Chapter 43 - Floor 2 Is Too Suspicious (4)

At first, I thought I had simply misunderstood.

But after visiting the other “nobles’” mansions, I reached the same conclusion I had started with.

The nobles here... were rotten to the core.

To sum up their requests, they wanted me to kidnap someone, beat someone up, or fight and defeat their private soldiers.

Not one of them offered the sort of refined commission you might expect from a “noble.”

“This is weird... Way too weird...”

There were more than a few things wrong with this city.

First, despite enjoying absurd abundance thanks to God’s grace, the people of the Bronze class wore threadbare clothes and lived in dilapidated houses.

The people here were unbelievably generous. Ask for fruit, and they gave you fruit. Ask for a sword, and they gave you a sword.

It was a true age of peace and prosperity. I was sure you could probably sleep with your front gate wide open without anything happening.

And yet... there were beggars in the streets.

With resources of every kind overflowing, there were still beggars sleeping on the street and begging for food.

On top of that, the nobles were blatantly obnoxious.

It almost felt as though they were taunting us: ‘Hey, Players and residents can hit each other, you know? Go on, hit someone. Give it a try!’

Exploited residents and wicked, lazy nobles. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all contrived.

And second.

This city... encouraged wrongdoing.

From what I heard, some Players had already profited by kidnapping citizens and delivering them to the nobles.

Of course, the citizens weren’t idiots. They fought back in their own ways, and apparently there had been quite a few cases of them subduing Players... but that only worked up to a point.

If Players with powerful traits decided to start committing atrocities in earnest, the citizens had no way to stop them.

“This makes no sense.”

Again, this tower was something that bastard called God had created to judge humanity.

Because humans were evil, selfish, lazy, had lost their faith... I was sure there were plenty of reasons.

And yet the tower was now encouraging us to grow stronger at a rapid pace by doing evil.

Of course, there might be another judgment after clearing Floor 2, just as there had been after the tutorial. There was a chance that those who climbed the tower honestly and maintained a decent attitude would receive their rightful rewards.

But... what if they didn’t?

What if judgment only came after we had climbed all sixty-six floors?

What if the lunatics who enjoyed terrorizing civilians in the real world were precisely the people best suited to growing stronger fastest in the tower?

What if God’s stance was, ‘Sure, bad people get stronger faster, but that’s part of the trial too. If humans were good, you’d all cheer each other on and help one another climb!’?

Humanity would have no way to escape extinction.

Finally, there was the layout of the square.

The alleys leading into it were extremely narrow. With three people blocking the way, there was simply no room to pass.

It was designed so that even those who had sold their consciences for Gold tokens would ultimately be held up by other thugs blocking their path.

There’s a saying about crabs in a jar. Put a bunch of crabs in a jar, and whenever one tries to escape, the others grab it and drag it back down. In the end, not a single crab can get out.

“Hmm...”

Actually... as hopeless as the situation seemed, there was a solution.

You just had to sweet-talk a couple of residents into removing the guys blocking the way. Violence between residents and Players was allowed, after all.

But would ordinary residents really want to help someone who had obtained a Gold token by sacrificing their neighbors?

The situation was one tangle after another.

At times like this, the right thing to do was tackle the problem right in front of me.

“You’re the person who showed me around earlier, right?”

“Oh... Yes, that’s right.”

“Come with me.”

First... I decided to return to Baron Licht, who had given me my first task.

“Hmm? Where is Miss Emily? Why have you returned alone?”

Baron Licht looked up at me from the book he was reading as he leisurely enjoyed a cup of coffee in the drawing room.

Without answering, I closed the distance in one swift stride and swung my sword at him, scabbard and all.

“Ho ho... Surely you realize that is futile... Gah!”

He waved a hand, creating something like a barrier in midair, but my scabbard smashed through it and struck him in the head. He passed out before he could finish his sentence.

“... The bastard could actually fight.”

The presence I had felt for that brief instant was pretty terrifying. If we had fought head-on, I would almost certainly have regressed. I must have managed to finish him in one blow because he had let his guard down.

“... Let’s see.”

I rummaged through the unconscious man’s clothes. All sorts of perverted items that no normal grown man would carry around came spilling out, but those weren’t what interested me.

“... Found them.”

At last, I found two gleaming Platinum tokens at his waist and a flat, gold-colored box tucked against his chest.

“... Are you finished?”

A man cautiously entered the room, watching me warily. He was the resident who had shown me around when I first came to these streets.

“Is this what you were looking for?”

“... Yes, that’s it. A token-generating box... that only residents can use.”

He accepted the flat golden box I held out and gave a small nod.

“With this... I can create as many gold tokens as I want.”

He pulled a silver box of the same design from his clothes and shoved it into the unconscious Baron Licht’s.

“Then... as promised...”

“Yes. I’ll offer proper tasks. Not ones that satisfy someone’s perverted personal desires... but ones that will genuinely help climbers grow. This madness should have stopped long ago.”

This was the solution I had come up with.

Replace the nobles with other people and steer them toward offering more reasonable tasks.

When he had shown me around earlier, this resident had at least treated me kindly and seemed like a reasonable person.

If he took Baron Licht’s place, people would no longer have to hurt residents to obtain gold tokens.

“Ugh... Uuugh...”

“For now, think about what tasks you’ll offer from here on out. I’m going to dump this guy outside.”

“Of course.”

I grabbed Baron Licht by the feet and dragged him out of the drawing room.

“Guh... Urrgh...”

His head scraped along the hallway floor, and he struggled to open his eyes, apparently coming to at last.

“Hey. You should’ve tried being a decent person. Kidnapping? Seriously, kidnapping?”

If I replaced all the other nobles the same way, people would be able to grow stronger without committing any more evil deeds.

Since God had supposedly made this tower out of disappointment in humanity... simply preventing further wrongdoing could count as a sufficient achievement.

If I dismantled and fixed, piece by piece, this tower’s structure that pushed ordinary people into committing sins, surely I would accomplish something.

Now I needed to think about the guys entrenched in the square’s entrances, the hidden rewards... and the beggars.

I felt I needed to investigate why the beggars were living as beggars.

“Heh... Hehehe...”

My mind had been racing as I made plans, but Baron Licht’s laughter brought it to a halt.

“What are you laughing at?”

“You aren’t the first person to think of this.”

“...?”

His manner of speaking had changed.

It was no longer aristocratic... but polite and respectful.

“Do you know the saying that the position makes the person? Do you think I was a sex-crazed son of a bitch from the beginning? It just... happens naturally. Because that is God’s will.”

“...”

“Look behind you.”

I slowly turned my head... and saw that the once-friendly resident had stepped out of the drawing room.

A vicious smile played on his lips.

“Baron Licht may have let his guard down... but I won’t. I’ve just seen what you’re capable of, after all.”

Dozens of bolts of light floated behind his head, and a thick barrier enveloped his body.

“... This is just ridiculous.”

Was getting stabbed in the back somehow written into my DNA?

I let out a deep sigh and charged at the thing that had once been a resident.

I put up a fight as best I could... but perfectly countering this thing called “magic,” which I had never seen before in my life, was impossible to begin with.

[You have taken damage.]

[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 2.]

* * *

“This is so annoying.”

The situation was impossibly complicated. There was so much hidden behind the scenes.

For that matter, the very idea that obtaining tokens would reconfigure a person to match them was bullshit.

“It’s just fucking bullshit.”

I was... trying to come up with the best answer.

But right now, everything just felt hopeless.

What was the right answer, anyway?

Was I supposed to overcome this situation while remaining virtuous? What the hell did they want me to do?

I wasn’t a genius. I wasn’t a politician. I certainly wasn’t a hero.

I was just... an ordinary person with the ability to regress.

All these suspicious, seemingly meaningful elements kept popping up, and it felt as though they were prodding me: ‘Let’s see you solve this one too.’

Regress dozens, hundreds of times here to find the right answer.

Then regress hundreds more times on the next floor to find its answer too.

Just imagining it made my head throb. I could feel the stress eating away at my mind.

Set a goal... steadily move forward, one step at a time...

I was tired of all that now.

“... I’m going to do whatever the hell I feel like.”

For the first time since coming to the tower,

I decided to let my emotions guide me instead of reason.