Hasn’t everyone had that thought at least once?
That they wished money would fall from the sky.
A hundred million won, two hundred million won.
That it would just drop right in front of them.
“…Sigh.”
I had the same wish, and today, that wish felt especially desperate.
Let’s move. Let’s buy a new car. Let’s buy a handbag...
Compared to my wife’s many demands, my bank balance was empty.
'I’m going out to meet a friend.'
'Today? I told you, it’s my workout day. I’m going to leave my phone in the locker room, so you won’t be able to reach me.'
'...Navigation history? Why would you check something like that? Don’t you trust me?'
On top of that, there were traces of an affair, plenty enough for suspicion but with no hard proof.
And that wasn’t all. Every month, a large sum of money and a great deal of worry went toward my father, who was lying in a hospital bed.
But my salary was nothing to brag about...
“Haaah, maybe I’ll buy a lottery ticket on my way in.”
Someone once said the lottery was the hope that kept life going.
Today, those words struck me with painful clarity.
I shoved my hand into my pocket and trudged toward the lottery shop in front of my house.
That was when it happened.
-CLINK!
"...?"
I heard the sound of a coin rolling from somewhere. Instinctively, I looked up at the sky and muttered.
"...No way. Is money actually falling?"
But after that sound, I sensed nothing else.
“I must be losing my mind.”
I gave a hollow laugh and shook my head.
I had wished so many times for money to fall from the sky that now I was even hearing things.
-TAP.
“...Huh?”
And in that instant, something shining bright struck my foot.
I bent down and picked it up.
“...A j-jewel?”
A diamond the size of my palm.
The sort of thing I had only ever seen in the media, glittering with a dazzling radiance, was sitting in my hand.
“W-What is this? What’s going on?”
As I panicked and looked all around, an enormous structure finally entered my sight.
“...Ah.”
A tall, majestic tower.
It was one of the towers climbed by Hunters and ability users.
“Maybe I’d gotten too used to it to notice.”
The “Tower Disaster” had appeared twelve years ago and plunged the entire world into shock.
It was an unprecedented catastrophe where, if a tower was not cleared within the time limit, the ground it stood on would collapse.
At the same time, however, people who had gained abilities appeared, along with the profession known as “Hunters,” and most towers were cleared one after another.
“This tower must be one of them.”
It stood there as naturally as a high-rise building, so I had not felt anything out of place.
This jewel was probably part of the loot that had fallen from the tower.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!”
And soon enough,
Hunters who seemed to be the owners of the jewel came rushing over.
“Huff, huff. Did you, by any chance, see a jewel that fell?”
“Ah, yes...”
Tsk. It was a shame, but what could I do? It had never been mine to begin with. I opened my hand and showed it to the Hunter.
“Here. I’ll return it to you.”
“Yes, thank you so—”
“...Huh?”
But there was nothing left in my palm.
“...? Did I drop it somewhere?”
As I hurriedly searched the ground and my pockets, the Hunters were staring at me with expressions mixed with fear and unease.
"...It was absorbed, wasn’t it?"
"I think so."
Fear and anger crossed in their gazes.
"Excuse me, I’m not that kind of person, all right?"
Uncomfortable and annoyed, I started making excuses.
"I did see that diamond, yes, but I must have dropped it somewhere. It’s definitely around here..."
But they did not listen to me at all.
"Sir, you’re not a Hunter, are you?"
“Uh... no, I’m not.”
“...I’m sorry.”
After that brief apology,
-GRAB.
they suddenly seized me by the collar.
“Huh?”
-WHOOSH!
And threw me into the tower.
“Huh? Huh?”
Have you ever felt yourself floating in midair?
A sense of weightlessness that went on and on, no matter how far you flew.
I flew like that for a long time.
-CRUNCH!!
Until I slammed into the wall of the tower’s first floor.
“Gah!”
I screamed as I spat out teeth and blood, crushed by a noise and agony so terrible I couldn’t tell whether it was my bones or the wall that had broken.
A headache like my entire brain had burst open ran straight down my spine, and I sat there, coughing up blood for a long while.
“Blech, bleeegh!”
-Step, step.
The three Hunters entered the tower with somber expressions.
“W-Why... why would you... do something like this...?”
With more than half my teeth gone, I barely managed to ask them, half vomiting blood and half spitting out words.
They simply lowered their heads with gloomy expressions.
“We truly have no personal grudge against you. It’s just...”
“You’ve been cursed.”
They spoke coldly.
“That jewel was ‘absorbed’ into you.”
Bullshit.
What kind of bullshit were they spewing?
“What does that even...”
That was when I noticed my own pronunciation had become much cleaner, and in shock, I touched the teeth that should have fallen out.
“...Huh?”
-Fumble, fumble.
They had grown back.
The teeth that had definitely fallen out.
They had grown back.
-Shing.
One of the Hunters drew his sword.
"That was a jewel containing the ‘Curse of Immortality.’"
"And now, before that curse eats away at you, we have to dispose of you."
“W-Wait...!”
-SLASH!
“G-Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Before I could say anything to stop him, the Hunter’s sword cleanly severed my arm.
-SPLAT!
My left arm flew off and skidded across the floor. The Hunter looked down at me with a ruthless yet bitter expression.
As if begging, I clung to his trouser leg with my remaining arm and said, “D-Does that even make sense? Just because my teeth grew back a little? You’re saying I’m cursed...?”
-Shake, shake.
But the male Hunter merely shook his head.
-Point.
Without a word, he aimed his sword at the place where my severed left arm had been.
“...Huh?”
And there,
“...W-What the...?”
My left arm had grown back cleanly.
The cognitive dissonance lasted only a moment. As the Hunter tried to cut me down again, I gripped his trouser leg even harder.
“E-Even if that’s true. Even if it’s true my body grows back, I can just live without doing anything bad, right? Please. I’m begging you. Please...!”
“It’s no use.”
-SLASH!
“Gah!”
This time, both arms I had used to grab his pants were cut off. I lost my balance, toppled backward, and collapsed as the Hunter continued speaking.
“...It is, quite literally, a ‘cursed’ jewel. One day, that power will eat away at your brain and corrupt your soul. The odds that an ordinary person, not even a Hunter, can overcome such a curse are...”
-Point.
“Practically zero.”
“F-For such a ridiculous reason...”
-SLASH!
I’m supposed to die.
Those words never made it out.
This time, what was cut was my neck, and as my vision rolled several times, I saw my headless body kneeling on the ground.
-Wriggle, wriggle...
And that body’s two arms had already regenerated, growing back again. The part of my neck that had lost its head was slowly regenerating as well. My vision vanished for a moment.
“Ah.”
When I opened my eyes again, I had become the head attached to my own body.
But that lasted only a moment too.
-SLICE!
My head was cut off again.
-SLASH!
My arms, my legs, were cut off.
-SLICE! SLASH! SLASH! SLICE! SLASH!
My torso, my organs, my spine, my skull were smashed and shattered apart.
“Hh, huff, haaah.”
My dying gasps, “Haaah, haaah!”
“Hellfire!”
“Ice Arrow!”
and the Hunters’ breathing and skill chants formed a harmony so vile it made me sick.
-SQUELCH!
I was stabbed.
-SLASH!
Cut apart.
-SLICE!
Chopped to pieces.
-CRUNCH!
Burst open.
...
...
Like that, minutes.
Hours.
Days.
How much time had passed?
“Huff, ngh. Hah. Haaah.”
It felt as if my brain was about to explode.
No, it actually had exploded, over and over.
No longer able to maintain my sanity,
-GRAB.
“Haaah, haaah... huh?”
Without realizing it, I grabbed the neck of a Hunter who looked slightly exhausted.
“L-Let go!”
-SLASH!
Both of my arms were cut off, but I could not even scream. The nerves responsible for transmitting pain had long since overloaded, and I could no longer feel anything.
-GRAB!
With my newly regrown arms, I grabbed the Hunter’s neck.
-SLASH!
Again, both my arms were cut off.
They shouted to one another.
“D-Damn it!”
“The curse corruption has already started!”
“Hurry, we have to remove him as soon as possible!”
Curse corruption, my ass.
Anyone would go insane if they were pinned down for hours, for dozens of hours, sliced open, chopped apart, blown to pieces, burned alive.
If they were killed hundreds, thousands of times like that.
-GRAB.
“They’d lose their fucking mind.”
-Crunch, crunch...
“Ghk, keck... E-Elina... magic... support...”
“I’m out of MP! I can’t... I can’t anymore...”
I was not the only one exhausted.
After killing me without rest for days, they were tired, their strength clearly drained.
And I did not miss that moment.
-Crunch, crunch, crunch...
“Keh, keck...”
-CLANG...!
The Hunter’s sword fell, and the sound of bones breaking echoed quietly through the tower.
-CRACK!
At long last, I twisted the Hunter’s neck and shattered it. After confirming that his arms had gone limp.
-Thud.
I picked up the sword he had dropped.
-Shing...
Then I trudged toward the remaining two.
“P-Please don’t do this. W-What the hell are you...?”
“What the hell?”
A snort left me on its own.
A sneer rose on its own.
“Don’t come near me, you deviant! Die! Monster!”
“What the hell, you ask. What the hell?”
-STAB! STAB! STAB!
The male Hunter beside the collapsed female Hunter fired arrows nonstop.
But the arrows only flew in and lodged in my chest.
They did not stop my steps in the slightest.
-THWACK!
“......”
One arrow flew into my eye and stuck there.
-GRIP.
I grabbed that arrow.
-Crunch, crunch, crunch...
Then ripped it out and threw it away.
“I only did ‘once’ what you bastards did to me hundreds and thousands of times. Isn’t that right?”
“But you didn’t die!”
“Ha!”
Before long, a new eyeball grew into the empty socket where my eye should have been. With my restored vision, I approached them again.
“You people are insane...”
I raised the sword high over the man and woman trembling on the floor.
“T-This can’t be happening...!”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
-SLASH!
I returned to them exactly what they had done to me.
***
[ Three S-grade Hunters have been found dead on the first floor of Gyeonggi Namyangju Tower No. 2. Judging by the floor on which they died and nearby CCTV footage, authorities have determined that the suspect is human and have begun an investigation... ]
That day,
I killed only three people.
They killed me hundreds of times.
As I opened the tower’s door and stepped out, I checked my cracked smartphone.
Two and a half days had passed since I first picked up the jewel.
The fact that I had killed three Hunters became nationwide news, spreading through every channel, SNS, and phone media outlet.
I became a wanted criminal designated by the government.
Of course, I was probably fired from my company. I never went back to check.
When I barely managed to return home with my hood pulled low to hide my identity,
“You... you’re insane! You murdering piece of trash!”
My wife refused to listen to a word I said, hurled abuse at me, and declared she was divorcing me.
And then, [ Mr. Yoo Da-huin’s father has... ]
A death notice arrived by text.
My father had seen me on the news and died of a heart attack.
With his only son now a government-wanted murderer, there was no way I could even hold a funeral for him.
“......”
Nothing remained for me.
Only the regret of wishing I had hurried my steps toward the lottery shop, of wishing I had never picked up that fallen jewel, lingered somewhere in my brain and rolled around there.
“...Fuck this. Fuck.”
Nothing remained.
The moment I picked up that jewel, my life changed completely.
But I did not even have time to cry or regret it.
I could not even die.
And so...
With my hood pulled low, I looked up at a newly formed, enormous tower.
[ Ding! ]
[ The User is afflicted with the Curse of Immortality! ]
[ You may enter the tower! ]
‘To find something that can kill me.’
I decided to climb the tower.