This individual was clearly not of this world.
I had recognized that fact the instant my eyes fell upon them.
After all, the eyes of an Earthling did not appear as theirs did.
In the old man’s eyes, there was no discernible boundary between the sclera and the iris.
Only a cosmic, impenetrable black remained, making it impossible to discern where his gaze was fixed or what thoughts might be swirling within him.
Those eyes turned towards me.
“Hmm? Who might you be?”
His voice, deep and weighty, resonated as if the entire cavern were trembling with its sound.
Devoid of any discernible emotion, his voice was all the more unsettling for its chilling indifference.
I couldn’t say a word.
No, I was incapable of it.
Paralyzed by terror, I could only dart my eyes around, frantically scanning my immediate vicinity.
The walls were meticulously adorned with anatomical charts, each meticulously detailing the intricate muscular and skeletal structures of human beings.
Within the glass jars lining the shelves, grotesquely twisted organs floated, alongside fetuses so malformed they could barely be recognized as human.
A sharp, metallic chemical scent assaulted my nostrils, mingling with the sickening stench of decaying organic matter.
The sudden assault on my senses left me momentarily lightheaded.
[Would you like to exit the Tower? Y/N]
I immediately decided to make an emergency escape.
It was blatantly obvious that disaster was imminent.
Without hesitation, I pressed Y.
[Cannot exit the Tower!]
[Access Denied Zone!]
[An unknown error has occurred!]
[Sending diagnostic and usage information helps the Tower improve your experience.]
[Close / Send Info]
[Time Remaining: 13 minutes 42 seconds]
‘Damn it all….’
The situation was utterly preposterous.
As I remained frozen and silent, the old man’s brow furrowed subtly.
“Why the silence? Peculiar. Is this a creature devoid of will? Must it be discarded?
Hmm. I cannot tell. It doesn’t appear human. Who could have fashioned such a thing?
Why the silence? You, who precisely are you? Why are you silent? Why? Why? Why?”
A cold sweat trickled down my spine as his low murmuring filled the air.
This old man was, without a doubt, half-crazed.
“Why the silence? Are you not a sentient being? Must I then dispose of you? Who are you? Why have you come here?”
To speak of discarding someone as if they were mere refuse, right before their very eyes.
No, the old man did not perceive me as a person at all.
His expression was akin to one observing a curious taxidermied animal or an exotic insect.
I hastily opened my mouth.
“Ah, no. I’m a person. Just someone passing by nearby.”
My panicked, fumbling reply was nothing short of a disaster.
What kind of person would simply be ‘passing by’ a place such as this?
Yet, the old man appeared entirely unconcerned by my shoddy excuse.
It seemed he was merely content with the sheer fact that I had uttered a sound.
“Hoh, you can articulate in the tongue of humans. Intriguing. Most intriguing. Where did you acquire such knowledge? Who fashioned you?”
The old man scanned me up and down, as if intrigued.
Once more, I found myself utterly speechless.
‘Who fashioned me?’
‘Am I expected to provide my parents’ names?’
“Why are you silent? Why are you silent? Why are you silent? Why are you silent? Why are you silent?”
‘Oh, for f*ck’s sake….’
It appeared I had well and truly fallen into a trap.
With a forced calm, I pried apart my stubbornly sealed lips.
Yes, I just needed to buy time.
Fortunately, the timer was still running normally.
That was all I could rely on now.
“…I’m just a person. No one made me.”
“Hmm? Hmmm…. Intriguing. Truly intriguing….”
The old man stood up from his spot and took a step towards me.
‘I have to run. I need to leap back and flee. Right now….’
Alarms blared frantically within my mind.
But my body wouldn’t obey.
They say one’s body seizes up when confronted by a predator; was this truly what it meant?
The old man reached out a hand to my frozen form and touched my shoulder.
At the same time, my shoulder detached from my torso.
My arm didn’t turn into sand or anything.
Blood gushed from the severed limb.
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
“Indeed. A human.”
“Ugh, guh……”
“To think there were still humans left…. How moving.”
Unimaginable pain.
Overwhelmed by an excruciating pain I had never before encountered, I found myself unable to even properly scream.
Yet, regardless of whether I contorted my face in agony, the deranged old man simply continued to babble on.
“It’s perfect. This skin, this skeletal structure…. This is precisely the form I failed to achieve hundreds of times.”
He drew so close that his face was mere inches from mine, and began to meticulously examine every detail of my face and body.
His fingers touched my cheek.
The unnaturally cold touch of his hand sent an immediate shiver down my spine.
“Where have you come from?”
“Hmph…. Hngh….”
“Aha! So you couldn’t speak because of the pain? My apologies. It’s been quite a while since I last encountered a human….”
When the old man brought my arm back to the severed section, it reattached itself.
The searing pain from moments ago persisted, however, and I remained too disoriented to articulate a single word.
“Now you can answer, can’t you? Where have you come from?”
“Ci….”
“Ci? Have you emerged from a city? How utterly peculiar…. Surely, no human cities remain.”
“You son of a b*tch!”
I was in complete panic.
Any semblance of a plan, such as buying time through dialogue, had utterly vanished from my mind.
This was the first time I had truly felt my life hanging by a thread.
I had to struggle somehow.
My desperate struggle manifested thus:
To blow off the old man’s head with sand bullets.
“Hmm, the pain should surely have subsided. Is your mind still unsettled?”
But, of course, it was utterly futile. The moment the sand bullets made contact with the old man’s skin, they crumbled into dust, dissolving harmlessly.
“Die, you bastard!”
Undeterred, I continued, unleashing a barrage of sand bullets using all ten of my fingers.
Yet, not a single one managed to inflict even the slightest scratch upon the old man.
The old man, it seemed, didn’t even register this as an attack.
He calmly took a sip of tea, then spoke.
“Has your temper cooled somewhat? May I now pose my questions? I may, yes?”
“Haaah…. Hah…. What in the….”
“Where in the world have you come from?”
I didn’t know how many times I had heard the same words.
At that point, I gave up everything.
I resolved to surrender everything to the old man and comply meekly.
Yes, I was definitely not in my right mind right now.
Pain, fear, and utter helplessness—all of it pushed my mental fortitude to its absolute breaking point, leaving my mind hazy with a disorienting dizziness.
I barely managed to answer the old man’s words.
“…From outside, from outside the Tower.”
“The Tower? What is this ‘Tower’? How are you still alive? All of humanity beyond these walls should be long dead, should they not?”
“I have no idea what the Tower is. And people are perfectly alive and well out there…. Is that sufficient?”
“Hmm…. No deception there, it seems. Strange. Truly strange. The Tower, you say? Does this not bring to mind… hmm? Hmmm?”
[Warning: A powerful error has been detected.]
[Forbidden access.]
[Correcting error immediately.]
Abruptly, the old man’s eyes swirled in their sockets.
His eyes, previously black, filled entirely with white before reverting to their former darkness.
The old man shook his head once.
Then, with a tone once more laced with madness, he posed another question.
It was as if all his previous inquiries had been utterly erased from his memory.
“Have you come after clearing out all the test subjects out there?”
Even as fear clawed at me at the sight of him, I persisted with my reply.
“Are you referring to the goblins?”
“Indeed. My little test subjects. That shaman, the last of them, was quite a meticulous creation, yet to be so senselessly ruined.
I had only just commenced my observations, a truly regrettable turn of events.”
The old man clicked his tongue, as if genuinely disappointed.
At his words, every piece of the perplexing puzzle clicked into perfect alignment.
Why the goblins on the fifth floor had mirrored the exact configuration of the Hard difficulty.
Why their numbers had been so sparse, uncharacteristic of an Extreme difficulty challenge.
‘So this old man was the real boss….’
The goblin horde was not a monstrosity spawned by the Tower itself.
They were merely soldiers, set loose by the deranged old man before me for his twisted experiments.
The old man’s gaze swept over my body once more.
“But what relevance does that hold? You have materialized before my very eyes!”
“….”
“Naturally, one cannot judge based solely on outward appearance…. I require certainty. Absolute certainty.
I must ascertain if a spark truly resides within you….
For the very cornerstone of a new world must be erected not upon uncertain sensations, but upon intelligence that has been unequivocally proven….”
‘What the hell is he talking about….’
“There is one way to verify that. You’ll cooperate, of course?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
‘He’ll kill me if I don’t.’ I swallowed the retort that had sprung to my lips.
In response to my answer, the old man’s mouth stretched into a wide, unsettling grin.
He then produced something from within the folds of his robe.
A black cube, about the size of a palm.
It was an odd object, as if a piece of space itself had been excised.
“This is a box that only a wise beast can open. If you can open it, you will have proven your worth.”
“What’s inside?”
“The essence of knowledge. But what lies within is ultimately irrelevant, is it not?”
The old man chuckled heartily as he handed me the box.
“I’ve configured this box to open when it recognizes my voice speaking a specific keyword.”
“What keyword did you set?”
“‘Nothingness’. An empty space, you see.”
“…Pardon?”
I doubted my own ears.
The old man’s explanation continued.
“It must be spoken to open, yet the moment it is spoken, it ceases to be ‘nothingness’, for sound then exists.
This, you see, is a perfect fortress of paradox, born of my own intellect.
Thanks to it, even I can never retrieve what is held within. Tell me, is it not amusing? Amusing, yes? Isn’t it?”
“Yes… it’s amusing.”
Anger surged within me.
What did this mad old man want me to do?
Once more, the urge to blast his head off with a sand bullet intensified.
But I had to restrain myself.
I had already seen how futile it would be.
It would be better to simply stall for time and wait for the Tower to automatically eject me.
“Well, can you solve it?”
The old man urged me on.
His eyes held a blend of pure intellectual curiosity and a ruthless coldness that seemed to test my very worth.
I swallowed dryly, my nerves taut.
I racked my brain.
Yet, this brain, which I had rotted away on internet forums my entire life, was unlikely to suddenly produce a brilliant idea now.
‘Think…. Think. This kind of wordplay puzzle. I’ve definitely seen something similar while browsing forums….’
In the early hours, the forums often buzzed with all sorts of topics.
Sometimes, quizzes or deduction problems like this would appear.
Everyone would rack their brains, trying to find the answer.
“Not yet? Hmm, how tedious. How boring…. Perhaps you are not worthy after all? What do you think?”
‘Shut up…. Please just be quiet….’
Now, every single breath the old man took felt like a noise gnawing at my nerves.
I wanted to cover my ears. To block out that madman’s muttering. His ragged breathing. My own heartbeat. Everything.
A desperate desire to erase all sound.
It was at that very moment.
‘Erase sound?’
A single word flashed through my mind like a spark.
Thoughts cascaded, one after another, leading me to the answer.
A concept that did not exist in this madman’s world. A solution from my own world.
“Hey, old man.”
Having found the answer, I no longer feared the old man before me.
A strange calm enveloped my entire being.
I lifted my head and looked at the old man.
The old man’s black eyes widened, gleaming.
‘So damn creepy.’
I quickly reverted to polite speech and replied.
“Have you ever heard of noise canceling?”
