The Refusal to Sacrifice
One sacrifice could cut ten minutes off the timer.
And right now, there were a total of 103 people in the safe zone.
Excluding Yujin, Lee Sia, and Park Ji-hoo, that left the hundred survivors they'd rescued in the first quest.
If they offered every last one as a sacrifice, that would be a thousand minutes. In other words, sixteen hours and forty minutes shaved off.
The quest that demanded they hold out for a full twenty-four hours would shrink down to seven hours and twenty minutes.
Twenty-four hours versus seven hours and twenty minutes. The difference was night and day.
And the zombie wave bearing down on them this time made the first quest look like a joke.
A mere ten thousand or so? Laughable. They were pouring in without end, literally endless.
In the first timeline, Yujin had run this quest with a full thirty players. Most of them had already hit the level 20s.
"I figured that many people meant we could clear it without offering any sacrifices, you know?"
He'd been wrong.
Barely four hours into the wave, ten of those thirty players were dead. The remaining twenty were so exhausted they could barely keep fighting.
Which left Yujin to struggle alone. But in the end—
"Around the six-hour mark, people started saying we should offer the survivors as sacrifices."
It wasn't just one or two. Nearly everyone except a stubborn few. Yujin had agreed. At the rate they were going, the players themselves were going to be wiped out.
"Do we really need to throw our lives away for a bunch of NPCs?"
That had been the main excuse. And in the end, they had offered the sacrifices—every last one of the hundred survivors. The fifteen players who made it through went on to the third quest.
"This isn't about conscience or morality. It's about efficiency. Survival."
Yujin said it casually, watching Lee Sia's face harden into stone.
There was no real choice. Having lived through it once, Yujin knew that better than anyone.
"So get ready. Even if we burn every sacrifice, we've still got more than seven hours of fighting ahead of us. That won't be easy either."
He had already made up his mind to offer them. There was no reason to take the impossible path when an easy one sat right there.
But—
"No."
Lee Sia slowly shook her head.
"Did you hear what I just said? If we don't offer the sacrifices, we all die."
Maybe Yujin could survive. Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo could not. At least those two would definitely die. That was how Yujin saw it.
A hundred NPCs versus two slaves. The latter mattered far more to him. Even if there were tens of millions of NPCs instead of a hundred, they wouldn't help him clear the Tower one bit.
"Still no."
Lee Sia bit down on her lip.
"People don't do that. Sacrifice someone else just so I can live? And you'd still call yourself a real human being after that?"
"Hmm."
Her tone was getting rough.
"If we can't hold the line, those people die too—"
"So what? I don't care. I don't want to live like that, you psychopath bastard."
She cut him off and drove her point home. Her conviction was so upright, so deeply rooted, that nothing short of shattering her soul would ever bend it. An unbreakable will.
"Those people aren't numbers or tools. They're the lives I saved. The ones Ji-hoo saved. They're living human beings."
"...I don't get it."
"Of course you don't. You're a psychopath."
Her voice was absolute, certain.
"You'll regret it."
"Regretting it while I die is better than regretting it while I live."
Looking straight into the eyes fixed on him, Yujin slowly nodded.
"Fine. I'll respect your decision."
He rolled his shoulders and went on.
"Then go ahead and dig yourselves a grave."
They came.
It felt like the entire ground itself was moving. Lee Sia tried to estimate their numbers, then gave up almost immediately.
There's no counting that.
The horde stretched far beyond the limits of her perception—so vast she couldn't even take it all in at a glance. Yujin hadn't suggested sacrifices for nothing.
Hold the line for twenty-four hours against that many? Most players would choose the sacrifices without a second thought. Anyone would value their own life over a hundred strangers.
But Lee Sia was different. Exactly the opposite. If she could trade her own life to save a hundred others, she would do it without hesitation. That was the kind of person she was.
"Sorry, Ji-hoo. Dragging you into this because of me."
"It's okay, Nuna. I agree with you."
After hiding the survivors deep in the safest part of the zone and returning, Park Ji-hoo had listened to the exchange between Lee Sia and Seong Yujin, then simply nodded. Without another word, he had decided to follow her lead.
Even knowing they might die. No—even knowing the odds of dying were far higher than the odds of living. Lee Sia was endlessly grateful for the quiet support of the boy who stood by her without complaint. She reached up and ruffled his hair, matted with zombie blood and gore.
What a good kid.
Unlike most kids his age, Park Ji-hoo was quiet and pure-hearted.
I can't let him die out here.
During their vacation in the real world, she had heard everything about his situation. Worthless parents and a pitiful little sister. A life so completely different from her own happy one. That was why. Lee Sia wanted him to live happily with his sister. She had already decided that if it came down to it, she would throw her own life away to get him out of here.
"Don't leave my side."
The rough tide came crashing in, ready to sweep everything away. A hundred meters. Fifty. Thirty. Then ten.
Now.
KWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWAANG—!
Beside her, Yujin—still wearing that indifferent expression—jerked his hand. At the same time, threads so thin they were invisible to the eye whipped through the air, slicing through everything they touched. Zombies. Buildings. Everything split clean apart like soft butter.
The teetering structures collapsed, burying the zombie tsunami under rubble. It was the same method Yujin had used earlier to slaughter them by the thousands. The effect was devastating. The front ranks were crushed flat, as if the fact that he had single-handedly wiped out over ten thousand before had been no accident. At a glance, well over a thousand of them had been obliterated.
No one celebrated. Far too many remained. It was like scooping a single bucket out of the ocean. Through the thick clouds of dust, their silhouettes came into view—leaping over the wreckage of collapsed buildings, charging forward in a frenzy.
"Don't get pushed back."
Yujin's low warning cut through the noise.
Once they gave ground, it was over. They would keep stumbling backward until the endless tide swallowed them whole.
"I know that."
Lee Sia bit her lip as she answered. She still wouldn't even look him in the eye. The whole "let's offer sacrifices" thing had clearly left a bad taste in her mouth.
Tsk.
Yujin clicked his tongue inwardly at the sight of her.
She'll come to her senses once she gets burned.
He had heard plenty of stories about how righteous the Sword Empress was. How she would walk into hell alone without a second thought just to save someone else. But that path would only lead to the same end as the first timeline. Eventually she would face an enemy she couldn't handle and become more fertilizer for the Tower.
Better to live a little selfishly, a little more calculatingly. That way she could clear the Tower without dying and go back to her original life. At least, that was how Yujin saw it.
In that sense, today was a pretty good event. If she got bent, worn down, and broken by these endless zombies, she might start looking out for herself a little more.
Yujin bit his lip lightly and put strength into his fingers.
Kiiiiiing—!
The Heavenly Silk Thread [C] stretched taut between his fingertips, releasing a razor-sharp tension.
If only I had a little more mana.
The length of the Heavenly Silk Thread [C] scaled with the user's mana. Right now, all Yujin could manage was roughly thirty meters. Even that was only thanks to obtaining Grace [C] on the first floor. If it had been even twice as long—no more, no less—the fight would have been far easier.
Can't be helped.
It still wasn't bad. He had never expected to get his hands on a C-grade weapon item this early in the first place. Black Wing [C] he had always planned to hand over to the Sword Empress as a bribe. Landing something this useful by pure luck made the fighting infinitely more manageable. Honestly, he could probably grind the quest clear on his own if he had to.
Protecting Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo, though—that was a different story.
Let's see how this goes.
This was the ordeal they had chosen for themselves. He had offered them the easier, safer path, and they had still picked the hard, drawn-out one. The responsibility for that choice rested entirely on their shoulders.
Yujin intended only to watch. To see what kind of reaction they would have at the end of this road. Regret? Despair? Or the opposite? Maybe even death. From where he stood, death looked the most likely outcome.
Even so, he didn't force the issue. Climbing higher meant going through this at least once. Someone had once called it heartless—the attitude the Tower forced on its players. It was simply too brutal a road for anyone who still carried warmth or pity in their heart. Among those who reached the higher floors, players who put others before themselves were rare. Not because they had been born that way, but because the climb itself had worn them down and weathered them away.
Only one person had ever stepped off that path.
Only the Sword Empress.
Would it be the same this time? Or would it be different?
Yujin sincerely hoped for the latter. He didn't want her stopping short again, the way she had in the first timeline, because of some pointless meddling.
"Let's go!"
Lee Sia kicked off the ground and charged forward. Park Ji-hoo backed her up from behind.
I told them not to get pushed back, and they're advancing instead.
Watching Lee Sia's back as she carved through the zombies with increasingly practiced swordplay, Yujin let out a short snort of laughter.
The fight was only just beginning. Twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes still remained. Even for Yujin, this was going to be anything but easy.
Sssrrrkk—.
He slid after her like water, spreading the Heavenly Silk Thread [C] wide. The impossibly thin strands swam through the air as if they possessed a will of their own.
Piiiiiiiiit—!
An edge sharp enough to split ordinary metal on contact diced the zombies into pieces. They kept charging without even realizing they had died a second time, then simply collapsed.
KWA-GWA-GWA-GWAANG—!
Park Ji-hoo's fists detonated like artillery shells.
Seogeok—!
Lee Sia's blades danced, taking heads clean off.
Even as Yujin's fingers never stopped moving—dicing zombies into neat little cubes—his eyes never left the two of them.