The Wish Ticket

A monochrome expanse where white stretched away in every direction.

The moment he stepped into the Sanctuary Room, the health and mana he had lost surged back into him at once.

"I might actually live."

Do-yun let out a long breath of relief and simply collapsed where he stood. He meant to close his eyes and stay like that for a while — but the second the tension left his body, a sharp pang of regret slipped in and rooted itself in his thoughts.

"I should've grabbed a few more crystals."

There was still the other Yellow Crystal he had never recovered, and the faintly remembered crystals of other colors. The rest of them he could write off — but failing to secure that Yellow Crystal left a particularly bitter taste. He had already been treating it as good as his, turning over uses for it in his head.

"Nothing I can do about it."

Staying any longer would have been far too dangerous. Letting greed cost him something that actually mattered was not an option. If he had overreached just to snag extra crystals and something had gone wrong with him instead, it would have been the worst kind of false economy.

Besides, with the building coming down around me, I couldn't have wandered around hunting for crystals anyway.

Most of the specially colored crystals lived inside the Company building. The Yellow Crystal whose location he already knew was no exception.

"I was supposed to stop on the twelfth floor, but I climbed the outer wall the whole way up, so I had no choice but to skip it."

The Company's architecture was so convoluted that even memorizing it was no small feat. He already had more information crammed into his head than he could comfortably hold; there simply had not been room for every last detail. That he had remembered the Yellow Crystal at all was pure chance.

— One-two-three-four. On the ninth floor, just remember this one thing.

— Twelfth floor, third room, fourth drawer.

— I trust no one will forget and go looking for the twenty-third room on the first floor!

In the Tower of Trials, information was power — and power meant better odds of survival. Returners had devised all kinds of methods for the new challengers about to enter, and mnemonic tricks like that were part of the effort.

There aren't many that convenient to memorize, though.

With so many known hidden pieces floating around, a handful had simply lucked into associations like that. Most were buried in far more complicated places; it was usually easier to just thrash around and find them the hard way.

"Do-yun-nim!"

Ciel cut clean through the chain of his thoughts. He cracked his eyes open to find her hovering right in front of his nose, a gift box already in her hands.

"You still have to check ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠your Tower of Trials rewards!"

She beamed, and a notice flared into existence before him.

He had been grumbling only moments ago about not securing more special crystals — but objectively speaking, that was the complaint of a man who already had more than enough. By Tower of Trials standards, claiming even a single colored crystal was treated as S-rank.

"Right. Not losing the Red Crystal is already a win."

Satisfied that he had secured the most important crystal of all, Do-yun looked down at the gift box in his palm. When he peeled off the wrapping, four glass vials sat inside, each filled with a liquid that shimmered with a soft rainbow sheen.

"What is this?"

He lifted one of the vials, brow furrowed. The notice had clearly said an F-rank potion selection ticket — yet what Ciel had handed him looked already finished.

"Heh-hem! It's the latest technique, using fairy power!"

Ciel squared her little shoulders as she explained. Strip away all the flourishes and the summary was simple: what she had given him were unfinished potions whose effects had not yet been fixed.

"Normally I'm supposed to hand them over after you choose — but since you and I are close, I cut you a little slack!"

That explained the expectant look that had been begging for praise. Even a temple dog can recite poetry after three years, as the saying went — Ciel, like Do-yun himself, had figured out how to work the system's loopholes.

Slosh.

A gentle shake set the liquid flashing with every mysterious color at once. Not having to choose immediately was a genuine advantage. Attack-boost potions, defense-boost potions, health recovery potions — he could pick the optimal reward for whatever crisis presented itself.

"I appreciate the thought, but it probably doesn't mean much for me."

That convenience only applied to ordinary challengers. For someone whose growth path was as extreme as Do-yun's, it was irrelevant.

"For me, a mana potion is always the best choice."

Attack boost? Just pour more mana into Sun Swordsmanship. Defense ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠boost? Just pour more mana into Subspace. Health recovery? Just pour more mana into First Aid. His private miracle of calculation solved every situation with a single resource. Any other option was a loss.

"Ehk."

Ciel made a strange little noise and wilted. Her hard-won loophole had failed to land, and it clearly stung.

"Do I actually have to transform these before I drink them?"

The thought struck him out of nowhere. A liquid that glittered with every color and could become any potion at all — didn't that mean it already possessed every potion's properties?

"Uh, I'm not sure. The manual just says to transform them into whatever the challenger wants and then hand them over."

She answered with a blank, helpless look. Watching her, Do-yun felt a strange certainty take hold: drinking these as they were, without transforming them, would be better.

"I'll hold on to them for now."

There were only four — he could not afford to waste one as a test. But if they worked the way he suspected, they would be the ultimate doping agent.

If they don't do anything special, I can always convert the rest into mana potions later.

With his Tower of Trials rewards properly secured, Do-yun moved on. It was time to settle the Tower of Ascension entry rewards.

Do-yun, who had been waiting on edge, let out the breath he had been holding the instant the notice appeared. He had been deeply uneasy about losing his streak of first places ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— but this time, at least, no one had taken the throne from him.

"Forcing the fight with Kaya was a pretty big gamble."

All of it traced back to Kaya at the top floor. If he had not poured everything into trying to kill her, he would have had more mana left in reserve — and he would not have needed to flee back to the Sanctuary Room with time still remaining on Floor 9. Even so, he did not regret the choice.

If I hadn't pushed hard now, it would have been even worse later.

Kaya's reflexes were pure instinct. The first thing she had seen upon opening her eyes was a sword stroke dense with overwhelming heat — and she had not dismissed it as a dream or a hallucination. She had moved at once. What if the Sunrise he had unleashed had not been the kind of technique that literally ground everything around it into nothing?

She would have counterattacked immediately.

Unaware that Kaya possessed a green crystal, Do-yun would have accepted damage just to guarantee her death — and that would almost certainly have meant only he lost a life stack, one-sidedly.

"Shame I couldn't finish her, but there's nothing to be done."

Stripping her of one more recovery method would have to be enough. Next time the chance came, he would end it for certain.

Do-yun shifted his gaze to the Hall of Fame rankings. This time there were no scores — just a clean list of names. One of them jumped out at him immediately.

"Protector."

Thanks to the experimental records he had found on Floor 9, he knew exactly what that name meant. Project Leap: brainwashing once-human subjects into weapons. Protector was one of its success cases. The fact that he sat directly under Do-yun's name carried no small weight of implication.

Did he clean out every crystal left in the building?

And crystals would not have been all Protector collected. Across Floors 6, 7, and 8, Do-yun had already seen the various arrangements prepared for him — Sun Swordsmanship, an SS-rank staff, and more. Similar things had almost certainly been hidden on Floor 9 as well. This time, though, he had no idea what they might have been.

"I took a nonstandard route up, so of course I wouldn't know."

That path had gotten him to the top floor quickly — but it had also left him blind to whatever tools the Company had prepared for the test subject returning to the fold. The monsters Angelina had driven berserk? Those counted as arrangements, too, but something separate would have been set aside for a cyborg like Protector.

"Next time we meet, he might be a real problem."

Do-yun muttered it under his breath and turned his attention to the rewards. Speculating about a secret weapon without a single clue was as pointless as it got. Better to grow his own strength so he could answer whatever came.

There was no need to deliberate over this set of options.

"I'll take the Rune of Evolution."

With a complicated look, Do-yun faced the truth he had been carefully ignoring.

Crunch.

On the floor lay a warped lump of metal bent like a snake. Hard as it was to believe, that was the sword he had been using. It had failed to withstand the aftershock of Sunrise and twisted out of shape. Without the durability reinforcement, the blade itself would almost certainly have shattered to pieces.

"Give it an auto-repair function."

He had originally meant to use the Rune of Evolution on the sheath — but looking at a hunk of metal that would be hard even to swing, let alone sheath, forced a change of plans.

Nothing is more important than the weapon itself.

What good was reinforcing a sheath when the sword looked like that? He could not go around beating people with the scabbard instead. He would be able to obtain a new weapon on Floor 11, but he did not even consider it. The ruined sword was already two ranks above the E-rank piece Floor 11 would offer — C-rank — and he had already spent two Rune of Evolution upgrades on it. He could not abandon it out of sheer sunk cost.

Shff.

Fortunately, the Rune of Evolution accepted his demand without complaint. Watching the sword slowly reclaim its form, Do-yun clenched his fist.

"Then all that's left is the consecutive first-place reward."

In a light mood, he moved to check what seven straight first places would bring — and froze, staring at a notice far more spectacular than anything he had expected. The text that bloomed before his eyes blew his casual assumptions to pieces.

Before Do-yun could even begin to grasp what that meant, a golden door took shape in the empty air directly ahead of him. From within that door — a presence so sacred it was almost palpable — stepped a face he knew well.

Remiel.

The administrator of the 1st Stratum, the one who had once granted him the authority called Reverse, stood there before him.