I Conquered the Tower with the EX-Class Character That I Raised - Chapter 66

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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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Chapter 66
I returned home with the components I’d “borrowed” from Happy and Yereche.
And now for the most urgent matter.
Holy water.
Using holy water as the base, I mixed in a few material items easily obtainable from the marketplace and combined them in various ways.
A single round, dumpling-shaped consumable item was completed in no time.
It was an ‘Anchor Stone’—crafted using the exact same formula and manufacturing method as in Lost Honor.
Using the same method, I also created a ‘Link Stone’ needed for teleportation.
‘I did tinker with it into the shape I remembered at the end… I hope it works properly?’
“Anchor creation.”
[Would you like to designate your current location as an anchor?]
‘It works.’
The guidance window I’d seen before—[Anchor Stone required]—was omitted, and instead a prompt asking whether I wanted to designate this as an anchor appeared.
My current location was inside my room.
If I pressed ‘yes’ here, this place would become an ‘anchor,’ and using a Link Stone in the future would allow me to teleport to this location.
I pressed ‘yes.’
This room, where all my infrastructure was concentrated, naturally had to be my first base of operations.
[What would you like to name this anchor?]
“Home.”
Uuuoong—
A massive, intricate golden magic circle filled the empty space of the room with a heavy vibration, unfolding completely.
The edges of the magic circle rotated like gears, precisely scanning the three-dimensional coordinates of the room, then sank into the floor with a soft pop and vanished without a trace.
‘Did it work?’
Since the anchor had been installed, I decided to test the means of transportation as well.
I climbed up to the rooftop.
“Link.”
[Where would you like to link to?]
[1. Home]
“I see how this works.”
I lightly tapped on ‘[1. Home]’.
Fwissssh—
The Link Stone I held in my hand melted into golden particles of light.
The particles hovered in the air, seeming to scan my body shape, then began wrapping around my entire form without gaps.
Uuuoong—!
The particles vibrated in resonance, and my vision flashed brilliantly like a camera flash going off.
I reflexively closed my eyes, and for a brief moment, I felt my body floating weightlessly in the air.
When I opened my eyes, I was in the room.
“…Oh. Whitey, how long did it take from the rooftop to here just now?”
[Exactly 2.8 seconds elapsed.]
“That’s fast.”
I headed back up to the rooftop to run a few more tests.
The moment I stretched my arm slightly into the empty air, the luminous particles enveloping me trembled as if startled.
They refused to allow my body to escape beyond the barrier, swarming frantically and hastily wrapping around my exposed skin.
Their desperate yet endearing movements struck me as oddly cute.
‘This won’t be practical during intense combat.’
Cute or not, it was slow and inefficient.
If I moved violently while the particles were enveloping me, the link would either break or slow down.
It seemed I could only use this in safe locations.
“Assessment complete.”
With that, testing the first new ability, ‘Anchor and Link’, was finished.
Next came the important part.
“Hehehehe… hehehehe.”
This was today’s main event.
Terminal expansion!
A notebook upgrade for that purpose.
The moment I initiated terminal expansion, an alert appeared asking, [ Which terminal should ‘世界’ be installed on? ]
I pulled out a black notebook.
“Good to see you, Level 1 Notebook.”
I’d asked Kang Hyo-jun to find me the “most durable notebook currently in existence.”
A sleek machine with a black chassis, premium LED accents embedded along its edges, and an elegant inverted triangle silver logo engraved at its center.
A Genovo notebook—famous since before The Tower’s emergence for being cheap, durable, and heavy—that some mad scientist had heavily modified.
Being pre-Hunter era equipment, and chosen purely for durability, its performance was abysmal.
By Hunter standards, it was F-rank.
But this machine…
An EX-rank Hunter. No, beyond that!
It would become the king of notebooks.
“From now on, your name is Note. B. Lupin.”
Become the freest notebook in the world, unbound by the limitations of any component.
I selected Note B. Lupin—or Nopi for short—as my terminal.
[Scanning]
Zing—
A flat, intense blue light shot out from the message window like a barcode scanner, sweeping across my entire notebook from top to bottom.
Whirr—
Without me even pressing the power button, the notebook turned on by itself, and the fan began to spin…
Whiiiiiiiiii!
“Huh?”
Just as I thought it was starting normally, the fan suddenly began to scream.
“What, what’s happening!”
Whoooooosh!
The notebook trembled as if about to explode, and my heart began trembling right along with it.
“No! Not my Nopy!!”
Panicking that the main body might explode, I frantically jabbed at the close button on the hologram system window.
But my fingers only cut through empty air—it was useless.
In the meantime, Nopy transcended screaming and began trembling as if utterly enraged.
“Calm down, Nopy!”
I hastily opened the notebook to force a shutdown, and the display was glowing a brilliant blue.
And within it, in golden letters, sprawled across the screen…
[Installing world]
was displayed.
I touched the trackpad, tapped the screen, but nowhere could I find a ‘cancel’ button.
I watched Nopy with bated breath.
[Installation complete]
“Phew.”
Nopy had endured.
‘Truly destined to become the king of notebooks.’
After the final notification, Nopy regained composure.
Now stable, Nopy obediently displayed the desktop.
And on the desktop, just one thing.
A Lost Honor icon had appeared.
Click, click.
I manipulated the trackpad to launch Lost Honor.
Boom!
With grand BGM, the connection proceeded normally.
The difference from when I’d launched it on PC was…
[Who are you?]
“What’s with this heavy-handed question.”
Against the Lost Honor title screen background, a question of unclear meaning flickered with crackling noise as if the text were corrupted.
“I’m Ha Sung-woon.”
[Ha Sung-woon]
After typing simply and pressing enter, an hourglass indicating loading popped out and began spinning.
“They verify accounts like this?”
[Earth-94th Floor-ID: Ha Sung-woon]
[Is this correct?]
[1. Yes] [2. No]
“Yeah, that’s right.”
When I selected ‘Yes’, the screen changed.
A familiar login window appeared.
Nebula’s face was visible.
I tapped to log in, and meanwhile examined the PC.
[Connection detected from another device]
and the game ending message appeared.
On the laptop, the hourglass was spinning round and round again.
[Terminal Status Check]
[CPU: F]
[GPU: F]
[RAM: F]
[SSD: F]
[Motherboard: F]
[Power: F]
[Cooling: F]
“Dreadful.”
Heroes fresh out of the starting village are always like this.
Don’t be disappointed, Nopy.
The connection was complete.
But…
“…What is this?”
The screen was grotesque.
Something that looked like Nebula—a lump of black clay—stood there vacantly.
Nebula’s full-body armor, which once gleamed with somber beauty, had been squashed into a shape like a dented black drum barrel.
The Safe House, which should have been majestic, had also frozen mid-loading and been compressed into a grimy cement block…
The NPCs in the Safe House were stuttering and glitching as they wandered about, their forms squashed like beeswax figurines melted in a microwave.
[Welcome back, Guardian!]
Only the clear voice of the NPC Artier flowed from the gray lump of clay whose facial features had been completely flattened.
“…This is serious.”
My Lost Honor, which had delighted my eyes with its realistic graphics, had transformed into the result of a child’s clay play.
“No! What I see doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’ve logged in from a new terminal.”
I deliberately averted my gaze and tapped the skill window.
…
“Why isn’t it showing?”
Only after tapping my index finger repeatedly on the mouse did the skill window finally appear.
“…Okay, I expected this much lag.”
Click—I activated synchronization.
…
About three seconds later, the Demon Lord Commander’s mana filled up.
“This reverse responsiveness is insane.”
So I had to endure about three seconds of lag for every single action?
And then another three seconds or so passed.
[M-m-m-master]
Rat-dol prostrated before me with bizarre, stuttering movements as if frame drops had seized him.
‘….’
Rat-dol awakens automatically when dark mana circulates through him.
Opening the skill window takes 3 seconds. Activating synchronization takes 3 seconds. Dark mana circulating takes 3 seconds. Rat-dol waking up takes another 3 seconds…
“This is insane.”
I attempted to cast magic.
…It still takes 3 seconds.
The processing speed had degraded so severely that the mana’s movement as it traced the spell formation stuttered and cut out in chunks.
The mana consumption had deteriorated to the point where I gasped audibly.
But the most serious problem was something else entirely.
I lifted my eyes from the monitor and surveyed the room.
…The world appeared distorted like the ‘clay lumps’ I’d seen in Lost Honor.
It was a vision problem right now.
I hastily logged out.
“Phew.”
My vision returned to normal.
Normally I should feel a sense of exhaustion as the mana that had filled me dissipated, but the experience had been so unpleasant that I felt liberated instead.
“I can only really use synchronization, it seems.”
But it was premature to be disappointed.
If all these drawbacks stemmed from Nopy’s components being entirely F-grade, then improvement was entirely possible.
The starting point.
I spread out the components I’d extracted from Yereche and Happy—or rather, ‘borrowed’—across the table with a flourish.
“A great notebook must have great companions by its side.”
Join me on this journey to become the notebook king.
I decided to start by swapping out the CPU.
“Let me see. The model name is… wow.”
Amazing!
This is incredible.
With the discovery of mana stones and the advancement of mana engineering, Earth’s civilization developed tremendously.
But unfortunately, the problem was that mana stones, with their infinite applications, were rare treasures that were difficult to obtain.
In an era where mana stones accounted for most of the advancement, there was no room to waste them on mere computer components.
So the ‘mana stone components’ that had been produced in limited quantities during the early days of mana engineering had become ultra-rare treasures, difficult even to glimpse now.
Yet two of them were right before my eyes.
“How did you even get these?”
A mana stone CPU called the magnum opus and masterwork of Maintel.
The design featured a heat-resistant reinforced glass panel inserted into the center of a crude metal heat sink cover, with a faintly glowing mana stone core visible to the naked eye within.
Without even connecting the power, the microscopic mana circuit lines engraved on the mana stone wafer pulsed with a shimmering light.
It had a science fiction aesthetic.
“Components really do look best when they’re packed with LEDs, shimmering brilliantly.”
With practiced movements, I swapped in the component and checked Nopy’s status.
[CPU: S]
“S grade….”
A bit disappointing.
To match Nophy’s caliber, I’d need to find an EX-grade component…
“I’m disappointed, Yereche.”
So that’s the extent of your abilities.
“This is confiscation.”
How dare you lend out an S-grade component.
I’ll punish you through confiscation.
Next up: the graphics card, the GPU.
“The appearance is far from ordinary.”
A massive primary mana stone sits proudly embedded in the center of the circuit board, while thick heat dissipation pipes woven from silver and gold—materials with high mana conductivity—wrap tightly around the board.
Instead of RGB LED tuning, the natural mana radiance emanating from the mana stone itself seeps through the gaps of the crude metal heat sink.
It feels as though two genres—fantasy and mechanical engineering—have been woven together.
“This one has its own charm, I must admit.”
[GPU: EX]
“!”
There it is.
EX!
“As expected of Happy. She never disappoints me.”
In return, I’ll extend the rental period.
If I must set a deadline…
Let’s make it eternal.
[Agent.]
“Hmm?”
[Someone came by the door and left. They left behind a package.]
“?”
Though I’m running on a laptop and have degraded considerably, I was just reinforced with the Demon Lord Commander’s mana.
Someone had visited discreetly without triggering my senses?
Just as alarm bells began ringing in my mind…
[It seems impossible to detect through mana. I was able to sense them because I can read biological signals.]
“Such extraordinary concealment…”
There’s a hunter in South Korea capable of using stealth techniques like that?
[It appears to be Hunter Jang Ho-hyun.]
“Jang Ho-hyun? Who’s that?”
The name sounds vaguely familiar, yet strangely unfamiliar.
[…A hunter known as the Silent Assassin.]
“Ah, that person.”
Right, there was such a hunter.
I opened the door and stepped outside.
On the floor sat a single component, carefully packaged with respect.
The component of Nophy’s that Jang Ho-hyun had “borrowed” briefly.
SSD.
“I’ll put it to good use.”
Hmm? There’s a note.
[You must return this.]
The handwriting was formal and precise, written with careful, deliberate strokes.
“Is this Jang Hwi-ho’s handwriting?”
[It’s Jang Ho-hyun.]
“Right, that person.”
I crumpled the politely written note without a second thought and tossed it into the trash bin.
This was originally Nopi’s—what was he talking about returning it?
As if a temporary caretaker had any say in the matter…
[Ha ha. You actually believe that? How naive. Stupid organic lifeform…]
“….”
After hearing Whitey’s comment, I quietly kicked the trash bin containing the note out of sight.
I should definitely return it.
I’m just an efficiency-focused gamer, not a villain.
And I’m certainly not a mad scientist turning Whitey into a human-hating AI.
“What are you saying, Whitey? Of course I have to return borrowed things. I’m a conscientious South Korean citizen, after all.”
[Oh…]
Anyway.
That wasn’t the important part.
I needed to install the SSD quickly and see how much better things would become.
* * *
The Silent Assassin, Jang Ho-hyun, forced his reluctant feet to move forward.
But he couldn’t stop his head from turning back repeatedly.
My SSD…
The component he’d just left behind lingered in Jang Ho-hyun’s vision.
A tear rolled down Jang Ho-hyun’s cheek.
But because he was the Silent Assassin, no one noticed it.
“Oh! You startled me. Could you make some noise when you walk?”
“My apologies….”
* * *
“No!!! You can’t!!! Nopi!!!”
Nopi is dead!

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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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