The void never slept.
It pressed down on us, heavy as oceans, thick as tar. The ash-horizon did not move. The obsidian spires never shifted. The chains pulsed with law, searing bone and sinew in mechanical rhythm.
Time didn't flow here. It suffocated.
The Saint of Salvation dangled opposite me, his head bowed. His once immaculate white robes had burned away, leaving raw, charred flesh. His aura—the glorious sun that had blazed like holy fire—was now a smoldering ember.
Pathetic.
Beautiful.
I flexed my wrist. The chain held. The crack I'd forced last time was invisible now, the metal smooth once again. But I remembered the feeling. The flaw was still there.
Hidden. Growing.
The Tower didn't notice. Yet.
I licked the blood from my lips and spoke softly, as if to a child.
"You know what I love about this, Saint?"
He stirred faintly. His eyelids fluttered, swollen with burns.
"It's fair."
"You spent how long? Erasing people. Wiping clean tragedies. Pretending mercy meant nonexistence. And now?"
I rattled the chains. They burned, and my arm split open to the bone. I didn't flinch.
"Now you're stuck. Chained. Unable to erase. Unable to save. All that's left is you and the screams you can't silence."
The Saint's lips trembled. "…Mercy…"
"Mercy?" I leaned forward, as far as the spikes and chains allowed. "Where's your mercy now? Did you hear the hunters below? Praying for the Tower to protect them. Do you think it listens?"
His voice broke. "The Tower is—"
"Order? Salvation? Ha." My laughter was low and sharp. "The Tower is afraid, Saint. And you? You're proof of it."
His shoulders shook.
"No…"
"You erased millions," I whispered, voice soft as silk. "You called it kindness. But do you know what they looked like in their final moments? Their eyes, Saint. I saw them. They didn't beg for mercy. They begged for one more chance. One more second. A scrap of persistence."
The Saint's head snapped up, eyes bloodshot, face twisted with shame.
"Stop…"
"You called them sinners. I call them mine."
I smiled, bloodied teeth gleaming.
"And I don't erase my toys. I collect them."
The air shifted.
For just a heartbeat, I felt it—something moving beyond the spires, beyond the prison. A shadow brushing the walls of reality.
Not the Enforcer. Something else.
Watching.
Listening.
The Saint shuddered as if he felt it too. "We're not alone."
"Of course not," I said. "The Tower doesn't chain monsters without an audience."
But deep inside, I knew. That wasn't the Tower. That wasn't law.
That was something hungrier.
And it was watching me.
The gears screamed.
Stone ground against stone as the Overseer's figure reappeared, text-eyes burning with unreadable lines.
[Correction Protocol II: Escalation.]
My chains flared. White-hot agony flooded every nerve, every vessel. Flesh seared, bone shattered, soul fractured.
The Saint convulsed, choking on his own screams.
The Enforcer spoke again:
[Subject: Calamity of Regression. Persisting despite correction. Analysis: Excessive resilience. Adjustment required.]
"Adjustment?" I hissed through the blood foaming in my throat. "What are you gonna do? Chain me harder?"
The gears ground louder.
[Correction Protocol II initiated: Memory Extraction.]
And then the chains plunged into my mind.
A thousand lives unraveled.
Deaths. Regrets. Loops of despair.
I saw every suicide I'd committed, every failure, every time I'd flung myself into oblivion hoping for a better outcome.
The Tower pulled them out like weeds, displaying them in cold light.
[Cycle 1: Suicide. Cycle 2: Suicide. Cycle 3: Suicide.]
On and on. A thousand, ten thousand, endless.
The Saint gasped, eyes wide as the visions bled into him too. For the first time, he saw my eternity.
"No… impossible…" he whispered, trembling. "No one… no one could endure this…"
I laughed, broken and bright. "That's why I'm not someone. I'm something the Tower made by accident. And accidents…"
The chain in my ankle trembled.
"…break rules."
Floor 75.
The guildmasters froze mid-meeting as every wall glitched with visions.
Suicides. Deaths. A man hanging, stabbing, burning, drowning—over and over.
One hunter vomited. Another fainted.
"The hell… is this?"
"Memories… someone's… regression?"
The strongest hunter in the room whispered:
"It's not someone. It's a Calamity."
Floor 1.
Newbies screamed as their tutorial shattered into flickering static. NPCs stuttered. Monsters froze mid-attack.
And all the while, one laugh echoed through the cracks.
The visions overwhelmed him.
He saw me slit my own throat, drink poison, leap into fire. He saw me suffocate, starve, rot alive.
Thousands. Millions.
The Saint's mind cracked like glass. He screamed and screamed, until his throat bled.
"How… how did you endure…?"
"Endure?" I tilted my head, smiling despite blood streaming down my face. "Who said I endured? I didn't endure. I persisted. That's all."
His eyes brimmed with tears. His chains glowed white. His aura twisted into something jagged, desperate.
And in that moment, I knew:
The Saint wasn't my rival anymore.
He was mine to break.
I leaned forward, my voice low and venomous.
"Do you want to know a secret, Saint?"
He shook, staring at me like a cornered animal.
"The Tower chained us both. Because it doesn't trust either of us. You and I—we're the same. Different colors of the same error."
"No…"
"Yes." My grin widened. "You erased. I persisted. Both unacceptable. Both unstable. You thought you were its servant. But you're just as disposable as me."
His lips trembled. His silence was my victory.
I whispered the poison deeper:
"Help me break these chains. And I'll give you something the Tower never could."
"What…?"
"Forgiveness."
The Enforcer raised its hand again. The gears screamed louder.
[Correction Protocol III initializing…]
But as the law tightened, something else happened.
The crack in my ankle chain spread.
Thin as hair. Silent as dust.
The Tower didn't see it.
But the Saint did. His bloodshot eyes widened, hope and terror mixing like acid.
He understood.
And for the first time… he didn't pray.
Far above, the whispers stirred again.
<< The Regression one infects the Erasure one. >><< Unacceptable. >><< Increase containment. >>
A pause.
<< He laughs still. Why does he laugh? >>
No answer came.
I closed my eyes. Reached inward.
Chains cut off my body. My magic. My soul. But necromancy wasn't just about corpses. It was about memory.
And I had a million deaths to work with.
I focused on one.
Cycle 7,431: a death by hanging. The rope bite. The snap. The void.
I breathed life into it.
And for a flicker—just a flicker—the phantom of a corpse appeared behind me. A pale Seo-jin, neck broken, eyes rolled back.
The Enforcer's gears stuttered.
[Warning: Summoning unauthorized.]
I laughed, teeth red. "Unauthorized? That's my specialty."
The phantom vanished. But the crack spread wider.
He was shaking. Staring.
"You… you could… break us out…"
"Not alone," I said smoothly. "I need you. The eraser. The saint. You'll wipe away the links I break. Bit by bit. Together."
His mouth opened. Closed. Sweat poured from his burned skin.
"I… I swore to…"
"To the Tower?" I interrupted. "And what did that get you? Chains. Torture. Silence."
His eyes filled with rage. Despair. Shame.
And then, slowly, he nodded.
Tiny. Fragile. But enough.
The Saint of Salvation… was mine.
The Enforcer stepped closer, gears grinding to crush us both.
But I only leaned back against my spire, chains cutting, grin widening.
Because the Saint was trembling for me now, not the Tower.
Because the crack spread, unseen.
Because the whispers above grew nervous.
And because I knew something they didn't.
Persistence always wins.
I laughed. Blood dripped down my chin, chains burned through my marrow, the Saint sobbed beside me—
And the laugh carried, far below, through every floor of the Tower.
Hunters woke screaming.
Floor Guardians trembled.
And in the silence that followed, every living thing knew:
The chains would not hold forever.