Chapter 69 - The Regressor Accepts Fate (5)

Father!

My mind was foggy.

Father!

A heavy fog, as though I had just woken from a long sleep. The kind that spread from deep inside my brain.

“Father!”

“H-huh?”

“Father! Are you all right?”

My eldest daughter-in-law was gently tapping my shoulder.

“Oh, thank goodness... Honey!”

She pressed a hand to her chest in relief, then brought my eldest son into the hospital room. My other sons soon followed, filling the empty space like links in a string of sausages.

“Dad...”

My sons gathered around the bed, their faces worried.

“What are those looks for? It’s not as if I only got sick yesterday.”

Seeing my boys’ faces seemed to clear my head a little. My memories, muddied as though ink had been poured into them, were slowly returning too.

Right. This was the VVVIP room in the hospital where I had spent the past two years. My health had been steadily declining, but I hadn’t realized it had gotten bad enough to scramble my memories like this.

“But Dad, she said you looked distressed in your sleep...”

“I had a dream. About when I was struggling through Floor 3. Why? Shall I tell you about it?”

“Oh, Dad! We’ve heard that story enough to know it by heart!”

My eldest son chuckled, lightening the gloomy mood a little.

“Yes, even those terrible times are fond memories now that they’re behind me...”

Seventy years had passed since I cleared the tower. Humanity had regained its peace.

The god who had clamored for humanity’s extinction suffered a crushing defeat at my hands and withdrew, vowing there would be a next time. I became the hero who saved humanity.

For seventy years now, I had enjoyed wealth and fame as the most famous person in the world. Physically, I was incomparably healthier than other old people. The problem was my mind.

“I think it’s time for me to go.”

Was it because I had regressed too many times in the tower? Over the past few years, my memories had frequently become confused, and I often passed out without warning.

“Son.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I... intend to leave now.”

My body was healthy.

That was the problem. Only my body was healthy.

I was afraid of what I might do once my mind was no longer sound. I couldn’t let an old man with dementia wield the godlike power dormant within my body.

“... Dad.”

My eldest son bowed his head. For years, he had kept persuading me not to die, but he seemed to sense that my resolve was firm this time.

“I’ve been... truly, truly happy. I’ve always felt lucky to have you as my father.”

“Me too, Dad!”

“Father...!”

My family burst into tears, one after another.

I chuckled gently and indulged each of their protests before softly clearing my throat.

“Now, now. All of you should go. I think I need some time alone.”

“... Thank you for everything, Dad.”

Wiping away their tears, my family left the room one by one.

After watching them leave for a moment, I drew aside the curtain beside my bed and looked down through the window.

[Grampa Junho! You hafta get well, no matter weather!]

[You are the pride of our nation, South Korea.]

[The entire nation is rooting for you to get back on your feet!]

Bouquets and banners covered one wall of the hospital. Even at a glance, there were hundreds of them.

“It’s ‘no matter what,’ not ‘no matter weather,’ you little rascal...”

Seeing them made me certain.

My struggles in the tower, which sought to destroy our humanity, had been worthwhile.

What I had done was not wrong.

“... You did well, Junho.”

After praising myself, I slowly dispersed the mana circling my heart.

Little by little, life drained from my body.

It was a quiet, peaceful death.

[You have taken damage.]

[Regressing to the moment you first entered Floor 66.]

“Aaaaaah!!!”

Breathing raggedly, I ran my hands over my body.

What I felt wasn’t an ageless body harboring unprecedented power, but the soft body of a man in his twenties.

Where was I? This wasn’t my hospital room. What was I doing?

“... You’re awake?”

Dok Suhui stood beside me, looking down at me as though I were pathetic.

The sight of her face slowly brought my memories back.

Right. I was making my way through Floor 3. I had opened the stone door on the right and reached a room with the same design as the one on the left.

The last thing I remembered was a mysterious voice suddenly telling us, ‘A warrior must have courage. Face your fear,’ before I lost consciousness.

Had the tower shown me the scene I feared most? The terror I had just felt was far too vivid.

“It looks like whoever overcomes their ‘fear’ first gets to wake the other person up. Aren’t you grateful I woke you?”

“... Thank you.”

I thanked Dok Suhui as I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck.

“What kind of vision did you see to leave you sweating like that?”

“... The worst ending I can imagine.”

Clearing the tower wasn’t my only goal.

If I didn’t find a way to get rid of this Regression skill someday... I might end up trapped in an eternal cycle even after clearing the tower. If that happened, my mind would slowly shatter.

My thanks to Dok Suhui were anything but empty words. She had woken me at just the right moment. I was afraid of what I might do once the realization that I would never be allowed to rest destroyed my mind.

What a madman with immense power could do was literally limitless. And I wasn’t sure my mind would be intact when I returned to reality after watching a vision of myself committing those insane acts.

“What about you, Suhui? What kind of vision did you see?”

She was smiling lightly, but a single tear was rolling down her cheek.

“... Me?”

She wiped the tear away with a grin.

“I saw what drives me to keep moving forward.”

“...”

“Well, we cleared it. That’s what matters, right? I think it’s been about two hours. Shall we wipe off the sweat and keep going?”

Her lips were smiling, but I could sense a faint sadness.

“... I’m done wiping myself off. Let’s go.”

I got to my feet without pressing her further.

* * *

Overcoming our fear must have been all there was to the right-hand path. There were no more visions or forks in the road.

“Oh, you’re here?”

We followed the path straight ahead and found Kang Chan and Ahn Gyeongjun waiting, leaning against a wall.

“You cleared it faster than I expected.”

“Yes. These things made of earth—dolls? Machines?—attacked us from every direction... but the spirit possessing me swept them all away.”

“... That spirit was quite strong.”

Boss Chan nodded at Ahn Gyeongjun’s words.

If even Boss Chan acknowledged him, that tribesman really must be strong.

“M-more importantly, this place looked really suspicious, so we were investigating.”

Now that he mentioned it, Kang Chan and Ahn Gyeongjun were waiting at the entrance to a room rather than going inside.

“... What is this place?”

A quick look from a distance revealed a sort of cavern.

Torches flickered precariously on the walls as though they might go out, and structures resembling wooden supports were embedded in the rock.

To top it off, large lumps of metal lay scattered across the floor.

“It looks... like a mine?”

Yes, a mine was the first thing that came to mind. I thought the underground mine tunnels I’d seen in books had looked like this.

“B-but the ceiling is too high for that...”

Ahn Gyeongjun had a point. I’d heard that mine ceilings were usually so low you had to stoop, but the ceiling here was high. At least twenty meters.

“And this metal isn’t ordinary metal.”

He held out a silvery lump of metal to me.

“Would you try hitting it?”

“... Hit it?”

“Yes. Gently.”

“...”

I cautiously tapped the lump with my fist.

“Ugh...!”

I had barely tapped it, but a heavy impact struck my fist. It felt as though the metal had hit me back.

Any harder, and I might have regressed.

“What the...”

“I’ve tested it a few times, and I don’t think this is ordinary metal.”

Apparently, after the possessing spirit had carried him through the left-hand room in no time, Ahn Gyeongjun had conducted various experiments while waiting for us. As a result, he had learned quite a bit about the metal’s properties.

“This metal... reflects any impact above a certain threshold.”

“... It reflects the impact?”

Anyone with a science background would have jumped out of their skin at that property. It reflected impacts?

“Yes, though I’ll need to investigate further to learn the details...”

A mine with rare metal scattered all over it. Was that supposed to tell us something?

I didn’t know what to make of it.

“For now... shall we go inside?”

Thinking alone wouldn’t solve anything. In the end, you had to stick your head into the tiger’s jaws to find out what the problem was.

I took the lead again, while Boss Chan brought up the rear.

“... Hmm.”

There had to be something here. It wouldn’t be strange for something to jump out at us, like the wolf that had hidden on the ceiling.

Yet even as I walked with my senses heightened to the limit, I detected nothing.

I gulped involuntarily. The silence felt like the calm before a storm.

* * *

Had we been walking for about ten minutes?

“... The lumps here are especially big.”

I could see several lumps of metal far larger than those elsewhere. Was this a sign of something? I kept moving without letting my guard down.

Just as we finished passing the mysterious lumps of metal...

“?!”

With my senses on high alert, I noticed immediately.

Behind the party. Something strange was happening.

“Watch out...!”

I tried to warn them, but it was already too late.

The huge lumps of metal we had just passed began rising into the air. The irregularly shaped chunks converged, taking on a definite form.

They moved so quickly I could barely follow the assembly process.

CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

In a literal instant, the metal had assembled into a giant with two legs and two arms.

“Oh, shi—!”

In the blink of an eye, it had us from behind.

A Word from the Author (Afterword)

Thank you, as always, for reading.

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