1. The Constellation's Body
The sky was being torn open wider and wider, and through the gap, a pure white radiance poured down.
To the eye it looked nothing short of holy, yet everything the light touched burned away and turned into a handful of ashes.
Even in a world where ruin went on like that, one man ran hard, weaving clear of the radiance.
'Is this place finished too?'
A black coat, black hair.
With a massive coffin wrapped in pale, murky wraiths slung over his shoulder, the man kept running.
A High Ranker, first in the overall rankings.
The Wailing King, Lee Jin-hyeok.
In name and in fact, he was the strongest player in the Tower.
'Found it.'
The place Lee Jin-hyeok arrived at was deep within range upon range of mountains, where the pure white radiance had not yet reached.
"Jin-hyeok?"
A woman with short black hair ran up to Lee Jin-hyeok.
Her bloodshot eyes looked ready to burst at any moment. She seemed not to have slept for days on end.
"So you have finally come?"
"Did you wait long?"
"I did not wait long."
The second-ranked High Ranker, the pinnacle of the sword.
The Heavenly Demon, Cheon Hyang-un.
"Are the rest all dead?"
"Yeah."
"......I see. So that is how it ended after all."
Shaking the blood from her sword, Cheon Hyang-un gave a bitter smile.
"Let us go. The others are waiting."
Following Cheon Hyang-un's lead inside, he heard a man and a woman talking, and then saw them.
"Is it over?"
"......."
"It's over, obviously."
"Is this a situation you can talk about that lightly? You poison woman."
"And what if I don't take it lightly? It's all over anyway. You muscle-brained fool."
Wearing the sort of pointed hat witches are always shown in, the woman fiddled with a dagger.
Poison, sorcery, and magic all at once. The fifth-ranked High Ranker, the Poison Witch, Dang So-wol.
"Our lives are worth about as much as a fly's now. No telling when we die."
"We should at least put up a last struggle."
A burly man in enormous armor spoke with a hammer resting on his shoulder.
Guild master of <Mighty Warriors> and the Tower's fourth-ranked High Ranker.
The Beast Warrior, Russell Mighty.
"Even if the Tower has fallen."
The torn sky meant that the boundaries of the 'floors' that had divided the worlds were broken.
That was right.
The Tower, right now, was collapsing.
"Who could ever have predicted it?"
The sky tore further, and outside, the light beating down grew stronger and stronger.
"That a Constellation would invade the Tower in person."
Constellation.
Transcendent beings who observed the Tower from outside and could hand down rewards to players.
The one that had invaded the Tower, brought it down, and killed countless lives was one of those Constellations.
It was <Pure Radiance>.
"Damn it...... If that bastard Melidus hadn't betrayed us......."
"So-wol. Russell."
Lee Jin-hyeok cut in between the two.
"Brother!"
"Lee Jin-hyeok! You bastard!"
The moment they saw Lee Jin-hyeok, the two rushed over and threw their arms around him.
"Ugh! Get off! You muscle-brained fool!"
"You get lost! Don't get in the way of a burning friendship between men!"
After a round of commotion, Russell asked,
"What about the others?"
"Dead. I'm sorry. I couldn't save them."
"......."
"But."
Lee Jin-hyeok spoke as he dropped the coffin he had been carrying.
"I achieved the objective."
"......!"
When Lee Jin-hyeok waved his hand, the wraiths surrounding the coffin vanished in an instant.
CREEEEAK......
Before long, the coffin opened.
Inside lay a human made of pure white skin.
A strange human with no face, like an egg ghost.
"My word...... Brother. You really did it?"
"To actually walk into <Pure Radiance>'s sanctuary and come back alive......."
"Should I say that's Lee Jin-hyeok for you? I knew this bastard would pull it off. He never fails."
In contrast to the guffawing Russell, Lee Jin-hyeok gave a bitter smile.
"I did fail. Look at the state of the Tower."
"......."
"......."
No one could deny those words.
Their opponent may have been a Constellation and its forces, but the defeat of the player alliance was a self-evident fact.
"Now, now. Even so, it's a relief. Hope has just appeared."
Spreading a magic circle over the body of the human Lee Jin-hyeok had brought back, and inserting tubes connected to drugs, Dang So-wol called out.
"All thanks to him bringing this back."
Looking at the faceless human, Lee Jin-hyeok asked,
"Is this really possible?"
"Of course it is."
Dang So-wol spoke with certainty.
"We can absolutely pull it off."
"Just who is this human."
At an exchange only the two of them understood, Cheon Hyang-un asked,
"Just who is this human, that you had him brought here even at the cost of sacrificing every one of our other comrades?"
"A vessel."
At Dang So-wol's word, everyone looked at her.
"A vessel that a Constellation's consciousness can be transferred into, Sister."
"A vessel?"
"Yes. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you in advance. I was afraid the secret would leak."
CRACKLE!
"But there was no other way. There were far too many bastards on the inside who betrayed us and went over to <Pure Radiance>."
All three of them nodded.
Certainly, far too many players had betrayed the Tower and sided with <Pure Radiance>.
"What do you plan to do with a vessel that can hold a Constellation's consciousness?"
Russell asked.
"It had better be something worth the sacrifice of everyone except us, yes?"
"More than enough. It means we have gained a chance to save everyone."
Dang So-wol drew two items engraved with complex runic script from inside her robes.
In one, black water flowed inside a sphere as though rain were falling.
The other looked like an old clockwork mainspring, but above all else it gave off a brilliant golden light.
"With this black rainwater, I'll transfer the soul and steal the Constellation's body."
Swish.
"And with this mainspring, I'll turn back time and change the past and the future at once."
"You mean to enter this body and then regress?"
"Exactly."
Dang So-wol looked at the group.
"One of the people here is going to enter this body and go back to the past."
Her cheeks were flushed with a strange anticipation.
"Heh heh. We steal a Constellation's body, and then we regress. To think I would get to do something this insane in my lifetime......."
It was hardly the first time she had taken an interest in strange things, so Russell let it pass and asked her,
"Why can't he just go as he is? With that item, you could send him back cleanly, couldn't you?"
"That alone can't change the outcome we have now."
Dang So-wol said.
"Think about it. Think about how the Constellation destroyed us."
A Constellation's power was overwhelming.
Players and Rankers alike had all been swept away by a single gesture, a single skill from those things.
Even the High Rankers could do no more than flee, stall for time, and endure.
The reality was that with a player's body, one could not so much as scratch a Constellation.
"The truth is, no matter how many times we regress, we can't stand against a Constellation without a 'Constellation's body.' That is why I asked Brother Jin-hyeok to do it."
Dang So-wol looked up at the sky.
"Take this body back into the past and build up strength. The goal is to become a 'player' who can stand against a Constellation."
"In that case."
Cheon Hyang-un stepped closer to the body.
"We must decide who will enter this body."
"Yes, Sister. But before that, there's something to be careful of."
"Something to be careful of?"
"If you regress with this body, your original body itself is annihilated. The same two souls and bodies can't exist at the same point in time."
"......!"
"Then what about family, or friends?"
"They'd forget. No, 'forget' isn't the right word either. You become 'a person who never existed in the first place.'"
Swish.
"Your very existence disappears."
A shocking statement.
Hearing it, Cheon Hyang-un shook her head.
"Then this one must withdraw."
"Sister."
"This one does not believe her own skill to be lacking. Even going back, this one would do well. But."
Swish.
"If this one's very existence is erased, this one cannot become the Cult Leader of the <Heavenly Demon Cult>. That would mean one fewer great guild to stand against the Constellations."
Only one who carried the blood of the previous Cult Leader could become Cult Leader of the <Heavenly Demon Cult>.
Without the Cult Leader's order, the <Heavenly Demon Cult> would not have joined the war.
That was why Cheon Hyang-un refused to be the one to regress.
"I can't go either."
Dang So-wol gave a bitter smile.
"I have to stay to the very end to transfer the soul and send this body into the past as well."
"Then it's me?"
Russell threw out his chest and laughed.
"Shouldn't I be the one to go, with the power I have? I'll go and wipe the whole lot of them out."
"Hah. This muscle-brained fool."
"What?"
"If you and Brother Jin-hyeok fought, who would win?"
"......."
Lost for words, Russell quietly stepped back.
He had survived to the very end and was the fourth-ranked High Ranker, so he was strong, certainly, but he was no match for Lee Jin-hyeok, who stood at first.
"Brother."
"Lee Jin-hyeok."
"......Jin-hyeok."
All three looked at Lee Jin-hyeok.
"......."
Lee Jin-hyeok kept silent, but in truth that was as good as consent.
'I have no world to go back to and no family to remember me anyway. I should carry this burden. Just as I always have.'
Lee Jin-hyeok was different from the other players, who had been dragged into the Tower by force.
A player who had abandoned his ties to the outside world and entered the Tower of his own will.
Once inside the Tower there was no returning to the world he had lived in, so every bond he had was one built after he entered.
If he regressed, these were relationships only Lee Jin-hyeok himself would remember.
"That isn't the only reason."
Dang So-wol came closer to Lee Jin-hyeok.
"You entered the Tower later than any of us, and still you became the first-ranked player."
"That's right. And didn't you travel all over the Tower more than anyone? The reason you were able to get strong in the first place was that you scooped up every hidden piece there was."
Russell laid a hand on his shoulder.
"If someone must regress to a time when the Tower has to be climbed all over again...... Jin-hyeok. You hold the greatest possibility. Greater even than this one."
Cheon Hyang-un approached from behind.
"Growing stronger as one climbs the Tower. There is no one who can do that as well as you."
The three High Rankers looked at Lee Jin-hyeok.
Of course, they had confidence of their own.
Confidence that they too, if they went back with this body, could grow far stronger still.
But none of them was confident of becoming as strong as 'Lee Jin-hyeok,' or of doing it as well.
The Wailing King Lee Jin-hyeok. Who was he?
Was he not the monster among monsters, the man who had entered the Tower more than ten years after them and still held the first rank?
Was he not, on top of that, a weak player with no innate talent for combat, from a strange country called South Korea?
'With a body that had no talent, entering ten years late, he still reached the summit.'
Swish.
'And if a man like that were given a Constellation's body, overflowing with talent, and the experience of having done it once.......'
Circumstance, martial power, judgment, and knowledge of the Tower as well.
A powerful Constellation's body, the countless hidden pieces only Lee Jin-hyeok remembered, and the Tower's rewards.
How enormous the synergy would be once those things came together was already something to look forward to.
"Jin-hyeok. I am sorry to place another burden upon you, but."
Cheon Hyang-un gripped Lee Jin-hyeok's hand.
"You are the one suited to it."
'What a burden.'
The last remaining human players, all looking only at him.
Seeing them, Lee Jin-hyeok felt exhaustion rush over him.
'But there's no one else.'
Burden.
It was the heavy load he had always carried.
When he had stopped the 'Einheri' in white armor, the followers of <Pure Radiance>, from conquering the Tower.
When he had held back <Pure Radiance> and the other Constellations.
When he had stolen the 'vessel' while his comrades drew away eyes and bought him time.
Had he not stood at the very front, answerable for them all?
An ordinary player or Ranker would have collapsed under the pressure long ago.
The Tower, which held countless worlds, and every living thing inside it.
More times than once or twice, he had risen to the position of being responsible for all of them.
But Lee Jin-hyeok had done it.
Through countless failures and setbacks, he had done it.
'That's right. I'm the one who can do this best.'
And he was used to it.
Taking responsibility for everyone and delivering results, at least that much.
"All right."
Lee Jin-hyeok looked at his comrades.
"I'll be the one to go."
"Lee Jin-hyeok. You'll do fine."
"Brother......."
"Jin-hyeok. I trust you."
With his comrades' words as the last thing spoken, Lee Jin-hyeok lay down beside the new 'vessel.'
"Any last words you want to leave?"
"Words to leave?"
"Since I'm going back to the past anyway, there must be something you want changed."
At that, the three looked at one another.
"You already know what I regret, so."
Russell left it at that and simply guffawed.
"If there's a bastard who won't listen, knock him on the head until he does."
"There's nothing in particular I want. I'm fine as things are. Oh."
Dang So-wol narrowed her eyes.
"Majuron. Just kill that woman for me. Without fail."
"Understood. Hyang-un. What about you?"
"I......."
Cheon Hyang-un closed her eyes for a moment.
"If you can, would you give my younger sister one more chance?"
"You've still been carrying that in your heart?"
Cheon Hyang-un nodded.
"I want to give her one more chance. My own sin was great, too. And at the point you regress to...... she will be my only blood kin."
"Understood."
Having heard his comrades out, Lee Jin-hyeok sank down beside the vessel.
'Damn it.'
FLOP.
"I'm going to begin."
Dang So-wol lifted the two items, the black rainwater and the mainspring.
"Take a nap, and when you wake, everything will be done, Brother."
Swish.
"I'm counting on you. Our past. And our future."
"I'm counting on you, friend!"
"......You had my thanks."
HISSSSS......!
When Dang So-wol waved her hand, pure white smoke wrapped around Lee Jin-hyeok's airways.
'Anesthetic poison?'
Looking at the faces of his comrades, forcing smiles as they watched him, Lee Jin-hyeok's consciousness slowly drifted away.