Game 1: Potatoes Problems and Portals.
The chair moaned as though it had pressed a complaint to the union against the back of Kim Do-hyun. He bent into it as though he were trying to escape the fluorescent ceiling lights overhead, his knees clamped together, his hands thrust in between them like luggage that no one wished to identify as theirs.
It was not a room but a bowl, the auditorium. A giant silver soup bowl tipped over, hundreds of college students in it. Their mumbling was like rattles on the walls, and they bounced about like frightened marbles. Some students giggled, pretending to be confident. Others looked forward with cold eyes like stone as though they already held swords of fire. Do-hyun was not one of them.
His palms were so sweaty they had just gone through an exercise of the entire body without informing the rest of him. His chest rose and fell at a regular but annoying tempo, each beat whispering, you're alive, you're alive, in a voice that didn't sound as reassuring as it should have, and more sarcastic.
He hated rooms like this. Too many lights. Too much space. There were too many opportunities to make everyone see how mundane he was.
Kim Do-hyun was nobody's hero. He was not even a background character that can be named in the credits. He was that guy. The one you meet on campus and forget at once. Second-year college student. Baby cheeks that were soft and made him look more like a high-schooler than the real younger cousin. A shirt that was a little too tight over his belly because he liked bread, and bread liked him a little too much.
Late-night gaming, instant noodles, anime binges, that was the three-legged stool of his life. No muscles. No abs. No girlfriend. He was that type of a guy whose parents could say to him he was a good boy in a way that said, please, God, just get him through to graduation.
And yet.
Sometimes at 3 a.m., lying in bed staring at the blank ceiling, a thought would crawl out of him like a cockroach that refused to die:
What if life was different? What if I was stronger? Braver? Anything other than this potato existence?
But then reality, cruel and consistent, always smacked him on the back of the head with the reminder: shut up, Kim Do-hyun, and pass your midterms.
Today, however, today was not reality as usual.
Today was the Awakening Program.
A national event. A circus disguised as a ceremony. A ritual every young adult looked forward to, or dreaded, if you were built like a sack of rice. The promise was simple: step through the portal on stage, and if mana lived in your blood, it would ignite. You would awaken, gain powers, maybe even fame. If not? You'd walk away unchanged. The world would forget your name five minutes later.
Do-hyun already knew which side he belonged to. Spoiler: not the exciting side.
But he was still here. Why? Because even inside his soft belly, a voice whispered: don't quit before you even start.
The stage lights flared. A tall man in a glittering black suit strode to the center, holding a mic like it was a sword. Baek Min-jae. The legend himself. A top-tier hunter whose reputation could scare monsters into early retirement. His presence silenced the hall.
"Welcome to the tenth episode of the Awakened Program," Baek Min-jae declared, his voice smooth enough to butter bread yet sharp enough to cut through silence.
Thunderous applause followed. Students clapped like they were cheering for salvation itself.
Do-hyun's hands refused to move. They were too busy dripping with sweat.
Baek Min-jae's eyes scanned the crowd. His smile thinned. "This is where we bring out what's inside. If mana flows in your veins, today you'll see it. If you're meant for greatness, you'll step into it. If not... no gain, no loss."
The air shifted. Heavy, dense, like someone had pressed the auditorium under a massive thumb.
Then the stage flared to life. Blue mist swirled upward, weaving into a glowing ring. Symbols spun along its edges, golden light pulsing in rhythm with invisible heartbeats.
The portal.
Baek Min-jae lifted his hand. "Eleventh candidate. Step forward."
Do-hyun blinked. He did the math. One, two, three... eleven. Oh no. That was him.
Every eye in the room seemed to swivel toward him, even if they didn't. His chair squeaked like a dying hamster as he stood. Too loud. Way too loud.
He took his first step forward, and it felt like walking in cement shoes. His throat dried into sandpaper. Every shuffle echoed, magnified until it sounded like the stomp of a giant.
Baek Min-jae didn't blink. "Step into the portal."
Do-hyun's heart slammed against his ribs like it was trying to escape. Still, he walked. Slowly, painfully, one foot dragging in front of the other.
The glowing circle grew larger, filling his vision with impossible light. Heat rushed to his face. The crowd blurred behind him. The world shrank to a single point of blue mist and golden symbols.
He stretched out his hand.
And the instant his foot touched the circle's edge.
Reality broke.
The air twisted. Wind screamed around him. Cold slammed into his skin, then heat, then cold again, cycling so fast he thought he was a human microwave burrito. His vision blurred into shards of white, like staring at a cracked phone screen under brutal sunlight. A high-pitched ring filled his ears, drowning every other sound.
He felt Weightless like he was Falling. And then he felt gone.
Darkness. Not the peaceful kind you sleep in. This was the suffocating, heavy kind that pressed against his skin as though the universe had vacuum-sealed him in regret.
Am I dying? Did I get isekai'd? Wait, shit, I didn't clear my browser history!
But then the darkness cracked. Something leaked in. Memories. Except they weren't his.
Street fights under buzzing neon lights.
Sweat dripping down a forehead, fists raised against a sandbag.
Late-night livestreams with three loyal viewers, none of whom might've been real people.
A girl's voice, sharp and teasing: Han Tae-yang, you idiot!
Do-hyun gasped. His own name... it slipped away. Every memory of his college life, his anime marathons, even the weight of his T-shirt on his belly--gone, washed out like chalk under rain.
Instead, another life carved itself into him.
Han Tae-yang.
A fighter. A gamer. A loud, scrappy fool who cursed at his screen and threw punches in alleys. A brother who scraped together coins to feed his sixteen-year-old sister, Han Ha-neul, while pretending it was easy. An orphan who laughed at his poverty but never let it break him.
Do-hyun tried to cling to his identity. Tried to whisper I'm Kim Do-hyun into the storm. But his voice faded, smothered by the tidal wave of Han Tae-yang's memories.
When the pressure finally eased, he opened his eyes.
He was no longer Kim Do-hyun.
He was Han Tae-yang.
Han Tae-yang was not extraordinary in the usual sense. His monthly income was barely five metaphorical potatoes, sometimes three if you included bills. His streaming career was a disaster, his name barely whispered in obscure corners of the internet.
But unlike Kim Do-hyun, Tae-yang wasn't invisible. He was loud. He was stubborn. He was a street brawler who never backed down from a fight, even if the fight involved him getting tossed into a dumpster.
He lived in a cramped apartment with his younger sister, Han Ha-neul, sixteen years old and infinitely smarter than him. She nagged him daily about his bad habits but still smiled when he brought home cheap snacks. Together, they carried the fragile weight of being orphans in a city that didn't care.
The memories rooted themselves into his bones until he couldn't tell where one life ended and the other began. Slowly, inevitably, he accepted it.
Kim Do-hyun was gone.
Han Tae-yang remained.
It started with the game. The cursed, ridiculous, life-sucking game.
"The almighty Divine Tower of God's Challenge/trial."
A virtual reality monstrosity disguised as entertainment. Tae-yang remembered sitting in his chair, headset on, hurling insults at developers who clearly hated the human race.
The game was notorious. South Korean gamers had attacked it like soldiers storming a fortress, grinding day and night, forgetting to eat or bathe, driven by national pride to conquer it first.
But the tower was merciless. The Arctic floor froze players into pixelated ice sculptures within an hour. The Maze spanned ten thousand kilometers of hopeless wandering. The Gatekeeper boss was so unfair it made grown men cry on livestream.
After three years, most players quit. Servers emptied. The game teetered on bankruptcy.
But Tae-yang? He didn't quit.
He cursed, he sweated, he smashed controllers, but he never left. Because quitting wasn't in his vocabulary.
Now he stood inside the tower. Or maybe... not just inside a game anymore. His lungs dragged in ragged breaths. Sweat rolled down his temples, dripping onto cracked stone tiles. His arms trembled from hours of fighting.
Around him loomed colossal walls etched with ancient runes, staircases that twisted into infinity, and air so thick with mana it tasted metallic on his tongue.
He had done the impossible.
Before his eyes, a system notification blinked into existence. Crisp. Merciless.
[You have conquered the 50th floor.
Congratulations. You are the first to conquer the Divine Tower of Challenge.]