Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 

[Analysis results.]

[The substance is classified as high-contamination residue.]

[Constituent components unidentified.]

[If left inside the Magic Tower, environmental degradation and odor spread are expected.]

[External disposal recommended.]

[If left inside, environmental degradation and spread risk present.]

A sticky sensation clung to the fingertip that had lightly brushed it.

Jin-woo immediately shook his hand off.

"....... It’d be impossible to even pass through in this state."

[Agreed.]

[Current passage Contamination Level exceeds acceptable standards.]

[Unsuitable as a long-term habitation environment.]

Lumina’s analysis was calm, but its contents were clear.

If he did not clean it up, he could not use it.

After sweeping his gaze once over the end of the passage, Jin-woo let out a short breath.

"Haa... fine. I get it."

《Magic Tower Stability: 32%》

《Declining》

It was unavoidable.

If he wanted to use this, he had to clean it.

***

Seven hours passed.

There were no tools and no chemicals.

He scraped away the hardened layer with a dull-ended piece of metal.

With every scrape, the smell rose up ‘again.’

He washed it away with water, then washed it again.

"Ugh... this precious water."

Running the Water Purification Room shaved down Mana Stones.

Fetching water shaved down Mana Stones.

In the end, it was the same resource.

And today—

he was spending that cost on ‘cleaning.’

[Contamination purification critical.]

[Cleanliness maintenance essential.]

"I know. That’s why I’m doing it."

Jin-woo caught his breath and looked down at the floor.

To finish cleaning, he had to consume half of the Mana Stones he had.

That meant he had drawn that much water.

It was wasteful.

"What on earth......."

Jin-woo let out a short sigh.

"What happened here? And what exactly are these residues?"

[Record damaged.]

[Unknown.]

Even Lumina could not give him an answer.

Only one thing was certain.

‘There are clear traces that something invaded this place.’

A question suddenly crossed his mind.

Could the reason the Magic Tower had been abandoned for so long be related to these traces?

‘Not a monster...... though.’

Jin-woo shook his head.

He had seen countless monsters while climbing to the ninety-eighth floor, but he did not remember any being that left this kind of residue.

The question remained unanswered.

But this was not a situation where he could get an answer right away.

"For now...... I’ll have to be satisfied that I finished cleaning."

Convincing himself that way, Jin-woo exhaled deeply.

"Looks like I cleaned it all, right?"

[Contamination purification complete.]

[Cleanliness: 78%.]

78%.

It did not have to be perfect.

He only had to stop it from spreading.

《Magic Tower Stability: 33%》

《Maintaining》

"Good. Turn off the ventilation device too."

[Ventilation device operation stopped.]

[Remaining Energy: 45%.]

Cleaning a single place had consumed a considerable amount of energy.

But it was a far better choice than leaving a contaminated environment alone and catching some strange disease.

"Still...... I’m glad I did it."

Muttering that, Jin-woo looked toward the end of the passage.

There, one firmly closed door stood.

"Can it be opened?"

Doors that could be opened had opened.

But this door was different.

[Magic circuit damaged.]

[Power lost.]

[Opening impossible.]

Jin-woo approached the door and lightly tapped it with the back of his hand.

THUNK—

A sound as if it were hollow inside.

There was something in there.

‘There is something...... but I can’t check it.’

After thinking for a moment, Jin-woo used his skill.

《You have used Magic Engineering.》

Blue light gathered on the door.

The flow of the magic circuit was revealed, and he roughly identified the severed sections and damaged points.

There was only one problem.

‘The materials... are nowhere near enough.’

Even connecting a single circuit line would grind through Mana Stones, and he had already burned through half of them on cleaning.

"For now...... there’s nothing I can do."

And soon, he turned his back.

He decided to leave this door for later.

He would do only what he could do now.

That was survival.

***

The moment Jin-woo turned and left that place, beyond the door, deep in the darkness, the shell between the cracks trembled ever so slightly.

Shudder.

A faint light pulsed once between the cracked gaps, then went out.

A reaction without will or breath.

Something accumulated inside had merely shaken for a very brief moment.

Silence returned.

The egg sank back into the darkness.

But—something that had ‘reacted’ once would not sleep again.

***

Jin-woo stood in front of the purification device for a long while.

He blankly watched the water droplets falling at regular intervals, then looked down at the hand that had unconsciously tried to grab the handle.

His hand was empty.

Only then did his body realize first that the familiar weight was gone.

"...."

His gaze, which had naturally searched for the pickaxe, stopped above his shoulder.

The weight that should have been there was absent.

Jin-woo tilted his head as if trying to organize his thoughts for a moment.

‘No way.......’

He slowly turned his head and checked the equipment rack.

As expected, it was empty.

"...... Ha."

A breath leaked out that was neither laughter nor a curse.

The day had gone wrong.

The pickaxe was not in the mine.

Before coming to purify water, he had maintained his equipment at the Forge.

He had cleaned up the worn edge and retightened the handle.

After inserting the fixing pin and checking for wobble, he had thought, ‘I’ll take it later,’ and left it there.

"The Forge......."

Bitterness seeped into the word he muttered.

Before going to the mine, he had stopped by the Forge.

Then water purification.

Only then had he realized the pickaxe was gone.

The Forge.

The mine.

A round trip.

Jin-woo rubbed his forehead and let out a long breath.

"...How many times has this been just today?"

[Analyzing.]

Lumina’s voice rang quietly.

[Repeated movement loss detected.]

[Today’s accumulated travel time: 2 hours 17 minutes.]

[Overlapping movement sections: 63%.]

[Frequency of repeated passage through identical routes: high.]

Jin-woo silently closed his eyes.

Two hours.

A few Mana Stones, a few canteens of water.

In the Tower, it was not a ‘day’ being cut away, but a ‘portion of survival.’

Jin-woo silently looked at the purification device.

"...... Strange. I moved, but there’s nothing left."

Only time was leaking away.

[Agreed.]

[Current work method has markedly low ‘output efficiency relative to labor volume.’]

He moved, but there was nothing left.

‘At this rate.......’

He did not continue the sentence and swallowed it inwardly.

It was not yet time to reach a conclusion.

[Movement route is inefficient.]

[Current work is inefficient for long-term habitation.]

Jin-woo stood there for a moment, then thought back over his day.

As soon as he woke up in the morning, he had headed to the mine.

He mined Mana Stones, filled the fuel, and then purified water.

In his head, he had planned the route in his own way.

‘This time, it’ll be fine.’

Mine → purification → Forge.

It had been a plan to finish everything in one pass.

But reality was different.

The moment he ran the purification device, an energy warning came.

He returned to the Main Room and filled the fuel.

On his way back, the water container was empty.

A route meant to be finished in one pass had been split into three.

"...... Ha."

After going to fill the water container, this time he remembered that he had left the pickaxe at the Forge.

The mine.

The Forge.

The purification device.

[Overlapping movement route confirmed.]

[Frequency of unnecessary round trips: high.]

Lumina’s report continued coldly.

[Work efficiency: -21% compared to expectation.]

[Resource yield reduced / energy consumption exceeded.]

Jin-woo did not shake his head.

It was a result he could not deny.

The Mana Stones were fewer than planned, and the amount of purified water did not meet expectations either.

"I moved around this busily......."

All that remained in his hands was fatigue.

"Whew...."

He remembered the time before Regression.

Back then, being alone meant death.

That was why roles had been divided.

The ones who fought, the ones who maintained equipment, the ones who carried things.

It had not been perfect, but—

‘I wasn’t alone.’

Now it was different.

This was the Magic Tower.

There were walls, there were facilities, and resources circulated.

It was definitely safer.

And yet, it was harder.

Mining, purification, and transport were all his alone.

This structure had been built on the premise of an Administrator.

Only then did Jin-woo become certain.

It was not a problem of ability.

The premise was wrong.

‘These facilities weren’t made to be run alone.’

"It’s a structure that grinds one person down."

Jin-woo thought.

‘If I don’t change this, I’ll eventually get stuck here.’

***

"Whew......."

After finishing the mining work, Jin-woo returned to the Main Room.

After putting Mana Stones into the fuel tank one by one, he leaned his back against the wall and sank down.

"As expected, it isn’t easy."

The Mana Stones he had moved today numbered twenty-six.

The number was simple.

The process was brutal.

Even carrying four at a time, he had made six round trips.

Carry—set down—go back again.

What wore down before the Mana Stones was his knees.

"At a time like this... even one subspace bag would help."

Jin-woo clicked his tongue.

A basic essential item in the Tower.

But there were none on the first floor.

‘You need to reach at least the tenth floor to get something like a D-grade bag.’

He could not expect a proper bag until he climbed to at least the fifteenth floor.

‘Even if I want to go up and bring one back.......’

Jin-woo shook his head.

‘There’s no way to come down.’

One of the absolute rules of the Tower.

Once you went up, coming down was not permitted.

Only upward.

Even if he could go get one, he could not return.

So going to get a bag was not a ‘solution’ but an ‘escape.’

It was not an option for the current Jin-woo.

He sat with his back against the wall and slowly caught his breath.

‘Whether before...... or now, the Tower isn’t easy.’

Jin-woo gave a faint laugh.

Even before Regression, it had always been like this.

‘It’s already the fifth day, huh.’

His sense of time was automatically converted according to the standards before Regression.

"Would we have reached the third floor?"

By the standards before Regression, the fifth day after entering the Tower was around the time they would have been clearing the third floor.

Back then, he had really suffered.

The information was not organized, and there were no strategies.

Most of all, the problem was his job.

Magic Engineering.

A skill unsuited to combat.

‘I got rolled around for a long time.’

Even thinking back on it now made him dizzy.

Rather than saying he had survived, saying he had barely held out fit better.

Still, back then, there had been people he could entrust his back to.

‘And then...... I died on the ninety-eighth floor.’

The scene from that day rose vividly in his mind.

‘What if I had run away back then?’

He might have lived.

But if he had turned his back at that moment, the Hunters holding the front line would have been wiped out as they were.

After thinking for a moment, Jin-woo muttered as if mocking himself.

‘Was it only the difference between dying quickly and dying late?’

The combination of the Arch Lich and the Bone Dragon.

No matter how he thought about it, it made no sense.

"Even a game ruined by bullshit luck has limits......."

The current ‘inefficiency’ had the same quality as that day’s ‘absurdity.’

Anger surged up.

"No, what the hell was this Tower thinking, designing the ninety-eighth-floor boss like that?"

As if the objective had not been a clear, but ‘elimination.’

Did it even have something called a conscience?

An Arch Lich riding on top of a Bone Dragon.

That was not a clear. It was an execution.

‘What’s the point of preparing thoroughly?’

"When one spell from the Arch Lich can one-shot you."

Jin-woo let out a hollow laugh.

Then, suddenly, the ninetieth-floor stone monument came to mind.

"The Arcanist... the final Ark."

The meaning those words left behind was one thing.

This was not about clearing it. It was about operating it.

‘The bastards who made the Tower.’

‘A structure prepared for collapse.’

‘The final Ark.’

It was not a combat structure.

The movement routes were split apart, and there were facilities.

And this Magic Tower.

Jin-woo slowly exhaled.

And he realized.

‘This is.......’