Floor 23, The Waiting Room (1)

When I told Ha Heijeong about what had happened on Floor 21, she was visibly astonished.

According to her, what I'd done—smashing apart a colonial planet's cult—should have been next to impossible in the first place.

She said I'd probably only managed it because it was a lower-grade colonial planet.

Come to think of it, the number of soldiers inside the factory hadn't been all that large.

Even with an overseer in charge, the enemies we'd faced back on Floor 16 had numbered well over a million. Heijeong's words seemed to be right on the mark.

When I asked her about colonial planets next, a message came back from her.

It was similar to how, when developers moved in on unclaimed land or land whose greenbelt had just been lifted, the people who'd always lived there were given a chance to claim ownership.

Up to that point, it was exactly what I'd imagined.

When I held my tongue and simply waited, Heijeong soon sent another message.

Hmm... something about that didn't add up?

The vast majority of climbers, lured in by the Tower, had contracted with the lower Sinjwa.

Which meant the lower Sinjwa should be the ones taking ownership.

But Heijeong had just told me that the high-seat Sinjwa were the ones who took it.

Something wasn't lining up.

The moment I opened my mouth to ask again, her next message arrived.

Those who conquer the Tower become Sinjwa.

Climbing this far, and talking things over with Heijeong along the way, I'd pieced together at least that much.

Ah. So that's why she told me, back at the pub, never to open the status window......

It had been quite the tangled mess, but at last I was beginning to understand the things Heijeong had said to me long ago.

I could feel the sheer viciousness of the Tower of Trials in my bones.

First, the Tower all but coerced climbers into choosing the status window. Technically you could refuse, but in practice it was anything but a free choice.

And it had rigged things so that a sponsorship contract was mandatory.

And then, once all that was locked in, your world's ownership slipped away the moment your shareholder ratio passed one hundred percent......

Worse still, even if you became a Sinjwa, you supposedly ended up as another high-seat god's lapdog.

Right. That's how it was.

The Tower of Trials, the Sinjwa, the climbers—all of it was interwoven this densely, this intricately.

In that moment, a sudden, suffocating tightness seized my chest.

A crushing weight of responsibility settled over my shoulders.

Hearing, vaguely, that I was Earth's hope, and knowing the reality behind it—those were two entirely different things.

She'd probably kept the details from me from the very beginning because she hated the thought of me carrying a burden like this.

And with that, Ha Heijeong had apparently made up her mind.

She'd kept silent all this time for fear of weighing me down—but now that she'd started talking, she seemed determined to drive the weight home properly, and the messages kept coming.

After that conversation, I washed up and lay down on the bed, sinking into a long, deep meditation.

Until now, I had thought of conquering the Tower as nothing more than an act of protecting Earth.

And of course, that was true.

'But......'

Once I learned what the consequences of failure would actually be, the feeling of it changed entirely.

The reality that awaited us if the Tower went unconquered.

Earth being strip-mined of its power, humanity turned into slave soldiers—those would be only the tiniest fraction of the wretched futures in store.

'Damn it. Don't dwell on this too much.'

Heijeong had told me not to carry the burden for nothing. Knowing about the gruesome future changed absolutely nothing.

One way or another, for my own survival—and to save Earth, and the people on it—I had to conquer the Tower of Trials.

Thinking about something else, anything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else, would do me more good. I deliberately forced my mind onto another track.

'The portal... no use for it right now, anyway.'

When Heijeong had heard about the portal, she'd said it was an extraordinarily rare skill to acquire.

Even in her first regression, the number of people who could use portals could be counted on one hand.

'She did say I could reach Earth with it, though......'

A portal's mana ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cost varied depending on the destination.

In Earth's case, it was a distance that even magic power exceeding a stat of 100 could not bridge.

Worse, if I crossed through a portal and failed to return within the Tower's time limit, I would die.

'Whether I cast it from the Waiting Room or inside a floor, it makes no difference.'

Unless I intended to pop over to Earth and come straight back, I would need enough mana to sustain two consecutive portals at minimum.

Granted, I did have the Mana Accumulation Gauntlet. Store up enough for a while and I could open one......

But the portal I could currently sustain lasted less than five minutes. Five minutes on Earth was enough for exactly nothing.

Heijeong had said that in her first regression, portals were mostly used within a single floor for missions—covering long distances, or doubling back to somewhere we'd missed something.

Well, either way, the portal was a problem for a much later day.

About eleven hours left on the clock.

The other climbers were still on Floor 22.

With nothing else to do, I lay there scrolling through the community posts the climbers had left behind before entering Floor 22.

As I idly thumbed my way down the board, one post caught my eye.

It was about Earth, and about our families—and it did not look like a happy read.

The fact that it had racked up over four thousand comments said as much.

I couldn't tell whether it was bait, thrown out just to stir the pot, or a genuine reflection on the Tower and Earth.

But I was human too, and seeing that title, curiosity got the better of me, as it inevitably would. I decided to read the whole thing.

Hm. Truthfully, these were all perfectly reasonable deductions on the climbers' part.

Talk of Earth was something a great many climbers cared about deeply.

So it made perfect sense that this particular post had flared up into such a blaze.

And yet, having heard directly from Heijeong that nothing had happened to Earth, I couldn't help feeling a little stifled reading it all.

We hadn't had our ownership of Earth stripped away yet—which meant those things couldn't touch it.

'That's only if we fail to conquer the Tower, though......'

I wanted to tell them Earth was fine. But it was information no climber could possibly know, which meant I couldn't breathe a word of it.

Maybe someday, once I could actually use the portal skill, I'd be able to.

The one thing that still gnawed at me was the claim that, with low probability, someone's parents or friends might have died in the Tower's lower floors.

I knew my parents were alive and well—but for the other climbers, it was undeniably a sobering warning.

'They'll quietly carry that anxiety with them.'

Well, it was something that had already happened. There was nothing to be done about it now.

Just then, a message came flying in from Ha Heijeong.