Chapter 1: Entry

Life on easy mode.

That was my life in a nutshell.

Because I had a superpower.

Not metaphorically. An actual superpower.

“Daddy, Daddy.”

“Hm? Hold on, Seo-hyeon. Daddy’s busy.”

“Why don’t you just freeze it and think? Then the clock won’t run.”

“...? Shh. Go play over there for a bit. Let me finish this game.”

“Nooo! You’re almost out of time! I’m telling you, just freeze it and think!”

When I was little, I once got into serious trouble for pestering my father while he was playing online janggi on the computer.

Until around kindergarten, I had no idea.

I simply assumed everyone could do what I could. I was a child, after all.

My parents dismissed it as the fanciful ramblings of an imaginative kid.

But as I grew older, I came to realize that I was different from everyone else.

Whenever I willed it, the world stopped.

The people before me, the objects around them—everything froze.

Time itself stood still.

Time Stop Ability.

Then again, it wasn’t quite as incredible as it sounded.

It wasn’t the absurdly overpowered ability people usually imagined. I had only been given half of it.

While time was frozen, I couldn’t move either.

All I could do was remain still and think.

Of course, even that was more than enough to coast through life.

“Seo-hyeon, you’re home? Did you get your midterm results?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, I got one question wrong in science.”

“Really? What about the other subjects?”

“I got everything else right.”

“Ha! That’s my boy. Well done!”

Studying was the easiest thing in the world.

For me, it truly was.

Come across something I didn’t understand while studying?

Freeze time and think until I understood it.

Too much to memorize?

Freeze time until I had committed it all to memory.

Slacked off until the exam was right around the corner?

Just freeze and unfreeze time throughout the night, cram everything at the last minute, and be done with it.

A minute—or even a single second—for everyone else could become an hour’s worth of productive thought for me.

And naturally, during exams, I was the only one who never had to worry about a time limit.

Whenever I encountered a difficult question, I simply froze time and thought it through.

That was how I had remained at the top of my class ever since elementary school.

Beyond that, the ability had countless minor uses in everyday life.

It was like the pause function in a video game. When the game was paused, the character couldn’t move, but the player sitting outside the game could still think.

In that sense, it was probably the most accurate comparison.

It would probably be useful in a fight too, wouldn’t it?

Not that I had ever been in one.

I had no interest whatsoever in physical activity, so I had never really used the ability for sports either.

I simply grew up as an otherwise unremarkable model student.

And today was the day of the CSAT.

“Don’t be nervous, all right? Just relax and go in with a clear head.”

“Okay. I’m heading out.”

My parents drove me to the exam site.

I waved goodbye to the two of them, who looked far more nervous than I felt, and walked through the front gate.

Light and easy, just like always.

I took the exam and went home.

“I’m back.”

After dinner, I downloaded the answer key and graded my test.

The result was exactly what I had expected.

A perfect score.

Of course, I had put in the work too.

Even without the pressure of a time limit, I still needed enough actual ability to solve every question if I wanted a perfect score.

I hummed to myself and stretched.

“Seoul National Med, you’re a damn joke.”

Ah, easy peasy.

Did it weigh on my conscience that I was the only one using a cheat while everyone else studied their hearts out?

Well, what could anyone do about it?

Life had never been fair to begin with.

And there was no reason not to use a gift I had been born with.

Anyway, all that remained was to enjoy myself for a while, prepare for the medical school interview, and then I would be set.

My life had been smooth sailing up to that point, and there was every reason to believe it would remain that way.

I was about to open my door and share the good news with my family.

Then, without warning, everything began to shake.

RRRRRUMBLE.

I grabbed the edge of my desk to steady myself.

From outside my room came the panicked voices of my family.

What the hell?

An earthquake?

One this powerful, in Korea?

Before I could think any further, something appeared in the air before my eyes.

[The Tower calls its Climbers.]

[You have received the Tower’s call.]

[Your assigned difficulty is ‘Nightmare.’]

[Easy]

Personnel: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 45 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[Normal]

Personnel: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 45 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[Hard]

Personnel: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 45 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 45 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[If the Time Limit is exceeded, the Tower’s Curse will descend.]

[If the Easy difficulty Time Limit is exceeded, 10% of humanity will perish.]

[If the Normal difficulty Time Limit is exceeded, 20% of humanity will perish.]

[If the Hard difficulty Time Limit is exceeded, 50% of humanity will perish.]

[If the Nightmare difficulty Time Limit is exceeded, 99% of humanity will perish.]

[Will you enter Nightmare difficulty, Floor 1?]

All I could do was stare, trembling, as the messages appeared one after another before my eyes.

November 13, 2025.

The world was turned upside down.

A powerful earthquake struck the entire globe within the span of a few moments.

At the same time, a colossal tower-shaped structure rose from the center of the Pacific Ocean.

A select few received the Tower’s call.

That was how the messages appearing before their eyes described it.

Easy, Normal, Hard, Nightmare.

One hundred thousand people were chosen for each of the four difficulty levels.

Those who received the Tower’s call came to be known as “Climbers.”

Each Climber could enter the difficulty to which they had been assigned.

The black tower had risen in the middle of the Pacific, but it was little more than an impenetrable structure. It had no entrance and no visible means of entering or leaving it.

The Climbers, however, could enter the Tower whenever and wherever they wished.

The adventurous were the first to attempt the climb.

It was soon discovered that clearing a floor added one year to the Time Limit.

The Tower had warned humanity that when the Time Limit expired, the Curse would descend.

Easy meant the death of 10% of humanity.

Normal meant 20%.

Hard meant 50%.

...And Nightmare, the difficulty to which I had been assigned, meant that 99% of humanity would die.

At the time, with less than a year having passed since the Day of Upheaval, it remained nothing more than an unfulfilled warning.

Governments around the world sprang into action.

They had no other choice.

Humanity had been thrust to the brink of extinction without warning.

Every day, simply watching the news was a spectacle in itself.

The Korean government urged Climbers to report themselves voluntarily to the state as soon as possible.

It promised to enact new legislation, establish dedicated facilities and agencies, and spare no effort in providing comprehensive support to those climbing the Tower.

I did not report that I had become a Climber.

Instead, I simply watched the daily progress through the text floating before my eyes.

[Easy]

Personnel: 95,361

Time Limit: 9 years, 237 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 06 seconds

Reached Floor: 10F

[Normal]

Personnel: 94,022

Time Limit: 5 years, 237 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 06 seconds

Reached Floor: 6F

[Hard]

Personnel: 96,081

Time Limit: 2 years, 237 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 06 seconds

Reached Floor: 3F

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 97,910

Time Limit: 237 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 06 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

They said Climbers grew stronger the higher they ascended.

Like characters in a game, they leveled up, learned skills, and gained power beyond ordinary human limits—or so the stories claimed.

Easy difficulty was progressing the fastest.

The enemy on the first floor of Easy was said to be a single Goblin.

Its Climbers had already reached the tenth floor, and the Easy Time Limit had grown to more than nine years.

Normal and Hard had reached the sixth and third floors, respectively.

The only difficulty in which the first floor remained uncleared was Nightmare.

None of that had anything to do with me.

I had absolutely no intention of climbing the Tower.

Why the hell would I?

Once you entered the Tower, you couldn’t leave until you cleared the floor.

In other words, if you failed, you died.

One only had to look at Nightmare’s progress.

Of the roughly two thousand people who had entered so far, not a single one had succeeded.

Every last one of them was dead.

With no survivors, there was no information whatsoever about what waited inside.

Entering was no different from throwing your life away.

Any sane person valued their own life.

That was precisely why Nightmare had far fewer entrants than the other difficulties.

Someone would clear it eventually, though.

There were still more than two hundred days left on the Time Limit, weren’t there?

Clinging to that thought, I focused entirely on my own life.

I enrolled in medical school and went about my college years.

The world was changing at a breakneck pace on one front, but the overwhelming majority of people still carried on with their ordinary lives.

It wasn’t denial.

I was simply someone who had been unlucky.

Someone else would take care of it.

Someone...

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 94,936

Time Limit: 135 days, 1 hour, 6 minutes, 32 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 92,571

Time Limit: 56 days, 21 hours, 18 minutes, 56 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 87,920

Time Limit: 10 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes, 23 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

***

Time passed.

Now, collapse was staring humanity directly in the face.

And astonishingly, no one had succeeded.

─ The Nightmare difficulty Time Limit has now fallen below one week. The United States government, which recently announced that it was considering a direct nuclear strike against the tower in the Pacific...

─ The number of Nightmare-difficulty Climbers who have yet to enter the Tower still exceeds 80,000...

Every day, the news was filled with speculation about whether the world was truly about to end.

Governments across the globe offered every incentive imaginable, urging Nightmare Climbers to challenge the first floor, but their efforts appeared to have little effect.

Korea remained relatively stable, but overseas, riots and violent unrest grew worse with each passing day.

─ Holy shit, is humanity actually going extinct?

─ Technically, it’s not extinction. One percent will survive.

─ No, but what the hell are the Nightmare Climbers even doing?

─ The world is about to end, and more than 80,000 of them still haven’t gone in. Selfish pieces of shit, seriously.

─ Would YOU challenge a difficulty that’s chewed through over ten thousand people without a single clear? lol

─ Are you a Nightmare Climber?

─ Shouldn’t the government track them all down and force them inside?

─ Get real.

─ Unless they report themselves voluntarily, there’s no way to find them if they keep their mouths shut.

That was all anyone talked about in online comment sections.

“The end is nigh! Those without faith shall be cast into hell...!”

Just the day before, I had seen people standing in the streets and shouting through megaphones.

It was the end of days.

Not merely in rhetoric.

The end of the world was genuinely drawing near.

[Nightmare]

Personnel: 77,105

Time Limit: 3 hours, 36 minutes, 7 seconds

Reached Floor: 1F

The Time Limit had entered its final day.

The number of survivors was plummeting.

Even now, it continued to fall in real time.

I understood how they felt.

By this point, they must have believed there was nothing left they could do.

And yet the Reached Floor still had not changed.

More than twenty thousand people had challenged it, and not one had succeeded?

Was this some kind of joke?

Was the floor even possible to clear?

Staring at the numbers before me, all I could do was let out one hollow laugh after another.

“Ha...”

Ninety-nine percent of humanity would be wiped out.

Roughly eight billion people would die.

Not every last human being, no.

But it was more than enough to ensure that the world as we knew it would cease to exist.

Had I never been chosen, at least I wouldn’t have been forced to agonize over this.

Everyone else could do nothing but accept the death that was coming.

But I, at the very least, still had the option of grasping at straws.

“I don’t want to die either, goddammit...”

I didn’t want to die.

And it wouldn’t be a simple death.

If I entered the Tower, who knew what kind of horrifying, agonizing end awaited me?

I wanted to remain where I was and pray that someone—anyone—would succeed within the next three hours.

I wanted to cling to even that one-percent chance of survival.

But what good would that do?

What were the chances that both my family and I would survive against odds that slim?

...A miracle like that wasn’t going to happen.

When the Time Limit runs out, will 99% of humanity really die?

Does that even make sense?

I tried to deny reality.

But I already knew the answer.

Whether it made sense or not was irrelevant.

From the moment the Tower had risen, the world’s common sense had been twisted beyond recognition.

I sat at my desk with my eyes closed for what felt like an eternity.

Then, at last, I opened them and rose to my feet.

I placed the farewell letter I had written in advance inside my desk drawer and set an alarm on my phone.

I changed my clothes and stepped out of my room.

My father, my mother, and my younger sibling were all gathered in the living room.

“...Where are you going?”

“I just want to get some fresh air.”

“All right. Don’t stay out too late.”

My mother gave me a faint smile.

My sibling had been sniffling for some time.

On the television screen, the time [3:15:09] was displayed in enormous digits, counting down as a news anchor spoke frantically.

My father spoke as though leaving me with one final reminder.

“Come back soon. Let’s at least have one last dinner together as a family.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

But I probably wouldn’t be coming back.

They were perceptive people.

They didn’t say anything unnecessary.

I had already written everything in the farewell letter.

If I failed to return, the alarm would go off at the appointed time, and they would find the letter and read it.

At a time like this, did any of it really matter?

Still, they deserved to know, at the very least, why their son had never come home.

I left the house and walked through the empty, deserted streets.

I slipped into an alleyway and stared straight ahead.

[Will you enter Nightmare difficulty, Floor 1?]

Exactly one year had passed since that day.

The message appeared the moment I resolved to enter.

From this point onward, I was walking to my death.

And yet there was no other choice.

“...Enter, you son of a bitch.”

The instant the word left my lips, the world before my eyes shifted.