BFBT 9

Chapter 9

Dimension Gate

“Boss! This isn’t right! I worked my butt off killing those trash mobs to save up points, so taking advantage of me like this is dirty!”

“Now hold on, Baek Hyun. It’s because it’s you that I’m offering this price. I’m Hwang Kang-ung—the man they call the Antoni Gaudí of the 1st Floor!”

“Come on, 10,000 points is way too harsh! Killing a 1st-floor skeleton only gives a measly 5 points! A full clear of the floor yields barely 50 points! I’d have to run the 1st floor 200 times for that!”

“Hmph, fine! Good grief… I’m giving you a discount only because it’s you. I’ll take 8,000 points.”

Inside a large room on the top floor of a ten-story building, Hwang Kang-ung and Baek Hyun were locked in a heated argument.

The spacious room was filled with architectural models, structural frames, expansive maps, and simulated terrain mock-ups.

“Boss Hwang Kang-ung, I am Baek Hyun—the top Magic Swordsman of the 1st floor. Are you sure you won’t regret this later?”

“Ahem!”

Hwang Kang-ung cleared his throat, sinking into contemplation as he weighed the proposal.

“Do you really believe you can break free from the 1st floor?”

“Yes. Because Senior said so.”

Baek Hyun’s expression was dead serious, forcing Hwang Kang-ung to look past the immediate present and consider the future.

“To be frank, I think escaping the 1st floor might turn out to be completely impossible forever.”

At Kang-ung’s somber tone, Baek Hyun nodded.

It was a perfectly reasonable perspective. Lee Shin was overwhelmingly powerful—an insurmountable wall that no challenger could defeat or overcome, no matter how strong they grew.

As a floor boss designated by the Tower, Lee Shin was bound to the 1st floor and could never leave. If so, they too might be trapped here for eternity.

“Even so, he said it was possible.”

“At the end of the day, he’s still just a human bound to the Tower.”

“Isn’t that true for us as well? We’re bound here, too—trapped right inside this 1st-floor waiting room.”

“Don’t twist logic, kid.”

Baek Hyun opened his mouth to argue further, but stopped himself. Hwang Kang-ung’s reasoning was fundamentally sound and logical.

Lee Shin might just be an entity created by the Tower, and perhaps everything he said was nothing more than a character persona programmed into him.

Yet Baek Hyun—having faced him directly and interacted with him multiple times—could not bring himself to believe that Lee Shin was a artificial construct created by the Tower.

He was a human, just like them.

“Even if there’s an alternative clear condition like he claims and you manage to leave the 1st floor, there’s no guarantee you’ll become a ranker in the future.”

“That’s true, but no challengers in history have ever grown this strong starting from a 1st-floor waiting room. Once we go up, we can decisively shatter every single clear record on every floor above.”

Baek Hyun wasn’t wrong.

Hundreds of challengers had already entered the 1st-floor waiting room. Among them, the young man standing right here was strong enough to be counted on a single hand.

“Fine. 5,000 points. Not a single point lower.”

“Khaaah! As expected of Korea’s Antoni Gaudí! I’ll be in your care, then! Once the training center is completed and I grow stronger, I’ll help you out when we climb the Tower later. Hahaha!”

“Enough, just get out already.”

“Alright, work hard, Boss!”

After Baek Hyun exited the room, Hwang Kang-ung stood up and walked over to the window, gazing out at the city that had sprung up across the 1st-floor waiting room.

It could no longer be called a mere village—it had transformed into a full-fledged small city.

The vast plain had no designated owner, and there was nothing the Point Shop couldn’t provide. Furthermore, raw materials for standard furniture, food, and finished goods were surprisingly cheap.

The distant mountains, forests, and diverse stone deposits in the rocky terrain provided ample construction supplies, while their fatigue-resistant bodies inside the Tower accelerated building progress even further.

When he first entered this place, he had been utterly bewildered. Failing to climb the Tower because the 1st-floor boss is too strong?

Yet he had adapted quickly.

What captured his interest was the vast open land, scattered with crude wooden shacks and sparse furniture. The open wilderness was waiting to be built upon, and the modern people living here longed to recreate the living standards of their home world. He was the one who could satisfy that craving.

Watching his structures fill the landscape piece by piece thrilled him far more than climbing the Tower ever could. Through that relentless passion for construction, he had eventually earned the title Architect of the Wilderness.

By now, he had become the wealthiest individual and the preeminent architect of this city.

“Kang-ung… Did you really want to climb the Tower, or were you just looking for an escape?”

His quiet murmur carried a faint trace of lingering sorrow.

As nearly a year approached since Lee Shin regained his memories, December drew near.

On Earth—oblivious to the true state of affairs inside the Tower—people were anxiously awaiting news from the challengers expected to emerge through the Dimension Gate.

[Dimension Gate Opens in 3 Days!]

[Just How High Have the Tower’s Challengers Climbed?]

[Experts Predict Cha Yu-min Has Likely Broken Through Floor 75.]

[Consensus Suggests Even Cha Yu-min Would Struggle with Floor 80…]

[How Far Have This Year’s Rookies Climbed?]

[Who Will Be This Year’s Supernova?]

[Massive Crowds Already Gathering at Gwanghwamun Square; Public Transit Stalled…]

Media across Korea began flooding the internet with articles, eagerly anticipating the day the challengers would return. Most coverage speculated on how far Korea’s No. 1 ranker, Cha Yu-min, had climbed, or what rare items the returning rankers would bring back.

Among those topics, quite a few were curious about the progress of this year’s rookie crop and whether a new prodigy would emerge.

None of them had any idea what kind of news the returning challengers were about to deliver.

The Tower represented an opportunity for a life-altering fortune, yet it was also a deadly gamble.

The moment a challenger reached the 50th floor and returned to Earth, they became an apex predator of society and joined the global elite.

However, countless lives were extinguished during the trek to the 50th floor, while others remained hopelessly stalled along the way.

It had become a tragic daily reality for families to learn of a loved one’s death through returning rankers, left-behind inheritances, or recovered artifacts. Some fell into denial and ran from reality; others threw themselves into the Tower—to find missing family members, to verify the truth with their own eyes, or to seek vengeance against the Tower itself.

Even so, people willingly gambled their lives on the Tower. The moment one reached the 50th floor, acquiring those transcendent abilities served as a reward more intoxicating than anything else in existence.

[Just 1 Day Until the Dimension Gate Opens!]

[What Miracles Will the Challengers Bring Back This Time?]

[How Far Have Cha Yu-min, Shin Chang-ho, and Shin Ji-won Advanced?!]

[The Entire World Watches Korea! Will the Throne at the Top of the Tower Change Hands?]

[US Ranker Jonathan’s Statement from Last Year Resurfaces: “Mr. Cha Will Not Reach Floor 80.”]

[UK Supernova Vergo: Will He Reach Floor 50 Within 3 Years?!]

A spectacle driving global excitement.

As the final day ticked down before the Dimension Gate opened, the fever pitch reached its absolute climax.

And when the gates of each nation finally opened…

The entire world erupted.

Among all nations, Korea burned the brightest.

[BREAKING! All of Korea’s Rookie Challengers This Year Gone Missing!]

[Zero Word from Every Single Challenger Who Entered the 1st Floor!]

[Has the Tower Changed? Sudden Difficulty Spike on Floor 1?]

[A Bug in Korea’s Tower? An Error? What is the Truth?!]

Korea fell into complete chaos.

Over the past year alone, 978 people had entered the Tower from Korea.

Not a single one of them.

Not one person had advanced past the 1st floor.

This carried implications far beyond missing persons or casualties.

[Mass Disappearance of Korean Challengers: Why?]

[Other Nations Report “No Issues Whatsoever.”]

[Korean Rankers and Challengers Stalled in Tower Progression.]

[Korea, Formerly One of the 5 Great Powers in the 20s Floor Range National War, Plunges into Crisis.]

[Is Korea on the Brink of Collapse?]

[Is Korea an Isolated Incident, or Just the Beginning?]

Global attention slammed onto Korea. Foreign journalists flooded in alongside domestic media, completely overwhelming Gwanghwamun Square.

The government was so paralyzed trying to manage the fallout that routine operations ground to a halt. Inquiries poured in simultaneously from all corners of the world, leaving officials—who lacked any concrete information themselves—struggling merely to comprehend the situation.

└ What is happening? Is this real life?

└ Crazy… Korea is completely ruined now.

└ What happened to everyone who entered this year? There’s no way they failed to clear Floor 1!

└ Floor 1 is literally just a tutorial! Failing to clear it makes zero sense. If not a single person out of 978 came out, something is definitely broken. The Tower is finished.

└ In my opinion, this is just the beginning. Starting next year, other countries will end up like this too.

└ It’s the end of the world! We’re doomed!

A week had passed since the Dimension Gate opened.

Normally, the media frenzy would have begun to cool down by now, but far from subsiding, it burned even hotter.

Cha Yu-min.

A week after the opening of the Dimension Gate, he had finally returned to Earth—and his body was completely battered.

Those waiting at Gwanghwamun Square for the top-tier ranker broadcast his arrival to the world the second he stepped out.

Every single word Cha Yu-min uttered was front-page news. In a situation completely starved of facts and rife with wild rumors, any information from him was like rain during a severe drought.

Click! Click! Click! Click!

Camera shutters snapped relentlessly across the packed square as a torrent of questions was hurled at Cha Yu-min, but he remained silent.

“I will hold a press conference in two days.”

At Cha Yu-min’s single sentence, the noisy crowd fell instantly silent.

“I am well aware that Korea is in chaos right now. In fact, the whole world is.”

His calm, steady voice carried across the square. He hadn’t raised his voice, yet every person present heard him with crystal clarity.

“I went to the 1st floor.”

A single, brief statement.

The shockwave it sent through the crowd was beyond imagination.