Director sure went all out."
As he finished speaking, Jin Yoon-ho glanced at Yoon Mi-ri.
She winked a few times.
Then she opened another screen.
"I was going to report once I dug deeper and organized everything," she said.
"Mi-ri," Jin Yoon-ho warned. "They said it's disciplinary action if you get caught. Don't do it."
Of course, he never said he wouldn't look.
He leaned in and examined the purchase list.
"A bag," he said.
"A bag," she confirmed.
"And not just any bag. A ridiculously good one."
"No wonder the cost was astronomical."
The Infinite Warehouse Owner Peltz's Bag.
And the Prankster Rasbelt's Picnic Bag.
If either of those went to auction, no one could even guess the final price.
"Director Han Ji-won really does have insane connections," Jin Yoon-ho muttered. "You can't buy these no matter how much money you have."
"We're not like her," Yoon Mi-ri said. "She's old-money royalty."
A brief silence fell.
Then the two of them met eyes.
They were thinking the same thing.
But after a moment, Jin Yoon-ho shook his head.
"No. Not a chance. She's already in berserker mode these days. If we touch this, it's war. The Commissioner signed off on it, so even Director Lee Chang-gi can't mess with it."
He remembered Han Ji-won glaring at them like she wanted to kill them every time they crossed paths.
If they stole the bag?
He was willing to bet she'd come storming in with an axe.
"What if the Commissioner turns a blind eye?" Yoon Mi-ri asked.
"He won't," Jin Yoon-ho said. "He's already been favoring us too openly lately."
"And if he does turn a blind eye anyway?"
"Then we take it immediately," Jin Yoon-ho said without hesitation. "Axe or not. If we get it to Jin-hyeok first, what can she do?"
They'd heard that the Runner needed it.
If they hadn't known, fine.
But now?
There was no way they could just sit on their hands.
"Really?" Yoon Mi-ri asked.
A meaningful smile spread across her face.
She turned her chair and placed her hands on the keyboard.
"I was digging into something else too," she said.
Then she hit Enter.
Multiple windows appeared on the monitor.
A Player death case in Chungnam.
The culprit: an Oni from Kansai.
Behind it all: Chairman Sugihara.
And the political party backing Sugihara—the Gamin Party.
Jin Yoon-ho scanned the screens once and spoke.
"The Sugihara Gate scandal? You've been looking into this? Was there more to investigate?"
"There was one question we never answered," Yoon Mi-ri said. "Chairman Sugihara Shoji personally triggered the Gate incident. What on earth possessed that old man to do it?"
Jin Yoon-ho nodded, then fixed his gaze on her.
"You found something."
"At first, I didn't think much of it," Yoon Mi-ri admitted. "But sitting here, I started wondering. Lately, every impossible thing that somehow became possible… who was always nearby when it happened?"
Jin Yoon-ho's eyes widened.
He didn't need to think about who she meant.
"The Runner… Yoo Jin-hyeok."
"Exactly," Yoon Mi-ri said. "So I checked. Just in case."
Her grin widened as she hit Enter again.
"Tada. And this is what I concluded."
Jin Yoon-ho stared at what appeared on the screen, his mouth falling open.
And a moment later—
As the puzzle pieces snapped together in his head, a slow smile crept onto his face.
A smile that, to some people, might look downright wicked.
This… might work.
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T/N:
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