In front of the sea of the Arcamer Empire lived a man whose position was close to myth.

A man who, ten years ago, suddenly appeared and singlehandedly wiped out the beasts and monsters that had filled the sea. And then he also crushed the pirates who interfered with maritime trade.

【Pioneer】

The man with blond hair and green eyes, Verdin, looked out across the sea. He wasn’t in the best mood.

"Ban Iner."

He had never once forgotten that name.

Because that person had saved his life.

***

Pioneer, in the past.

«Hard Difficulty, 16th Floor, Climber - Verdin»

«Current Location, 10-Floor Unit Exchange Meeting.»

A rough voice rang out by Verdin’s ear.

"This bastard’s weird. He cuts down monsters just fine, but he can’t handle people properly."

Crunch!

A sharp pain surged from his back.

Verdin gritted his teeth.

Both of his ankles had been horribly slashed, leaving him unable to walk.

It wouldn’t have been strange if he died right then and there.

Any spark of hope had long been extinguished. His mind already had one foot in hell.

He had trusted Heirgen, a climber from the Normal difficulty, who was next to him.

Because he’d acted overly kind.

But that kindness had just been part of grooming him as an easy prey.

It was a dungeon-type exchange meeting. True to its name, the dungeon itself wasn’t very difficult.

Only goblins. There was a Goblin Lord waiting as the boss monster, but with eight participants in the exchange, it was an enemy that could easily be cleared.

Verdin glared at his arms, bound with restraints made of special material.

Third Rank.

The stage where one could emit mana outside their body.

So he tried releasing mana, but the restraints didn’t come undone.

Heirgen thrust forward his right hand, holding a short sword.

The short sword pierced the neck of the player lying next to Verdin.

The player’s body shuddered like in a seizure, then went limp.

The cube spat out from the dead player rolled next to the corpse.

"Karnak, you kill this one. We’ve gotta split the experience evenly, right?"

"Was there any decent item?"

"Oh, that sword he used when fighting the goblin seemed different. Even though he’s lying there like that, he’s a Hard-difficulty climber, same as you."

"Got it."

Verdin could clearly feel the mixture of their voices and the smell of blood stirring up overwhelming disgust and despair.

"What’s the point of Hard, when you die like this to someone from Normal? If you think about it, difficulty means nothing. Right? If they start struggling, it becomes a pain, so we better start by slicing their ankles."

Right after Karnak finished speaking, a voice reached all three of them.

"What the—why are you lying there like that?"

Karnak and Heirgen both turned their heads to the right at the same time.

A silver-haired woman with blue eyes was striding toward them.

"When I saw you fighting the goblins earlier, you looked like you knew how to fight better than those two. So why are you restrained like that?"

She tilted her head, genuinely confused.

Karnak and Heirgen were dumbfounded.

They hadn’t paid any attention to this person, and now she just showed up and started talking about who’s stronger or weaker. It was absurd.

Verdin, lying on the ground, remembered the woman’s name.

Ban Iner.

Someone he had fought alongside at the beginning of the exchange meeting.

Her residence floor was the 12th. According to the Mouth of the Low Mountain, she was a Second Rank.

He’d thought her movements were clean for a Second Rank, but she had never shown strength far beyond that.

Clearly, she wasn’t someone who should be stepping into this situation.

"They backstabbed you, huh?"

Slash!

"Keugh!"

Karnak slashed Verdin’s shoulder with his sword.

"Just wait there a bit. I’ll kill that bitch first, then take care of you."

Swish!

Heirgen drew his spear.

"If this crazy bitch had even a shred of sanity, she wouldn’t charge in like this. Looks like she’s completely lost it."

Ban Iner slowly closed the distance between them.

Ban Iner’s right arm moved.

The arc of her sword grazed past the weapons held by Karnak and Heirgen.

Crack! Snap!

"Uh... what?"

Heirgen muttered stupidly.

A stream of blood sprayed from the right side of Heirgen’s neck.

Ban’s sword had pierced Karnak’s heart.

"You killed a few players, right? So getting killed like this in return—you were prepared for that, weren’t you?"

That was the last voice Heirgen and Karnak heard in their lives.

Verdin barely managed to see Ban Iner’s movement.

She wasn’t even channeling aura into her sword.

And yet, she had instantly killed Karnak, who had just unleashed sword energy.

Then, in the next move, she ended Heirgen’s life too.

Something that couldn’t be done unless there was an overwhelming difference in skill.

Verdin blankly stared at Ban Iner as she walked up to him.

"Keep training. Kill the ones that need to be killed. You’ve got quite a bit of potential. I honestly can’t believe you used to be just a sailor."

Clink!

Ban Iner sliced through the restraints binding Verdin’s arms with her aura-cloaked sword.

"...Thank you."

"Oh, yeah, you kinda should thank me for that one."

Verdin let out a bitter smile.Ban gave a crooked grin.

"That precise arm angle, instinctively targeting the goblin’s weak point—that’s not something just anyone can pull off. You’ve got talent. More than enough."

Verdin, catching his breath, stared at Ban Iner’s blood-smeared face.

"Why did you hide your strength?"

"To lure in guys who’d underestimate me and come at me. But looks like those guys came after you first."

"Can I add you as a friend?"

"Why?"

"I figured I should repay the debt for saving my life."

Ban smirked.

"Oh? You gonna repay me at the next exchange meeting?"

"Yes."

"Looking forward to it."

Verdin couldn’t hold back a question burning in his chest.

"Do you really think I have talent?"

Ban chuckled at that question.

"Yeah. Why, you don’t believe it?"

"Yes. Honestly, I don’t."

"Believe it. These eyes have heard ‘genius’ so often they’ve grown calluses."

"...Got it. Thank you."

"No need to thank me. Ah, we’re about the same age, so talk casually next time."

Verdin, not feeling great about dropping honorifics to someone who saved him, scratched the back of his head.

"...Okay."

Pandemonium. After adding Ban as a friend, Verdin found out she was a climber from Pandemonium difficulty.

"What’s the Pandemonium difficulty like...? I still can’t believe there’s a difficulty beyond Hard."

At Verdin’s words, Ban let out a sigh.

"It’s fucking hard. Not just the difficulty itself, but the worst part... there’s no comrades. No team. I’ve been climbing completely alone."

Verdin couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of difficulty Ban Iner had experienced.

"Well, it’s not like I’m gonna die or anything, right? I want to live."

Verdin remembered.

"I hate meaningless deaths."

Ban Iner had said that with a bitter smile.

And a few days after the exchange meeting ended—

Ban Iner’s name in the friend list turned gray.

Which meant she was dead.

***

While he was staring at the sea, lost in thoughts of the past, a voice came from beside him.

"Captain, pirates who travel between both the kingdom and the empire and have been designated as high-risk enemies by both sides have appeared at sea."

Transcendent Gallery username 【Pioneer】, Verdin slowly opened his mouth at the words of Magus, a Sixth-Rank swordsman who could be called his right-hand man.

"Their estimated Rank?"

"According to the subordinates currently engaged with them, they're estimated to be Seventh-Rank. It seems too high for someone doing such strange things, but still."

Verdin didn’t doubt the judgment of his men. He had experienced enough during his days climbing the tower to know that the higher the rank, the more likely someone was to be insane.

"The higher the Rank, the more lunatics there are. Go take care of it."

Magus didn’t question Verdin’s sudden disappearance. It wasn’t the first or second time Verdin had vanished like this.

Where Verdin reappeared was the sea. Above the sea.

Three ships were sailing in formation.

"...What the hell?"

Gelford, a Seventh-Rank warrior and the pirate standing atop the largest of the ships in the center, looked up at Verdin. A deep frown formed between his brows.

The energy radiating from Verdin, who stood looking down from above the ship with his snow-white coat fluttering, was too unusual to speak carelessly.

"The identities of the people you’re currently detaining."

Verdin’s gaze turned to the men and women bound tightly at the front of the ship.

Gelford’s long scar on his cheek twitched as he gave a twisted smile.

"Isn’t selling those we pillage the right of invaders?"

"Looks like they’re each missing a hand."

Gelford stroked his chin at Verdin’s words.

"Isn’t cutting off the hands of those who don’t listen also the right of invaders?"

Verdin’s emotions didn’t waver. Upon reaching the Ninth Rank, many things had become different from that of ordinary humans.

The emotion of anger didn’t surface easily. To be precise, the total amount of anger he had to spend on things like this had already been exhausted.

Because he was already angry—elsewhere. Gelford continued.

"I was looking for the so-called master of this ocean. Heard nonsense about some Ninth-Rank monster."

"That would be me."

Gelford let out a hollow laugh at Verdin’s simple confession.

"Perfect. If you’re the master, then even if you get buried in this abyss, you won’t hold a grudge, right?"

From either side of the ship Gelford stood on, water surged upward as if tearing the sky.

«Domain Skill: Leviathan.»

Currents soared high into the air. A reality-altering domain skill capable of creating an ocean even where there is none.

But now, the space was already an ocean by nature. The power of the domain skill was maximized in every sense.

One of Leviathan’s abilities was current manipulation, and its range was roughly 150 meters. That current now carried the aura Gelford had built up.

The forms water could take were virtually limitless.

From tiny droplets floating on the surface to whirling torrents of current. And slashes of water sharper than any sword strike surged up from the sea.

Rumbleeeee!

Hundreds of forms of high-lethality water rushed toward Verdin.

The attacks aimed at Verdin weren’t just from Leviathan-based sea currents.

There were also long-range slashes from four Fourth-Ranks and one Fifth-Rank.Even the minor attacks from lower-ranked subordinates.

All of that power, like divine punishment, rushed toward Verdin in the next moment. And then Gelford’s pupils widened.

"...This is—"

Something was wrong.

"What the—"

The sea. His sea wasn’t moving.

Not even a single drop of water.

A foreign presence had completely overridden the Leviathan domain. Not a single current or droplet remained under Gelford’s control.

Verdin slowly moved his right index finger.

Ssshhh...

The water moved. Not by the will of Gelford, who had deployed Leviathan, but by Verdin’s will.

«Domain Skill: Drift.»

Verdin’s Ninth-Rank domain had completely overwritten Leviathan’s domain.

Verdin had effortlessly understood the structure of Gelford’s Leviathan domain. And to comprehend another’s domain while in the state of activating one’s own—

Authority Seizure

A domain from a lower Rank than oneself. It meant seizing the rights of that domain.

The surging currents all abruptly reversed course. Every flow reversed.

KWAAGGHH! KWAAAGHH—!!

The towering waves swallowed the ship, and Gelford’s crew were shredded apart, bleeding red as they sank into the ocean.

Among those who bled, not one could be called a hostage.

Floating...

The twenty-four hostages once captured by the pirates now hovered next to Verdin in the air, high above.

Without any harm. Verdin had lifted them using an extremely delicate control of mana.

"Uhh..."

The men and women fumbled in mid-air, trying to stabilize themselves.

"You can just stay still. I’m maintaining the balance."

"Y-yes..."

"Okay!"

They expressed their thanks in trembling voices, bowing their heads before Verdin. Verdin gathered his mana and transported them to the eastern ship, which remained relatively intact.

Fssss...

He gently set the twenty-four down onto the deck.

And then—

"Cough! Gahak!"

He lowered himself slightly to look down at Gelford, who was coughing up blood on the deck.

"Still breathing, huh."

But he would die soon. His body had been pierced by all manner of current infused with aura.

He had literally been slaughtered.

The only part of him that remained intact was his head.

"H-how did you do it..."

"I maximized the difference in our Ranks."

"I... I saw the end of the world."

"That’s just because your vision is shallow."

Gelford’s eyes were still full of confusion.

Cough—

Gelford vomited blood once more, his head drooping limply.

He died, still trapped in that confusion.

The hostages trembled as they looked up at Verdin, who remained standing in the sky.

"Thank you... second god..."

Verdin frowned. It wasn’t a pleasant title.

Ninth Rank. A Transcendent who had reached the Ninth Rank was close to a god. At least, to those who were not Transcendents themselves.

Probably even objectively, that was true. The power a Transcendent possessed was indeed godlike.

But was it truly so?

Verdin, unlike the other Transcendents, didn’t believe himself to be a god.

Even if he had escaped mortality, could that really be called divinity?

There were only about three people who came to mind when thinking of someone truly close to a god.

Those he personally considered to have entered the realm of the Tenth Rank.

The Sword of Light, called the “First God” by the continent’s people. And Joo-ddak, who had never publicly revealed their power but contributed to the order of this world.

And finally, the Heavenly Demon, who was now in another world and could no longer be seen.

Though honestly, even those three—while they rivaled gods—were still not truly gods.

Verdin thought of Ban Iner again. Truly a damn shame.

The one who had once saved his life.

He had watched many climbers of the same difficulty, more talented than himself, die by misjudgment, or reckless ambition, and then climbed past their corpses to the top.

But Ban Iner had died.

He had become far stronger than Ban Iner. In the distant past—Ban Iner, who had once saved him during that exchange meeting, was now someone he could crush with a single finger.

The world was too unfair. She was more talented than him. But because she was summoned into the “Pandemonium” difficulty, she had to die.

If she had at least been summoned into Hard difficulty, she would’ve survived. If she had been revived on Pandemonium’s 13th Floor, she wouldn’t have had to die again.

And she would’ve emerged from the tower stronger than even him now.

But that, too, was a meaningless delusion. Still, the bitterness could not be helped.

He could only hope, sincerely—

That, just as Ban Iner once told him:

—I hate meaningless deaths.

That she did not feel, at least to herself, that her death had been meaningless.

***

A terminal that allows access to the Transcendent Gallery. Who the hell designed it so that I could have this on the 1st floor?

Was it one of the beings from the uppermost level that came out of Administrator Plishek’s mouth, or the Pandemonium Tower itself?

Or perhaps another external existence?

It was a topic worth considering, but not something that would produce an answer just by agonizing over it.

At this point, I couldn’t even tell whether this damn tower was trying to pull me upward or drag me down. Either way, I had to ascend.

Because the reasons to climb were gradually increasing.

I manipulated the mana within my body. To grasp a sense of the Sixth Rank.

The pillar beside the aura circuit forming the central axis of the body. Successfully creating a third pillar would mean entering the Sixth Rank.

But the path to the Sixth Rank was harsh. I fully realized that I first had to complete the vessel known as the Fifth Rank.

By bleeding and breaking, I gathered all the achievements I had earned and solidified a single, intact vessel. The lines written in the Sword of Light senior’s sword manual, Dragon Slayer Sword, flashed through my mind.

—There’s no special mana control method. —You’ll have to create your own way of manipulating it to reach the Sixth Rank.

You have to understand all of yourself. Even the powerless parts of you. And the parts of you that are strong.

The hours of anguish flowed by like an instant.

[The Tower Exchange Meeting is now beginning.]

The exchange meeting had begun once more.