The city had a smell.

  Not the damp dust of the Tutorial.

  Not dried blood.

  A neutral scent.

  Clean.

  As if someone had decided the air should smell like “normality.”

  Rin walked beneath the entrance arch in silence, surrounded by a human tide that still didn’t know whether to run, cry, or laugh.

  High ramparts. Wide streets. Perfectly aligned facades.

  Lanterns lit despite the absence of any visible sun.

  Silhouettes—“residents”—walking calmly, carrying crates, talking, greeting one another.

  NPCs, Rin thought.

  Functionaries.

  Living scenery.

  Mi-sun moved at his right, eyes cold, scanning angles.

  Dae-hyun kept Ha-joon close, as if the crowd might steal him away.

  And Jin-woo…

  Jin-woo had already been absorbed by the city.

  Not physically.

  Socially.

  He was talking to someone he didn’t know.

  Laughing.

  Passing words like lit matches through a dry field.

  Rin didn’t like it.

  Not because Jin-woo was joking.

  Because it was working.

  The first scream cut through the street like a blade.

  “Help! He’s going to die!”

  A woman stumbled into the road, supporting a man whose chest was wrapped in filthy cloth. His abdomen was blackened, as if something had burned him from the inside.

  A Tutorial wound.

  The crowd hesitated.

  Old instincts resurfaced: step back, don’t get involved, don’t attract attention.

  Rin remained still.

  He observed.

  That’s when she appeared.

  She didn’t run.

  She didn’t shout.

  She walked forward as if the world had a rhythm—and she had decided to respect it.

  A woman with pale hair tied back, wearing a coat far too clean to be honest. Her hands were bare. Her eyes were exhausted—but not empty.

  “Lay him down,” she said simply.

  The woman obeyed instantly, as if the sentence carried more than sound.

  Her name was Eleanor.

  She placed her hand above the wound.

  Not on it.

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  Above it.

  And the air shifted.

  Rin felt a subtle pressure—like a fluctuation in density.

  A faint ringing in his ears.

  The kind of effect the System liked to record.

  A soft light condensed.

  Not spectacular. Not divine in the cliché sense.

  Just real enough for the street to fall silent.

  The man convulsed.

  Then his breathing steadied.

  The blackness around his wound slowly retracted, like a burn rewinding itself.

  He coughed once more.

  Then opened his eyes.

  A murmur rippled through the crowd.

  In seconds, it became a wave.

  “She… saved him.”

  “That’s a skill?”

  “A healer…”

  “A saint…”

  Rin looked around.

  He watched the eyes.

  Not the crying woman’s.

  Not the healed man’s.

  The others.

  The ones already calculating what that power was worth—and how to obtain it.

  Rin forced himself to check his interface.

  Nothing.

  No notification.

  The System remained silent.

  Its silence was an answer.

  It didn’t need to validate faith.

  Faith validated itself.

  Mi-sun exhaled, almost inaudibly.

  “That’s going to become a religion.”

  Rin didn’t reply immediately.

  He was watching the phenomenon form in real time—like a chemical reaction.

  Fear had dominated the Tutorial.

  Here… it was something else.

  Faith formed faster than fear.

  Because fear isolates.

  Faith gathers.

  Dae-hyun reacted in the most human way possible.

  “At least… at least there’s someone who can heal.”

  Ha-joon stared at Eleanor the way one stares at fire in the dark.

  Not admiration.

  Need.

  Mi-sun looked away, as if the scene disgusted her.

  “A power like that… attracts wolves.”

  And at the back of the crowd, Jin-woo approached, rubbing his eyes like an exhausted actor.

  “Waaah…”

  He pressed a hand to his chest, dramatic.

  “I almost cried, I swear.”

  He looked moved.

  He played it well.

  But Rin saw something else.

  Jin-woo wasn’t watching Eleanor.

  He was watching those watching her.

  He noted the men positioned near the walls.

  The already-formed groups.

  Those with better-stocked bags.

  The gazes too steady. Too evaluative.

  Jin-woo smiled—a light, social smile.

  And he memorized.

  The tavern stood at the center of a circular plaza.

  As if someone had decided the city required a heart.

  The moment Rin entered, he understood:

  This wasn’t a place of rest.

  It was a market.

  Tables. Scribbled maps. Low murmurs.

  People speaking quietly while pointing toward directions beyond the walls.

  And at the center—

  A?cha.

  She didn’t look like a heroine.

  She looked like someone who had understood before anyone else that morality doesn’t feed you.

  A hard-eyed woman surrounded by three others.

  Her pack.

  Not loud brutes.

  A coherent group—disciplined in posture, in gaze, in choosing whom to listen to.

  A rumor was already spreading from table to table:

  “There’s stuff outside.”

  “‘Missions.’”

  “People found chests.”

  “Beasts too.”

  Rin didn’t sit.

  He observed.

  Like during the Tutorial.

  The tavern wasn’t decoration.

  It was the real economic center.

  Where resources, information, and alliances became currency.

  Mi-sun approached an improvised board—planks covered in notes, names, prices.

  She read without expression.

  “They’ve already rebuilt an employment system.”

  Dae-hyun looked sick.

  “We… we don’t have to go out there, right?”

  Ha-joon whispered:

  “But… if we stay… and others move ahead…”

  Rin felt the tension rise again.

  Not combat tension.

  Choice tension.

  Accepting a mission meant going outside.

  Outside meant killing, fleeing, losing someone.

  But refusing meant staying “clean”—

  And perhaps dying later for failing to learn.

  Mi-sun finally sat, resting her elbows on the table.

  “There is no ‘clean’ here.”

  Dae-hyun clenched his fists.

  “Young-mi died because of that. Because of this logic.”

  Her name lingered.

  Then fell, heavy.

  Rin didn’t intervene.

  He was watching the mechanism form.

  Because deep down, he knew:

  The city wasn’t dangerous.

  What it allowed was.

  Jin-woo entered like he owned the place.

  He poured himself a drink—no one asked if he paid.

  He sat at a table where he knew no one.

  Within ten minutes, he knew everyone.

  He laughed.

  He listened.

  He gave someone a nickname.

  He passed along a rumor as if it had originated elsewhere.

  Rin noticed something simple.

  Jin-woo connected people across factions.

  Without declaring alliances.

  Without formalizing anything.

  Just by being the guy tolerated everywhere.

  An invisible social connector.

  Mi-sun watched him from the corner of her eye.

  “He’s dangerous.”

  Rin replied without looking at her.

  “No.

  He’s useful.”

  And that might be worse.

  For the first time since the Tutorial ended, something familiar returned to Rin.

  Not fear.

  Not adrenaline.

  Certainty.

  The next catastrophe wouldn’t need monsters.

  It would be born here.

  Between these too-clean walls.

  Around that too-bright healer.

  Inside this too-lively tavern.

  And the System…

  Still silent.

  As if the Tower was simply waiting to see who would break first.

  Rin set his untouched glass down.

  “We stay lucid,” he said quietly.

  “The city isn’t a refuge.

  It’s staging.”

  No one answered immediately.

  But Ha-joon nodded.

  And Mi-sun, without smiling, murmured:

  “Then we play better than they do.”

  In the distance, laughter burst through the tavern.

  Jin-woo.

  Always at the center—

  Without ever standing at the front.

  And Rin understood something important.

  Floor 1 wouldn’t begin with a quest.

  It would begin with belief.

  And a price.