To the 11th Floor

"H-hello. My name is P-Park Gun-woo."

The man who approached us introduced himself with a face drawn tight with nerves. He was so tense he actually stammered.

"I'm Yoo Shin-hoo."

I stepped forward as our party's representative. I intended to take the lead until we'd established our footing here. After that, I'd dump it all on Han Ba-da.

"Y-Yoo Shin-hoo...?"

"That's right."

"D-don't tell me... the Fixed Safe Zone's..."

Quick on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the uptake.

"That's correct."

I'd planned to keep it quiet at first, but looking at the state of things, there was no point in hiding ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it. I decided to just come out with it.

"Th-thank you. You saved our lives."

"Don't mention it. They were the ones who came after us..."

"Ah, I-I'm grateful for that as well."

"Hm?"

When I gave him a puzzled look, Park Gun-woo scrambled to explain.

"Th-thanks to the strict conditions you set, we were able to stop the L-Labyrinth Faction from taking over the 11th floor. That's how we've held out this long. At first I wondered what kind of ridiculous rules those were... but later I understood just how good they were. Thank you."

At some point his nerves seemed to ease, because he stopped stammering.

"Ah. You mean that."

But what the hell is a "Labyrinth Faction"? Unbelievable.

"Those people — they're this so-called Labyrinth Faction?"

"Yes. They're truly vicious. A garbage syndicate that kidnaps trainees, uses them however they please, monopolizes the Hunting Grounds, and tries to build their own kingdom. The women they kidnap become sex slaves, the men become meat shields, and the children become errand runners — and if they don't like someone, they kill them for EXP. They're not the kind of people anyone should have to deal with."

Park Gun-woo had clearly accumulated a great deal of rage toward them; it poured off him as he spoke.

"But... where have you been all this time? No matter how hard we looked, we never saw you on the 11th floor..."

"Ah. We were hunting on the floors above."

"The floors above? Don't tell me you can come back down!?"

"Once you beat the 20th-floor boss, you can descend as far as the 11th."

"The 20th-floor... boss?"

The expectant look on his face crumbled.

Fair enough. From what I'd seen, he was an ordinary man of Mid-Low Potential. He would have felt it himself while hunting here. Graduating from the 11th floor alone took months. The 20th was a distant dream — and by the time he got there, the 11th floor would already have been swallowed whole. Of course, fighting this Labyrinth Faction would shorten that timeline considerably. Human EXP was among the most efficient sources there were. Even so, it would only make a difference of a single floor.

Then he seemed to catch on to something, and composed his expression again.

"Th-the Labyrinth Faction has been running rampant lately."

An abrupt change of subject. The moment I heard it, I knew what Park Gun-woo was driving at. He had put together that we were a capable party descended from the 20th floor, and that I had carefully designed the Fixed Safe Zone conditions for the sake of the trainees.

He pressed on without flinching.

"As I said before, their atrocities have gone far beyond the pale. On top of that, they've been growing larger by the day, and our Free Coalition alone can barely keep them in check. Lately even the people holding the front lines have been heading to the next floor more and more often... I know this is shameless of me to ask, but please — please help our Free Coalition!"

Park Gun-woo bowed his head deeply.

There were roughly two reasons the people on the front lines would be moving to the next floor. One, the situation here was that bad. Two, they were afraid of falling behind those who had already gone ahead.

I looked at him and spoke.

"We can help you. We have our own purposes here, of course — but if everything you've said is true, then those people are not the kind we can tolerate. We cannot allow them to run wild in the Labyrinth."

I kept my expression hard.

"The Tower makes you stronger the higher you climb. I dread to think what happens if people like that grow stronger than they already are."

We came here for that purpose in the first place.

Park Gun-woo took my words as confirmation that his read on me had been right, and thanked me over and over.

"Thank you. Thank you. I truly cannot thank you enough."

They must have been driven into a truly desperate corner. His gratitude was excessive, almost frantic. He looked at me the way a drowning man looks at a rope dropped from heaven.

Joo Ha-yeon drew close and whispered.

"The situation looks worse than we imagined."

"Yes. It does."

I'd set conditions on the Fixed Safe Zone, and it had still come to this. A sigh came out of me on its own.

We were escorted to the Fixed Safe Zone. Not that we didn't already know where it was.

I was still the Administrator. If I wanted, I could have thrown every last person inside out on their ear. Hiding their headquarters — the Fixed Safe Zone — from me was never going to be possible.

Once we entered, we were able to meet the man who served as the Free Coalition's representative.

Choi Jung-heon. A middle-aged man. No one I remembered.

He listened to Park Gun-woo's explanation, then came straight over to greet me.

"A pleasure to meet you. I am Choi Jung-heon, representative of the Labyrinth Free Coalition. I hear you descended from the 20th floor."

"Yoo Shin-hoo. Yes, that's right."

"...And the reason you came down...?"

"Someone in our party suspected things would look like this. They said we couldn't just leave it, so we came down."

"I don't know how to thank you..."

Choi Jung-heon's face filled with emotion, as if justice had not yet died in this world.

Justice, my ass. We came down because we needed to.

We needed to fill out the party, and we needed to keep the Tower's waters from rotting through. That was all.

Outwardly, though, I wore a kind smile.

"When we were weak, we had no choice but to keep our heads down. But I believe we've found our footing now. And since an opportunity to help has presented itself... if not now, when?"

I kept the kind smile in place.

"To think someone like you was still out there... truly, truly, we are fortunate..."

The whole thing sat awkwardly with me.

I turned my head and called for Han Ba-da.

"Yes, Yoo Shin-hoo."

Han Ba-da took in the people around us and addressed me more formally than usual.

"I'll designate you as a Sub-Administrator. You'll be able to modify the Safe Zone conditions as well, so I'd like you to manage things here according to the situation."

Before, I hadn't had the time, so I'd simply set the conditions to be as strict as possible. Now I could just have Han Ba-da stationed here permanently.

Those conditions had been put in place to keep the place from going to rot. If the situation had changed, adjusting them accordingly was only natural.

"...Are you sure that's all right?"

Han Ba-da had caught my meaning, and she asked to be certain.

"Yes. The situation has changed. Do as you see fit."

I was leaving the Labyrinth in her hands. I had to give her at least this much authority.

Han Ba-da was no fool. She had a strong sense of justice, but she was no sucker, and she wasn't stupid. She would handle it. She'd already been stabbed in the back once, so she would be more careful than before besides.

I wanted to leave Na-yeon here as well, but that wouldn't do.

I turned to Choi Jung-heon.

"Do you have a faction map?"

"...We do. Why do you...?"

He seemed wary of the way I had suddenly handed authority to Han Ba-da. Fair enough. They had just realized they weren't picking up a sword — they had summoned the sword's owner, and the Labyrinth they had been managing was about to be taken from them outright. Of course, even if they hadn't summoned us, the outcome had been decided the moment we arrived.

"While Miss Han Ba-da manages things here, we intend to do a little cleaning."

"...That's reckless. They..."

I looked at him and spoke with finality.

"No. I've already fought them. It's enough. Don't worry."

At that firm answer, Choi Jung-heon had nothing more to say. We were the ones holding the blade. Fortunately, he was the sort of man who had taken on the thankless job of leading a coalition with nothing in it for him, and he hadn't turned out to be a bad person. He was wary because he didn't know us — but if things continued as they were, his people were finished anyway.

In the end, he had no choice but to hand over the faction map.

The moment I received it, I split off from Han Ba-da's group.

"Then I'll leave the situation assessment and management on this side to you."

"...Please be careful, Shin-hoo."

"Of course. Don't worry."

About three days.

That was all the time it took.

Time enough to give the Free Coalition cause for cheers, and the Labyrinth Faction cause for despair.

Han Ba-da rapidly took control of the Free Coalition, riding on the back of what I had accomplished.

A number of people were caught attempting to defect, and Han Ba-da did not forgive them. They were infiltrators the Labyrinth Faction had planted to dig up information on me after my sudden appearance, and they paid a steep price for overreaching.

Some had been planted from the very beginning. Others, it seemed, had turned traitor because the recent atmosphere had soured.

Choi Jung-heon, the original representative, and Park Gun-woo, who had brought me in, were thankfully not that type. They looked at the traitors in shock, but they didn't fall apart over it. They had been able to anticipate that people like this would exist — that they were bound to.

In those three days, the humans I killed and the humans I rescued numbered in the hundreds.

And Han Ba-da, having seized the coalition, was receiving fairly good reviews for her characteristically inflexible but scrupulously fair way of doing things.

On top of that, the Free Coalition cheered at the Fixed Safe Zone restrictions, which were far looser now than they had been under my management.

That said, she was not the type to sit back and tolerate people loafing around like freeloaders, so she caught some resentment at the same time — but the Free Coalition was not in a position prosperous enough to allow that anyway. And since even within the coalition, idlers were given the cold shoulder, no one actually opposed her decisions.

I finished three days of cleaning, then rested for a while as I went around looking for people with high potential, one by one.

The Labyrinth Faction was still standing, but their momentum had died a sudden death with my arrival. And recently...

"The Labyrinth Faction is... fleeing?"

The number of people heading up to the next floor had been growing.

"Yes. It seems more of them have been going up to the 12th floor lately."

They had realized they couldn't beat me by growing on the 11th floor, so some of them had started to run.

That meant the force I'd displayed over the last three days had been that overwhelming.

I'd only run wild for a mere three days...

Han Ba-da looked at me as if to ask what the hell I had been doing out there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for three days.

"I simply cut down anyone belonging to the Labyrinth Faction without a single exception. I also saw a great many rather unpleasant sights. I think that's why I couldn't hold back."

I just didn't hold back, period.

"...They really were garbage, though. I wondered if they were even human."

Joo Ha-yeon came to my defense. The rest of the party agreed with how merciless I had been. Even Na-yeon — who'd once been such a bleeding heart — declared that giving them a peaceful death would be a luxury.

What Park Gun-woo had first told me had been a severe understatement. Or perhaps even he hadn't known it was this bad. Sex slaves? Meat shields? Errand runners? It went far beyond that.

Toying with people — fine, I could stomach that. Rape and slaughter. Wrong, yes, but even on Earth those things happened all the time on the battlefield.

But forcing them to couple with monsters? I'd seen every kind of horror the Tower had to offer, and it still turned my stomach every time.

Worse — they would tie down a male monster and threaten to cut a man's cock off if he didn't get it up and fuck the thing. What kind of sick game was that supposed to be? It wasn't as if the Tower didn't have its share of voyeuristic scum who got off on watching people couple with monsters. But cases this deranged were genuinely rare. It was so effective at shattering a person's mind that I found myself thinking it might be useful for interrogations later. Na-yeon vomited on the spot. Even I — and I don't rattle easily — made sure Na Seoyun didn't see it.

I never imagined I'd see something like this on the Lower Floors — no, in the Labyrinth.

I gave those deranged bastards the exact same punishment.

They were men, same as me, and I pitied the ones who'd been on the receiving end. ...I'd seen all kinds of other horrors besides, and there were far more things too sickening to dwell on than I'd expected.

We hadn't even climbed that high yet. I never imagined such creatively vile garbage would show up this early.

Once I'd given her a rough account of the situation, Han Ba-da's expression turned cold instead. Then she let out a long breath.

"...Hah. This place is really..."

"We need to clean all the way up to the upper floors, not just here. I don't think anyone's reached the 16th floor yet, but looking at this floor, I worry what the next one will look like."

Right now, the 11th and 12th floors would be the worst of it.

"...Understood. You've worked hard."

The Labyrinth Faction cleanup wasn't finished. If anything, there was a long way still to go. We'd need another two weeks at least. We were only taking a day off because seeing that had put a crack in Na-yeon and Nam Eun-ju's composure. Honestly, Joo Ha-yeon looked like she was struggling a little too. Na Seoyun was in better shape, thanks to my keeping her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from seeing as much as possible.

I was fine. Cases like that were rare, but it wasn't the first time I'd seen that level of thing, and I'd seen worse.

Which was why, on this day we'd set aside for rest, I had no intention of wasting even that time.

Whenever I had a spare moment, I went around the coalition checking for people with talent.

Most of them were in the low-to-mid range. Mid-High and above were hard to find, and High-level was truly rare.

Do I really have to take them?

I turned it over even as I walked the coalition.

In truth, I had already found one person of Supreme potential. I had seen Na Seoyun, and I had found Han Ba-da, who was High-tier but rivaled Supreme all the same. Privately, I had been hoping I might find one or two more people in the Labyrinth with Supreme potential — or at least something just a hair short of it.

And that expectation had proven correct. I had barely arrived on the 11th floor before I found one such existence.

The problem was, the kid came with so many issues that it made me hesitate over whether I should take them along at all.

The Supreme-potential talent I had found was a child I had rescued from that worst of all places I mentioned.

A child. That's right. A child. Male.

...An eight-year-old boy.