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Chapter 92
Chapter 92
The 20th Floor’s Bureau was quiet.
This was a peaceful world with few incidents.
The employees of the Bureau would clock in, take care of complaints, have a meal, and play chess or card games to kill time.
“I thought I’d get to do lots of fun stuff if I became a Ranker.”
Creak—
Howl, a newly appointed Ranker at the Bureau, mumbled while leaning back in his chair, “Boring work for a slave’s wage doesn’t change anywhere, does it.”
“It’s not completely a slave’s wage. Besides, we should be thankful that it’s a permanent, full-time position,” the coworker sitting opposite him said while moving a chess piece.
Tak—
If they didn’t have at least this, time felt like it would never move.
Howl scanned over the chessboard.
“Hmm… Let’s see…” he thought out loud for a brief moment. “I’ll—”
Bang, bang—!
Right before he was about to move a piece, someone started banging on the door.
“Who is it?”
Creak—
“Excuse me,” the guest that banged on the door barged in.
It was a mean-looking man with red hair.
Howl squinted while looking over at the man. “Horang?” he said.
It was one of the faces he saw a lot after being appointed on the 20th Floor.
The regulars fell into one of two groups. They were either serious criminals, or they had such a reliable sponsor that they could walk in and out of the Bureau like it was their house.
Horang was someone that fell within both groups.
“Why are you here? Did you cause trouble again?” asked Howl.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then why did you come here? Everyone’s acting carefully because things are serious right now.”
Horang walked over to the sofa set the two were sitting at, and he sat down without asking before answering, “I found two rabbits.”
“Rabbits? Which ones are we talking about?”
“Giants and Kim YuWon.”
“What?” Howl’s eyes widened.
He had been observing the Giants’ movements. And now YuWon was with them.
“Well, actually there are two Giants, so I guess I should say there are three rabbits. Anyway, some pretty dangerous guys have met up,” Horang said.
He then said with a creepy smile, “And we at Olympus happened to discover them.”
Horang was technically not part of Olympus. Instead, he was an executive of the Crimson Wolf Guild, a somewhat famous guild on the middle floors. But there were rumors that a bigshot in Olympus was backing him.
“Because of that, I’ll need some assistance,” Horang said.
This wasn’t a request one would normally ask the Bureau, asking for support to get some players.
The problem here, though, was that Howl and the other Rankers in the Bureau didn’t have a problem with him making a request to hunt players.
“But he only just arrived on the 20th Floor.”
“No. You shouldn’t judge YuWon by what floor he’s on. I saw him fight in the Grand Martial Arts Tournament, and he was no joke.”
“You think?”
“I think Hargaan did lower his guard at the end, but the guy still knocked him out with a single punch.”
“I guess you have a point.”
“Also, it’ll be hard with two Giants accompanying him. Not to mention, he might have the backing of the Heavenly Demonic Cult…”
They two had a short debate about combat strength, calculating the variables that were YuWon and the Heavenly Demonic Cult.
“Hmm…”
“I guess as long as we can get him…”
“We’d be promoted at least one rank.”
The Rankers spoke with smiles on their faces.
And thus, a secret talk started in the tiny room at the Bureau.
* * *
* * *
Adam was basically a small city.
The trunk and branches that rose into the sky were the homes of Giants.
An indestructible tree.
With the exception of High Rankers on the level of the “Big Three” gods of Olympus or the Ruyi Jingu of Son OhGong, one couldn’t even scratch Adam.
Naturally, that meant YuWon couldn’t harm the tree with his current abilities.
‘I can go buck wild.’
Step—
YWon got on top of a branch of Adam.
The floor was hard, and there was far more than sufficient space for him to go wild.
Fwoosh—
Flicker, flicker—
Above YuWon’s head, hundreds of fist-sized flames of [Holy Fire] appeared.
Whoosh—!
The [Holy Fire] burned violently, having now escaped YuWon’s control. They’d soon start falling randomly towards the ground.
Phew—
YuWon let out a deep breath as his eyes changed.
[Cinder Eyes reads the path.]
Among the many abilities of [Cinder Eyes,] one of the main ones was reading ‘paths.’
There were many kinds of paths, but a major one was ‘evasion.’ By using this ability, YuWon could see where the fire would fall, read the path, and move a few beats faster.
‘This is making me dizzy.’
It had been quite some time since he had started using [Cinder Eyes,] but whenever he used it, he still felt the overload. Especially at times like this when he was reading an especially difficult path to evade.
Beeeeep—
His brain started to overload, but this still wasn’t enough for him to read the paths of a hundred flames.
[Activating Sensory Field.]
[Checking the data of all objects and life forms within a 50m radius.]
[Perception increases by 50%.]
[Sensory Field.] Among the new skills YuWon obtained, it was the skill he was most familiar with. It was similar to [Cinder Eyes,] but it was much more effective. This wasn’t because [Sensory Field] was a better skill, it was simply because he was much more familiar with it.
YuWon closed his eyes.
Fwoosh—
YuWon could feel the fires that had escaped his control burning ferociously. The sensation of which direction they were going to fall towards and how powerful they were tingled over his skin.
That was the power of [Sensory Field.]
Within the field, YuWon’s senses multiplied manyfold.
He opened his eyes, and his vision through [Cinder Eyes] became imbued with the power of [Sensory Field.]
Fwoosh—!
YuWon’s red eyes opened wide.
There was only a single thought running through YuWon’s mind.
‘So, the world can look this clear.’
He saw where each flame was going to move and how he should move himself. Everything was visibly clear.
Whoosh—
The balls of fire finally started to fall.
One by one, the flames of [Holy Fire] began to rain down. In just a few seconds, they all started descending together.
Boom, kaboom—!
Fwoosh—!
The fires fell on a branch of Adam, and the flames rose up. That branch became tinged in the purple light of the flames.
But among that inferno, a small space no bigger than one meter wide opened up.
In the sole space where there was no fire, YuWon landed.
Phew—
He managed to evade everything he saw. In fact, YuWon thought it might have been possible to dodge everything even with his eyes closed.
He had started practicing with [Sensory Field] consistently as soon as he got it, and he observed that the proficiency was growing faster than normal.
‘The two skills synergize well like I thought they would.’
The combined effects of the two skills were multiple times greater than their sole effects, but the downside was that, as effective as it was, it was also that much more taxing.
‘My brain can’t keep up with the sensory information.’
Expanded vision as well as other senses overloaded the brain greatly.
He had a lot of experience using [Sensory Field,] but [Cinder Eyes] was a relatively newer skill for him, even though in this life, he had been substituting [Sensory Field] with [Cinder Eyes.]
Now he had both skills and the ability to use them in tandem, but that meant an even greater load on his brain.
‘I’ll need some practice.’
He decided he’d likely be busy with this for a while.
“Whoa. What’s this? You were here?” an exaggerated voice suddenly cut in.
YuWon turned his head and noticed a familiar face.
“Huh? It’s a human?”
“What’s a human doing here?”
“Didn’t you hear? Elder Urpha gave him permission to stay.”
“The Elder did that?”
“Still, to let a human…”
Kwant and four other Giants spoke to each other.
They were around the size of Buar and Nwiar, meaning they were young Giants.
“Is Kim YuWon really that amazing?”
“I don’t know. I only ever heard the humors.”
“So what? It’s not like he’s a Ranker. He’s only a guy that just got to the 20th Floor.”
“He was still very impressive in the latest Grand Martial Arts Tournament.”
The Giants whispered amongst themselves as they followed Kwant and approached Yuwon.
Stomp, stomp—
They might have been young, but they were still Giants. And five of them at that.
It was an intimidating sight, seeing them all approach someone at once.
Kwant led the pack.
“So we meet again,” he said with a sinister smile. “And would you look at that? That son of a bitch Buar isn’t here,”
With an intimidating face and stature, Kwant was seriously picking a fight against YuWon.
It might have been because he had met Urpha yesterday, but Kwant now looked cute to YuWon by comparison.
Kwant’s gang tried to stop him.
“Hey. I think you’re going too far with the Elder’s guest…”
“I’m sure he had a reason for calling him here…”
“So what?” Kwant growled. “All humans are enemies. Every single one of them.”
YuWon let out a laugh. It was like seeing kids that wouldn’t listen to their teacher. Though Urpha was more like a principle in this metaphor.
“He’s laughing?”
“What’s up with him?”
“Is he trying to hurt our pride?”
YuWon realized that they really were just big kids, seeing how easily they were provoked by some simple laughter.
“I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in right now…” Kwant threatened YuWon while reaching his hand out to him.
The size of Kwant’s palm was bigger than YuWon’s head.
YuWon also reached his hand out to Kwant.
Clench—
The two grabbed each others’ hands.
Squeeze—
‘No way. Is this guy…’ Kwant couldn’t believe that YuWon had grabbed his hand. ‘… Trying to challenge a Giant in strength when he’s only a human?’
Kwant had heard plenty about YuWon’s skills. He was also well aware that he had been going around topping all the test rankings and that he was the winner of the Grand Martial Arts Tournament, which proved that he was the strongest among the players in the lower floors.
But setting all that aside, Giants were the greatest when it came to physical strength. That was the power of genetics.
‘I’m going to crush you,’ Kwant thought as he squeezed YuWon’s hand.
But…
“Kgh…”
The one that ended up feeling pain was Kwant.
Crack, crack—
“Kugh!”
His fingers started to twist, and bones started to break.
‘What’s going on…?’ He wondered.
Kwant tried to strengthen his grip through the pain, but nothing changed.
Crack, crack—
“Kuaaaagh!!”
Thud—
With his hand crushed and broken, Kwant fell to his knees in pain. He tried to pull back his hand, but it wouldn’t budge.
“M-My hand! My hand!”
Kwant tried to smack YuWon with his other hand while screaming in pain. It was unsightly compared to how prideful he was acting just a moment ago.
“W-What the…?”
“Did Kwant just lose in strength?”
“Against a human?”
In terms of strength, there was no race that could beat the Giants in the Tower.
Of course, there were plenty of humans that were as strong as Giants with enough stats and levels, but most of them were Rankers.
Kwant was a player that had reached a much higher floor than YuWon.
“There’s more than just five of you guys, right?” YuWon asked.Adam was one of the central residences of the Giants. There were likely tens of thousands of Giants living inside this tree.
With more than enough time left until the start of the test, YuWon smirked, having come up with a good idea.
“Go call all your friends,” he said. “I’ll play as much as you guys want.”
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