Chapter 105: 7F Hidden (4) |
TL: DDTL
“How…”
I was genuinely stunned.
The Sage was fully aware of exactly what kind of situation this was.
Up until now, every character in a Hidden Route had been like an NPC in a game, a being that knew nothing about the Tower…
And yet this one had even seen straight through to who I really was.
Thoroughly thrown off, I stopped time for the moment.
Was this another one of the Tower’s tricks?
Or else…
That was when the Demon King spoke.
‘…The same? What do you mean?’
– Exactly what I said. I wasn’t sure at first, but this human exists outside the Tower’s influence.
What?
‘Hold on a second.’
I gathered my thoughts.
So, being outside the Tower’s influence meant…
‘You’re saying the Sage is a real person too?’
Wasn’t this a hidden floor inside the Tower?
No, I’d had a vague suspicion of it for a while now, but…
The Demon King gave me a definitive answer.
– You sensed it faintly yourself, didn’t you. Every floor of the Tower is a world that once truly existed.
And then came something even more shocking.
– Worlds that were destroyed by the Tower.
…Worlds destroyed by the Tower?
I chewed on the Demon King’s words for a moment, then let time flow again.
The Sage, who had asked whether I was curious about the Tower’s true nature.
Let me hear it straight from him.
“…What exactly is going on here?”
If what the Demon King said was true.
Then this wasn’t the Tower’s scheme at all. It was a situation that had slipped beyond the Tower’s control.
“How do you know about me?”
The Sage shrugged.
“I am the Sage.”
“What?”
“It means there is nothing I do not know. There’s no reason to be surprised that I know who you are.”
“…Please explain it to me properly. Are you a Climber too, by any chance, Sage? Then this world is…”
The Sage said,
“The world the Tower swallowed whole. My world.”
“…!”
“I, too, was a Nightmare Climber, just like you, and I failed. This is the fate of worlds that failed.”
So the Sage was a being of the same sort as the Demon King after all.
But more than that, the fate of failed worlds?
“…What in the world is the Tower, then?”
There was so much I wanted to ask.
But I started again with the answer I hadn’t gotten just before.
The Sage glanced up at the ceiling, then went on.
“There’s no time, so make your choice now. The reward for the 7th floor.”
“What? No, wait…”
“As I said, every truth is contained within this Book of Omniscience. Including everything about the Tower.”
The Sage held out a book to me.
“If you want to know the Tower’s true nature, choose this book as your reward.”
As if he had no intention of answering me directly.
Still bewildered, I looked down at the book in his hand.
I asked again.
“By ‘choice’… do you mean there’s another reward besides this one?”
The Sage smiled.
“For the other reward, I would use this Book of Omniscience and what remains of my own power as the materials, and grant you the one thing you need most.”
…The one thing I need most?
“And what’s that?”
“Who can say. Your fate would be the one to know.”
He was talking in riddles, exactly like a sage.
“Can you explain it properly…?”
That was when it happened.
Crack!
A chill ran through me out of nowhere, and I whipped my head around to look at my surroundings.
The space around us was splitting apart.
[◇%#■Error^$◇●%@&$…]
A glitched message flickered up before my eyes.
The sensation wasn’t unfamiliar.
‘…It’s the Tower.’
It was the exact same feeling as when the Tower had tried to purge the Demon King from inside my body.
It’s about to do something again.
The Sage continued, unbothered.
“Did I not say there was no time? Make your choice quickly.”
For the moment, I stopped time.
The chilling sense of the Tower’s presence vanished.
I can’t make sense of any of it…
Too much is happening at once.
In any case, just as the Sage had said, there didn’t seem to be any time to waste.
The instant I released time, I would have to choose the reward right away.
The Sage had offered two rewards.
One was the Book of Omniscience, said to let one know every truth in the world.
The other was… a reward of unknown form, said to be the one thing I needed most.
What should I pick?
That was when the Demon King spoke.
– Choose the Book of Omniscience.
‘…Why?’
– If this human’s words are true, it is a book containing every truth in the world. Must I spell out its value for you?
I knew that.
If the Sage was telling the truth, the book in front of me was a truly incredible treasure.
Above all, information about the Tower.
I would be able to obtain information about the Tower, about which I had known absolutely nothing until now.
What the Tower was, and what its purpose was.
…Could it possibly even hold information on the upper Nightmare floors I had yet to climb?
The trials of each Nightmare-difficulty floor would surely differ from world to world.
It seemed absurd, but hadn’t he said it was a book that contained every truth in the world?
Let me just ask directly.
I released time and hurriedly asked the Sage.
“Does the Book of Omniscience contain all the information on the Nightmare floors I still have to climb, too?”
The Sage nodded.
“It likely does. The Book of Omniscience is, after all, the record of the universe.”
Crack, crack!
The space split open again, more violently this time.
I stopped time once more.
The Sage hadn’t given me a definitive answer.
If it really did contain information on the Nightmare floors…
Then this book was nothing less than an invincible cheat code.
To know everything meant being able to prepare and respond to everything in advance.
Why was Nightmare so hard to clear?
Because of the absence of information.
If that absence of information were gone, then climbing the Nightmare floors from here on would be no different from climbing on Easy difficulty.
And that held true even setting aside the information about the Tower.
There was no doubt it would be an enormous help to me one way or another.
I mean, hadn’t he said it could let me know everything in the world?
Honestly, I could barely even imagine it.
– Is there anything to agonize over? Choose the book.
The Demon King was on the side of picking the Book of Omniscience too.
So, rather than a reward whose very nature was unknown, choosing the Book of Omniscience would surely be the right call.
That was the sensible conclusion, but…
After much agonizing.
I released time and gave my answer.
“Give me the one thing I need most.”
For the first time, the Sage’s face showed a flicker of surprise.
“What is your reason for not choosing the Book of Omniscience?”
He, too, seemed to find my choice unexpected.
But the reason I’d arrived at this conclusion was simple.
“You said it yourself. That you failed too, Sage.”
If the Book of Omniscience really could let someone climb the Tower all the way to the top, and protect their world…
Then why had the Sage, who claimed to have been a Nightmare Climber, failed?
Even if I obtained the Book of Omniscience, all it would do is put me in the same position as the Sage.
If someone far more remarkable than me couldn’t succeed, how could I possibly succeed?
In that case, wouldn’t I be better off gambling on the other reward instead?
I couldn’t know whether this was the right choice…
But either way, the Book of Omniscience wasn’t what my heart was drawn to.
The Sage smiled.
“Will you not regret it?”
“…Well, who knows. But didn’t you say there was no time?”
I looked around uneasily.
The space had cracked apart like a spiderweb, as if it might collapse at any second.
Before my eyes, the glitched message kept crackling and flickering…
Flash!
That was when the Book of Omniscience shone.
A pure white light gathered into a single point as if being compressed…
And then the book vanished.
What remained in the Sage’s hand was a tiny gem the size of a fingernail.
“Take it.”
I took the gem the Sage held out to me.
And then.
“…!”
The gem gave off light once more and melted into my palm.
Wh-what?
There was no pain.
Startled, I stared at my palm.
The gem had vanished without a trace, and a strange pattern was glowing on my palm.
Soon that pattern, too, lost its light and disappeared.
“…What did you do?”
“That is the reward you chose.”
When I asked the Sage, he simply answered like that, without any explanation.
This is the thing I need most?
Rumble, rumble.
The trembling of the space grew even more violent.
The message before my eyes was slowly coming into focus.
Realizing this was my last chance, I asked frantically.
“Sage, why did you fail? How far up the Nightmare floors did you climb?!”
The Sage smiled as he spoke.
“I wish you the best of luck. Kim Seo-hyeon.”
[Error detected.]
[Correcting error.]
[Exiting the Tower.]
Along with the messages, the scene before my eyes switched.
*
Rumble, rumble, rumble…
Within the collapsing library.
The Sage strolled leisurely between the bookshelves.
This was a world that was nothing but a hollow shell.
The Sage recalled his own world, which had perished long, long ago.
A world swallowed by the Tower was transformed into an eternal theater like this.
And the people became clowns, toyed with, never realizing their own circumstances.
That the stage of the 7th floor had become the Sage himself was surely because he had left that deep an impression on the Tower.
“So now I’ll be turned back into a clown again.”
The Sage chuckled.
When he was being swallowed by the Tower, he had managed to preserve a sliver of his own self.
And he had spent a span of time close to eternity here, undetected by the Tower.
Countless Nightmare Climbers from countless worlds had passed through.
The Sage had searched while playing the clown. For a figure worth pinning his hopes on.
There had been many who succeeded at the trials.
There were those who would be called geniuses of the age, and monsters who came from far more advanced civilizations.
Dazzling talent, overwhelming power.
But those alone were not enough.
If that was all there was, they would be crushed by the Tower in the end.
In a time when only meaningless hours had repeated themselves.
The Sage finally met the moment he had long awaited.
A human of ordinary talent, with no especially outstanding ability. Kim Seo-hyeon.
And yet the Sage had seen something special in him.
It was not because a mighty being was entangled with his soul.
Though he had ultimately been defeated by the Tower, the Sage was a figure who had even succeeded in glimpsing its true nature.
But even those eyes of the Sage found a part of Kim Seo-hyeon he could not see through.
Since it was invisible, he could not know what that thing was.
But it was enough to make him stake his hopes on it.
If there truly was a being who could topple the Tower, then it would surely be something that lay beyond even the Sage’s own understanding.
So the Sage handed over everything he had left.
The price was that the Tower took notice, and now even the last of his self would be erased completely.
With this, it was all over.
The Sage looked up at the ceiling of the crumbling library and let out a hollow laugh.
“I yielded to no one when it came to the thirst for knowledge, but to you, I throw up my hands in surrender.”
Is there any being as greedy as you?
Kwaaaaaaa-!
And with that, the space collapsed entirely.
The fallen library began to reconstruct itself, as if a clockwork spring were being wound back up.
*
My field of vision shifted.
And the Tower’s presence, the one that had felt like it was crushing my very soul, vanished as if washed away.
“Phew…”
So much had happened all at once that my head was spinning.
I caught my breath and looked around.
I was back in the motel room.
“…?”
What?
Why did I come straight outside instead of to the Reward Room?
What happened to the Hidden clear?
That was when a message appeared.
[Due to an error, the Nightmare-difficulty 7th-floor Hidden clear is being voided.]
[Due to an error, the Hidden Route for Nightmare difficulty is being closed.]
[The Hidden Route cannot be undertaken until all errors have been corrected.]
“…Huh?”
What in the world is this.
I stared at the messages, dumbfounded.
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