Lee Young-woo, 24, F-rank, an orphan refugee from a war

[A/N: Currently, this story is on hiatus. Moreover, it has a ton of grammatical errors. This story is subject to be reworked someday in the future. You have been warned.]

Youngwoo woke up and stretched lightly. His hand quickly searched all around him to finally locate his phone. 6:20 was the time when his alarm sounded, fiercely attacking his ears. With a sigh, he placed his hand on the device and guided his fingers to where the button to stop the alarm was. Yawning, he **** himself up, and after a few seconds he was sitting on his bed.

His apartment was a very comfy, albeit tiny space, about 5 by 5 metres. Just next to the door to the corridor, he saw an electric kitchen, on which a pan was standing with some leftover bacon from the day before. Next to that was a small sink and a fridge. On the other side of the room was his bed. The sheets were disheveled as per usual (he tended to move around in his sleep a lot), and with a still sleepy gaze he found his old laptop laying on the floor.

'Ah, fuck... another day.' He thought as he slowly and carefully got up and walked over to the sink. Without much thinking, he turned the crank up and drunk some of it. However, as he felt something brush over his teeth when he closed his mouth, he spat it forward. To his disgust, he found that water's color was somewhat brownish, meaning some rust got into it. 'Oh come on!' He struck the wall lightly in discontent. With no way of purifying his mouth easily, he decided to just let the water run until the rust was washed off enough to not cause any further discomfort.

Still with an uneasy feeling in his mouth, he walked to his bed and placed his computer on it. After ensuring that it was plugged to the contact (its battery was of little use anyway), he fired it up. While waiting for the long startup to finish, he looked around the disorder. By the table he found some clothes that, in his opinion, could still be worn for some days. 'It might be time to do some laundry.' A thought rang in his head as he got out of his sleeping garnets (which were just regular clothes anyways, a plain green shirt and knee-long black shorts) and changed into something he would be able to walk around in. After donning ankle-long, dark gray pants and blue shirt, he put on a light, black hoodie.

As he looked at the sink, he noticed how the water turned to a nice, white color, signalling that it was time to wash his teeth loosely. After that, he turned on the pan and turned to his laptop. With little hesitation, he turned on the Internet and went to the page titled "Tower's Daily". While scrolling through the page, he only found a single post worth reading.

@:Is it the end of the Magician Guild?

Yesterday at 12:00, Magician Guild gathered all its forces to try and get through the boss on 20th Floor, the infamous "Iron Maiden". Today at 2:32 the guild has returned, unable to bring down the boss. It is unknown exactly how many people were lost in the raid, but what started as over 500 people came out as about 30. It seems that Magician Guild's pride and Guildmaster, 2nd ranked Hilda Coull, known as Dragon Witch, has died during the raid. The Vicemaster, 8th ranked Morpheus refused to give any insight on the situation, and so it seems likely. With that, it looks that the guild's future is looking grim.

However, after urging some of the guild members, we found out some positive news: due to the sacrifice of many members, the guild was able to pin-point Iron Maiden's weakness. What this weakness is remains unknown, but Morpheus was heard to be gathering new raid forces to go and kill the boss today at 12:00. We will go to the Gate today and find out whether the rumors are true.

'What...? There's no way. How could almost the entire guild lose? This is unheard of.' Thought Youngwoo as he was sitting on the bed, pondering. 'Wait... what's that smell...? Oh shit, oh FUCK!' He bolted out of his bed to the frying pan, but what welcomed him was nearly black pieces of bacon he was intending to eat.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" He yelled on top of his lungs. "Fucking hell..."

With his mood completely ruined, he nearly threw the pan into the sink and sunk it in water, not even wanting to take care of it for now. Instead, he quickly brushed his teeth and closed his laptop before taking a small backpack on his back and venturing out. Quickly checking a pouch he carried in his pocket, he sighed heavily.

'For fuck's sake, only 25 silver left... Life is unfair. It's not my fault that the Tower only gave me a shitty passive skill.'

He combed his short, black hair for a moment before going down on stairs. His bright, yellowish skin had no blemishes, and he was quite tall, standing at 194 cm of height. He had little fat (mostly thanks to his metabolism), but he obtained a bit muscle from his hunts. His eyes were shining in the dark scenery of the city, small, brown points locked in his head.

So far, he didn't come across anyone, and thanks to this he was able to breathe calmly. He wasn't very open to people, as most of the time conversations he was having ended up getting very awkward. Was it perhaps that people were laughing at him behind his back for being a F-rank Hunter? Or was it because the ability he got was not good at all? He didn't know, but he knew that it was safe to assume it was both.

Still, weak or not, he was **** to stay in this accursed place, possibly for the rest of his life. This meant one thing: he had to hunt. Economy was established surprisingly fast once people found out there was no way of going out of Tower. The main currency were the coins sometimes carried around by monsters and granted by fulfilling Tower's quests. With those, one could buy and sell basically anything, beginning with just loot from monsters, ending on oneself (it was surprising how many people did this in the beginning).

The Tower existed on Earth for 12 years now. Nobody knew how it came to be, it literally just appeared out of thin air in the middle of Indian Ocean. At first, public opinion thought it was alien attack, and the structure was bombarded on sight. However, the Tower didn't sustain any damage from extensive attacks, and it didn't retaliate in any way. After some weeks of speculation, an expedition was formed, and the story went quickly from there. In less than a year, there was already a society on Floor 1, named the Safe Zone. A huge city was erected here in a blink of an eye, and with some technology from the outside world, stable connection of Internet was possible (but not electricity, sadly, people had to figure out this one on their own.)

One of features of the Tower was its size compression. Nobody knew how it works, but despite the structure being only about 500 metres wide and 2,5 km tall (measuring from ocean surface), inside of Safe Zone alone was size of Australia and so high that there were layers of atmosphere in similar fashion to Earth itself. It had some barriers around and ended when one went almost 2500 km from entrance in any direction. This meant that Safe Zone was considered home to all hunters. Days were just as long as those on Earth and were synced perfectly. There was even some kind of Sun and Moon for the Safe Zone, but they looked a little different than Earth's. The sun was a little smaller, and moon bigger. Despite some monsters appearing on outskirts of the town, the city was safe, and only in first 2 years did some people die to outside threats.

Another feature (which brought so many people in the first place) was the Tower marking every person as a Hunter and giving them some kind of ability. The ranks were divided in 2 tiers: Normal and Elite (divided by people, not by Tower itself). Normal tier had ranks from F (the lowest) to A (the highest), and Elite had ranks S and higher.

When he first came to the Tower nearly 8 years ago, this system was already functioning in full. Youngwoo was overjoyed to receive a C-rank skill. Well, that was at first. Then, when he learned how to summon his status and check information on his skill, he wanted to cry.

[Leather Hide Full of Poison (passive)

Rank: C

You receive 20% less damage from all attacks and are nearly immune to heat and cold. However, every hit you take will cause some kind of debuff to happen to you.]

At first glance, it didn't seem half bad. But then, Youngwoo got hit for the first time, and immediately got poisoned, causing him to nearly die. Another time he got fatigued to the point where he simply couldn't walk for almost 10 minutes. Every time he received even the slightest damage (which used to happen a lot), he'd become crippled in some way. This was the reason he never went out of F rank of Hunters. He'd need to prove himself in battle, and how to do that when even a slight bruise can poison him to ****?

He could've gotten the skill removed, and after trying it out he really wanted to. However, there were two things that stopped him from doing that. The first one (quite obvious) was that the Tower wouldn't grant him a new skill even if he tried. And the second was, he liked the second effect. Being able to withstand high heat and cold was good even if it were to be only 50% effective, but for him it was nearly 95%. Many Hunters would kill for a skill that did that due to different climates of different floors. One would need a backpack with a lot of spare clothes for diverse outcomes, but Youngwoo was fine with just a small pack with bare necessities.

He never had much fortune in hunting, but that didn't mean he could simply give up. He, much like everyone else, knew well: if you did a lot in the Tower, be it something good, bad, on lower floor or higher, the Tower would eventually reward your efforts and suffering. And so, Youngwoo fought in his strife, patiently awaiting the fated day.

He waited for a month, then second one. People all around him started getting some extra skills, but nearly 80% of people that came with or before him still had only their original skill. Soon, after 6 months, this number diminished to 75%, then after 3 years to 60%. Now, 8 years after he came to the Tower, only about 5% of people that came with or before him had only 1 skill at their disposal. But Youngwoo wasn't optimistic about that; all those people were crippled in some capacity. Some didn't have limbs, some couldn't think straight, and some simply gave up, deciding to live on 1st floor and working hard, just as they have done outside the Tower.

That was the second reason he kept on going for hunts - to never be stuck like those who couldn't fight for themselves properly. He trained his reflexes hard nearly every day, and at this point he could go completely untouched for days. But that didn't give him confidence in going for any floor past floor 4; he could fight with bulky but slow orcs on floor 2 and mostly non-harmful slimes on floor 3, but floor 4 had wolves. He absolutely couldn't go against any fast targets if he wanted to live.

He moved forward on the walkway between a few buildings, intending to get to the Gate as soon as he could. At his pace, he'd reach it in about 25 minutes, which was good; he usually hunted from 7:00 to about 14:00 so as not to meet any stronger predators coming out at evenings. He fixed the light hoodie in black color he was wearing, and kept on going. There were nearly no people in sight; just some scarce few that were going about their business.

Reaching his destination, he saw 2 guards in uniforms standing next to the Gate. As he was approaching them, he noticed how there was nobody gathering near the Gate. He was fully expecting for at least someone to be attempting their own raid at this point of the day, but no one was in sight. There was just him, 2 guards, and no one else.

As he was about to take his steps directly into the door and place his hand on it to transfer to his desired floor, one of the guards stepped out and stopped him.

"Sir, we'll have to ask you to leave." He said, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

"What? I want to hunt, you guys can't stop me from doing that."

"We can. Merchant's Guild has asked nobody to access the Gate until Magician Guild retry their raid today at noon."

"What?! And you listened?"

"Sir, we're simply doing our job. Our higher-ups told us to listen. We're sure you can wait a few hours."

"You can't just block people from hunting!" Youngwoo raised his voice a little as he frowned, angry.

"Sir, please be understanding. We don't know why no one is allowed to hunt, either, but the four major guilds pressurized ours to cooperate."

"...what? All four?"

"Yes." One of the men nodded lightly. "Our guildmaster cannot understand this as well, but if issue is so imperative that the Gate must be blocked for a few hours, we're sure no harm will come to anyone because of it."

"No harm?! I can only hunt during mornings! How's that 'no harm'?!"

"Sir, we're sure you can skip a day. Nobody died before from being unable to hunt for a day." The guard was still speaking very calmly. This was making Youngwoo's blood boil.

"No, this is outrageous! I'm going in anyway! You two can't sto-"

"**** Palm." Guard on Youngwoo's right took a stance and pushed forward with his right hand. Palm of his hand, enveloped in blueish aura, sped forward and hit black-haired man in the chest, knocking him a few metres back.

As Youngwoo slowly got on his knees, he suddenly spat forward a mouthful of blood. 'Internal bleeding, just fucking amazing.' He had experienced it a few times already. Internal bleeding, while sounding serious, wasn't very harming to him. In fact, it was simply more of a nuisance that would stop after 10 minutes. Wiping blood from his mouth, he glanced at the guards, who both took their stances, ready to fight.

"...forget it." He said, taking his steps away, every now and again spitting some blood onto the grass next to the walkway he was walking on.

Guards relaxed slowly.

"You didn't have to hit him so hard." Said one of them. "Gate's warded off anyway, he'd have figured it out on his own."

"I didn't hit hard. It was actually a mock **** Palm of mine."

"Still, he didn't seem to take it so well."

"Who cares? I'm not getting paid to care for people, only for Gate."

"Same here."