The Forgotten Sentinel
Do-yun looked down, turning Jeong Se-ah’s advice over in his mind.
“Everyone knows the saying that the darkest place is right under the lamp, don’t they?”
“Drop the idea that the Clear Crystal always has to be hidden somewhere hard to reach!”
“It might be concealed right near the place you first entered!”
Without her words, he never would have thought to dig through something as ordinary as a trash can.
“Oh my goodness, Do-yun-nim! This is an absolutely insane record!”
Ciel called out to him, practically vibrating with excitement. She had never imagined he would find the Clear Crystal this quickly.
“Are you going to return right away?”
“No.”
Do-yun carefully tucked the Clear Crystal into his clothes as he answered. This was nothing like the seventh floor, where reaching the crystal as fast as possible had been everything.
He reviewed the notifications that had appeared the moment he entered the ninth floor.
The trial of the 9th floor begins.
Find the hidden Clear Crystal within the 24-hour time limit.
Nowhere in those sentences did the word “quickly” appear. Some returnees who had missed that distinction chose to return the instant they obtained a Clear Crystal—only to regret the decision not long after.
This is nothing more than the basic reward.
There was not just one Clear Crystal on the ninth floor. The pure white one currently in Do-yun’s hand was only the start; unusual crystals of other colors that granted additional rewards were hidden throughout the area.
“My real target is over there.”
Do-yun lifted his head slightly. Amid the half-collapsed buildings, a single high-rise still stood perfectly intact. The skyscraper rising alone above the ruins served as a landmark all by itself. A faded sign hung from it.
COMPANY
Do-yun first walked slowly through the empty streets. The previous floors had all felt like distant otherworlds, but the ninth floor was different. The scenery was somehow unfamiliar and yet intimately known.
It looks a lot like Earth.
Vending machines stamped with brand logos he had never seen. Neon signs blinking a faint blue light into the air with their wires cut. Streamlined metal hulks that were clearly some form of vehicle. The designs differed in the details, but the overall landscape was startlingly close to Earth’s.
Of course, it was not a perfect match. Mechanical prosthetic arms lying scattered along the roadside were things one would never find on Earth.
“What kind of prosthetic has a blade attached to it?”
Do-yun eyed one of the mechanical arms that had fallen to the ground with open curiosity. The precise interlocking of countless mechanical parts was a product of science several levels beyond anything on Earth.
Even so, it looks like they couldn’t escape ruin.
He pulled his gaze from the prosthetic and surveyed the surroundings. Bullet holes layered the asphalt in dense patterns; the outer walls of buildings were scarred by explosions and studded with metal shrapnel. Right in the middle of it all, the traces of those who had fought to the end remained starkly clear.
A corpse missing one arm—most likely the owner of the torn-off prosthetic. A body with deep claw marks gouged into its back. A corpse whose entire form had been blackened and charred by fire.
“Do-yun-nim? Why are you suddenly covering my eyes?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It really doesn’t seem like nothing, though?”
He forcibly stuffed the fretting Ciel into his pocket. Someone as sensitive as her would have no resistance to a sight like this. He had no desire to force the view on her.
Thud. Thud.
As he continued forward, the scenery around him gradually changed. The signs of battle grew far more intense than what he had seen on the road earlier. Buildings had been reduced to bare skeletons; rusted steel barricades and collapsed automated turrets lay tangled everywhere.
Yet one question rose unbidden as Do-yun took it all in.
Where are the monster corpses?
Human bodies, dried bloodstains, and ruined equipment littered the area in every direction—yet there was not a single corpse of the monsters they must have fought. Had the humans failed to inflict any damage at all, leaving nothing behind?
“Hmm.”
He tried to dredge up any relevant memory, but nothing useful surfaced. That was only natural; the information returnees passed along usually concerned hidden pieces or rewards. No one focused on detailed descriptions of the scenery.
Still, there’s no way no one noticed this sense of wrongness.
It was unsettling, but not urgent enough to warrant spending extra time on. Do-yun pushed the doubt into a corner of his mind and kept moving.
Thud. Thud.
The area around the entrance to his destination had clearly been an especially fierce battlefield. Hastily assembled metal barricades at the mouth of an alley had been crushed into ruin, and behind them the corpses of soldiers lay stacked in layers.
Do-yun’s eyes flicked to an energy blade and a rifle that had fallen nearby. The moment he picked up the weapons, however, he realized they were already drained of power and completely useless. He clicked his tongue briefly.
“Shame.”
Only one more block and he would reach the entrance of the target building. He stepped quietly over the bodies and soon arrived at his destination.
“Whoa.”
The entrance was so horrific that “grim” felt inadequate. Sharp blade scars and bullet holes marred every inch of the steel door, and roughly scrawled writing densely covered the surrounding walls. It was written in a language he had never seen, so he could not make out the meaning, but the fact that it had been sprayed in blood-red paint suggested it was nothing positive.
“They locked themselves in to survive, huh.”
It was a scene common enough on Earth as well—closed shelters that sealed their doors under the excuse of scarce internal resources and ignored every request for rescue. Back then the sight had made his hands shake with rage, but now it hardly mattered. The steel doors they had trusted so completely had been torn open like paper by the monsters.
“Bash won’t cut it for this one.”
The steel door before him now, however, was different. It was not merely thick like Earth’s doors; it was a complete barrier fused with advanced technology. The surface held a soft metallic sheen, as if made of a special shock-absorbing alloy, and even the blade scars and bullet marks were nothing more than shallow scratches. At a glance it looked impossible to open by force, yet Do-yun was not worried. He already knew how to open it.
Beep-beep.
When he rapped lightly on the steel door, a mechanical voice issued from a speaker mounted on the wall.
“Please authenticate your identity.”
At the same time the smooth wall surface split open, and countless gun muzzles emerged to train on Do-yun. Crimson laser sights locked onto his forehead, heart, solar plexus, and every other vital point, as if promising that the slightest mistake would not be forgiven.
Yet there was not a trace of tension in Do-yun’s eyes.
They said if you searched the corpses you could find a Company executive’s ID card.
That was a fact uncovered by the returnee known as the Undertaker. From a particularly well-dressed corpse one could obtain the passcode granting entry to Company. Do-yun, however, had no need to dig through bodies; he already knew the answer.
“All for the prosperity of humanity.”
The moment he recited the passphrase, the steel door began to grind open with a heavy rumble. Watching it, Do-yun allowed a faint smile to touch his lips.
No one expected a corpse to hold information this important.
The Undertaker. An eccentric who insisted that even those who died inside the Tower of Trials deserved a funeral. Given that the tower reset every time a new challenger entered, his efforts had been meaningless—yet he had clung stubbornly to his conviction. The information about Company’s password had been one of the by-products of that process.
I should be grateful I can profit from it like this.
The instant Do-yun tried to step through the fully opened doorway—
Thud.
It felt as though he had slammed into an invisible wall. An intangible force hurled his body backward.
“Ghk—what the hell is this?”
He was rubbing his forehead when his body froze solid in that exact posture. A notification that should never have appeared was floating before his eyes.
Sentinel uses Isolation Zone (C).
A skill-use notification rising through Absolute Sight. It was something that absolutely should not be happening. Do-yun was currently under the effect of an early-entry ticket.
Not even thirty minutes have passed yet.
Which meant no other challengers should have been able to enter the ninth floor. So why was there someone—something—using a skill?
Thoom. Thud.
While Do-yun reeled in confusion, the sound of something walking echoed from the far end of the dark corridor. When the figure finally stepped out of the shadows, Do-yun could not help but be startled all over again.
A Destroyer? Don’t tell me one of them is still alive?
A cyborg of pure metal. Its appearance was strikingly similar to the Destroyer he had defeated on the seventh floor. Looking closer, however, he could tell they were not identical.
Creak.
Peeling paint, rusted plating—the robot before him carried the clear marks of time. Yet the red lens mounted near its head fixed on Do-yun with perfect clarity.
What even is that thing?
The laws of the tower were absolute. Ignoring the effect of an early-entry ticket and entering a trial ahead of schedule was impossible. Unless it had been here from the very beginning…
Wait. Could it be—!
A single possibility flashed through Do-yun’s mind like lightning. Everyone he had met in the Tower of Ascension had already climbed the Tower of Trials to the end and earned the right. But not everyone could reach the top of the Tower of Trials. So what happened to those left behind after failing the climb?
A returnee who never entered the Tower of Ascension. Is that robot one of them?
He could not be certain yet. He had never encountered anything like this on the sixth, seventh, or eighth floors. But the fact that the being in front of him could use skills was undeniable.
The moment Do-yun opened his mouth to organize his thoughts, a crackling noise issued from the robot’s speaker even faster.
“Identification module complete. Designation: Kim Do-yun.”
Do-yun’s eyes narrowed to slits. The robot already knew his name—something he had never revealed.
The instant he sensed that something was wrong, the situation was already spinning out of control.
“Destroyer combat log confirmed. Combat result: total loss. Cause analysis: functional termination by target ‘Kim Do-yun.’”
The Sentinel’s red lens flared with a deeper, more intense light.
“Deploying tactical armaments. Priority objective: eliminate special-class threat.”
With a series of metallic clanks, the Sentinel’s forearms and shoulders split open, and weapons of every shape burst forth from within.
“Oh, sh—!”
Do-yun could not even finish the curse before the countless weapons locked onto him roared to life as one.