Chapter 358: Eighty-Fourth Floor, Waiting Room (1)

Earth, during the events on the eighty-fourth floor.

[Hey, did you guys see that?]

[See what?]

[If this is bait, you’re dead.]

[Something popped up overseas on Nature or Time News or whatever about Kwon Su-Hyeok.]

[Huh? What’s it about?]

[Yeah, I saw it. It’s about how the tower creates gods.]

[That’s been floating around forever, though.]

[Sure, but this time it was explained more systematically. It started with that whole greenbelt theory.]

[Too lazy to go read it. Someone, summarize.]

[TLDR, the conclusion is that the tower is creating Earth’s god. Every other world that shows up in the tower already has its own god.]

[So Kwon Su-Hyeok is Earth’s god?]

[Right now, the odds are definitely pointing that way.]

[What’s wrong with you people? Kwon Su-Hyeok? Call him King Su-Hyeok.]

[Forget “king,” it’s God Su-Hyeok now.]

[Lol are you seriously quoting some cult paper that’s getting dragged in the U.S.? National pride is one thing, but this is too far.]

[Nope. Cope harder.]

[Cult or not, when even politicians are showing up at his parents’ house, maybe they think it’s plausible, too.]

[Isn’t that just for show? National image and all.]

[Still, you’d want to stay on his good side. The hundredth floor is just around the corner. What do you think will happen if Su-Hyeok comes back to Earth now?]

[It’d be a divine descent, what else?]

[Bullets wouldn’t even work 😂.]

[One wrong move and an entire nation could go down.]

[That’s why all the countries near Korea have gone dead silent lately. Used to bark and provoke them all the time, but now? Nothing.]

[... You’re right.]

[King Su-Hyeok? Is he a god?]

[At this point, yeah. He is.]

[But wouldn’t that logic apply to the climbers of other countries, too? China and India have tons of climbers.]

[So what? Su-Hyeok still steamrolls all of them.]

[Honestly, even without him, there are several Koreans at the top.]

[Alexei’s hanging in there alone, haha.]

[That’s why Korea and Russia are suddenly buddy-buddy. Hilarious.]

***

[8 hours 20 minutes until the rest period ends. Please take a rest.]

Not much changed after leaving the hot springs. I kept turning over the same theories, caught in an endless loop filled with nothing but assumptions.

The more I pondered, the more my head throbbed. I held plenty of suspicions, but nothing tied together neatly.

Eventually, I stopped trying to wade through it with reasoning alone. It was becoming painfully clear that my solo contemplation wouldn’t lead anywhere.

There is nothing I can be certain of.

If I kept chasing the same threads, I risked getting trapped in a flawed conclusion. To gain a different perspective, I needed to cool my head.

If I were being honest, though, I had paused mainly to wait for Ha Hee-Jeong. Out of the two of us, she was the one who understood the tower best. Therefore, I focused the rest of my time on training.

It was hard to keep my thoughts completely at bay, but a few hours later, Ha Hee-Jeong returned, and we finally had a proper conversation. Even then, she couldn’t provide any clear-cut answers.

It wasn’t something that could be helped. Just because she had returned from the future didn’t mean she knew everything.

In truth, we now knew far more about the tower and the gods than we had during her previous life.

Ha Hee-Jeong’s regression had changed a lot.

Still, after listening to everything I laid out, she agreed that my theory seemed likely, even the idea of a three-way power struggle.

Kalain, the existing gods, and Master of the Five Carriage Wheels.

We decided to treat those three forces as more or less confirmed.

The questions that came after that assumption remained, of course, but those gods were likely at the heart of all of this.

Why did Master of the Five Carriage Wheels send Ha Hee-Jeong back?

She was clearly on our side. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have risked so much to aid Ha Hee-Jeong.

When we met last time, it seemed like she had recognized me, but didn’t say anything. That was probably due to the tower’s restrictions, or maybe she was simply afraid of other gods finding out.

I could also guess why she had chosen Ha Hee-Jeong instead of me.

Simply put, Master of the Five Carriage Wheels had a contract with her. Ha Hee-Jeong mentioned seeing a message right before regressing that the Dice of Fate had been cast. Her sponsor had used her shares to borrow power from the tower.

My sponsor during Ha Hee-Jeong’s previous life was only a fifth-class god, so it would have been impossible for them to pull that off, too. Moreover, they weren’t particularly fond of me to begin with.

That still didn’t solve the real issue—why?

I have no idea.

While we both stewed in frustration, Ha Hee-Jeong used her necklace to step into my waiting room.

She figured that if we were going to be stuck, why not be stuck together? Typing messages back and forth was tedious anyway.

Sure, it helped to organize thoughts compared to talking, but we were already past that point.

Even then, nothing really changed. We talked face-to-face for over an hour, but still couldn’t reach a solid conclusion.

However, there was one theory that seemed the most plausible.

Master of the Five Carriage Wheels wants to save the tower.

To explain that, we had to bring up something from the past. It was the theory the mad scientist had shared with me about the primordial god.

This god created the tower.

That made sense, since the tower was a place built to create gods.

At some point, the primordial god vanished, leaving other gods and the Tower of Ordeal behind. To the other gods, the tower would have looked like an easy target. With a few adjustments to the rules, they could lord over new gods and control the worlds they governed.

The tower, however, wouldn’t have wanted that. It was supposed to create gods for each world, not let them be stolen. Therefore, it likely stayed silent and bided its time, waiting for something or someone.

A challenger, perhaps.

Maybe Master of the Five Carriage Wheels wanted us to become that someone. Or perhaps challengers had some deeper connection to the primordial god.

Of course, this “First God” may have nothing to do with this.

Nothing was guaranteed. Everything was just a theory built from the pieces we had gathered so far.

There was also a slim chance that they simply needed powerful allies. The fact that Kalain, a former challenger, had become a first-class god so quickly supported that.

Challengers had something different. Whether it was their ability to grow faster than others, or something else entirely, I couldn’t say.

Even Divine Power proved that; I wouldn’t have been able to obtain it without becoming a challenger.

Taking everything else into account, that first theory still seems the most likely.

In the end, we didn’t reach a satisfying conclusion, so we decided to leave it there.

Once we reached the top of the tower, the answers could reveal themselves. For now, we were simply keeping all possibilities in mind.

After that, we ate together. All that thinking had left me hungry, and it would have felt cold to send her off the moment we finished talking.

I couldn’t remember exactly how the conversation flowed while we ate. Regardless, at some point, the past came up, and I was confident Ha Hee-Jeong brought it up first.

“Hey, you remember that time?”

“What?”

At first, I assumed she was referring to something that had happened inside the tower since that was all we had been talking about.

It wasn’t.

“Our first time drinking, when we turned twenty.”

“Seriously? Why bring that up now?” Even before she said anything more, I already knew where this was going.

I scowled instinctively, but Ha Hee-Jeong paid it no mind and kept going. “You just disappeared all of a sudden that day.”

Ha Hee-Jeong burst into laughter.

How far back is she even reaching?

I quickly explained what happened, though she already knew the story.

“It was my first time hanging out with those friends, and I drank like it was soda.”

That was no exaggeration. Overestimating your tolerance was a mistake many people made when drinking for the first time.

Technically, I had my first drink with my dad after finishing the college entrance exam, but I had stayed sharp that time because it was in front of him. That gave me the illusion I could handle my alcohol. In a relaxed setting with friends, I let my guard down and paid the price.

Ha Hee-Jeong didn’t even acknowledge my excuse.

She continued as if she hadn’t heard a thing, “You vanished, and the rest of us spent forever running around trying to find you.”

“Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?”

“You were already home, asleep, and we had no idea. Do you know how cold it was that winter?”

I heard they cut the gathering short and searched for me for more than two hours.

I let out a sigh. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

“Still can’t get over it, even now.” Ha Hee-Jeong was still laughing.

I could tell she was trying to lighten the mood to help us relax and forget the heavier topics for a bit. Unfortunately, the more I listened, the more ridiculous it started to sound.

I wasn’t the only one who had gotten sloppy while drinking. If anything, Ha Hee-Jeong had been worse, and more often at that.

“Hey, you aren’t exactly innocent, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you got wasted, you called me out. I’ve walked you home how many times now? It’s gotta be at least two hundred,” I shot back sharply, but Ha Hee-Jeong just brushed it off with a shrug.

“Sounds about right.”

She turned toward me and looked me straight in the eye. “So why’d you always come for me? I always called you when I was blackout drunk.”

Her deep, clear brown eyes met mine. I froze briefly, then answered, “Because I was worried.”

“Worried about what?”

I hesitated, then decided to be truthful. “That you’d pass out and fall asleep on the street somewhere.”

For a moment, she stayed silent. We held eye contact for a few seconds, although it could have been longer. Perhaps even close to a full minute.

Then, after that brief silence, she smiled softly. “Thanks.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. It felt like I had been baited into something. It was probably because she was a regressor, but she always seemed to know me too well. Whenever we talked, I always ended up on the defensive. It was like she could see straight through me.

Trying to escape the moment, I abruptly changed the subject. “

Oh

, actually, that reminds me of something.”

“What is it?”

“Wanna go visit Natalie’s world?”

“The dimensional witch?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She actually told me to bring you along sometime.”

Ha Hee-Jeong immediately agreed, “Not a bad idea. I’ve been curious about her anyway. I’ve got a lot of questions too. You said The Meticulous Architect showed you some kind of future, right?”

Wait, am I stupid?

It hit me that we could have asked Natalie about everything we had just been discussing. She knew far more than she let on.

I quickly added, “We can ask about our guesses, too.”

Ha Hee-Jeong’s eyes widened.

“

Oh?

You’re right.

Ugh,

we should’ve gone to her in the first place.”

“Yeah.”

I felt exactly the same. We had been so focused on our own speculations that neither of us had thought to bring up Natalie.

“Your apostle’s still there, too, right? The one named Hyang?”

“Yeah, with Gehenna.”

“Perfect. Let’s finish eating and head over.”

***

Natalie’s world had changed a little since the last time I visited. It had always been lovely, but this time, the atmosphere was subtly different.

Not much time had passed, so the change surprised me.

It is probably because of Gehenna and Hyang.

They had joined Natalie here, and she had gone out of her way to accommodate them. She had even mentioned that she had learned a lot from spending time with them.

The garden’s transformation was likely thanks to their influence. Since there wasn’t much to do for leisure in this world, the three of them had probably spent time tending the garden together.

Not bad.

Even with all three of their tastes blended in, the garden retained its beauty without feeling mismatched.

Given the divine signal I had sent ahead of time, Natalie, Gehenna, and Hyang were already waiting for us at the center of the garden.

𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The moment we arrived, Natalie came running over. “You’re here!”

“Yeah.”

After our brief greeting, Natalie turned immediately to Ha Hee-Jeong. “Hello! I’m Natalie Marlene!”

“

Oh?

Hi. I’m Ha Hee-Jeong.”

She looked genuinely delighted to meet her, more than I had expected.

To be honest, it caught me off guard. Natalie had always been especially close to me, but in that moment, I felt like I had been demoted to a side character.

Ha Hee-Jeong looked a little flustered, too. She had expected Natalie to be friendly, but her warmth went beyond that. It was surprisingly familiar, almost intimate.

Natalie always seemed like she knew more than she let on.

Oh, I wonder. Does she know about Ha Hee-Jeong’s regression?

Natalie could glimpse into the future, after all, and I didn’t know the extent of a dimensional witch’s powers.

Ha Hee-Jeong probably shared my sentiment, because she glanced at me. With Gehenna standing nearby, we couldn’t directly ask Natalie. We would have to wait for a better moment.

Before we could pursue it further, though, Gehenna and Hyang approached us.

“Hello.”

“Hey. Have you been well?”

“I have. Hyang, greet them.”

“Hello.” Hyang bowed deeply, bending a full ninety degrees.

She had grown a lot and was no longer the shy girl from before. I had granted her a good amount of divine energy, and Natalie had clearly been guiding her well.

Gehenna then turned her attention to Ha Hee-Jeong. “Natalie spoke of you. You’re a close friend of Kwon Su-Hyeok, are you not? You’re truly beautiful. I adore beautiful things. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope we can become good friends.”

She extended her hand. Ha Hee-Jeong rolled her eyes toward me, visibly taken aback. Gehenna had always been a little intense, but this felt like she was charging forward at full speed with no brakes.

“

She’s always like that,

” I mouthed to Ha Hee-Jeong as I nodded slightly.

Ha Hee-Jeong rolled her eyes again in response. “Y-yeah. Nice to meet you.”