Chapter 37

Chapter 37. Galactic Martial God Chronicle - Entrance Exam (1)

When we returned to the 10th floor, cool air wrapped around my entire body.

Because time flowed more slowly on the 10th floor than on the 14th floor, the sun was not yet fully setting.

However, looking at the sky, it was slowly turning yellow, as if sunset was approaching, so the timing looked tight for doing anything in particular.

“First, let’s divide the loot.”

Lee Soo-young and I left the central park of the city and began dividing things at a quiet rest area nearby.

Small things like magic stones were divided on the spot, but the Goblin ears we would exchange for merit points at the Association and the blades removed from the legs of the 12th-floor grain-pecking monster, the “Blade Eagle,” were heavy, so they were being stored on the Tower’s first floor.

Originally, I had planned to only collect the magic stones and leave the rest, but the farmer told us the blades were worth quite a bit, so we took them.

Thanks to the farmer helping us remove the legs from ninety-five Blade Eagles out of gratitude for selling him the nets, collecting the blades did not take very long.

The blade parts were something the Association bought, so there was no need to wander around looking for a buyer or search through the Tower Community.

Once the distribution was roughly over, Lee Soo-young headed straight to the Association to dispose of the items, saying they would not all fit in her Inventory.

At the Association, the employee, who had been preparing to leave work, frowned when he saw the sack full of Goblin hunting proof.

“Ah... it is almost mealtime.”

I had done something rather sorry to the employee.

However, the Climber Association employee, who possessed a thorough sense of professionalism, counted them one by one and converted them into Credits and merit points.

“Goblin ears and Blade Eagle blades. The total is 63,000 Credits and 250 merit points. Divided in half, that is 31,500 Credits and 125 merit points each.”

Once it was gathered like this, it was far more profitable than I had expected.

The Tower Shop did not accept returns, so I had been reluctant to buy Credits with Shop Points and had been saving Credits, but it seemed there was no need for that.

Including the money from selling nets to the farmer, I had roughly 49,000 Credits, about 4.9 million won.

I could live comfortably doing nothing for the next two months.

Outside the Tower, no one would throw this much money at you for catching Goblins, so this kind of leisure was only possible inside the Tower.

“Should we just have dinner and call it a day?”

“Sounds good. It’s tiring because I haven’t eaten properly. There’s a place I wanted to try!”

Lee Soo-young and I entered a flashy restaurant located near the Association.

On a day when one had worked hard, was it not proper courtesy toward life to feast on something delicious?

I had also just earned plenty of Credits.

After eating boldly without thinking about the price, I was horrified to learn that the dinner course menu cost 8,000 Credits per person, about 800,000 won, but what could I do?

I had already eaten it.

It was as delicious as its price, but I needed to be careful about this.

I felt like I understood why there were so many stories about Tower Returnees spending money like water and going bankrupt.

If one climbed outright high enough, then one would become that much stronger and earn well outside the Tower too, so it would not matter.

But if one climbed only to an ambiguous height, one’s spending habits would grow as loose as they could possibly be while one’s income failed to keep up, leading to ruin.

Most people invited to the Tower failed to leave the lower floors, died while climbing, or gave up halfway and left.

I could also become one of that majority.

I should at least keep an expense ledger.

---

After returning to the inn where I was staying, I took a shower.

Even if I had a cleaning magic tool, it did not wash away the unpleasant feeling of fighting and being covered in blood.

Being hit by hot water also had the effect of relaxing tense muscles, and it relieved stress too.

Lying on the bed, I looked at the tattered upper half of my combat uniform.

“Hmm, do they sell only the top separately?”

Perhaps because Harpies fought by diving from the sky to the ground, the pants were almost fine, but the top had become rags.

If I had reached the Second-Rate stage, it would not have been reduced to rags so emptily.

“Sigh~. Nothing I can do. I’ll have to buy a new one.”

Thanks to this, I had at least saved my life. Without it, I would have been drenched in blood and nearly dead within three minutes.

Still, I did not plan to buy one immediately. I was thinking of buying it after letting some time pass.

If I bought it right away, Si-woo would nag me, so there was nothing I could do.

Si-woo almost never nagged, but there were exactly two cases when she did: when I used the internet too much, and when it looked like I was overspending.

Si-woo put a lot of effort into my healthy growth.

Well, no matter how I thought about it, buying another combat uniform I had purchased not long ago, one that would not even fit my child body, was not right.

Before entering the reincarnation clone’s body, I checked the Tower Shop.

Looking at my Points, I was shocked by how many monsters I had killed in a single day.

I had over one thousand Shop Points.

Considering that on the 12th and 13th floors, I had shared them with Lee Soo-young, and on the 14th floor, they had been divided among four people, it was even more shocking.

Of course, the higher the floor, the higher the Points monsters gave, but astonishing was still astonishing.

I bought Appraisal Scrolls, which I had been putting off because I found the Points too precious.

[Appraisal Scroll (F): reveals the name of the appraisal target and an approximate appraisal result. / Price: 10 Shop Points]

I bought five Appraisal Scrolls.

In order, I appraised the ability stones from the Hobgoblin, the monster wolf, and the Goblin Shaman, as well as the Goblin Shaman’s staff and the strange-looking stone I had purchased from Lororen.

[Berserk: lowers Intelligence and increases Strength and Stamina.]

[Bleeding (Passive): if an attack causes bleeding, it does not recover naturally.]

[Hallucination: shows hallucinations.]

[Goblin Shaman’s Curse Staff 4: an item containing a tickling curse.]

[Appraisal failed.]

Because the Appraisal Scroll was not high-level, the information was truly approximate.

Berserk was a fairly famous ability.

As far as I knew, it had a high probability of lowering cognitive ability during use, and a low probability of causing loss of reason.

It seemed I would need to use an Appraisal Scroll with higher performance to know the exact probability or how much it increased Strength and Stamina.

Or I could find out about the ability in the library.

Originally, an F-rank Appraisal Scroll existed to learn the name and then look it up in the library.

In the case of passive abilities, I knew that they had no level, and if one did not become used to them, one could not freely turn them on and off.

Since the ability was always active and mana was automatically consumed when the conditions were met, passive abilities tended to have low evaluations and prices unless they strengthened the user.

That was because if a passive ability activated by mistake against an opponent far above oneself, all of one’s mana could be drained and one could die.

Still, an ability was an ability, so it would fetch tens of millions of won.

If it sold, that was.

However, Bleeding seemed to have a good effect, so it might sell for quite a high price.

Well, Lee Soo-young had a share in it too, so I would discuss it with her when we met later.

But what is “Appraisal failed”?

Even if it was an F-rank Appraisal Scroll, it was not an item from the middle floors of the Tower. Could appraisal still fail?

This stone seemed likely to be either a jackpot or a great calamity.

“It could be dangerous to keep it with my main body, so I should have a clone store it if possible.”

While lying comfortably, I entered the reincarnation clone’s body.

The Tower clone’s time stopped.

---

I opened my eyes in the body of the reincarnation clone living in Galactic Murim.

In truth, while climbing the Tower, whenever something was necessary, I had received help from the reincarnation clone from time to time, so it was not particularly as if I had been away for long.

On top of that, I had only lived as the Tower clone for about two or three days, so it felt as though I had only returned from a short trip.

Strictly speaking, I was still traveling right now, though.

“You look somewhat tired.”

Si-woo asked with concern when she saw that I looked tired.

“Haam~ I’m especially tired today.”

Of course I was mentally tired, since I had fought so many times.

Physical fatigue was absent because my body was different, but mental fatigue crossed over as it was.

Thinking about it, it had been quite a long day.

At my words, Si-woo asked worriedly,

“Are you perhaps feeling unwell?”

“I’m not sick. I’m just tired.”

Even after my answer, Si-woo checked my temperature and took my pulse through my wrist.

“Hmm... you are healthy. I always have to forcibly stop you from training, so today is unusual.”

“Well, days like this happen, don’t they?”

“Then tonight’s training will be replaced with meditation and Yoga Qigong.”

Meditation and Yoga Qigong, yoga, were also connected to mental cultivation, so they were training methods that could instead relieve my mental fatigue.

Of course, they could not compare to simply doing nothing and resting completely.

My daily routine after turning four was a repetition of training, rest, and meals.

As my body grew, rest time was decreasing little by little, but during the growth period, rest was more important than training, so rest time was longer than training time.

If I tried to train more on my own, Si-woo knew like a ghost and forcibly made me play.

However, if I used the internet, she worried anxiously that I might be influenced by something strange online.

After Cheon So-yeon moved in next door, she came over to play every day, reducing the time I spent on the internet. Only then did Si-woo look satisfied.

“Ah, when do I learn a lightness skill?”

“A lightness skill? Are you, young master, who looks for a taxi after walking more than three steps whenever we go out, asking for a lightness skill?”

At Si-woo’s words, I averted my gaze.

Inside the house, I toddled around just fine and trained hard, but the world outside the house was still too big for me.

In the first place, maybe it was because this was a rich neighborhood, or maybe because they had too much land, but anywhere I tried to go was too far.

Even going to the neighborhood mart by car was common sense, and even the nearby neighborhood park, said to be close, would take more than an hour to walk to with these short legs.

How could I not look for a taxi after more than three steps?

I was still at an age where I should be riding in a baby stroller!

No, at four years old, maybe not a stroller?

“Still, it’s good to run fast.”

At my answer, Si-woo thought for a moment.

“In truth, the infant martial arts education manual says that lightness skills should not be taught before at least ten years old.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because if a child uses a lightness skill and runs somewhere while the parents look away for even a moment, they cannot be found.”

Ah, that was true.

There was a reason people put shoes that went “squeak! squeak!” on children who had just begun walking.

From the child’s perspective, they were sound-making toys, but from the parents’ perspective, they were no different from a sound alarm.

Originally, when searching for a missing child, one calculated the action radius a missing child of that age could move within, proportional to the time since they went missing, and searched within that area. But if the child learned a lightness skill, that radius would grow uncontrollably.

“Mm, still, I think you would be all right, young master.”

Well, what kind of three- or four-year-old child kept double ledgers and created a secret investment account to use?

Even when I had been kidnapped, I had managed to call and make contact just fine.

Even if I got lost, I was the kind of person who would take public transportation home on my own.

“Then you’ll teach me a lightness skill?”

“Yes. Starting tomorrow, I will teach you Wind-Link Lightness, the Cheon Family’s basic lightness skill. Wind-Link Lightness is also connected to Bluewood Step, so it should not be too difficult to learn.”

Yahoo! Now I too could finally escape being a pedestrian... no, I guess not. It was not as if I would be riding a car.

Uh... then....

Yahoo! Now I’ll be a swift pedestrian!