‘How did all of them end up gathered in one place?’
I had occasionally encountered them while climbing the towers, but this was the first time I had met all of them at once.
And from the very first stage, no less.
The population within the towers was estimated to be ten billion. How could only people who had shared a connection with me have been selected to stand beside me?
‘Is this truly a coincidence?’
Had the bug known as the reboot somehow caused this?
‘There are no genuine coincidences in these towers. There must be some intention behind it.’
No matter how long I considered it, I could not find an answer.
“So many of you have volunteered. You all possess an admirable sense of justice. Excellent.”
I drew the crowd’s attention with a genial smile and a pleasant voice.
‘But even so, nothing changes.’
Whatever relationships I had shared with them in the past were irrelevant.
I would use them strictly as tools.
After all, the memories I cherished had not been created with the people currently standing before me.
‘The more I clung to relationships from the past, the more often I failed to climb the towers.’
That was one of the lessons I had learned through countless regressions.
Several of them had even betrayed me in other past lives.
‘The one advantage of our previous relationships is that they are already in the palm of my hand.’
I knew their specialties, the strength of their minds, and even their weaknesses.
‘Soyeong is good at fostering teamwork and raising morale, so I will place her in Team 2. Yonghyeok specializes in close combat, so he belongs in the Vanguard Squad. Seongwon is a Pyromancer, so people tend to mistake him for a backline fighter, but he is actually more effective when dealing damage from the middle distance. I should assign him to the Firepower Squad.’
I reassigned the others to teams that suited them better than their previous ones.
“We have reorganized into four Defense Teams and one Skirmisher Team. As for the remaining time… Hm. We have twenty hours left. You must all be exhausted, but you endured well. For now, put your worries aside and tend to your personal needs. We will resume work after eight hours of rest.”
“Yes!”
The people resisted far less than I had expected.
Ultimately, I was a failed commander who had caused around ten casualties.
Even though I had executed the Vanguard members who had grown frightened and retreated as an example, there should still have been some degree of discomfort or rejection.
Instead, their expressions were brighter than when they had first arrived here.
‘Something is strange. There is no reason they should accept everything so easily.’
I had even prepared several contingency plans, but it seemed that they would no longer be necessary.
To learn what had happened, I coaxed the youngest member of Team 5 into talking.
The method was simple.
The child could not wander around freely, while I could explore every part of the ruins.
During my scouting, I had discovered a supermarket filled with things children loved.
Since we had to secure even our own food in this place, such reconnaissance was essential.
Fortunately, the Sentinels always possessed some form of geographical advantage, so food was rarely scarce.
‘Even on a Wasteland Map, the base is located beside an oasis.’
I gave the child some snacks and persuaded him to tell me everything that had happened while I was gone.
As expected, the change in the people had not been caused by me.
It had been Park Gilsu.
‘He praises me while securing the actual benefits for himself. Interesting.’
To them, I had merely become the North Star in the night sky.
Their eyes were directed toward me, but their ears were turned toward the bespectacled Park Gilsu.
‘I do not care. He can take as much of that as he wishes. More importantly, it is impressive that he united everyone without me. Why have I never seen Park Gilsu’s face before? With that disposition, he should have survived well into the later stages of the towers.’
I did not know the reason, but I could make a reasonable guess.
He had probably been too kind.
Too upright.
Too human.
The people with the lowest survival rates in the towers were not the ones who charged forward recklessly.
They were the kindhearted people who helped and cared for others.
Most of them died before they could even escape the Tower of Beginnings.
That was why, despite my countless regressions, I had encountered people like him only occasionally and almost exclusively within the Tower of Beginnings.
‘People destined to climb the towers.’
And today, I had encountered several people from my past who possessed a high likelihood of climbing.
When it came to ascending the towers, they were A-Rank Talents.
I intended to monopolize everything and reach the end alone during this cycle, so I had no intention of accepting them as permanent companions.
Still, accompanying them briefly and making use of them seemed worthwhile.
Missions requiring precise cooperation were rare, but they did appear.
As long as they continued following my instructions, I was willing to use them.
“And then I started digging the ground like this…!”
I looked at the young boy beside me, who was waving his arms and legs dramatically as though performing a play.
“So all of that happened while I was gone?”
“Yes. Mr. Gilsu said you ordered him to do it, Boss.”
He had even given me the credit.
There was no longer any doubt.
Park Gilsu was subtly appealing to me, asking me to recognize his usefulness.
‘He has no particular reason to go this far for me, though… Hmmm. Does he prefer the safety of second place to being first and attracting every bullet?’
Perhaps he had instinctively realized that opposing me would only place him at a disadvantage.
I patted the boy’s head and handed him a large piece of candy I had taken from the supermarket.
“Wow! Thank you!”
Leaving the child’s gratitude behind, I organized my thoughts.
“A funeral··· How did he know to do that?”
It was actually something I had planned to use myself.
Once the blood in the corpses had coagulated sufficiently, I had intended to cremate them.
Park Gilsu, however, had chosen a different method.
“It has been a long time since I saw a burial instead of a cremation.”
He probably decided to bury the bodies because he did not yet understand what kind of place the towers were.
Burying a corpse was an extremely dangerous act.
Some enemies could manipulate dead bodies or use them as a medium for poison, while certain monsters were drawn to graves.
That was why the dead were ordinarily honored through a clean cremation.
Of course, threats like those rarely appeared during an initial stage like this one.
“I should take a look.”
I headed toward the open area where the graves had been made.
Before leaving to meet Team 1, I had instructed Park Gilsu to gather the bodies in one place.
However, Park Gilsu had claimed that it was my order and created graves in the form of burial mounds.
A funeral like this was extremely effective during the earliest stages.
It strengthened unity among the team members and assured them that their bodies would not be discarded without dignity after death.
That knowledge brought them psychological comfort.
Even though I had not witnessed the funeral, I could clearly imagine what it had looked like.
Although they had known the dead for only a short time, they had probably shed sincere tears and mourned as though members of their own families had died.
While creating the graves and burying their companions, each of them must have considered that they might someday be buried in the same place.
“Is this it? For something made by hand, they did quite well.”
A cold wind passed through the silent forest of buildings, sweeping dust across the broad clearing.
I narrowed my eyes against it.
When I opened them again, the burial mounds were faintly visible through the dust, resting heavily upon the earth.
The weapons and armor of the dead had been planted atop the crude mounds as though offering a final farewell.
“He was the first to begin digging with his bare hands··· That must have been deliberate.”
According to the boy, once all the bodies had been gathered, Park Gilsu silently began digging the earth with his own hands.
The others must have understood the meaning of his actions and followed him.
TAP. TAP.
The ground was softer than I expected.
However, no matter how loose the soil was, digging with bare hands remained difficult.
That was true even for Awakened who possessed strength and Vitality far beyond ordinary people.
Yet until all ten burial mounds had been completed, no one had complained or claimed that the work was too difficult.
WHOOOOOSH-.
These were the graves of their companions, excluding the invaders and the three Vanguard members who had endangered everyone else.
After burying the dead, the survivors had clasped one another’s dirt-covered hands and continued mourning until I returned.
“And he even delivered a remarkably effective speech.”
Despite being a child, the boy possessed the memory of an Awakened.
He had repeated every word without a single mistake and reenacted the scene with vivid detail.
-They say that the trials life places before us are given because we possess the strength to overcome them. Everyone, we have not known one another for long. However, we must trust and rely upon one another, fight together, and prevail.
-We must survive. These people died because of those men. They refused to trust us or depend upon us, and this was the result.
-Through the deaths of those who left us today, we have learned something. We must overcome our fear, trust and rely upon one another, and move forward together. Look beside you. None of this is possible without companions. We must win every battle that must be won and return alive. Let us return to our homes, erased from our memories but still warm within our hearts…! We must return together!!
Thanks to the child’s excellent memory and performance, I could vividly imagine the atmosphere at the time.
Soaring emotion and radiant hope.
It was also a clever piece of agitation that redirected the resentment of anyone inclined to blame me toward another target.
STEP. STEP.
I looked at a roughly abandoned pit that stood in stark contrast to the burial mounds before it.
It was a crude grave where the bodies had simply been thrown inside without even being properly covered with soil.
“They were still rather generous.”
Those men deserved to have their corpses dug up and mutilated, yet the others had still covered them with dirt.
I passed them and returned to stand before the ten burial mounds.
Then I observed a brief moment of silence.
Regardless of everything else, these people had died while following my orders.
Even if I would not apologize, I should at least honor their end.
“May you reach a better place.”
Leaving behind only those brief words, I headed toward the shelter.
The short night passed.
Outside the Temporary Shelter, people moved about busily.
“Lend me that knife for a moment.”
“Okay~ Help me lift this when you are finished.”
The people constructed the maze even more thoroughly than they had the previous day.
They reinforced the entrances and made the traps far more lethal.
After completing their work, some held sparring matches, while others shared techniques for using their skills.
“This is certainly a first.”
Throughout all my countless regressions, I had never seen such a warm and human community.
Everyone found work without being ordered and made efforts to improve themselves.
Humans truly seemed to be creatures of adaptation and social animals who desired stability.
Within this unknown space, they were no longer ignorant.
At the very least, they now understood what they had to do to survive here, and they worked diligently toward that purpose.
Their current priority was to complete the Defense without dying.
Once they had a clear and visible objective, they had no time to grieve or surrender to despair.
When everyone else was moving busily, no one could remain idle alone.
Even if someone wanted to, there were people who persuaded and helped them until they began working.
‘Kang Sujeong, Bae Soyeong, and Park Gilsu.’
They raised everyone’s spirits and were liked by the entire group.
In contrast, I was practically invisible.
Put positively, I reigned over them like a king.
Put negatively, I was an outcast.
‘As long as they handle everything properly on their own, I do not care.’
As I continued preparing for the next invasion, the bespectacled Park Gilsu approached me.