Chapter 57: Sub-Tower (3)

After China cleared the first Sub-Tower and the second appeared in Mongolia, the Communication Channel remained in an uproar all day.

[World Tree: China << Have these people completely lost their humanity?]

[Flying Squirrel: Millions of lives are at stake, and they still refuse to share information...]

[MeatMeat: Do they have no basic human decency?]

[Ballpoint: How can anyone be that selfish?]

[No.39: I saw the news. Apparently, they’re demanding that Mongolia hand over all its resources?]

[Lethe: Do they really want to behave like this? Do they look at Person123 and feel nothing?]

The overwhelming majority were condemning China for withholding information about the Sub-Tower and using Mongolia’s crisis to pressure the country.

[Black Tiger: Wang Kai risked his life to become the first person to clear it. What right do any of you have to tell him what to do?]

[Rocky Mountain: The selfish ones are the people demanding that he hand over information he earned through his own efforts for free.]

[Wildflower: Millions of lives, my ass. They have an entire week. Just evacuate the city.]

[Downstream: Why is everyone blaming only Wang Kai? Name a single top-ranked Climber who openly shares all their information.]

[Zhang Wei: Then go cry to Person123 and beg him to clear it for you lol.]

A portion of the Chinese Climbers defended him.

[Hwapung: Mongolia should be grateful to us. Without Wang Kai, how would they ever solve this on their own?]

[DoDoDo: Look, if you don’t want to negotiate, then deal with it yourselves. You don’t like this, you don’t like that—what the hell do you people want?]

[Shooting Star: Shut your mouth before we crack open the skulls of every last one of you insane Chinese bastards.]

[MeatMeat: Shameless bastards, still yapping away in here.]

[Hada: Whoa, whoa. Calm down, Mongolian friends. Have you all evacuated Ulaanbaatar yet?]

Everyone was too busy insulting one another and starting fights.

[Battery: Person123 isn’t really going to clear it for them, is he...?]

[Cyclone: Mongolia is pretty far away, though.]

[Radiwe: Hey, what if Person123 is Mongolian?]

[Tsetseg: I’m Mongolian. Please help us, Person123... Mongolia is on the verge of collapse!]

[Takoyaki: But can Person123 even clear it? Isn’t he only level 40 right now?]

[Tree: Wang Kai refuses to say anything, so we don’t really know. If the Sub-Tower requires someone around level 50, even Person123 might struggle.]

[Amazon: Don’t be ridiculous. Why would Person123 ever go clear a Sub-Tower?]

[Salad: If anything happens to him, humanity is finished.]

The arguments continued without end.

In the end, all anyone could do was wait and see what became of Mongolia.

The only people whose blood truly ran cold were the Mongolians themselves.

[Time remaining for the second Sub-Tower: 5 days 8 hours 9 minutes 17 seconds]

[The second Sub-Tower has been cleared to the final floor.]

[Time remaining until the third Sub-Tower appears: 5 days 8 hours 9 minutes 16 seconds]

Then, without warning, a message announced that Mongolia’s Sub-Tower had been cleared.

[Triangle: ?]

[Life’s Trials: Wait, what?]

[Lake: Did Wang Kai clear it?]

[Requiem: There hasn’t been any news about it, though. Did Mongolia accept China’s demands?]

[Oliver: Doesn’t look like it. Neither Mongolia nor China seems to know what happened.]

The Mongolians themselves—the people most directly involved—quickly made it clear that they had no idea who had cleared the Sub-Tower.

If a Climber from another country had entered and cleared it, there should have been some form of announcement.

Yet everyone was learning about it for the first time.

The tower had been cleared, but no one was claiming responsibility.

That left only one possible conclusion.

[Lion King: Ah... Don’t tell me. Was it you again?]

[Cherry Pie: Yep lol. Who else could it be?]

[Railroad: Person123! Person123! Person123! Person123! Person123!]

[Premium: If you cleared it, please at least tell us in the Communication Channel, Person123-nim...]

[Scales of Judgment: Truly the greatest pacifist in human history. The GOAT.]

[Iron Chain: Seriously, he’s in a completely different league from someone like Wang Kai.]

[Terrace: Compare him to someone worthy of comparison.]

[Verryverry: Looks like China got left with nothing lmaooo. So satisfying.]

[Litman: Greedy as hell and still walked away empty-handed. Bahaha.]

[Hero: Wait. You don’t think Person123 is actually Mongolian, do you...?]

[Whistle: He probably just traveled directly to Mongolia. If he were Mongolian, wouldn’t he have cleared it sooner?]

As always, people showered Person123 with praise.

And China became the target of ridicule.

Crash!

Inside an extravagant mansion, Wang Kai hurled the whiskey glass he had been drinking from.

Glass shards and liquor scattered across the marble floor.

Sitting opposite him, Li Wei—a member of the Party’s Central Committee—flinched before quickly regaining his composure.

There was a faint note of accusation in his voice as he spoke.

“What is the meaning of this? You said with complete confidence that the difficulty was beyond what Person123 could clear.”

“You tell me.”

Wang Kai’s face was twisted with irritation and anger.

“This is absurd.”

He clenched his jaw.

“That bastard is level 40, isn’t he? You’d need to be at least level 50 to clear something of that difficulty.”

Either the difficulty varied between individual Sub-Towers, or Person123 was far stronger than Wang Kai had anticipated.

After watching the Communication Channel fill with mockery, Wang Kai had switched it off before his blood pressure rose any further.

Now he issued an order to Li Wei.

“Listen. I’m clearing the next Sub-Tower no matter what. The moment the third one appears, have everything ready so I can reach its location as quickly as possible.”

“Ahem... I will need to discuss that with the higher authorities first.”

“What is there to discuss?”

Wang Kai glared at him.

“Don’t you want the Mana Vein? I’m practically handing the entire thing to you on a silver platter. Just do your damn job and support me properly.”

Insolent little bastard.

Li Wei cursed him inwardly, but nodded all the same.

Person123 had appeared out of nowhere, and China had foolishly allowed the Mongolian prize to slip from its grasp.

But the remaining Sub-Towers had to be secured by China, just as Wang Kai said.

That troublesome interloper had begun making his move.

There was no longer time to draw out negotiations and extract greater concessions.

Given Person123’s character, he would almost certainly attempt to clear the future Sub-Towers as well.

Wang Kai would have to reach them first.

The right to activate and deactivate the Mana Vein belonged to the person who cleared the Sub-Tower.

As long as Wang Kai held that authority, China would be able to negotiate for a share of the Mana Vein from a position of overwhelming advantage, regardless of which country the tower appeared in.

“Fucking bastard, playing the pathetic savior...”

Wang Kai resolved to clear the third Sub-Tower before Person123 and prove the difference between them.

Five days passed as he waited for the next tower to appear.

[The third Sub-Tower has appeared.]

Surprisingly, the third Sub-Tower appeared in Japan.

China.

Mongolia.

And now Japan.

Three consecutive Sub-Towers had appeared in Northeast Asia.

It was an astonishing coincidence.

In any case, it was a fortunate one for China.

Japan was not far away, which meant Wang Kai could reach the Sub-Tower’s radius quickly.

He had been waiting at the airport, fully prepared.

The moment the message appeared, he set out under the guidance of his attendants.

Reservations?

Customs?

When the Party exerted its influence, such formalities became unnecessary.

A seat was immediately secured for him on the fastest flight to Sendai, Japan, and he boarded without delay.

Since there had been no way to predict the country in which the Sub-Tower would appear, this was faster than arranging a private jet, which would have required prior authorization.

[The third Sub-Tower has been cleared to the final floor.]

“...?”

The message appeared just as Wang Kai settled into his first-class seat.

He slowly removed his sunglasses and stared at the incomprehensible words before him.

“What the fuck?”

The third Sub-Tower had appeared barely twenty minutes earlier.

And now it had already been cleared?

Unless someone had been standing within the tower’s radius at the exact moment it appeared, such speed was impossible.

Wang Kai’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

“That bastard Person123...”

A terrible possibility occurred to him.

“Don’t tell me he was Japanese all along?”

***

The third Sub-Tower appeared in Sendai, Japan.

The Japanese government did not even have time to declare a state of emergency.

[The third Sub-Tower has been cleared to the final floor.]

It was cleared less than half an hour after its appearance.

The Communication Channel erupted once again.

No one was particularly surprised that Person123 was believed to be responsible.

What turned the discussion into a raging controversy was the sheer speed of the clear.

[Reynold: He cleared it in less than thirty minutes?]

[Sug: That kind of speed is impossible unless he was already in Japan...?]

[Firefly: Wait a minute. Is Person123 actually Japanese?!]

Speculation spread rapidly.

People began wondering whether Person123 had been Japanese all along.

It was the only explanation that seemed to make sense.

The Mongolian Sub-Tower had taken two full days to clear.

The Japanese one had taken only twenty minutes.

Of course, it was technically possible that Person123 had simply happened to be vacationing in Japan and had coincidentally been within the Sub-Tower’s radius at the time.

But the probability of such a coincidence was vanishingly small.

The Communication Channel burned with activity.

Before long, the idea that Person123 was Japanese began to be treated as an established fact.

No one was more excited than the Japanese Climbers.

[Beginning: Person123 is Japanese? Is this real?]

[Takamura: Judging by the circumstances, the probability is extremely high...!]

[Monsoon: So it was we Japanese who had been saving humanity all this time?]

[Ramen: Quite surprising (lol).]

[Sword Demon: I always knew something was strange. It made no sense that Japan hadn’t produced even a single Nightmare clearer.]

[Human Pass: It wasn’t that we didn’t have one. He had been one of us from the very beginning.]

[Rhythm: I’m so proud! Person123!]

Person123—the Nightmare-difficulty record holder and savior of humanity—was Japanese?

For Japan, which, like Korea, had yet to produce a single known Nightmare clearer, the surge of national pride was several times beyond a lethal dose.

News organizations around the world rushed to publish breaking reports.

The entire world was thrown into turmoil by the possibility that Person123 was Japanese.

***

Some time had passed since I cleared the second Sub-Tower and returned home.

Absurdly enough, the third Sub-Tower appeared in Japan.

What was going on?

Was Northeast Asia under some kind of curse?

In any case, the moment the tower appeared, I prepared to warp to Japan.

The distance from Seoul to Sendai was approximately 1,300 kilometers.

Required Willpower: 130,000.

Charging time: roughly six thousand minutes.

One hundred hours.

During the five days since clearing Mongolia’s Sub-Tower, I had recharged the Warp Device whenever I had time and was not asleep.

I had accumulated approximately eighty-five hours’ worth of charge.

This time, I needed only another fifteen hours before I could make the journey.

The return trip, naturally, would have to be charged from zero again.

I finished charging the Warp Device and immediately traveled to Japan.

[You have successfully cleared the 1st Floor.]

[You have successfully cleared the 2nd Floor.]

[You have successfully cleared the 3rd Floor.]

...

...

...

The monsters on the lower floors were no different from those in the previous Sub-Tower.

From the 5th Floor onward, however, the enemies began to change.

The minotaur had been replaced by some kind of monster resembling a triceratops.

The swarm of bats had been replaced by a swarm of insects, each nearly as large as a bird.

Only the monsters themselves were different.

The overall difficulty remained roughly the same.

I continued straight through the tower until I reached the 10th Floor.

The final boss waiting there was Dracula.

“Oh...?!”

When I struck him with Flame Strike, his body dissolved into blood, scattered through the air, and then reformed.

Damn.

That actually looked useful.

His physical abilities were inferior to those of the Black Knight, the boss of the second Sub-Tower.

However, that ability to liquefy his body made him considerably more troublesome.

Whoooosh...

Of course, Destruction Ray treated all such tricks equally.

The beam struck him directly.

Dracula was annihilated without leaving behind so much as a single drop of blood.

[The third Sub-Tower has been cleared to the final floor.]

[You have acquired ownership of the third Sub-Tower.]

The third Sub-Tower was cleared without difficulty.

“Haa...”

The reason for my sigh was simple.

Recharging the Warp Device for the return journey was far more torturous than clearing the tower itself.

I left the Sub-Tower.

Then, in the middle of some Japanese forest whose location I did not even know, I stopped time again and again, recharged the Warp Device, and returned home.

When I arrived, my younger sister was lying on the couch watching television.

“...?”

I was about to head into my room when an absurd report on the screen caught my attention.

—Japan’s Sub-Tower has been cleared in under thirty minutes. Person123 is once again believed to be responsible, and speculation is now spreading that Person123 may, in fact, be Japanese...

What on earth?

“Person123 is Japanese...?”

My sister stared at the television in surprise.

Then she turned toward me.

“Did you see that? They’re saying Person123 is Japanese!”

“Uh... Yeah. Right.”

That was certainly surprising.

I immediately understood why such a ridiculous report had appeared.

Ah.

It was because I had cleared the tower too quickly.

I had warped to Japan almost immediately after the Sub-Tower appeared.

Now that I thought about it, the misunderstanding was fairly reasonable.

I opened the Communication Channel to check.

As expected, it was complete chaos.

I closed it again at once.

Ugh.

Charging the Warp Device had left me utterly exhausted.

Without giving the matter much thought, I went into my room.

The misunderstanding would resolve itself as soon as I cleared the next Sub-Tower anyway.

For now, I would let them enjoy themselves.