The Regressor Is Mentally Weak (3)
The Regressor Is Mentally Weak (3)
-Entered Floor 23.
The sky is dark.
Not the glimmering darkness you see when you're stumbling home drunk, plop down on a bench, and tilt your head up. Not the dim suggestion of dawn you get when you wake up too early, step outside craving a breath of cold air, and catch the sky before sunrise.
It's a grimy, viscerally unpleasant dark—the color of water that's been used to wring out a filthy rag. The kind of hue that makes you feel foul just looking at it, that makes you want to spit on the ground for no reason.
"Ji-won..."
I can't feel Choi Ji-won's mana. That crackling energy from her constant use of 'Heart of Lightning' is the sort you can pick up even from far away. Unless she deliberately suppresses it, we normally let our mana flow freely when we enter the Tower—so we can find each other easily. Meaning, Choi Ji-won isn't here, or she's very, very far away.
"Hmph."
Well, nothing to be done. Instead of searching for a missing Choi Ji-won, I started walking toward a mana reaction I felt relatively close by. The number of people I sensed was somewhere between five and ten. I'd have to see with my own eyes to know for sure.
Scuff. Scuff. Scuff.
After tramping over crumbling soil and pushing through dry, withered grass, what I saw was... a huge village. Far larger than anything on Floor 22. Too large to call a village, but too small to call a city—big enough to hold a few thousand people. The label is ambiguous, so I'll just call it a village.
"Creepy."
All the buildings in the village were impeccably maintained. The wood still held a sheen, and the roofs were spotless without a trace of moss. No cobwebs under the eaves, either.
The neatly laid stone blocks were pristine, without a scratch, and the inside of a mailbox I checked was so clean it practically sparkled—as if it had just been cleaned.
Overall, the condition was close to perfection, but what was truly disquieting was this: there wasn't a single person to be seen.
Such an enormous town, buildings that looked brand new, yet absolutely no trace of use. Isn't this eerie quality what people call a liminal space? An isolated, hollow feeling, like being trapped in an empty place.
No, there are people. Smoke is rising over there. I reeled my mind back in before it drifted off-course and quickened my pace.
Come to think of it, the direction of the mana I sensed matches the direction of that smoke. Someone must have lit a fire. A few residents, maybe? Or players? The answer was obvious.
"He's here."
"Finally."
The source of the smoke was a small campfire. A group of men and women sitting around the faintly crackling fire looked up at me. Their clothing was tidy overall, but a fine layer of dust clung to their armor—they hadn't been waiting here for just a day or two. As you can probably guess from the mention of "armor," every one of them was a player.
More to the point, how long had they been waiting? With a party of this caliber, the numbers were certainly thin.
"Am I the last one?"
"Yeah. We were exactly one person short."
A rough-looking woman stood up, cracking her neck to either side. Seven people had been gathered around the campfire. Including me, that made eight.
"I was bored out of my mind."
"Tell me about it. Is it finally starting now?"
The other players loosened up in their own ways. They were all people with real skills. The type who'd be acknowledged as "masters" wherever they went. With player quality this high, clearing Floor 23 would probably be easy.
My chest swelled. The fact that such remarkable people were joining forces to overcome the Tower... the fact that they were striving to grow stronger—it stirred the romance inside me.
"Everyone... I know this is a little much to say the moment I show up..."
"...?"
"Let's really do this properly. Let's clear it for sure."
"Why state the obvious?"
"Hah, good grief. We're not children. Finishing quickly and going home would be nice."
The other players shook their heads. They looked a little embarrassed by my words, but at the same time they smirked, the corners of their mouths tugging upward. We weren't enemies. We were comrades climbing the Tower together.
[8/8]
"It's starting."
"Let's go."
At the same moment the number appeared in front of my eyes—as if my arrival had satisfied the condition—
"Smoke?"
"Looks like some kind of gimmick."
From between the buildings, from every direction, a murky smoke began to close in. It didn't look natural; it felt distinctly artificial.
"Wh-whoa..."
The smoke, which had been tightening like a ring, instantly filled the space. Just as the haze became so thick I couldn't see an inch ahead... at some point, the sounds cut out too. The mana I'd been using as a substitute for sight wouldn't extend beyond my body. It felt as though an invisible hand had enveloped my entire being.
"..."
"..."
And so, ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds.
Precisely one minute later, the smoke dispersed all at once, and my stifled vision brightened. The scene was the same. The small campfire. The dismally spotless village. Even the unsettling sky.
"Is everyone okay?"
"Yes. I'm fine. No abnormalities with my body..."
I checked my own condition, and everyone else did too, but we felt nothing out of the ordinary. Our mana circulated fine. All our items were intact. Our limbs were all still attached.
Just as those checks came to an end, a message window floated into view.
<Floor 23>
-Find and kill two false existences. They will target the climbers' lives.
-Each day, one Disadvantage will be given to the climbers.
-You have tasks that must be completed before sunset each day. If any tasks remain incomplete, a great Disadvantage will be given.
"'Find two false existences'..."
"So something is hiding somewhere in this village? And what's with the tasks?"
"I haven't fully wrapped my head around it yet... anyone here whose brain's still working?"
I was in the same boat. The other players weren't clearly grasping the floor's assignment either. Tasks? What did "false existences" even mean? It was a gloomy assignment suited to this gloomy village—
"Wait."
No, something felt off. Something was... seriously wrong. The same village. The same sky. And the same people...?
"How many of us are there right now?"
"What are you talking about?"
A man wrinkled his brow, his expression plainly asking, What kind of stupid question is that?
"What, you can't even count? Watch. One, two, three, four, five, six."
The man's voice, which had been counting briskly—
"Seven, eight... nine..."
"..."
"..."
"...ten."
By the time he counted the tenth person, his voice had faded so much it was barely audible.
"Weren't there definitely eight of us?"
"It was definitely eight. I even saw the number [8/8]."
Eight people entered. Ten came out. Two more had appeared.
"So the two 'false existences' the Status Window mentioned... meant this."
"Then, two of us aren't real people—they're monsters?"
"That's probably it."
Among the other players murmuring with grave faces, no one stood out as awkward or suspicious. They were all the people I'd seen at the campfire, at the campfire, at the campfire...
"Ah, fuck."
My memory was hazy. I couldn't recall the faces properly. Even if I'm bad with faces, I wouldn't forget people I'd met barely ten minutes ago. This... was the Tower's meddling.
"Hey, does anyone actually remember who is who? Some of you were here for a while, right?"
"I remember. There's a guy I talked with about life stuff. So that person is... damn it all."
"Was the person next to me a man or a woman? I can't even remember that."
"What number was I? The last? The first?"
The confusion of memory was the same for the other players. Even though some of them had clearly waited here a long time given the state of their armor, they couldn't recognize each other's faces.
"You remember me, right? I came in last. I was the one who made it eight."
"...Was it? But wasn't the person who arrived last a woman?"
"No, I think two people came at the same time at the end?"
"No, I was definitely the last to—"
...Was I really the last? Now even my own memories were a jumbled mess. It was all ambiguous. Had I truly been the last? Or... it also felt like someone else came after me.
Confusion swept over all of us. We'd clearly resolved to combine our strength, yet suspicion was gradually bleeding into the way we looked at one another.
-Your mission.
-Repair the sign at the west entrance [Incomplete]
-Reforge ingot at the forge [Incomplete]
-Complete the artist's last painting [Incomplete]
At last, the "tasks" the Status Window had mentioned appeared.
"I... think I have to go east."
"Northwest for me."
"Center of the village."
What's more, all the tasks were different, and the locations were scattered.
"...Wait a moment."
We've already confirmed that two monsters are mixed in with us. If all our routes get tangled together... someone will die in an instant.
"First... let's each talk a bit about ourselves."
Right now, right here, we had to find the monsters.