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Chapter 166
In truth, part of me already understood.
That maybe… just maybe, we had already completed everything on the 13th floor.
That what I was doing now could very well be meaningless.
But if I didn’t shake this feeling—this hunch—I knew I’d regret it.
Call it intuition. Or maybe…
The kind of sixth sense regressors always have in novels.
And right now, that instinct was screaming—there’s still something left on this floor.
“…The horses stopped?”
“They never even ate before, so why now?”
I waited five days for this moment.
After seeing the horse transform and regressing, I endured five full days of walking this barren wasteland. All for this.
—Skkrrrrrk.
With a sound like tearing paper, the air twisted like crumpled parchment.
A rip in reality opened before us.
“Oh, adventurers! You’ve done well.”
From the rift emerged a gentle-looking nun with a soft smile.
“Oh my, the carriage is completely intact! Surely divine protection guided you. And no one’s hurt either—how wonderful. Thank you for safely escorting such dangerous cargo.”
She began leading the carriage into the village, just like last time.
The other players stood frozen, overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness of the situation.
“What are you doing?!”
“Out of the way!”
I didn’t hesitate—I threw myself into the spatial rift and forced my way inside the barrier.
“You mustn’t do that!”
The nun lunged toward me, clearly alarmed—but when I flared my internal energy, she stiffened in place, unable to move.
“What are you hiding?!”
I darted toward the nearest wooden house and slammed the door open.
“P-please don’t hurt us!”
“You can take everything we have!”
But inside, there were only two terrified civilians, cowering and shaking.
No suspicious activity. No hidden ritual.
Still, I couldn’t rule it out yet.
I heightened my senses, scanning for secret compartments or hidden doors—but found nothing.
No, it was too soon to give up.
I bolted out and ran toward the largest wooden structure nearby.
The first thing I saw was dried meat and fruit. Looked like a storage shed at a glance…
But—
“Knew it.”
My sharpened senses caught something—a shape slumped in the corner.
No breathing. No sound.
Its posture looked all wrong for a living person.
I felt a rush of anticipation—had I finally found something?
Wait…
“The mustached guy?”
What was lying in the corner—was the same mustached man who’d appeared at the start of the 13th floor.
Or rather, what looked like him.
It wasn’t a man.
It was a perfectly crafted wooden dummy.
“….”
I searched every building after that.
Aside from a few terrified villagers and some more wooden mannequins, there was nothing else.
No enemies.
No answers.
Nothing.
As if—
This was all just… a normal, peaceful village.
“Was I… wrong about all this?”
And yet…
If this really were just an ordinary village, why did they need to transport a crate filled with such thick, ominous energy?
It didn’t make sense.
While I stood frozen in confusion at the village center, the nun came sprinting toward me, breathless and panicked.
“Everyone, run! I’ll hold him off! You know where to go!”
Clutching a mace in trembling hands, the nun turned to me with unmistakable hostility in her eyes.
Meanwhile, the villagers who had been hiding inside the houses darted out and began fleeing in all directions.
“Why… Why are you doing this?! Especially now! Aren’t we on the same side?!”
“…Do you know what’s inside that crate?”
“It contains death energy—you know that as well as I do.”
“Then why bring it here?”
“You came here under $#%&’s orders. Don’t act like you know nothing. You saw his puppet, didn’t you? Aren’t you afraid of what might happen if you cross him?”
The first part of her words had been garbled—probably filtered by the Tower itself.
But that puppet…
It must be a symbol of someone.
Someone powerful.
And the nun assumed I recognized it.
“So… this was really just a simple escort mission? There’s no hidden objective, no demonic ritual, no twisted secret?”
“…What are you talking about?”
Her tone shifted.
The nun, finally sensing something strange in my questions, slowly lowered her mace.
She must’ve realized I meant no harm.
With that, an unspoken truce settled between us.
We started to talk.
But the longer we spoke…
…the more my expression twisted in disbelief.
“There’s really nothing? No hidden boss? No final curse? Not even a devil waiting in the shadows…?”
“…I can’t say anything with absolute certainty, but… no, I don’t think so.”
Even though I couldn’t understand everything due to the Tower’s censorship, what she was telling me seemed sincere.
According to her, this mission really was just an escort job.
The crates were emitting death energy, which attracted monsters.
That’s why they hired adventurers to protect them.
That’s all there was to it.
“Then… why did you break into the village? It’s not like this kind of village is new to you.”
“…I’m sorry.”
Her eyes sharpened as she pressed the question.
I lowered my head and bowed deeply.
Then, out of sheer embarrassment, I bit down on the inside of my cheek.
So utterly shameful.
So humiliating.
You have taken damage.
Regressing to the moment you first entered the 13th floor.
***
“Jun-ho, honestly? I think it makes less sense for you to keep running into unfair crap on every floor.”
“…”
“This Tower wasn’t built just to mess with you, right? It’s not like it’s custom-designed to ruin your day.”
Choi Ji-won’s voice was calm as she tried to comfort me, watching as I silently stared at the ground, visibly shaken.
“To be honest with you, we are way stronger than the average player. Like, objectively. If the two of us working together can’t clear a floor, what chance does anyone else have? And we’re only on the 13th floor. Isn’t that kinda telling?”
She was trying to cheer me up. I could feel it. But even as I listened, something in my chest wouldn’t settle.
“I talked to a Ranker I know at the Association,” Ji-won continued. “Turns out the reason so many players kept quiet about the crate thing… is because they abandoned the ones who got debuffed. They couldn’t report it honestly because of the guilt.”
“…Yeah. That… actually makes a lot of sense.”
“And floors 11 and 12 didn’t have any real ‘hidden’ gimmicks like you kept hoping for, right? Maybe it’s just the style of the angel who designed floors 11 to 15.m You don’t need to overthink it.”
“I guess… but still, I can’t shake the feeling we missed something.”
I sighed.
Maybe it was a kind of paranoia.
After climbing this Tower through so many regressions, with so much suffering…
Maybe I was just used to things being hard. So when a floor felt too easy, my brain couldn’t accept it.
Like something must be wrong.
“You’ve had it rough. But from where I’m standing, floors like 2, 4, and 11 were the exceptions. The others? You beat them just like this. Clean.”
“…That’s true.”
“If you’re really that unsettled, I think it’s okay to regress a few more times. But we’ve got a long way to go in this Tower, and spending all your mental energy on this one floor might not be worth it.”
She was right.
There was no boss I hadn’t beaten.
No locked door left unopened.
Nothing tangible left unfinished.
It was just… me. My own obsession. My own warped sense of normalcy.
“…Yeah. Let’s just clear it. That’s the right call.”
“You sure?”
After sorting through my thoughts, I took a short week-long break, then regressed one final time to clear the 13th floor without hesitation.
And with no lingering doubts, I stepped onto the 14th floor.
The 14th floor was a cooperative mission:
Ten players had to work together to build a machine.
But there was a catch—ten different parts were required, and each came with its own level of difficulty.
Retrieving the easiest part, the gear, only meant facing a few wolves along the way.
But the hardest part?
The core?
That path was swarming with heavily armed trolls.
The most straightforward method would’ve been for all ten of us to move together, collecting one material at a time.
But we decided to split up and each go after a part individually.
How did we manage to get the hardest one?
“…Ji-won, you’re already back?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t that hard, honestly.”
With Choi Ji-won around, what’s there to worry about?
If we’d stuck to the ‘proper’ method—ten people grouped together—it probably would’ve taken us two weeks.
Instead, we cleared the floor overnight.
The rewards were solid: an XP elixir, some high-grade potions, and a C-rank trait called Enhanced Stamina, which, just like the name suggests, boosted stamina and physical durability.
“Starting from floor 11, the rewards are seriously nice.”
“Right? I can feel myself getting stronger. And it’s not even that hard.”
The other players were thrilled.
Some even joked that if floor 15 was just as sweet, they’d stay here forever.
“Jun-ho, what do you think? Wanna regress a bit and see if there’s anything hidden?”
“…I’ll try it two more times. Then I’ll decide.”
And so I did. Two more regressions.
And just like with the 13th floor, the result was the same—no hidden elements, no surprises.
The lingering unease hadn’t fully gone away… but I wasn’t about to regress dozens of times just because of a gut feeling.
“Mental health matters for a regressor…”
Unless I’m forced into it, there’s no reason to obsess over nothing.
After a final sweep of the area, checking my gear, and tying up loose ends—
“Shall we go?”
“Yeah. Let’s go now.”
With a light heart, I stepped onto the 15th floor.
Entering 15th Floor.
Looking back on it now…
That moment marked the beginning of everything that would change.
---The End Of The Chapter---
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