I opened my eyes once again.
Nothing surrounded me but pure-white walls.
My chest tightened until it felt ready to burst.
The rage swelling inside me erupted from my throat.
“Fucking hell-!!”
I had been forced into another regression.
THUD.
The sound of my fist striking the floor echoed in every direction.
The countless years of my previous life had vanished for nothing.
A future no one else remembered.
I had to begin this endless ordeal all over again.
After everything it had taken to get that far···
Was I supposed to start over from the beginning again?
How many more times did I have to go through this fucking nightmare before it finally ended?
“AAAAARGH!!!!”
No matter how much I screamed, the fury inside me refused to subside.
Then I noticed the damned message before my eyes, one so revolting that merely looking at it was enough to give me a nervous breakdown.
[Tower of Beginnings]
-STAGE. 001
Leave the pure-white room and challenge the summit of the tower.
-Success: Awakening(Status Window unlocked), 100 Points
-Failure: Death by starvation
No one knew where this place was or who had brought us here. We only knew that if we wanted to survive, we had to climb the tower.
I climbed and climbed.
After experiencing countless deaths, I finally managed to conquer the summit of the Tower of Beginnings.
However, the reward for conquering it was not a return to my original world.
It was the appearance of another tower.
[Tower of Faith]
The second tower had appeared just when I thought I had finally been set free.
The despair I had felt then was beyond description.
But now···
Despair and frustration far greater than anything I had felt back then ruled over both my body and soul.
Beginning, Faith, Betrayal, Frustration, Rage, Joy and Sorrow, Despair, Infinity.
Even the word aeons could not adequately describe the time I had spent conquering all those towers.
The end of those endless years had been right before my eyes.
The final tower spoken of by every prophet and seer.
The Tower of Infinity.
And at the very last moment, I had been betrayed.
Worse still, my betrayer had been my one and only companion—the one person who had never betrayed me throughout my infinite regressions.
He had been a steadfast companion who had sacrificed himself for me countless times, and the only friend to whom I would willingly have entrusted my life and soul.
“Then why? Why the hell did it have to be at the very end-!!”
I had controlled every variable.
Throughout my infinite regressions, I had thoroughly identified every person who would betray me and exploited each of them to perfection.
That was why I had believed it was the best possible opportunity.
I could never have returned there with better conditions or circumstances.
“Choi Roun!”
-BANG! BANG! BANG!!
Unable to contain my rage, I pounded the floor.
[Ah—truly. I have waited so very long for this moment.]
[Why···? Why are you···!!]
The madman licking his lips as he tore out my heart was not the Choi Roun I had known.
[I was curious. I always have been. You constantly behaved as though you knew everything. How did you do it? Well, you do not have to tell me. My Fixed Skill is··· Predation.]
My absurdly durable body continued to endure even without a heart, but my consciousness grew hazier by the moment.
[Why? You risked your life for everyone so many times.]
[It was the most efficient choice. If death was inevitable either way, saving you gave us at least a sliver of hope. The liberation of every soul··· I believed you might be capable of achieving it. And although I could become stronger than anyone else, I could never know as much as you did.]
[Then··· why are you doing this now?]
[Because you have outlived your usefulness. There is no more information I need to learn, and I no longer need any companions, do I? Now it is time to taste the fruit I have coveted for so long. I have always wondered how you managed to monopolize so many secrets.]
When I was nearing my limit, his expression twisted.
[···You do not have any future-sight or information-reading skills···? How is that possible? I thought someone like you would possess an even more extraordinary skill··· Wait. Do not die yet. Tell me. ···I said tell me. Tell me before you die! How did you know all of that-!]
It was almost laughable.
Perhaps even the goose that laid the golden eggs had seen the same look on the fool who cut open its belly.
Seeing the desperate curiosity on his face made me feel a little better.
I had not learned about the future through a skill.
It was nothing but memory.
Everything I knew had been accumulated over countless regressions. Choi Roun had mistaken my ability to lead people using that information for some kind of skill.
He would never imagine, even in his wildest dreams, that I was a regressor.
[···Go f*ck yourself.]
Those had been my last words.
I had enjoyed watching his face contort grotesquely at the end.
But even that had not been enough to extinguish my fury.
“When we meet again, I will rip out your heart and chew it to pieces··· You f*cking traitor.”
The Choi Roun of this cycle and the traitorous Choi Roun from my previous life were undoubtedly two different people.
The Choi Roun I encountered this time might never betray me at all.
A mutable world.
I was the only regressor in this place. I was also the only person who had obtained an ability before Awakening.
That was why I knew it better than anyone.
Everything in this place was ‘random.’
Even within the Tower of Beginnings, the first mission, the people one began with, and the abilities one obtained changed every time.
The only things that were not random were a person’s intrinsic nature and my regression.
Relationships between people also changed constantly.
Someone who had been my most bitter enemy in one cycle might become a companion to whom I entrusted my life in another.
People changed according to their circumstances.
Everything differed depending on where they started, whom they started with, and what abilities they possessed.
‘Like a parameter sweep.’
It was like an experimental method in which one or more values were systematically altered, then the results of each combination were observed and analyzed.
With every regression, something changed little by little.
‘This pure-white room mission is the same. The first time, I started with dozens of other people.’
This time, however, I was trapped in the pure-white room alone.
That was the reason I had failed to clear the towers despite experiencing infinite regressions over countless aeons.
Every condition, from the smallest variables to the largest, was thrown into disarray. That made clearing the towers extraordinarily difficult, which was why the loss of my previous life was so agonizing.
I had obtained the finest abilities, achieved optimal growth, and survived to the very end with the best possible companions.
Had it not been for the single variable known as Choi Roun, I would undoubtedly have witnessed the end of the tower in my previous life.
“Phew··· I should get out of here first.”
I had already starved to death thousands of times.
After all, dying in this pure-white room was the only way to rest during my infinite regressions.
The frustration left over from my previous life made me consider simply starving to death again several times, but I knew that doing so would only cause my anger to fade.
I moved through the room, feeling my way along walls so white that merely looking at them seemed capable of driving a person insane.
Several hours must have passed before I found a tile near the center of the floor that sat at a slightly different height from the others.
CLICK.
When I pressed down firmly, the tile smoothly sank into the floor.
A section of the pure-white wall then split apart as though it were collapsing, revealing an open doorway.
“How many times did I die because I could not figure out something this simple?”
The first stage was where I had died more times than anywhere else.
There was not even water in this pure-white room, much less food.
When I first opened my eyes here, I had thought it was one of the countless punishments of hell.
Unable to find the door leading out, I had starved to death over and over again.
Ridiculously enough, starving to death did not even qualify as a tragedy, let alone hell.
Sometimes I awakened alone, but at other times, I opened my eyes alongside complete strangers.
Whenever I found myself trapped in the pure-white room with people I had never seen before, we distrusted one another, divided into factions, and fought.
At first, no one found the door before starvation set in, and the people began devouring one another.
Back then, all I had done was flee in tears. In the end, those ravenous fiends had torn me apart and eaten me alive.
In the next life, I had lived as a punching bag for the strong. In the life after that, I had served as a meat shield forced to walk at the front in case there were traps.
All of that had happened because I was timid by nature and had failed to obtain a useful ability.
It was only when I began with a combat-related ability for the first time that I learned how one had to behave inside this tower.
[Tower of Beginnings]
-STAGE. 001
-CLEAR
-Success rewards will now be distributed.
“Whew··· What kind of f*cked-up ability are you going to give me this time?”
I calmly called up my Status Window.
If the ability seemed useless, I planned to let myself die during the next stage.
Starting with a worthless ability only exhausted me mentally. Nothing ever improved because of it.
[Status Window]
Name: Lee Hojun
Level: 01
······
Various categories appeared within the Status Window.
However, I did not care about my name, level, stats, or age.
The only thing that mattered was my skills.
Sometimes, I began with an unbelievably powerful skill. At other times, I received an ability that was utterly useless.
The only thing that never changed was each person’s intrinsic nature—their innate temperament, Fixed Skill, appearance, personality, and other inherent qualities.
[Skills]
Fixed Skill – Infinity(Unique)
Active Skill - None
Passive Skill – Evolution(Unique)
As always, my Fixed Skill was the first thing to greet me.
The Fixed Skill called Infinity.
It allowed me to possess an unlimited number of skills and items.
It was the reason I became increasingly powerful during the later stages.
‘Most people can possess only one Fixed Skill and fewer than ten Active and Passive Skills.’
Unless someone possessed a Fixed Skill such as Thousand, no one else could hold hundreds or thousands of skills as I did.
Even Thousand was merely an inferior version of my skill.
I could possess an infinite amount of anything, regardless of quantity.
Because ordinary people had a limited number of skill slots, they had no choice but to delete the least useful skill they had previously learned before registering a new one, no matter how reluctant they were to do so.
The higher the rank of a newly acquired skill, the more likely they were to discard an older skill of a lower rank.
I had no need to do that.
The more skills I acquired, the stronger I became.
The same was true of items.
I did not even have a weight limit, so I collected everything, including worthless garbage that others called scrap, and found practical ways to use it.
“Damn it. Is this cycle a failure? I have to start without an Active Skill?”
It was not a good beginning.
Obtaining a decent Active Skill in the early stages was extraordinarily difficult. This was practically the same as being told to fight all kinds of monsters bare-handed.
“Still, my Passive Skill is Evolution? Skill evolution is certainly not bad in the long term, but··· Phew—huh?”
I noticed something strange.
Unique.
“What? Unique?”
The rank displayed beside Evolution made no sense.
How could a skill that was not a Fixed Skill be Unique?
Many people possessed the Evolution skill.
Although it was a high-ranking Passive Skill classified as Rare, someone fortunate enough could obtain it during the early stages like this or purchase it from the Shop later for a considerable number of Points.
THUMP. THUMP.
With my heart pounding, I called up the skill’s detailed information.
[Evolution]
Rank: Unique
Any skill can be ‘evolved.’
There were no restrictions.
Evolution was originally a chance-based skill that upgraded Normal- and Magic-rank skills to Rare.
Although the probability of success was extremely low, Normal- and Magic-rank skills were relatively easy to acquire. Even if the evolution failed and destroyed the skill, it was not much of a burden.
If someone continued trying, the evolution would eventually succeed, raising the skill’s rank.
However, Rare had always been the limit.
Evolution could not be used on another skill of the same Rare rank, and the same was naturally true of Legendary skills.
But···
The description of this Evolution skill said ‘any skill,’ and its rank was Unique.
“Could this mean··· it can even evolve a Legendary skill? But Unique is the only rank above Legendary, isn’t it?”
I wanted to test it immediately on a Legendary skill, but the only skill I possessed was Infinity, the Unique skill that followed me through every life like my soul mate.
“······!!”
No.
Surely not.
Could that actually be possible?
In all my regressions, a skill ranked higher than Legendary had never appeared even once.
And now I was considering something beyond even Unique?
Although I thought the idea that had entered my mind was completely absurd, I activated Evolution before I even realized what I was doing.
“I am only checking. I am just going to check.”
[Evolution]
Target Skill: Infinity(Unique)
Expected Skill: ???
“···This actually works?”
Amazingly, even a Unique skill could be evolved.