The Girl in the Mirror
I drove my sword into the neck of the final monster. Shunk!
The creature’s body crumpled, and an unpleasant silence settled over the top floor of the Obsidian Tower. The only things still breathing were me and the dying monster.
…No. Now it was just me.
Final trial cleared.
The tower’s voice, sickeningly familiar after all these years, rang inside my head.
Climber Seo Ha-yoon.
“……”
The Obsidian Tower has been successfully cleared.
“……Fuck.”
I’d waited to hear another climber’s name, but nothing came except my own. I’d even hoped one or two of the bodies sprawled across the floor might be faking it, playing dead.
Climbers will return to reality with all abilities and memories acquired inside the tower intact.
The tower’s voice kept ringing in my skull, completely indifferent to how I felt. The only human to ever clear the Obsidian Tower. Once I stepped outside, money, fame, and power would all come rolling in.
Even so, I couldn’t make myself move. A white exit had appeared on one side of the chamber, yet my feet refused to take a single step.
Because beyond that door, there wasn’t a single thing I truly wanted to return to.
The highest contributor to clearing the top floor of the Obsidian Tower shall receive a reward.
Reward: Reality Alteration Authority (1 use)
Still, I had to check the reward. It was the last one I’d ever get from this tower; I wasn’t about to gloss over it.
…Maybe. Just maybe, there was still something I could get back.
“Hey. What’s the Reality Alteration Authority?”
The highest contributor may interfere once with the causality and laws of reality.
“Can it bring dead people back to life?”
Yes.
“…How many?”
Resurrection is limited to a maximum of one person, provided it does not contradict causality and natural law.
Of course. There was no way this damned tower would hand out a reward generous enough to save as many people as I wanted. Still, being able to save even one was something to be grateful for.
And if it was only one person, I already knew exactly who it had to be.
“Kang I-jun. Bring him back.”
Impossible.
“……What?”
Resurrection of the deceased is only possible for souls that have been dead for fewer than ten days.
“You piece of—!!”
I swallowed the curse before it could explode and forced my breathing to steady. After burning through dozens of lives just to clear the damn thing, it was laughable that I could only save one person. And now it was telling me I couldn’t even save the one I wanted most.
“Then…”
…Still, I wasn’t completely without comrades who had reached the final floor with me. The moment I opened my mouth to speak the first name that came to mind, a single possibility flashed through my head.
“Hey, wait.”
Yes.
“With that Reality Alteration Authority… can I go back to the past?”
It is possible.
“Not just turning back time. I mean going back while keeping all my current memories. Is that possible?”
Memories and experiences bound to the soul of Climber Seo Ha-yoon will remain even after the reality alteration.
…Maybe. If I went back to the past and cleared this tower one more time, I might be able to save not only Kang I-jun but every single one of my comrades.
The only problem was that I’d have to conquer this hellish tower all over again.
“……”
I’d have to climb it again. I might even die differently this time. But unlike the first run, I already knew the tower’s layout. I knew who could become reliable comrades.
…And I knew exactly where and how each of them had died.
The only question left was how far back the tower’s time regression could actually send me…
Time regression is possible up to ten years, measured by human time.
Ten years ago. That might mean before I ever entered the tower, or somewhere in the lower floors. In this place, how well you built your stats from the bottom layers decided everything. If I was going to do it over, starting from the very beginning was the smarter move.
“…Time regression.”
To which point do you wish to regress?
“You said ten years is the limit. Give me the maximum.”
Climber Seo Ha-yoon’s reward has been confirmed.
Ten years of time. It was more than enough to gamble my life on one more time.
I sorted through the whirlwind of thoughts in my head and quietly accepted the light wrapping around my body.
When I briefly lost consciousness and opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was a pure white ceiling.
An old fluorescent lamp and those pointless glow-in-the-dark stickers plastered in the corner of the room. It was a sight that should have been familiar, but after ten years it felt strangely foreign—even my own house.
“……”
I shot upright in bed and looked around. Only then did it truly sink in that I was home. How many times had I wished, inside that cursed tower, that I could come back here?
-Wobble.
“Whoa?!”
Lost in thought, I tried to stand up from the bed and immediately lost my balance, pitching forward.
Right. This was ten years ago, so my body was the one from ten years ago too. Not the hardened, trained physique I’d forged over a decade inside the tower, but my original frail, pathetic one.
With that in mind, I headed to the bathroom to take a look at my face from a decade ago. The moment I stared into the mirror—
“……Huh?”
…The person staring back at me with a stupid expression was a girl.
-Pat.
“……”
-Pat. Pat.
“……”
When I touched my face, she touched hers. When I moved my hand to my head, she did the exact same thing, wearing the same bewildered look.
-Slap!
“Ow…?!”
Just to be sure, I smacked my own cheek. Seeing the girl in the mirror slap her own cheek in perfect sync, I finally accepted the truth.
…The girl looking back at me from the mirror was me.
“……Fuck.”
Even my voice was that of a girl I’d never heard before.