The Awakened Community has been pretty entertaining lately.
He was checking it more often than YouTube these days.
He woke up early, pulled out some kimchi and one precious can of tuna to mix into rice, and logged into the Awakened Community on his phone.
“Hm? Why is it nothing but Seo I-an today?”
Seo I-an posts, wall to wall — convincingly enough to mistake it for a dedicated Seo I-an fan community.
“Oh right, the Floor 41 record. Well…… good for our regular customer, getting some attention.”
It had probably been like this since yesterday.
He scrolled through with a faint sense of satisfaction and tapped the top post.
[Title] Ay! I been saying I believed in Seo I-an over Hong Je-hun all along mate!
[Author] Anonymous30
— Give me a straight-talking Seo I-an over a two-faced Hong Je-hun any day!!
└ [Anonymous1] so someone’s out here simping for someone with zero social skills lmao
└ [Anonymous12] guy’s never actually met Seo I-an but sure he knows her personality lmao
└ [Anonymous1] you can tell plenty from how she acts on here tbh, no need to meet in person
└ [Seo I-an] 010********
The last comment had already become This comment has been removed by a community moderator.
“Oh no……”
Still, felt like something Seo I-an would do.
[Title] Seo I-an was definitely riding the rabbit’s coattails again right?
[Author] Anonymous109
— Absolutely has to be rabbit-assisted. Otherwise makes no sense
└ [Anonymous7] “absolutely” not “absoltely”
└ [Anonymous3] spend your life dismissing other people’s hard work instead of growing, see where that gets you
└ [Anonymous109] I mean yeah~ my parents are loaded so I can afford to live like that~
└ [Anonymous17] what do we say when there’s no proof?
Today’s Community: complete chaos, as usual.
Ugh. The noise, the noise.
He was about to put the phone down and put YouTube on while he ate, but one post caught his eye.
Just this one, and then.
[Title] Has anyone compiled a schedule of when the NPC rabbit shows up?
[Author] Hong Je-hun
— Would appreciate if someone could share.
└ [JehunHamLovesHim] Check Best Post #231, Ham!!
“……Sorry?”
He didn’t even know his own schedule — how did they?
And like YouTube, once you started scrolling the Community, you couldn’t stop.
He kept going, snickering at his phone, when——
[Title] So when does the Special Floor drop?
[Author] Lim Ji-hwan
— Hasn’t come up yet this month, right?
New bait, cast.
Special Floor.
A hidden floor that appeared once a month — accessible only to A-rank or above Awakened.
Twenty-four hours’ notice dropped before it opened, and entry was available for exactly ten minutes from the moment it went live.
Awakened who made it inside during that window were automatically formed into a mandatory party — by nationality. So Korea’s Special Floor was only accessible to Awakened climbing Korean Towers.
If someone asked is it worth bothering? — every single person would answer obviously, yes.
The rewards were said to be extraordinary.
Which was precisely why Awakened entering the Special Floor through injury or illness had become a social issue in multiple countries.
“Korea has always been outside the rankings, hasn’t it. Probably……”
Special Floor participation was actively encouraged by national governments.
The national ranking rewards were the reason.
Unlike regular Towers, the Special Floor advanced rankings by nation rather than individual. Come in within the top three — and for a full month, Tower climbing in that country got a little easier.
The monsters inside would have their HP reduced by a percentage for that month, that sort of thing.
And Korea…… had never once placed in the ranking.
Which was part of why the Korean Awakened Association kept getting called useless.
“Honestly, I’d like to go sometime.”
Entry counted against the daily Tower limit — but the contribution rewards supposedly made that drawback entirely worth ignoring.
He pulled up the search bar and typed Special Floor.
The summary of what he learned: you entered the moment it opened, dumped all your skills for ten minutes, and left. The vibe was something like an event dungeon — not particularly dangerous, but the boss mob’s HP and defense were described as unreasonably high.
Also the one floor where levels are everything didn’t apply.
Low level or high — all Awakened had their base stats fixed at 1.
In exchange: skills cost no mana to use.
Which made items and skills the deciding factors.
His first thought on reading that:
I could actually do something here.
Stats fixed at 1.
In his case — items could still extract some punch through elixirs, and Rapid Fire seemed like it would hold up fine.
If everyone was at the same baseline anyway, wasn’t being faster better? That was the thinking.
He was sitting there pondering when——
“Oh?”
[Title] Your Special Floor has arrived ^^
[Author] Anonymous37
— Timer just appeared!
A post written moments ago, already rocketing up the view count.
He pulled up his Tower entry screen and there it was: Special Floor: 23:58:03.
No entry for now — that was tomorrow’s business.
He moved his eyes down the list.
New S-rank skill: Elixir God.
It needed two bottles of the same elixir type.
Time to start making some.
While Woo-joo was entering the Tower.
The Awakened Community — already blazing with Special Floor news——
[Title] Oh. But will the rabbit show up in the Special Floor?
[Author] Lim Ji-hwan
— If it does, couldn’t Korea actually place in the ranking?
└ [Anonymous7] ???
└ [Oh Won-taek] ???
got doused in accelerant.
The question of what if the rabbit appeared in Korea’s Special Floor? caught fire and spread without end.
And team lead Oh Won-taek of the Association, who had been monitoring the Community and watching all of this unfold——
“Yun Jin-gi!”
Called for his most prized employee with urgency.
“Sir!”
The man at the desk directly across answered immediately.
“Have you managed to reach Kim Woo-joo?!”
“I tried yesterday and again this morning — no answer! I’ll try again right now!”
He’d left texts too. The calls just weren’t going through.
Blocked? He’d wondered — but the ringtone went all the way through, so it wasn’t a block.
He picked up his phone again.
“Find out if he’s entering the Special Floor tomorrow! Just get me that answer as fast as you can!”
“Sir?”
“Think about it — if Kim Woo-joo enters the Special Floor tomorrow, and the rabbit shows up there — what does that tell us?”
“It would mean the two of them are definitively not the same person, sir!”
“Exactly!”
Oh Won-taek snapped his fingers.
“And if he says he’s not going — do whatever it takes to get him there. The Special Floor is basically the Tower giving rewards away for free, so it’ll be worth his while too.”
“Yes sir! Understood!”
“Oh — Yun Jin-gi.”
“Sir!”
Yun Jin-gi paused and slowly set his phone face-down on the desk.
“Go ahead, sir.”
“It’s just……”
Oh Won-taek dry-washed his face before continuing.
“Enchanter Zhuge Qing…… has he said whether he’s entering the Special Floor?”
Zhuge Qing.
The pride of Korean Enchanters — or at least, he had been.
If what regular Awakened needed was levels, stats, and skills — what Enchanters needed was luck, business acumen, and innate manual dexterity.
A former petty pickpocket, he had Awakened as an Enchanter and outshone everyone around him almost immediately.
He seemed to have turned things around and was living fairly productively.
Until he opened his mouth and said:
Korea is too small a vessel for someone of my caliber.
The Awakened climbing Towers with the weight of responsibility on their shoulders — and the rankers among them.
The Enchanters who crafted the items to support them couldn’t be neglected either.
And the backdrop: Korea.
A country where the Association was, at that time, practicing its winner-takes-all funding model more aggressively than anywhere else in the world.
Naturally, Zhuge Qing had been a national asset, with enormous Association funding poured into him.
That the asset had turned into a liability — no one had seen that coming.
At first, Zhuge Qing had cooperated with the Association.
But as time passed, communication grew sparse — until his name finally resurfaced through Chinese news.
Exposing Korea’s unjust treatment of Enchanters!
Top Enchanter who had enough of Korea naturalizes abroad!
Naturalizing in faith in glorious China’s potential! Grateful to the great Chinese authorities for their welcome……
The articles came flooding out overnight.
Korea could not refute them.
What he’d exposed was the Association’s open secret — the system of concentrating support on whoever was ranked first.
He had benefited enormously from that very system, extracted everything he wanted from it, and then turned around to bite the hand that fed him.
The public cursed Zhuge Qing.
Called him a thief who’d siphoned off taxpayer support and run.
And cursed the Awakened Association even more.
For having helped make him into one.
The Association, with nothing to say in its defense, chose silence.
Managing public opinion quietly. Hoping a new incident would come along soon enough that this one would fade into the past — oh yes, that happened, didn’t it.
And it was in the process of fading, just about, right now.
But if Zhuge Qing entered the Chinese Special Floor this time around?
If he helped China place in the rankings?
That would be a disaster.
Just imagining it sent a cold ache through the back of his neck. His blood pressure was not going to thank him for this.
“No information has come through, but he’ll enter. China’s been going out of their way to poach talent from other countries specifically to move up in the Special Floor rankings.”
China currently held the second and third-ranked individual Awakened — and still couldn’t crack the Special Floor rankings.
The Tower’s stat-normalization system was the obstacle they hadn’t managed to overcome.
What they needed was skill power and gear power.
Gear power was why China had moved quickly to bring in Zhuge Qing.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“It would be stranger if he didn’t enter. From his perspective, naturalizing in China and showing us he’s thriving — this is the perfect stage for that.”
“……If China places high this time, it’s going to be quite a sight. The state of us.”
That arrogant, strutting man would absolutely do exactly that.
Oh Won-taek pressed his fingers against the space between his eyebrows.
“But you never know, sir. What if the rabbit appears in our Special Floor, and instead of China — it’s us that places?”
That would be wonderful.
Slot Korea firmly into the upper rankings.
Push China out of contention.
If that happened — Korea got stronger after Zhuge Qing left! Zhuge Qing had been poisoning Korea all along! — would be very easy lines to sell.
The thought alone opened something up in his chest.
Oh Won-taek lowered his voice and addressed his most prized employee.
“……Hey, Yun Jin-gi. Should we pray? Apparently if you desperately call for the rabbit on the Community, it shows up in your Tower……”
“I’ll pray with you, sir! Two people praying has to be more effective than one!”
Meanwhile, at that very moment.
Tower Floor 21.
To use the Elixir God skill, he needed two bottles each of multiple types of elixirs and potions — since the skill worked by drinking them one after another for stacked double-effect.
Which was why he’d intruded into someone’s Floor 21.
Floor 21. Middle ground. Just right.
Too low and good materials wouldn’t drop. Too high and gathering and synthesis success rates would fall.
He pulled up his inventory and reached for the pickaxe to start gathering in earnest when——
“Hewwo~.”
Everything went blue in an instant.
Ragcho had said she’d appear when he called.
But he hadn’t called yet. What was going on?
“I haven’t called you yet?”
“When the floor’s owner exits, the Tower naturally dissolves-nya. You still had a reward to collect, so you were moved here automatically-nya.”
“Oh. I see.”
So much for relaxed, uninterrupted gathering.
The gathering window, apparently, was only open until the floor’s owner defeated the boss.
“But you’re not telling me to collect my reward.”
“There’s no contribution at all-nya. No reward, and I can’t pull up the sales window either-nya.”
“So just barging in at random has this problem.”
Up until now he’d always done his research on the Community first before entering.
Looking for Awakened who were stuck mid-Tower.
It had been purely for easier contribution gains — and now he realized that was also the best way to maximize time inside the Tower.
“But Woo-joo-nim, you have the Eagle Eye skill-nya?”
Ragcho tilted her head slightly.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“If you use it on the Tower Intrude screen, you can see remaining time-nya.”
“Oh?”
“Floors with less time remaining are probably easier to earn contribution on than floors with a lot left-nya.”
Ragcho smiled softly.
But he couldn’t smile back.
Our Ragcho. A clever fool.
“You can’t use skills outside a Tower, though.”
He’d overlooked something so basic.
“Who says Tower intrusion has to happen from outside the Tower-nya?”
“Wait——”
He felt like something had knocked the wind out of him.
Our Ragcho. A proper genius.
He immediately pulled up the Tower Intrude screen and blinked twice.
And he could see it.
[Towers Currently Available for Intrusion] : Republic of Korea
[Floor 16] Heo Min-su [1:03:52]
[Floor 11] Woo Hye-jin [13:11]
[Floor 10] Yeom Geon-ju [34:02]
……
The remaining time really did appear next to each listing.
The last digits held still for a while between updates — so it only showed down to the minute, not the second.
“Ragcho.”
“Nya?”
“Thank you!”
“It’s nothing to make a fuss over-nya~.”
He could initiate Tower entry from inside a Tower.
Ragcho had shattered that assumption completely.
“Are you going somewhere else-nya?”
“Yeah. I need at least two bottles each of as many different elixir and potion types as I can get.”
“Do your best-nya! Ragcho is always cheering for Woo-joo-nim-nya!”
Ragcho raised both fuzzy little fists with conviction.
He didn’t bother holding back the smile.
He waved at her.
“Thanks! See you later!”