FLASH!
My vision returned, and I saw the Ogre charging toward me.
-THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
“U-Ugh…!”
I crawled backward, scrambling away from the Ogre.
-CRASH—!
Its fist slammed into the floor, barely missing me thanks to that crawl.
“Ghk!”
Just from the force of the missed punch, I was blown backward.
-THUD!
My body hit the wall, and I slapped my head hard several times to clear my blurred vision as I looked ahead.
“…F-Fuck!”
There, the Ogre came into view, raising one thick leg.
-CRACK, BOOM!
“Ku, geuph?!”
The Ogre’s kick hit me, and I was crushed against the wall as if I had been flattened into it.
With the sound of bones shattering, I felt my organs burst out one after another, and then, once again.
I died.
“…Hah!”
And I opened my eyes.
But the instant I opened them, the Ogre’s fist flew at me again.
-CRASH—!
“—Kuhup!”
This time, my chest.
I died.
I opened my eyes.
-CRUNCH!
“Ke, huk…!”
Next was my neck.
I died.
I opened my eyes.
-CRACK!
“…Cup.”
It even picked up my body and folded me in half.
I died.
I opened my eyes.
-THUMP!
The Ogre picked up my body, crushed in half, and threw it away. It snorted hard, puffing up its whole body as if showing it off, and looked down at me where I had collapsed.
“Ha, haha.”
I let out an empty laugh.
“…What are you looking at, you idiot?”
-SMASH!
The moment I spat those words out, the Ogre brought its enormous fist down on my head.
My head was crushed like a shattered jar of jam, then repaired itself again.
“Ha—.”
Endless death.
In the deaths repeated without even a gap to live, I felt myself growing more and more numb.
When did death stop being surprising?
Now, only pain frightened me, and even that was growing duller and duller.
My mind and my body.
They slowly went numb, as though calluses were forming over them.
It was just.
-CRUNCH!
I died again.
And.
-CRACK!
I came back to life again.
The Ogre was not fighting.
It was simply massacring me.
As if a human was no match for it, as if it intended to trample and erase the foreign presence that had entered the tower.
But.
Why?
"…Why am I not running away?"
I asked myself while being torn apart, bursting open, and dying.
I was definitely weak.
The Ogre killed me with ease.
Dozens, hundreds of times.
I had to run.
Even now, I had to leave the tower.
Whether I was punished or made excuses.
Maybe submitting to the warrant placed on me and choosing legal punishment was the right choice.
But I did not run.
My survival instincts did not work.
That was right.
At some point, I had stopped feeling the need to run.
Why?
The answer was too simple.
“Because... I don’t. die….”
-CRUNCH!
My face smashed into the wall and was crushed.
As it slowly repaired itself.
“…That’s why.”
I finished what I had been trying to say.
Right.
I would never die.
Then, the one who truly had to run from this fight was.
Who, exactly?
Around the time that thought crossed my mind.
“…Grrrr….”
The Ogre’s eyes wavered for a moment.
Wrongness.
That feeling even a beast sensed instinctively.
‘This human keeps coming back to life.’
Even for a boss-grade monster, the sight of something it had beaten to death coming back to life as if nothing had happened, over and over, could only be strange.
I felt it.
"Ah, I see."
I put strength into my hands. The Ogre still had the power to kill me again and again. But….
Even so, the one who wanted to run away was the Ogre.
I walked. Not to meet death, but to ignore death and press forward.
The Ogre stepped backward. There was no living thing that could ignore death, so it sensed an instinctive wrongness and recoiled from that fact.
And then,
[ Ding! ]
[ Death Count requirement of 10,000 has been met! ]
[ Hidden Skill: 'Intimidation' unlocked. ]
“…Intimidation?”
[ Ding! ]
[ Hidden Skill: 'Intimidation' activates! ]
At that moment, the space sank heavily.
A power I had not even known I possessed was released.
"…?!!"
The Ogre flinched and took a huge step back.
Seeing that massive body stagger backward was a funny sight.
“Ha, hahaha.”
I laughed and said.
“Don’t run away.”
A fight without fear of death.
A fight that had become far too familiar to me over the past few days.
I already knew.
However.
The Ogre did not.
“Come here. What are you scared of?”
“Gruk…!”
I advanced.
The Ogre retreated.
The moment it sensed that something had gone wrong.
“G, Ooooooooh!”
-WHOOSH!
The Ogre swung its arm on reflex.
-CRUNCH!
Its arm, as if it were only natural, struck my head far too easily, and my head flew straight off my body.
But it did not matter.
-Sssssss…
I slowly repaired myself and came back to life, never stopping my steps.
“Gruk, grrrk…!”
-THUD!
The Ogre brought its fist down.
Yoo Da-huin died.
And came back to life again.
-BOOM!
The Ogre kicked again.
Yoo Da-huin died.
And came back to life again.
-CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
Once more, the Ogre tore my corpse apart again and again.
Yoo Da-huin died again and again.
And came back to life again and again.
Repetition.
Repetition.
Repetition.
In an exchange of offense and defense across death and resurrection—no, in a one-sided ‘offense,’ I did nothing and slowly drove the Ogre into a corner.
“Gruk, groooook….”
Even when its enormous fist crushed me,
I approached as my body broke apart.
Narrowing the interval between death and resurrection, and narrowing the distance between myself and the Ogre, I kept drawing closer.
It had come.
The moment had come.
‘The moment when death no longer has any meaning has come.’
“G, grooooooooooooooooooooh!”
In the end, the Ogre could not endure it any longer and turned its back.
-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Its enormous body ran in the opposite direction as if fleeing.
But I.
“Why are you running away?”
I had no intention of letting it go.
“Let’s keep fighting! Try killing me! You can do it, can’t you?! Kill me more!”
My eyes had already become stained with madness.
I shouted at the Ogre, which had turned its back on me and was fleeing, telling it to come back, and I wished to die a few more times.
“Come on! Attack me! You beast!”
“Gro, grooooooooooooooh!”
But the Ogre could not understand.
Why did something that should die keep living?
Why was it standing there with both arms spread open, as if telling it to come?
This was not a fight.
It was a nightmare.
-THUNK!
“Gro, gro, groooooh…!”
Before I knew it, the Ogre had reached the far opposite end, bracing itself against the wall and catching its breath.
I slowly approached the Ogre.
-GRAB.
Then I seized its thick leg with both arms.
“Caught you.”
“Groooooooooooooooooooooooh!”
The Ogre screamed.
A beast’s howl and a scream.
-BOOM!
Just by stomping its leg down, it turned me into mush.
But it meant nothing.
-Creeeeep…
Because I would come back to life anyway.
“Kuo! Kuo! Guooooooooooooh!”
The Ogre screamed as it thrashed, trying to shake me off where I clung to its leg, but I desperately refused to let go.
Then.
-THUD!
Its enormous body lost balance and collapsed to the floor, and I climbed on top of it.
“You know what?”
“Gro, groooooh….”
The Ogre looked at me with eyes trembling in fear.
“You can’t kill me.”
The one who had survived was the human.
And the one who had fallen was the enormous monster.
Now.
“So now it’s your turn to die.”
It was time for me to attack.
I reached toward the fallen Ogre’s eyes.
-GRAB!
The Ogre’s enormous hands grabbed both my arms.
-CRRRRACK!
“Ghk!”
Just that was enough to bend both my arms and shatter the bones into pieces, but….
It did not matter.
-Sssssss….
As my bones reassembled themselves, I pushed even 1 cm, no, even 1 mm closer to the Ogre’s eye.
-CRRRACK!
They fractured.
-Sssssss…
They healed.
Fractured.
Healed.
Fractured again and again.
-TAP.
Before I knew it, my fingers touched the Ogre’s eye.
-…SQUELCH.
Like dragging a finger through pudding,
I gently scraped out the Ogre’s eye.
“Guoo, guoooooooooooooooooooooh!!!!!”
-CRACK, CRRRRRACK!
The Ogre screamed as it mercilessly twisted and ripped out both of my arms.
“Ha.”
I could not believe it.
After turning me into mush,
after killing me dozens, hundreds, thousands of times.
It screamed like a little girl just because I scraped out one eyeball.
“And you call yourself a boss?”
While my broken arms repaired themselves, I grabbed the bastard’s other eyeball.
-RIP!
“Guooooooooooooooooooooooooh!”
And tore it out.
“You’re supposed to kill me, the invader of the tower! Get up! Monster!”
The Ogre brought both hands that had been holding me to its bleeding eyes, thrashing and screaming.
-WHAM!
Thanks to that, I was sent flying into the distance and sprawled on the floor.
It did not matter.
I stood and once again trudged toward the thrashing Ogre.
“Get up, monster! Kill me, the human!”
-SQUELCH!
I forced my arm between the bastard’s fingers, pushed my hand deep into the place where its eyeball had been, and frantically rummaged around with my fingers, searching for the brain deeper inside.
“Guooooooooooooooooooooooooh!”
“Hahaha, hahahahahahahahahaha!”
The Ogre writhed on the floor, weeping tears of blood.
I sat on top of it and laughed madly.
Who was the monster,
and who was the human?
Now, even I had forgotten.
My arm and fingers were crushed to pieces and reassembled over and over,
until, at last, the tips of my fingers touched the soft part of the bastard’s brain matter.
-SQUELCH!
I plunged my fingers deep inside it.
“…In the end, you couldn’t kill me either.”
Then I clenched my hand around it.
-CRRRRRRRRRUNCH!
And tore it out with all my strength.
The Ogre’s struggling stopped, and only the reek of blood and a damp, hot temperature lingered across the floor.
-…SPLAT.
I threw the piece of the Ogre’s brain in my hand onto the floor.
[ Ding! ]
[ You have cleared the 10th Floor of the tower! ]
───────────────────
[ Floor: 10th Floor ]
[ Climber: Yoo Da-huin ]
[ Clear Time: 13 hours 11 minutes 54 seconds ]
[ Previous Best Record: 5 minutes 12 seconds ] (Shortest tower climb record)
───────────────────
[ Clear Conditions Met ]
▶ Ogre (Mini Boss) x1 defeated
[ Climb Ranking: Last Place ] (Current: 51,112th)
[ Ding! ]
[ Clear Time has set the all-time longest record! ]
The notification window announcing the clear shimmered before my eyes, and I stared at it with blank, hollow eyes.
In the end, I had failed.
The 10th Floor of the tower.
Even from the first boss I met, I had not received the death I had hoped for, and I had stubbornly survived and ended up killing it.
“…Status Window.”
-FLASH!
────────────────
Name: Yoo Da-huin
Class: ??? (Curse of Immortality)
Level: 1 (Level Up Impossible)
────────────────
Health: ∞
Attack Power: 8
Defense: 5
Magic Power: 0
────────────────
Trait: 『Curse of Immortality』 (Detailed Information Available)
Skills:
[ Pain Numbness LV.5 (MAX) ]
[ Enhanced Regeneration Speed LV.5 (MAX) ]
[ Hidden Skill: Intimidation ]
────────────────
Death Count: 10028
────────────────
“…Ten thousand.”
Ten thousand deaths.
A number I could not accept just from the words shown to me.
If I go higher, will I really be able to die?
What if this ‘curse’ is literally a ‘curse,’ and it cannot be undone?
What if I have to live forever like this?
What if I have to run from the wanted order, run from reality, and spend my entire life climbing the tower?
But the tower did not wait for me.
-Ding!
[ Continue climbing to the next floor? ]
[ Yes / No ]
The notification window appeared again.
“…….”
-Press.
I simply pressed Yes.
Because I was a ‘cursed’ person trapped in the fate of repeating these deaths ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, until the day I died.