I woke up that morning to news that put in a foul mood.
─ The United States has failed to clear Nightmare difficulty Floor 2? The challenger is believed to be the sa individual who cleared Nightmare difficulty Floor 1 as the second person to do so…
“…Haah.”
So he failed.
There didn’t seem to be any official statent from the U.S., but the report wasn’t fake news.
All I had to do was check the Communication Channel to see that one person had disappeared.
I felt sorry for him.
Honestly, I felt disappointed too.
And at the sa ti, a twinge of guilt.
Because deep down, I already knew.
I knew that the person with the highest chance of clearing Floor 2 was .
The Ti Stop Ability, which synergized with skills to a broken degree. Compared to the other Nightmare clearers, my ability was probably in a league of its own.
And yet here I was, still unable to make up my mind…
“Why the hell is the world like this.”
I closed my eyes, blaming the world for no good reason.
But no, seriously, fuck that, it is the world’s fault.
One day a Tower just shoots up in the middle of the ocean, threatening to kill everyone if we don’t climb it once a year. How is that not insane? Huh?
“…”
Gotta do what the threat says, I guess.
If I don’t wanna croak, that is.
‘Let’s go in.’
Sitting on the sidelines, watching and waiting while the other Nightmare clearers died off one by one, that wasn’t sothing I could bring myself to do either.
Wow, since when was I such an altruistic guy? Hahaha.
Once I made the decision, my mind actually cald down.
When should I go in?
Well, sooner would be better.
Whether I died now or lived one more month and then died, it was all the sa in the end.
The closer the Ti Limit got, the more chaotic the world would beco anyway.
Tomorrow? Yeah. How about first thing tomorrow morning?
I went out for a walk to sort through my thoughts.
While I was getting so fresh air, I checked the Communication Channel and noticed a Whisper.
[ChickenSandwich: …The Skill Stone I currently have in my possession is a normal-grade skill called ‘Leap’.
It’s a skill that amplifies jumping power, so it might help with climbing Floor 2. If it’s not a skill you already have, please, I’m begging you, send a reply.]
[ChickenSandwich: If you don’t want to et in person, just na a location. Anywhere in the world, just tell where, and I’ll leave the Skill Stone there for you to pick up.]
[ChickenSandwich: I have not the slightest interest in who you are. All I want is the survival of humanity. You are our only hope. Please, let help in whatever small way I can.]
“This guy…”
He’d sent Whispers before.
And I already knew who he was.
The world’s richest man and famously eccentric businessman. Bilon Must.
At first I’d suspected it was soone impersonating him, but it wasn’t.
The thing was, this man had actually gone on a broadcast and said that yes, the Chicken Sandwich who sent the Whispers was really him, and could the recipient please write back. I’d seen it on the news. That was a while ago.
Bilon Must wasn’t a Climber himself; if I recalled correctly, he had his secretary registered as a Climber.
‘He’d gone quiet for a while, and now he’s at it again.’
He was a morable figure precisely because his plea was so absurd: he didn’t want anything else, just please take the Skill Stone.
The offer was so outlandish that it actually felt sincere.
Normally I would have just ignored it, but this ti I found myself reading the Whispers carefully.
“Leap, huh…”
A skill that amplifies jumping power, he said.
The the of Floor 2 was a jump map.
It did seem like a skill that would genuinely help.
Was this man really making this offer solely because he wanted to clear Floor 2?
Then again, doubting his motives was almost laughable at this point.
Humanity was once again a month away from extinction. Who wouldn’t be desperate?
Now that I’d actually decided to enter Floor 2, I found my resolve wavering slightly.
‘…What do I do?’
Reply? Or don’t?
I hadn’t expected to be agonizing over this, but here I am, wavering.
Exposing my identity to soone was sothing I could never take back… but with my life on the line, was it right to be nitpicking over every little thing?
I might die in there and spend my last monts regretting that I hadn’t just taken it when I had the chance.
He says he doesn’t care who I am.
He’s even saying I can just na a location if I want.
Not that I took those words at face value, of course.
Even if he said he’d just leave the item sowhere, how would I know there wasn’t soone watching or a hidden cara?
Still, I could sense that what this man truly wanted was nothing more than for Floor 2 to be cleared so humanity wouldn’t be wiped out.
I wandered the streets for a long ti, wrestling with the decision.
*
Bilon Must wanted to go to Mars.
So people said he was just a money-crazed businessman, a fraud playing at being a visionary to fool the masses.
But his dream had never once deviated from its core, not since he was a child.
Go to Mars. Venture out into the wider universe. Humanity becos a multi-planetary species.
But then, fuck.
One day, the Earth went to complete shit.
Humanity received a death sentence. Every year, they had to climb the Tower just to cling to life.
He’d been forced to tear up vast swaths of plans he’d mapped out decades into the future. Humanity had to survive first before there could be any future of reaching for the stars.
He threw himself wholeheartedly into building infrastructure for the Climbers. He funded facilities, sponsored organizations, and expanded his business empire into the Magic Stone industry, which was ballooning at a staggering pace.
In truth, the Tower hadn’t given humanity nothing in return.
The Magic Stones that ca from the Tower were quite literally a miracle material. Bilon Must saw the possibility of advancing his dream by decades through technology harnessing Magic Stone energy.
Provided, of course, that humanity was still around to see that future.
That was why climbing the Tower had always been his top priority. More precisely, climbing Nightmare difficulty.
“Damn it all, we’re completely fked.”
Bilon Must felt the urge to just fire a rocket straight at the Tower Climbing Managent Bureau headquarters.
The all-or-nothing attempt to clear Nightmare Floor 2 had ended in total failure.
Jack Davis, the second person to clear Nightmare Floor 1, had failed. Word was he hadn’t even lasted a few minutes after entering before he died.
The governnt had played a role in helping Davis acquire all those skills, but Bilon Must’s support had been just as significant. He’d poured sponsorship money into the man without a second thought.
In truth, Bilon hadn’t wanted to invest that kind of support in Jack.
From the start, Bilon had only been interested in the first Nightmare clearer. He’d kept reaching out through Whispers via his secretary, but never got so much as a reply, so he’d had no choice but to give up and go with the alternative.
Now that Plan B had crumbled, there was only one place left to turn.
Why won’t you answer ?!
I’ll give you everything I have! Just please take the Skill Stone!
…Though, admittedly, “everything he had” amounted to a single Leap Skill Stone in his personal collection.
Skill Stones were perpetually scarce on the market. On top of that, the Managent Bureau had swept up every last one to spoon-feed them to Jack, so there was no way to acquire more for the ti being. Money alone couldn’t solve this.
The U.S. still had one more Nightmare clearer remaining. Taylor.
By rights, this Skill Stone probably should have gone to her, but no. He simply couldn’t bring himself to place his hopes there anymore.
In the end, the answer had been the sa from the very beginning.
The first Nightmare clearer, the one who had beaten Nightmare Floor 1 with no information at all, that person alone was special. That person was the only one with a real chance of clearing Floor 2.
Bilon didn’t care in the slightest whether the clearer was a man or a woman, a child or an elderly person, a criminal or a terrorist. It made genuinely no difference to him.
If the clearer already had the Leap skill, then great. If not, Bilon desperately wanted that person to at least take this and challenge Floor 2 with even slightly better odds.
So please, just reply…
“…Chairman! We got a response!”
Bilon shot to his feet.
“Wow, it ca? Really?!”
“Yes! They say they accept the offer! They’re asking if you can co to where they live…”
Finally.
After all that ignoring, it seed the first Nightmare clearer had finally had a change of heart.
Of course they had. When even taking every possible precaution wasn’t enough, how could anyone go in without accepting every available skill?
That person couldn’t afford to do that. They were humanity’s hope.
“Where?! Tell them I’ll leave right now even if it’s the North Pole!”
“Yes, well, they say it’s Korea.”
Bilon blinked. Korea?
“…South, obviously?”
“That’s correct.”
“Got it. I need to leave imdiately.”
He was a little surprised. The first Nightmare clearer was Korean?
But what country they were from didn’t matter one bit, so Bilon arranged his trip to Korea as quickly as possible.
The first Nightmare clearer’s conditions were simple. This eting was to remain secret, and it must never be disclosed to anyone. Bilon, of course, had no intention of doing so.
However, visiting a foreign country for no apparent reason would draw attention, and for a figure of Bilon’s stature, leaving the country in total secrecy was impossible.
So he ca up with a public pretext for the trip. As it happened, he had a eting with the chairman of a Korean company coming up soon, so he simply moved it forward.
After clearing his entire schedule for the day of arrival, Bilon moved discreetly.
The first Nightmare clearer had, surprisingly, said he wanted to receive the Skill Stone in person.
Bilon left behind all his security personnel and headed to the eting place accompanied only by Ellen, his secretary and Climber who was practically an extension of himself. He had, of course, asked for and received the other party’s permission.
“Is this the right place?”
“…The GPS isn’t working properly. My apologies.”
Ellen fumbled his way through the directions.
They drove into a run-down alley and pulled the car over to the curb.
[Person123: The black car in front of the utility pole, that’s you, right?]
A mont later, a man approached and knocked on the rear window.
Bilon opened the door. A man wearing a cap and a mask climbed into the back seat.
His face was mostly hidden, but Must got the distinct impression that this was a very young man.
“…Nice to et you.”
Bilon extended his hand for a handshake.
In the driver’s seat, Ellen stared tensely into the rearview mirror.
Bilon was soone with a degree of involvent in the Managent Bureau’s Nightmare clearing project, and Ellen, as his close aide, was privy to so of that information. Including what Level the Nightmare Floor 1 clearer was.
Level 10. To put it in intuitive terms, a superhuman capable of killing a bear with his bare hands.
Ellen was a Climber too, but he’d only cleared a single floor on Easy difficulty, putting him at roughly the level of a sowhat strong ordinary person.
If this man harbored any ill intent, there would be no way to protect Bilon.
But of course, Bilon had co here fully prepared to accept that risk.
If the plan were rely to hand over the item, he could have just sent Ellen. But he’d wanted to et the first Nightmare clearer at least once in person.
“Nice to et you. Thank you for coming all this way.”
The man who took his hand replied in English.
“…You speak English fluently?”
“I can manage a little.”
Even if they couldn’t communicate verbally, they had the Communication Channel, so it wouldn’t have mattered.
The reason Bilon was surprised wasn’t the English. It was that the man’s voice sounded far younger than he had expected.
“Thank you for agreeing to et. I’ll get straight to the point and hand over the item.”
Bilon cut right to the chase. He pulled the Skill Stone from the bag beside him.
The man took the Skill Stone and examined it.
“Thank you. Would it be all right if I use it here?”
“By all ans.”
The man used the Skill Stone imdiately.
A burst of light spread outward, and the Skill Stone scattered into nothing and vanished.
The man stared into empty space for a mont, seemingly checking his Status Window, then nodded.
“I’ve confird the acquisition. Thank you.”
Thanking him was what Bilon wanted to say.
After all, this man was a savior who had already saved humanity once before.
The first Nightmare clearer was most likely soone who was extrely averse to having his identity exposed.
So Bilon had originally planned to simply hand over the Skill Stone without any unnecessary words or questions, thinking that prying would only breed resentnt. But he couldn’t contain the impulse, and asked.
“Do you have any idea when you might attempt Floor 2?”
The man answered as though it were nothing.
“I’m planning to go in first thing tomorrow.”
“…”
“Oh, well, now that I’ve picked up a new skill, I should probably practice with it a bit before going in. So not tomorrow, but it’ll be soon.”
Bilon swallowed hard.
He delivered the one thing he’d been dying to say.
“You are humanity’s hope. Please, I beg you, clear Floor 2.”
The man hesitated for a mont before answering.
“…I’ll do my best. I don’t want to die either.”
With a final, polite bow, the man got out of the car.
Once the man’s figure had completely disappeared into the alley, Bilon started the car.
He gazed out the window, quietly turning the strange encounter over in his mind.
Ellen spoke first.
“…He looked even younger than I expected.”
Bilon nodded.
His build wasn’t particularly large either, and his deanor had been remarkably normal. In every way, he was nothing like anything Bilon had imagined before eting him in person.
Had a young man like that really cleared Nightmare Floor 1? He was so ordinary that it circled back around to extraordinary.
Bilon murmured.
“He said he’d challenge it soon…”
There were still about twenty days left on the Ti Limit.
Why was he rushing this ti, unlike before?
Could it be because of the U.S. failure? Maybe he was trying to make his attempt before more Nightmare clearers died.
If even he failed, what would happen to the world?
They would find out soon enough.
For the first ti in a long while, Bilon felt the urge to seek out every god there was.
Please, save humanity once more. Our savior.
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