Whisper of the Spiral (3)
EndSeeker.
Why was that nickname suddenly coming up here of all places?
Hyun Si-woon's brow furrowed.
A little rude, isn't it.
"What did I tell you?" Ha-wol sneered.
"Tossing aside your own hand just to pry open the other man's first? If it were this lady, I would have drawn my blade on the spot and separated that insolent brat's entrails from his chattering tongue."
Her voice was cold as ice; clearly Yoo Jin-hyeok had gotten thoroughly under her skin.
"Whatever 'secret of the tenth floor' he is spouting is surely empty bluster. There is no need to listen further. Seize everything he owns, cripple his martial arts, and cast him out into the wilderness. That is the way of the Moon Spirit."
Si-woon let Ha-wol's bloodthirsty advice slide past his ears. Instead, he parted his tightly sealed lips.
"Is that name so important to you?"
"If I was rude, I apologize. The information I hold... I can show it only to someone qualified to bear it. And frankly, I am more than ninety-nine percent certain that you, Hyun Si-woon, are EndSeeker."
"Why?"
"Because in the Tower of Despair there is only one being who could crush me and my party this thoroughly."
Strength entered Yoo Jin-hyeok's voice.
The one monster whom Oracle himself could not even cast a shadow upon—the sole existence who had shattered every common sense of the Tower of Despair.
The one who had broken through the thirtieth floor.
"Am I wrong?"
He pressed.
Si-woon met those tenacious eyes for a moment, then finally nodded.
Well, it doesn't matter.
He already knew every one of his members believed him to be EndSeeker. There was no other way to explain it. Yeon-ho hyung had been a veteran of this game himself. And looking into Yoo Jin-hyeok's eyes, the man did not seem the type to go blabbing about it—and even if he did, it would make no difference.
"So it really was you. An honor to meet you."
"We can exchange honors later. Right now it's time to check the price of the information."
"Ah, yes."
Gulp.
Yoo Jin-hyeok swallowed hard and continued.
"To cut to the conclusion—the Attunement begins."
"Attunement?"
"Yes. From the moment the Tower descended upon this land, it has been weighing every server. And the first judgment begins the instant eight servers have cleared the tenth floor."
"What does that mean?"
"Server integration."
"……."
"And with it, the Server War begins."
This time it was Si-woon who swallowed dryly. The information was more shocking than he had expected.
"Can you explain in more detail?"
"First, every tower belonging to a server that has not cleared the tenth floor will be erased. If there is an entity that planted the Tower of Despair, it would see no reason to maintain towers in those regions. Of course, the monsters won't vanish just because the towers do. In short, the rest of humanity—except for the eight surviving nations—will have no choice but to rely on the climbers of those eight nations for survival. A de-facto subordinate relationship will form."
"……."
Si-woon could barely process it. If true, this was earth-shaking information.
"The eight surviving servers will then wage a Server War. And according to the results... they will receive graded rewards."
Listening this far, Si-woon felt something off.
It's too quiet.
Right. Ha-wol had claimed she already knew what would happen after the tenth floor. By now she should have been cursing the man for spouting nonsense and pouring out a torrent of abuse.
And yet?
"……."
Ha-wol's eyes had gone round as saucers. Her mouth hung open; she had frozen solid.
That was answer enough.
Wow. It's real.
Si-woon turned his gaze back to Yoo Jin-hyeok.
"How did you learn this?"
"One moment."
Yoo Jin-hyeok carefully slipped a hand into his coat and drew out a single book, old and etched with a bizarre pattern. There was no title on the cover—only a twisted spiral motif, so warped that just looking at it made one dizzy.
"……Thanks to this."
He held the book out.
"I found it on the fifth floor of the Tower of Despair, in Ash-gray Avalon."
Avalon? Had there been a book like that there?
"When I first encountered this book in the Tower of Despair game, it was nothing but a question-mark item."
"……!"
Si-woon's eyebrow twitched.
Exactly the same.
The identical phenomenon he had experienced when obtaining the Formless Sword, the Thunder Dragon Spear, and the rest—Oracle Yoo Jin-hyeok had clearly gone through it as well.
"It's a book you can obtain by solving the library puzzle inside the palace deeper in Avalon City... Its name is Whisper of the Spiral, and it's Unique."
Whisper of the Spiral.
The moment he heard the name, Si-woon felt an instinctive sense of wrongness. Every hair on his body seemed to stand on end with an unpleasant prickle. The book was merely resting in Yoo Jin-hyeok's hand, yet it felt like a living creature. The spiral pattern carved into its pitch-black cover rippled as if it were sucking in Si-woon's gaze. Looking at it too long made his head swim; his mind threatened to blur.
Yoo Jin-hyeok smiled bitterly, as though he had expected exactly this reaction.
"As you can see. This book is... a little strange. From the first moment I held it, I felt something dreadful."
His voice trembled faintly.
"Even when I opened it, nothing was written inside. Blank pages. No method produced any response. Then... by pure chance, I dropped a Despair Stone I'd obtained on the seventh floor onto the book. Do you know what happened?"
"What happened?"
Yoo Jin-hyeok's pupils quivered with fear.
"The book greedily sucked the Despair Stone in. Like a starving beast swallowing prey... and then it spoke. It was absurd. A Tower reward, a Despair Stone, just snatched away like that..."
He recalled the moment—the emptiness, the rage he could barely suppress.
"With an item evaporated, I had only one choice. Ask the members' understanding and keep feeding it the Despair Stones we'd earned as rewards. See it through to the end."
Si-woon found himself nodding before he realized it. He would have done the same.
"The teammates willingly handed over their rewards, and I started putting in the second, the third, the fourth... Despair Stones one after another. Then the moment the fifth stone went in."
Yoo Jin-hyeok swallowed. As if the memory itself were crashing over him again, his entire body trembled finely.
"A voice rang inside my head."
It had not been a mere sound. An alien tongue, the very law of the cosmos itself. Incomprehensible, yet something that made its meaning known by pure instinct—a contradictory sensation. It was like the simultaneous detonation of hundreds of millions of stars, or the song of a whale echoing from the deepest abyss. Simply holding onto his sanity had been a miracle. Amid a headache that felt as though his skull would split, forbidden knowledge had been forcibly branded into his mind.
"And that was this information?"
"Yes. In exchange for five Despair Stones, the book taught me the rules of the Attunement."
"What kind of insanity—!"
The one who reacted was Ha-wol.
"How in the world did an object like that end up in a climber's hands? You brat! Get away from that book this instant! That book is a calamity!"
You know that book?
Ha-wol's violent reaction only sharpened Si-woon's curiosity. For the arrogant, self-assured Ha-wol to call something a calamity and fear it—she had never reacted like that even upon seeing Noe-je.
"It is unmistakably a book that flowed out of the Spiral Library..."
Spiral Library?
"Yes. Somewhere in the Tower—an obscure corner that houses a forbidden library. And within it dwells a being called the Librarian."
Ha-wol's explanation came in unstable fragments, as though she were groping through half-buried memories. She seemed reluctant even to speak the name.
"That creature is no ordinary Ranker. No one truly knows when it entered the Tower or what it is. Even the Tower Lord may not know."
"……."
"It accepts Despair Stones and sells knowledge—forbidden knowledge that even mocks the Tower's own rules. But..."
Her voice dropped lower still. A horrific rumor that had circulated in whispers among her fellow Rankers when she herself had been one rose in her mind.
"I have never seen a Ranker who touched that knowledge return with their sanity fully intact. It begins with some trifling scrap of lore. Yet once one tastes it, they can never stop. It is like a drug that gnaws at the soul. In the end they offer every Despair Stone they possess, and finally even their own existence is laid upon a shelf of that library."
The final moments of one Ranker flickered before Ha-wol's eyes. Not of the Moon Spirit, yet a friend of hers all the same—a mage skilled enough to have climbed as high as tenth in the rankings. Hungering for knowledge, she had sought the Spiral Library. One day she declared she would offer every Despair Stone she owned and set out for the library; she never returned.
"That is why our Moon Spirit never set foot near the place. Power borrowed from unclean things only brings ruin upon oneself in the end."
Ha-wol's firm warning sank deep into his mind.
"……."
But Si-woon's thoughts ran differently.
Avoid it?
His gaze returned to the Whisper of the Spiral resting in Yoo Jin-hyeok's hand.
Even the Tower Lord does not know. It can break the Tower's rules. Which meant the existence dwelling within this book stood far closer to the root of this damned Tower than anything else.
Avoid that?
Si-woon could not. He did not simply want to become a strong Ranker. He wanted to see the end of the Tower of Despair itself. The one who seeks the end—exactly as his nickname declared, EndSeeker was his goal. For that, he had to know. The Tower's secrets. Its origin.
And now, a clue that might lead there stood right before his eyes.
"Are you even listening, you brat?! That thing is poison! The instant you touch it, it will corrode your soul itself!"
Even Ha-wol's urgent cry could not shake Si-woon's eyes. Rather, deep within his pupils a strange curiosity and a burning thirst were rising.
A grotesque book. The unknown existence that lay beyond it. Si-woon was drawn to it with fierce intensity. The one domain in this Tower that even he, the EndSeeker, had never touched. An abyss even he had never reached. The chance to peer into it had arrived.
Perhaps sensing that tenacious gaze, Yoo Jin-hyeok bowed his head deeply.
"I will hand this book over."
"Really?"
"Yes. Deep down I already know I cannot bear this book. In exchange, accept our climbing party under you."
There was not a shred of hesitation in his voice. This was not the groveling of one who had accepted defeat. It was a choice for survival. A choice to grow stronger.
"In the Server War that will come, I wish to become your sword and shield. In return, make us stronger."
"What kind of madman..."
Ha-wol clutched her head as though it ached. As always, her disciple was impossible to control. Then again—perhaps that was exactly why he could look toward higher places.
And sure enough, Si-woon had already decided. For an infinite regressor, what was there left to fear?
"Deal."
A short, clean answer.
"Hand over the book."