Invasion
A Red Inquisitor is invading.
Eliminate the intruder.
It felt unfamiliar.
Kim Jun stared at the words hanging in the air, mulling over the message as if it had appeared on a screen.
“Invasion…?”
It was a word he’d never seen before.
No, the concept itself was new.
Before his regression, he had climbed up and down the Tower dozens of times and learned its rules by heart.
There were bosses, monsters, hidden paths, and traps.
The patterns might change, but the basic framework had never once wavered.
But this was different.
This invasion thing. It’s a different system altogether.
He narrowed his eyes.
His mind quickly strung together one guess after another.
Did some outside being, like a hunter, get in? Or an avatar of the Administrator? No, impossible. If that were the case, why wasn’t it here before I regressed?
Kim Jun felt his heart sink, strangely and heavily, into his chest.
Ever since he had entered the Dark Soul staircase, everything had been changing little by little from the first run.
The boss patterns. The slightly altered traps. The new systems that kept appearing.
Small differences had piled up until they’d become unmistakable changes.
Almost as if the world were trying to force the balance back into place, as though it were deliberately trying to check his growth as something unnatural, something too fast.
Master.
Andras’s voice echoed in his mind.
What?
Maybe… the Administrator has noticed your true identity.
Kim Jun narrowed his eyes.
The idea sounded like a wild leap, and yet it wasn’t without basis.
The existence of the three girls could still be explained away as something he had missed before because of timing.
But what about the other changes?
The words Kim Jun had left on the floor, the traps that kept shifting little by little, and now this unprecedented invasion.
...Something’s definitely off.
Even if they still hadn’t realized he was a regressor, the signs Kim Jun had left scattered across this world were enough on their own.
Those traces alone were enough to tell anyone that he was a “special” existence.
Whatever it is, I need to be careful.
For now, ahead.
Right.
The swamp mist split apart.
Crimson haze began to billow, and within it a shape slowly took form.
The Red Inquisitor.
It was wrapped head to toe in black leather and carried a trident in its hands.
A white candle burned at the tip of the weapon.
Molten wax dripped continuously down the blade and sizzled into vapor when it touched the swamp below.
It was an uncanny sight, as if the being’s very existence didn’t cleanse the air here but instead contaminated it further.
The Inquisitor said nothing.
It simply lifted the trident slowly with both hands.
Wooooooooong—
The entire swamp trembled.
Rotting reeds tore apart, and even the air itself seemed to groan under the strain.
Slash—
“Cough!”
Blood burst from Kim Jun’s mouth.
There was no physical wound, but his whole body had gone numb, as if it were being torn apart.
An AoE skill.
The trident raised to the sky. The cut in his HP bar.
That meant one thing: a wide-area attack.
The warning’s short, but the cast time is long. If I give it time, we’re done for.
“Andras!”
“Speak!”
“Press it!”
The two of them charged at once.
The paths of the greatsword and the blood sword crossed as they bored in toward the Inquisitor.
Ka-jack!
Thwack—!
The sound of metal and flesh colliding rang out. Blood sprayed.
Every time Andras’s Shisan Hyeolhae cut through the air, a crimson trail flared into existence.
Following that line, droplets of blood scattered everywhere.
But the Inquisitor endured.
Swoosh—!
The trident thrust out in a long arc.
Not a stab, but a sweeping push.
Kim Jun attempted to parry it.
Clang—!
A heavy shock ran through his hand.
The Inquisitor’s trident bent off course and its body twisted sideways.
A brief but definite state of stiffness.
The instant he could land a strike on a vital point.
“Now!”
“Got it!”
Andras’s Shisan Hyeolhae burst forward as if detonating.
A crimson streak split the swamp air and plunged toward the Inquisitor’s chest.
But then—
Tap.
Twisted at the waist, the Inquisitor somehow recovered its balance with impossible speed.
There had definitely been stiffness, but the duration had been absurdly short.
Andras’s Shisan Hyeolhae sliced through empty air.
“This one’s different, Master!”
“Yeah. It’s a real pain in the ass.”
Andras withdrew his blade.
Kim Jun’s gaze sharpened.
With a normal boss, the stiffness lasts long enough to land a guaranteed vital hit.
But this Red Inquisitor was different.
The parry itself worked, but it never allowed an opening for a vital strike.
Let’s try one more time.
Kim Jun deliberately created an opening in his attack.
He wanted the enemy to strike first.
The plan was simple: the moment the parry succeeded, Andras would thrust Shisan Hyeolhae straight into the vital point.
However—
Ssshhk—
The Inquisitor’s movement veered beyond his expectations.
It cut off the trident’s straight-line attack on its own and stopped midway through the strike.
It knows I’m going to parry it.
Kim Jun ground his teeth.
And if they fought at close range, it became even more troublesome.
Up close, the creature’s attacks came in with broken rhythm.
Late by one beat, early by two.
Unpredictable, off-beat attacks.
The timing for his parries kept slipping, and with every mistake Kim Jun’s stamina drained away.
But if they backed off, it was worse.
Wooooooooong—
The Inquisitor raised the trident again with both hands.
The candle flame trembled like ripples on a pond, and the prelude to a wide-area skill began to stir.
What a dilemma.
Get close, and it toys with them through broken rhythm.
Stay back, and it tries a wide-area attack.
Even if he managed to parry, the stiffness was too short to create a vital opening.
The only time parrying was even possible was when he maintained an appropriate distance.
Even so, Kim Jun and Andras did not stop.
Even if the damage was minimal, it still wasn’t completely ineffective.
Crack-crack-crack—!
Dragon Eater kept tearing away the Inquisitor’s balance.
Swish—!
Shisan Hyeolhae carved crimson lines through the air, slashing flesh whenever an opening appeared.
Drip—drip, drip—
Black leather tore, and blood spilled down into the swamp.
No matter how hard it pushed back with the trident, the cracks kept accumulating.
Hissss—
Slash—
The moment black and red crossed, the Inquisitor’s body finally lurched violently.
HP: 50%
And then—
Wooooooooong—
The whole swamp groaned.
Crimson mist shot up from the Inquisitor’s body, and at the same time—
Doom—doom—doom—
An unfamiliar melody spread out.
A dull, hammering rhythm that used the heartbeat as its beat.
Over it all, the discordant cry of a pipe organ filled the swamp.
Kim Jun’s eyebrow twitched.
“...What the hell is this song?”
It was reality, but the music had changed like this were a game.
That eerie background track came from nowhere, and there was no way to turn it off.
“This is ridiculous.”
The Tower was keeping time for them.
Phase changes, and a majestic beat at that, just for some intruder.
As if he were nothing more than a character inside a game.
That was what Kim Jun disliked most of all.
“Just die already.”
Normally, he would have tried to conserve mana.
But at this rate, there was no telling how long it would take, and this was an enemy he’d never seen before.
There was no way to know what kind of patterns its second phase might hold.
And honestly, figuring that out sounded like a goddamn headache.
I don’t even know how long the “Reversing Clock Tower” is going to take.
He didn’t have time to waste here.
Then the conclusion was simple.
He wouldn’t drag this out.
After all, I’m not from this world.
Deal with hunters using a hunter’s methods.
Swooosh—
Kim Jun raised his hand high.
“Infernal Dragon Breath.”
Infernal Dragon Breath
Insufficient mana!
Lion Talisman has been activated!
Required HP: 750
In that instant, his vision turned red.
With his mana exhausted, it started chewing into his vitality instead, and his body boiled as though it were burning from the inside out.
“Now burn the hell out of my sight, you bastard.”
Kwaaaaaaaa—!
Black-red flames swallowed the swamp whole.
The blaze surged like a tidal wave and devoured the Inquisitor’s trident, while the candle flame flickered as if screaming before going out.
The crimson mist was seared by the heat and blackened at once, turning to ash in an instant.
The Inquisitor struggled in resistance, but the fire rolled over the entire swamp in a roaring spiral.
The motion that had been building toward a wide-area skill collapsed where it stood, and even the arm twisting the trident vanished into the flames.
Before long, everything fell silent.
The invading Red Inquisitor has been slain.
The invading Red Inquisitor returns to its original world.
When the flames finally died down, all that remained was the boiling swamp water and the blackened ruins of the trident.
Kim Jun planted his greatsword into the ground and briefly wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Annoying.”
“I agree.”
----
Plop.
Gulp.
Kim Jun swallowed a potion.
But the gauge didn’t rise noticeably.
As expected.
Half-human, half-demon, half-dragon.
Because his altered constitution was so unusual, the potion’s recovery efficiency was less than half of what it should have been.
On top of that, with the laws of Dark Soul layered over him, the effect was even more negligible.
“At this rate, I won’t be able to clear this quickly.”
Of course, now that he’d adapted, Kim Jun could still clear it somehow.
But if he wanted to reach floor 19 comfortably, he needed a solution for mana—and fast.
As he caught his breath, Kim Jun’s gaze drifted suddenly beneath the swamp water.
Where the trident had sunk, scorched by the flames.
From a crack in the charred ground, a faint glimmer flashed.
“Master.”
“Yeah. I saw it too.”
He knelt and reached his hand into the water.
In the cold swamp, his fingers closed around a small crystal.
A blue light pulsed inside it like a beating heart.
Item acquired: Mana Stone
Kim Jun’s eyes narrowed.
A Mana Stone…
The raw stone itself had little use.
But if he brought it to a craftsman-type NPC somewhere in this place—someone like a spirit stone artisan—he could pay to have it processed into a talisman.
Expected craftable item: Blue Abyss Talisman
Effect: Increases mana recovery speed
A slow smile spread across Kim Jun’s mouth.
“At least there’s a solution after all.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Whether it was luck or something else, the fact remained that an NPC capable of refining this Mana Stone existed right here, deep within the Reversing Clock Tower.
He tightened his grip.