What Must Not Be Touched
Before the regression, the Tower of Agony had been known as an impregnable fortress that no one managed to conquer even in the later stages of the apocalypse.
The reason was simple: survivors mistakenly believed that the keyword "agony" meant the pain they felt inside the tower would be amplified.
It was only much later, when the truth came out—that the tower actually shared pain among everyone inside it—that a clear finally became possible. Until then, however, misinformation had spread far and wide, and the tower had tormented survivors for a long, long time.
"And there's one more thing you need to watch out for."
The crew's eyes lit up.
"Do not touch anything inside the tower."
"I'm sorry—what do you mean by that, Director?"
Geum Chul-soo asked in surprise.
"If you take anything out of this tower, your reward gets reduced."
"What kind of—"
"That's the kind of tower it is. A tower rigged that way."
"A tower full of traps in more ways than one, isn't it?"
Jeon Hye-ji chimed in. Everyone nodded.
"So even if something truly valuable drops in there, it's the part where we must not pick it up?"
"That's right. The moment you touch something, your reward drops by exactly that much. Normally, grabbing good loot on the way up wouldn't be a bad idea—but we're planning to clear this tower before it gets expanded, aren't we?"
"That is the part of it, yes."
"Then the rewards can't be as spectacular as you're imagining. Good things will drop, sure. But any action that lowers the reward tier is absolutely forbidden. Even if food drops. Even then."
"D-Director."
"What is it, Su-won?"
"Wh-what about when Gold Coins drop?"
"You don't pick those up either. Nothing. Not a single thing."
This, too, was information that only came to light after the Tower of Agony was cleared.
By the time it was conquered, the tower had been expanded all the way to its ninety-seventh floor, and only after the clear did a flood of details come out. Among them was one particularly novel tidbit: for every item a successful climber obtained, the tier of the clear reward dropped accordingly.
Won-goo, who knew all of this, drove the warning home hard.
"There's one more thing, but I'll explain that later. We're short on time, so let's move."
"Yes, sir!"
"Chul-soo! Don't let Dulla run too far ahead!"
"Yes, Director!"
Following his orders, the crew was carving their way through the tower.
The main monsters that haunted the Tower of Agony were the Priests of Crystal—worshippers of a god named Kalaktos.
They were fundamentalists who believed the world must be kept in a state of purity, devotees who prized enlightenment and rigorous discipline above all else.
Going by that description alone, they might as well have been monks. The difference was that Kalaktos happened to be an exceptionally cruel god.
The Priests held that every living thing outside their order had to die. And every creature they killed, they were required to eat.
Humans were no exception.
As the Tower of Agony expanded, the Priests of Crystal multiplied and their abilities grew stronger. One of the horrors that emerged from that growth was this: there were cases where survivors were not killed outright.
Having acquired a taste for human flesh, the Priests stopped killing survivors on the spot and began raising them inside the tower instead.
Humanity, reduced to livestock.
The Priests of Crystal were formidable opponents, with even the weakest among them ranking at Tier 3.
And yet the crew was cutting through them with almost laughable ease.
So easily that Won-goo didn't even need to step in.
"They're Tier 3 monsters, but it feels far too easy, the part where we're handling them. Director Gong. Wouldn't you say?"
"Part of it is that we've gotten stronger. And part of it is that they're weak against us, specifically."
"What do you mean by that?"
"This species has a strong resistance to magic."
Ordinarily, extended conversation mid-battle was unheard of.
But right now, things were calm enough that neither Won-goo nor Mu Beob-sa needed to lift a finger.
Dozens of Priests hurled themselves forward with frenzied ferocity, over and over—and that was all they managed. Not one of them advanced beyond a certain distance.
Which was exactly why the sight was so striking.
Nearly two meters tall. Reptilian golden eyes. Eerily elongated hands and arms, tipped with razor claws.
As servants of Kalaktos, whose creed exalted purity, they wielded no weapons of any kind—that was their defining trait.
In exchange, their bodies were tough beyond any comparison to a human's.
On top of that, they possessed a high innate resistance to strange abilities—magic, psychic assaults, mental attacks—so a party lacking in physical offense would have faced considerable difficulty clearing them.
But Won-goo's crew was not such a party.
Thanks to their mage, Mu Beob-sa, having his magic sealed away, they were practically a physical-combat-specialized party by default.
And then there was the newly joined Rafael, in full swing.
She was built much like Hye-ji—petite, slight—but her fighting style was the complete opposite.
Overwhelming strength. An all-out offense that showed not a shred of fear.
Better still, she had now fully absorbed the crew's calls and hand signals, and their teamwork was beginning to click.
As a result, clearing the first floor was genuinely easy.
Easier than Won-goo had expected.
"Rafael! You're overextending!"
Even while trading banter with Mu Beob-sa, Won-goo never lost track of the flow—and he immediately called Rafael out.
"Rafael!"
At the second call, even the worked-up Rafael had no choice but to fall back.
Thud!
At that moment, a Priest's long claws plunged into Rafael's stomach.
The Priest drove its claws in deeper, trying to haul her intestines out.
"……?"
What surfaced in the Priest's mind was not triumph, but confusion.
'Why won't it move?'
The claws hadn't budged an inch.
Rafael's abdominal muscles were stronger than the strength of a lowest-tier Priest.
A Dwarf Elf already blessed with tremendous power, who had poured her stats wholesale into her physical abilities—pulling off this kind of parlor trick was nothing to her.
Rafael brought her sledgehammer down and reduced the Priest to pulp.
Then it was Won-goo who burst out from behind her.
The instant Rafael took the hit, he launched himself with explosive jumping power and slammed into the Priests.
With his enhanced body, a single leap now carried him so far and so high it was practically a dash.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
In the blink of an eye, Won-goo sent three Priests flying.
Turnon's Warhammer had one unavoidable weakness: it needed stacks built up to unleash its true power.
But even without those stacks, it was a sufficiently threatening weapon.
It was a blunt instrument, after all.
And since it carried the Indestructible option, he could swing it as carelessly as he pleased.
Besides, he had invested a tremendous number of Coins into his stats, and Won-goo was far stronger now than he had been before.
It would take time for the applied Coins to exert their full hundred percent—but that didn't matter.
He could already feel that he was strong enough.
"Rafael!"
"……."
"When it's just us crew, you answer."
"Yes."
"I told you to follow orders. If this keeps up, we have a problem."
At that, Rafael gave no verbal reply—only a nod.
"Alright! Let's pick up the pace! They're still trash mobs, so mow them down!"
"Yes, sir!"
Passing the first floor wasn't difficult.
The boss guarding it swaggered out boldly—then lost its entire upper body to a single swing of Rafael's sledgehammer, and that was the end of it.
The crew entered the second floor.
"By the way, Director. Maybe it's because these mobs are so strange, but…… they don't drop anything, do they?"
It was Jo Mu-sa's question.
"True. These bastards never dropped much to begin with. They do spit out something rare now and then, though. Just because they don't carry weapons doesn't mean they don't carry accessories. And every so often, they cough up Gold Coins too."
From the second floor onward, stronger Priests of Crystal began appearing.
Even so, nothing really changed.
The crew dispatched them with room to spare.
"Su-won!"
"Y-yes, sir."
"You know when those bastards start shrieking?"
"Yes."
"Don't rush forward when they do. Hold back a beat, then move."
"G-got it."
"What kind of skill is that, sir?"
"It's a mental damage attack, originally. That's this species' specialty—screaming to induce disorientation."
The crew focused on Won-goo's words. All around them, the corpses of Priests of Crystal lay heaped in piles.
"Doesn't seem to affect us, though?"
"Of course it doesn't. We've been steadily investing in our mental stats this whole time. Remember wondering why we kept dumping points into that? This is exactly the situation it was for."
"Ah……"
"If you get hit with disorientation, you might not recognize your own crewmates and start attacking them, or you might break off entirely and sprint around like a madman. And what happens to the fight then? Jo Mu-sa, you've been through something similar—you know."
"Yes…… I do."
"Director, do those kinds of monsters show up on the upper floors?"
"We're fine for now. What's spawning in this tower at the moment are just the rank-and-file faithful."
"That's a relief, then."
"What you should actually be worried about is this tower's other rule. Look outside. Dusk is starting to fall, isn't it?"
The Tower of Agony was built as a spire straight out of the Middle Ages, and from within, the outside world was visible.
"So it is."
"From now on, once night falls, we move into the Temporary Shelter inside the Trailer."
"……?"
"……?"
"……?"
Everyone wore startled expressions. They had all experienced the Temporary Shelter before, so its mere mention wasn't cause for surprise.
It was the fact that they'd be using it now that caught them off guard.
Won-goo rarely opened the Shelter. Time inside the Temporary Shelter was extraordinarily precious—and therefore extraordinarily expensive.
"It's the part where you're opening the Temporary Shelter, then?"
"So it gets dangerous at night."
"Right on the money, Hye-ji. You've been inside the tower now, so you've seen it for yourself. Strange monsters, sure—but how's the difficulty?"
"Fairly manageable."
"Exactly. And yet the information brokers rate this tower at a very high difficulty. That rating exists precisely because of what I'm about to tell you. Once night falls, this tower spawns at least ten times more monsters. It's practically a flood. On top of that, the monsters themselves become far stronger than they are during the day."
"That really would be dangerous."
"It would. And in that situation, if you get caught wrong in the pain-sharing link, you all join hands and go meet your ancestors together."
The crew nodded.
"Ttugi. Clear these corpses out and make some space."
"Understood, Boss."
"Jo Mu-sa. The bag."
Click.
Taking the bag from Jo Mu-sa, Won-goo expanded the Trailer onto the open ground the crew had cleared for him.
The Trailer, shrunken down to the size of a bag, returned to its original dimensions.
"Everyone in."
When darkness fell, Won-goo activated the Temporary Shelter without hesitation.
The crew closed their eyes for a moment, and when they opened them again, outer space spread out before them.
Even Rafael, who normally maintained an almost perfectly blank face, couldn't hold her expression this time. She stood with her mouth hanging open, staring in every direction.
"You've all been here before, so you know the drill. Enjoy yourselves—but remember, nothing from this place leaves with you. Don't forget it."
"Yes, sir!"
"Dismissed. Do whatever you like."
Won-goo wasn't the type to drag his feet when something good was waiting. The moment he gave the word, the crew scattered to their own pursuits.
Ordinarily, Won-goo would have gone off to spend time with Midnight, but today he had other business first.
He needed to explain the situation to Rafael.
She had seemed quite shocked, yet she accepted the explanation surprisingly well.
Before long, only Won-goo and Midnight were left.
The two of them talked quietly together as the hours slipped by.
"Director Gong. It seems a new facility has appeared. It's the part where I should confirm my eyes did not deceive me?"
Mu Beob-sa was eating shrimp crackers—the kind sold on old Earth—straight from the bag in his hand. Won-goo walked over casually, plunged his hand in, and grabbed a fistful.
"You always do have a knack for sniffing these things out. That's right."
"What kind of facility?"
"One you'll like, Mage. A library."
At that, life sparked in Mu Beob-sa's eyes.
"A library—it's the part where I ask why you did not mention it sooner."
"Because there are no books."
"……?"
"There are no books yet. And it's not an ordinary library, either. It's an AI library."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"There's far too much about this Shelter that I don't know myself."
"Is it not the part where Director Gong only knows what he knows?"
"Honestly…… you and your mouth. In any case, going by my best guess—there's a committee that manages the apocalypse, isn't there? the Oversight Committee."
"That's so."
"I suspect it's connected to them. At any rate, when I did my Coin enhancement this time, I upgraded the Shelter's functions too. There were plenty of other options, but this one seemed like the top priority."
"A library without books?"
"Honestly…… I'm telling you, now we fill it. You remember those books you got for me a while back?"
"You mean the ones with the Seals?"
"That's the ones. Those books…… ugh, never mind. Just come with me. Showing you will be faster than explaining."
Just as Mu Beob-sa and Won-goo started toward the library, Geum Chul-soo's urgent voice rang out.
"Director! Director!"
"What? What's all the commotion?"
"Miss Midnight, she……"
"What about her?"
"She suddenly collapsed and started convulsing!"
Won-goo's face went utterly rigid. He moved at a blistering speed.
Midnight lay collapsed in the corridor, the crew gathered around her. Jo Mu-sa tried to check her condition—but he couldn't.
Electric current was arcing all around her body. Her eyes had rolled back entirely, and smoke was seeping out of her frame.
At a glance she looked like someone being electrocuted, but it was no ordinary electrocution.
"Jo Mu-sa. Don't touch her. You'll get shocked."
"Director, what is……"
"Don't touch her. She'll be fine."
Won-goo's expression was frozen solid—colder than ice. But in his eyes, beneath that coldness, lay something far deeper: grief.
"Everyone, go. Midnight has a chronic condition. This happens."
Won-goo crouched down in front of the collapsed Midnight.
As the crew hovered anxiously, Mu Beob-sa spoke a single line.
"It's the part where everyone goes. Director Gong will handle things here."