‘Of course, I’ll start tomorrow!’
Thud.
"Phew."
I returned to the hideout, which still felt unfamiliar, washed up roughly, and lay down beneath the blanket.
The shower only had cold water, and the blanket was far from soft—thin and even damp—but perhaps because I was exhausted, it all felt pleasantly comfortable.
Growl.
"Endure it, Han Seol."
I forced myself to ignore the sound coming from my stomach.
Before showering, I had tried to chew and swallow the hard bread, but it felt like my teeth would fall out first, so I’d tossed it aside.
Maybe I hadn’t starved enough yet, because I didn’t want to eat it right now.
‘Guess I’ll browse the gallery.’
Face-down on the blanket, I opened the gallery, intending to look up more information.
[Infinite Regression Gallery]
[Wait, but isn’t getting one on your first run total bullshit?] (14)
[☆ Still, begging for a wish that lets you browse the gallery is insane lol;] (95)
[I do feel a little bad for him] (5)
[I’m just jealous... At least he got to see one] (11)
[★ Lmao look at this newbie’s comments. This is what it takes to get an Irregular] (145)
‘This topic has crazy staying power.’
I was the person involved—the main character, even—but it was surprising that the topic hadn’t died down after nearly two hours.
In particular, the latest featured post about whether it was insane had turned into a heated debate, even though I wasn’t there.
More comments kept appearing every time I refreshed. They looked ready to start cursing each other out for real, so I hurriedly left a comment.
KingGodWiki: Even I think it’s insane, so it’s fine.
┗Anonymous: Holy shit, the man himself lmao
┗Anonymous: Fuck, what am I supposed to be now after defending you?
┗Anonymous (Author): Yeah, it is insane.
‘Hmm. I can’t just stand by and watch pretty girls fight over me.’
The flood of comments stopped in an instant. Mod, I’m working for you here.
[☆ Please stop name-dropping, direct references, and excessive criticism...] (243)
[Author: Not an Eraser🔸]
It was this bad even with the mod working.
I knew why everyone was reacting this way now, but it was still surprising.
Not an Eraser🔸: It’s a star that grants wishes... More precisely, it’s the only means of getting out of this place...
┗Not an Eraser🔸: You can get one roughly once every thousand years──
"A thousand years..."
In probability terms, that was a 0.1% chance.
It was low, but honestly, I wouldn’t call it an insanely awful rate.
At least it could show up. There were games that pretended something that didn’t even exist could drop, then went, Agh, penalty fine!
The problem was that this was a gacha you could roll only once a year.
Four hundred floors. A one-year apocalypse timer.
You had to risk your life climbing endlessly, then beat 0.1% on the one chance you got each year.
They’d even said the difficulty increased with each regression.
I still didn’t know to what extent, but the bottom line was that the odds of dying would rise.
‘And there’s no pity system, either.’
Anyone would want to return to their original world.
Anyone would envy someone who got an Irregular.
"Well, I couldn’t even take it when it was handed to me."
There hadn’t even been an explanation, so I figured it couldn’t be helped. I definitely didn’t regret it──
‘Fuck, I regret it so goddamn much.’
My arms and legs still tingled. Remembering how I had nearly been rammed to death by a boar sent a shiver over my entire body.
[???]
- Its functions are currently restricted. Once the conditions are met, ‘???’ will become available.
- Rewards continue to accumulate even while it is restricted.
‘You’re really all I have now, Wiki...!!’
Wiki had to prove that my choice wasn’t stupid—that it had been an investment in my future.
‘I have no idea what function this even has, but...’
The fact that its rewards accumulated kept making me more and more excited.
There was a Gallery app and StarWiki on the internet app, so perhaps it was related to the internet.
Honestly, Wiki alone solved most problems, so I couldn’t begin to imagine what other function it could have.
At most, the only thing my dopamine-soaked brain could think of was a game.
Ding!
[A comment from Not an Eraser]
I immediately tapped the new notification.
I had been ignoring them because there were too many comments, but I should check one from the mod.
Not an Eraser🔸: Are you okay, Wiki...? I’m worried because you haven’t said anything for so long...
┗Not an Eraser🔸: You don’t have to push yourself too hard as you climb... It’s okay to take it slow at first, really slow...
┗Not an Eraser🔸: Please answer me... ㅜㅜ
‘Do they feel that guilty?’
I let out a hollow laugh at the mod’s comments, posted every thirty minutes.
If I died because of them, they’d probably feel guilty for no reason.
I had only read a few posts and comments, but I could roughly tell what kind of person the mod was.
Unless this was some elaborate act, they were fairly timid and quiet.
‘Though I have no idea why someone like that is a mod.’
Thinking that this personality made them hard to dislike, I slowly left a comment.
KingGodWiki (Author): It’s fine, I’m alive.
┗KingGodWiki (Author): I’m gonna make a new post. Wait a sec.
┗Not an Eraser🔸: What a relief...!!
I let out another hollow laugh at the reply that came back within seconds.
Even if they were just a mod, the fact that they were always on standby was pretty endearing.
As expected, erasers are meant to work endlessly, unpaid and without rest, twenty-four hours a day. Mm-hmm.
*
[★ Alright, Infinite Regression Gallery bros, listen up.]
[Author: KingGodWiki]
I’m fucking pissed about it. If I hadn’t been banned, I’d be home right now;
If the mod were nearby, I’d seriously punch them in the face.
But separate from that, I don’t regret it.
Thanks to wishing to browse the gallery, I got to meet you guys, didn’t I?
If I could make you smile for a moment in this hell, that’s enough for me...
(Photo confirming the clear of the 10th floor of the Tower of Trials)
(Photo of the run count and timer floating in midair)
Still, aside from that, this place seems livable?
Looking forward to getting along with you all. Don’t say mean things, and love the newbie, okay? Ppuu><
Upvotes 453 Downvotes 17
[Comments]
Anonymous: Ppuu my ass;
┗Anonymous: Wait, I didn’t even see the photos—what the fuck, that’s insanely fast? Why are you already on the 10th floor??
6373: How the hell did you do that?
┗Anonymous: This bastard finally started talking today lmao
┗399: Seriously, even people on their three-thousandth run said they’d never seen this guy speak. This is legendary.
Second-Run Newbie: No, fuck, are you really in the same tower as me? How does a newbie who’s been here less than two hours clear the 10th floor?
┗Anonymous: People with good abilities can do this much. Guys from places where you have to use your body clear the Tower of Trials easily.
┗Baldness Not Stopped Even by a Ninth-Circle Archmage: No... The early floors are mostly simple labor, so even if you’re strong, it’s hard to clear them quickly. He really is abnormally fast.
1876: So this is what it takes to get an Irregular. I can feel the wall between us...
Not an Eraser🔸: You’re already on the 10th floor?! It’s only been an hour and a half since you posted about the first floor??
┗Anonymous: You forgot your periods. Stay in character.
┗Not an Eraser🔸: It’s not an act...!!
┗Not an Eraser🔸: Anyway, that’s amazing, Wiki...!!
Superiority of Dual Swords: Hmph! Even so, you are only very slightly faster than I am. Did you post this to brag?
┗KingGodWiki (Author): I wasn’t trying to brag, but sorry if it came off that way;
┗Anonymous: This guy has eighth-grader syndrome. Just ignore him.
┗Superiority of Dual Swords: I do not have eighth-grader syndrome!! I am genuinely cool and amazing!!
Dog That Barks at Idiots: (Dog squinting and tilting its head emote)
┗Anonymous: This guy’s using a bunch of emotes today lol
┗Rabbit Hops: Hey! Why do you only do that to me?!!
┗KingGodWiki (Author): (Dog barking like crazy emote)
┗Rabbit Hops: Why are you copying it and barking too?!!
┗Dog That Barks at Idiots: (Dog giving a thumbs-up emote)
"The early floors are mostly simple labor..."
I had learned another piece of information that wasn’t on Wiki or in the announcement.
It wasn’t precisely quantified, but it was probably data drawn from experience.
‘Come to think of it, aside from the 10th floor, they were all like that.’
Hitting doors, running for long periods, carrying things, and so on.
What I had done from the first through ninth floors could definitely be called simple labor.
Well, thanks to Wiki, I hadn’t even done any simple labor!
Ding! Ding!
I snickered as comments continued pouring in and browsed the gallery for a while.
[I wonder where that newbie will get stuck lol] (34)
As if entranced, I tapped the post whose comments were rapidly piling up.
[I wonder where that newbie will get stuck lol]
[Author: Anonymous]
Vote, go go.
──────
1. Tower of Trials
2. Tower of Wisdom
3. Tower of Mindscape
4. Tower of Fate
──────
(67 people have currently voted)
I picked Tower of Wisdom. Seems like the perfect place for a strong dumbass character, no?
Come to think of it, I still hadn’t looked at the explanations for the other towers.
The abbreviations sounded strange, but the Tower of Trials was probably just shortened that way, so they must have abbreviated the others too.
‘Someone said I’d suffer in the Tower of Wisdom earlier, didn’t they?’
It was definitely the Tower of Wisdom... wasn’t it?
Wouldn’t Wiki do well there, too? I hadn’t experienced it firsthand yet, so I wasn’t sure.
[Comments]
Anonymous: Definitely Tower of Wisdom.
dd: Seriously. Do you think someone who wished to browse the gallery with an Irregular is wise and smart? Lmao
Anonymous: Isn’t the Tower of Mindscape the obvious choice? It’s common knowledge that 99% of the Infinite Regression Gallery fears the Tower of Mindscape.
┗Tower of Mindscape Lover: What the fuck is scary about the Tower of Mindscape? You wanna die? Are you one of those freaks?
┗Tower of Mindscape 100th-Floor Resident: Seriously, that heart-pounding tension is the only thrill you can feel in infinite regression.
┗Anonymous: You freaks, get the hell out;
Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: The Tower of Fate has the worst reputation, so won’t it be the Tower of Fate?
┗Anonymous: What’s got the worst reputation is you pretending to be a pretty girl at fifteen hundred years old.
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: Seriously, stop following me around!! It’s been over a hundred years since I revealed my age, so why are you still following me around?!!!
┗Anonymous: Ah, sorry; So you’re sixteen hundred now, then.
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: Hey!!!!
┗KingGodWiki: It’s fine. Sixteen hundred is better than sixty or seventy.
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: That doesn’t help at all, you know?!
Not an Eraser🔸: Still, wouldn’t he do well in the Tower of Fate...?
┗Anonymous: I was about to say, "You think the Tower of Fate is easy?" But he got an Irregular on his first run, so that actually sounds believable;
┗Anonymous: Ah; I picked Tower of Fate too, but now that you mention it, you’re right.
Reading the comments, people were explaining the tower they had chosen and their reasons.
I hadn’t read about them through Wiki yet, but I was beginning to get a rough sense of what each tower was like.
‘The comments all seem pretty evenly split, though.’
Perhaps because I had shown proof of clearing the 10th floor of the Tower of Trials, that one had the fewest votes, while the comment sentiment seemed divided three ways.
When the vote count had just passed three hundred, a notification popped up saying that the poll had ended.
──────
1. Tower of Trials - 6 votes
2. Tower of Wisdom - 59 votes
3. Tower of Mindscape - 72 votes
4. Tower of Fate - 166 votes
──────
When I checked the results, the Tower of Fate had taken over half the votes.
Once the result was revealed, the general mood was one of agreement.
People were more surprised that the other options had received as many votes as they did.
The comments were starting to agree that it made sense because I was a newbie who had gotten an Irregular right from the start.
‘No, what’s with the Tower of Fate...?’
It was definitely the Tower of Fate. Unlike Trials or Wisdom, the name gave me no clue whatsoever, and I frowned.
If I opened Wiki, it would probably explain it nicely.
Starting with the origin of the name, it would tell me everything one by one—the concept, the characteristics, all of it.
‘Help me, Wiki-mong!’
Still, I decided not to look it up yet.
Based on my experience in the Tower of Trials, only every tenth floor was likely difficult, while the early floors—especially the early part of the first run—probably wouldn’t be too hard.
‘I can’t resist a mystery box.’
Of course, I intended to read about it right before entering the tower, but I didn’t particularly want to do it already.
If it really was somewhere that might be difficult for me, like the gallery users said, I would only end up worrying for no reason.
I had to climb the towers to survive anyway, and if I had to climb them, there was no need to borrow trouble.
"Yawn..."
Fatigue washed over me after exercising for the first time in nearly a year.
Thanks to Wiki, I had made it to the 10th floor relatively easily, but on a few floors, I had still done some work.
Not enough to call it difficult, of course, but still.
‘For me, this is torture-level exercise...’
It didn’t feel like day and night existed here, so surely it didn’t matter when I slept and woke up.
I pulled the blanket, neither soft nor warm, all the way to my neck and made one last post on the gallery.
[Fuck, newbie here, urgent. What is this??]
[Author: KingGodWiki]
I’m going to sleep. Turn off the lights for me.
[Comments]
Not an Eraser🔸: I came in worried, and what is this supposed to be..!!
┗KingGodWiki (Author): Just turn off the lights.
┗Not an Eraser🔸: (Bizarre creature getting angry emote)
*
‘It’s not as hard as I thought.’
The next day... maybe. I wasn’t sure, but twelve hours had passed on the communal timer.
I must have been pretty exhausted, because I slept like a log. After barely chewing and swallowing one piece of hard bread, I headed straight for the Tower of Wisdom.
『Tower of Wisdom』
-9-
I shrugged at the clear marker for the ninth floor in front of me.
I had gotten through the first through ninth floors without much difficulty.
Spot-the-difference puzzles, stepping on floor tiles with a mysterious pattern in the correct order, and so on.
Most of them were creativity puzzles. There had even been things like the IQ test questions you commonly see online.
‘It doesn’t quite feel like I’m using wisdom yet, though...’
Honestly, they were easy enough to solve even without Wiki.
Of course, just because they weren’t hard didn’t mean I hadn’t checked Wiki.
Getting a free clear was insanely sweet, so why would I make myself suffer?
"Alright, let’s go in."
Rumble!
I considered resting for a moment, but my body wasn’t tired, so I immediately walked toward the 10th floor.
As always, I watched the door close right away, then turned around and realized that the inside of the tower was incomparably more spacious than anything I had seen so far.
It had looked ordinary from outside, but once again I could feel that this was no ordinary place.
‘A maze...?’
Enormous walls filled the tenth floor from floor to ceiling.
The space was so large that it looked like it would take dozens of seconds to sprint from the left wall all the way to the far end of the right wall.
And in its center stood a passageway with faint light spilling from it.
Clunk!
I looked up at the sudden dull noise, and a timer reading [30:00] appeared in midair.
No matter where I looked or how much I turned my head, the timer followed me.
Did it mean I had to escape this place within thirty minutes?
The maze looked fucking huge at a glance, and the time limit seemed tighter than expected.
[29:59]
I watched the timer tick down on its own for a moment.
Ding!
‘My porn is here!’
Smiling brightly at the Wiki notification, I raised my phone.
.
.
.
[Tower of Wisdom]
Prove your insight of wisdom.
┗ Concept: A tower of reason that demands everything from the simplest thought to the most sophisticated judgment.
┗ Characteristics: Strength holds no meaning. Each floor contains devices that induce thought in different ways, demanding a wide range of intellectual abilities, including memory, judgment, interpretation, observation, and inference.
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