Floor 4: Forward or Back (2)

Live long enough and you run into moments like this—moments when conviction in your own judgment starts to crumble, when a small voice pipes up: Is what I'm doing right now actually correct? Like marking a shaky answer on your college entrance exam answer sheet, or trying to get through an interviewer's simple question: So, why did you apply to our company?

'Damn it... is going down really the right call?'

Because here I was, twenty minutes into sprinting down a descending slope with the rumble of rolling boulders at my back, and doubt had begun to gnaw at my decision.

The downhill stretch had shown nothing but sameness for twenty straight ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠minutes. The angle of the descent, the structure of the walls, the floor beneath my feet—none of it changed. It felt as though I'd been caught inside an illusion.

Hold on. An illusion?

'Come to think of it, that sound of the boulders rolling...' It was exactly the same as when I'd first heard it. Even the tremor running through the ground hadn't shifted one bit. Could the boulders really be rolling at precisely the same speed I was running? No—come on. There was no such coincidence in this world. And looking back on it, the Tower's messages had always carried a trick hidden inside them. So let me turn that message over in my mind once more. Escape. Was forward truly the right direction? Were the boulders even coming down at all?

I stopped first. Judging by the sound and the tremor, there was still distance between us.

"Hoo... hoo..." Steadying the breath that running had left ragged, I fixed all my attention on the rolling sound and the vibration of the earth.

Rrrrumble— rrrrumble—

A constant sound, a constant tremor. Neither was growing any louder.

Damn it. I'd been fooled, and beautifully, this time too. Without much thought, I turned to head back up the slope—and then a sudden question stopped me cold.

'But wait... wasn't this trick a little too easy to catch?'

Even if everyone had panicked and bolted down the slope at first, it was a deception that anyone would have seen through given enough time. And honestly, I hadn't caught it through sharp wits alone either—I'd simply been spooked by the boulder trap I'd seen back on Floor 2.

'A double bluff, then?'

The trick was too obvious. What if the real boulders came thundering down only after everyone realized the first ones were fake and turned around? Or what if the path behind was sealed off, and by the time you discovered it, too little of the time limit remained to ever go forward again?

'If only Dobby were here.' I could have trusted his instincts. So why hadn't Dobby been summoned with me this time? The message on Floor 1 had clearly said he would join my journey. If this were a pure speed run, I could understand leaving him behind—it would be a trial where my raw physical ability was all that mattered. But Floor 4 was, unmistakably, a floor meant to be cleared through judgment and instinct. Dobby would have known that sound was a trap. So there'd be no reason not to summon him. On Floor 2, it had been Dobby's instincts that unearthed Karakshi's tomb.

...Huh?

'Is this actually a speed run?'

That the rolling sound and the tremor were illusions, I was certain. But what if the Tower deliberately let climbers see through them, lured them into turning back—and only then sent the real boulders rolling?

"Fuck..."

My head was a tangled mess. I no longer knew what was right. Forward? Or back?

Even as I wrestled with it, the clock kept draining. One way or another, a choice had to be made—standing rooted to this spot wasn't on the list of options.

Keep it simple. Floor 2 had a fork in the road, but Dobby had been there with me. Even at the crossroads where I met Faraktus, Dobby had gone blank and silent, but he hadn't vanished. Dobby never disappeared when a moment demanded a choice. If anything, he simply kept his mouth shut. And here, on Floor 4, he hadn't been summoned at all.

'The simplest answer, then. This is a speed run. So run. Just run.'

Rrrrumble— rrrrumble—

The sound and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tremor remained exactly as before. Only one thing had changed: a white portal now stood before my eyes, glowing against the dead-end wall at the end of the passage.

'Seriously?' It ended just like that? Without a single threat—simply because I hadn't been fooled by a sound and a shudder? Should I have turned back after all? I'd found the hidden pieces on Floors 1 and 2, been forced to skip Floor 3, and here on Floor 4 I'd come up empty. Would one have been waiting behind me? I couldn't say for sure. Maybe I'd skipped Floor 3 precisely because there was no hidden piece there to begin with.

It was too late anyway. Fifty-one minutes had gone into running down that slope. Even if I turned around now, I doubted my stamina could carry me all the way back to the starting point. No—flip it around. If I'd turned back halfway, I might never have reached this place within the time limit at all.

'Stop obsessing over hidden pieces.' I wasn't a regressor like Ha Heijeong. Unless a hidden piece happened to fall into my lap by chance, I shouldn't let it weigh on me. Karakshi, Faraktus—both of those had cut it dangerously close. There was no need to court death just to chase one. Getting through Floor 4 alive was enough. Turn back, and I might never have cleared it at all. The Waiting Room, then.

I'd been right. Had I gone back, the trap would have sprung. Faraktus, and now this—apparently my instincts weren't half bad.

With the familiar sensation of weightlessness, my vision flooded with light, and I closed my eyes.

The familiar Waiting Room welcomed me back. The white room, the narrow bed and table inside it—perhaps because less than an hour had passed since I'd entered Floor 4, it all felt more familiar than ever.

Enough. The instant I thought it, the windows faded away. I'd gotten used to swatting aside the notifications that crowded my view. At the same moment, a new message refreshed before me.

Four hours—quite a bit shorter than the previous floor's Waiting Room. Because Floor 4 had been so brief? An hour of running, four hours of rest. Not a bad trade. I wasn't sleepy, and if the downtime stretched much longer I'd have run out of things to do entirely. Maybe my stamina had genuinely improved, because I felt far less worn out than an hour of running had any right to leave me.

So what was I supposed to do with all this time? I wondered if Ha Heijeong had finished Floor 5 yet. Oh—right. Dobby! Where was he?

"Dobby!"

"K-Kkiik!"

I turned my head, searching—and there he was, a little face poking out from under the small bed. Well, I had told him not to even think about climbing onto the bed when we slept together. But that was no reason to sleep beneath it.

"...Why are you under there?"

"Kkiik! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Room! Too, bright!"

So apparently the room stayed lit the entire time I was gone. Even so—sleeping under the bed, really?

"Ah... yeah. I see. I'm back, by the way."

"Kkiik! Human! Good work! Water! Bread!"

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Dobby crawled out from under the bed and presented me with a water bottle and some bread. I accepted them without complaint. I wasn't all that hungry and had planned to make do with the water alone, but since he'd gone to the trouble, one piece couldn't hurt.

"Dobby, if this happens again, just sleep on top of the bed."

"Kkiik! Goblin! Can do that?!"

"Yeah. Just not when I'm around."

"Kkiik! Human! Thank you!"

Dobby clapped his hands, over the moon. Honestly, what was there to be so delighted about? Had I been too harsh on him? No, I didn't think that was it...

"Yes."

By the time I'd finished off the first piece of bread, the message from Ha Heijeong had come through. How had she known? Ah, of course—the leaderboard. She must have checked it. So she'd cleared Floor 5 too, within that same hour?

Ah, so that was why she'd told me to get some sleep—and why there'd been no answer when I woke. From inside a floor, the community and the leaderboard were out of reach.

Hmm. Coming from Ha Heijeong, that settled it even more firmly: I really did need to stop obsessing over hidden pieces. It made sense, too—if they were scattered across every single floor, they wouldn't be hidden pieces at all. My life came first.

A circus over me? What was that even supposed to mean? I scrambled to open the community, and sure enough, the board was in flames.

Every few posts, a curse aimed at me slipped through. Everyone must have been fuming from the wait. Look, it wasn't as if I'd done it on purpose—I hadn't even started Floor 5 yet. Should I put up a post explaining myself?

While I was still weighing it, another message arrived from Ha Heijeong.

"Shop."

A new window blossomed before my eyes. Cola, ramyeon, hamburgers... the familiar things registered first. So the Shop sold Earth food too. It seemed to carry everything under the sun. All priced at a single achievement point—no, hold on. People had actually been spending achievement points on this? Wasn't clearing Floor 4 worth something like 800 points?

Then again, now that I was actually looking at them, an ice-cold cola did sound tempting. At one point a bottle, it was hard for the mind not to wander.

'First, what Heijeong told me to do.'

The Shop had no categories to speak of. Hundreds of thousands—no, millions—of items lay jumbled together in one vast heap. All that existed was a search bar. Apparently, finding things was entirely your own problem. I turned to the search field tucked in the corner and typed in Essence of Lightning. Listings flickered past in a blur. A single product surfaced.

Forty-five thousand points? A price that made my jaw go slack. I happened to have the points, but for other climbers this was a figure they wouldn't even dare dream of. Had any of them even managed to scrape together 1,000?