Chapter 74

Chapter 74.

BEEP— BEEP— BEEP—

As if it were an alarm, or perhaps a warning tone.

Pandemonium’s Guild Master quietly listened to the somehow eerie calling tone.

“You should pick it up.”

“Mmm. Do you not like listening to this sound?”

“…Not particularly.”

Hehehe.

The Guild Master laughed like a child, then slowly answered the phone.

“Yeah.”

[Master, I will report.]

The caller was Kim Min-seok.

[Just now, five people entered the Tower.]

“You are certain?”

[I observed it through an Artifact. I am certain.]

“Mm.”

The Guild Master let out a short hum.

Five.

Five, was it…

[Guardian Han Seol-ah, Lee A-un, who distinguished himself during the Resonar Subjugation Battle, Saintess Yeriche, and I do not know the other two.]

“Why do you not know?”

[One is someone I have never seen before, and the other… I feel like I have seen him somewhere, but I cannot quite remember. He looks common and plain.]

“Common and plain? Hmm. In your textbooks, the nameless supporting character is called Cheol-su, right? Like ‘John Doe’ for us. Then name him ‘Cheol-su’ for now.”

[Yes. I will do that.]

Han Seol-ah, Lee A-un, Yeriche, and Cheol-su.

Then the remaining one…

“That must be First.”

“That seems likely.”

[…?]

Kim Min-seok’s curiosity could be felt from beyond the phone, but the Guild Master abruptly ended the call.

“I told you, did I not? First would be alive.”

“I also thought he would be alive.”

“You bet that he had ‘failed,’ just like me. I bet on ‘escape.’ If you treat it as a failure, that is the same as thinking he was dead.”

The Observer nodded.

“That is because you have never seen First in person.”

“What exactly is he like for you to say that? Now that you have confirmed that First is alive and can even reenter the Tower… it is about time you told me.”

The Guild Master nodded.

“First is… a lunatic.”

“That must be why he climbed all the way to the 94th Floor.”

“No, no. I am telling you, that bastard is genuinely insane.”

The Guild Master fell silent for a moment, as if choosing his words, or perhaps recalling the past.

“I will tell you about something that really happened. Mm, there was a village where an epidemic had broken out. It was a disease that turned people into werewolves. If you found and killed the werewolf hiding among them, the mission was a success. You could clear that floor. What would you do?”

“I suppose I would try to find the werewolf.”

“Right. That is the standard method. But First acted differently.”

Clap, clap!

As if excited, the Guild Master clapped his hands and smiled brightly.

“He killed every single villager first!”

“….”

“Then he could kill the werewolf too, and there would be no humans left for the epidemic to spread to, and no risk of it spreading to other villages either. Right?”

“…I suppose I can imagine that much.”

If one excluded the human heart and pursued efficiency, it seemed possible.

After all, identifying the werewolf one by one would consume quite a lot of time and energy.

Just as he was thinking, This much is ordinary—

“Haha! Hahaha! At first, I also thought he had killed them all to eliminate the danger. I thought there must have been a clear reason for that massacre. But no. First did not think ‘that way.’”

“…Pardon?”

“He said he just wondered whether something like a ‘Hidden Quest’ would pop up if he killed everyone.”

“…A Hidden Quest?”

“That is one of the reasons First became so strong. Every floor has an objective, and a hidden true objective. If you clear those conditions, you can become stronger.”

The childlike smile on the Guild Master’s face deepened even further.

“Of course, ‘kill every villager’ was not the condition for the Hidden Quest. First simply became a man who had committed a massacre.”

“…I see.”

But the story did not end there.

“Here is the question. What do you think that floor’s Hidden Quest was?”

“I am not sure. Since the theme was an epidemic, perhaps eliminating the epidemic…? The floor’s objective was saving the village. The true objective was eradicating the epidemic?”

“Correct. That was the condition. Then, what would you have done?”

The Observer thought in an extremely rational manner.

“Develop a vaccine… or kill every werewolf….”

As he said that, he watched the Guild Master’s reaction.

The thought process of the human being called First, as he had heard of it so far… was clearly twisted.

“What did you do, Master?”

“I killed every werewolf.”

Somehow, that felt like the limit of what a human could think of.

After all, it had been slaughter carried out strictly to achieve the floor’s clear objective.

“…And First?”

“He spent one year on that floor.”

“So he developed a vaccine?”

“Haha, of course….”

If it were vaccine development, that much time could make sense.

The “world” inside the Tower was at a medieval level, so even if one had modern knowledge, restoring the necessary technology would physically require a great deal of time.

“Not.”

But that was wrong.

“First spent one year traveling around the world inside that floor and killed every living human.”

“…Pardon?”

At the unexpected conclusion, the Observer asked back in a stunned voice.

“He was told to eliminate the epidemic, so he completely erased ‘humans,’ the hosts who could be infected. If everyone in the world became a werewolf, then it would no longer be a disease. It would become a new evolution, and the new normal. He guessed that insane act might be the ‘true Hidden Quest.’”

“…Was that really the Hidden Quest?”

“No. Of course not.”

The Guild Master quietly rubbed the back of his neck.

As if the thought of that time still gave him chills.

“After that, he came out and said one thing: ‘So it was not.’ Then he went to clear the next floor.”

“…He is not an ordinary madman.”

“That is why I told you, did I not? He is a madman.”

The Guild Master leaned far back in his chair.

“So I asked him. After committing that massacre, was his mind still fine?”

“…I am curious too. What did he say?”

“He said they were not humans. They were NPCs. So it was fine.”

“…Like the ones in games?”

“That was how it felt to him. That guy.”

The Guild Master wiggled his toes and sank deeply into his chair.

“When I learned that the Tower that appeared in Korea was the 94th Floor, I knew First was Korean. I thought that if he was that insane, he would have climbed far higher than me.”

The Guild Master lightly pushed against the floor with the tips of his feet, and the chair spun toward the window with an eerie creak.

SHAAK!

When he reached out and pulled the cord, the blinds rose, revealing the scenery outside.

Far away, the towering “Republic of Korea Tower” could be seen.

“While devouring other ‘Failures’….”

The dazzling sunlight pouring in left a long, dense shadow inside the room.

However, in the pitch-black shadow behind the Guild Master’s back, where the light did not reach, horrifying “monsters” whose forms could not even be guessed wriggled and squirmed as if licking their master.

“I have waited a long time, First. For you to appear.”

Because First had maintained the “Awakening Failure” state, a characteristic of Climbers who had “escaped” the Tower rather than “failed,” for 10 whole years, not merely one or two…

The Guild Master had failed to find and “devour” him.

‘I thought that if I kept watching that Tower, he would appear someday.’

Pandemonium’s mobile fortress.

Its current location was west of the Republic of Korea…

Above the Yellow Sea.

As he glared at the 94th Floor Tower that First had just entered…

The 74th Floor Climber of India’s Tower.

Pandemonium’s Guild Master.

The Climber Hunter.

“The Second,” Iranshu, smiled ferociously.

“Now, fail. When you do, I will come find you…!”

***

It felt as if I were passing through squirming intestines.

I could have passed through faster, but I was restraining myself.

Because this floor’s “Boss” needed to misjudge me.

[The ‘power’ you lost is waiting for you…]

A Status Window shone brilliantly, as if urging me to choose quickly.

If I touched that, I could regain the power I had obtained while climbing from the 1st Floor to the 94th Floor.

But it was not time yet.

In the past.

I gave up on clearing the 94th Floor.

From a Climber’s perspective, there were two kinds of failure in clearing a floor.

Being outmatched. Being killed or collapsing dead because one lacked power.

In that case, it became a “Tower conquest failure,” and one was expelled outside the Tower.

I did not know what happened after that.

However, when I thought about the ones who were kicked out after failing, one face suddenly passed through my mind.

Second.

He had a sociable personality, was overflowing with the will to learn, and pursued efficient clears—not as efficiently as I did, but sufficiently so. I taught him various things.

He had been like my subordinate and my favorite disciple.

He had been capable enough that I still thought of him from time to time.

Of course, considering that I did not see him in the 75th Floor waiting room, I assumed he had died while clearing the 74th Floor.

‘If he survived that vicious difficulty somehow… I wonder where he is and what he is doing now.’

And the other case.

Giving up on clearing the floor.

It was not failure.

It was more like temporarily putting the clear on hold.

We also called it “escape.”

If one chose that…

One had to put down everything gained from the Tower and be kicked outside.

And with the blessing called Awakening completely stolen away, one had to endure the life of an Awakening Failure, lower than a human—like an insect.

The only way to regain the lost power was… to crawl back into this hellish Tower.

That was my case.

‘…It took 10 years to come back.’

Moreover, this escape was single-use.

Once one escaped and left, then returned, only two conclusions remained.

Either clear the Tower, or fail and get ejected.

I came back to clear this Tower no matter what.

That was why it took 10 years.

‘Because I thought an opportunity would definitely come someday.’

The “power” that brilliant Status Window spoke of was that kind of thing.

The power I had left behind in the process of giving up on clearing the 94th Floor.

Then the reason I gave up on clearing the 94th Floor.

That was the “empty field” the Defense Team was likely experiencing right now.

‘How was I supposed to know it would turn out like that?’

The 90th Floor range was a massive scenario with a continuing theme.

What I did while clearing the 90th Floor did not disappear. It remained on the 91st Floor.

The same was true for the 92nd and 93rd Floors.

That was why, if one made a single wrong move on the 90th Floor, by the time one reached the 94th Floor, the snowball could grow beyond control.

The problem occurred at the point when I cleared the 93rd Floor.

Until then, I had no idea that the 90th Floor range… was a massive connected scenario.

‘The 80th Floor range was not like that, damn it.’

There was not even some helpful fairy to tell me.

The concept of the 93rd Floor was agent protection and VIP assassination.

If I had cleared it by the standard method, I would have protected the important agent and created a base for them.

Then I would have assassinated the head of the hostile force threatening that agent and cleared it.

But I, an efficiency-crazed veteran, did not do that.

‘…I was admittedly a bit extreme.’

Partly to clear a Hidden Quest…

I cleared the floor by a rather twisted and grotesque method.

As a result.

By the time of the 94th Floor, the “fortress” that should have taken root around the “core” and become humanity’s vanguard and reliable breakwater was never even built and disappeared.

I learned about this butterfly effect only after starting the 94th Floor.

I was already deep in the “Offense” side, happily cutting enemies to death, when the messages “The fortress is under attack” and “The core is under attack” appeared at the same time…

And then I saw the words, “If the core is destroyed, you will die.”

I immediately used the one-time-use Escape Ticket.

…Ten years ago.

And that was why I was doing this now.

I did feel sorry for the Defense Team.

But I had taken even that into account and made a party with specs more than sufficient to clear it.

…In the first place.

When I said I would be there soon, it was not a lie.

By my estimate, once.

Three times at most.

They only had to endure that many Waves.

GLURK! PTOOEY!

As I slid down through the entrails, my feet touched a space as black as pitch.

GROOOOOAN—

With a repulsive cry, the space opened its eyes.

The black walls split open, and thousands, tens of thousands of scarlet, bright yellow, and deep blue eyes sprouted all at once.

It was such a grotesque sight that if it were used as a horror image, it might kill several people of heart attacks.

The Boss of the 94th Floor.

The “Dregs of an Outer God.”

It was called dregs, but…

It was a disaster on such a different level that Break Bosses like Scathach or the Frost Dragon, which had driven humanity outside into despair, looked cute in comparison.

From the beginning, Tower Bosses and Break Bosses were in entirely different weight classes.

This was one of the reasons the Republic of Korea’s renowned S-rank Hunters had entered the 94th Floor in the past and been ground down without leaving even their bones behind.

While the Defense Zone blocked semi-Boss-class to Boss-class Demonic Beasts pouring out in Waves…

The Offense side had to kill an out-of-standard monster that could not even be scratched by ordinary specs before the Defense Team collapsed.

That was the true difficulty of the 94th Floor, the floor called hell.

At my current level, with only one EX-rank Frost Sorcerer synchronized, simply meeting those eyes was enough to make blood stream from my nose.

“Big Brother is here.”

Between the eyes, in the place that was still black space.

SLITHER—!

A tremendous number of tentacles began pouring out.

“That greeting is a little rough, is it not?”

One must not be deceived by its terrifying appearance.

This bastard.

If it thought it could not beat its opponent, it ran.

During my first attempt, I remembered getting furious because I had to chase after the cowardly thing after it got frightened by my power.

There was a reason I had synchronized only the Frost Sorcerer.

‘If I test the waters with only something that looks manageable, like a Frost Sorcerer, this cowardly bastard will not run. It will stretch out its tentacles with all its strength.’

As expected, it moved to surround me from every direction, intending to chew up and swallow the insignificant prey before its eyes.

It probably intended to trap me completely, but from my perspective, it had taken the bait.

As I said earlier, failure meant losing everything and getting ejected, but “escape” was different.

It meant that the “original power I had left behind” remained intact in the Tower, waiting for me.

“You are dead.”

Before the tentacles of the Outer God surged toward me as if to devour me…

I reached out toward the brilliantly shining Status Window…

And seized it.

[Restoring the postponed record of ‘First Climber’ Ha Seong-un]

“Let there be light!”

FLASH!

The single sword stroke I reclaimed after 10 years split the darkness.