A Predestined Farewell
She made no effort to hide how flustered she was. Clearly, she had never imagined I would back her this aggressively.
Even so, she seemed to recognize the opening for what it was.
"Why would you... do this for me?"
"I believe I can trust you, Han Ba-da. We've crossed the line of fire together, haven't we?"
Honestly, nothing we had been through quite deserved to be called crossing the line of fire...
Ahem.
I pushed the stray thought aside and went on, holding her gaze.
"If you've started something, you ought to see it through. You've already begun — so go all the way. I'll help you as much as I can."
"...Why are you going this far?"
I gave her a bitter smile.
"Honestly, I'm only human. Seeing the state of the lower floors hasn't sat well with me. Na-yeon takes it even harder. She gets anxious sometimes, wondering what will happen if we simply walk away. I feel the same."
The Cartel. Their atrocities. After we had cleaned them out and she had seen the wreckage with her own eyes, Na-yeon was genuinely afraid of what would follow once we left.
She knew that no matter how much goodwill I had shown by coming down this far, a man of my temperament was never going to linger on the lower floors playing janitor forever.
If Han Ba-da stayed behind to manage the Labyrinth, Na-yeon would at least be able to rest easy.
"And I'm not handing everything over out of simple goodwill."
"...Is there something you want?"
"Mages."
"Mages?" Han Ba-da echoed, looking puzzled. "The only decent mage around is Na Seoyun. Among the mages we have now, she's the only one who can actually cast anything."
That was true. Of every mage currently in the Labyrinth, Na Seoyun was the only one who could truly use magic.
Beyond her, there were only elementalists, more or less. Among traditional mages, there was virtually no one who deserved the name. Until they learned more skills, they had essentially nothing they could cast — mages in name only, reduced to swinging their fists like any other brawler.
And given the nature of their class, they received no physical stat bonuses. Mages were already rare, and they died off in droves during the early stages.
Those were the people I was asking her to support.
"Asking me to play favorites with a particular class..."
"You can't apply the same standard to everyone. The fact is, they're struggling more than the rest right now."
Besides, I was the one making the request. Whatever she said, refusing me would not be easy.
"B-but..."
"Just say the Fixed Safe Zone administrator demanded it, and that if you don't comply, you'll be barred from using the safe zones. Or say I invested in them — either works. Of course, I won't ask you to do it for free."
I laid out the terms I had already thought through.
"By the time you've finished managing the Labyrinth and you're ready to climb the Tower again, we'll already have challenged the next floors. When that day comes, I'll support you."
I actually intended to follow through. Her potential was too good to waste, and even a late investment would be enough — I was confident I could raise her to first-string caliber, even if joining our party would be difficult by then. That way I could naturally place Han Ba-da under my influence. Or at the very least, turn her into a friendly power. Either way, I would not lose.
Just as I had given her the Minotaur's Handcuffs so she would not fall behind inside the Labyrinth, supporting a single party through the guild I planned to build would be no great burden once they left and wanted to challenge the Tower again. Even if I never founded a guild at all, simply passing along the gear I outgrew would be a tremendous help. From the Lower Floors onward, people would start acquiring real equipment in earnest — and none of it would come cheap.
Moreover, from the Lower Floors on, the Tower's very structure changed. Movement downward became free, which made offering help far easier.
The limitation remained, of course — you still could not descend to the 20th floor or below.
But even that was something. Precisely because of that isolation, I needed someone I could trust all the more.
In that regard, Han Ba-da passed.
"What do you think?"
In truth, what I wanted under the banner of supporting the mages amounted to little more than food aid, arranging parties among the mages themselves, and providing a safety net just in case.
And she had to make it perfectly clear that I was the one who had commissioned the support. Even that much would be a profitable deal if it simply left the mages, as a group, well-disposed toward me. Recruitment would be easier down the line — and their backing would become a formidable force in the later stages.
Mages were weapons. Extraordinarily powerful weapons. Even mediocre ones, once they gathered together, changed the entire equation. A bombardment over a wide area was something ordinary warriors simply could not withstand.
The Mage Legion.
It was a pipe dream. But the possibility was not zero.
Han Ba-da sat with my proposal in silence for a while. Then she nodded.
"The mages are practically no different from the weak as it is, so as a welfare measure, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. And you're the one providing the Fixed Safe Zone in the first place, Shin-hoo. It's not as if you're asking for something else — just to support the vulnerable. Of course I will."
Mages as the weak.
I almost laughed. These were the same mages whose presence only grew more overwhelming the further you climbed.
I gave Han Ba-da a slight bow.
"Thank you for granting such an unreasonable request."
When I even lowered my head in gratitude, she waved her hands in startled protest.
"No — you don't need to do that. If anything, I should be the one..."
She seemed to trust the promise that I would support her once she reached the 21st floor.
The thought that I might die or fail along the way had not crossed her mind in the slightest.
And I did not believe it would happen, either.
I had secured Han Ba-da's consent. She would manage this place — the Labyrinth — and as a bonus, I had set my foot, however lightly, on the path toward a Mage Legion. I realized I had essentially accomplished every goal I had set for myself here.
And then there was Ha Yoo-jin joining us. I was thoroughly satisfied.
We could not leave the Labyrinth immediately anyway, not with Ha Yoo-jin still here. That meant we needed to make every day count.
Once we had settled on our next move, we parted ways.
A day later, as promised, Nam Eun-ju left the work in the hands of Lee Yoon-hyung and Choi Jung-heon and headed for the next floor.
The 12th floor, like the 11th, was already sprouting a Cartel of its own. Unlike the 11th, however, it had nothing that could be called a coalition — nothing like the Free Coalition — and the people with a conscience were being slowly ground down. Resistance was almost entirely individual, or at best a party of one or two.
Left unchecked, it was only a matter of time before the Cartel exploded in size.
We traveled from place to place, lightly pulling trainees out of trouble and building our name, then immediately spent that recognition to found a coalition with Han Ba-da as its representative.
The Blue Sea Coalition. Whether it would grow into a guild in the future, the way it had in the first timeline, I could not say.
Jin Sang-soo, the man who had laid its foundations, was dead.
The moment the coalition was established, I tore through the floor like a man possessed and crushed the Cartel's yellowing sprouts underfoot before they could take root.
It took me less than a month to deliver the entire 12th floor into Han Ba-da's hands.
In that time, Ha Yoo-jin had already entered the 13th floor.
The 12th floor coalition had not yet reached a stable enough state for Han Ba-da to hand it off to anyone.
So we went up to the 13th floor first.
"Seoyun!"
"It's been a while, Seoyun."
"Ah — oppa, unnies."
"H-hello, hyung, noonas."
About a month. We had run into each other now and then, but never managed a proper conversation. The sprouts had to be cut early if we wanted an easier time later, so there had been no room for long talks — and Na Seoyun hunted so far from the Fixed Safe Zone that meeting her was difficult in the first place.
Ha Yoo-jin's forms of address had somehow settled into calling me hyung, and the women noona, with their names attached.
Honestly, being called hyung by an eight-year-old stung a little. Even counting by the second timeline, the age gap was triple, which made it awkward. But he had overheard other trainees calling people hyung even when there was a noticeable difference in age, and he had come back and changed how he addressed us.
When a kid was tearing up about wanting to get closer, it was hard to tell him no. In the end, I let it slide.
According to Na Seoyun, it had all started with a party that put the idea in his head. A trainee who had been getting called "mister" had indignantly declared that people ought to call him hyung or oppa instead — and that was how we had ended up here.
I was not the type to care about titles in the slightest, so it had never mattered to me. Apparently, though, quite a few people did care about such things, which was how this situation had come about. Combined with my memories of the first timeline, I was definitely old enough to be a "mister," so that particular title would not have bothered me at all. But being addressed that way by a child this young... even I could not help but feel a twinge.
Frankly, even Na Seoyun calling me oppa was embarrassing enough as it was...
What was done was done. I changed the subject.
"How's the 13th floor?"
"...I haven't seen any real scumbags, oppa. Everyone here either has actual skill, or they're people who got sick of the trash on the 12th and climbed out. They don't even care about Cartels, I guess? Some of them are even saying that if one pops up, they'll just beat it down and move on to the next floor."
"...Really?"
The women — everyone but me — asked as if this were the best news they had heard in weeks.
"Yeah. Really. There aren't that many people here either, so we might hit the next floor pretty soon."
Na Seoyun grumbled that the 11th and 12th floors had been so overcrowded with monster competition that they had been forced to hunt deep. That was actually why we had not been able to meet easily on the 12th.
It had gone faster than I expected. Only two floors had been contaminated, and even those had now been cleaned out. Nothing left to worry about. It almost made the hardship worthwhile. Clearing the 20th floor quickly and setting strict conditions on the Fixed Safe Zone had paid off. I figured we had minimized the loss of life — the trash, of course, did not count as human.
In this period alone, I — our party — had killed thousands of people. Later on, we had even started prioritizing subdual over killing.
When you are putting down humans by the hundred every day, it is no wonder our group had grown sick of murder. Of course they lit up at the news that the 13th floor was a little less filthy.
"Then... then..."
"Yeah. I think that about wraps up our role in the Labyrinth."
"Haa..."
"It was hard."
"...You've all done well."
Joo Ha-yeon, Na-yeon, and Nam Eun-ju let their shoulders slump, looking genuinely exhausted.
"Then keep climbing, Seoyun. We should go see Han Ba-da."
"...Okay. I understand, oppa."
Na Seoyun looked a little dissatisfied, but she did not say anything more.
I went to find Han Ba-da and told her the 13th floor was in no condition to spawn a Cartel yet.
"That's welcome news... I've got my hands full just getting this place in order."
The 11th floor had the Free Coalition. The 12th did not.
That meant Han Ba-da had to build everything from scratch, and she was in no position to worry about anywhere else.
"Then..."
"Are you leaving the Labyrinth right away?"
"No. We can't leave just yet. Yoo-jin is still on the 13th floor."
"Then... would it be too shameless of me to ask one favor?"
"...Pardon?"
"I... I'm a little short-handed right now. It's really hard..."
Han Ba-da bowed her head to me as if she were truly at her limit.
I was taken aback. Han Ba-da was not the type to make requests like this lightly — and the person she was asking was me. I had never imagined she would come to me with something like this.
"Until you leave... just a little. Please help me, just a little."
...She really did look like she was drowning in work. On the 11th floor there had been plenty of people to help, but on the 12th there was only Jo Eun-yeon. She had founded a coalition, and the inside was apparently a mess.
In the end, I had no choice but to help Han Ba-da with her work until Ha Yoo-jin reached the 20th floor.