Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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Intro. A Night Perfect for Counting Stars

Seven months ago—
“Damn, it’s freezing. Hey, how much longer?”
My junior soldier exhaled a cloud of breath and checked his wristwatch in response to my question.
“Forty minutes remaining, Han Ji-woo.”
“This cursed perimeter watch. We’re in a high-tech age—why can’t they just replace all this with CCTV? Who’s going to come out here to this Gangwon Province mountain ravine? Even North Korean soldiers would freeze to death on the way.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
The cold was so severe that if I dozed off for even a moment, I’d wake up dead.
Deep in the mountains of Gangwon Province.
On a winter night like this, the sky was unusually clear, and with not a single light source around, the stars poured down so abundantly that I wondered if this was really Korea.
“Hey, got any interesting stories?”
“Did I tell you about what happened at Haeundae during my last leave?”
“I heard that one during the last perimeter watch.”
“Oh… then I don’t have any others.”
“What, does military service end if you run out of stories?”
“If it did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
His cheerful quip drew an involuntary laugh from me. “Damn, you got that right.”
“Hey, hey.”
“What?”
My junior pointed at the dark silhouette of a tower visible in the sky.
“They say if you enter that tower, you gain superpowers. What ability would you want to get?”
“Superpowers? Well… what about you?”
“Obviously, every man’s fantasy—invisibility, right?”
The joke that followed was characteristically crude, as military humor tends to be.
Even decent guys back in civilian life turn into lunatics once they enter the military.
This one seemed particularly unhinged, though I had to admit his gift for banter was undeniable.
Superpowers, though.
If I could gain a superpower, it would be nice to experience something extraordinary.
Superpowers themselves would be extraordinary, of course.
Looking up at the sky, the stars shone with unusual brilliance—a night perfect for counting stars.
Chapter 1. The Tower’s Invitation

There are moments in life when you feel genuinely fortunate.
Like when you oversleep and miss a bus that gets into a traffic accident.
Or when you’re devastated after failing all your early admission applications, only to score your highest mark ever on the national college entrance exam across all your practice tests.
According to the news, that bus had no fatalities, though several critical injuries occurred—just as I wouldn’t have been able to attend a better university had I gotten into early admission.
Yes, I’ve always been lucky.
At least, that’s what I believed until just moments ago.
Until this morning, when I celebrated my birthday at East Seoul Terminal after submitting my military discharge papers and watching my unit members depart for field training.
But now I found myself questioning whether this luck I’d cherished my entire life was truly fortunate.
Because right now, I’ve been kidnapped into a completely blank white space.
Just moments ago at East Seoul Terminal, I was savoring my birthday with the most refreshing feeling I’d ever experienced in my life—past and future combined.
“Is this an invitation from The Tower?”
About ten years ago, when I was in fifth grade, the world changed.
Phenomena called ‘Gates’, ‘dungeons’, ‘monster holes’, and ‘passages to other worlds’ began appearing across the globe, and a tower that couldn’t reach the sky materialized.
It was the sort of common story you’d find in comics and novels.
Gates, if left unattended for a certain period, would trigger what was called an ‘outbreak’ or ‘monster break’.
The phenomenon where the interior of a Gate ruptures and monsters pour into our world before the Gate disappears was termed an outbreak.
One might think the outbreaks occurring worldwide caused massive chaos—but that wasn’t quite the case.
As the saying goes, exorcism requires firepower, and if firepower won’t suffice, you need even greater firepower.
Bullets weren’t ineffective against monsters, and even if thick, hardened shells could withstand bullets, most could be penetrated by artillery shells.
While there was considerable damage initially, within months the military suppressed them, and through research, we discovered how to eliminate Gates without triggering outbreaks.
In fact, a country like ours benefited from our unique circumstances—narrow territory and division status maintaining constant war readiness—allowing us to recover quickly.
According to the news, countries that had disarmed or possessed excessively large territories remained somewhat chaotic even now, ten years later.
Of course, even Korea, which was relatively better off, couldn’t have the state and military solve every problem easily.
When outbreaks occurred in urban areas, you couldn’t simply bomb cities, and it was impossible to deploy self-propelled guns and towed artillery into small Gates, so individuals had to handle Gate elimination with personal firepower.
Portable mortars or anti-tank weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 could be carried into Gates, but the critical disadvantage was that ammunition was too heavy to transport much of it.
This was because transport vehicles couldn’t enter Gates.
This created various problems, and three types of people solved them.
One was ‘naturally awakened ability users’.
Rarely, people naturally awakened to superpowers around the time Gates and The Tower appeared, and they could hunt monsters that couldn’t be easily dealt with by personal firearms while minimizing collateral damage.
The internet jokingly made it a meme—weren’t they hunters from novels and comics?—and now everyone called them hunters.
The other was agents of the international organization ‘World Protection Treaty Organization’, established through cooperation between governments—abbreviated as ‘WPTO’.
WPTO’s role was known to be detecting areas where Gates would occur through cooperation with each nation, measuring Gate lifespans, and managing problem-solvers and hunters who would handle Gates.
The internet, intertwining with hunter memes, was calling it the ‘Global Hunter Association’.
Among conspiracy theories, there was talk that those who founded WPTO called themselves ‘Prescients’ and were apocalypticists.
Gates and The Tower were supposedly evidence of this.
There was also talk that WPTO could be established so quickly because there was a prophet among the apocalypticists.
WPTO was established less than a year after Gates appeared, so even if we accept that there was a prophet, I don’t see what a prophet in WPTO has to do with apocalypticism.
Well, just like Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar, prophecy and apocalypse do seem to go hand in hand, so that’s probably the sentiment.
The last group was ‘Tower returnees’.
At some point, superhumans began appearing, claiming they had entered and returned from that tower visible in the sky but unreachable.
They had all awakened at least one superpower.
Tower returnees, unlike naturally awakened individuals, often wielded multiple abilities—in addition to innate powers that couldn’t be learned, they brought back learnable disciplines called ‘magic’ and ‘martial arts’.
Magic and martial arts allowed even those without superpower awakening to grow stronger and wield power comparable to superpowers.
Magic hadn’t yet become publicly accessible, though rumors suggested specialized schools would soon emerge, while martial arts dojos and academies had been established for quite some time.
The most prominent examples were Tanaka Sanmei, an S-rank hunter among Japan’s Tower returnees, who founded the ‘Gaga Swordsmanship’ dojo, and Robert Julius, an S-rank hunter among America’s Tower returnees, who established the ‘Robert Julius Gunkata’ instruction center.
No one knew how or why Gates and Towers had come into existence.
Perhaps the government or the WPTO knew, but such knowledge hadn’t reached the public—myself included.
Yet over the past decade, much about Gates and Towers had been revealed.
The internet, awash with all manner of information, naturally overflowed with Tower returnees sharing their experiences, and documentaries and variety shows had long since made discussing returnees’ accounts a tired trope.
Regardless of whether any of it was true.
Recently, I even heard that the government had begun teaching elementary, middle, and high school students how to respond if summoned to a Tower—as casually as teaching first aid.
During my military service, I’d grown weary of hearing repeatedly how to handle being dragged into a Tower to avoid being charged with desertion.
“Well, a Tower summons isn’t necessarily a bad thing anyway.”
In truth, when Towers first appeared ten years ago, being kidnapped into one was terrifying.
But now, a Tower summons was viewed as a kind of lottery.
The reason was simple.
Those summoned to a Tower could always awaken at least one superpower.
And those climbing a Tower could leave whenever they wished.
At least, if the tedious military education broadcasts were to be believed.
I approached the large crystal floating alone in the center of the pristine white space.
“This will actually work, right?”
Unfounded anxiety crept over me, but I reached out and placed my hand on the crystal.
A tingling sensation shot through my fingertips, and a translucent window materialized before me.

[Registering climber….]

The translucent window, its circle spinning like a loading screen, displayed [Registration complete!], followed by a welcome message and my name.

[Welcome to the Tower, Climber Han Ji-woo.]

The presumption that I’d entered of my own volition was absurd, but I waited for the next message.

[You have acquired the Tower’s common abilities: ‘Status Window’, ‘Tower Shop’, and ‘Inventory’.]
[You have acquired the personal ability ‘Multidimensional Avatar’.]

As the notification appeared, rough information about the ability flooded into my mind.
The Tower’s common ability, ‘Status Window’, was literally an ability to view my current state.
Beyond that, it was an ability with no other abilities whatsoever.
“Status Window.”
I didn’t need to actually say ‘Status Window’ to bring it up, but there’s something to be said for a little flair.

[Name: Han Ji-woo / Age: 21]
[Strength: 8 / Agility: 11 / Endurance: 9 / Intelligence: 15 / Mana: 1]
[Status: Normal, Hungry]
[Ability: Multidimensional Avatar Lv 1]

A sparse status window indeed.
Looking at the status window, abilities had levels, but I had no level myself.
That’s right. The Tower didn’t operate on a leveling system—there was no such thing as a character level, which meant there were no level-up stat bonuses either.
So how was I supposed to grow stronger?
I had no idea.
Everyone who’d climbed the Tower before testified that they couldn’t understand the mechanism by which they’d grown stronger.
They simply performed what could be called Quests as the Tower demanded, hunted monsters, and at some point realized they’d become stronger.
All they could discern was that the stat and ability level numbers were indicators of the standard required for each floor.
I’d heard that the first ten floors were considered a tutorial, so strength at floor eight and endurance at floor nine meant I was below standard.
I’d thought my health had improved from living a relatively disciplined life in the military, but apparently I fell short by the Tower’s standards.
“Hungry, huh… I skipped breakfast, so my stomach’s definitely complaining.”
On my discharge day, I’d chosen to skip the bland military rations rather than eat them before leaving.
Next, I checked the Tower’s shop, and a translucent shop window materialized before me.
The shop didn’t have many items.
Bread and water, a one-handed sword and shield, a bow and arrows, and a superior recovery potion!
“This really is like a game.”
Food and weapons were one thing, but potions?
In fact, this potion was the biggest reason the Tower’s invitation was called a lottery.
The shop’s currency was shop points. The initial allotment was ten points, and every item—bread, water, sword, potion—cost exactly one point.
A superior recovery potion was nothing short of miraculous; outside the Tower, a single bottle sold for at least fifty million won.
That was the minimum price. Time your sale right, and you could sell it for two hundred million won.
If I invested all ten points into potions, I could sell them for a minimum of five hundred million to a maximum of two billion won—truly a lottery.
Even that was because quite a bit of supply had hit the market over the past decade, driving prices down. Ten years ago, the price was literally whatever the seller demanded.
The inventory could hold items based on weight regardless of volume, but since I was still on floor one, I could only carry five hundred grams.
As an experiment, I tried placing the military cap I was wearing into the inventory.
“Oh! It really goes in.”
The cap vanished as it entered the inventory.
Concentrating on the inventory again, the hat appeared and disappeared repeatedly in my hand.
This would be convenient if I could just increase the capacity.
With that thought, I placed my hand on the crystal once more.
I needed to confirm the most important thing above all else.
The moment my hand touched the crystal, two options materialized on a translucent window before my eyes.

[Will you proceed to Floor 2 of The Tower? You will never be able to return to Floor 1 of The Tower.]
[Will you exit The Tower? You will never be able to enter The Tower again, and all shared abilities will be revoked.]

I withdrew my hand from the crystal and said “Cancel,” and the translucent window vanished.
Fortunately, just as I’d heard countless times before, it seemed I could exit The Tower whenever I wanted by making contact with the crystal on each floor.
Based on what I’d heard ad nauseam during military briefings, the directive was clear: enter The Tower, exit immediately, and continue with my remaining military service.
Otherwise, I’d be considered a deserter, and my service would be extended considerably.
“Should I be grateful that I got kidnapped after finishing my military service? Or should I complain that I was dragged here when I was finally hoping to rest?”
Notably, personal abilities acquired here and items purchased from the shop could be taken outside.
Of course, shared abilities would be revoked as the warning stated—my ‘Inventory’ would be confiscated, so I’d have to carry everything in both hands.
Because of this restriction, Tower returnees endlessly lamented the countless items they’d been forced to leave behind.
Now that I’d confirmed I could leave whenever I wished, I needed to examine my personal ability.
Floor 1 of The Tower, an endless white void, seemed designed as a place to freely experiment with one’s personal ability.
I examined my ability: 【Multidimensional Avatar】.

(To be continued in the next episode)

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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