16th Floor: The True Target (2)

Time had not yet resumed its flow. Within that frozen moment, my mind raced at breakneck speed.

What my sponsor deity wanted from me was simple. Kill the Emperor and the Empire's leadership. The information it had originally intended to hand me was clearly connected to this as well — information that demanded an enormous 81% stake. And when I refused, it had gone so far as to roll the Dice of Fate on a mere 1% chance.

If my sponsor deity was willing to go this far... it wasn't trying to harm me.

I realized it instinctively — the sponsor had no malicious intent. And in that very instant, something ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shot straight through my mind. Every one of the Emperor's suspicious actions. The way he had covered his face and smiled while speaking of the collapsed defense line. The fact that he had never once appeared during the defense of Pogoren Fortress. That unnaturally intense possessiveness he'd shown toward the relic of the Shadow of the End from the moment we first met.

Damn it.

It had never even occurred to me that the Emperor of the Empire could be on the invaders' side. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd assumed there must be some other reason, and dismissed my own suspicion as overthinking. Judging by how even Ha Heijeong hadn't known, that truth probably never came to light until the moment Floor 19 ended in the original timeline. No wonder the continent had crumbled into the invaders' hands so easily.

No matter how numerous the lizardmen were, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Empire's own leadership had been colluding with the enemy...

In a way, it was only natural. The enemy knew this side's situation inside and out, so defeat was inevitable. And the reason the Empire had survived this long despite its Emperor being a traitor was almost certainly the Ronsyark's Dagger — to reclaim it when the invaders came looking for the relic. It seemed the enemy gained some kind of power once they possessed it.

Setting that aside... did the Shadow of the End really not know its own Emperor was a traitor?

From everything I'd observed, the Shadow of the End seemed to communicate with the Empire through its saintess. Yet it had never dropped so much as a hint — which meant the deity itself had been kept in the dark. Hmm... it made me wonder if maybe gods weren't the perfect, all-knowing beings I'd imagined. Or perhaps the invaders' god had pulled some maneuver to keep the Shadow of the End from noticing.

Either way, my task is clear.

Kill the Emperor and the imperial leadership. Truthfully, even if I'd been too dense to figure it out myself, there was no escape. The forced action was already in effect — if I didn't want to die, I had to kill them. At least they were villains, which was a small comfort.

"...Commander?"

The moment I steeled my resolve, time returned to normal. Apparently, because this was a 'forced action', the Tower of Trials granted a certain degree of consideration. The Emperor called out to me, his voice urgent. His expression suggested he worried something had gone wrong. He called my name again, his voice trembling.

"Commander?"

"Ah, yes. I felt dizzy for a moment. I must have lost quite a bit of blood during the battle."

"Hoho, of course. You're the hero of the Empire — how ferocious must that battlefield have been? Merely standing there is a feat in itself."

I gave a vague nod, then turned to look at Ha Heijeong behind me. She had been standing there in a daze, and now she was watching me with worried eyes. But the instant our gazes met, the look in her eyes changed — as if she had read my mind. It was a relief. I wouldn't need to signal her separately.

"Heijeong."

"Yeah."

The moment her reply ended, I activated Lightning Flash. Time froze once more — but different from before, because it was still moving, however slowly. Worried it might be parasites like at Sarkeyst, I activated Shadow Monarch and peered into the Emperor's mind, but there was nothing of the sort. They had betrayed the very world they lived in of their own will.

I gripped Ronsyark's Dagger tightly. I would never know why the Emperor and the imperial leadership had betrayed their own kind.

What could you possibly gain by selling out the world you live in?

And what exactly was this dagger, that everyone clung to it so obsessively?

I drove Ronsyark's Dagger into the Emperor's heart. Immediately, chains of lightning burst outward from him, coiling around the members of the high command.

In a way, you could call this my first kill...

They looked exactly like Earthlings, which left me feeling strangely unsettled. I worried for a moment that it might haunt me later. Hmm... no. Thinking it over calmly, that seemed unlikely.

It's not truly murder.

These were the people of Planet Soborn. They resembled us, but they were not human. Just as with every other foreign race, the Tower would surely shield my mind. I felt somewhat reassured — though the discomfort lingered all the same. After all, I had just taken the lives of beings wearing our own faces.

"Kghk! Why...?"

Time came flooding back. The imperial high command, struck dead-on by lightning, collapsed where they stood — only the Emperor remained on his feet. Half-cooked by the lightning, he clutched at the dagger buried in his chest. His impossibly widened eyes trembled violently, yet still fixed themselves on me. Even now, clinging to his dignity as Emperor to the very last — it was almost pitiful.

"Aaagh! Suhyeok!"

"Suhyeok!"

"Commander!"

The party's horrified screams and Katley Monaka's shriek of outrage burst out a beat too late. Katley Monaka came sprinting toward me with her spear raised — and Ha Heijeong roared flames up between us, cutting her off.

"Stop. He's doing us a favor, so stay right there — unless you want to die."

"Why on earth?!"

Katley Monaka screamed and thrust her spear, but she couldn't get past the wall of searing flame. The fire knocked her spear aside and coiled into chains, binding her where she stood. Then the Emperor, his face worn down to pure resignation, opened his mouth with a voice cracked down the middle.

"Heh heh... How on earth did you figure it out?"

The Emperor let out a hollow, unhinged laugh. I did not answer.

"Damn it... I had no choice. It was a war we couldn't win. Who could have predicted someone like you would appear... Kghk!"

The stream of excuses made my stomach turn. I twisted the dagger buried in his chest. The Emperor's screaming head snapped back, and his eyes filled with the sky. Under the pale moonlight, the heavens hung as dark as if draped in shadow.

"Forgive... me... O Shadow of the End..."

In that instant, a black shadow flickered once across the Emperor's blue eyes — there, then gone. The breathless Emperor sank to his knees and crumbled.

I wrenched the dagger free at an angle. When I turned around, the party and Katley Monaka were all staring at me with eyes wide in shock. They had heard the Emperor's words, so of course they knew the truth now. Their gazes carried both the question of how I'd known and the raw horror of witnessing slaughter unfold before them — and because I was the one holding the knife, the shock cut that much deeper.

I spoke as calmly as I could, so the party wouldn't spiral.

"I'll explain everything."

[Conquest of the Tower of Trials' 16th floor complete. Entering the Waiting Room.]

[11 hours 59 minutes remain until the Tower of Trials' 17th floor. Please rest.]

Brightening light filled my vision, and the familiar scenery of the Waiting Room came into view.

"Whew..."

A sigh of relief escaped me on its own. It was a blessing that I'd managed to explain the whole affair to my party before we returned here — the forced action my sponsor had triggered by rolling the Dice of Fate, and the fact that the Emperor and his high command had been traitors all along. Thankfully, the party understood my actions.

Kind of a shame I never got to raid the treasure vault, though...

The moment the conversation with the party ended, we'd been whisked straight to the Waiting Room, so there was nothing to be done about it.

I turned my gaze to Dobby, who stood there in a daze. By now he should have been perfectly capable of going to wash up on his own, yet every single time, he wouldn't move until I told him to.

"Dobby, go wash up first."

"Kkiik! Okay!"

"Wash yourself thoroughly. You're covered in blood too."

"Kkiik! Goblin washes really, really clean!"

After sending Dobby off to the shower, I immediately opened my status window.

The first thing that caught my eye was the vanished stake. 0.00%. Even staring at the status window and rethinking it, the idea that the Dice of Fate had triggered a forced action at a 1.09% chance was absurd on its face.

An old game came to mind. Back in the day, I'd slap a 70% enhancement scroll onto my grinding work gloves and still watch it fail, again and again...

Just as my thoughts threatened to drift down that rabbit hole, a single hypothesis suddenly surfaced.

1.09%. My sponsor never actually believed the forced action would succeed at that odds.

It hadn't been gambling on that 1% — it had rolled the Dice of Fate in order to convey something to me. Even though Floor 17 was a war already won, it wanted me to know that something remained on that floor important enough to warrant this kind of action. Thinking it over, even if the forced action had never triggered, I would have sensed something was off sooner or later. Given time, the Emperor's strange behavior would have resurfaced in my memory too.

I'd have found the answer eventually either way.

Well, the outcome was good, so it hardly mattered. Whatever the case, this whole affair had taught me two things: my sponsor deity was considerably wiser than I'd given it credit for, and it was most definitely not a malicious god. A true sponsor in the genuine sense of the word. From now on, whenever it seemed to be trying to tell me something, I'd have to look much more closely at what it was—

My thoughts were severed by notification windows popping up without warning.