Leon grinned broadly as he walked down the dimly lit alleyway, the crisp evening air hitting his face. A wave of immense satisfaction washed over his chest, replacing the lingering fatigue from his earlier mana depletion.

’This is really nice...’ Leon thought, his fingers twitching slightly with excitement. ’I actually got myself some cool, fast cash without even needing to trade away those two monster items.’

He hadn’t even taken the time to properly open the leather pouch and count exactly what was resting inside it yet.

However, just based on the heavy weight of the bag bouncing in his system inventory and the loud, metallic clinking sound it had made on the counter, he was absolutely sure there were at least fifty copper coins resting inside there.

In this run-down, impoverished part of the lower district, that amount of money was a significant sum.

Those fifty copper coins were more than enough to completely cover the entire rent he had been owing his angry landlord for months, ensuring he wouldn’t be thrown out onto the cold streets by tomorrow morning.

As for where he would actually sell the common grade wooden club and the basic shield now, he wasn’t worried in the slightest.

He would simply walk a bit further down the district and find another black market shop that was run by someone less foolish than Teo.

As he walked, his dark eyes narrowed slightly as he thought back to the live broadcast he had just witnessed on the television screen.

The arrogant, smiling face of his brother flashed clearly in his mind, along with the bold declaration he had made to the entire world.

"The tower, huh..." Leon muttered, his voice barely a whisper against the quiet backdrop of the empty alley.

The mere mention of that word carried an immense, historical weight that every single player in the world understood.

The last time a tower had actually appeared on Earth was about a hundred years ago, and it was also famously the exact last time a legendary grade weapon was ever seen in the entire world.

Towers were entirely and completely different from regular, everyday dungeons that players cleared for basic loot.

While dungeons were small, self-contained instances, a tower was a massive structure possessing exactly a hundred distinct floors, with each individual floor filled with entirely different monsters, environments, and incredibly rich rewards.

The legendary player who had successfully conquered the last tower a century ago was universally known only as White, a title given to him due to the pristine, glowing white armor he always wore into battle.

He had also been the exact, singular person to gain ultimate possession of that legendary grade weapon at the very top floor.

White was widely recognized as the absolute strongest human in all of history.

He held the grand distinction of being the very first and the last person, to ever be officially ranked as an SSS-rank player in human history, leaving behind a legacy that no one had ever come close to touching since.

However, White had suddenly vanished without a single trace left behind, disappearing from the face of the earth along with his legendary weapon.

No one knew where he went or why he left, leaving the world in a state of absolute shock and confusion as the strongest protector of humanity completely evaporated from existence.

Today, the actual name of that legendary weapon itself was completely lost to time, and there were only recorded stories and vague myths of its incredible might left in the history books.

Over the past century, the details had faded, leaving behind nothing but grand legends that ordinary citizens whispered to one another.

The stories themselves were vastly different depending on who you asked, filled with wild contradictions.

Some ancient records firmly claimed that the weapon was a massive spear, and that White had used it to completely split the skies in half during his battles.

Meanwhile, other historical texts loudly claimed it was a majestic sword that could effortlessly rip through space and dimensions with a single swing.

The stories surrounding his unmatched power were incredibly many, but absolutely no one in the modern era actually knew the truth of what happened.

This was because all official records and detailed files about White had mysteriously and completely vanished from the global system databases, including his real, birth name.

He was a complete ghost in the system, leaving nothing but his white armor as a memory.

Leon’s dark eyes suddenly shone with a bright, intense gleam of pure ambition as he connected the dots in his mind.

He stopped walking for a brief moment, a wild, exhilarating thought taking deep root inside his consciousness.

’If White could become a world-renowned, S-S-S-rank player with just a single legendary item in his possession...’ Leon thought, his heart hammering violently against his ribs with immense excitement. ’Just imagine what I could possibly do with tens and possibly even hundreds of them at my disposal!’

With his unique, god-tier talent to extract a legendary draw from absolutely anything, the possibilities before him were entirely limitless.

He wasn’t restricted to just one artifact; he could potentially build an entire arsenal of legendary weapons and gear that would make the highest-ranking guilds look like absolute toddlers.

To actually achieve that grand, spectacular goal though, he had to first venture deep into dungeons and gather as many legendary drops as he could possibly extract.

That specific requirement, however, was exactly where he immediately ran into another massive, incredibly frustrating problem.

According to the strict laws established by the world government and the system framework, only players who were officially registered with licensed guilds could venture into dungeons.

The major guilds completely controlled the dungeons in the region to protect their monopoly on resources.

Doing so while not being registered with any official guild was universally considered highly illegal.

Any independent player caught sneaking into a dungeon without a proper permit or guild clearance would be heavily hunted down, arrested, and branded as a rogue criminal by the authorities.

He had only been in Ran’s official party during his last excursion, which was the exact, singular reason how he had managed to enter that dungeon in the first place.