“Huh, Hyung, what’s that?”
At Jiho’s chin gesture, Suho looked down at his own hand and saw a lottery ticket.
“Huh? Well… it’s a lottery ticket. Did I buy something like this…?”
“Hyung, it’s almost time for the draw broadcast. Let’s check the numbers.”
Prompted by Jiho, the two sat together in front of the TV.
With the host’s cheerful voice, the first number was announced.
[Number 23!]
“Oh, your ticket has 23 too! Not a bad start, right?”
[The second number is 8!]
“Wow! The second one too? This is looking good!”
Suho felt bewildered by the whole situation, yet his mood was strangely peculiar.
Then, as the third, fourth, and even fifth numbers matched the ones on Suho’s lottery ticket, Jiho began to get extremely excited.
“H-Hyung… what on earth is happening… oh my god… if just one more matches… ah, my heart’s pounding so hard I can’t watch…”
[…The final number is 41!]
The moment the last number was announced, Jiho opened his mouth slackly and let out a silent scream of shock.
Not even knowing what was going on but swept up in the atmosphere, Suho got excited along with him.
“D-Did I do it? Me?”
“H-Hyung! Hyung!! It’s first place!! Oh… crazy… oh my god…”
“First place… I can’t believe I got first place…”
“How much is the first-place prize money?”
Jiho hurriedly searched for the information. Suho’s mind was instantly filled with imaginations of what he would do if he received the prize money.
Paying off debts, helping his family, going on trips he had always wanted to take, and maybe even opening a small shop.
It felt as vivid and clear as if the future he had long dreamed of was within reach of his fingertips.
“H-Hyung, the first-place prize for this lottery… they say it’s record-breaking…”
“Really…? How much?”
“5… 54.7 billion won… crazy… what the…”
“What?”
In that instant, Suho’s eyes went wide and his mouth hung open.
“The lottery first prize is over 50 billion won…?!”
“Wh-What are we going to do with this money?! Hyung?!”
“Well… 50 billion won…”
The moment he was engrossed in what to do with 54.7 billion won, cognitive dissonance set in, and Suho woke from his dream.
A fancy yet unfamiliar ceiling.
It wasn’t his own bedroom where he always slept.
‘Guess I slept somewhere other than Elysium…’
Where had he fallen asleep yesterday…
Was it Dream Village in the subspace warehouse, the hotel penthouse on the artificial island Bigyeongdo, the Sky Platinum Room on the sky island Laputa, or the VIP private lodgings at the TDM Convention Center… his memory was hazy.
He traveled around so many different places, after all…
Recalling the dream from last night, Suho suddenly giggled.
“50 billion won, haha. What could I even do with pocket change like that…? A record-breaking win… that’s funny.”
It was true. There had been a time when he had imagined such things countless times.
Hoping earnestly that such luck would visit his life too…
Well, now it was an incredibly humble, merely cute memory.
Still, it was nice to feel that trivial sentiment from his poor days. A time he could never return to now.
Out of habit, he checked the emails on his phone.
A progress report on Suho New City had arrived.
From General Director Kim Sang-hun, who updated and sent detailed data almost every week.
How meticulous and diligent. Moreover, his competence in organizing everything so it could be grasped at a glance was outstanding.
The problem was that Suho’s interest in this new city had now faded too much. Having been staying on the artificial island and sky island lately, the new city simply felt too dull…
‘Suho New City… it’d be nice if it does well, but now…’
Scrolling through the emails, he saw many other reports as well.
What stood out in particular were documents sent by the global asset management company under exclusive contract with Suho.
The steady inflow of deposits from Aetherium sales to various countries,
the revenue from the many S-rank items he had listed on the global On Tower auction house,
the profits from the numerous materials sold at TDM,
and even the massive income from the many investment outlets where the asset management team had invested those assets through various routes.
Reports of income, and more income, that never ended no matter how much he read.
“Tsk, ugh, my head hurts. So how much is all of this… anyway…”
With the asset types being so diverse and the amounts so colossal, he couldn’t take it all in at a glance.
“Still, I think it’s definitely over one gyeong at least… ugh.”
It was a large sum, but a number that stirred no particular emotion, since he had nowhere to spend it.
“Hoo…”
Earth was too small.
He had thought that for quite a while now.
‘What more is there for me to do on this tiny planet…’
He needed to keep discovering his next goal.
Going out to eat breakfast, he happened to pick up a newspaper that his hand brushed against.
Seeing a newspaper there, he supposed he had slept at the VIP lodgings of the TDM Convention Center.
Since Suho was peculiarly insistent on paper newspapers, he had subscribed to various types to be delivered to every main residence.
Of course, excluding the artificial island Bigyeongdo and the sky island Laputa.
At the luxury restaurant on the TDM lodging floor, he unfolded the newspaper while eating a truffle omelet and smoked salmon Benedict prepared by a chef who had been waiting since early morning.
Rustle—
There wasn’t a single newspaper that didn’t carry a story about Suho, and one column in particular caught his eye.
It started with, ‘A country without a single drop of oil. The saying that the Republic of Korea had nothing but manpower to possess and export is now an old saying. Even without a single resource, the Republic of Korea has an infinite resource bonanza called Jeong Suho.’
Suho simply scoffed.
Well, it wasn’t wrong. It was just that Suho himself didn’t feel much about it.
* * *
After a light breakfast, he moved to the subspace warehouse.
Detecting Suho’s arrival, Rabi came flying up and asked.
“What was that thing yesterday? You put something strange in here.”
“Ah, I came to see that too. Where did you put it?”
“Not knowing what it was, I placed it far away for now.”
“Far? How far?”
“In Earth’s measurements, about 1.65 billion kilometers.”
“…How far is that?”
“Um… explained in terms Earthlings can understand, roughly the distance from Earth to Saturn.”
“…That’s far. Even if it tried to come here, it would take quite a while… should we just leave it?”
“As you wish.”
Rabi shrugged, but Suho soon changed his mind.
“No, it’s still a monster. I feel uneasy letting something like that roam freely in my warehouse. Let’s go. To where it is.”
“Moving.”
As Rabi manipulated the space of the subspace warehouse, the scenery changed in an instant.
And beneath the feet of Suho and Rabi floating in the air, the 103rd-floor boss monster, Mecha Drake, came into view from incredibly far below, standing vacantly and looking around.
In a place where every direction was the horizon, an endlessly sprawling space, the thing stood bewildered, not knowing where to go or what to do.
With nothing obstructing or blocking it, it was free to go anywhere, but the infinite space that was empty everywhere was, in truth, no different from a prison itself.
After thinking for a while about whether to leave it as is, Suho suddenly recalled the scene of Mecha Drake destroying the Dream Village he had painstakingly built. And messing up the Earth-supply zone he had gathered over a long period.
That was absolutely intolerable.
“This won’t do. Let’s destroy it. Rabi, can you break that?”
“Break it? It’s nothing.”
Indeed, Rabi was capable of slicing a planet-sized Magrite into whichever desired shape in the blink of an eye inside the subspace warehouse. A mere robot like that—no matter what material it was made of—posed no problem whatsoever.
“How finely shall I break it?”
“Hm… wait a moment. Now that I’m actually about to break it, it feels a bit of a waste… Then how about just stopping its functions?”
“Function stop. One moment, checking the core. Hoo, the core is in the center. Then I shall split only the core.”
“Okay.”
Clink—
With a clear sound, the thing collapsed powerlessly, and the light that had been flickering brightly in its eyes faded as well.
Though it was an enormous body over 500 meters long, since it was sitting alone in such a vast space, it looked like an anchovy atop the Pacific Ocean. Somehow, it felt pitiful.
* * *
[Headline: “Superhero Jeong Suho Who Saved Europe”]
[Headline: “Extermination of a Colossal-Class Monster: Jeong Suho, Savior of a New Era”]
[Headline: “There Is No Wall That Cannot Be Overcome—The New Humanity That Destroyed a Tower Over 100 Floors”]
[Headline: “God of the Tower, Jeong Suho: Writing the Myth of Solo-Clearing Over 100 Floors”]
└ Jeong Suho is truly a living legend… It is an infinite honor to live in the same era as such a legend.
└ It’s no different from a hero’s epic… If it were made into a movie or drama, wouldn’t it be a huge hit?
└ Really? Would it actually be a hit?
└ It would flop. The scenes already shown in reality are far more spectacular than any movie or drama, so could movie CGI even surpass this?
└ Agreed. We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t get criticized for failing to match reality.
The 103rd-floor tower in Switzerland, which had ended all monster outbreaks, disappeared without a trace, and the world’s news was a cauldron of excitement.
No matter which media outlet you scanned, most stories were about Suho having saved Europe from the brink of annihilation.
Evaluations that humanity had secured complete supremacy in the confrontation against towers threatening the existence of mankind.
Burdened praises calling him a hero, a legend, a myth.
Previously, evaluations of Suho had always been at the highest level, but this time the degree and dimension were different.
Having sensed that there would be this kind of “great praise atmosphere,” Suho had left the spot the very moment he confirmed the boss was dealt with and the tower disappeared.
The supersonic jet ‘Infinity Wing’ was at the airport, so he left a message in the group chat telling them to take it themselves, and quietly disappeared.
It was something he had done without a second thought, but looking back now, he truly felt he had done well.
With the successful conquest of the super-high-rise tower, and the fact that the colossal Tower Break had been resolved without a single casualty turning Europe into a grand festival atmosphere.
Seeing how the Ultimate Line clan members, who had been detained in his place to participate in the enormous banquet and receive extravagant hospitality, still couldn’t depart even after a whole day had passed, Suho shook his head.
‘Well… among our clan members, there are probably those who like that sort of thing? Thomas, or maybe Thomas…’
Anyway, no matter how much he thought about it, Suho nodded in agreement that he had done well to run away.
“By the way…”
Colossal monsters that appeared with a label every time they emerged.
Suho suddenly thought, ‘Couldn’t I make one too?’
He had all the materials he could ever need.
He had ample power in the form of highest-grade Aetherium.
He had the knowledge and technology too.
He felt like, ‘What can’t I do?’
He hadn’t had a sample for the operating principles, but now he had secured an excellent sample.
He even felt like, ‘Rather, what reason is there not to make it?’
He thought he would carefully disassemble and examine the boss Mecha Drake he had captured this time, and give it a try.
If he made one, he could use it during Tower Breaks too… of course, the city would be smashed…
And inside the towers, he could use it when facing colossal monsters that even super-strengthened androids or Ascends would have a hard time against.
“Not bad?”
The more he thought about it, the more useful it seemed in many ways.