Chapter 143: Zone 10 Boss (5)

I watched the Hero’s life unfold for a long time.

I didn’t interfere with her dream until the very end.

I simply didn’t want to.

Maybe it was because the despair that had flowed into me through the Hero’s memories had been so overwhelming.

Or maybe it was because I couldn’t help seeing the me from Floor 10 in her.

Either way, it wasn’t exactly boring for me either.

Compared to having to charge the Warp Device every ten minutes in Floor 8’s desert, this was more than bearable.

The bigger problem was stopping the Demon King whenever he started throwing a fit.

“Thank you. For waiting so long.”

It seemed the Hero’s long dream had finally come to an end.

The slightly aged Hero returned to her original appearance.

“Damn woman. Looks like you’ve finally come to your senses.”

The Demon King grumbled.

The Hero approached me and spoke.

“I remember everything now. Just as you said, my world was destroyed because of the Tower.”

“Yeah. I saw it all through your memories.”

I watched the Hero’s expression as I continued.

“And right now, you’ve become a boss monster. Outside...”

“What exactly is this world?”

“It’s the effect of an item called Pankera’s Crown. It creates a Mental World, and it can pull in someone else too as long as I’m in direct physical contact with them.”

The Hero nodded as though she more or less understood.

“I see. So even after death, I was still being toyed with like a clown by the Tower.”

“...”

After laughing hollowly for a moment, the Hero asked,

“What should I do, Kim Seo-hyeon?”

I explained my current situation to her in detail.

The Contract I had made with the Tower.

That if I failed to fulfill it, I would be permanently barred from climbing Nightmare from then on.

And that I had to defeat her in order to fulfill the Contract and bring this to an end.

After hearing everything, the Hero asked,

“So all you need do is return to reality and kill me?”

“...That’s right.”

“Then do so, Kim Seo-hyeon. If I can be of help to you, I shall be glad.”

The Hero spoke calmly.

“Rather, I would ask this of you myself. End this cursed life of mine. I failed to protect anything, and yet thanks to you, I was even allowed to dream a happiness far beyond what I deserved... I have no regrets left.”

I fell into thought for a moment.

Then I made the Hero a proposal.

“Hero, could you teach me some swordsmanship?”

“...Swordsmanship?”

“Yes. It would help me a lot.”

Before I went back to reality and killed the Hero.

Since I had the chance, I figured I might as well gain whatever I could from her first.

As for the Demon King’s magic, I had asked him to teach me before and gotten chewed out for it because, apparently, my soul itself was fundamentally incompatible with it...

More precisely, it seemed the Demon King converted my Willpower into mana and used that to cast his magic, but I wasn’t capable of handling that mana itself.

Martial arts, however, were different.

They were simply a matter of learning how to use the body.

Up until now, I had only raised my combat proficiency by fighting however I could.

I had never properly learned swordsmanship or hand-to-hand combat.

“If it will aid you, then gladly.”

The Hero accepted without a moment’s hesitation.

“But a great deal of time seems to have passed. Is reality outside truly all right?”

“It’s fine. Time in reality is stopped.”

I didn’t bother explaining my ability in detail, but the Hero seemed to assume it was simply another effect of the item and asked no further questions.

“Damn it, how much longer are you planning to stay in here?”

The Demon King looked ready to throw another fit, so I calmed him down.

“We should do what we can, Demon King. It’d be a waste to just leave now.”

I left the Demon King to amuse himself by building some ice kingdom or whatever.

And so I began receiving instruction from the Hero.

Her swordsmanship lessons started with the absolute basics.

“When gripping a sword, place your fingers like this. Otherwise, you waste strength.”

How to grip a sword.

The proper posture for swinging.

Foot placement.

Shifting the body’s center of gravity.

And so on.

After I learned the basics, we immediately moved on to sparring.

This was a world where death, injury, and physical exhaustion did not exist.

We could fight to the death as though it were real combat, and it wouldn’t matter.

The Hero matched her physical ability exactly to mine when we sparred...

Of course, I still wasn’t even remotely a match for her.

Every sword strike I threw with all my strength, she casually tapped aside or dodged.

Our strength and speed were supposedly identical, yet before I could even understand what had happened, the Hero’s blade would already have severed my neck.

Slash!

...Apparently, her teaching style was on the harsher side, because she showed little mercy.

Every time we sparred, my head and limbs went flying spectacularly through the air.

Not that it mattered, since I couldn’t die.

“Hero, how would you rate my talent?”

“Average.”

“...Are your standards perhaps unusually high?”

“Not particularly. I was speaking by ordinary standards.”

Brutally honest.

But that was fine.

I had all the time in the world.

There was no point worrying about talent.

I just had to see how far I could go.

Clang! Clang! Cla-clang!

We continued sparring.

At first, I could feel myself improving little by little.

Then, at some point, I hit a wall.

It wasn’t particularly strange.

Human growth was never a smooth incline.

It came in steps.

And there was no way I would get discouraged just because my progress slowed down a little.

If my mental fortitude were that pathetic, I would have died back on Floor 1 and Earth would already have been destroyed.

I kept throwing myself at the Hero as though slamming my body into an immovable wall.

Again.

And again.

“Your center of gravity was too far to the left just now. That’s why you failed to respond.”

“When I stepped forward with my left foot, it was nothing more than a feint. Watch the shoulders first.”

“If you want to redirect the opponent’s blade while your swords are locked, blindly forcing it with strength won’t work. You have to use the weight of their sword against them.”

Every time I died, another piece of knowledge was hammered into me.

But understanding something and making it instinctive were completely different matters.

I figured if I kept at it long enough, eventually it would work.

So I died.

And died again.

By the time I had probably died several thousand times—

there came one of those moments.

The kind where something you had wondered whether practice could ever accomplish suddenly, inexplicably, just clicked.

As though a blocked meridian had finally opened, I exchanged more than ten moves with the Hero for the first time.

Slash!

And, as always, her sword still took my head off...

But it was the first time I could clearly feel that my skill had made a major leap.

Not just one step upward.

It felt more like I had crossed into an entirely new realm.

“...Excellent.”

For the first time, the Hero smiled.

How much time had passed by then?

I had no idea.

Now that I was enjoying it more and more, I forgot even the passage of time and continued sparring.

But the heart—the thing that drives a person forward—is not infinite.

Eventually, I hit another plateau.

This one lasted much longer.

Swinging a sword started to feel tedious.

The thought that I had already done enough kept creeping into my mind.

I wanted to leave.

From that point on, all I needed was patience.

The moment I left, it was over.

I would never get another opportunity to learn like this.

Until my pure swordsmanship reached at least roughly the Hero’s level...

I would not stop.

Of course, it wasn’t as though we literally spent every waking moment sparring without rest.

Sometimes I played around by manipulating the Mental World.

Sometimes I simply talked with the Hero about this and that.

My ability to manipulate the Mental World had improved considerably compared to before as well...

“This is the world I live in. Earth.”

I unfolded the scenery of an Earth city and showed it to the Hero.

By now, the Hero—

Seri—

and I had dropped the formalities and were speaking casually.

Considering how much time had passed, we had grown that close.

“It’s a wonderful world. So bright.”

Seri asked,

“Seo-hyeon, you said you’ve cleared Nightmare up to Floor 10, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m nothing but a loser myself, so I don’t know if I have any right to advise you... but please, don’t walk the same path I did.”

Yeah.

I’d have to work at it.

That was part of why I had stayed here for so long in the first place.

Whoooooosh!

The scenery of Earth distorted, and the surroundings transformed into a snowy field.

“That bastard.”

I looked up at the Demon King rampaging through the sky.

Time to swing the sword again.

We continued our endless sparring.

Sometimes we transformed the surrounding terrain into harsh environments.

Sometimes we switched from swords to other weapons.

Sometimes we abandoned weapons entirely and fought barehanded.

There was no reason to insist on only using a sword.

Thinking.

Experimenting.

Endlessly considering how to improve.

After a long period of perseverance, moments of enlightenment came several more times.

Each time, my skill improved dramatically.

And little by little, I began to see more clearly just how wide the gap between Seri and me truly was.

Once I reached a certain level, Seri stopped holding back entirely and always fought me at full strength.

We crossed blades more times than I could count.

I died more times than I could count.

How much time had passed?

If someone asked whether it was really worth investing this much time simply to improve my raw martial ability instead of obtaining some Legendary-grade skill or something...

Maybe it wasn’t.

But I hadn’t lost anything either.

Not a single second had passed in reality.

And by this point, I could vaguely feel it.

I was almost there.

There really wasn’t much left.

And finally—

“Ah.”

I suddenly came back to myself.

The result after more than [N O V E L I G H T] a hundred fierce exchanges.

As always, Seri’s sword was aimed at my neck.

But—

my sword was aimed at hers as well.

Seri smiled and lowered her blade.

“...There’s nothing more you can learn from me. This is the end.”

I could feel it myself.

It wasn’t as though my swordsmanship had reached some absolute peak where there was nowhere left to go...

But from here on, I could continue training on my own.

It was time to say goodbye.

I had reached the goal I had set.

And I couldn’t remain in this world forever.

“Finally done?”

The Demon King appeared at some point, looking bored as he stared at us as though telling us to hurry up and leave already.

I looked at Seri for a moment before speaking.

“Demon King, would it really be impossible? For Seri to attach herself to my soul and coexist with me like you do...”

Before the Demon King could say anything, Seri spoke first.

“Don’t, Seo-hyeon.”

“No, but—”

“You said this only ends if you kill me. We don’t know how the Tower would react if you tried something like that.”

She was right.

The Contract with the Tower required me to ‘slay’ all of the Zone Bosses within the set time.

If I kept her soul intact somehow, there was no telling how the Tower would judge it.

“And...”

Seri continued.

“I want to rest now.”

I sighed and nodded.

“All right, then...”

Seri turned toward the Demon King.

“More importantly, Seo-hyeon.”

“...Hm?”

“I know why you’re involved with that man because you explained it to me, but even so, don’t trust him too much. He is a being who has accumulated a karmic burden of slaughter so immense it cannot even be measured.”

As a Hero, Seri truly hated the Demon King.

During all the endless time we had spent here, she hadn’t once spoken to him first.

Apparently, as she had just said, it was because the Demon King was an extraordinarily evil being...

The Demon King merely snorted as though the whole thing were beneath him.

I simply nodded.

I gave Seri my final farewell.

“Thank you. Really. For everything.”

It had been exhausting, tedious, and painful.

But it had also been rewarding.

And fun.

I thought long and hard about what to say...

Then I held out my hand and offered her one final promise.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

To bring down the Tower.

Not merely to prevent my own world from being destroyed, but also for the sake of worlds like Seri’s that had already been destroyed by it.

All of those meanings were contained in those few words.

Seri smiled and took my hand.

“Goodbye, Seo-hyeon.”

It was time to leave the Mental World.

Seri said,

“The moment we return to reality, cut off my head. Once we’re outside, the Tower may influence my mind again.”

It was a reasonable concern.

Perhaps the reason Seri had been able to regain her memories and sanity inside the Mental World was because I had stopped time outside, temporarily freeing her from the Tower’s influence.

So the moment we returned, I had to kill her.

Even then, there was no way to know what would happen.

I would simply have to find out.

I took a deep breath.

And finally—

left the Mental World.

‘...!’

There I was, my hand still reaching toward Seri’s face.

Time in reality remained frozen at that exact instant.

I released it.

I regained my balance and settled into position.

Immediately, I summoned a sword of light and raised it with my one remaining arm.

But...

For just a moment, I hesitated.

A teacher and a friend with whom I had spent an unimaginably long time in the Mental World.

I knew I had to kill her immediately.

And yet I faltered.

Then my eyes met Seri’s.

At the sight of that hollow gaze, my heart sank for a moment.

“...”

Seri did nothing.

She merely smiled in silence and closed her eyes.

...I felt relieved.

At least, even in her final moment, her consciousness was not being toyed with by the Tower.

“Rest now, Seri.”

I swung the sword.

Following the trail of light, Seri’s head was severed cleanly from her neck.

[The Zone 10 boss has been slain.]