Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Earth was dying.

More precisely, it would be more accurate to say that the environment where humans could survive was dying.

Perhaps that was why.

[The dimension has reached the end of its lifespan.]

[After a long discussion, the Transcendents have decided to grant the dimension one final opportunity before deleting it.]

[Climb the Tower and achieve victory against the elite legions.]

[If you reach the top, the deletion will be canceled.]

Without warning, a gigantic Tower appeared, and invitations were sent out in massive numbers.

What the hell is that...?

An invitation? I awakened?

Those who received invitations automatically awakened.

Not long afterward, they were forcibly dragged into the Tower and began climbing it.

Climbing the Tower was something they had to risk their lives for.

Those without enough strength were forced to surrender their lives there.

Even so, people did not stop climbing.

Whoa, this is insane.

With this kind of power, I feel like I can do anything!

They could obtain superhuman strength.

And the stronger they became, the more their power, wealth, and fame skyrocketed.

However, while people were intoxicated by that power, Earth was slowly being destroyed.

And so, forty-five years passed.

Earth had effectively been ruined long ago, and fewer than ten thousand survivors remained.

Craaaack!

The 80th Floor.

"Cough!"

A man dropped to one knee, his entire body in ruins.

There was hardly anything intact around him.

The corpses of monsters nearly twenty meters tall were piled up like mountains.

Countless sword wounds covered those bodies, revealing just how extraordinary the man's martial prowess had been.

But his body had already reached its limit.

One eye had gone blind.

His left ear and arm had been torn away.

Blood continued pouring from his wounds because he could no longer stop the bleeding.

There was barely a patch of unbroken skin left on his body, and most of his bones were fractured.

Even his internal organs were damaged beyond repair, some of them gruesomely visible through the torn flesh of his abdomen.

And yet, the man was still holding on through sheer willpower, using the sword buried deep in the ground as support.

"Cough..."

He spat out a lump of blood and looked at the enemies before him.

The Transcendent Giant Soldiers.

They were the beings lurking on the 80th Floor.

"Truly persistent."

"If we'd been even a little later, things could've gotten dangerous."

"To think a mere human would actually step onto the 80th Floor."

The Giant Soldiers looked down at the man with genuine admiration.

Earth was clearly a planet inhabited by lower races.

They had never imagined that anyone from such a world would reach the 80th Floor.

And it had been done by a single human, no less.

Honestly, they could kill him immediately.

But they were curious about the human who had managed to climb this far.

"Human, we pay our respects to your courage. Do you have any final words?"

The Giant Soldiers were showing what they considered mercy.

This inferior being had single-handedly wiped out twenty percent of their forces.

The land they stood upon had been split in two.

Every temple in the area had been partially destroyed.

All of that damage had been caused by this one human.

"What a waste."

The human muttered quietly.

"A waste?"

The Giant Soldiers tilted their heads.

"If I'd climbed the Tower properly from the beginning... wiping all of you out would've been nothing."

He had only been able to enter the Tower fifteen years after it appeared.

At that point, humanity had already reached the 30th Floor.

He had received his invitation later than others and started climbing long after they had.

Even so, the man climbed with monstrous talent.

Then, on the 48th Floor, he obtained the Immortal Heart, accelerating his growth even further.

By the time he reached the 55th Floor, people had begun calling him the Sword God.

Sword God Yoo Seong-un.

My actual level was nowhere near that.

The title had only been given to him because he was the best swordsman among humanity.

He knew better than anyone that his skill was still far below the true realm of a Sword God.

That was why regret had always remained somewhere in his heart.

What if he had entered the Tower earlier?

What if he had earned high clear scores from the beginning and secured every reward he could?

What if he had claimed all the hidden opportunities scattered throughout the Tower?

He could have become unimaginably stronger than he was now.

Perhaps he wouldn't have merely been called the Sword God.

Perhaps he truly could have reached the realm of a god.

"I'll admit that you are impressive. But refusing to abandon your arrogance even at the brink of death is truly ugly."

The Giant Soldiers said that aloud, but inwardly, they acknowledged Seong-un's words to some extent.

If that human had swept up every reward the Tower had to offer, then not only they but even the beings above them might have been in danger.

That was all the more reason to finish him here.

They had to destroy his soul as well, ensuring he could not use some hidden trick to survive.

"So I'm going to try again."

As he spoke, Seong-un pulled an item out with a trembling hand.

It was an old pocket watch covered in rust.

"Hm? What exactly do you plan to do with something already broken?"

The Giant Soldiers recognized the watch and tilted their heads.

"What else? I'm going to turn back time."

"Ridiculous. Turning back time is impossible for anyone..."

The Giant Soldier who had been scoffing suddenly stopped.

The hands of the rusty pocket watch began spinning backward.

At the same time, everything around them came to a halt as though the entire world had frozen.

The God's Pocket Watch.

Seong-un had obtained it on the 78th Floor.

If someone asked how he'd gotten it, he could only say it had been pure coincidence.

During a search operation, he had discovered an abandoned village.

While resting there, he'd happened to find the watch.

It had been stored inside a wooden case together with a note.

[God's Pocket Watch]

-Do you regret the past? Do you believe things would be different if you could return? If you truly believe so, this watch will grant you a new opportunity.

I can return to the past...?

He had never imagined he would discover such an item on the 78th Floor.

However, he had no intention of using it immediately.

It would be a lie to say he had no regrets.

Still, it had already been twenty years since he began climbing the Tower.

He had sacrificed twenty long years to reach the 78th Floor.

His strength had played a large part in getting this far, but luck had also been involved.

There had been countless times when a series of coincidences had allowed him to survive.

There had also been desperate gambles he never expected to work, only for them to catch his opponents off guard and kill them.

He didn't want to erase those twenty years.

For now, I'll just keep it.

If the day ever came when he used it, it would probably be when death was right in front of him.

In the end, the pocket watch was used.

When Seong-un regained consciousness, he was lying inside an old studio apartment.

His ruined body had been completely restored.

There was no pain anymore.

"So I've gone back to five years before I entered the Tower."

He had started living in this studio when he turned twenty.

He had not even lived there for a full year.

If he had awakened here, it meant he had returned to when he was twenty years old.

In other words, Yoo Seong-un was now twenty.

He had gone back to ten years after the Tower first appeared.

At this point in time, humanity should still be trying to clear the 24th Floor.

Seong-un looked at the pocket watch in his hand.

The mysterious item that had returned him to the past was still there.

However, the hands that had spun backward were now completely gone.

"Five years..."

He had originally received his invitation at the age of twenty-five.

At that time, humanity had been struggling on the 30th Floor.

He had effectively moved his starting point forward by five whole years.

But there was one problem.

"So I have to wait five years before I receive my invitation."

An invitation was required to climb the Tower.

And Seong-un was not supposed to receive his for another five years.

If he simply waited, then returning five years into the past would become meaningless.

"I can't just sit around."

So he would take action himself.

Seong-un looked through the window at the enormous Tower outside.

It rose so high that clouds hid its peak.

Strangely enough, that Tower was only a model.

The real Tower that invited climbers existed somewhere other than Earth.

Then why did this model exist?

It could be said that it existed to keep climbers alert.

Just like now.

Rumble...!

The ground shook violently as though an earthquake had begun.

At the same time, fragments flew out of the model Tower and attached themselves to nearby buildings.

The buildings touched by those fragments rapidly turned black.

Soon, they transformed into small Towers.

That's the reason.

So-called mini-games.

If the giant Tower was the main content, then those smaller Towers were side content.

When climbers weren't actively ascending the real Tower, they would sometimes enter those small Towers to earn minor rewards.

But rewards weren't the only reason the small Towers needed to be cleared quickly.

Monsters came pouring out of them.

My first objective.

If the Tower refused to give him an invitation, then he would simply force it to give him one.

Rather than being randomly selected to fill an empty spot, he would have a Transcendent acknowledge his qualifications and personally earn the right to climb.

To do that, he needed to enter one of the small Towers and defeat its boss.

Should I call this lucky? This was before that place was discovered.

There was a hidden opportunity buried inside one of these Towers.

It had appeared in the neighborhood where Seong-un's studio apartment was located.

That damned Tower had forced him to move out before he had even lived there for a full year.

That was why he remembered it clearly.

"Aaaah!"

A scream came from outside.

A green monster with a long nose, thin limbs, and a swollen belly was threatening a woman with a wooden club.

A goblin.

It's happening now.

A smile appeared on Seong-un's lips.

He opened a box stored inside a drawer.

A black dagger lay inside.

It was essentially a self-defense weapon intended for situations where someone encountered a monster wandering the streets.

The dagger had been created from refined mana stones obtained from the Tower.

It should be more than enough to kill a goblin.

Seong-un took the dagger, hurried out of his apartment, and headed downstairs.

He jumped several steps at a time.

The moment he opened the first-floor door, he met the eyes of the terrified woman outside.

"P-Please save me..."

She begged in a voice that sounded close to tears.

Fortunately, he wasn't too late.

Seong-un picked up a small stone from nearby and threw it.

The stone struck the goblin directly in the forehead.

"Hey. Come at me."

"Kerrrk!"

It probably hadn't done any damage, but the provocation worked perfectly.

The goblin took its eyes off the woman and charged at Seong-un.

Whoosh!

The goblin swung its wooden club without hesitation.

Seong-un drew his right foot backward and lowered his waist.

The club sliced through empty air.

It was an attack powerful enough to easily crush an ordinary person's skull.

But to Seong-un, who had survived countless battlefields, it looked unbelievably crude.

Pierce it in one strike.

Seong-un drove the dagger into the goblin's neck.

Stab!

"Kek!"

Green blood spilled from the goblin's mouth as its body convulsed.

When Seong-un pulled out the dagger, the goblin collapsed forward and died.

[You have achieved a remarkable feat.]

[You hunted a monster despite being unawakened.]

[The System has begun paying attention to your potential.]

[Awakening requirements have been fulfilled.]