Episode 5
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Good. That’s how you do it. You must govern your mind here. You must not get excited. Everything is study. If you study the mind, that becomes a mind art. You use the mind art to regulate the flow of mana. Internal energy and mana are not particularly different, after all. At least, that is how it is inside this tower.
…I could feel it too.
The moment I killed the Alpha Orc, a thrill surged up within me.
Without realizing it, I put more strength into my arms, and more strength into my legs.
I felt like I wanted to run wild just like this.
My mind must have been wavering.
Heavenly Slaughter Star taught me about mind arts with just a few simple words.
- …I think you’re just a genius.
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Follow the sword path Black Moon showed you exactly, but your two legs must remain free.
The sword path only teaches you how to swing your arms.
To reach that sword path, it is important for your two legs to move without rest and find the optimal route.
I made my legs light, as if I were doing footwork in boxing.
I kicked off the ground with my rear foot, threw my front foot forward to leap far, and switched the positions of both feet so my center of gravity wouldn’t fall apart.
(Why Did God Give Birth to Me): You’ve built the basics properly.
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Now, a horizontal slash. Turn your waist and pour your center of gravity into the sword.
Whoosh—!!
Was it because of the Black Moon Sword’s unique sharpness? I succeeded in cutting down one orc.
The problem was… my mana was slowly starting to run out.
I could feel the strength in my arms and legs weakening.
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): …It seems this is too much for you, child.
‘Yes.’
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Do you remember what I told you earlier?
‘You said, “This venerable one favors you. There is no one in the world who can match you. Because this venerable one favors you.”’
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): That is right. Since I favor you, put some distance between yourself and the orcs and open the exchange window. You killed the Alpha Orc and an ordinary orc each in a single blow, so the remaining ones will not dare approach you rashly.
I opened the exchange window.
I placed a longsword in the exchange window with Heavenly Slaughter Star,
and she handed over a high-grade mana stone.
[A-rank Item, High-Grade Mana Stone]
- Upon use, restores 5,000 mana.
My total mana was 3,000.
That meant using it would restore all my mana.
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): It is not good to forcibly increase your mana pool through items. In the long term, the quality of your mana will deteriorate, so for now, you have no choice but to replenish your mana like this.
‘…Thank you.’
Whenever I received something, I felt uncomfortable deep down because I had no way to repay it.
This time was the same.
After all, I had received quite a lot from the gallery users in just one day.
Did she realize how I felt just by looking at my expression?
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Child, I said I favor you. Your growth is how you repay this grace, so do not feel burdened. And all of us are beings who need you. You must succeed in climbing so you can save us. Only then can I tear Why Did God Give Birth to Me to death.
(Why Did God Give Birth to Me): How is some 89th-floor scrub going to kill me?
I realized all over again that becoming someone needed by others was a rather precious thing.
…And Ian, whom the gallery users unanimously called a crazy bitch, needed me too, didn’t she?
I suddenly became curious about Ian’s story, the story of a strong person who needed me.
After quickly dealing with the orcs, I headed to Ian.
“Ian, tell me your story.”
It was at that moment.
A strange light flowed through Ian’s eyes, which had always been empty.
“…”
The moonlight disappeared.
The sun rose.
The poisonous weeds turned into flowers.
The surrounding scenery disassembled once, then reassembled itself.
The monster corpses burned away.
Far in the distance, I could see a great city.
I could see the enormous castle of the Black Moon Guild, the greatest guild in this world.
“I want to bring down the Black Moon Guild. No, I wanted to bring them down.”
(Why Did God Give Birth to Me): …?
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): …?
- The hidden route is fucking fun.
- Ian wants to destroy the Black Moon Guild?
- Newbie, originally the goal of this theme is subjugating the Black Moon Guild.
- …Normally, there’s one route for clearing this theme, right? Dungeon subjugation, escaping from Ian, going to the village and finding the kids exploited by the Black Moon Guild, starting the Black Moon Guild subjugation, then realizing the secret of the world.
- If you tell the secret of the world, the quest won’t clear. You have to learn it directly through an NPC.
- So in the end, Ian is also one of the victims of the Black Moon Guild?
“Oppa. Where is your home?”
“Hm?”
“Oppa, you’re not from this world, are you?”
Silence flowed.
- …Huh?
- How do NPCs know that?
According to the gallery users, the tower was just one game.
It was like enjoying a different game for each theme.
In other words, the people here were literally created NPCs.
The climbers were players攻略ing this game, where everything was predetermined.
But… Ian knew that I wasn’t from this world.
“Oppa, you’re a climber of the tower.”
“…”
How did she know?
I looked at the gallery users.
- How did she know?
They were no help.
“You’re a climber who came after a long time.”
“…”
“I remember everything.”
“…”
“At first, I was so confused.”
Ian said that she had subjugated the Black Moon Guild together with the first climber she met.
That was right. Originally, NPC Ian’s role was to help climbers easily clear up to the 5th floor.
- But she didn’t lose her memories every time the world reset?
“…”
“But then, I was back in the garden in front of the dungeon.”
Ian’s eyes shone once again.
As I said earlier, until now her eyes had been empty, and she had literally seemed like a mad person… but now it was different.
She let the flower tucked behind her ear fall to the ground.
“It was the same when I subjugated the Black Moon Guild with the second climber.”
- Wait, then….
- That explains why Ian went crazy.
“When I realized this world wasn’t a proper world. I think that was when I started going mad. Every time I came to my senses, there were more corpses in front of me. The corpses disappeared when day came.”
- ….
“Oppa.”
“Hm?”
“I still like climbers. I like you, Oppa.”
“…Why?”
“There’s no reason for liking people. I want to believe in people. I always have.”
“…”
“At some point, when I came to my senses, I was killing someone. I don’t want to do that. I want to see people as they are.”
I thought she resembled me.
“Oppa.”
I nodded without answering.
“There isn’t just one secret of this world. I want to return this world to how it was originally. I want to break this cycle. I’m sick of living a life sealed inside this timeline. I want to change the system of this tower.”
An NPC who defied the role given by the tower.
An NPC who had noticed the cracks in the world had, in effect, been cursed to live her entire life sealed inside a timeline.
Only now could I understand.
Why Ian was so strong.
She had never lost her memories and had repeated the same actions in the same place in this tower for a lifetime, so she had no choice but to become strong.
“I don’t know when I’ll go mad again. I don’t know when I’ll lose my mind again. I don’t know when I’ll try to kill you again, Oppa. Am I sane right now? I’m probably not.”
Ian continued speaking for a long time while stroking my hand.
She said she would first tell me how to clear this theme.
“The Black Moon Guild is an organization that kidnaps people and ruins them for black magic research. I was an orphan taken in by the Black Moon Guild, and ten years ago, I underwent their experiments and went mad. …In my time, that was ten thousand years ago.”
That meant Ian had endured ten thousand years alone in this distorted timeline.
“You can’t just simply destroy the Black Moon Guild. There should be research materials hidden deeper inside. I’m certain there’s a clue in there to changing the tower’s system. Oppa, take me, even though I’m not sane, and uncover that secret. I told you about my past, so you save me too.”
“I’ll save you. No matter what, I’ll save you.”
Without realizing it, I made that promise.
Ian smiled brightly.
It was at that moment.
“Hehe, Oppa. Don’t run away. Don’t betray me. Oppa is strong. I like Oppa.”
The light vanished from Ian’s pupils.
She had lived the same life for ten thousand years, so there was no way she could be sane.
Both I and the gallery users could vaguely… very vaguely understand Ian’s life.
[You have cleared the 3rd-floor quest!]
[As a reward, your total mana increases by 100%!]
[The 4th-floor quest has arrived!]
[4th-floor Quest - Survival]
- Details: Survive Ian.
- Time Limit: Until Ian’s broken mind returns.
…There were two 4th-floor quests in total.
Surviving Ian when she was not sane.
And further than that, returning Ian to sanity as quickly as possible.
…Fuck, I couldn’t help but think the difficulty was damn shitty.
- Still, we got a valuable hint. If we properly dig into the Black Moon Guild, we should be able to find a hint to return Ian to sanity.
- But then the problem is… technically, the war against the Black Moon Guild is the 5th-floor quest, right? If he goes to war with the Black Moon Guild in the 4th-floor quest, what’s going to come out as the 5th-floor quest?
- The newbie has already taken a hidden route we don’t know, so the 5th-floor quest will probably be different from the one we knew too. Now all we can do is watch.
- And help as much as we can.
- First, destroying the Black Moon Guild is part of the quest we know, right? We should help with that.
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Child.
‘Yes.’
(Heavenly Slaughter Star): Find the red-light district near the Black Moon Guild. The original strategy is to gather swordsmen who were harmed by the Black Moon Guild there.
(Why Did God Give Birth to Me): Yeah, go to the red-light district with Ian for now. If you go there, you’ll get a good companion and obtain a skill too. You’ll also learn one of the secrets of the world.
I nodded.
“Ian, shall we go?”
“Where?”
“You said we should take a walk.”
“A walk? Hehe, okay. Oppa, you won’t go anywhere without me, right? If you do, I’ll kill you.”
The road to the red-light district was quite long.
The current Ian was favorable toward me as long as I didn’t make her anxious.
We laughed and chatted about trivial things.
Strangely, this conversation felt like it was putting my heart at ease.
#
The 89th floor of the tower.
In a room of time and space where there was nothing, Heavenly Slaughter Star, a fixed-nickname user of the Tower Climber Gallery, was stranded.
She, who had acted as the Heavenly Demon in her original world, watched Lee Suho.
Lee Suho, who had heard her teaching once and absorbed it immediately.
…He was interesting.
She wanted to raise him somehow.
He was a martial artist with potential, the likes of which she had not seen in years, no, in hundreds of years… no, in thousands of years.
A martial artist with the possibility of becoming her disciple.
She had to keep him alive, no matter what.
Since she didn’t know when Ian might go berserk, Heavenly Slaughter Star began rummaging through her inventory to find a way to make Lee Suho stronger.
That was when it happened.
Lee Suho raised his sword toward Ian.
Heavenly Slaughter Star, who had not been paying close attention to Lee Suho’s broadcast because she was rummaging through her inventory, dropped her jaw.
Above all, her beautiful face twisted in an instant.
“…What is this insane child doing!!”