Chapter 229 - Hatred (2)

[Please select a skill card.]

But I had no choice but to stop my arm. The moment I reached out to snatch a card, fingers far smaller than mine threaded themselves through my own and caught them.

"You mustn't do that, Gongja."

"Pardon?"

"That wouldn't be any fun."

Ja Sujeong let out a breath.

"After provoking me this far, you wouldn't spoil things by being so unimpressive at the very end, would you?"

A brief tingle ran down my back. Her fingers entwined with mine felt like breath given form. A warm, cool, mistlike sensation ate away at my hand.

"... What do you mean?"

"Hehe."

Conversely, her breathing seemed to resemble fingers. Still holding my hand, she drew closer, and with every whisper, her fingerlike breath softly nibbled at my ear, over and over.

"You held up the very first card you obtained and demanded your reward from me... But look. It's written quite plainly on that very card."

TAP. TAP.

Ja Sujeong touched the card in my hand with her delicate fingernail. At the vibration from the Tower Master's nail, the golden card shivered as though infected with static electricity.

+

[I Want to Be Like You]

Rank: S+

Effect: Activates automatically when an enemy kills you. Copies one of the skills of the enemy who killed you and makes it your own. You cannot copy an opponent you have already copied once. The skill to be copied is determined at random.

※However, you die!

+

"Look, Gongja."

The breath that had become fingers brushed sharply against my eardrum.

"It's clearly written, isn't it? Here... No, not there. Here. The very last part. It explicitly says, [The skill to be copied is determined at random]."

Ja Sujeong giggled. She looked like a girl playing a nasty prank.

"Gongja, you told me to hand over a skill in accordance with [the rules established by the Tower]."

Perhaps this was the purest innocence the person called Ja Sujeong could display.

"Would you follow the rules too, Gongja?"

SNAP.

A snap of her fingers rang out.

At once, the golden cards scattered in a sudden flurry, like fireflies startled by fireworks, darting among the sparks.

"..."

"At random."

Ja Sujeong pressed her body against my arm and whispered.

"I don't mind you taking a piece of my flesh, but please decide which part to take [at random], in accordance with the Tower's fair and impartial laws."

I raised my head to the night sky. Nine golden fireflies wheeled about ceaselessly. With their constellation shattered, each card became a shooting star, trailing a long comet's tail as it cut across the sky.

"You've had it good all this time, haven't you? Ever since meeting the Sword Emperor. He looked at everything from behind and told you which skill to choose. All you had to do was wiggle a finger, as comfortably as picking an ice cream flavor."

"..."

"But every glorious game of bullshit luck must come to an end."

I looked into her purple eyes. Her purple eyes looked back at me.

Perhaps no mirror was as transparent as her eyes. All I saw was the surface of those purple eyes; beyond it stretched an endless succession of reflected inner eyes. A mirror reflected in a mirror, another mirror forming within that mirror, and within the newly formed mirror, another mirror... Purple mirrors...

"Now try leaving it to your own luck, Gongja."

Before I knew it, my gaze was fixed. Once I truly looked into Ja Sujeong's eyes, turning my head anywhere else became impossible. It felt like being caught in a cleverly laid trap. My eyes were reflected in her purple eyes, and my eyes reflected in her purple eyes were reflected in my own...

'Ah.'

I struggled to pull myself together.

'Get a grip.'

If I stayed like this, I felt I would forget even how to speak and become a statue that did nothing but stare into Ja Sujeong's eyes for hours, dozens of hours, hundreds of hours.

I took a breath.

"Understood."

Then I slowly nodded.

"As you say, I'll try to draw what I want under those conditions."

"Ahaha!"

"But let's set a rule."

"What would that be?"

"[I will never look at the backs of the cards.] Unless you turn them over yourself and show me, I won't look at the backs myself."

"Yes, well. That goes without saying, but how commendable of you."

"However."

I looked at Ja Sujeong. Enhancing my eyesight with aura, I looked at her alone.

"Please don't treat grabbing a card as immediately selecting it."

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"I'd like you to allow me time to look at the cards, touch them, and handle them a little. Oh, I won't ever look at the backs with my own eyes anyway. If I turn a card over and see its description, you can just cancel the skill. I won't mind."

"Hmm..."

Ja Sujeong smiled coquettishly.

"I'm curious what you're planning to do. Very well, Gongja. I can wait as long as you like for your choice. If you wish, I can even use [Glacier Dragon's Breath] to stop time in this world right now."

"There's no need for that consideration."

"All right. Go ahead and try!"

First, I collected all nine golden cards. They zipped around like the golden ball in a certain sport from a very famous fantasy novel, but give it up, little ones. To someone who'd honed his aura like me, you were nothing more than fireflies.

"Whew."

I took a deep breath. My hand drew cards from the stack one by one, very carefully.

Then...

"..."

I looked at Ja Sujeong, seated opposite me. With only the stack of cards between us, we exchanged looks at close range.

"...?"

No. This card wasn't the skill I wanted. I made my judgment immediately and set the first card down.

"Oh?"

Viscountess Ja Sujeong laughed.

"Are you trying to identify the cards by watching my expression?"

Her laughter mingled disbelief with mockery.

"Are you playing poker, Gongja? I'm not someone whose expressions can be read. All you can glean from reading my face is praise for perfect beauty, astonishment at noble grace, and infinite joy at my very existence."

I looked at Ja Sujeong.

"Viscountess."

"Yes?"

"Doesn't anyone ever tell you to cut the bullshit?"

"My retainers usually do. Aren't they terribly cruel? There's no head of a house who treats, loves, and cherishes their retainers as well as I do."

Even while Ja Sujeong spouted her bullshit, I calmly, carefully set aside the cards one by one.

"..."

Not this card either. Next.

Not this one either. Next.

Next, next, next...

"...?"

Ja Sujeong noticed something strange only when the nine cards had dwindled to three.

"Gongja. You..."

Perhaps I wasn't merely reading her expression and guessing the cards. Perhaps I had a clear method for carefully distinguishing them. That suspicion must have finally occurred to the Tower Master.

"What are you doing? How are you identifying the cards?"

"Who knows?"

I looked at Ja Sujeong.

"Maybe I'm coasting on another overpowered skill."

"You don't have an X-ray vision skill. Even if you did, seeing through skill cards would be impossible. They're magic manifested in a truly special material. How in the world...?"

As Ja Sujeong furrowed her brow, I discarded another card. The last two.

I looked at her.

"..."

"Some interesting cards are left."

I was still looking only at the fronts of the cards. Their fronts were colored gold and engraved with an unidentifiable design. That design was, in fact, the subject of heated debate among hunters. What on earth was it supposed to depict?

The design went like this. First, a polyhedron—possibly a die, possibly something else—floated all by itself in the very center. Two serpents wound around it. Finally, leaves and flowers from some unknown plant brightly adorned the edges.

Hunters had argued about it countless times.

「Why do skill cards have this design engraved on them?」

「The polyhedron signifies the Holy Grail. The two serpents represent Satan. In other words, the Tower is telling us that devils surround the Holy Grail!」

「Then what are the leaves and flowers?」

「Does it mean devils are interested in environmental activism?」

「Bullshit comes in, fucking nonsense goes out. Nice trade.」

But no hunter had reached a clear answer. The most widely accepted guess was that, although no one knew, there might be a clue on the hundredth floor. Even eleven years later.

"Heh."

An incredulous chuckle suddenly escaped me. Viscountess Ja Sujeong tilted her head.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing. I just remembered the stupid things people in our Tower did. This design here, engraved on the cards. Hunters went around spouting all kinds of ridiculous nonsense about it as though it were true."

But...

"This is just your house's crest."

Ja Sujeong blinked.

"Yes. And?"

"Pwahahaha!"

Here's the story. In the kingdom, [serpents] symbolize [magic] and [magicians]. That's because serpents are believed to have inherited dragons' blood, and magic, too, was developed by dragons. As a miracle originating from dragons, it naturally takes the form of a [serpent].

Thus, either a house's founder was a magician, or its founder had killed a magician. In either case, the house's crest invariably included a serpent.

A distant ancestor of Viscountess Ja Sujeong had reportedly slain a fairly famous magician. The corpse of the magician who'd croaked like that became part of a noble house's crest.

The archmage had lived in an enormous forest called the Crystal Forest. That was why a few leaves and bunches of flowers decorated the serpent: [This magician croaked in a forest].

Viscountess Ja Sujeong's ancestor swallowed up every last bit of the territory the archmage had ruled. The house was therefore named Crystal, after the forest. The unidentified polyhedron depicted at the center of the crest was a crystal.

In short:

[This house's ancestor tore apart and killed a magician who lived in a forest, and was granted a noble title bearing the name Crystal in recognition of that meritorious deed].

That was what the design engraved on the front of the cards meant. That was all. The end.

"Viscountess, you're seriously nuts. Why would you slap your house's crest on the front of the cards?"

"I don't know why you're suddenly calling me nuts. Obviously, it's because I made the Tower. And I'm a noble of the kingdom. I signed my own work. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Hundreds of thousands of priests in the outside world made a whole song and dance about this, calling it God's will, a prophecy from the Lord, and engaging in every kind of pointless bullshit..."

"Since I'm also a god, wouldn't my will be God's will?"

Not a single person I met wasn't a lunatic.

Anyway, I looked at Ja Sujeong.

"Hmm, not this card either. Eliminated."

"..."

I discarded one of the last two cards. Ja Sujeong furrowed her brow.

"Do you know what that card was?"

"Yes. An extraordinarily good skill."

"Tell me."

Ja Sujeong demanded proof. I decided to oblige her gladly.

"[One Loved by Dice]."

"..."

"Its rank is no less than SSS. The effect is simple, too."

The description of this skill was only one line. No, just a single term.

+

[One Loved by Dice]

Rank: SSS

Heavenly luck.

+

Heavenly luck.

"In short, it's a skill that [makes you lucky]. Forget Golden Dragon's Eyes and everything else—this is actually the most broken skill of all. You get luckier? Game over. No matter how difficult the quest you're given or how baffling the stage you enter, you've got bullshit luck on your side."

That was why I'd kept it among the final two cards.

"I thought long and hard about it."

"—... How?"

"I really agonized over whether to choose this card or that one. Maybe, Manager Ja Sujeong... Ah, forget it. Screw that. If you hadn't provoked me, I'd have gone all in on [One Loved by Dice], no question."

There was an old saying that had long circulated in the Tower:

A glorious game when it's skill. A shitty game when it's luck.

That was because a hunter's caliber depended on which skills they obtained. Viewed in that light, [One Loved by Dice] was the ultimate skill.

"But I won't choose this skill."

I looked at Ja Sujeong.

"I'll choose something else."

From beginning to end, throughout the entire process of sorting and selecting the cards, I had looked only at Ja Sujeong.

"..."

More precisely, I had looked into her purple eyes.

"... Aha."

At last...

"I see, I see."

Ja Sujeong realized my trick and laughed.

"Gongja."

"Yes?"

"You looked into my eyes."

Exactly.

"That's right."

It was a simple method. I looked at Ja Sujeong.

"All I did was look at what was reflected in your purple eyes."

Ja Sujeong closed her lips. She was smiling as though delighted. Silent and smiling, she simply kept looking at me without moving a muscle.

"Can you still see it clearly?"

I nodded.

"Yes."

Your eyes are so transparent. Even though purple ought to be the poorest color for reflecting anything, Ja Sujeong's eyes were like mirrors reflecting endlessly.

"Would you read it for me?"

"..."

"Take a slightly closer look."

We were already close enough. I raised the one remaining card and looked into her eyes. My aura-enhanced vision was trapped in her eyes—in a maze of mirrors.

"Read it."

Viscountess Ja Sujeong whispered.

"..."

The disparity between sight and sound.

Steadying my breathing amid senses that refused to mesh, I read what would become my gold.

"Earthbone Dragon's Skull."

"Yes."

"Rank. SSS+."

"That's right. I measured it."

"Effect. Stores the memories of the living. The stored memories are placed in a [box]. This box can only be destroyed by the owner of this skill..."

"Keep going."

Viscountess Ja Sujeong's voice drew closer. Perhaps it was merely an illusion. With my vision enhanced to an abnormal degree, all I could see now were purple letters reflected in the curve of a mirror.

"As long as the box remains intact, you can repeatedly produce the body of a person who inherits the same memories."

"In short, as long as you keep the original memories in the box, you can make bodies to hold them as many times as you like—hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times. But not simultaneously. One body for one set of memories. Only once that body is destroyed can you make the next."

"..."

"What are you doing, Gongja? I told you to keep reading."

"... The body can roam the world, accumulate new memories, and [update] the box with those experiences. Provided, of course, that you permit it."

"Think of that game with the famous Italian plumbers."

Viscountess Ja Sujeong giggled. Her laughter was closer than before.

"When you die in the game, you come back, don't you? You die, but you don't die. Your lives are [coins]. The Earthbone Dragon's box containing your memories is, so to speak, a [save point]. Even if you lose a life and die, you merely return to your save point. Of course, the life in which you died won't be saved... You have to return alive to save again at the save point."

"..."

"Because of this," Viscountess Ja Sujeong said, "countless people died."

She told the story contained in that skill.

"How many people wish their lives had a save point? Surely as many as those who wish for regression. The Earthbone Dragon. Those who learned of her existence risked their lives to meet her somehow, crossing deserts, swimming great rivers, and passing through jungles teeming with monsters."

A story that the mere word [skill] could never express.

"Many died along the way, but..."

"..."

"178 succeeded in reaching the Earthbone Dragon's nest."

And those 178 humans obtained [save points]. With no need to worry about death or fear a permanent end, they succeeded in turning their lives into [coins].

"The worst military force was born."

The army of 178 swept across the world.

"They carried flags planted on their backs to show where they had belonged in their lifetimes. Thus, they were called the Soldiers of Faded Banners."

Soldiers flying flags whose days had already waned.

"The Rock Guard, hailed as the greatest archer a thousand years ago. The seventeenth master of the Spiral Gate, who commanded the Mountain Snailfolk's strongest assassination force. The master thief who turned the entire royal capital into a sea of fire before leisurely escaping. The great river pirate who seized half the kingdom's waterways six hundred years ago and commanded dozens of warships. The promising prodigy expected to become the kingdom's greatest magician thirteen hundred years ago."

Great figures who had each dominated an era in the kingdom's long history. Like my Master, who had conquered Murim's final age.

"They formed an [army that could not die]."

178 warriors of that caliber had gathered.

"They say that whenever people saw that force approaching from beyond the desert, dozens of flags fluttering, everyone collapsed in terror, children cried, and soldiers lost their morale and fled in defeat."

"..."

"The Soldiers of Faded Banners were, in that sense, nothing less than a natural disaster made of humans."

With my vision still trapped in the mirror maze, I parted my lips.

"What became of them in the end?"

Viscountess Ja Sujeong chuckled.

"They became my private army."

"..."

"That immediately explains why the kingdom's nobles never declare war between houses against me, even though they consider me a son of a bitch. They'd get their asses kicked."

And then...

[Selection complete.]

The card in my hand melted away in brilliant light.

[Copying skill.]

At the same time, the maze of mirrors unraveled. The purple mirrors no longer had a card to reflect. The mirrors became eyes again, what I was looking at became Ja Sujeong's eyes, and when I realized it, I was face-to-face with her.

"Death King."

Right before my nose.

"What you have obtained is that powerful. It contains countless deaths and has left countless wounds. What do you intend to do with that card, Gongja?"

Close enough for her breath to reach me. The perfect distance for a venomous snake to sink its fangs into a person's throat.

"I'm curious. Very curious. However impressive it may be, in the end it's only the skill of a Dragon Emperor and an army that I already defeated and reduced to spoils of war."

The noble descended from a slayer of serpents was smiling with her eyes.

"How do you intend to defeat me with that?"

I smiled too.

"Just get ready to bawl your eyes out, Tower Master."

There was no room for doubt. I had drawn the strongest card.