Chapter 392

Calamity (4)

Up until now, I'd been quite hesitant to use the Hero trait on an "Earth" scale. The reason wasn't just personal. Spend too long in an overwhelmingly powerful state, and your senses go numb.

Yeah. To me, the power of the Hero trait had always been a "too strong" kind of power. Borrow that strength, and breaking the Tower would be nothing. I'd been confident there'd be no crisis I couldn't handle.

"...There has to be. There has to be some way."

Who could've guessed a monster that fucked up would show up? Part of me wanted to file a complaint somewhere. Was this really within the rules? Was something like that even allowed to exist? Wasn't this cheating?

If there'd been a referee overseeing everything, if there'd been even some way to lodge a complaint with a god, I'd have been ready to protest all day long. But I was the one stuck taking a one-sided beating, and no chance to object was ever given to me. That, more than anything, was what made my chest feel so suffocatingly tight.

The sturdiest enemy I'd ever faced, spreading the widest-ranging threat I'd ever faced, wielding the most dangerous ability I'd ever faced. A force efficient enough to wipe out not just one human, but "humanity" as a whole. I knew I had to stop it. I just couldn't think of how.

"...Something."

What made my chest even tighter at this point was that giving up wasn't an option, no matter what. The moment the golem appeared, its ability activated. Meaning I was the only human who could even attempt to plan against this thing. I had to do it. Only I could do it. On top of that crushing weight sat a despair that whispered I couldn't. It bore down on my shoulders without end.

"What about this."

Like someone thrashing to stay afloat, I wrung my brain dry and ran through every plan that seemed remotely feasible, one after another.

First, I built a massive concrete structure at the exact spot where the golem would appear. The golem, quite literally, materialized out of thin air, and the location it appeared at was always fixed.

And well, in fiction, don't two overlapping objects always warp into something strange, or just outright explode? Personally hoping for the explosion option, I raised a huge block of concrete in the desert.

BOOOOOOOM!!!

"...Huh."

Result: There really was an explosion. Except it was the concrete block that exploded, and the golem descended into this world without a scratch on it. Failure.

"Maybe... is it because it's concrete?"

Wondering if the material type was the problem, I gathered up valuable metals like gold and silver this time and built a structure of similar size. Even with a regressor's power, collecting that much gold and silver was next to impossible, so the structure ended up far smaller than before, but still large enough to deal serious damage to the golem if it worked at all.

BOOOOOOOM!!!

Result: The gold exploded the same way. No anomaly.

I couldn't stop here. After wracking my brain day and night, I came up with a few plans that seemed halfway plausible.

"Here, try decoding this."

I memorized the strange characters written across the golem's surface as best I could, then regressed and had Earth's finest linguists try to decipher them.

Result: Decoding failed. All they could tell was that, judging by the repeated phrases, it was probably some kind of spell or prayer.

"Dok Su-hee. I need your help."

Next, I tried stuffing the golem straight into Dok Su-hee's Inventory.

"S-something that big won't fit..."

"I'll throw every experience points potion I've got at you."

I drained every last cent out of the United States, bought up every experience points potion on the market, and dumped them all on Dok Su-hee to pump her level. I had her funnel every stat point from leveling up into Mana, and by the end, Dok Su-hee's Inventory had grown massive enough to swallow an entire apartment building.

"I'll, I'll try it! If I actually manage it... Jun-ho oppa, no... Jun-ho-nim, you'll... go out with me next time...!"

Result: Dok Su-hee couldn't fit the golem into her Inventory. Watching from a distance, it looked like she was giving it everything she had, but it ended in failure.

I piled up an absurd amount of earth and raised a mountain near where the golem appeared. Even if I couldn't stop the golem from showing up at all, I thought completely burying it might have some effect.

Result: The mana that blocked all communication couldn't be stopped by dirt.

I called in Choi Ji-won, Kang Chan, and even Michael Zetter, and had everyone attack the exact same point on the golem at once. When I'd attacked it alone, I'd managed a fairly large crack, so the calculation was that if we dealt enough damage before it could repair itself, we could destroy it.

Result: The crack grew much larger than before, but the golem seemed to get denser the deeper you went. Destroying the core failed again.

Attempt. Failure. Attempt. Failure.

Trapped in that endless loop of failure, I just kept wearing myself down. The moment I realized I'd truly lost the plot was when I caught myself running through a plan I'd already tried and already failed, without even thinking. I was moving out of obligation, not out of any real thought.

Only then did I admit it. My creativity had run dry. No better plan was coming to me. This was the limit of who I was as a person. I didn't have a plan to bring the golem down.

I lay sprawled across the sofa in Ji-won's apartment, staring up at the ceiling. (Choi Ji-won herself had gone to Europe to fight off a monster.) I stared blankly at the ceiling, and somehow an hour passed, then two. Still no brilliant scheme came to me. I'd just wasted the time.

So what now? Was I really supposed to... climb the entire Tower within a year?

Maybe it would work out. There was probably some timeline out there where I conquered the Tower within a year, got celebrated by everyone, and settled into the role of Earth's savior. Even if it meant losing every shred of privacy, I was prepared to sacrifice myself for the sake of all humanity.

But what if it didn't work? What if I failed? What if there was no way, no matter what, to conquer the Tower within a year?

No, maybe, in the process of climbing, I really would grow strong enough, strong enough to bring that golem down in a single blow.

But what if even that failed? What if I climbed as far as the Tower would let me, and still wasn't strong enough to destroy the golem?

The thoughts chased each other in circles, tail after tail. My brain felt like it was melting into mush. I kept dry-heaving over and over. My body was so far beyond human now that this had to be a hundred percent mental. I wanted to throw up properly and get it over with, but I hadn't eaten anything, so even that was impossible.

This was the reality of who I was. Weak... pathetic... good at nothing but scheming. That kind of person. An entirely ordinary man who would never have made it this far if not for Ji-won.

"..."

Yeah, if it hadn't been for Choi Ji-won, I never would have made it this far. No, if it hadn't been for Kang Chan, I might not have even escaped Floor 3. If it hadn't been for Michael Zetter, the Player Association would never have existed, and as a result, I might not even be standing here.

I was just some bastard with insanely good luck. I happened to draw a good trait, and thanks to having an incredible girlfriend, I'd made it this far. An ordinary man. Up until now I'd managed to squeeze out some kind of plan by wringing myself dry, but I'd finally hit my limit.

"..."

So was I going to give up?

No.

I couldn't bet everything on the mere "possibility" that some future version of me might manage to bring the golem down. I needed a better plan. A more creative plan. A superior plan. If it was impossible with just my own head, then I'd borrow someone else's, even if it meant borrowing from everyone.

Having made up my mind, I kept regressing after that, discussing with people I trusted, over and over, on "how do we bring the golem down." Some of the ideas were absurd. Some seemed pretty solid. Though the actual results, when I tried them, weren't good.

After round after round after round of discussion, at some point I realized I'd been trapped inside a single fixed assumption the whole time.

Regression erases everything that happened.

I couldn't come up with a decent plan on my own, so I was gathering opinions from other people.

So then, why had I only ever asked for opinions from people I trusted?

Because... I'd have to explain my ability in detail, and reveal the entire past I'd lived through, and most of all, because those were the people who'd believe me completely.

But was that really true? Explaining my ability in detail meant nothing, since regression would erase it anyway. Revealing my past just meant swallowing some embarrassment. And there were plenty of ways to make people believe me "by force." This whole bias had only existed because I'd clung to my privacy and stuck to secrecy up until now.

Right. What I was trying to protect was all of humanity.

So then, wasn't it fine to accept help from all of humanity too?

About a month before the golem first appeared, a video went up on the single most-subscribed YouTube channel on Earth.

The video's thumbnail showed Kim Jun-ho, the man who'd recently earned enormous fame by claiming to be a "regressor," staring straight ahead with a hardened expression, while beside him the channel owner wore a look of shock.

The video's title read as follows.

-Humanity is on the brink of extinction. We need your ideas.