Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability Chapter 98: Nightmare, 7th Floor (5)

[Floor 7 of every difficulty has been cleared.]

[The Tower calls new participants.]

I was moved to the Reward Room.

My frozen, shattered body began to heal.

The frost lted away, and the severed upper and lower halves of my body fit themselves back together as if ti were running backward, fusing and regenerating in an instant.

The Demon King rose to his feet.

I spoke, marveling.

‘…You’re pretty impressive, Demon King?’

Even so, I hadn’t expected the floor could be cleared this easily.

The Demon King let out a scoff.

“Such a fuss over so little. I did not use even a speck of my true power.”

Sure thing.

Either way, the Demon King had carried hard.

‘Demon King.’

“…”

‘Anyway, you have to give it back now.’

“Tch.”

He looked thoroughly reluctant to hand my body over so ekly.

Still, he didn’t dig in his heels and refuse.

Soon control of my body returned to .

It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel my body’s senses while the Demon King held the reins, but there was a strange sensation of floating, of being unmoored.

I checked the reward.

A violet skill stone sat before .

Epic grade.

Around Floor 7, it seed epic-grade rewards were starting to appear even outside of hidden clears.

I read the skill description.

[Skill: Hellfire Eruption (Epic)]

Erupts a powerful pillar of hellfire within a 20-ter range. Requires 30 to 150 seconds of ntal concentration to cast. The longer the ntal concentration, the greater the skill’s power and range.

Type: Magic Type

Willpower Cost: 700

Cooldown: 2 minutes

“Oh.”

A magic-type skill.

And nicely enough, it was fire-based.

Thanks to the Zone 3 boss bracelet and my fire-type passive, fire magic was far and away my most efficient option whenever I had a choice. The power got blown way up, after all.

And looking at the description… it’s a charge-type skill, similar to Destruction Ray?

[You have acquired ‘Skill: Hellfire Eruption (Epic).’]

With “hellfire” right there in the na, I had high hopes for its power.

It would surely be weaker than Destruction Ray, but it still ant I’d gained another nuke-type skill.

Maybe because an epic-grade skill had dropped, there were no other rewards, but the skill had co out good, so I was satisfied.

[Difficulty: Nightmare]

[Floor: 8]

[Level: 95]

[Willpower: 5,000/5,000]

[Skills: Destruction Ray (Epic ), Subspace (Epic), Hellfire Eruption (Epic), Sixth Sense (Rare )( 3), Teleportation (Rare ), Rapid Regeneration (Rare ), Scorching Zone (Rare ), Fire-Type Low-Tier Mastery (Rare )…]

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 575,092

Ti Limit: 1 year 20 days 15 hours 4 minutes 16 seconds

Floors Reached: 8

I checked my status window, confird the ti limit had been extended.

Feeling the relief of having cleared yet another hurdle, I let out a sigh.

This Floor 7 clear had been brutal too.

If the Demon King hadn’t stepped in at the end, I really might have failed.

‘…But is it okay to clear it like this?’

It felt like I’d cleared it using cheats.

By the Tower’s own earlier wording, the Demon King was a kind of error.

That was why it had tried to eliminate the Demon King, claiming it would correct the error, wasn’t it?

It seed to have sohow failed because I’d stopped ti.

So why was it staying quiet now, even though I’d flagrantly cleared the floor with the Demon King’s power…

Or could it be that it could no longer interfere?

It was nothing I could figure out by thinking about it, so I dropped the thought.

Whatever, I cleared it, so it’s fine.

All’s well that ends well.

“Anyway, thank you, Demon King.”

– If you’re grateful, then…

“Ugh, I’m exhausted. I should get out and rest now.”

There was plenty I wanted to ask the Demon King about the power he’d shown.

But I was tired.

I’d worked hard, so I was going to rest a bit first…

*

Entering the twenty-first century, no, perhaps for the rest of whatever human history remained.

The number twenty had beco the most symbolic figure of all.

On the twentieth of every year, which the UN had even officially designated the ‘Day of Destiny’, people everywhere prayed with all their hearts. For one man’s success.

[FireAnt: Everybody praying nice and hard?]

[Shane: I’m shaking, I’m shaking. Please, please, one more ti! Person123!]

[Kalguksu: It’s gonna succeed no matter what, so what’s there to be nervous about? I don’t even flinch when the 20th rolls around anymore. If anything it kinda makes laugh lol]

[Emperor: Cut the crap and pray quietly, old man]

[Lexidre: Just believe, you nonbelievers. There is no failure on the path of salvation He walks.]

[Firepower: But isn’t the Tower making no offer this ti? No global notice popping up]

It wasn’t just news dia. Plenty of talk shows got lively around this ti of year too.

“So, Arlo, what do you think will happen with this Nightmare Floor 7?”

The podcast show ‘The Jude Noise’.

The host, Jude, asked the man seated across from him with a smile.

The man was Arlo, appearing as a regular guest for the third ti now. A Doomist who used to insist Person123 would ultimately fail and the world would end.

He had endured every kind of mockery and public ridicule, yet had always held to his pessimistic stance without wavering…

“It’ll succeed.”

Arlo answered as if declaring it.

But that too was a thing of the past. He’d been gradually shifting his stance for a while now, ever since the Nightmare Floor 4 clear.

“Oho, how surprising. So you’ve changed your mind too, Arlo?”

“Don’t tease , Jude. Although I suppose that’s exactly why you’ve called to this seat for the third ti now.”

Jude burst out laughing.

“Correct. My thinking has completely changed now.”

“What changed your mind, Arlo?”

“I recall coming on this show so ti ago and saying sothing like this. That Nightmare is a die with sixty faces, and I didn’t want to keep expecting the die to land on sixty over and over.”

Jude nodded.

“You did say that. I rember.”

“And how many tis has that sixty co up now?”

“Nightmare’s been cleared up to Floor 6 so far, so… I’d say it’s co up five tis.”

“Exactly. Can we still call this coincidence?”

Arlo chuckled and shook his head.

“By now anyone has no choice but to acknowledge it. Person123’s extraordinary nature. That he isn’t so coincidence or stroke of luck, but a singularly special result.

I once said miracles don’t happen many tis over, but that was my mistake. The miracle isn’t that each floor of Nightmare gets cleared, it’s that his very existence has been a miracle for humanity.”

“Your position really has flipped completely, hasn’t it?”

“Isn’t it all being proven by results? Person123 conquers Nightmare year after year, plain for all to see. He’s the only one who can do it. Even Spain’s Alejandro, who drew so much attention by clearing Nightmare at record speed, couldn’t break through the wall of being first.”

Arlo grew more and more impassioned.

“Ever since Person123 set that twentieth-day deadline, this world that used to be utter chaos has been stabilizing to an astonishing degree every single year. Cri rates have plumted, and a great many social problems have been solved.

All of us must be feeling that atmosphere. That even when Nightmare’s ti limit approaches now, the people who hold on to hope far, far outnumber the ones who despair. Isn’t that truly remarkable?”

Of course, Doomists still existed.

There were people who thought Person123 would fail soday, and there were even religions that regarded the Tower as the judgnt of God and worshipped it as a deity.

But compared to the early days when the Tower first appeared, they were a re minority now. Far more people than that now held on to the hope that they would be able to keep on living.

It was all because Person123, with his overwhelming ability and his selfless conduct devoted solely to the peace of the world, was giving people faith.

“It’s truly remarkable. I agree with you completely.”

Jude pointed at the rosary-like bracelet on Arlo’s wrist.

“Now that I think of it, Arlo, this has been on my mind for a while… isn’t that bracelet the emblem of the Person123 Church?”

Jude raised his own wrist with a slightly sheepish smile.

“That’s right. I joined too.”

“Haha, so you’ve gone and beco a devout believer now.”

“Well, it’s not a group with much of a religious flavor. Honestly, I find myself thinking… shouldn’t every mber of humanity join?”

After the Religion of the Heavenly One scandal in Korea, there had been a brief period when religious groups connected to Person123 stumbled, but those had been underground cults through and through.

The Salvation Faith, the root of the Person123 Church, was still actively growing in scale even now. Larger and larger by the day.

“I believe it. That humanity’s miracle will gift us one more year of life once again. This year too, it will surely be so.”

anwhile, Tis Square in New York, USA.

With just fifteen hours left until Nightmare’s twentieth-day deadline, a large crowd had already gathered here as well.

People who’d co out with light steps to pray for success, mbers of the Person123 Church praying in earnest, reporters covering and weaving through them all…

As the crowd swelled with the passing ti, several people suddenly shouted.

“…It’s a success!”

“Floor 7’s been cleared! Whooooo!”

The cries of climbers who’d seen the notice first served as the starting gun.

The crowd packed into the square erupted in a trendous roar. Everyone rejoiced, hugging one another and throwing arms over shoulders.

It was a far earlier clear than the previous floors. So this year people hadn’t even had ti to fret.

[Jeomsu: We get to live another year! I knew it, dammiiiit!]

[Hedgehog: Ahh… thank you for saving humanity again this year.]

[Dayoung: Honestly it feels like a given outco now lol]

[Snowman: That’s what I’ve been saying. You just believe and wait, that’s all.]

[Gugu: Truly one person is holding up the entire world]

That made seven floors.

For Person123, there was no such thing as failure.

With every floor of Nightmare cleared, people’s faith grew stronger and stronger.

But just how long this mont of joy would keep returning year after year…

That was sothing no one could know.

*

– This year too, Person123 has saved humanity. Word cos that Floor 7 of the Nightmare difficulty was cleared around five o’clock this morning…

Kim Seo-a, waking up late in the morning, was startled as she watched the news.

While she’d been asleep, Nightmare Floor 7 had been cleared in the early hours.

Floor 6 last ti had been attempted during dayti and cleared earlier than the floors before it, and this Floor 7 had been an early clear as well.

“Haah…”

So the world isn’t ending this year either.

Feeling her heart pounding, Kim Seo-a let out a sigh of relief.

Click.

The door opened and Kim Seo-hyeon ca out into the living room too.

Kim Seo-a said excitedly,

“Floor 7 got cleared!”

“Yeah, I saw.”

Made it through this year too, Kim Seo-hyeon muttered, glancing at the TV screen.

Then he went to the kitchen, drank so water, and went right back into his room.

The sa flat, unmoved reaction as always.

Kim Seo-a had never once seen Kim Seo-hyeon look happy upon hearing that Nightmare had been cleared.

“…”

Co to think of it, they’d ended up missing it again.

This year, she’d been thinking, Kim Seo-hyeon included and no one left out, the whole family should pray together in the living room for the Nightmare clear.

But sohow, at the very mont Nightmare got cleared, Kim Seo-hyeon was always either out of the house or asleep in the early hours of the morning.

It was surely a coincidence. A coincidence, surely, but…

Kim Seo-a stared fixedly at the door to Kim Seo-hyeon’s room.

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