Shin Su-jin and Kang Ju-hyeok stared in bewildernt at the string of ssages appearing before their eyes.
The Fallen? What on earth…?
Then, without warning, black smoke began rising from the man’s corpse.
“Get back!”
Kang Ju-hyeok, who had been standing close, scrambled backward.
Crack, crack, crack…
The man’s skin turned deathly pale, and a single horn sprouted from his forehead. The transformation happened in the blink of an eye.
Grrraaah…
With a drawn-out, guttural moan, the man rose to his feet. The whites of his eyes had vanished, leaving them entirely black.
Apart from having all four limbs intact, there was nothing human left about him.
“A, a monster…!”
“Aaaaahh!”
The onlookers scread and scattered.
The man jerked his head around in insect-like twitches, scanning his surroundings, then lunged at the crowd.
Thwack!
Shin Su-jin seized the man’s arm.
His thrashing was far beyond the strength of an ordinary human.
She wrenched his arm back and slamd him to the ground, pinning him as she shouted.
“Hey! Snap out of it!”
“SHRAAAAHH…!”
All the man did was screech and flail.
Communication seed entirely impossible.
Shin Su-jin kept him pinned, brow furrowed, and spoke.
“Get soone to bring climber-grade restraints over here.”
“Yes, ma’am, but… will they hold?”
“He’s weaker than level 10. It’ll be fine.”
She tried to make sense of the situation.
The ssage had clearly stated that deceased individuals would be revived as Fallen.
Did that an all 40,000-plus people had turned into monsters like this…?
While Kang Ju-hyeok was frantically making calls, a transmission crackled over the radio.
─ Terrorist incident reported inside Seoul Arts Center, Seocho-gu. Multiple casualties suspected. Requesting ergency support from nearby Tower Monitoring Division personnel…
Both their expressions hardened further.
A terrorist attack. There was no way it was unrelated to what was happening right now. Sothing had gone wrong over there too.
Seoul Arts Center happened to be right nearby.
Shin Su-jin clenched her jaw, wrestled with herself for a mont, then brought her fist down.
Crunch!
The man’s head caved in.
Killed instantly, the man went still.
“Handle the situation here. I’m heading over there.”
“Yes, ma’am…! Be careful!”
Shin Su-jin didn’t even bother with a car. She took off running toward Seoul Arts Center at incredible speed.
She arrived at the building shortly after and approached the police officers who had their guns trained on the entrance.
“Stay back! It’s dangerous!”
“Section Chief Shin Su-jin, Tower Monitoring Division, Tower Climbing Special Agency. What’s the situation inside?”
The officers stood down once she flashed her ID.
Just then, soone staggered out of the entrance, bleeding. Their face was white with terror.
“M-monster… there’s a monster inside…”
“Officer Park! Get this person out of here, now!”
One of the officers hurried off with the injured person.
The police were on edge as well. A senior officer briefed Shin Su-jin.
“The thing is… we haven’t been able to fully assess the situation either. A monster appeared inside during a performance, and it seems a lot of people are still trapped. We received orders to hold position and not enter, but…”
Shin Su-jin nodded.
“I’ll go in. You should all pull back further from the entrance and stand by.”
“What? It’s too dangerous! We need to wait for backup…!”
Shin Su-jin walked right past the officers and through the entrance.
*
The location always changed whenever I went to pick up magic stones.
Honestly, it wasn’t as if the deal was so top-secret that we needed to go that far, but there was nothing wrong with being careful.
“Thank you.”
Today, we t near one of the exits at Gyodae Station.
The foreign man handed over a bag stuffed with magic stones as always, took the bag of Supre Magic Stones from in return, and left.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and started walking.
I’d sell them at the magic stone exchange, then maybe take a stroll through the city before heading ho.
Ah… co to think of it, isn’t it about ti?
I checked the Nightmare ti limit.
[Nightmare]
Personnel: 230,901
Ti Limit: 1 year 57 seconds
Floors Reached: 4F
“One minute left.”
Once the ti limit hit exactly one year, the first-wave climbers who hadn’t entered the Tower would start dying.
Not that watching it happen would let do anything about it.
I stood still and watched until the ti limit reached one year.
[Nightmare]
Personnel: 230,982
Ti Limit: 1 year 1 second
Floors Reached: 4F
The mont the ti limit hit exactly one year.
[3 years have been exceeded.]
[A total of 43,456 climbers who did not enter the Tower will die.]
The ssages appeared.
…Over 40,000 people are going to die?
On a global scale, it might not seem like many, but that was tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of people, gone in an instant.
“Tower, you piece of shit.”
What the hell do you get out of doing this?
I was muttering curses, a bitter taste in my mouth, when…
[Climbers who died by the Tower’s Curse will be reanimated as ‘The Fallen’.]
[There is a 90% chance of a Stage 1 Fallen appearing.]
[There is a 9% chance of a Stage 2 Fallen appearing.]
[There is a 0.9% chance of a Stage 3 Fallen appearing.]
[There is a 0.09% chance of a Stage 4 Fallen appearing.]
[There is a 0.01% chance of a Stage 5 Fallen appearing.]
Another string of ssages appeared.
…What? What is this?
“The Fallen?”
I couldn’t make sense of it, but I could tell imdiately that sothing serious was unfolding.
I opened the Communication Channel.
[Ecstasy: yo what is this? did everyone see the ssages?]
[Ghost Blade: it says they’re revived as Fallen?]
[Gabriel: holy shit, the dead people turned into monsters]
[Kingdom: monsters? what are you talking about?]
[Bell Chi: the climbers who just died turned into monsters with horns!! fuck, i gotta run so can’t answer questions!]
The Communication Channel was in chaos.
I skimd through the posts and got a rough picture of the situation.
So the dead climbers… turned into monsters?
Being revived as Fallen ans becoming a monster?
‘What the hell.’
The Tower was clearly pulling so new bullshit.
I looked around at the peaceful streets, a stark contrast to the pandemonium in the Communication Channel, and decided I should head ho for now.
I went down to the station and was waiting for the subway when my phone started vibrating like crazy in my pocket.
– [Ergency Alert] Unidentified creatures appearing nationwide. All citizens are advised to refrain from going outside and evacuate to a safe location imdiately.
– [Eunpyeong-gu] Creature spotted near Yeonsinnae Station. Do not approach under any circumstances…
– [Yongin City] Creature spotted inside Everland. All visitors, please evacuate the premises imdiately…
– [Busan City] Creature spotted in the middle of Busan Bridge…
Ergency alerts flooded in one after another.
What the hell is all this…
I called my family.
Fortunately, my father had the day off from work today, and my sister had no classes, so everyone was at ho.
“Hello? Yeah, you’re all at ho, right? The alerts… yes, yes. I’m sowhere safe too, so don’t worry.”
Even after I hung up, the ergency alerts kept pouring in.
I stopped when I saw one of them.
– [Seocho-gu] Creature spotted inside Seoul Arts Center. Do not approach under any circumstances…
…Seoul Arts Center is right nearby.
‘Should I go?’
The deliberation was brief.
I ca back out of the station and flagged down a taxi.
“Seoul Arts Center, please.”
It was right there, and just looking the other way would have weighed on my conscience.
And I felt the need to see for myself what this “Fallen” thing actually was.
I arrived in no ti.
As I approached the Seoul Arts Center building, I spotted police cars and officers stationed at the entrance.
Wee-oo, wee-oo…
An ambulance blew past and screeched to a halt beside the police cars.
It doesn’t look like things are over… yet.
The police had their guns aid at the entrance.
I looked around, then called out to Diul.
‘Diul.’
I slipped past the officers under Concealnt and went through the entrance.
My expression hardened. A vicious stench of blood was wafting from deeper inside.
*
Shin Su-jin moved through the corridor past the entrance, scanning her surroundings tensely.
The building’s interior was silent, and a sharp, tallic tang of blood stung her nostrils.
Sob, sob, sob…
And a faint sound of weeping that had been audible for a while now.
She entered the opera hall and flinched at the sight that filled her vision.
A few lights flickered precariously. In the darkness of the theater, bright red blood and bodies were strewn everywhere.
Grrrr…
Shin Su-jin spotted a monster shambling between the rows of seats.
It looked similar to the man who had turned earlier.
The difference was that this one had three horns on its forehead.
Sob… sob, sob…
The weeping ca again.
This ti, Shin Su-jin looked toward the stage.
Among the bodies of the perforrs, another monster sat curled up with its head buried in its knees, crying.
That one had five horns.
Just looking at it sent a chill crawling over her skin.
Shin Su-jin readied herself for a fight.
But neither of the two monsters reacted to her presence.
She observed them silently for a mont, then instead of engaging, she chose a different course of action.
She muffled her footsteps and approached the signs of life she could sense scattered among the audience seats.
“Ngh, ngh…”
Beneath a row of seats near the entrance, a man and a woman crouched with their arms over their heads, hiding.
They were paralyzed with fear. Shin Su-jin whispered to them.
“I’m here to get you out. It’s okay.”
The man, tears and snot streaming down his face, shook his head.
“W-w-we tried to run and they all died… that monster…”
Shin Su-jin checked on the two monsters again and cald them down.
“It’s okay. We need to move now, while the monsters are still.”
She couldn’t just leave these people here. She quietly led the two of them toward the exit.
The monsters still showed no reaction, and they made it out of the theater safely.
“Go down this hallway and out of the building. There are police outside.”
“O-okay… oh god…”
The man and woman, still trembling with fear, linked arms and headed out.
Shin Su-jin went back inside the theater.
Beyond the couple, more people were still hiding among the seats.
“Quietly, co this way.”
She evacuated them one by one.
The escape had been going relatively smoothly.
“Aagh…!”
Soone going up the stairs stumbled and fell with a loud clatter.
Shin Su-jin helped them up and whipped around to check the monster.
The three-horned monster that had been wandering between the seats turned its head toward them.
SHRIEEK…!
“…Run!”
The monster launched itself with a screech.
Shin Su-jin blocked its attack with both arms and was flung into a wall.
The remaining survivors broke from their hiding spots with screams and fled.
She picked herself up. Her arms throbbed as if they were about to snap.
Before she could even collect herself, the monster was charging again.
CRASH!
Its strength and speed were staggering.
At minimum, its physical capabilities exceeded level 30.
Shin Su-jin activated her Aura Blade skill.
She dodged the monster’s attacks by a hair’s breadth, waited for an opening, then drove a clean strike at its heart.
Boom!
The monster’s chest burst open.
Under normal circumstances it would have been a killing blow.
But the monster acted as if nothing had happened and counterattacked imdiately.
Unprepared for the retaliation, Shin Su-jin took a fist to her side and went flying.
“Gakh…!”
Shin Su-jin coughed up blood.
A dizzying pain tore through her; broken ribs, most likely.
The monster gave her no reprieve and lunged at her again.
“…!”
Sothing else leaped in from the side, snatching the monster out of midair.
A massive, jet-black four-legged beast.
…Another monster had appeared from nowhere, and it had the three-horned creature clamped in its jaws, grinding it between its teeth.
Shin Su-jin watched the scene in stunned silence.
Crunch! Crack, crack! Ptooey!
The tiger-like beast chewed the three-horned monster to a pulp and spat it out.
Mangled and crushed into a heap of flesh, the three-horned monster appeared to be dead.
Shin Su-jin fought through the pain and hauled herself to her feet.
But the Black Tiger had killed the three-horned monster in an instant and now simply sat still, haunches planted on the floor.
…It’s not attacking?
Confused, Shin Su-jin checked her surroundings first.
Thankfully, it seed everyone had gotten out; no one else remained in the theater. But…
Sob, sob, sob…
The wretched sound of weeping continued.
Shin Su-jin felt a chill run through her as she turned toward the stage.
The three-horned monster was dead, but one more remained. The monster that was still curled up and crying through all of this chaos.
Goosebumps prickle across her skin and won’t stop.
She could simply tell. That thing was far, far stronger than the three-horned monster.
What do I do?
Everyone had escaped, but she couldn’t just leave the monsters here.
Then, suddenly, a voice reached her.
“I’ll handle it, so please get out.”
Shin Su-jin looked around in surprise.
But there was still no one else in sight, only the monsters.
And yet, there was sothing oddly familiar about that voice.
She realized who it belonged to.
“Person123…?”
Then could this monster be…?
Shin Su-jin looked at the Black Tiger sitting docilely.
It all clicked into place. She understood now who the master of the Black Tiger was, the creature that hadn’t attacked her and had killed the three-horned monster instead.
Once again, she had been saved by him.
‘A summoning skill… or sothing like it?’
How could anyone command a monster like that?
Shin Su-jin was still reeling with confusion, but she decided to follow his instructions for now.
Person123 was here, and she would be no help in a fight against that remaining monster. Those facts, at least, she understood clearly.
Stages 1 through 5 of the Fallen. And the horns on their foreheads.
If she had to guess, the number of horns indicated the stage.
If so, that weeping monster was a Stage 5 Fallen, the highest rank.
“…Be careful.”
Shin Su-jin murmured the words softly to the space around her, then hurried out of the theater.
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