Chapter 107: Suspicion

“...Therefore, it is our assessment that clearing Floor 7 is all but impossible.”

Having reached the end of his presentation, Max concluded with those words.

The officials from the Climbing Bureau and the government nodded, their expressions grave.

In truth, no detailed analysis was necessary.

Anyone who had read the information Person123 posted about Floor 7 would have come away with the same thought:

Ah, this one is... a little too much.

Liam, Director of the Climbing Bureau, glanced toward Taylor, who sat off to one side.

Her expression was equally rigid.

The United States no longer had any reason to continue recklessly challenging Nightmare.

The Nightmare project had originally begun with a grand purpose: ensuring humanity’s survival and placing America at the forefront of the Tower’s conquest...

But with the appearance of Person123, that purpose had long since changed.

The first clear of any Nightmare floor was something only Person123 could accomplish.

Every nation that continued climbing Nightmare now did so for one reason alone: its own national interests.

The truth was that, from Floor 4 onward, the Climbing Bureau had no longer been able to wholeheartedly support Taylor’s repeated attempts.

Even so, she had ultimately managed to climb as far as Floor 6...

But no matter how one looked at it, the chances of successfully clearing Floor 7 were far too low.

Person123 had even gone so far as to single out the United States and China by name and leave them a warning.

Was there truly any reason to keep pushing forward?

The scales of risk and reward had now tipped entirely to one side.

Perhaps even China would refrain from attempting Floor 7.

If the United States challenged it alone and ended up losing Taylor...

The mere thought was horrifying.

Knowing when to stop—and allowing both sides to stop here—would that not be the wisest choice?

“Taylor, what do you think?”

Every gaze in the room turned toward her.

Taylor spoke.

“...I don’t believe we need to reach a decision immediately.”

After the meeting ended, Max walked alongside Taylor and asked,

“Are you still planning to go through with it?”

Max already knew the answer.

He knew what kind of conviction she carried.

And, just as he had expected, she replied,

“I have to try.”

“...Taylor, I don’t want to say this either, but this is genuinely insane.”

“Has it ever been anything else?”

“You understand it yourself, don’t you? Floor 7 can’t even be compared to the others. Why else would Person123 have gone out of his way to leave a warning?”

The body’s Left-Right Reversal gimmick.

It was not something one could practice beforehand.

Not unless it was possible to interchange the neural networks of the brain’s left and right hemispheres.

Unfortunately, humanity possessed no such technology.

No matter how thoroughly someone understood the phenomenon in theory, could they truly adapt to that sensory chaos on the spot?

How Person123 had managed it remained a mystery.

But then again, he had always been the exception.

Taylor shook her head.

“I don’t intend to rush into it. But even so... I will never give up on climbing Nightmare entirely.”

After parting ways with Max, Taylor entered Floor 5.

Before setting out for Zone 5 to hunt, she stopped by Drake’s Restaurant.

“Huh? You’re alone today.”

Drake, the owner, regarded her with a quiet, welcoming look when he saw her.

Taylor nodded in greeting.

As a Nightmare climber, she did not operate openly on Floor 5.

In fact, she was not even an official member of the Security Corps.

Still, because she frequently dealt with the Corps, she occasionally spent time with its members.

Most of those meetings took place here, so she had become well acquainted with the owner.

“Do you have any Horned Deer steak left?”

“Perfect timing. As it happens, there’s exactly one cut remaining.”

Horned Deer steak was Drake’s Restaurant’s signature dish.

It was delicious enough that even eating it while under stress could make some of that tension melt away.

Taylor chose a corner seat where she would not attract attention and waited for her meal.

But then...

Her gaze suddenly fixed on the entrance.

A man wearing a hat had entered the restaurant.

It was a familiar face.

The man noticed her as well, and a flicker of surprise crossed his expression.

He approached and took the seat opposite her.

Sounding genuinely pleased to see her, he said,

“What a coincidence, meeting you here.”

“...Hello.”

Ye Tianwei.

It was true that Drake’s Restaurant was practically Security Corps territory, but climbers from the Black Star Society visited often enough as well.

Even so, it was unusual for the head of the Black Star Society to appear here alone.

Ye Tianwei smiled.

“Please don’t misunderstand. This is purely a coincidence. It’s not as though I knew where you were and came looking for you.”

“I haven’t misunderstood anything.”

“That’s a relief. The Horned Deer steak here is such a delicacy that I occasionally sneak in to eat it myself.”

Taylor saw no reason to mention that she had just ordered the final serving.

“Do you have business with me?”

“Ah, of course. I was simply curious about which way you were leaning.”

Ye Tianwei nodded before asking,

“What are you going to do about Floor 7?”

“...”

“To be honest, reading that post made me a little happy. It was a warning, certainly, but the fact that Person123 singled us out by name almost made it feel as though he was concerned for our safety.”

Ye Tianwei continued speaking with the easy familiarity of an old friend.

Taylor did not respond, but she could not deny his words.

Because, in truth, she had felt something similar.

She had continued throwing herself at Nightmare, driven by the single desire to be of even the smallest help to Person123.

Behind that desire lay nothing but her conviction that she was acting for the sake of humanity.

But Taylor was still only human.

It felt as though the person she had pursued with everything she possessed had finally glanced back over his shoulder at her.

The thought left her unsettled.

And yet, somehow, it also made her a little happy.

“For the record, I intend to attempt it.”

“...Don’t you think you’ll fail?”

“That isn’t what matters, is it? The moment we stop climbing, our role is over anyway.”

Ye Tianwei smiled.

“Exactly. I always thought you and I were the same kind of person. Perhaps I never needed to ask in the first place.”

Taylor did not care for the way Ye Tianwei’s gaze seemed to pierce straight through to her innermost thoughts.

“Of course, I’ll need to prepare far more thoroughly than I did for the previous floors.”

“Good luck.”

Taylor replied curtly.

At that moment, the Horned Deer steak she had ordered arrived.

“Here is your Horned Deer steak.”

Ye Tianwei spoke up.

“I’ll have the Horned Deer steak as well, please.”

“Hm? I’m afraid we’ve just run out. That was the final serving.”

“Oh.”

Ye Tianwei turned back toward Taylor, looking visibly flustered.

Watching him, Taylor let out a quiet snort of laughter and cut into her steak.

***

After posting the information about Floor 7, my everyday life continued without anything particularly unusual happening.

I simply went about the rest of the year diligently until the time came to challenge Floor 8.

...Though, to be fair, I spent most of that time hunting in Zone 5.

Crunch!

A shard of ice pierced clean through the Bone Dinosaur’s skull.

The one currently controlling my body was the Demon King.

Whenever I handed my body over to him, all the Demon King ever did was reinforce the Ice Castle he had built in Zone 4 or sit absentmindedly upon his throne.

Recently, however, he had begun hunting monsters for me from time to time.

I had managed to talk him into it.

I told him I would allow him to defeat the Zone 5 boss himself.

I also argued that we should hurry, kill the boss, and expand the zone.

After all, just as he had been buried in Zone 4, there was no telling what else might be hidden elsewhere.

The Demon King seemed at least somewhat interested, so he agreed.

He roamed the Mist Forest, hunting monsters.

The Demon King’s power placed a considerable burden on my body.

But against insignificant monsters like these, there was no need for him to exert enough power for that burden to become a problem.

After all, merely flicking out several tiny shards of ice in succession was enough to kill them instantly.

As I watched the Demon King hunt, a question suddenly occurred to me.

‘Demon King, is there any chance I could learn magic too?’

Real magic—not the Tower’s power.

If I could use it, then I would also be able to cast magic repeatedly without any cooldown.

The Demon King gave a contemptuous snort.

“Spare me your nonsense.”

‘Come on, don’t be like that. Teach me a little.’

“I have no intention of teaching you. Even if I did, you would be incapable of using it. The very nature of your soul is hopelessly unsuited to magic.”

‘...The nature of my soul?’

The Demon King explained.

The people of the world from which he came and the people of this world were fundamentally different in the very composition of their souls and bodies.

In other words, Earthlings were simply not built to wield magic at the most basic level of their existence.

‘But you can use it perfectly well while you’re inside my body.’

“And what happens whenever I do?”

‘Oh.’

“Part of the problem is that your pitiful body cannot withstand my power. But it is also because your constitution is fundamentally incompatible with magic.”

So that was the reason.

Then why was there no difficulty in using magic-type skills?

But just as the Demon King had explained before, it was likely because skills were merely imitations of magic rather than the genuine article.

In any case, learning that I could not use magic was disappointing.

The Demon King’s allotted time in control of my body eventually came to an end.

Once I regained control, I continued hunting for a while longer before leaving the Tower.

“It’s already one o’clock.”

I pulled something out of my Subspace.

It was a bag filled with Lowest-grade and Low-grade Magic Stones.

They were the stones I had received from Bilon’s courier a few days earlier.

Whenever I received a shipment of Magic Stones, I never took them directly to the Exchange.

Instead, I always brought them home first and sold them later...

The reason I went to that trouble was to keep up appearances in front of my family.

As far as my family knew, I earned Magic Stones by clearing Easy Floor 1.

If they never saw me regularly leaving the house to sell them, it would have appeared suspicious.

“I’m heading out for a while.”

“All right. Going to the Exchange?”

“Yeah.”

Just as I was about to step through the front door with a bag stuffed full of Magic Stones, I heard another door open.

My sister came rushing out.

“I’m coming too!”

“What?”

“I want to see the Magic Stone Exchange at least once. I can come along, right?”

Without waiting for my answer, she told me to give her ten minutes and disappeared back into her room.

...Where had that come from all of a sudden?

***

She knew it made no sense.

Even so, Kim Seo-a had recently found herself entertaining a strange suspicion.

Her older brother, Kim Seo-hyeon.

Why was it that every single year, at the exact moment a Nightmare floor was cleared, he was nowhere to be found?

When Floor 1 had been cleared, he had been out of the house.

Floor 2 had been cleared in the dead of night, while everyone else was asleep.

When Floors 3 and 4 were cleared, he had been away on a trip...

And Floor 6 had once again been cleared during the day, precisely when Kim Seo-hyeon happened to be out.

This time, Floor 7 had also been cleared in the early hours of the morning.

Whenever a Nightmare floor was cleared, her brother reacted with nothing but complete indifference.

And on top of everything else, Person123 was a Korean man.

Could all of it truly be nothing more than coincidence?

...Well, of course it was a coincidence.

She knew that.

What was the alternative?

Was she seriously suggesting that her brother might be Person123?

Her brother?

That man?

She would sooner believe someone who told her that the Earth was flat.

Person123 was a savior who risked his own life on the front lines of Nightmare for the sake of all humanity.

A hero who had willingly accepted a Penalty in order to save even the smallest group of people, refusing to abandon anyone.

As his own sister, someone who shared his blood, Kim Seo-a knew Kim Seo-hyeon well.

She knew that he could not have been further removed from such a person.

He was cautious, hated drawing attention to himself, and would never willingly approach anything even remotely dangerous...

Rationally, she knew the idea was absurd.

She knew it had to be nothing more than coincidence.

Yet the thought continued to nag at her.

She wanted to verify it somehow, if only to put the suspicion to rest.

And so, when Kim Seo-hyeon set out for the Exchange to sell his Magic Stones, she followed him.

They drove over and arrived at the Magic Stone Exchange.

After a clerk checked Kim Seo-hyeon’s identification, he handed over the bag of Magic Stones.

The clerk emptied the stones out and measured their weight.

Standing beside Kim Seo-hyeon, Kim Seo-a carefully watched the entire process.

She had researched it online beforehand.

The Lowest-grade and Low-grade Magic Stones dropped on Easy difficulty were pale blue.

Mid-grade and High-grade stones obtained from Normal and Hard difficulty were a deeper shade of blue.

Only the Supreme Magic Stones obtained from Nightmare difficulty possessed a distinctive golden color.

Every stone Kim Seo-hyeon had brought with him was pale blue.

“That comes to 11.91 kilograms of Lowest-grade Magic Stones and 9.7 kilograms of Low-grade Magic Stones.”

The clerk identified them as Lowest-grade and Low-grade stones as well.

If Kim Seo-hyeon were a Nightmare climber, that would have been impossible.

Nightmare difficulty was supposed to drop only Supreme Magic Stones.

After receiving the payment by bank transfer, they left the Exchange.

“Did you get a good enough look?”

“Yeah. It was pretty interesting.”

“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden...?”

Kim Seo-a shook her head, finding her own behaviour ridiculous.

...What kind of absurd suspicion had she been entertaining?

Just as she had thought, there was no possible way her brother could be Person123.

***

After completing the Magic Stone transaction, we left the Exchange.

Since we were already out, we decided to have lunch at a nearby restaurant.

As I watched my sister devour beef as though there would be no tomorrow, a thought crossed my mind.

‘Is she actually suspicious of me?’

She had never shown the slightest interest before.

Then, out of nowhere, she had insisted on accompanying me to watch me sell Magic Stones.

Had she wanted to confirm that I was really selling them the way I claimed?

“Is it good?”

“It’s delicious.”

Or perhaps not.

Maybe it really had been nothing more than a sudden whim.

Either way, she had made me nervous for no reason.

I picked at my own meat while scrolling through my phone.

As I idly skimmed through several news articles—

– Anomalous activity detected within Pyongyang as surveillance of the North intensifies...

“...?”

One article caught my attention.

It was breaking news concerning North Korea.

Something about it felt wrong.

I searched for more information.

– This is an urgent bulletin. The unusual movements currently being observed within the North Korean military are believed to indicate an impending transfer of power. Our government...

...What is this?

Was it saying that a coup had broken out in North Korea?