The Fallen Fortress

The reward for slaying the Guardian of the South went straight down his throat.

Under normal circumstances it would have been a precious lifeline—enough to survive one more hit. But after watching an F-rank leather armor jack his HP past two hundred, the effect barely registered.

Next came the title awarded for clearing the tutorial. As a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reward handed out to everyone, its effect was thoroughly unremarkable.

Too bad there's no reward from the Tower of Ascension itself.

Everything so far had come from the Tower of Trials. No blue notification from the Tower of Ascension had appeared at all. Maybe skipping the Repechage was the reward in itself.

Alright. Enough of that.

With every reward accounted for, Do-yun turned his gaze toward the corner. Ciel, who had been slumped there looking thoroughly miserable, felt his eyes on her and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shot to her feet.

"D-Do you have questions? Ask me anything! I'm your guide, after all, Doyun-nim!"

Even rattled by circumstances she could never have expected, she clung to her professional pride. Watching her, Do-yun decided he had drawn a jackpot of a fairy.

— After Seeker Jeong Se-ah shared her hidden piece, a lot more people started climbing with fairies.

— Did you know that every fairy has a different disposition?

— Some only hand over the bare minimum of information, while others try to help you with everything they've got.

Ciel, sparkling up at him without waiting to be asked, clearly belonged to the latter group. Do-yun decided to start with the thing he most wanted to know.

"Can you explain exactly what the Tower of Ascension is?"

It had been on his mind since the moment he was summoned here. He had roughly guessed that finishing the Tower of Trials was the entry condition, but he wanted the details. Those details might also explain why he had been pulled in.

"I'm sorry! I can't tell you that!"

Ciel squeezed her eyes shut and crossed her arms in a hard X. Mildly disappointing, but Do-yun wasn't crushed.

Even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the Tower of Trials, questions like this were off-limits.

No matter how friendly a fairy was, they never answered questions that cut to the tower's essence. Judging by her reaction, speaking the truth would call down heavenly punishment.

"Fine. Forget it."

He waved her off and turned his back. Anything he actually cared about would get the same dodge, so there was no point pressing further. As much as he liked her, he had nothing left to say.

"D-Doyun-nim! I can answer other questions! Aren't you curious what the next trial is?"

"I'm fine. I already know."

He knew the content of the sixth floor in the Tower of Trials. The Tower of Ascension might diverge—but if it did, Ciel wouldn't know that either.

"Aren't you curious what's become of your original world?"

"Don't you want to know why you were summoned into the tower?"

"Don't you care what rewards you get for climbing?"

Ciel kept trying to draw a reaction out of him, but every question was one he already had answers for. Other returnees had asked them long ago.

His original world? Time would keep flowing there whether he was present or not.

Why he was summoned? He had been told the towers pulled talented people at random from all over the globe.

Rewards for climbing? The power you gained along the way was the reward.

"That's strange. The Academy taught me people would definitely be curious about these things."

Ciel fluttered her tiny wings around him, then seemed to sink under the weight of her own expectations.

"Sounds like some pretty outdated knowledge."

"It is not! It's knowledge verified over hundreds of years!"

She stamped the floor in a huff, then jabbed a finger at him.

"You're the weird one, Doyun-nim! Be honest. This isn't your first time, is it? You're a regressor, aren't you?"

"It is my first time."

"Then how do you know so much?"

Do-yun shrugged.

"I just got lucky."

There was no other way to explain it. Being invited into the Tower of Trials relatively late had simply let him borrow the knowledge of the seniors who had already cleared it.

While he was killing time teasing Ciel, the notification bloomed in front of his eyes. Unlike the tutorial, a hard time limit had been forced on them—so his gut said he would be sharing this trial with other people again.

"Ciel. Come to think of it—are you even allowed to be here?"

One last question before the sixth floor dragged them in. When Remiel had spoken earlier, the phrase "assigned zone" had come up. Was a fairy who belonged to the Tower of Trials allowed to linger in this place?

"I don't know! This is my first time being appointed as a Tower of Trials fairy to begin with."

Her attitude was almost aggressively sunny. Put another way, she had no plan whatsoever.

"It'll work out somehow, right?"

He wasn't sure that was a healthy approach, but from Do-yun's perspective, having Ciel around was still far better than not. A designated fairy you could summon with an EX-rank item was at her most powerful inside a trial.

"Alright. Let's do this."

"Fighting!"

The instant their palms met with a cheerful slap, the scenery before his eyes flipped in a single breath.

Fwoosh.

Do-yun found himself standing atop a stone rampart. It was not the rampart anyone would picture. Cracks spiderwebbed through the masonry, and the floor looked ready to give way at any second.

"Not sure if I should be happy about this."

He checked the wall's condition and made a complicated face. Should he celebrate that the sixth floor seemed similar to the Tower of Trials—or get angry that the battlements under his feet were about to collapse?

The system notifications arrived right on cue—and the content was a little different from what he knew.

"Restore a fallen citadel?"

As far as Do-yun understood it, the sixth floor's theme was defense. You were supposed to hold a wall that was about to fall—not rebuild one that had already been overrun. The Tower of Ascension was giving completely different orders.

"Ciel. Can you check the situation around us?"

"Got it!"

The winged fairy shot into the sky. That was the first practical use of a designated guide: aerial reconnaissance. Do-yun left her to it and surveyed the surroundings himself. Other challengers had been summoned onto the ramparts nearby—and the mood was anything but peaceful.

"Say that again. What did you just call the Empire's proud walls?"

"You crazy old man! Why are you losing it over a pile of rocks that's already falling apart?!"

A white-haired elder was swinging his sword wildly; a boy was dodging the blade by the narrowest margins. On the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠otherwise still rampart, the two of them moved with a frantic energy that made them impossible to ignore.

"It's noisy. I would prefer silence."

"What was that?"

They weren't alone, either. Whether everyone who had cleared the fifth floor was present or not, the people dotted along the wall were more numerous than Do-yun had expected.

"I said shut up."

Jin Cheon-woo was there as well—the man who had said he would meet Do-yun higher up. The same presence that had silenced other challengers with a single stamp of his foot on the fifth floor made the old man, who had been frothing every time someone insulted the ruined walls, tuck his tail between his legs.

"Ahem! See? This man is quietly admiring the walls the Empire raised."

"Are you senile? He's just standing there because he can't be bothered."

The old man, who had been about to grab his sword hilt again at the boy's grumbling, took one look at Jin Cheon-woo and settled for a cough. He edged away, then found his next target and went wide-eyed.

"You! You're no imperial—so why are you carrying an imperial blade?!"

Unluckily for Do-yun, the man he decided to pick a fight with was him. The elder stared at the sword hanging at Do-yun's hip as if he had witnessed something unforgivable, his face twisting hard.

"You mean this?"

"Yes! Lay that sword down this instant, and I will not hold you to account."

Even nonsense had its limits. He walks up out of nowhere, picks a fight, and this is what comes out of his mouth?

No—more importantly, he doesn't know who I am?

Do-yun had swept first place on the Hall of Fame. Anyone who knew that wouldn't strut up this confidently. Or maybe he knew and was still clinging to some absurd principle.

"You refuse to put down the sword? Then by imperial law, I challenge you to a duel!"

Trembling, the old man drew his blade. Stay here any longer and he would keep being a nuisance. Already tired of dealing with him, Do-yun answered by jumping off the wall instead.

Thud.

A brief weightlessness, then a hard impact.

More damage than he expected. Part of it was the height, but more than that, the beginner's protection had vanished once he cleared the fifth floor.

Whatever. As long as I'm not dead.

Do-yun used First Aid and glanced upward. The old man was staring down with his mouth hanging open. Apparently he lacked the nerve to jump after him.

Having shed the annoyance, Do-yun looked around.

Complete ruins.

Collapsed houses. Warehouses reduced to charred wreckage. Skeletons scattered along the streets. The traces of death and destruction made it clear just how long ago this place had fallen.

Do-yun frowned once and started walking. A little farther off, beyond an alley, small figures scuttled and chittered. Green skin, child-sized bodies, mean little eyes.

"Goblins."

Small monsters. Individual threat level: blue—watch carefully. Armed, even an ordinary person could handle one. Do-yun had fought them tooth and nail himself, once—running alleys with a baseball bat in hand.

"Keek?"

The goblins spotted him and charged with sharp cries.

Shhk.

Do-yun flicked his sword once. A silver arc cut the air, and two goblins split cleanly in half before dissolving into light.

No need for Bash. Raised to C-rank, the sword's power was enough to carve goblins apart with a mere graze.

"Same as the Tower of Trials, then."

Kill monsters, earn merit points. Stronger monsters meant more points. The S-rank cutoff in the Tower of Trials was a thousand points, but climbing the Hall of Fame in the Tower of Ascension would require him to move fast.

He was about to hang the sword back at his waist when Ciel returned from her scouting run.

Whoosh.

She locked onto him instantly and dropped down.

"Doyun-nim! We're in real trouble!"

She shouted the moment she landed. Her tiny wings beat hard as she delivered exactly what he had expected.

"There are monsters everywhere! Th-they're even still coming in right now!"

"Coming in from where?"

"The gate! It was wide open!"

That settled where he needed to go. The Tower of Ascension had ordered them to restore the fortress—so sealing the entrance came first.

"Guide me to the gate."

Following Ciel, who had mapped the layout from the air, Do-yun soon stood before the battered main gate. The sagging doors had long since lost any function as a barrier—but familiar faces were already gathered there.

Kaya. Jin Cheon-woo. El Sion.

The same people he had met on the fifth floor's trial. The robots, it seemed, had failed to achieve their goal.

"Hey, good to see you, friend!"

Even with Jin Cheon-woo and El Sion weighing the air down like two stone pillars, Kaya waved with a light, cheerful tone. If blood hadn't been dripping from her hand with every shake, Do-yun might have returned the greeting with something approaching good humor.

"Ah, this? Some trash dared to pick a fight, so I taught them a lesson."

When he stared at the blood falling from her claws, Kaya giggled and licked them clean.

"Eugh, gross! Why would you lick that?!"

Ciel, beside him, recoiled in pure disgust. The volume made Do-yun flinch a little, but Kaya showed no reaction at all.

Is Ciel only visible to me?

Maybe because she belonged to the Tower of Trials, no one else could see her. The same seemed true of her voice.

Well. That would make sense.

She had scouted without incident and come back fine. He didn't need to worry about her taking a surprise hit from someone who couldn't even perceive her.

Still… is there another way through?

Do-yun exhaled a long breath. This gate was the only path monsters could use to enter. Sharing space with a lunatic like that didn't appeal to him—but he had no real alternative.

There's supposed to be a translucent barrier at the gate that keeps challengers from physically leaving.

Monsters outside could pass through; for some reason, no one inside could go out. That alone had bottlenecked every strategy in the Tower of Trials. Either you prayed the gate held and rained ranged attacks from the walls, or you abandoned the walls entirely and dug in at a key position. That only worked because the sixth floor required you to protect your own life, not the entire fortress.

There should definitely be a barrier there…

But as Do-yun studied the gate, he tilted his head. The barrier that should have been so alien it was impossible to miss simply wasn't there.

What?

Curious, he carefully approached the gate. One step. Two. Before he quite realized it, he had walked straight through and out the other side.

"Wait. Don't tell me—"

El Sion, who had been watching with his arms folded, went wide-eyed. He tried to follow as if he couldn't believe it—and slammed his forehead into empty air hard enough to clutch his brow.

"How in the world…?"

El Sion stared at him with open disbelief, but Do-yun didn't answer. He only looked from his own feet to the gate and back again. One thought had already seized his mind with absolute clarity.

I can monopolize the monsters.