The Unknown Light
Q. Congratulations on the clear, and on the new record. How are you feeling?
A. Thank you. The truth is, this clear wasn't mine alone.
Q. Ah — you mean the Unknown Light everyone's been talking about. There's a rumor going around that if you accept help, your experience and your loot both shrink.
A. The rumor is true. But it was a miracle worth far more than anything I gave up.
Q. You don't feel cheated? If you'd cleared it alone, the experience and the loot would have been enormous.
A. Not in the slightest. People were certain I'd clear Floor 55 as a matter of course, but I wasn't sure of that at all. I climbed carrying the weight of the chance that today might be my last day.
Q. That's astonishing. You didn't look that way at all! After you confirmed you'd been healed, you even seemed conscious of the record. Could you tell us why?
A. I wanted to prove that if all of humanity puts its strength together, we can overcome this trial.
Q. Could you say a little more?
A. I don't know who healed me, or where they are, but they're probably an Awakener too. I wanted to show that if people can come together the way we did this time — past borders, past race — then there is no trial we cannot endure.
Morning.
The world was still in an uproar over Hermione Hayes's new record, and over the unidentified Healing Villain who had helped her reach it.
"Hmm..."
Among the flood of articles, one headline snagged my eye at once.
"Hm?"
Startled, I clicked through. Three pieces of evidence were laid out, one after another.
1. The first appearance was at Daejeon Tower.
2. Multiple streamers were healed on a platform that is easy to reach only from Korea.
3. The hours of activity fit an Asian time zone better than any other.
That, in short, was the argument.
"Tch. This is why I hate the sharp ones."
Of course, it was still nothing but speculation, and the comments were only half convinced. Even so, someone out there had clearly decided to take the guess seriously.
On what possible grounds did they think I was Chinese?
I clicked the article.
"Hah..."
Of all the reasons they offered, the one carrying the most weight was simply this: among the people who had been healed, there was a Chinese national. The heal had landed with perfect timing in the middle of a genuine crisis, and their argument was that such a thing would be impossible unless the healer had already been watching.
"I didn't even know it was a crisis."
Okay. Message received. No more healing at random.
If I looked only at the loot, spraying heals across as many people as possible was still the better play. The fatigue was worse, though, and so was the chance that someone would trace me.
From now on, I would heal only the people who truly needed it, the way I had with Hermione Hayes. And I would stick to a single platform: Nutube.
Once the decision settled, I opened Nutube and searched the live-climb category.
It was early morning, so the climbs were clustered in the Americas — about seventy people on the towers. One thing caught my interest. As if they had all agreed in advance, every title carried a little mark beside it: Heal O, or Heal X.
The groups focused on farming rather than climbing were all marked X. The ones attempting an upper-floor clear, or drilling for one, were all marked O.
I pulled in the computer, the tablet, and the phone and opened four broadcasts at once. Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Paraguay. All of them were working above Floor 40, and Brazil in particular was attempting Floor 53 — the highest floor of that tower.
"This ought to be a nice little bonus."
If they set another record, there would be an extra reward. Even if they didn't, a first-clear reward was waiting. Quitting halfway did settle the loot and experience along the way, but the penalty was steep.
"I'll heal you plenty, so fight!"
Miguel Andrade was the youngest Awakener in Brazil.
Sixteen years old, and already two years past his awakening. Even by the world's measure, he belonged among the youngest.
Sniping: S
Bow, crossbow, any ranged weapon — a shot from hundreds of meters still finds its mark.
Among the hundreds of known awakening abilities, it was counted as one of the broken ones. To wring everything he could from it, Miguel had poured every status bonus into Strength and Agility. Kill them before they close the distance. That was the whole of his thinking.
Through Floor 40, the strategy worked almost too well. Even through Floor 45, it held against everything but bosses and elite monsters.
But now he stood on Floor 53.
An arrow screamed through the air and punched home — and even the trash mobs had stopped dying in a single shot. Twang, twang, twang. A shriek answered him. Two arrows at the least. Three or four when he was unlucky.
If there weren't many of them, he could still manage. Hold the distance and snipe them down slowly. But if the monsters came in numbers? And if the floor was a labyrinth, with no clear line of sight? Then the story changed. The passages were narrow. Things could appear ahead of him and behind him. There was nowhere to dodge.
Floor 53 was exactly that kind of place.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—!"
Miguel spat curses as he ran like his soles had caught fire.
"Kieeeek! Kieeeeeek!"
Behind him, lizardmen shrieked and gave chase. An arrow sat neatly between each pair of brows — he had been hunting headshots. Even with a shaft buried dead center in the skull, the lizardmen did not die. If anything, their rage had climbed to the crown of their heads, and they came after him with their underlings in tow.
Miguel put his quick feet to work and fled for his life. He had already memorized the terrain, and for a moment like this he had a place in mind.
The hill. I have to reach the hill.
Lizardmen had webbed feet, and on dry ground their speed was limited. Climbing a slope slowed them sharply. If he took the high ground and started sniping again, he judged he could break this mess open.
It was a good judgment. It would have been, if the orcs had not already dug in on the hill.
"The fuck...?"
The orcs, too, each had an arrow planted companionably in the skull.
"Tch...!"
Nowhere to advance, nowhere to retreat. Lizardmen coming up from behind. Orcs on the slope ahead, grinding their axes on whetstones. Despair caught Miguel before he noticed it, and his feet stopped.
The only close-combat technique he owned was a dagger skill: Wing Cut. He had kept it for the moments when melee was no longer a choice. Could a dagger no bigger than a child's palm really answer what was coming?
"Mom..."
He swallowed the urge to cry and met the lizardman lunging in.
Steel rang. The dagger bit into the lizardman's throat — a sharp, clean strike. But the lizardman's spear drove a long line through Miguel's abdomen in the same breath.
"Guhk...!"
One blow, and he was nearly mortally wounded. His mind went hazy. Far off, he could see the older sister and the younger siblings who had gone ahead of him, waving, smiling.
— Wait. I'll be there soon.
And then, with the sound of wind, light exploded from his whole body.
"Huh?"
The pain vanished. The spearhead buried in his gut withdrew on its own.
"No way...?"
Miguel sniffed back the blood streaming from his nose. When he had started the broadcast, only half believing, he had written a line and left it there.
"No way...?!"
He did not waste the opening. The sudden radiance had frozen the lizardmen where they stood, and into that gap Miguel swung the dagger, cutting their numbers down one by one.
I can win. I can win—
"Kgh...!"
This time it came from behind. He jerked his head around at the searing pain and found a massive axe buried in his back.
No. Not buried. The blood-soaked blade was sticking out through his chest. At least his body hadn't been chopped in two...
Radiance surged over him again. Miguel had already half given up. There was no skill in the world that could recover a blow like this.
And yet the axe slid free once more. Shattered spine, liver, lungs, skin — all of it whole again, without so much as a scar.
"This can't be real..."
This was a miracle of God. That was what Miguel thought. He reset his grip on the dagger and roared.
On that unshakable faith, Miguel broke through Floor 53.
"Tsk... Even the best fried chicken gets old if you keep eating it."
Two days in a row really had been too much. Better to rotate which place I ordered from. I had never dared think about the expensive stuff — Cheongyang-chili mayo, black garlic alio — but going after those might not be a bad idea either.
"Then again, I think I need some rules."
Because we weren't actually talking to each other while they climbed, a few problems I hadn't expected had started to show. A lot of Awakeners stayed far too passive until that first heal landed. On the other side, plenty had charged in bold when I had no intention of healing them, and had nearly died for it. The worst were the ones who slapped Give me a heal on their stream titles of their own accord and then went after floors they had no business attempting.
"Not really my problem, though."
Still, the most basic rule ought to be this: once I chose someone to heal, I would give them one heal no matter the situation. Then they would feel that I was watching.
The problem was the ten-second cooldown. If I had several people under my eye and crises broke out all at once, I couldn't cover them. That Brazilian kid just now was a perfect example. If the others hadn't been stable, it would have been razor-close. No — honestly, he would have died. He was such a glass cannon that even a heal every ten seconds, right on the dot, couldn't keep up with him.
"Maybe actually talking to them would be better."
A direct conversation would erase a lot of problems. It would create others. The moment my identity came out, choosing targets as freely as I did now would be impossible. Every single choice would turn into politics. People would start reading intent into all of it.
Better, maybe, to remain a symbol, the way I was now. Freer. And maybe able to save more people.
...Huh?
"Save people...?"
Had I actually thought that? Without meaning to, I turned toward the printed photograph of my parents — the two of them in some nameless backwater, arms around children whose names I didn't know.
"That isn't what I want..."
I bit my lip and held still.
Ding—!
While I sat lost in the thought, receipts came flying in.
"Huh?"
My eyes went wide. There was a line on the receipt I had never seen before.