A caterpillar should stick to eating pine needles, and a crow-tit will rip its legs trying to walk like a stork.
The two proverbs were different, but they meant the same thing.
Don't overstep, and act according to your station.
This lesson was the guiding principle Taeho Shin had kept close to his heart until then.
The class Taeho Awakened to was Blacksmith.
Even though it wasn't the class he wanted, he silently dedicated his life to it.
Constantly stuck in the forge, he was always soaked in sweat, with iron dust falling every time he moved.
Buried in endless work, he couldn't even climb the Tower.
But every time he made a weapon, humanity climbed another floor.
With every piece of armor he forged, the challengers' casualty rate dropped.
At some point during that endless hammering, he earned the respectful title of Transcendent Blacksmith from the people.
Though the work was hard and it wasn't the path he originally wanted, he had no regrets or doubts about his life.
…Until the world ended up like this.
"…Fuck."
A curse left his mouth.
But there was no one left to hear it.
Covered in wounds, Taeho looked around with hollow eyes.
Under a sky swirling with dark purple, countless corpses lay scattered around.
His eyes scanned the bodies.
He saw a sharp, sturdy sword that could slice through dragon scales.
He saw a shield that could block a railgun without a scratch.
He saw a suit made to be as tough as a shield while amplifying physical strength.
They were all pieces of gear he had crafted himself.
"Why on earth… Why!"
He covered his face.
In the end, humanity failed to climb the Tower.
But it wasn't due to a lack of strength.
The human traitors.
The lunatics who were overwhelmed by the Tower's existence, abandoned humanity, and voluntarily worshipped it.
The Tower collapsed because those lunatics backstabbed the very challengers climbing to protect everyone.
But they, too, were once human.
And so, they freely used the equipment he had created for humanity.
Because the traitors held high ranks in the world government, they had access to even better weapons.
And with those weapons, they slaughtered the noble challengers who were risking their lives to climb the Tower.
"Damn it…! Damn it!"
Taeho slammed his fist into the ground.
The thick concrete shattered into dust.
"Did I work so hard… just for an ending like this?!"
Huddled over, he howled like a beast.
The countless pieces of equipment he had desperately crafted… only empowered those destroying the world.
The reality made his head feel like it would explode with rage.
Rumble—
The sky warped.
With every ripple, an energy that shouldn't exist surged across the atmosphere—the Tower's Qi.
Once, humanity believed this energy was their key to conquering the unknown.
But when the Tower fell, the trapped Qi ruptured, flooding the globe like an uncontained tide.
It began consuming the world like venom.
Except Earth wasn't the victim.
Mankind was.
To the invaders who broke free from the Tower and descended upon Earth, it was as vital as oxygen—a raw source of power.
ROOOOOAR!!!
A roar that felt like it would overturn heaven and earth vibrated through the air.
Gritting his teeth, Taeho raised his head.
High above, the burning purple heavens fractured as an entity of unfathomable size revealed itself.
He stared at the being with bloodshot eyes.
"Arkanus…!"
The First Dragon.
The most powerful dragon.
And the Dragon Lord who ruled over all dragons.
Arkanus flew closer, looking down disdainfully on the world with eyes burning like suns.
It was so impossibly far away that he couldn't clearly see its pupils.
But he could feel it.
Feel Arkanus staring only at him.
Gritting his teeth hard enough to break them, Taeho managed to pull himself up.
Click-clack-clack!
The suit lying on the ground wrapped around his body in an instant.
Since he had made it himself, he knew how to use it better than anyone else.
Yet among all his creations, a single anomaly remained—an item whose true nature escaped even him.
"I'm counting on you."
Opening his inventory, he pulled out the item at the very top.
An item he had made himself but didn't know how to use.
At the same time, it was the very item that earned him his Transcendent title.
[Unknown Core]
Grade: Transcendent
Description: A core that has transcended the very meaning of grades. It requires charging to use its original abilities.
Remaining Capacity: 0.0001%
Unique Abilities: [Charge], [Unknown], [Unknown]
Creator: Taeho Shin
The information revealed nothing except for [Charge], one of its unique abilities.
But this was the only thing he could rely on.
"I don't know what you are, but…"
As he brought the core to his chest, a space opened up within the suit.
Securing the core, he gripped his sword and shield firmly.
"At least at the end, give me strength worthy of your Transcendent grade."
Skreeeech!
Dragons flew toward him like arrows.
A destructive force of Qi gathered inside their gaping jaws.
BOOM!!!
A deafening roar shattered the air as torrents of dragon breath tore toward him.
The breath attacks, spanning a range of at least several kilometers, were impossible to dodge.
Knowing this, he held his shield close to his body and lowered his stance as much as possible.
Rumble!
The broken concrete remnants melted in an instant.
But as the next blast struck immediately after, the molten ground flash-froze solid.
Lightning jagged from the sky, shattering the ice to dust.
A roaring gale followed, sweeping the debris clear.
A single dragon's breath was capable of laying waste to all of South Korea.
Now, those breaths poured down one after another, targeting only him.
Then, the onslaught abruptly stopped.
Silence settled over the ruined earth.
The dragons, fully aware of their own destructive power, were certain their prey was dead.
But.
"Are you done, you lizard bastards?"
Inside the crater where countless breaths had poured, Taeho had endured every single attack, his eyes wide open like a wild beast.
Before the startled dragons could react, condensed Qi fired from his outstretched hand straight toward one of them.
BANG!!!
The dragon struck by the blast plummeted to the earth.
The remaining dragons' eyes widened in shock.
They couldn't comprehend what had just happened.
As the enraged dragons gathered Qi to unleash their breath attacks again, a massive cry on a completely different level from theirs echoed from afar.
ROOOOOAR!!!
Terrified by Arkanus's cry, the dragons scattered.
Behind them, the Dragon Lord's massive body came into Taeho's view.
A flicker of despair flashed in his eyes.
His gaze locked onto Arkanus’s gaping maw.
One look was all it took to know.
That breath was on a completely different level from the others.
100 times? No, 1,000 times?
He couldn't even estimate its power.
He even thought that Earth itself might be torn apart.
"Is this the end?"
His will broke.
No—truth be told, it had been broken from the very beginning.
The Tower had already collapsed.
That reality wouldn't change even if he somehow killed all those dragons.
So why was he fighting so hard?
If he just surrendered here…
If he let that cataclysmic breath erase him, peacefully, without pain—
"What a stupid thought."
Crunch!
He bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could.
The electric shock of pain instantly snapped his blurring mind back to reality.
Give up? Throw away a path forged through the blood, desperate struggles, and sacrifices of so many?
"Not a chance in hell."
Click-clack!
The suit wrapping around his body reshaped itself.
The parts protecting his chest and abdomen vanished.
Instead, it focused on his limbs, pushing his physical strength and attack power to their absolute limits.
As he looked at the core, its remaining capacity was displayed.
[Remaining Capacity: 0.93%]
"Weak lizard bastards. You blasted so many breaths, and that's all it charged?"
He insulted the dragons as if they were pathetic.
But he didn't mean it.
No, in truth, he was completely sickened by the dragons' power.
To charge it this much—something that hadn't moved past 0.0001% before no matter what he tried…
…And to think it hadn't even reached 1% after taking all those dragon breaths.
Taeho thought to himself.
What on earth is this core?
"This is actually perfect. I'll absorb your breath with this core, completely erase it, and then use that power to kill you!"
The Qi contained within the core flowed into the suit, lifting his body.
Soaring up in an instant, he headed toward Arkanus.
Quietly watching, the Dragon Lord opened its mouth wider.
BOOM—!
All sound was erased.
His eardrums had ruptured from the overwhelmingly massive roar.
The gargantuan breath obscured Arkanus from his vision.
But he didn't give up.
"Aaargh!!!"
He let out a shout that could have been a scream or a battle cry.
While absorbing the breath with the core, he converted all the charged Qi into an attack.
The numbers for the core's remaining capacity fluctuated wildly.
However, the gap in power was clear.
"Urgh!"
His body was burning away.
No—had it already burned away entirely?
Sensations had vanished from his body.
He couldn't even tell if he was alive or dead at that point.
In total silence, he simply kept charging and attacking while feeling endless pain.
If only I had known they were human traitors.
Was it because death was near?
Suddenly, past regrets drifted into his mind.
No, if only I had restricted the equipment so that only chosen people could use it. If only I hadn't made it.
No…
If only.
If only I had turned down every request, believed in my own potential, and climbed the Tower myself. Could I have brought about a different ending than this?
At some point, the pain vanished.
He could hear nothing and see nothing.
He couldn't tell if he was dead or alive.
Since he could at least still think, was he still alive?
An absurd chuckle slipped out at the ridiculous thought.
Still, he had done everything he could.
Even if he ultimately broke down and failed, at least he hadn't given up.
Just like that, as he was about to let go of his consciousness, which he had held onto like a lingering regret—
Something familiar floated into his pitch-black vision.
What is that?
The moment the question crossed his mind, the tick of a clock echoed from somewhere.
Tick—!
It sounded as loud as a dragon's breath.
What's this all of a sudden? It's so annoying. Everything is over now, so why am I suddenly hearing a clock?
Just as irritation began to mount…
Tick—!
The ticking of the Unknown Core, which had resonated ceaselessly like a heartbeat, stopped.
"Damn it! What on earth is this annoying clock sound… Huh?"
Realizing he could hear his own voice, he snapped his eyes open.
Sitting up, he froze in shock and looked around.
A cramped room, a worn-out desk.
Stacked high with certification exam books.
A sight he hadn't seen since becoming a Blacksmith.
Yet it was a sight he knew all too well.
"This is… before I Awakened…"
Before he could even finish his sentence…
Ding!
[Congratulations. You have been chosen as an Awakener.]
[Proceed with the tutorial to Awaken your latent class.]
Along with the notification, the message window that had completely turned his life upside down a long time ago popped up once again.
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