Chapter 1 - Prologue. Carpe Diem
Chapter 1: Prologue. Carpe Diem
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“Hey, from now on, any bastard who says they’re going back to the past dies by my hand. Got it?”
Excerpt from the records of 《Carpe Diem》, humanity’s last volunteer force
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A sky shrouded in darkness by a colossal tower.
Ruined buildings scattered everywhere.
Screams and groans drifting through the air.
Smoke from cannon fire billowing all around.
Then came the silence.
What more was there to explain?
This was, quite literally, a world after the fall.
Perhaps it was already a story you knew well.
Explaining every detail would be a pain, so the timeline below should make it easier to understand.
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2018.
An enormous structure known as the 《Tower of Nightmares》 appeared in the skies above every city in the world, including Seoul...
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.
Trying to explain it through a timeline proved even more tiresome. Besides, genre novels popular in the early twenty-first century had already churned out plenty of stories like this one. Was there any need to lay out another familiar tale here?
Still, ending it there would be dull, so the story should go on a little longer.
After all, shouldn’t humanity be allowed at least a few excuses for ending up like this?
It all began with the tower, as everyone knew.
In 2018, an enormous structure called the 《Tower of Nightmares》 appeared above peaceful cities.
The tower itself said nothing, yet humanity began babbling about doomsdays as though it had been waiting for this. Apocalypses, catastrophes, all that sort of thing.
Then one day, the tower called for humanity.
It was said to be a strangely specific and unrealistic message: “If you wish to prevent humanity’s destruction, answer the tower’s summons.”
Surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of people answered it.
Tower Walkers.
Or simply, Walkers.
They received the tower’s “message,” answered its summons, and gained the power and qualifications to face its trials.
It was an encouraging development.
Not even one in ten thousand people became a Walker, but wasn’t it still remarkable? So many people had stepped forward for humanity’s sake.
Of course, considering the rewards that leaked out of the 《Tower of Nightmares》, not every one of them had entered with such noble intentions.
In any case, the people called into the tower’s battlefield received the System’s blessing. Like players in a game, they obtained items and skills, then used them to conquer the 《Tower of Nightmares》 from within.
Humanity was not proactive at first.
No one knew what dangers lay inside the tower, nor what exactly it meant by “humanity’s destruction.”
Then the First Tower Impact occurred.
Monsters released from the tower slaughtered the people aboveground, wiping out a third of the world’s population.
Explaining what happened after that would only be tedious.
It was a familiar story of Walkers carrying humanity on their backs as they climbed the tower and continued their conquest.
Of course, this familiar story did not end there.
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2023.
Discovery of the past-life item, 「Stone of Regression」.
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The Stone of Regression.
It was the sort of name that made its purpose obvious at a glance.
By then, everyone understood what kind of story this was.
That was right. It was that story everyone knew well.
When the world was about to be completely destroyed, a lucky protagonist discovered an item. They thought, “Screw it,” used the item, and found themselves back in the past.
A story that belonged only in novels became reality through the 「Stone of Regression」, discovered in 2023.
There was just one problem.
“Damn it, if it’s come to this, I’m regressing!”
“Yeah, this life is ruined anyway!”
“Me too!”
“Fuck, me too!”
Too many people went back.
Jaehwan watched people turn into clusters of light and rise into the air.
“There goes another one.”
“...”
“That should be the last of them, right?”
“I think so.”
Yoonhwan, who had been watching beside him, answered.
They leaned against the wall on the ninety-eighth floor, watching the lights pierce the sky and drift away.
The retreating lights were beautiful, like shooting stars.
Lights vanishing with hope for a new life.
They would forget every ruined day and return to the past, where a life with a guaranteed future awaited them.
A life that knew everything. A safe life.
An easy life gained by stealing someone else’s future.
“Must be nice.”
“Nice, my ass.”
Jaehwan did not entirely fail to understand the people who wanted to return to the past.
They all must have had their own grievances.
They all wanted to become the protagonist of this world.
Still, Jaehwan wondered whether those departing protagonists had ever thought, even once, about the world they left behind.
Or the fate of those who still had to live in that abandoned world.
Ten years had already passed since the Stone of Regression was discovered in the tower.
Most of the surviving Walkers had gone back to the past. From thousands to tens of thousands of them had abandoned the present and chosen the past.
The 「Stone of Regression」 was the reward for conquering the seventy-seventh floor.
A massive stone blocked the entire entrance to the seventy-eighth floor. Everyone only realized it was an item while they worked together to smash it apart.
The item description for the Stone of Regression was as follows.
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[Item Information]
Name: Stone of Regression
Grade: Legendary
Description: Turns back time, sending the user to the period shortly after they were summoned to the tower. The user’s current memories remain completely intact. It can be divided for use.
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At first, no one believed it. An item that could send someone back to the past? The tower’s items might have surpassed common sense, but surely no such item could exist.
Others wavered.
Every Walker had experienced a realm beyond humanity through the incredible items and skills offered by the tower.
Yet most had also taken the second-best, or least-worst, path in exchange for the skills and items they wanted.
The temptation was overwhelming.
What if they could begin all over again while knowing the entire future?
“It says it can be divided for use... With something this large, a great many people could use it.”
The first person to use the 「Stone of Regression」 was Hwang Inchan, also known as Sword Panic, the Representative of the advance force 《Blade Walker》.
“It could be a lie, so I’ll use it first and let everyone know.”
Those were Sword Panic’s last words.
Jaehwan had been there at the time.
They were all fools.
Why had no one realized it made no sense? Saying he would go to the past first and let them know was no different from saying, “I’ll die first and tell you what death is like.”
No one knew what happened to a person who went to the past.
Just as no one returned after experiencing death.
After Hwang Inchan disappeared, chaos broke out.
“Is it real? Did he really go to the past?” Some questioned it. Others seized the opportunity to secretly slip pieces of the broken 「Stone of Regression」 into their inventories.
Hwang Inchan never returned.
Then people began to wonder.
Why had Hwang Inchan, who returned to the past, not appeared in this world again? Why had nothing in this world changed?
Sakamoto answered those questions. He was the advance force’s only Japanese member and had once been a middle school science teacher.
“Perhaps this is only natural.”
Sakamoto explained the situation using several scientific theories, including multiverse theory and parallel universe theory. According to the most prominent theory, the current situation was one where “the universe’s time branches had split.”
In short, the moment Hwang Inchan vanished into the past, our world and Hwang Inchan’s world had completely separated.
“The worldline Hwang Inchan entered in the past has split from our worldline. We can no longer meet him again.”
The advance force knew fuck-all about science, so they could not fully understand what he meant.
One thing was clear, though.
Hwang Inchan going to the past did not change this world.
“Japanese teacher, could Hwang Inchan have gone somewhere other than the past?”
“Look at the stone’s description. It says it sends the user to the past, doesn’t it? As far as I know, the tower’s items have never lied, not even once.”
A few people nodded at that.
“I believe this stone will send us all to Earth in different worldlines. Of course, this is only a hypothesis, so we cannot rule out the possibility that everyone who uses the stone will arrive in the same time branch. The tower’s items surpass our common sense, after all.”
By the time they came to their senses, more than half the advance force had used the 「Stone of Regression」 and left for the past.
As members of the advance force, they were all greedy. If they landed in the same time branch, those who went back would compete with one another. The later they went, the more they would lose. No one wanted to be at a disadvantage.
From then on, humanity could not stop talking about regressing to the past.
Regression here, regression there.
All anyone thought about was what they would do once they returned.
Some worried they would lose out if they went too late. Others claimed it would be more profitable to return after the advance force had conquered a few more floors.
Some quickly secured pieces of the 「Stone of Regression」 and sold them to Walkers on lower floors. Others even compiled every event since the tower opened into booklets and sold them.
Amid all that, two Tower Impacts occurred in succession.
Tower Impacts were great disasters where the tower went berserk and poured monsters aboveground. Rumors spread that every aboveground being who was not a Walker had been nearly wiped out by them.
The remaining Walkers had two choices.
Pay any price to obtain a 「Stone of Regression」 and go to the past, or remain here and die.
Jaehwan chose neither.
“...Please, stop leaving already. What the hell are you going to do with this world if every last one of you goes to the past?”
Undeterred by the collapse of 《Blade Walker》, the strongest advance force, Jaehwan and a few Companions continued upward.
He was stopped once on the eighty-fifth floor, which they reached after countless hardships.
Most of the Companions who had barely held on died. Resignation settled in people’s eyes. They could go no farther.
Jaehwan persuaded and encouraged the later arrivals climbing from the first floor one by one, training an elite force. He chose only those who would not be tempted by the 「Stone of Regression」 and would protect this world.
That was how humanity’s last volunteer force, 《Carpe Diem》, was formed.
The final advance force was made up of Walkers who chose to remain in the present rather than go to the past, determined to protect this present.
Jaehwan led them through the accursed eighty-fifth floor.
They climbed and climbed again.
Sometimes people died. Sometimes people happened to find fragments of the 「Stone of Regression」 and left for the past.
Even so, Jaehwan kept climbing.
Now they were on the ninety-eighth floor.
Jaehwan resented the Walkers who had gone to the past.
If only half of them had not left. No, if only the advance force had stayed, the world would not have become like this.
Humanity had endured for a long time.
Many people died, were injured, and fell ill, but they could still have overcome it.
Now, it was impossible.
Only two members of 《Carpe Diem》 remained.
Even so, Jaehwan did not give up.
“Let’s go, Yoonhwan.”
As far as they knew, the tower ended at the hundredth floor.
Only two floors remained.
If they conquered those two floors, this hellish time would end.
Humanity would be freed.
This world could begin again.
Jaehwan believed that.
No, he had believed it.
“Yoonhwan?”
There was no answer.
“Kim Yoonhwan.”
One of the last members of humanity’s volunteer force, and the one who remained with Jaehwan.
Kim Yoonhwan, the Smile Knight.
His Companions gave him that nickname because he always wore a smile, no matter what happened.
Yet, for some reason, the Smile Knight was not smiling.
“Don’t tell me...”
Where had that stone come from?
Jaehwan looked at the small fragment clutched in Yoonhwan’s hand and asked, “You... Don’t tell me you’re thinking of regressing?”
He could not believe it.
Yoonhwan silently lowered his head. Jaehwan glared at him as though he might attack at any moment, then abruptly turned his back.
“Go.”
“I’m sorry, Jaehwan.”
“Get lost, before I change my mind.”
Jaehwan walked alone toward the door to the ninety-ninth floor.
Yoonhwan watched his back.
It was a back he had always been able to trust and follow.
The door to the ninety-ninth floor slowly opened. When Jaehwan had passed halfway through it, Yoonhwan staggered and leaned against a pillar of the tower.
His breathing grew ragged.
Blood flowed through the folds of his disheveled cape. A small hole had pierced Yoonhwan’s chest. It was the work of the demonic beast Giltikas, the boss of the ninety-eighth floor.
It was not an injury that could be managed with a potion. Only a priest of a rare class could heal it, but priests had vanished from this world long ago.
His closest friend must have seen it at once.
The stone in his hand was not a 「Stone of Regression」. It was only an ordinary pebble.
Yoonhwan gripped the ordinary stone tightly. His wrist trembled, and he felt its cold, harsh texture. It was a sensation that could only be felt in this world.
Jaehwan had taught him this.
He had taught him about this utterly insignificant stone. About holding tight to this shabby life, made worthless by countless people who returned to the past without hesitation, and refusing to let go.
It was a very difficult thing to do.
Yoonhwan turned toward the outside of the tower.
“I’m so glad you’re in this world, Jaehwan.”
The moment his tilting body fell beneath the tower, Jaehwan, who had been opening the entrance to the ninety-ninth floor, stopped.
He raised his right hand and silently wiped his face. He steadied his breathing and listened to the sound of something breaking apart.
But he never looked back.
Alone, he stepped onto the ninety-ninth floor.
His world had not ended yet.
Footnotes:
Chapter discussion