Chapter 1 · 11 min
Chapter 1
Bottled Water
‘Is this the end?’
Kim Dohyeon sighed.
He had barely managed to escape the magical beasts, but there was nowhere left to hide.
If the magical beasts roaming nearby found Dohyeon, this time he really would be eaten alive.
‘Of all things, I had to get caught up in an absorption phenomenon.’
The absorption phenomenon was an occurrence in which people around the Tower were randomly selected and summoned into the Tower.
It occurred rarely around the Tower.
About once every few years, someone would be swept up by the Tower’s absorption phenomenon and summoned into the Tower.
Naturally, the government strictly prohibited people from traveling near the Tower.
But even those government measures were useless.
‘Wasn’t it said that if there are no people around the Tower, it expands its range until someone gets absorbed?’
Dohyeon had also been far away from the Tower when he was absorbed, so there was no doubt about it.
Dohyeon looked down at himself.
A familiar uniform came into view.
‘Still, who would’ve thought I’d get absorbed while working a part-time job at a convenience store...’
“Grrrr...”
At that moment, a guttural growl sounded nearby.
Dohyeon’s hair stood on end.
The magical beasts had already chased him this far.
Right after he had been summoned into the Tower, magical beasts had appeared before the bewildered Dohyeon.
For half a day, he had repeatedly hidden and fled from the magical beasts charging at him.
He had barely found some inconspicuous bushes and hidden there, but the magical beasts were persistent.
They showed no sign of leaving and continued circling the area.
‘This is probably the 10th floor.’
He remembered seeing photos of the 10th floor on NewTube.
The dense forest in those photos matched the scenery Dohyeon was seeing now perfectly.
To go up or down between floors of the Tower, one had to find a gate.
The distance between an ascending gate and a descending gate took about a week to walk.
In other words, even if Dohyeon was lucky enough to find the stairs leading down from the 10th floor to the 9th floor, it would still take another nine weeks to escape the Tower.
The chances of avoiding the magical beasts for that long were practically zero.
‘No! No matter how I think about it, there’s no way to survive!’
Dohyeon lowered his head in despair.
[Kim Dohyeon has awakened.]
‘Huh?’
Dohyeon jerked his head up.
‘Awakened? At a time like this?’
As Dohyeon stood there bewildered, a rumor suddenly came to mind.
‘Come to think of it, they said the longer you stay on the higher floors of the Tower, the greater your chances of awakening.’
Experts had dismissed it as nonsense, but it seemed it was true after all.
Hope swelled in Dohyeon’s chest.
‘Then maybe I can get out of here!’
“Status Window.”
[Kim Dohyeon]
[Trait: Convenience Store Owner]
‘Convenience Store Owner?’
Dohyeon was tilting his head in confusion when it happened.
With a thud, a cloud of dust blew up behind him.
Startled, Dohyeon turned around and saw a rectangular building standing there.
A sign hung at the top.
‘Tower Convenience Store - Main Branch’
“Tower Convenience Store...?”
Dohyeon had been staring blankly at the building when he suddenly came to his senses.
There was no way the magical beasts had failed to hear that sound.
Sure enough, magical beasts began converging from all around.
A wolf-shaped magical beast came running on all fours with its tongue hanging out.
‘I-It’s over!’
Dohyeon squeezed his eyes shut and threw himself inside the building.
Even though there was no hope, it was an instinctive desire for survival, an attempt to live even a little longer.
Thud!
“Yelp!”
‘What...?’
When no impact came no matter how long he waited, Dohyeon cautiously opened his eyes.
In front of him were magical beasts struggling to enter the building but unable to get in, as though something were blocking them.
[Forces hostile to the Convenience Store Owner cannot enter the convenience store!]
The building did not budge no matter how many times the magical beasts rammed themselves against it.
“Grrrr...”
Eventually, the magical beasts gave up, looked at Dohyeon with reluctant expressions, and returned to the forest.
Seeing that, Dohyeon let out a long sigh.
“I-I survived.”
His relief was short-lived.
Dohyeon looked around.
‘What is this place...?’
Despite being called a convenience store, the building was completely empty.
Only the staff room and restroom on one side, along with the checkout counter in the corner, showed that this really was a convenience store.
‘Is this really a convenience store? No, more importantly, what kind of trait is Convenience Store Owner?’
As Dohyeon pondered, a message appeared before his eyes.
[First-Time Bonus! Bottled water will be stocked on the shelves.]
Thud!
“Whoa! Y-You scared me...”
A refrigerator appeared in the corner.
Dohyeon, whose nerves were already frayed from the magical beast attack, nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the refrigerator dropping into place.
He got to his feet and cautiously peered inside the refrigerator, his eyes widening.
Two rows of 500ml bottled water were lined up on one side of the refrigerator.
‘R-Real bottled water actually appeared?’
Dohyeon knew quite a bit about hunters and the Tower because he occasionally watched related videos on NewTube.
What troubled hunters most inside the Tower was not magical beasts, but securing supplies of food and drinking water.
Every source of drinking water that could be found inside the Tower was contaminated and completely undrinkable for humans.
Not only were the magical beasts inedible, even relatively normal-looking grass was practically poisonous to humans.
Therefore, hunters stocked up on plenty of food and drinking water before climbing the Tower.
But since they could not climb the Tower while carrying several weeks’ worth of food and bottled water, hunters had established supply bases throughout the Tower.
However, the prices were extremely high, and even those bases were often attacked and destroyed by magical beasts.
And yet, here on the Tower’s 10th floor, there was bottled water chilled enough to have droplets of condensation on it...
Faced with a sight that defied common sense within the Tower, Dohyeon’s jaw dropped.
‘This is... the Convenience Store Owner trait?’
Dohyeon opened the refrigerator door and picked up a bottle of water.
[Bottled Water 500ml: 1g of Mana Stone]
“...What?”
Dohyeon stared blankly at the message floating before his eyes.
‘You’re saying I have to pay a whole gram of mana stone for just 500ml of bottled water?’
One gram of mana stone was worth ten thousand won.
Ten thousand won for 500ml of bottled water.
It was highway robbery.
But Dohyeon soon changed his mind.
‘No. Put another way, since it’s my convenience store, doesn’t that mean I can earn that much more mana stone?’
Once he thought of it that way, the almost extortionate price suddenly became quite pleasing.
Dohyeon stepped away from the refrigerator and looked around.
The convenience store interior was completely empty.
‘Can’t I add more products?’
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a message appeared before his eyes.
[Add Product]
[Bottled Water 500ml: 1g of Mana Stone]
[Triangle Kimbap: 1g of Mana Stone]
[Cup Ramen: 1g of Mana Stone]
[...]
[Each time a product is added, a fee equal to 50% of the product’s price will be charged.]
A long list of products appeared.
‘The bottled water was added thanks to the first-time bonus, and I need mana stones to add more products.’
For penniless Dohyeon, it was still nothing more than a pie in the sky.
But if he kept running the convenience store, the number of products would surely increase little by little.
At that moment, voices came from outside the convenience store.
“Is this the place?”
“I told you it is. There was definitely a loud noise from here.”
The murmuring voices of people.
They were hunters.
***
‘Ah, I want some cold water.’
Yoon Taegyeong, the leader of the hunters, smacked his dry lips.
Their expedition to the 12th floor had been successful.
They had also obtained plenty of mana stones.
It should have been something to celebrate, but Taegyeong merely trudged along without energy.
No matter how many mana stones he had obtained, they could not quench the thirst he felt right now.
‘Bastards. Even if water is scarce, how can they jack up the price that much?’
Taegyeong ground his teeth.
He had stopped by the supply base on the 10th floor to buy water, but unlike when they had been climbing, the price of water had skyrocketed.
Even when he offered 5g of mana stone for 500ml of bottled water, they had said they absolutely would not sell it for that amount, leaving him no choice but to return empty-handed.
Supply bases did not sell supplies cheaply to anyone who was not a member of their guild.
Of course, it was not as though Taegyeong’s group had no water left.
For this expedition, they had hired two porters and packed them full of food and drinking water.
Whenever they encountered a supply base along the way, they also replenished whatever they had used.
But that was literally life-saving water, with only enough set aside for survival.
It was not something they could drink simply because they felt a little thirsty.
“There was definitely a sound from here...”
Taegyeong’s group was crossing through the forest following the vice-captain, who had said he heard a loud noise.
The vice-captain, who had awakened a reconnaissance trait, never missed even the faintest sound.
But no matter how long they walked, they could not find the place where the sound had supposedly come from.
Already thirsty, Taegyeong began growing irritated as even more of his time was wasted.
“Hey! No matter how I think about it, you must’ve misheard...”
“Huh?”
The vice-captain suddenly stopped walking.
Taegyeong, who ended up bumping his nose into the pack on the vice-captain’s back, shouted.
“Hey, you bastard, why’d you suddenly sto—”
“C-Captain! Look over there!”
“What’s over there...”
Taegyeong followed the vice-captain’s pointing finger and his eyes widened.
‘Tower Convenience Store - Main Branch.’
“W-What is that...?”
The rectangular building looked familiar.
Of course it did.
Aside from a somewhat different design, it looked very similar to the convenience stores he had seen countless times before.
“A-A convenience store? Why is there a convenience store in the Tower...?”
“Captain. Look over there!”
Where the vice-captain pointed, there was a checkout counter with a man standing behind it.
And he was even wearing a convenience store uniform.
Taegyeong’s group approached the convenience store in a daze.
As they entered, the man at the counter bowed.
“Welcome. Welcome to the Tower Convenience Store.”
“A-A convenience store!? Is this really a convenience store?”
“Yes. We hardly have any products yet, but it is a convenience store.”
Taegyeong looked around the convenience store and sensed something strange.
‘The lights are on?’
Electronic devices did not work inside the Tower.
That was why hunters lit campfires and stood night watch every night.
As Taegyeong looked around blankly, something strange entered his field of vision.
Trembling, Taegyeong approached it.
Clunk!
Cold air wafted from inside.
“A-A refrigerator!”
“A refrigerator works inside the Tower!?”
Taegyeong’s group shouted in astonishment.
But none of them were as shocked as Taegyeong, who was looking inside the refrigerator.
“W-Water!”
It was filled with bottled water chilled enough that droplets of condensation had formed on the bottles.
As Taegyeong picked up a bottle of water with trembling hands, a message appeared before his eyes.
[Bottled Water 500ml: 1g of Mana Stone]
“500ml of bottled water for 1g of mana stone...?”
The man at the counter scratched his head and said,
“Ah, it’s a little expensive, right? Still, since the Tower is such an unusual environment, there’s not much I can do about—”
“Th-That’s cheap!?”
“...Excuse me?”
At a supply base, anyone who was not a guild member had to pay at least 5g of mana stone for 500ml of bottled water.
In comparison, the convenience store’s bottled water, which cost only 1g, might as well have been free.
Excited, Taegyeong gathered an armful of bottled water and approached the counter.
“These, all of them! I’ll buy all of them!”
“A-All of them?”
“Yes! All of it, including enough for my members to drink!”
At the same time, a message appeared before his eyes.
[You have purchased 50 bottles of 500ml Bottled Water.]
[50g of Mana Stone will be deducted.]
Taegyeong barely even glanced at the message as he opened a bottle and brought it to his lips.
Gulp, gulp!
A refreshing sensation spread from his throat down through his chest.
At the taste, unlike anything he had experienced from the bottled water sold at supply bases, Taegyeong felt his head clear.
Gulp.
The other members watching him swallowed hard.
Taegyeong drained an entire bottle in an instant, then looked at his members and shouted.
“What are you idiots doing!? You don’t seriously think I can drink all fifty bottles myself, do you? Hurry up and drink some too!”
“Yahoo! Long live the captain!”
“Thank you, Captain!”
The members rushed toward the counter.
They each picked up one or two bottles of water and drank.
The man watched them with his mouth hanging open in a daze.