From Hell Back to Hell

Every companion who had walked beside him for the past twenty years lay collapsed, coughing blood.

"...We did it?"

He stared at the familiar lines hovering before his eyes and sank into thought. He hadn't done it for a reward. He had simply wanted to. In the end, the purpose had only happened to be the same.

"Why...? Why would you?"

The voice belonged to the last companion he had brought down — Isana, the Sword God.

"We're about to go home. Return is right in front of us. Why... why!"

One day they had been abducted to a place called the Tower World, and they had climbed the Tower on nothing but the promise that reaching the top would send them back to Earth.

Earth. He had wanted to go back. He missed the tuna kimchi stew he used to eat there, a bulgogi Whopper, a cheap iced Americano.

But something else had come before going home.

"Revenge."

"...Revenge?"

"You made me like this."

Han Do-yoon caught his reflection in a dagger slick with blood. Tentacles had sprouted from his pupils and wound around his head. Blood poured without end from his ears, and gills gaped along his throat. His arms had become tree roots, and a hose linked to some machine was driven into his abdomen. In a word, he no longer looked human.

For twenty years, the players climbing the Tower had used Han Do-yoon as a test subject. When all you want is revenge, you don't need a reason beyond that.

"You're... wrong!"

"Wrong?"

In the blood pooled on the ground he saw another version of himself. What looked back from it was not a monster, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his original face.

Huh? Which one was real?

"Get... a hold of yourself."

Wait. Why did I do that?

Looking down at the fallen Isana, the question rose without warning. Pain split his skull, and his mind pitched into chaos. In his memory there was no process — only the result.

Revenge? What revenge?

When did I poison the potions? Was I really used as a test subject for twenty years? What was the last thing I ate?

He fumbled through his pockets, seized the first thing his fingers found, and dumped it into his mouth. Only then did his mind run clear. The notification floating before his eyes dissolved like sugar in water.

"What have I... done."

There had never been a Han Do-yoon used as a test subject for twenty years. There had never been a Han Do-yoon turned monster. All that remained was a man whose mind had been destroyed by the side effects of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Elixir — a drug said to grant ageless immortality and an invincible body.

"This... this can't be."

Reason restored, Han Do-yoon looked over his fallen companions. One had stiffened like a doll whose joints had been bent the wrong way. Another was pouring blood from every opening in their body. Another had melted until nothing but bones rolled across the floor.

Isana, the Sword God, had become a single sword. Only her face remained.

...

"AAAAAAAH! NO! NO—!"

Words he had once let pass came back to him.

"Hrrk— ghhk!"

What tore out of him was a wail that never managed to become a scream. His nails dug into his scalp, and rage turned inward until his whole body burned red.

Return. The Tower World abducted people without their consent, and once they produced a certain measure of results, it sent them back — temporarily — to the place they had lived. When the time came, it abducted them again, and if they produced results once more, it permitted another temporary Return. That was why the Tower's residents climbed, longing for a Return that would last.

Han Do-yoon had been no different. Abducted one day, he had climbed the Tower to get back to Earth. After grinding hardship he earned a temporary Return, and when he set foot on Earth again the place felt like heaven, and the Tower like hell. So he gathered companions and climbed once more, chasing a Return that would never end.

He had met his ruin at 99 Layers, but still.

Return?

Sunk in despair, Han Do-yoon came back to himself at the Tower's alarm, repeating before his eyes. A Return to Earth — but not a permanent one. Only a temporary reward, granted because the Tower had been impressed by an idiot's atrocity. Go and come back, and he would have to resume that hellish life in the Tower. This time, without his companions.

The future spread before him like a painting of hell, and still he could not throw the chance away. There was only one reason. Han Do-yoon, like every other resident of the Tower, had been trained on a single piece of bait: Return. He was no different from an addict too deep in the drug to tell what state he was in. Grief, despair, and screaming had stripped him of reason, and still the hunger for Return was desperate.

The fraying thread of his mind drew taut. His thoughts spun tight as he weighed the moment.

When do I go back?

The more often one Returned, the greater the privilege. At first it had only meant going back to Earth. Now he could choose the era. The day he had gone to a sushi buffet with his family as a child? The high school trip? The day right after his discharge, when he cashed out his military savings? He had agonized over that choice countless times.

But in this moment, conscience and guilt opened another option.

Perhaps the choice was unexpected. The Tower hesitated to answer. The message appeared only once the silence had grown awkward.

The moment the words appeared, the world before his eyes went black. The floor vanished, and he fell somewhere.

This was not Han Do-yoon's first Return. He had lived through it ten times, and he knew how carefully the hours had to be spent from the instant he arrived.

How much time is left?

A temporary Return was exactly what it sounded like. When the time permitted in heaven — Earth — ran out, he would be dragged by force back to hell, the Tower. Going into the past did not change the future. The time allowed differed from person to person. For some it was a mere thirty minutes. For others, a week.

What...?

Ten years? He had never seen anything like it. To go back twenty years and live another ten on top of that.

Because this isn't a Return to Earth? Because it's a regression?

He couldn't know the reason. In the Tower World, everything was decided by the will of a transcendent being called the Tower. Every question ended there: the Tower's will.

The time I've been given is ten years.

Han Do-yoon pinched the bridge of his nose between index finger and thumb, the habit he fell into whenever he had something to work through.

What I have to do.

Repent to his companions. He didn't know whether anything he did after coming back to the past would change the future. But if he could say he had paid for his sins across the next ten years, he thought he might feel a little better when he returned.

...Is it because I came all the way back to the very beginning? My head is clear.

Residents of the Tower gained all manner of skills as they climbed. The very first skill Han Do-yoon had obtained was Predatory Emotion — the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ability to appraise a thing by eating it. That was why he had worked as an alchemist. He ate countless things that existed in the Tower World and turned them into all kinds of potions.

But appraising by eating was not the same as digesting whatever he ate. Obviously, he swallowed things that should never have been swallowed far more often than not. By the time he was climbing toward 99 Layers he had gained a monstrous stomach that could digest nearly anything, but the road there had been paved with side effects. He had never quite reached the end — the hallucinations, the monster — but he had lost his sense of taste, and he had fallen into addiction to certain drugs. Once a month there was a stretch when he was not in his right mind. In the end, perhaps that disaster had been inevitable.

What even happened at the start?

They called it twenty years, but if he counted the trials he had endured while climbing the Tower, he had lived more than fifty. Some of those trials let only the mind's time pass. He had wasted long stretches in empty mountains with nothing in them, so he could hardly claim his mind had matured. Twenty years was just a way of speaking. Entering the Tower felt, in his bones, like something from much further back.

Even so, the way a person remembers childhood with strange clarity, he remembered the first day.

It rained the next day, and I caught a cold.

The structure of the Tower World was simple. At the center stood a tower whose end could not be seen, and around it spread a lush forest. There were no nations. The total population was under a hundred thousand. The residents had been abducted not only from Earth but from all manner of worlds, and races other than human lived among them.

The most conspicuous structure here was, of course, the Tower. Any sentient being would naturally gather toward it, and so Han Do-yoon had made for that tower of unknown nature as well. Along the way he had come upon the only city in this place, and there he had learned how to survive in the Tower World. There was no other road to staying alive.

If he wanted to meet his companions again, the same as last time, he had to go to the Tower. He had met all of them there, and in any case, food, clothing, and shelter could only be solved by climbing.

For today... I should start by getting ready to keep the rain off.

The sky was beginning to darken. If he didn't hurry, he would catch a cold just like last time and suffer for it tomorrow.

It's my second time. I'm not about to live the same day twice. I'm not that much of an idiot.

The experience he had piled up climbing the Tower was useful even in the wild. He hadn't figured it out on his own so much as learned it from a companion with clever hands. He gathered broad leaves one by one and laid them over a thick trunk, and before long he had a temporary shelter to pass the day.

Next came warmth. Without it, he couldn't count on tomorrow's condition. He searched out dry branches, and just as he managed, with some difficulty, to get a fire going, the rain began to pour. He didn't have a single callus, and starting a fire with bare hands was no small labor.

And now I'm hungry.

Even so, it was remarkable progress compared to the first time. When he had first arrived, he hadn't known what kind of place this was. He had panicked and spent the whole day unable to pull himself together. Walking, he had caught his foot on a tree root, torn his pants, and bled freely from the knee. Soaked to the skin, he had caught a cold and been so far out of his head he thought he was going to die. Now he was comfortable enough to notice he was hungry.

Just endure today.

A person doesn't die from missing a single day of food. He was filling his stomach on clean rainwater when it happened.

A rustle. Someone pushed through the brush.

A woman in a torn white crop top and jeans appeared, her skin covered in scratches from the trees. Isana — the future Sword God. She must have been caught in the rain on her way here; she was soaked through, her black underwear faintly visible beneath her drenched clothes. Her long hair was tangled, clinging to the nape of her neck in a way that was strangely alluring.

That's strange.

Not once had Han Do-yoon ever looked at her, or at any of his companions, as a woman. And yet here he was, seeing her like this. That could only mean one thing.

So the drugs turned me into a eunuch.

He pulled his gaze back from where it had been roaming over Isana of its own accord. Had she felt the unpleasant heat of lust in it? She hesitated to come any closer.

"Sorry. I was looking at you weirdly. But if you show up dressed like that, no man can help it."

No answer.

Han Do-yoon regretted not speaking more warmly.

"Come over here and rest. You'll catch a cold like that."

Still no reaction. Something was wrong, so he looked into her eyes, and only then did he understand.

Her mind's already gone.

An ordinary Earthling who had lived an ordinary life could never stay sane in an unknown land like the Tower World.

She dropped.