Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability Chapter 104: 7F Hidden (3)

“…Are you the Sage?”

I asked.

The old man answered.

“The world used to call by that na, yes.”

This person, what is he?

It was a strange sensation.

Normally, through my Sixth Sense, I could get at least a faint read on how strong any opponent was.

But from the Sage in front of , I felt nothing at all.

It wasn’t that he gave off a dangerous feeling either, though…

I don’t know. I just can’t tell.

Maybe the level gap was so enormous that’s why?

Like in wuxia, where a master at too lofty a realm gives off no presence whatsoever. That’s the cliché, right?

“It’s a pleasure to et you.”

Conclusion reached: nothing to lose by leading with manners.

I dipped my head in a bow of greeting.

The Sage chuckled.

“Grateful you’d greet before cursing out. The gates you ca through must have been quite treacherous.”

“Surely a few trials of this caliber are only natural for obtaining the Sage’s Treasure.”

In any case, all three people had been nothing more than a one-man play directed by the Sage.

Which ant the information I’d gotten from those three was very likely all true.

It seed safe to conclude that obtaining the Sage’s Treasure was the clearing condition for this Hidden.

Did this an the final trial was over too?

It would be really nice if that were the case.

“What is your reason for seeking the treasure?”

the Sage asked.

“…Because I want to attain the truth?”

Obtaining the Sage’s Treasure was supposed to reveal all the truths of the world, wasn’t it?

I gave a reasonable enough answer, but the Sage said,

“If you do not answer honestly, you will not be able to obtain the treasure.”

What? Can he see through lies?

I didn’t have any reason like that. I was just trying to clear the floor.

“Honestly, there’s no real reason. I’m just a little curious about the treasure.”

There was no way he’d understand anything about the Tower if I brought it up.

So that was how I answered instead.

It was true that I had beco a bit curious about what this Sage’s Treasure actually was.

Fortunately, that must have been a pass, because the Sage nodded.

“There is one final trial remaining.”

“…What is it?”

“Anything.”

the Sage said.

“Na any trial you wish. Only, I will not test luck, and the standard for passing the trial will be set by . The chances to challenge are infinite.”

I tilted my head.

Na any trial…

I couldn’t help but be a little bewildered.

“Then, for example, chess, or…”

The mont the words left my mouth, a chessboard and pieces appeared between the Sage and .

The Sage settled into his seat.

“Black or white, which will you take?”

“…White.”

I’d only said it as a passing remark.

But since he’d said the chances were infinite, I sat down across from him too.

I took white and made the first move.

I wasn’t bad at gas like chess or go, I’d played a fair amount…

I was checkmated in thirty moves and lost.

“…One more ga.”

I played a few more.

But every ti, I lost before reaching fifty moves.

I changed the conditions.

“Can we play with a ti limit?”

“As you like.”

“Then let’s set the turn tir to one second.”

I was planning to use Ti Stop.

One second ant playing instantly, with no ti to think.

But for , the ti to think was infinite.

The Sage smiled.

“Won’t one second be too short?”

“I’m confident in playing fast.”

“Very well, then.”

[0:01]

A tir appeared in the air beside us.

The match began again.

The mont I moved, the Sage made his move just as quickly.

And yet the precision of his play didn’t change in the slightest from before.

“…”

So the result was the sa as well.

Another loss for .

What is he? An AI?

“…Can we switch to a different ga?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Let’s play go.”

I wondered whether the Sage would even know go.

When he snapped his fingers, the chessboard turned into a go board.

I took black and played the opening move.

This ti, too, the match was decided quickly.

I was dragged along helplessly, never grasping how, until the ga was lost.

I ca to realize that the gap in skill between the Sage and was unfathomable.

There was no beating him.

“…Do you happen to know gomoku?”

He’d said the chances were infinite anyway.

Without giving up, I kept switching gas.

Gomoku, stone-flicking, even sothing ridiculous like stacking go stones without knocking them over, I went up against the Sage at all of them.

The result.

A complete rout, every ti.

I stared, jaw hanging open, at the Sage’s tower of go stones.

The Sage showed off the miraculous feat of stacking more than twenty stones, teaching just how wide the gulf in class between us was.

No, what the hell is this…

Was there nothing the Sage couldn’t do?

It seed pointless to compete in a ga the Sage looked likely to be bad at.

…Instead of using my head, should I try competing with my body?

He’d said anything goes, so a fight would count too.

The problem was that I didn’t see much chance of winning on that front either.

He was surely a far stronger mage than I was.

“How about a contest using only our bodies, no magic?”

I added hastily.

“And killing’s off-limits, of course.”

The Sage laughed, then stood and put so distance between us.

“I will not counterattack. If you so much as graze even once, you pass.”

It was a generous condition, but I took it the opposite way.

Tch, is this no good either…?

He’d only set a condition like that because he was that confident, wouldn’t he.

Bang!

For starters, I kicked off the ground and lunged at the Sage.

The instant I stretched out my hand and thought I’d reached him.

The Sage’s body blurred and vanished.

When I looked behind , the Sage was standing there.

“…Didn’t you just use magic?”

“I did not.”

Then what was that?

Was he just so fast my eyes couldn’t follow him?

I lunged again.

This ti the Sage didn’t vanish.

Whether he ant to show he wasn’t using magic, he dodged every one of my attacks at a speed about equal to my own.

Even with my Exaltation skill active, I chased the Sage at full speed, but…

He stayed just out of reach; I couldn’t so much as brush the hem of his robe.

After running circles around the cavern for a long while, I stopped to catch my breath.

…This isn’t working.

I didn’t get the sense that a little more would do it. The level gap was obvious.

Given the speed he’d shown when he first vanished, this too was him going easy on .

When I looked at the Sage, his eyes crinkled into a smile.

The Sage wasn’t even breathing hard.

‘How am I supposed to win this?’

My head wouldn’t do it, and neither would my body.

I asked the Demon King.

‘Demon King, can you beat that guy with magic?’

The Demon King answered.

– Need you even ask.

‘Oh, then could you a little…’

– Can’t beat him.

‘What?’

– In my true body, perhaps, but with this pathetic flesh, how could I win? That one is no re lowly creature either.

So even the Demon King couldn’t do it.

– Think straight. It is not that I cannot, it is that your wretched body is so worthless…

I ignored the Demon King as he started to throw a fit.

Hah, there’s no answer to this one.

I deliberated, then opened my mouth.

If even this didn’t work, I wondered whether there was any way left to beat the Sage at all.

“Let’s go with a mory test.”

The Sage nodded.

“I will display one thousand numbers. If you morize them all before I do, the trial is passed.”

The Sage waved his hand.

[124572305804329502589320323…]

And a countless sequence of numbers floated up in the air.

I raised my hand and spoke.

“Hold on. Isn’t there sothing unfair about a mory contest using numbers you’ve presented yourself?”

“You wish to say that I already have the order morized? These are rely numbers generated at random.”

I shook my head.

“Even so, I can’t help being suspicious, can I. Could you run the trial so other way, rather than the two of us competing to see who wins?”

“Such as?”

“If you set a ti limit, Sage, I’ll morize all the numbers within that ti.”

This was a Sage for whom even the one-second rule in chess had rendered a ti limit aningless.

I figured that in a mory contest, the mont it started he’d just declare he’d already morized them all.

The Sage agreed readily.

“Then let us do that. How many seconds do you want?”

Would you look at this guy.

“…Seconds? To morize a thousand numbers, shouldn’t you at least give hours?”

I put on a show of complaining for no real reason.

The Sage laughed.

“At that rate it would not even be a trial. I will grant you one hundred seconds.”

“Haah, that’s brutal…”

I held back a laugh.

Inwardly, I was cheering.

‘I’ve won.’

The truth was, it didn’t matter how much ti he gave .

I managed my expression so I wouldn’t draw needless suspicion by looking too confident.

[100]

The tir’s number floated up separately.

And the sequence changed once more to new numbers.

“I will begin.”

With the Sage’s words, I stopped ti at once.

The Demon King spoke as if sneering.

– Of all the underhanded wretches.

‘This counts as skill too.’

Besides, the Sage was the more underhanded of the two.

A mory test it may be, but telling soone to morize a thousand numbers in a hundred seconds, is that even within the realm of reason?

In the frozen ti, I began morizing the numbers.

‘52839472…’

I had mories of trying to morize pi as a kid.

I’d gotten up to about a hundred digits, was it?

Ten tis that.

I didn’t know how long this would take.

To fully morize it, would it take at least a few days?

Victory was already guaranteed, but it was the start of a tedious slog of morization.

‘Demon King.’

– What.

‘morize them with , would you.’

– Are you insane? morize them yourself.

If he’d morized them with , it would have cut the ti and given a cross-check too, but I shouldn’t expect the impossible.

In any case, I drilled them into my head.

How much ti had passed.

‘…1231289924585…’

Okay. Done.

After morizing it all and running self-checks several tis over, I finally released ti.

I deliberately waited until the tir was almost completely up.

“I’ve morized them all.”

I told the Sage with an exhausted look on my face.

This wasn’t acting.

I really thought I was going to die of boredom, goddamn…

When the Sage waved his hand, the numbers vanished.

“Speak.”

“5283947212525110…”

I rattled the numbers off.

I recited all thousand numbers without forgetting a single one.

“…Did I get them all right?”

I was a little tense.

If I’d made any kind of mistake, I’d have to morize the whole thing again from the start.

Clap, clap, clap…

The Sage smiled and applauded.

“Correct.”

“…”

“Congratulations on passing the final trial.”

It was a modest celebration.

More than that, there was sothing odd about the Sage’s manner.

As if he’d known all along I would pass, sothing like…

It felt as though he were just going through a formal procedure.

The Sage waved his hand again.

And the place changed.

The dark cavern beca a vast library.

“Follow .”

I looked around with startled eyes, then followed the Sage.

Climbing endlessly up a spiraling staircase…

“All my life I have explored the world. By a stroke of luck, I defied even the destiny of a born mortal, and for an infinite span of ti I have ceaselessly filled in my ignorance. There exists no joy greater than coming to know what you did not.”

the Sage went on.

The sowhat stiff way of speaking from earlier was gone, and I could feel a liveliness in him.

For a mont I felt that subtle change was out of place.

Then the Sage stopped walking and pulled a single book from the shelf.

A thick book with no title at all.

When he opened it, the pages inside were blank, with nothing written on them.

‘…Is there still more to co?’

When was he going to hand over this Sage’s Treasure.

Just as I was thinking that.

The Sage stroked the empty page.

…Fwarararack!

And a current of air swept up all around us.

“…!”

The library trembled.

There was no other way to put it.

The books on the shelves pulled themselves out of their own accord and drifted through the air.

And the letters that poured out of those books all began to be absorbed into the book the Sage was holding.

Whoooosh…

The storm of letters died down.

And the once-blank book was now packed full of dense text.

The Sage closed the book.

“This is the Sage’s Treasure.”

“…”

“Every truth of the world is contained within this single volu.”

Montarily overwheld, I gave a dazed nod.

More to the point, could this really be the reward for this Hidden?

“Well? What truth is it that you wish to know through this?”

the Sage asked.

A truth I wished to know.

Well… naturally, there was plenty I wanted to know.

Like, say, about the Tower.

Information about the Nightmare floors I’d have to clear going forward, or what on earth was waiting if I climbed the Tower all the way to the top.

But there was no way I could learn anything like that.

Truth of the world, this and that, however grandly it was dressed up, in the end this too was just the process of clearing a single floor.

It was all nothing more than a theatrical stage the Tower had set up.

“Does this book say what the Tower’s true identity is, too?”

I asked that half in jest.

He wasn’t going to understand anyway, so I figured I’d just see how he reacted.

But then…

“Of course.”

“…What?”

I flinched and stared at the Sage.

The Sage was looking at with a smile.

“Kim Seo-hyeon, currently clearing the Nightmare-difficulty 7th floor Hidden route, the truth you desire is all contained in here as well. Do you wish to know the Tower’s true identity?”

Join our discord server: .gg/Bv5qu2Qbb

Read more chapters on my Patreon: /DDTL