The Infinite Path of Survival
The sky above the second floor of Extreme difficulty was crushed beneath a uniform slate gray. The air hung thick and murky, and no sun existed in that lifeless expanse. The whole land exhaled a cold, barren scent. Every footfall produced a dry crunch, sending puffs of dust swirling into the air.
Yuhwa absorbed the landscape spreading before her.
An endless wasteland stretched in every direction, split by a single colossal road that ran arrow-straight toward the horizon. Flanking that road on both sides stood prisons forged from rusted iron bars, continuing without limit.
“...”
Yuhwa began walking slowly along the path.
The interiors of the cells were, to put it mildly, nightmarish.
In some, human-shaped figures repeatedly slammed their heads against the walls, muttering incomprehensible words in the grip of madness. In others, three-headed beasts strained against chains, ripping into their own flesh and devouring it. Prisons containing nothing but quivering masses of dark-red meat whose forms defied recognition appeared with unsettling frequency.
Yuhwa recalled the description she had seen upon entering this floor.
The prisoners here are those who deceived the administrators and desperately struggled to escape the rules of the Tower.
It was obvious. Creatures like these could never have existed on Earth. Was the Tower implying it had not appeared solely on Earth?
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
At intervals along the road, prison guards on patrol came into view. They were skeletal figures draped head to toe in tattered black robes.
Yuhwa’s gaze met one of them directly. A blue will-o’-the-wisp flickered inside its empty eye sockets, seeming to stare straight at her. Yet they paid her no attention whatsoever. She wasn’t sure the term “invisible person” quite fit, but she was clearly being treated as one.
Maybe I should just count my blessings. Getting attacked would’ve been a real pain.
Yuhwa paused briefly to watch its receding back, then resumed walking through the silence.
She continued across the ash for roughly an hour.
“...”
The view remained filled with nothing but the endlessly continuing road. Nothing happened. The guards still treated her like a ghost and passed by. The creatures inside the prisons showed no reaction to her presence, simply repeating their own punishments in endless cycles. The only things drifting through the air were dry ash and a silence so heavy it felt suffocating.
It was in the middle of that tedious, monotonous trek that something finally changed.
“...Huh?”
Yuhwa turned her head, drawn by a strange yet oddly familiar aura. Inside one of the many prisons she had already passed, deep within the shadows, a small figure was curled up, breathing in shallow gasps.
Almost as if in a trance, Yuhwa approached the iron bars of that cell.
“You are...”
What lay inside was, astonishingly, a very small baby dragon. Its scales had dulled completely to a lifeless gray, yet the tiny horn on its forehead and the unmistakable shape of its wings proved beyond doubt that it was a dragon.
The hatchling was covered in scars, chest rising and falling with labored breaths as it lay collapsed on the floor.
Ting… Ting. Ting.
Yuhwa reached out and tapped the rusted bars lightly. At the sound, the curled-up baby dragon opened its eyes with great effort. Hazy golden pupils blinked slowly and fixed themselves on Yuhwa beyond the bars.
“Are you all right…?”
Yuhwa asked carefully. Whether the hatchling had heard her or not, it gave no answer. It simply stared up with hollow, resigned eyes that seemed to have abandoned every last hope.
That was when it happened.
Clatter.
An unpleasant rattle of bones sounded behind her. When she turned, a skeleton guard of a different shape than the ones she had passed earlier stood there. A massive scythe was slung across its back, its blade an ominous red-black the color of dried blood.
She sensed no hostility. Yuhwa realized at once that it would not attack.
“Oh, greetings, stranger.”
The skeleton guard spoke. The voice was not the clacking of bone on bone but a surprisingly human and courteous tone.
“...You can speak?”
“Of course. I was once human myself. Though I failed while climbing the Tower and was reduced to this wretched form.”
“Failed, you say…”
The skeleton guard clacked its jawbone in what resembled a faint smile.
It pointed toward the baby dragon inside the cell.
“Do you wish to buy this one?”
The unexpected offer made Yuhwa’s brows furrow.
“Buy?”
“Indeed. It is the rule of this place.”
The guard rested its scythe on one shoulder and began to explain at length.
“In life I was a rather famous warrior. I conquered the world with nothing but this humble scythe! Of course… well, I was ultimately defeated and killed by the beings of the Tower.”
“Yet the Tower acknowledged you? That’s why you serve as a guard rather than a prisoner?”
“Correct. You’re quick. That was already five hundred years ago.”
The guard thumped its empty ribcage and continued.
“The price for this dragon is roughly one million coins. Should you pay that sum, the System’s rules will transfer ownership of the creature to you. In other words, you may take it out of the cage.”
One million coins.
It was a colossal sum, equal to what she had spent on the growth-type trait in the Extreme Difficulty shop.
Yuhwa stared at the guard in silence, then asked, “There’s something you left out, isn’t there?”
“Such as?”
“The commission.”
The will-o’-the-wisp in the guard’s eye sockets flickered with interest.
I see how it is. Every time you sell a prisoner you skim coins as a fee, hoarding them until you have enough to escape the Tower. Coins can do anything, after all.
Even destroying the Earth was possible with sufficient coins. Postponing punishment or escaping this place would be no different.
The skeleton guard smiled. Or rather, its bones twisted into the shape of one.
“Precisely. What a perceptive stranger you are.”
The guard stroked the scythe’s handle while gazing into empty air.
“One day I will gather the coins and escape. Then I shall climb this cursed Tower once more. I will reach the very summit, step upon the Steps of Ascension, and—!”
Before the guard could finish, blue flames erupted across its bones.
The skeleton that had been speaking only moments earlier collapsed, writhing and screaming in agony. Its bones melted like candle wax inside the blue fire, dripping onto the ground.
Yuhwa watched the scene with an expressionless face, then slowly withdrew her hand from the bars.
Inside the cell, the baby dragon—clearly familiar with the sight—curled up once more, eyes filled with complete surrender, and closed them again.
“Don’t worry,” Yuhwa said softly. “I’ll come back for you one day.”
Whether the hatchling heard her or not, she couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. This was a vow.
A vow that she would not end up melted into a puddle of wax like that guard.
Yuhwa glanced down one final time at the melted remains, then turned and resumed walking along the ashen road.
She walked for roughly another ten hours.
“...”
Yuhwa’s steps finally halted. A single drop of cold sweat slid down her forehead.
No matter how far she walked, how fast she ran, or even if she spread her wings and flew, the only thing filling her vision was the same endless gray path and iron-barred prisons stretching beyond the horizon. There was no gate marking the destination, no sign of a boss monster—nothing.
I get it now.
The theme of the second floor was survival. Pure, simple survival.
The strategy was straightforward: in this empty, boring space, you simply had to keep walking forward. The only problem was that the distance to the goal was absurdly, unreasonably long.
She had already covered more than ten kilometers. It felt closer to a hundred. Perhaps the road continued for a thousand. Or maybe it stretched into something close to infinity.
The trial was clearly designed so that only those who refused to give up on that vast distance, who kept walking until they reached the end, would clear it.
This… is bad.
Yuhwa licked her dry lips. She had swallowed only once, yet already a faint, scratchy thirst was rising in her throat. Even with a dragon’s body, she could not indefinitely replace every physiological need with mana. The maximum time she could endure this extreme environment without water was three months.
If she failed to reach the end of this endless road before then, she would die of thirst in the middle of this desolate prison.
In a week she would probably be too hungry to move properly.
…This was very bad indeed.