No Room for Hesitation
They decided to head up to the second layer the day after tomorrow.
It was simply impossible to guess what kind of results the Akasha System enhancement would produce.
A full thirty-two hours.
That was how long the enhancement would take to finish.
Something I've never experienced before.
Until he had a precise grasp of it, he couldn't move rashly.
Thanks to that, the plan he had carefully put together had gone off the rails, which was irritating, but—
Still better than moving under uncertainty.
Yujin had brushed it off as nothing much, but the truth was that the Tower's dangers were immense beyond description.
In the first timeline, Yujin had come within a hair of dying inside the first ten floors nearly a hundred times over.
Even with talent on a completely different plane from everyone else, that had been the case.
Of course, having lived through it once, climbing would be a little smoother this time around.
But that was no reason to let his guard down.
The malice the Tower harbored could never be taken lightly.
One careless "Oops!" and even Yujin could become the light illuminating the thirteenth floor of the Alchemist Guild.
So I endure.
Thirty-two hours.
No—about thirty hours left now?
Only after the Akasha System finished its enhancement and he had confirmed exactly how it had changed would they move.
Of course, he had no intention of just sitting around at the Starlight Wanderer until then.
Even if he himself paused for a moment, there was no need for the other two to do the same.
And so—
"Fight."
Having stepped out of Terra through the southern gate, Yujin spoke to Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo.
"...Yes."
Anxiety and fear still filled both their faces.
Even after raising their levels that high, nothing much had changed.
A single day.
Far too little time to reshape recognition or mindset.
They possessed mental fortitude far tougher than that man who had been fed and then kicked out of the Starlight Wanderer, but that was all.
To survive in this damned Tower, they had to become far more vicious, far more numb.
For that alone, the hunting could not stop.
They needed to grow accustomed to blood and corpses even a minute, a second sooner.
Receiving Yujin's coldly settled gaze, the two prepared for battle.
Swords drawn, fists raised.
The opponents were, of course, a Red Goblin scouting party.
A group of only five.
Ones the current Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo could handle with ease.
But the two of them knew.
Those things were nothing more than the overture to the hell that was coming.
"You know to leave one alive, right?"
"Ah, come on! I know already, okay?"
Lee Sia shot Yujin a sidelong glance, then settled into her stance.
After a full day of being worked hard, it looked incomparably more natural than when he had first seen her.
"I'll go first."
Taat—!
She kicked off the ground.
Her center of gravity was endlessly low.
Like a single cat cutting through the undergrowth.
In the blink of an eye, Lee Sia was right in front of the Red Goblins.
Kieeeeeek—!
Only then did they spot her. They startled and raised their weapons.
But Lee Sia's sword far outstripped their reaction speed.
Beonjjeok—!
Black light carved through empty air.
It was the sword light of Black Wing [C].
A full C-grade.
A blade so outstanding it had caused an uproar in the first timeline bared its fangs.
Jjeong—!
By sheer luck, a crude glaive intercepted the path of Black Wing [C].
But it failed to stop it.
The item was far too excellent to be halted by something like that.
The lead Red Goblin was split cleanly in two along with its glaive.
As if it had never imagined this could happen, the creature died with a triumphant smile still fixed on its face.
As blood sprayed and the diagonally severed corpse began to topple—
Park Ji-hoo stepped in.
A small, scrawny boy.
With an appearance that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with fighting, Park Ji-hoo drove forward a fist sheathed in a massive lump of metal.
There was not a shred of hesitation.
Rather, that punch extended without any thought was all too fatal.
Instinct or sense—
The kid knew perfectly how to bring an opponent down.
Ppudddeudeuk—!
Park Ji-hoo's fist buried itself in the neck of a Red Goblin whose vision was already blinded by blood.
Instant death; no need for a second look.
A fist strike aimed at a vital point was not something a mere Red Goblin could endure.
In an instant, two were dead.
Three remaining.
The two of them exchanged a glance for a split second, then moved together this time.
Lee Sia's sword swept low as if brushing the ground, and over it Park Ji-hoo launched himself in.
Seogeok— Kwaduk—!
Into the temple of the one collapsing with its ankle severed by the blade, Park Ji-hoo's knee slammed home.
Destructive force so massive it was hard to believe it came from that tiny body crushed the skull outright.
Blood and brain matter splattered, yet they did not dodge.
Rather, they used it.
Exactly like Yujin.
One of the remaining two was ground down without even managing the thought of resistance.
Time elapsed to this point: roughly fifteen seconds.
Slow.
Any other player who saw it would have been left gaping, but Yujin only furrowed his brow.
If it had been him, he would have settled the fight within five seconds.
Even assuming the level was matched to Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo.
Right now it would not even take a second.
They need to get bolder.
It looked merciless enough, yet to Yujin's eyes it was plain as day.
When they cut and crushed the Red Goblins—
the hesitation lingering in their hands.
Without that, it would have been twice as fast.
Well, that can't be helped.
In the end this was a matter of time.
A week, a month, a year.
The longer they spent inside the Tower, the more they would improve.
Otherwise they would die.
Looking at the whole picture, not bad.
There were a few points that still grated, but this much was excellent.
The hard grinding yesterday had paid off.
"Done, right?"
Having deliberately left the last one alive and let it flee, Lee Sia approached while shaking the blood from Black Wing [C].
The motion looked quite practiced, so Yujin could not help snorting a short laugh.
"Far from it. With that level of skill, if you go up to the second layer you won't last a single day."
"Would it kill you to give a little praise?"
At Yujin's words Lee Sia scowled and grumbled.
But what could she do?
It was the truth.
"If you want praise, just do better. Don't go harboring useless sympathy or anything."
"...Sympathy?"
Lee Sia let out a hollow laugh.
"You're saying I feel sympathy for monsters?"
"Don't you?"
"Of course not! Why would I feel sympathy for things charging at me to kill me!"
Lee Sia shouted as if she had been deeply wronged.
"Then why exactly is there hesitation lingering in your sword?"
"That's—!"
Lee Sia wore an expression of pure absurdity.
"What person in the world can kill a living thing without any hesitation at all?"
Monsters were enemies.
Hostile life-forms charging in to kill her, that was the point.
But that did not mean killing them was easy.
Just a few days earlier she had been an ordinary college freshman enjoying ordinary life.
Not a soldier who had spent a lifetime on battlefields, nor a hunter who lived by the hunt.
The only lives Lee Sia had ever taken were mosquitoes and flying insects.
She was the type who could not even bring herself to kill a cockroach.
For someone that ordinary, carving up bipedal creatures the size of children with a sword was by no means simple.
If she had not even held the thought that failing to kill meant dying herself, she would never have managed to swing the blade at all.
But—
"What are you talking about. Why hesitate?"
Yujin did not understand in the slightest.
"Kill them and your level goes up, and sometimes you even get items. Why on earth would that make you hesitate?"
To him, monsters were a means.
A means to grow stronger.
A means to obtain items.
And ultimately a means to conquer the Tower.
No different at all from a farmer harvesting rice.
So he simply could not grasp Lee Sia's words.
"Aargh, this psychopath bastard. I knew it would be like this."
Hearing him, Lee Sia stepped backward, putting distance between them.
"I thought it was weird from the moment you drew your sword the second you saw me."
In Lee Sia's eyes, Yujin was a madman.
A madman who could kill other people without batting an eye if it served his purpose.
To fall into the hands of someone like that—
there was no misfortune quite like this one.
"Don't talk nonsense. Whether you kill while hesitating or kill in one clean stroke, the result is the same, isn't it?"
That much was true.
"In that case, isn't it better to handle it more efficiently and faster? If we're going to clear the Tower from here on?"
That was also correct.
Lee Sia had no rebuttal.
Emotionally she recoiled, yet there was not a single flaw in Yujin's reasoning.
"Mister. You were an outcast outside, right?"
Mister, huh.
He took a small wound to the heart from an address he had never imagined hearing from Lee Sia, who was barely younger than him.
But he did not show it.
It would have felt like losing for no reason.
"Yeah, I was an outcast. So what? What about it."
It was not the world that had ostracized him.
He had ostracized them.
Whether inside the Tower or outside it, the place overflowed with idiots.
Every last one of them a moron, an imbecile, a guy who could not even look after himself properly.
At least that was how Yujin saw it.
Which was why he had never once thought of mingling with them.
"Doesn't living like that make you lonely?"
"Lonely my ass."
Alone was good.
Alone was comfortable.
Mixing with others was nothing but exhausting.
Yujin was about to answer that way.
But he could not.
Is that so?
In the first timeline—
Yujin had ultimately cleared the Tower.
But not a single person remained around him.
Because they had all died.
Not one person left in the world who could hold a conversation with Yujin had survived.
That was why.
In the chance he had been given again, he had planned to acquire people he would write as companions and read as slaves.
To keep the world existing in as intact a state as possible.
Hmm.
Looking at that, it did not seem that being alone was unconditionally better.
"Ah, enough. We'll talk about this crap later."
Fortunately, something occurred that would clear the complications from Yujin's head.
Dudududududududu—!
Far in the distance, something was approaching.
A Red Goblin wave.
The short rest was over; it was time to grind them again.
"If you've got time to flap your mouth, kill one more. That way your odds of surviving go up even a little."
Lee Sia's face darkened.
At the thought of having to repeat yesterday's experience, Yujin's personality and disposition were completely forgotten.
"Go ahead and try fighting well while you hesitate."
Yujin sneered at her.
The price for needlessly cluttering his mind.
I should help a little less today.
A mouse thinking about the cat and flopping over.
Guilt over slaughter, hesitation—
all of it was the talk of the full-bellied.
Yujin decided that for today he would strip away every last scrap of the luxurious emotions she still carried.
Of course, in the process Lee Sia would end up in a bit of danger…
Doesn't matter.
She had to pay the price for calling him a psychopath bastard, didn't she?
Go ahead and try dying once.
Watching Lee Sia's back as she drew her sword toward the Red Goblins, Yujin smiled.
A smile that was utterly, thoroughly wicked.