Regression
Will you attempt to clear Floor 2,222?
What, I'm supposed to lie down and die instead?
Jinsoo's eyes cut to the timer.
Time remaining on Floor 2,222
00:02
Two seconds. That was all the timer had left him. No choice either way. Jinsoo selected yes.
You are the 2nd Player to attempt clearing Floor 2,222.
Title acquired — 2nd Challenger to Clear Floor 2,222
A blaze of light closed around his body.
Floor 2,222
📍 Objective: Hunt 22,222,222 monsters
✦ Message: We wish the Challenger victory.
The light died. What waited in its place was a host of monsters so vast he could not begin to see where it ended, already drawn tight around him on every side.
No defensive base, either. The clear condition had never been a timed defense to begin with. Figures. Even if a fortress had been standing here, it would have meant little. He was challenging this floor alone.
Over twenty million of them. This damned Tower went madder with every floor. There is an end. There has to be.
In the beginning, naive as he'd been, he had thought clearing Floor 100 would let him go and see his little sister. It hadn't. He had cleared Floor 1,000 telling himself that this time, surely, it was real — and another floor had been waiting past it. And so I came all the way to 2,222.
Every companion who had climbed the Tower beside him, who had shared the long years and every brush with death, was gone.
"Grrrrr!"
"Graaaagh!"
Boss-class monsters — dragonkin, giants, undead, and worse — split the air with their roars and came at Jinsoo from every direction, a tide breaking over him.
I can't die like this. The only reason he was still breathing was the sacrifices his companions had made. It was the worst situation he could imagine, with not a scrap of a chance in sight. Let's do this.
Steel whispered free. Jinsoo took his two beloved swords, one in each hand, and hauled his mana up. Pitch-black power crashed over him and sheathed his body, and he launched himself forward. First objective: break the encirclement.
He swung both blades at once. Crescent arcs of jet-black aura detonated outward and vaporized thousands of monsters in a single stroke. He did not hold back. Again and again the swords fell, and each time hundreds — thousands — were caught in the mana bursting from those black aura blades and died. Cloaked in pitch-black mana, Jinsoo cut across the monster tide and drove ahead, unstoppable.
"Graaaaaah!"
Kill as he might, they kept pouring in. Undead burst from the ground beneath him in ambush. Dragonkin stooped out of the sky and struck. Even so, his feet could not stop.
Enemies on every side. At least a wild swing still kills something. Jinsoo forced a smile and pressed on.
The blasts kept rolling. Death-screams answered them. How much time had passed?
Pain flooded him, as if every muscle in his body were tearing apart. His mana hit bottom. When he forced more up, his mana circuits screamed as though they might rupture on the spot. Curses of every kind worsened the wounds, dragged at his limbs, and sent his mana surging backward through him. He ignored all of it.
Fuck. When does this end?
At last he broke the ring and set his back to the barrier. Could've at least made the field wider. Packed in this tight, breaking out meant nothing — there was no room to hit and run, no space to fight a guerrilla war. You want me to stop holding on and just die? It felt as if the Tower itself were demanding his death.
You think I'm going to give up?
Back to the barrier, Jinsoo glared at what lay ahead.
He had fought for three days, maybe four. In that time he had cut down millions of monsters at the least. So why won't they thin out? The pain came again, every muscle threatening to split. The price of hauling mana up from an empty well: his circuits shrieked on the verge of bursting.
Fine. Come on, then.
He ignored the pain, forced the mana up, and swung. A storm of power howled through the press. Blood and flesh sprayed. Monster corpses vanished where they fell, and the items they left piled around him until they stood as a towering barricade.
"Grrrrr!"
The monsters clawed through the wall of loot and came on.
Yeah. Come as many as you want. Jinsoo forced a body running on nothing to move, and when his overheated circuits burst he ignored that too. The clash never paused. Items heaped into mountains. Monster blood ran like a river.
Down by about half? Roughly, it seemed so. Not much left. He forced another smile. His legs trembled. His arms had gone numb. Pain from torn muscle stabbed at his mind, and blood from wounds that would not close dripped to the ground and gathered into a small red pool.
Monsters moved by the instinct of the strong devouring the weak. The ones that had rushed him first were the relatively weak. Now the true dragons that had only sniped from a distance, and the kings of the giants and the undead who had merely watched, curled their lips and sneered.
"Grrrrr!"
Then, without warning, they lunged — fangs bared, massive clubs swinging, curses pouring down.
Sneaky bastards. They had judged him spent, hemmed in, hardly able to move, and they had moved on that judgment. Waited for me to wear myself out. There was a limit to wringing a dry rag. Jinsoo had poured out everything he had, and his body was past ruined — closer to a corpse that might collapse and die at any moment, and no one would have found it strange.
You think I'll die quietly?
He gripped his swords and slipped the fangs and the clubs. A club came down where other monsters stood and mashed them into bloody pulp. Clear of the blow, Jinsoo swung the blade in his left hand. It sheared through.
"Kyaaaaang!"
A wretched scream — and the right arm of the giant king who had swung the club went flying. Jinsoo met the king's stunned eyes and brought the sword in his right hand across. The head left its shoulders. The body, headless and armless, collapsed in a heap.
A system message surfaced, announcing the achievement of felling a boss monster. He ignored it. He didn't have the mind to spare.
Even a king of the giants was only one. Waves of monsters still surged in without end, and among them were plenty of bosses — true dragons, giant kings, undead kings. Jinsoo forced his exhausted body onward and kept swinging. He split a true dragon's bone and scale and took its neck, and dragon blood burst free. He pierced a giant king's heart. He shattered an undead king's core.
He fought, and he fought again.
"Hah—! Hah—! Hah—!"
His breathing would not settle. He had no feeling in his left arm or in either leg. They had been torn from his body; of course he didn't. His vision had gone blurred. The right eye was lost. The left, between the wound and the curse, could barely see what lay ahead.
Sunk to the ground, Jinsoo raised the sword still held in his right arm.
Feels like I've cleaned up most of them. Over twenty million, by his count. The problem was that even so, more than two million monsters still remained. And only the strongest of the strong, at that.
"Grrrrr!"
The growl rose as if they were laughing at him. A true dragon's foreclaw, tipped with razor talons, came scything in. He swung, and could not cut the talons. All he managed was to knock the blow aside. Attacks poured in from every side. He was holding them off with one sword and nothing but will when a true dragon closed in to tear him apart with its teeth — and he drove the blade into its skull.
In that same instant another giant king's club smashed half his upper body to ruin, and an undead king's bone blade, packed with curse, punched through Lee Jinsoo's heart.
"Guh—!"
Life force and mana flooded out of him in a tide. Monsters rushed in from every side, biting, ripping him open with their claws. His body tore apart. Jinsoo's life came to an end.
You are the 2nd Player to fail to clear Floor 2,222.
Second, even at the end?
Lee Jinsoo ground his teeth.
He had been born on February 22, 2002. On February 22, 2022, he had been dragged by force into the Tower and become the 22,222,222nd Player. Even before that, he had always been second. Second child of the house. Class 2. Number 22.
Dragged into the Tower, awakened as a Player, grown through every hardship the climb could offer — and still he had remained, always, in the seat of the second challenger. To think even his final failure would be second.
He had struggled to grow stronger. He had struggled to survive. He had struggled so he could return to Earth and see his little sister.
And still, always second. As if some curse had been laid on him.
So this is the end.
His consciousness thinned.
In that moment—
The Yellow God and the Red God feel a deep kinship with your life.
The Yellow God and the Red God sincerely lament your death.
By the blessing of the Yellow God and the Red God, a second chance is granted.
Your second life begins.
An unknown voice rang through Lee Jinsoo's mind.
"Haaah—!"
Jinsoo jolted awake, eyes flying open.
What? He had definitely died. And yet the feel of his body was vivid, alive. A second chance? A second life? The voice he had heard before the end came back to him. On the slim chance, he looked around — and a sight he could never forget filled his eyes.
The funeral portraits of his parents and his older brother, smiling brightly.
His little sister, asleep in his arms, her small face soaked through with tears.
Hoping he was wrong, he checked the date.
February 2, 2022.
The horrific traffic accident that had taken his parents and his brother on the morning of his birthday, and the funeral held immediately after.
The time?
22:22:22.
Goddamn it—
Congratulations. You have received the Tower's invitation as the 22,222,222nd.
A system message he had seen long ago rose once more before Lee Jinsoo's eyes. In the same instant, a blaze of light washed over his body, and the messages followed one after another.
You have arrived on Floor 1.
📍 Objective: Within 10 days, pass through the central gateway of Floor 1 and ascend to Floor 2.
⏳ Time permitted on Floor 1:10 days
A scene both strange and familiar opened before Jinsoo's eyes. They stood in the heart of a dense forest, and the people around him had already broken into panic.
"What? Where the hell is this?"
"Aaaaah!"
"Aaaagh! My promotion match!"
"Why am I here?"
"Who are you?! How did you kidnap me?!"
Some spun in place, wide-eyed and lost. Some screamed before they thought. Some snapped in pure irritation. Some went still and wary.
Regression?
For a moment Jinsoo went blank. He had believed death was the end. He had never imagined he would be sent back.
Could've sent me a little earlier. Then he might have saved his parents and his brother from the accident. No. Don't summon me at all. Why drag me here again? His face twisted savagely at the thought of repeating a hellish life that once should have been enough.
He had lost his parents, and now he was parted once more from the little sister he had raised as his own daughter — a girl of only twelve this year, left all alone.
Damn it.
But that was that, and this was this.
Anyway.
I have a second chance.
He looked again upon the faces of his parents and his brother, already fading in memory. His little sister's tear-soaked face, and the warmth of her in his arms, seared themselves into him, clear and whole.
He was glad. He was furious. He was sick of it. But Jinsoo was not a man to stay chained to what had already passed.
This time, I succeed.
He would conquer the Tower and see his wish fulfilled.
Status window.
Jinsoo opened it. If he meant to survive, confirming his current state came first.
Name:Lee Jinsoo
Player Level:2
Blessing of the Yellow God
Blessing of the Red God
What?
It had been an immensely long time, and the memory had gone faint. Even so, he knew at a glance that the numbers floating before his eyes were not what they had been when he awakened, before the regression.
Why is my level 2, and not 1?
And every stat, without exception, had been set to 22.