‘Please...!’
I hurriedly lowered my gaze to the descending ceiling.
I pulled out the phone I had crammed into my pocket and quickly opened the wiki.
[Tower of Wisdom]
- First-Run Floor 20 Walkthrough: Analyzing.
"Do you really want to watch me lose my mind, Wiki...?"
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them at the walkthrough that gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.
Was this what they called playing hard to get? I loved the wiki, but looking at it, I did not think it felt the same way.
Tap!
‘Stop getting distracted.’
The corners. I needed to fill in the corners first.
I did not know how much time I had. There was no timer anywhere.
There was no need for any more explanation. Once that ceiling hit the floor, it would be over.
Thud... thump.
‘At least they’re light.’
A rough swing of my hand—or even a brief touch—sent them flying far away.
They were fucking huge, but light enough to lift with a single finger.
Tap, smack!
I threw puzzle pieces toward both ends of the wall.
Watching them strike the faint wall and fall, I realized the room was roughly five meters across.
‘Just how many are there?’
They were all pure white, of all things, making them hard to distinguish.
They were not flat like ordinary puzzle pieces, but that did not make them any easier to see.
Crash!!
"Fuck...!"
The ceiling was not descending quickly at all. It moved slowly enough that I could only barely notice it if I squinted and stared.
But the pressure was greater than I could have imagined.
The room’s structure, which ruined my sense of direction, was making me panic.
‘...Don’t move around unnecessarily. Throw them.’
I had to go slowly. The more rushed I got, the worse it would be.
With that in mind, I searched through the gaps between the puzzle pieces, found the corner pieces, and tossed them into the corners.
Thump.
"Okay...!"
After roughly throwing all the corner pieces into their corners, I raised my head.
The ceiling still looked far away. Though I honestly had no idea how far it had descended.
[Tower of Wisdom]
- First-Run Floor 20 Walkthrough: Analyzing.
The wiki was still giving me nothing. Rather than get irritated, I immediately headed for a corner where I had thrown the edge pieces.
"...!"
Just as I was about to fit them together one by one, thinking I should start with the corners—
"This is seriously driving me insane."
I let out a hollow laugh at the fact that I could not tell which side was the front and which was the back.
‘Do I have to try them one by one? ...No, that would take too long.’
I fitted a corner piece into place first, but what came after was the problem.
Every individual puzzle piece was too large. There was no way to estimate how long brute-forcing it would take.
‘There are thirty-six edge pieces.’
Even as I thought, my body kept moving.
Seeing the edge pieces stacked ten at a time and the rest of the pieces, I figured out the total number.
A white 10x10 puzzle. One hundred pieces.
It was a lot, or not much, depending on how one looked at it.
I had only put together a puzzle once or twice in my life, but a hundred pieces should be quick.
The problem was that I did not know the time limit.
Rumble...!
‘First, sort them by type...!’
The sound from above made me move again.
I did not have time to struggle over them one at a time just because I could not tell their orientation.
Until the wiki gave me a walkthrough, I had to do everything I could.
Thump!
"This is so fucking irritating!!"
I scrunched up my face at the puzzle pieces getting kicked around in every direction.
Sometimes I mistook the floor for a puzzle piece and reached for nothing. Other times, I stepped forward thinking there was nothing there and nearly tripped over one.
As time passed, my sense of distance twisted further, and the pressure from the ceiling steadily closing in on me grew.
My head throbbed at the thought that I had to assemble a puzzle in this pure-white, mind-breaking space no matter where I looked.
Slap!!
"Focus, Han Seol—!!"
I smacked both cheeks hard with my hands, then examined the pieces around me.
There were five types in total, excluding the edge pieces.
Normally, there would have been more categories based on orientation, but with no pattern or picture, I could not tell them apart.
‘Think, think...’
I frowned as I looked at the puzzle pieces piled up to my waist.
How was I supposed to do this? They could not have given me this problem just to make me mindlessly grind through it.
There had to be something I could figure out. Something that could be called a clue.
Otherwise, could this really be called the Tower of Wisdom rather than the Tower of Trials?
"...Wait."
After examining them for a while, chewing my lip, I realized the puzzle pieces I had lined up in a row were not uniform.
I had stacked them straight, yet their sides were remarkably uneven.
More precisely, the protrusions and indentations on the puzzle pieces did not look alike in the slightest.
Of course, it was only natural that every puzzle piece had a different shape, but—
‘The shapes are more unusual than I thought.’
They looked stranger than the usual puzzle-piece shapes one might imagine.
Finding every match among them would not be easy, but they were distinctive enough that the moment I saw two connecting pieces, I would know they fit.
I had a feeling that distinguishing the matching pieces for each indentation might be easier than I had thought.
"...! Then the edges too...!!"
I hurried back to the corner and inspected the pieces.
It was the same here. The protrusions and indentations were not consistent at all.
Literally, if you were wise enough—if your observation skills or spatial awareness were good enough—the answer was easy enough to see at a glance.
‘This one... and this one?’
I narrowed down the candidates that seemed likely to fit the corner piece.
I flipped them front to back, turned them upside down, and tried fitting the three pieces I had selected.
Click.
"It worked...!"
I clenched my fist at the sight of the pieces fitting together perfectly.
I just had to move sideways, one space at a time.
I only had to find a similarly shaped piece that matched. There were not many pieces with similar indentations, so if I only had to try those—
Rumbleeeee...!!
"..."
The sound made my body freeze for a moment.
Would that really be enough?
Would I run out of time?
I looked up along the edge wall, but it was hard to tell how far the ceiling had come down.
Even so, I took a step, squinted, and spent a moment looking for the right piece.
Ding!
At the sound of the wiki’s notification, my vision immediately went dark.
"...!!"
All the strength suddenly drained from my body, and my consciousness began to fade.
Thud.
*
Rustle...
"What... just... happened...?"
Coming to my senses belatedly, I clutched my head, which was full of pain.
I had blacked out right along with the wiki’s notification.
I did not know how long I had been unconscious. My eyes burned. They burned so badly I could barely open them.
"Ngh—!!!"
Even so, I did not have time. I gritted my teeth and slowly opened my eyes somehow—
"Huh...?"
I gaped stupidly at the space, which had changed drastically from where I had been moments ago.
Gulp.
The walls were gone.
As if I had been trapped in space, endless-looking darkness filled my vision.
The walls, ceiling, and floor had all vanished.
Rather than being trapped in a pitch-black room like before, it felt closer to being thrown into a boundless void.
"What the hell... is this...?"
It was like entering a place in a game where players were not meant to go.
As though an error or bug had occurred, the entire world had turned to darkness.
Whoosh.
I reached toward where the wall had been, but my hand touched nothing.
I forced myself to take a step, but could not feel the sensation of standing on the ground or walking.
Blink.
"!!"
The moment I closed and opened my eyes, I was back in the original place.
That entirely white space. The place that had originally been the twentieth floor of the Tower of Wisdom.
[Accurately fill the space within the time limit]
When I blankly raised my head, the message was still there.
Rumble—!!
The unpleasant sound of the approaching ceiling echoed around me.
"..."
[Tower of Wisdom]
- First-Run Floor 20 Walkthrough: Displaying Results.
As if possessed, I pulled out my phone. The wiki’s walkthrough was displayed on the screen.
Whoosh.
When I turned my head, a puzzle blueprint filled the room.
A translucent blue hologram floated above the floor, as if all I had to do was find identically shaped pieces and place them over it.
A perfect walkthrough.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them at the sight of the wiki giving me the answer just as it always had.
"Am I... okay...?"
The headache stabbing into my skull quickly subsided.
As I clenched and unclenched my fists, I felt my burning eyes gradually cool down.
I did not know what had just happened to me, or whether that phenomenon itself had been part of the twentieth floor.
Step.
"I don’t really know what’s what, but..."
Still, clearing this place was what mattered right now, so I clenched my fists and forced myself to step forward.
*
"Wiki...?"
I stared blankly at the sight before me, blinking.
This was strange. This should not be happening. There was no way this could be happening.
"..."
I followed the blueprint the wiki had displayed and fitted every single puzzle piece together.
Tightly, without a single empty space. So perfectly that it could only be the correct answer.
Even with the blueprint, finding the pure-white puzzle pieces had not been easy, but it had never been difficult either.
I assembled the puzzle happily, piece by piece, pleased by how easily I could clear it.
But—
"W-what is this, Wiki...?"
Then why was there one piece left in my hand?
The final puzzle piece, with four indentations, trembled faintly on my palm.
Tap.
The puzzle piece fell limply to the floor.
I moved it around and tried fitting it in, wondering if it was some illusion like chocolate magically duplicating, but there was not even enough space between the wall and the puzzle for an ant to squeeze through.
[Tower of Wisdom]
- First-Run Floor 20 Walkthrough: Displaying Results.
The wiki’s walkthrough had not changed either.
To begin with, since I had filled the floor perfectly with the puzzle pieces, I could not think that the wiki was the problem.
Then why? What the hell was wrong?
‘...Is it just bait?’
No, it could not be.
If it were, the door would have appeared and opened long ago.
[Accurately fill the space within the time limit]
I had fulfilled every condition.
I had filled it perfectly, without a single gap.
Tremble, tremble, tremble.
I stood in the middle of the all-white room, my leg shaking endlessly.
What was wrong? What was missing?
I repeatedly searched the room in case there was some empty space.
I inspected and threw the last remaining piece all over the place, but nothing changed.
Rumbleeeee—!!
After wasting several more minutes like that, I raised my head at the sound—
"...No way, right?"
I spotted the X-shaped gap in the ceiling where the puzzle pieces had first poured out.
Had it been that large from the beginning?
I glanced down at the puzzle piece, and it looked far too much like the shape of the gap in the ceiling.
‘So now... I have to wait until the ceiling comes down right above my head...’
Did that mean I was supposed to fit the puzzle piece in there once it came close enough to reach?
And if that was not it when the time came, I would just get crushed to death?
"This is seriously driving me crazy."
I felt like I was going to lose my mind.
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