The First Regressor (3)
Spiritual power is awakening.
The moment those words rang out, the world that made up Eunho changed.
The hell?
This was no simple figure of speech. The feel of the earth beneath his feet, the scent of grass riding the breeze, the dense vegetation crowding his vision—every one of his five senses was telling him that this was no trick his brain was playing.
And now what is this?
Above all, his body was drastically different. The precious companion that had stayed by his side for many long years had vanished somewhere as if evaporated, while two heavy lumps of flesh now dangled from his chest without so much as a by-your-leave.
...Hold on. Chest?
Eunho lowered his head in bewilderment. A majestic mountain range blocked the view—his feet were nowhere to be seen.
What the f—
For an instant he felt a curse clawing up his throat, but he strangled it with desperate patience. He'd been told he could die at any moment; wasting emotion on something this petty would hardly do.
He turned his head. Aside from the state of his current body, familiar faces filled his view—people he'd seen back in his Academy days, and over there, himself, standing blankly.
Eunho could understand the situation. This was a 'memory.'
The regressor's memory.
In other words, an experience the Arin who had returned to the past must have lived through long ago. Having taken that in, Eunho's expression sank into gravity. In his eyes gleamed the resolve to miss not even a single sound drifting through his surroundings.
I don't know how, but I can see her memories now.
Having the regressor hover at his side and feed him information would have been fine, but no matter how vividly she described it, nothing could compare to living it firsthand. This was precious—immensely valuable—experience.
Before long, time in the backdrop began to flow. Like footage someone had set to fast-forward, the space skipped ahead, and each time it did, the scenery around them shifted—
From a clearing wrapped in dense vegetation to the deep folds of a mountainside. From a space filled wall to wall with green to one stained red, as though someone had slapped paint across it.
"AAAAAHHH!!"
Blood ran rampant.
"P-please... please, spare me!"
Piteous screams wove through the carnage.
Only then could Eunho fully grasp what the regressor had told him. From 'words' that felt real yet stayed somehow distant, to 'experience' carved into his own skin.
Eunho's eyelids lifted. The scenery of moments ago was gone—replaced by the regressor floating in the sky, the small-framed fairy, and the Academy graduates drowning in despair.
—Eunho?
Regressor Arin's voice called him back to himself. He raised his head and read a faint emotion seeping into her eyes as she hovered in the air.
—Just now, what...
I think I read your memories. No idea how I did it, though.
It probably had something to do with that 'spiritual power' announced moments ago.
Unbelievable. So we're officially out of answers, huh?
The scene he'd just lived through proved it. Corpses lay strewn in every direction, and the entrails that had slid out of bodies cleaved in half draped the grass like a carpet. And among those corpses, he'd found 'himself' as well.
When the difficulty climbs so high that you give up on even entertaining a thread of hope, you strangely drift into serenity instead.
...Goddamn it.
No, seriously. They should at least hand you a problem with a difficulty a human being could actually clear—this was less a trial than the level of badgering a newborn that hadn't even cut its baby teeth into going to hold a conversation.
Utterly at a loss, Eunho turned to Regressor Arin and asked:
Is there really no way? A hidden trump card, or something the Tower handed over in exchange for regressing—anything like that?
—The Tower would never give out something like that. It's not exactly a kind place... Hm? Wait a second. Kind?
Regressor Arin began to mutter, as though something had surfaced in her mind. The word, starting from 'regression,' passed through the Tower, detoured through her own abilities, and circled all the way back to regression again.
—Eunho, how did you read my memories?
Huh? What do you mean?
—I never showed you my memories. And claiming the Tower displayed them because you carry a regressor's soul doesn't hold water either. The Tower isn't nearly that generous a place, is it?
Though her words ended on a question, she settled the answer herself, as if none were needed.
—What just happened was a power you created, Eunho. You achieved it with the power you possess!
With every word she uttered, her voice soared toward an ever-higher mark.
—Eunho. Think back to what you just did. How you were able to look into my memories, and how that sense is meant to be used—
It was a truly clichéd setup, but while she was busy pouring out words of hope, the fairy curled its lips into a grin.
"There are simply too many inferior species, it's downright disgusting! You all feel the same when a bunch of bugs swarm together, don't you? It's exactly the same!"
"Hup—!"
A deceptively lighthearted voice rang across the clearing. In the same breath, a squelch—like a fruit dropping to the earth and bursting to pieces—followed, joining in to complete the harmony.
"...KYAAAAHH!!"
Screams sprouted up here and there. So did the fairy's innocent, childlike giggling.
The dignity of life had been demoted to a mere instrument. A dissonant duet.
Hearing it, feeling the humid wind drift across his skin, Eunho did not react. He couldn't afford to.
Focus.
His consciousness tried to sink once more—but it didn't come as easily as before. As he'd just witnessed, the fairy's kind was exactly that sort of creature. Meaning it could burst a rookie's head without a second thought, all for the sake of its own amusement.
Close his eyes, and he might never open them again. That tension kept sinking its teeth into the tail of his concentration, refusing to let go.
"...Don't worry, Eunho. I'll protect you somehow."
In that moment, a warmth caught his hand.
The voice at his ear belonged to the regressor, yet was somehow different. The warmth of a living being traveled along his skin and settled somewhere near his heart.
Thump. Thump.
Their heartbeats interlocked, resonating as one. Against the duet raised by fairy and despair alike, the two hearts wove a rhythm all their own.
Like a lullaby from a parent's lips, Eunho's body and mind regained their calm in an instant.
Right.
Eunho's eyelids fell shut. His consciousness sank deep.
Fwoosh—. He saw a flame.
Spiritual power.
In time with the voice that had just sounded, Eunho took hold of the spiritual power—a hazy glow that seeped out as though it had been hidden in the deepest reaches of his soul. He cupped it in both hands as though cradling it, and his heart pounded.
Bwoong—. The pounding of his heart now reverberated through his entire body like the boom of a colossal drum. His blood shuddered, his muscles surged, and even his skin gave off a faint vibration.
The power of 'Regressor (Baek Arin)' is infusing into you.
Eunho's eyes opened. A hazy golden hue pooled within them.
The pounding stopped. Feeling it, Eunho looked down at his own hands.
...No. It hadn't stopped.
If anything, his senses had grown so keen that he'd simply lost track of the pounding. Just as we cannot grasp with the naked eye something too vast to perceive, Eunho's brain had failed to accept the sheer volume of energy roaring through his body.
How could an ant ever hope to comprehend the stride of a giant?
In that instant, Eunho understood why Regressor Arin had been so supremely confident at the start.
Because she'd built up power like this.
There was nothing to fear. Though it wasn't his own strength, Eunho couldn't help but harbor that same confidence in the resonance of the power pulsing within him.
He raised his head and looked the smirking fairy square in the face. A rather petite frame.
But it hadn't felt that way at first. Like a savage beast crouched before him, an immense terror had magnified the creature into something monstrous. Not anymore, though.
What his naked eye beheld now held nothing but the truth, and it no longer made him tremble.
"...Eunho?"
—Eunho!
Arin's calls reached him—the voices of both the Arin of this time and the one who had come from the future. The feelings woven into their calls differed, but a single answer from Eunho could serve them both.
"I'm okay now. Yeah. I think I'm okay."
He released the hand he'd been holding. Her fingers flinched and trembled, as though the skin between their fingers couldn't bear to part, but Eunho simply smiled and let go.
"Examiner."
Eunho's voice spread faintly across the clearing. Like the drone of summer cicadas—unnoticed, yet drifting in from somewhere all the same—his voice rang out crisp and clear, reaching every ear in the clearing.
The fairy was no exception.
"Eek! The bug is talking to me!"
"Shut it. If you're the examiner, all you have to do is the job you were given, right? So what's the test you're running?"
Stepping into the Tower did not mean everyone gained entry to the first floor. That was why examiners existed. One had to pass the trials these beings set, and only by earning that qualification were rookie Climbers granted the 'right' to climb the Tower in their own right.
It was also why Eunho hadn't simply killed the creature on the spot.
"An unspeakably insolent bug... a genuine pest of a creature! But you're right! I am, after all, an excellent fairy—excellent enough to be entrusted with an examiner's duties!"
It was common knowledge, hard-won by countless senior Climbers, that holding a conversation with a fairy was a genuine ordeal. But now that he was actually talking to one, well—this didn't feel like a dialogue conducted at the same altitude of intelligence at all.
What did he mean? It was like trying to mix a serious discussion with a toddler who said whatever popped into its head.
At this rate, wasn't his patience practically at bodhisattva level? Just as that thought flickered faintly through him, the fairy's lips parted.
"It's simple! It ends when I'm satisfied! If you so much as lay a hand on my body even once—"
The creature never got to finish. WHAM! The sudden detonation drowned every other sound in the vicinity, dyeing them all in its own color and flaunting its existence.
The gust that rushed out. The dirt and dust that billowed. And then, once everything had gone still, the sight that greeted them.
Everyone who had entered the Tower sealed their lips. The shock they couldn't quite spit out hummed through their bodies, low and relentless.
The fairy was dead. Its body had ruptured in an unbroken line from skull to pelvis.
And before it stood Eunho, fist already extended.
He drew back the outstretched fist and asked, flatly—as though this much were only natural.
"Then I guess I pass."
Unfortunately, no answer came back.