Chapter 59: The Fruit of Tower Climbing (2)

Lee Jiyu’s house was the kind that made your jaw drop the moment you saw it.

A top-floor rooftop penthouse apartment with a ceiling height you only ever saw in dramas.

This wasn’t just a billion-won place. 

At a glance, it looked roughly twice the price of the one Choi Junseok had just seen.

What was the term again?

Premium penthouse?

The highest floor of a luxury apartment building. 

A massive transparent window that seemed to touch the sky, offering an unobstructed view. 

You could see the entire Seoul skyline and even the tops of other high-rise buildings below; an almost surreal sight.

Compared to the wall-to-wall windows of the 6-billion-won unit he’d seen earlier, this place had part of the ceiling made of glass too. 

It literally felt like a house built in the sky.

Choi Junseok’s mouth fell open in pure awe.

“Wow… this is insane.”

Of course there were stairs leading up half a floor inside, and an obviously expensive chandelier hung from the soaring ceiling.

Lee Jiyu smirked, clearly enjoying Choi Junseok’s reaction.

“Feel honored. Excluding summoned beings, you’re the first man to ever step foot in my house.”

“Then including summoned beings, I’m still the first, aren’t I?”

“…Now that you mention it, yes. Aside from the housekeeping staff.”

She said the housekeeping contract had been terminated before she moved into the Player Management Office settlement.

“Don’t you think it’s a waste never inviting anyone to a place like this?”

She hesitated for a moment before answering.

“I can see people outside… why would I need to bring them here?”

Choi Junseok, Lee Nayeon, and Song Hana all looked around in unison and began exploring every corner.

Lee Jiyu, oddly excited by their reactions, proudly showed off different parts of the house.

She casually mentioned that a single painting on the wall was worth 1.3 billion won.

As he toured her home, Choi Junseok felt a slight pang of emptiness.

This was exactly the kind of place he had wanted.

But Seoul real estate wouldn’t allow a mere 6 billion won to buy a penthouse straight out of a drama.

“My 6-billion-won ultra-luxury apartment suddenly feels shabby.”

“Don’t be too jealous. Even among rankers, I’m the only one who made this much from business… Honestly, you can’t earn this kind of money just by climbing the tower.”

It was true.

The money earned from climbing was in the hundreds of millions per year, but even a billion-won annual income couldn’t buy a place like this.

The terror of unavoidable taxes was something Choi Junseok had already felt deep in his bones in less than a month of climbing.

And since the funds were government-related, there was literally no way to dodge them.

She led Song Hana and Lee Nayeon to their rooms and assigned them places to stay.

“But… you have guest rooms ready, yet you’ve never had a guest?”

“…”

Lee Jiyu flinched as if stung.

“I-I just had extra rooms and thought ‘what if,’ so I called them guest rooms, that’s all…!”

Hmm…

At Choi Junseok’s suspicious smile, she quickly turned her gaze away.

Guest rooms. Two of them, sparsely furnished with only a bed and bedding.

It felt like he’d glimpsed a certain emptiness in her life.

She had entered the tower in her late teens, before the Incheon Magic Tower even appeared, and had been a veteran player for years.

In an interview, she once said her first awakening was in her mid-teens.

From then on, her parents had raised her strictly as a player: training, government-sponsored player development programs.

Naturally, she quit school and drifted away from friends.

She never had a normal life in the human world.

It was only natural that friendships would fade.

Anyone she grew close to probably died.

The average life expectancy of players who climb past the middle floors is shockingly less than one year.

Anyone she formed attachments to would either die within months or remain distant as subordinates or employees.

Thanks to that career, level, and strength, she became the sole record holder for the fastest solo clear of the 1st floor of the Suseo Magic Tower and claimed the hidden reward.

Using the fame and capital gained from climbing, she launched the Super Sonic brand and became a hugely successful entrepreneur in one leap.

It was obvious why she had no peers she could truly call friends.

At the same time, Choi Junseok thought he understood why she showed him this strange, almost human warmth and interest.

It’s not just because I’m the Function.

She must have been glad to meet a rare player in their early twenties who could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her.

Above all, Choi Junseok didn’t treat her with the same awe or nervousness others did.

“You can use this room, Junseok-ssi.”

Her tone had suddenly turned a little cold.

When she opened the door and turned on the light, a huge room came into view.

It looked less like a bedroom and more like a study.

It was subtly different from the rooms given to Song Hana and Lee Nayeon.

It felt like someone had lived here until very recently.

“This is the one you mentioned earlier…”

“Yes. Until just a few weeks ago, this was the room of my former teammate, the S-rank summoned being Choi Byeongryeol.”

The room was neatly organized. Unusually, there were a lot of books. Since summoned beings don’t need sleep, he must have spent his waking hours reading.

Didn’t Lee Nayeon also like getting information about the world through TV? It seemed like a similar desire.

Seeing there was no bed in the large room, Choi Junseok asked,

“Where’s the bed?”

“You expected a bed too? I’ll give you a blanket and pillow; just sleep on the floor.”

“…?”

Song Hana immediately shot her hand up.

“Then sleep with me!”

Lee Jiyu and Lee Nayeon both whipped their heads toward Choi Junseok and Song Hana in shock.

“What the… you two are already at that stage?”

The moment Lee Jiyu looked at Choi Junseok like he was a disgusting insect,

Choi Junseok waved his hands frantically and stepped back.

“W-what kind of filthy imagination is that? Absolutely not!”

“If it’s absolutely not, just say no; why are you stuttering?”

“Because you suddenly shocked me…”

Song Hana tilted her head innocently as if she’d done nothing wrong.

Lee Nayeon’s face turned slightly red as she quickly left the room.

“What the… why is Nayeon-ssi blushing and leaving? Don’t tell me…”

Lee Jiyu glared at Choi Junseok with genuine disgust, but he drew a firm line.

“We had separate rooms in the settlement too, and before that in the government-provided house. Please don’t misunderstand.”

He would’ve felt less wronged if something had actually happened. 

But he hadn’t even been near anything inappropriate.

He was, after all, a healthy young man in his twenties.

Of course it wasn’t easy to remain completely indifferent while living with two stunning women like Lee Nayeon and Song Hana.

Some guys would lose self-control and try to take advantage of the summoner-summoned relationship, but Choi Junseok was different.

Of course he wasn’t uninterested in them romantically.

He simply kept the line he had to keep.

He saw them as comrades climbing the tower together. 

His goal was to make sure nothing interfered with that climb.

And above all, he had known them for barely over a month. 

They’d been together like a training camp, but it still wasn’t that long.

“You know we’ve only been a team for less than a month, right?”

“…Has it really only been that short?”

“Too much has happened, but yes.”

Now that he thought about it, it was true.

A life he couldn’t have dreamed of just a month ago.

A month? Barely more than two weeks had passed.

From a container box to a luxury apartment in just over two weeks.

And now he stood before the 30th floor of the tower.

“So how exactly do you plan to earn 500 million won in three days? Even I would struggle if someone told me to make 500 million in three days.”

“Well, the tower always has the answer. From the 31st to 35th floors, they’re the martial artist floors, right?”

“…Right.”

They were floors that left a rather unpleasant taste.

While most floors featured obvious monster-shaped enemies, starting from the 31st floor, enemies took human form. 

Martial artists or swordsmen reminiscent of wuxia novels appeared, sometimes in groups, forcing players to experience killing humans.

Because of that discomfort, the 30s floors were ones many players actively avoided.

But not for Choi Junseok.

No matter how human they looked, they weren’t real people; just creations the tower repeatedly spawned.

There was no reason he couldn’t kill them.

It might seem like losing a bit of humanity, but Choi Junseok wasn’t that soft.

“On the other hand, there are people who repeatedly farm the early-to-mid 30s. Even the junk drops from human-type monsters are useful since they’re things humans used.”

“Even farming there repeatedly for three days, 500 million is tough. It’s not like exchangeable items pour out…”

“It’ll be fine.”

“…How can you be so sure?”

Lee Jiyu thought he was this confident because he hadn’t yet tasted the bitterness of the middle floors.

“Then I’ll just quickly go touch the 29th floor.”

“…”

Lee Jiyu stared at Choi Junseok with an expression that said she had lost all words. 

The 29th floor, “quickly”?

It was anything but.

Even veteran raid parties that repeatedly cleared the 29th floor occasionally suffered casualties.

That was how unforgiving it was.

The 30th floor was on another level. 

Even major guilds formed carefully coordinated parties with top rankers and still expected deaths as part of the plan.

Yet Choi Junseok immediately turned into a beam of light and entered the 29th floor alone.

Lee Jiyu shook her head at his reckless confidence and looked around the room of her former comrade for the first time in a while.

Everything remained exactly as Choi Byeongryeol had left it, untouched, just as she had ordered.

“It really has been a while since I came in here…”

Choi Byeongryeol had somehow sensed his own disappearance and foreseen Choi Junseok’s arrival.

And at that time, he had asked her not to grieve for him and to help that man clear the Suseo Magic Tower.

It had been like a final will.

Though it had only been a little over 100 days, he was someone she had grown closer to than anyone else.

As she gently touched the book with Choi Byeongryeol’s bookmark still in it,

she felt a presence behind her.

A soft shimmer of light gathered and formed Choi Junseok’s shape.

Shocked, she turned around and gaped.

“…Already?”