The Association had a main entrance, a rear entrance, and a staff entrance.
Most people used the main and rear entrances. Enchanters and Association staff used the staff entrance — that was the rule.
Seo I-an, evicted from the building at three o’clock when regular operations ended, stood outside thinking.
Kim Woo-joo would leave through the rear entrance, and Park Si-woo would leave through the staff entrance.
Meeting both of them was physically impossible.
She thought about it briefly, then strode purposefully toward the staff entrance.
She’d already exchanged numbers with Kim Woo-joo and arranged to meet tomorrow.
Right now she felt the more immediate need to deal with the person who had set her blood pressure soaring.
“Pulling that on me.”
She’d been grinding her teeth for a while when, at last, the figure she’d been waiting for appeared.
She’d been leaning against the wall near the rear of the building, one leg kicked out.
“Hey, Park Si-woo. Did you buy it?”
“I-an. You were offering 500,000, I heard?”
He turned the question around.
“What? He told you that?”
“I offered 600,000.”
Park Si-woo’s characteristic unhurried tone. Eyes crinkling at the corners. The unmistakable gleam of satisfaction behind them.
She was already starting to simmer just looking at him, and then——
“Ta-da~.”
“YOU ABSOLUTE ——!!”
He held up the special enhancement stone like a prize, and the sight of it sent her from simmering to full boil in an instant.
“Are you SERIOUS right now! You know I’ve been running myself into the ground trying to get my hands on that! It would’ve been infuriating enough if some random stranger bought it — but YOU?!”
Anyone buying it would have been aggravating. But Park Si-woo?
The betrayal hit Seo I-an in a completely different way. She shook her clenched fists and raised her voice.
“You offered 500,000, though — that’s cheap, for you. How high were you actually willing to go?”
“Nine hundred thousand TC. Three times the average, hard ceiling. Better if we finished under that. But the idiot——”
“I’ll take it off your hands for 900,000 TC.”
He held the special enhancement stone out toward her.
“You little — you just fleeced the new kid by 300,000 TC.”
She said it while criticizing him, but Seo I-an very obediently produced 900,000 TC from her inventory.
“I-an. But that person said they have a special enhancement stone fragment.”
“So?”
“You can only get those through an Enchanter’s gather skill.”
……But an Enchanter can’t output damage at that level.
Park Si-woo added the last part, thinking back to what he’d seen in the Special Floor.
Floor 24, someone else’s Tower. Orc Forest.
The moment he cleared the floor, he’d fled straight into Ragcho’s blue room.
He didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone else today.
He collected his reward quickly, scanned the sales window, found both useless, and closed them without regret.
Then looked at Ragcho.
“Woo-joo-nim seems a little low on energy today-nya.”
Ragcho looked up at him with worried eyes.
And the way those short, thick eyebrows drooped — even that was hazardous to the heart.
“I don’t just seem it. I actually am.”
Association errands since morning.
A TF team he’d suddenly been saddled with.
Team members he now needed to recruit.
Next month’s Special Floor season to prepare for.
And through all of that, he still needed to grow as fast as possible himself.
Too much to do.
Still.
“Ragcho, this Track skill is genuinely incredible though.”
The skill was incredible.
He’d used it on Floor 6 earlier, but hadn’t had a chance to tell Ragcho then.
With Oh Won-taek and Yun Jin-gi waiting outside, he could hardly sit in there chatting.
“Used together with Eagle Eye, it’d be perfect-nya!”
“Absolutely right!”
Eagle Eye to surface the red reverse scale, then Track applied to the bowgun shot.
Fire — and the result was always more than double damage.
Hitting the reverse scale gave a base 1.5x damage bonus.
And if he kept hitting the same spot again — there was probably additional damage stacking on top, though he could only speculate.
Either way, it had served him well just now in the supplementary damage role.
“But Ragcho.”
“Nya?”
“How come I never get debuffed?”
The debuff-cleanse potion Park Si-woo had given him.
He’d been told it was essential from Floor 20 onward, but he never seemed to need it past Floor 20.
“Only bosses can inflict debuffs-nya.”
“Then is the boss going easy on me? Maybe it thinks I’m a monster too because of the rabbit mask? In that case I should never take the mask off when I enter solo Towers in the future.”
A train of thought with distinctly predatory logic.
And the moment he finished speaking, he watched the sympathy in Ragcho’s eyes evaporate and be replaced by sheer disbelief.
The tail went rigid too.
“……Joking.”
“……Bosses apply something called ‘Target Focus’ based on contribution-nya.”
Ragcho continued with the explanation.
“Even a boss can feel who’s hitting it the hardest and most frequently — they’d register that person as the biggest threat, right-nya?”
“……Right.”
“That person gets Target Focus-nya. Which is why in a party, only the strongest member ends up taking the most hits from the boss-nya! It’s their instinct to go after the Focus target first-nya!”
So that was why he’d been able to stand back and watch other people fight bosses with such ease.
But.
“What does that have to do with debuffs?”
“Debuffs only apply to the person who has Target Focus-nya.”
“Oh. Nice.”
So in an intruded Tower, he’d never get debuffed.
Which made sense — Ragcho had said earlier that the maximum contribution a Hidden Party Member could receive was 50%.
Still, once he started climbing Floor 20 himself, the debuff risk would apply — so he’d keep the cleanse potions rather than sell or give them away.
Park Si-woo really had given him something genuinely useful.
A few days later.
The Republic of Korea was getting along just fine.
[Hyung! I heard you moved in yesterday! How’s the place?]
“Honestly? Better than I expected!”
He was currently in his new home.
The accommodation the Association had arranged.
A penthouse that felt like it might be 120 pyeong, easily.
He’d had the thought that you could probably play football in here.
He’d started with the flex of buying three robot vacuums because he had no confidence in cleaning it himself, followed by a new bed and TV.
Everything else had already been furnished — nothing left to buy.
[Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything you need!]
“Sure!”
He hung up after that and, with the boxes of clothes he hadn’t even begun to unpack sitting around him, collapsed onto the sofa and grabbed his own head.
The advance payment he’d already received.
The apartment he was lying in right now was one part of it. The sports car key sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room was another.
Not that he’d actually driven it yet.
Was he scared of getting behind the wheel again after a long gap?
No.
This was all just because he had no time.
“Ugh. Team members, how am I supposed to——”
Things in Korea had been fine these past few days, but things inside his head had not.
Seo I-an — his first choice for team recruitment, glowing at the top of the mental list — had suddenly gone completely silent after they were supposed to meet the day after his Association visit.
Called her phone: The subscriber you are calling is currently unavailable, please leave a message after the tone……
He’d moved to Hong Je-hun next.
Hong Je-hun had quietly left his number in a private comment on a community post, which made it easy.
They’d arranged to meet sometime next week.
And the rest of the team members?
Still working on it.
Going out personally through intrusion.
“Ugh…… I don’t want to go to Towers.”
Like students thinking ugh, I want to go home and office workers thinking ugh, I want to clock out ——
Lately he’d been catching himself breathing ugh, I don’t want to go to Towers like it was involuntary.
Understandable — high floors were exhausting to climb, and low floors had poor yield.
For reference: high floors were for talent scouting, and low floors were for making the elixirs he’d be distributing to those recruits in the Special Floor.
Stockpiling, essentially.
In truth, even without the TF team contract, he’d wanted to maintain the first-place Special Floor position.
He’d been watching how the international perception of Korea shifted from multiple angles — it was changing by the day.
Better for the country he was standing in to be called an advanced Awakened nation than a backward one.
“Still have to go though!”
But it had meant meeting more people, gaining experience from more floors. That much was helping him.
The element of it not quite being voluntary was a bit of a problem.
He pushed up from the sofa, pulled up the Tower Intrude screen, and picked up his phone to open the Awakened Community.
Because, as everyone knew, doing this gave him the illusion of being productive and a small sense of mental stability.
Like sitting at a desk with a textbook open while playing games on your phone. Same principle.
Either way — he was scrolling along when.
“Hm?”
A familiar username caught his eye.
And the post title was even more attention-grabbing.
[Title] Does anyone have a way to reach Awakened Seo I-an?
[Author] Park Si-woo
— 010-****-0000. Please get in touch.
He’d always thought this, but — did all Association staff get golden phone numbers?
Yun Jin-gi: 0123. Team Lead Oh Won-taek: 1111. Enchanter Park Si-woo: 0000.
He was marveling at phone numbers that lodged in your memory whether you wanted them to or not, when comments started pouring in.
└ [Anonymous55] did she break up with you
└ [Park Si-woo] Why would she break up with me?
└ [Anonymous55] you’re always glued to each other but suddenly you’re looking for her here?
└ [Park Si-woo] ㅠㅠ……
└ [Kim Ik-ryong] lmaooooo must be hard enough just getting her to like you but you made her cry
Instant conflagration.
He absorbed the raw power of Korea’s top Enchanter and pressed the back button.
……Come to think of it, was she not picking up the day after we met for the same reason?
Looking back at it, he hadn’t seen Seo I-an’s name in a while.
In the Tower Intrude screen he pulled up all the time.
“Tower intrude.”
[Towers Currently Available for Intrusion] : Republic of Korea
[Floor 11] Kim Min-ji
[Floor 9] Choi Jong-hun
[Floor 6] Hong Yun-gi
……
— Scroll sideways to browse overseas listings!
“Right, not here today either.”
Highest floor showing: 11.
Seo I-an wouldn’t be caught dead entering Floor 11.
That was below even what he’d bother with.
By the way — there was a feature he’d always been slightly nervous about and had been putting off.
The line at the very bottom of the Tower Intrude screen, sitting apart from everything else.
— Scroll sideways to browse overseas listings!
Overseas listings.
The reason he’d been avoiding it: even if he entered, the language barrier would make communication impossible.
But that wasn’t true anymore.
Until recently, I needed conversation to work as a wandering merchant and sell things. But not now, right? There’s the supplementary damage route — just hit the boss alongside someone without saying a word and collect contribution.
And if he was doing a first-time clear where supplementary damage wasn’t an option, and the language barrier made the encouragement effect impossible too — he could just shout exit and leave.
That was precisely the advantage of the Intrude trait.
His Tower-specific nerve, stronger now than it used to be, led him to tap the overseas listings for the first time in his life.
“Oh. Surprisingly user-friendly.”
The overseas Tower Intrude screen appeared — translated into Korean.
Strange in a number of ways.
But the strangest thing was the item at the very top, which immediately seized his attention.
[Towers Currently Available for Intrusion — Overseas]
[Foreign] Floor ??. Seo I-an.
……
Awakened-nim? When did you move to the section next door?