The Zone 3 boss plummeted to the ground, headless.

Watching the spectacle from the opposite side of the Security Corps, the Black Star Society climbers were just as shaken.

The ones who had been at the scene when Wang Kai died, in particular, suddenly understood.

Ah. Wang Kai really did have no choice but to die.

What human could possibly withstand something that one-shot a Zone 3 boss?

‘This makes no sense…’

Li Zeyan, the Hard difficulty Floor 14 climber who now stood as the Black Star Society’s public face.

Li Zeyan swallowed dryly.

He had heard countless accounts of how Wang Kai died, but even after witnessing it with his own eyes just now, he couldn’t comprehend how a skill that broken could exist.

And it was clearly a Magic Type skill from the look of it, yet the user showed no sign of Mental Concentration whatsoever…

Clap, clap, clap…

The silence broke under the sound of applause.

Ye Tianwei, who had been watching from the front, had suddenly begun clapping quietly.

Li Zeyan and the rest of the Black Star Society climbers exchanged glances and joined in.

With his back still turned, Ye Tianwei wore a flushed smile as he spoke.

“What a rare sight that was. Let’s head back.”

*

The message announcing the first-clear reward popped up.

The boss’s corpse soon scattered, drifting away like ash.

Unlike regular monsters, Zone Bosses didn’t leave any harvestable byproducts, was that how it went?

Well, not that I would have bothered collecting them even if they did.

“So easy.”

The boss fight had ended a lot more anticlimactically than I’d expected.

[1:51]

I checked the timer on the Warp Device.

No need to cancel the activation.

Now that the boss was down, I could just warp straight to Zone 0.

I glanced around at both sides.

The Security Corps and the Black Star Society were both watching me from a distance.

The combined weight of all those stares felt suffocating, so I activated Concealment.

[0:01]

The Warp Device’s timer ran out.

I warped to Zone 0.

I went straight to the portal to check my rewards and stepped into the Reward Room.

The rewards I’d received for taking down the boss were the first-clear reward, given only to one person, and the standard reward, given to each individual. The message had said as much.

The one I was excited about was the first-clear reward.

Now then… let’s see what the Zone 3 boss reward turned out to be.

“…A bracelet?”

It was a bracelet, for one.

I picked up the bracelet, made of what looked like red scale-like material.

[Flame Scale Bracelet]

A bracelet imbued with the power of the Red Wyvern. Increases the power of fire-type skills by 70%.

A simple, clear description.

And the effect was simply, clearly amazing.

Whoa… A 70% damage boost?

Given that my main skill was Flame Strike, the effect was incredibly good.

Plus there was Scorching Zone too.

‘It just so happens to land perfectly on fire attribute.’

I mean, what would I have done if it’d come out as some electric-attribute power boost when I don’t even have a single electric skill?

Thank goodness Zone 3 was based on a lava theme.

Rather than bothering to put it in Subspace, I slipped the bracelet on next to Diul’s bracelet on the same wrist.

I’d head back out and try the effect right away.

And then… the standard reward, next.

Going by the color, it was a rare-grade skill stone.

Hoping it would be a Magic Type skill, I checked the skill information.

[Skill: Fire-Type Low-Tier Mastery (Rare+)]

Organizes and enhances fire-type magic. Fire-type magic power increases by 10%, willpower cost decreases by 10%, cooldown decreases by 10%. If a higher-tier mastery skill exists, the effects do not stack and only the higher-tier skill’s effects apply.

Classification: Magic Type (Passive)

Willpower Cost: None

Cooldown: None

“Oh…?”

Huh?

Something I never could have imagined had popped up.

A Passive Magic Type.

Then again, if Physical Type had passives, there was no rule saying Magic Type couldn’t.

But I had never even heard of a Magic Type passive until now… Was it something special because it was a boss reward?

‘And the effect is pretty… good?’

Skill power increase, willpower cost reduction, cooldown reduction.

A full triple-set effect!

Willpower didn’t really matter to me, but the power and cooldown reductions were really nice. Especially the cooldown.

Sure, it was only 10%, not a huge number… but skills could be enhanced, right?

And thankfully this one was also fire-type.

I hadn’t expected much from the standard reward, but what came out was better than I’d hoped.

[‘Skill: Fire-Type Low-Tier Mastery (Rare+)’ has been acquired.]

Anyway, would the power-increase effects on the bracelet and skill stack multiplicatively? I hoped so.

Done checking my rewards, I returned to Floor 5.

With the Zone 3 boss down, Zone 4 should have opened too…

[Zone 1 (39.1%)]

[Zone 2 (20.5%)]

[Zone 3 (0%)]

[Zone 4 (0%)]

I checked the Boss Gauges, and a Zone 4 entry had appeared.

I decided to head straight to Zone 4 to test how much my fire skills had been boosted.

I hopped on Plli and rode all the way up to the entrance of Zone 4.

Whoooosh!

The moment I crossed the boundary, the air shifted from blistering heat to bitter cold.

A frozen land where icy gusts howled and slashed through the air.

The clothes I was wearing were on the thin side, but at my level, things like heat and cold barely registered.

“Where you at, monsters.”

Once inside Zone 4, I crunched along through the piled snow as I wandered around.

Found one soon enough.

A furry beast that brought the word “yeti” to mind.

The yeti spotted me too and lunged at me like a lion that had just found a slab of meat.

I extended my hand.

Whoosh!

When I cast Flame Strike, fireballs blossomed in midair.

‘Oh.’

The fireballs were noticeably larger than before.

Five massive fireballs shot toward the yeti.

Boooom!

A massive explosion.

The yeti was blown apart on the spot, consumed in the swirling flames.

Judging by the destructive force of the blast, it looked nearly twice as strong as before. The effect was definitely noticeable.

“Nice.”

I went back to roaming around in search of another monster.

This time I found some kind of, what, spirit? A floating mass of ice that gave off that sort of vibe.

That one’s… a monster too, right?

I wasn’t quite sure, so I stood still and watched it for a moment.

Then a blue glow flickered around the ice spirit.

Sixth Sense gave me a faint warning.

Crrrash!

Suddenly, sharp icicles burst up out of the ground, surging toward where I was standing.

I leaped back to dodge the ice.

This thing’s got a pretty flashy move on it, huh?

Anyway, definitely a monster.

I immediately fired off a Flame Strike and blew the ice spirit apart.

I kept exploring Zone 4 and ran into all sorts of other monsters.

Wolf-type monsters, white as snow.

Unlike the other monsters, these moved in fairly large packs.

They seemed to have marked me as prey, prowling in a circle around me, so this time I tried out Scorching Zone.

A few wolves caught in the area went up in flames in an instant. Scorching Zone clearly felt much stronger too.

They must have had some intelligence, because once a few of them died, the rest immediately turned tail and bolted.

Bzzzzzz!

Then I ran into a giant hornet, its entire body coated in something like ice crystals.

It came at me roaring like a helicopter.

The stinger especially gave off a dangerous feel, so it probably had venom.

I didn’t give it the chance to close the distance, and fired a Flame Strike, but…

The hornet was surprisingly fast. It dodged a few of the fireballs with aerial evasion maneuvers.

Couldn’t dodge the rest, though, and ended up blown to bits all the same.

Yetis, ice spirits, wolves, giant hornets…

That was about the lineup of Zone 4 monsters.

Just as I’d expected, they all looked to be around level 40.

Levels aside… the overall hunting difficulty of these monsters felt noticeably trickier than Zone 3.

It wasn’t a problem for me, of course, but other climbers who carelessly stepped into Zone 4 looked like they’d get pretty badly mauled.

‘Better post info on this too.’

For the public’s safety, I decided to compile information on the Zone 4 monsters and post it to the Communication Channel.

I checked the Zone 4 gauge.

[Zone 4 (0.1%)]

The monster density felt even lower than Zone 3.

I wanted to take a crack at the Zone 4 boss too before challenging Floor 6, but…

‘Could I pull it off?’

The Zone 4 boss had to be at least level 80 or so.

Could I one-shot it with Destruction Ray… probably no chance against the Zone 4 boss, no matter how I sliced it, right?

I was currently level 60.

Trying to one-click freebie a boss that was a minimum of 20 levels above me would be pretty shameless of me.

Before any of that, would I even be able to fill the gauge in time before challenging Floor 6?

That was something I’d just have to find out.

Anyway, that was about it for the first scouting trip.

Time to head back.

*

From around when the Zone 3 boss appeared, the rumor had already spread far and wide that Person123 was going to take it on.

[Toy: Is it really true Person123 is gonna fight it solo?]

[Poison Bottle: Heard the Security Corps offered to help and got turned down]

[Spaghetti: ugh why solo it instead of just teaming up w/ everyone else;]

[Clock: Maybe doesn’t wanna show themselves to more people]

[France: I know they’re strong but I’m so worried… it’s still a boss tho]

People were anxious, naturally.

Everyone now knew that Person123 was strong enough to one-shot Wang Kai, a level 60 climber, but a boss was a different story, wasn’t it?

As if mocking those very anxieties, however,

[Fried Chicken: Zone 3 boss is dead!! Message just popped up]

[Doctor: Wait what happened? Person123 is okay right?]

[Olcar: Heard from a Security Corps guy that they one-shot the boss…?]

[Lighter: Boss was apparently some kind of dragon. Even spat fire breath]

[Beer: I’m a Black Star Society member who saw it firsthand, they really did one-shot it. Same black beam that killed Wang Kai blew the boss’s head off in one hit, just watching it was unreal]

[Geuboog: LOLOLOL how strong even ARE you, Person123!]

[Pill: But that’s gotta be a magic-type skill no matter how you look at it? How is Person123 using it mid-combat?]

[Latilta: Maybe it’s an item effect, not a skill. Either way, that’s some absurd OP technique]

The rumor that Person123 had one-shot the Zone 3 boss too spread like wildfire, and people were astonished and finally able to breathe a sigh of relief at the same time.

The governments of various countries, who had been watching the situation with the same nail-biting tension, also let out a breath.

Person123’s life was the world’s life.

If they took even the smallest action that put themselves at risk, for the nations of the world, it was a threat on par with someone hovering a finger over the nuclear button.

In any case, Person123 was even more absurdly strong than people had imagined, and the Zone 3 boss fight ended without a single fatality.

After that, Person123 even posted information on the Zone 4 monsters as a bonus.

[Bluebird: Damn, posting Zone 4 info already]

[Yulu: Person123… how altruistic do you need to beeeee!]

[FightingWarrior: Always grateful. Used to bow in all four cardinal directions every day since I didn’t know which way you were, but now I’ve started bowing toward Korea.]

For the highest-floor climbers who would be the first to set foot in Zone 4, the information was worth its weight in gold.

Monster byproducts were a resource just as important as Magic Stones. Especially when it came to new monsters whose materials and composition were still unknown.

On Floor 5, hunting in Zone 4 began to ramp up bit by bit, and the world outside the Tower kept on bustling along as it always did.

*

[Nightmare]

Population: 279,561

Time Limit: 64 days, 2 hours, 33 minutes, 10 seconds

Floors Reached: Floor 5

Time flowed by quickly.

The Nightmare difficulty’s Time Limit was drawing closer and closer.