Junseok headed straight to the ravaged hill where the goblin army had been.
His goal was to find the weapons they’d wielded.
As expected, there wasn’t much worth looting.
That was fine.
The magic stones from these goblins wouldn’t even fetch a million won anyway.
What he was after were their weapon-type equipment.
He needed to test whether they could be retrieved from his inventory.
“Man, that was some serious aftermath.”
Just summoning the holy sword in midair had caused a massive shockwave.
But slamming it vertically into the ground?
Honestly, I did it in the heat of the moment, but I should never do that again.
Recalling the sensation of his arms being torn off, Junseok touched his fully regenerated limbs.
Both arms and legs were perfectly restored, but the memory made him gag, and he retched.
“Urgh!”
Lowering his head, he spotted something glinting in the dirt—a goblin’s arrowhead.
Looking closer, he saw various pieces of equipment buried in the rubble.
Anything intact?
Well, there was one thing.
A single sword, utterly unapproachable—the Sword God’s blade.
The hill was completely gone, replaced by a crater with the sword embedded at its center.
Ding!
<Warning!>
A warning window popped up, followed by some incomprehensible message.
Seriously?
He’d only glanced at it from a distance, and it still triggered a warning. It was absurd.
“Honestly, I was hoping the Skill Breakthrough Voucher would unlock something like remote item retrieval.”
His ability had a critical flaw.
Sure, a single click could devastate an entire floor, but the holy sword summon?
Once I use it, there’s no way to retrieve it.
For now, that wasn’t an issue.
The real problem was preparing for the shockwave.
But things change in the mid-floors.
Higher floors introduced complex stages, like in a game.
To reach the boss, you had to pass multiple trials and mid-bosses.
Some floors were even separated by portals.
While the holy sword might auto-return in such cases, that wasn’t guaranteed.
There’s more than one or two things to fix.
“It’s been in my inventory so long. Can’t it just count as mine now?”
Technically, it was his.
The issue was he couldn’t use it freely. Otherwise, Yoo Junhyuk, the Sword God yelling from his chest, wouldn’t be possible.
Like right now.
“You fool! Don’t even dream of it! Even the art of Sword Unity has levels, and you think you can just claim the pinnacle for free?”
Junseok ignored him with one ear, focusing on picking up arrowheads and broken swords.
The moment he touched an arrowhead, it turned into light particles, vanishing into his inventory with a srrrk.
His gaze shifted to a broken scrap sword nearby.
“Appraise.”
The rank was obvious, but he needed to confirm if it was classified as a weapon to test his new skill’s potential.
Item Name: Goblin’s Broken Scrap Sword (Unranked)
Category: Equipment – Weapon
Description: A sword made of scrap metal even a junkyard wouldn’t take. (Destroyed)
Junseok collected the broken swords into his inventory, changing the subject.
“What kind of enemies are in the upper floors that I’d need to swing this sword?”
Honestly, it was daunting. Climbing the Suseo Magic Tower, wielding a sword he couldn’t even approach, against enemies that were supposedly formidable?
But Yoo Junhyuk responded firmly.
“No, that’s not it.”
“What?”
“Of course, the upper-floor enemies are formidable, but with a sword like that… it’d cut through them in one stroke.”
“Oh.”
“Naturally, that sword wasn’t originally that powerful. It’s a mythic-grade blade imbued with me.”
Fair point.
It was like enchanting a mythic-grade item or embedding a gem.
A sword infused with the strongest player to ever clear the 100th floor.
“Its equip level shows as 999, but it’s not really 999.”
In other words, it was simply unusable.
Fighting with a sword that forbade even approaching it was ridiculous to begin with.
And before even discussing that, Junseok hadn’t even known about the “Transcendent” rank.
An item rank never before discovered.
From what he’d seen before his regression and heard on Player Inside, the highest known item rank was “Mythic.”
But that was only the highest discovered so far.
There was no rule saying there couldn’t be items above Mythic.
If even Yoo Junhyuk, the Sword God, didn’t know about Transcendent-grade items…
It was likely the first of its kind in Korea.
Even if such an item existed abroad, it’d be classified as top secret, so there’d be no way to know.
Mythic-grade items were already something rankers dreamed of possessing.
Some single-digit rankers didn’t even have one.
I just felt the power of a Unique-grade item.
A single Unique-grade potion had revived him from near death, with both arms torn off and unconscious.
Fully restored, hands and feet intact.
Korea’s first Transcendent-grade item owner.
Who?
Me.
His lips twitched into a smirk.
But honestly, he couldn’t call himself a true owner yet.
He couldn’t keep enduring that pain and using a Unique-grade potion for every Tower clear.
Junseok diligently scoured the ground, collecting a few more arrowheads and broken scrap swords.
“Honestly, I was hoping the Skill Breakthrough Voucher would unlock remote item retrieval.”
It was disappointing.
He’d wanted an ability where distant items would whoosh into his inventory, like a magnet function in some games.
But no such luck.
Multiple summons, huh?
If he’d gotten remote item retrieval, he could’ve spammed unlimited holy sword slams.
Plus, it might’ve made summoning the sword in reality possible.
Summoning it in reality was theoretically feasible, but the damage would be catastrophic, and there’d be no way to retrieve it.
It’d just create a real-world legend of King Arthur.
But if he could summon and retrieve it, he’d feel a lot more secure.
Firepower?
It’d surpass most modern missiles.
With stealth capabilities to boot.
An instant-launch stealth missile, essentially.
Whether Yoo Junhyuk knew of Junseok’s fantasies about summoning the sword in reality, he was busy placating him.
“Everything depends on your mindset. Abilities are meant to be utilized.”
“But there’s a limit to being F-rank, isn’t there?”
Junseok kept bending down, picking up scrap swords and broken arrowheads.
The moment they touched his hand, they vanished into his inventory with a srrrk.
Thinking about it, it made sense.
A Transcendent-grade holy sword bound to his inventory.
An item no one could use.
“Even I, called the Sword God, using that item is another matter. To be clear, no one can use it. Yet you’re using it to clear the Tower. Isn’t that enough?”
A sword no one could wield.
Literally Excalibur.
He’d been making good use of its “remote summon” trait.
Of course, there were still a couple of things to address.
The biggest was surviving the massive shockwave.
Another was finding a way to generate income.
The holy sword summon was powerful, but too powerful—destroying monster byproducts and magic stones, his main sources of income.
Even if he scraped together every drop from this goblin army, the magic stones were so meager they wouldn’t amount to much.
Would gathering everything fetch a million won a day?
But there were ways around it.
Higher floors offered guaranteed rewards just for clearing them, like hidden rewards automatically added to the inventory.
Beyond the 15th floor, that was standard.
And one critical flaw—experience points, or rather, leveling up.
No matter how much physical training a player did in reality, their level auto-adjusted upon entering the Tower.
A player’s level heavily influenced item equipping, consumable use, combat, and survival.
The inability to gain experience was a flaw he might now be able to address.
“Your item summoning ability is improving,” Yoo Junhyuk remarked, evaluating his skill usage.
He was likely referring to Junseok’s directional summoning with added velocity, despite nearly dying from it.
“Not bad skill usage. The most important thing for a player is to utilize their ability 200%, 300%. Keep refining it.”
Yoo Junhyuk rarely gave praise, even when training other players for the Incheon Tower conquest.
So this wasn’t empty flattery.
Watching from within, Yoo Junhyuk had quickly discerned it.
His judgment and grit are extraordinary. Or he’s just a fool.
At first, he thought it was reckless ignorance.
Who else would summon the holy sword vertically like that?
Yet Junseok had brushed it off and stood up as if he’d anticipated it.
What shocked Yoo Junhyuk most was that Junseok hadn’t spit out the potion in his mouth.
The sensation of his arms being torn off by the shockwave—pain no untrained person could endure without fainting from shock.
Yet he didn’t spit out the potion.
Instead, he clenched his jaw, calmly swallowing it bit by bit.
Splitting the potion’s regenerative effects was the best possible action
.
This guy.
Among the F-rank players Yoo Junhyuk had seen, Junseok had the most remarkable talent.
“But I’m banning that insane stunt until you develop a technique to handle the shockwave.”
“I wouldn’t do it again even if you told me to.”
Go through that pain again? No way.
Junseok sensed five or six swords and arrowheads in his inventory and stood by a tree.
Designating the items for multiple summons, he called them forward.
Whoosh!
The arrowheads and broken iron swords flew and embedded themselves in the target tree.
“Whoa!”
It worked?
Just by summoning them in midair with a set direction, the inventory’s weapons shot forward.
“You did it, you rascal! You’ve mastered the Sword Control Art!”
Yoo Junhyuk’s heartfelt praise rang out, but problems remained.
“Sword Control Art… not quite.”
If there were a missile-like fish that flew headfirst to its death, that’d be a fitting comparison.
It was single-use, and retrieving them required getting close—both critical flaws.
“Will killing enemies with multiple summons give experience?”
Despite breaking the 5th floor record, his level remained stuck at 5.
Yoo Junhyuk, a veteran of Tower climbing, answered without hesitation.
“Of course, it will.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If you pull a bow from your bag and shoot an arrow to kill, you get experience, right?”
“It’s considered an extension of your body since it’s ‘equippable.’ But your level is so low… the mid-floors are going to be tough.”
“Is it the same thing?”
If so, it made sense.
It wasn’t much different from using a thrown weapon.
“Now do you understand a bit how profound the art of Sword Unity is?”
“Not really interested in that.”
“How could a mere porter comprehend the Sword God’s ideals? I get it.”
While testing various things, 30 minutes passed, and the return notification appeared.
[Automatic return initiated.]
Honestly, it was a satisfying climb.
If he filled his inventory with good items and threw them…
He could unleash attacks that’d make most magic look like child’s play.
And above all, it’d look cool.
Hundreds, thousands of cold weapons surging from above, raining down on enemies.
“Heh heh heh.”
Unable to hold back his laughter, Yoo Junhyuk shivered as if creeped out.
“Already succumbing to the madness of a climber…”
With Yoo Junhyuk’s concern as the final note, Junseok turned into light and returned to reality.
Whoosh…!
As he prepared to head back to his container home, someone was waiting—Kang Jinsu, the Player Management Office Team Leader, somehow knowing exactly when to show up.
He’d flown by helicopter from the Sejong office to the refugee village in southeastern Seoul.
Bowing so low his head nearly touched his knees, he spoke.
“Mr. Choi Junseok, I’m deeply sorry. I severely underestimated you.”
Junseok had suspected as much when the hidden reward came in, but in just over 30 minutes, the outside world had already turned upside down.
“I sincerely apologize for my arrogance in front of you.”
Junseok nodded silently for now.
But he’d make sure to get what he could.
“Ahem… so.”
Kang’s shoulders twitched as he kept his head bowed.
“These days, apologies come empty-handed? Ahem!”
Kang straightened up with a bright business smile.
“Of course not. I’ll escort you to the Player Management Office’s VIP shop immediately.”
“Fine for me, but what about my family?”
“You mean the apartment move? We’ve already called a moving company for first thing in the morning.”
“About that.”
Kang’s lips trembled slightly, as if sensing unease.
“Is there a unit available next to the apartment we’re moving into?”
“I’ll… check.”
“Check?”
Kang’s eyes widened, as if chilled by Junseok’s words.
“I thought you’d naturally provide a separate place for my family and one for me. I can’t always enter the Tower from outside my house, right?”
“Well… even for the Management Office—”
Junseok let out a loud sigh.
Turning halfway, he continued.
“Oh, so it was just empty apologies. Typical Korean bureaucracy…”
“We’ll prepare it immediately!”
Junseok’s lips curved into a sly grin.
Good. He’s ready to negotiate.
Nodding with satisfaction, he said, “Alright. Take me to that VIP shop or whatever.”
“Well… the shop opens during the day.”
Junseok sighed again.
“There’s a giant sinkhole about to open in Seoul, and you’re worried about work-life balance?”
“I’ll have it opened immediately.”
Not Gate of Babylon… but Ten Thousand Flower Rain? Sword Control Art? Whatever it was.
It was time to find ammunition for his new technique.
And some good ones at that.