Chapter 314: Episode 314

“The Tower does not lie.”

I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper, trying to suppress the sudden flare of anger.

“Let me finish what I was saying,” Anton continued. “When a calamity strikes, the planet’s Will pours all of its latent power into giving birth to a single player with overwhelming strength, purely for the sake of its own survival. That player is the Guardian.”

The Guardian again.

That title had been haunting me lately.

“The catastrophe has already begun, Guardian. The world will crumble by your hands.”

Alexandro, the Rank 1 Hazard, had said it.

“I will look forward to the future, Guardian.”

The Führer had mentioned it, too.

“I’m sure your world has its fair share of chosen hero myths, right?” Anton asked.

“An awful lot of them, yeah.”

“Think of the Guardian as the modern incarnation of that hero. In exchange for shouldering the destiny of saving the world, they are granted the ability to continuously shatter their limits, growing strong enough to fight the Nemesis.”

“…I thought she just had an enhanced learning ability.”

“That is merely the most basic trait of a Guardian.”

Thinking back on it, Hong Yeon acquiring Hong Yul’s Scarlet Flare hadn’t made any logical sense. Adapting to the volatile energy just by having it injected into her body, and then wielding it with greater mastery than its original owner—no matter how I tried to rationalize it, “learning ability” wasn’t enough to explain that kind of explosive growth.

“But that makes even less sense!” I argued. “Why would Hong Yeon, the planet’s chosen Guardian, destroy the world?”

“That is…”

Before he could finish, a blinding red arc of pure force shot out in a perfectly straight line, cleanly severing Anton’s neck.

“Anton!”

His body dissolved into scattered light and vanished into the air.

“…An illusion? Well, it doesn’t matter.”

Hong Yeon emerged fully from the darkness, her sword lowered but deadly, closing the distance between us. A pure white aura—distinctly different from her usual crimson energy—undulated around her like a living flame.

“…Yeon.”

“Nemesis,” she stated, her voice devoid of its usual warmth. “If I kill you, everything ends.”

Her golden eyes locked onto me, burning with lethal vigilance.

Does she actually think I’m the Nemesis?

“Prepare yourself.”

“No, wait! Just listen to me!”

A violent surge of red eclipsed my vision.

I was completely taken aback.

The world spun sideways, and my perspective floated upward. It took a horrifying second to realize my head had just been severed from my shoulders. Far below, Hong Yeon stood in the perfect follow-through of a decapitating strike.

I was dead.

Killed by her blade.

Tick. Tock.

Time abruptly reversed, rewinding like an old VHS tape. My head snapped back onto my neck, the fatal wound sealing instantly. Beside me, Anton rematerialized. A heartbeat later, the ruined landscape dissolved, and I was sucked back into the pitch-black void of the starting area.

“You aren’t quite ready yet,” Anton’s voice echoed through the dark.

I reached up to touch my throat, my mind still reeling. It was completely intact.

“A Guardian facing the Nemesis does not hold back. They exist in an awakened state of absolute focus. If you harbor even a sliver of hesitation, you will die over and over again.”

“Anton!” I yelled, my voice cracking with desperation. “Please, just tell me! Why does Hong Yeon—why does the Guardian—destroy the world?”

Anton stepped out of the shadows to stand beside me, an enigmatic, sorrowful smile touching his lips. “Only the Guardian can kill the Nemesis. That is precisely why the planet’s defense system funnels its lifeblood into a single vessel. In truth, the Guardian is a weapon forged solely to destroy the calamity.”

“Then why…”

“Because the calamity is always one step ahead. Killing the Nemesis is not the end.”

Anton placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. Instantly, a flood of his memories poured directly into my mind.

“Aren’t you curious as to how Erendel truly fell?”

The image of a young woman materialized in my consciousness. She had cascading blonde waves and a youthful, striking face. Even though they looked nothing alike, there was a fierce, radiant energy about her that instantly reminded me of Hong Yeon.

“My granddaughter, Cynthia,” Anton said softly. “I tried to raise her as a mage, but this damn planet decided to make her a Guardian.”

Cynthia’s parents had been killed in a battle against demonkins. Orphaned at a young age, Anton had taken her in and raised her as his own. They lived together for years, forging an unbreakable familial bond.

At seventeen, Cynthia embraced her destiny, ruthlessly hunting down the demonkins to avenge her parents. By nineteen, her power was absolute. She stood unrivaled, a force of nature so magnificent that the people revered her as the ’Saintess of Erendel.’

Then, on her twentieth birthday, the Nemesis arrived.

The mages of Erendel—proud and supreme in their arcane mastery—poured every ounce of their vast capabilities into holding the calamity back. In the final, desperate clash, Cynthia drove her sword straight through the Nemesis’s heart, obliterating it.

But that victory was not an end. It was the prologue to a nightmare.

Upon its destruction, the soul of the Nemesis violently tethered itself to its executioner, flooding Cynthia’s body. Through her, the Nemesis achieved its true, fully awakened form.

The corrupted Cynthia dismantled her own world single-handedly. In just over three months, two massive empires and seventeen kingdoms were reduced to ash. Humanity was systematically stripped of its defenses, leaving the survivors as cattle in a world overrun by monsters.

That was the true story of Erendel’s annihilation.

“Do you understand now?” The horrific visions faded as Anton removed his hand.

“If you fail to kill the Nemesis, the world is inevitably consumed by endlessly multiplying monsters. But if you do kill it, the Guardian—the sole entity capable of delivering the fatal blow—will become corrupted and finish the job themselves.”

“…Is there truly no other way?”

“Finding an alternative is your burden as the Tower Master,” Anton replied, holding my gaze. “Of course, there is one known method. You allow the Guardian to strike down the Nemesis, and in that exact moment of vulnerability, you execute the Guardian.”

Is he seriously telling me I have to practice killing Hong Yeon?

Before I could voice my outrage, the trial’s magic began to aggressively eject me.

“Come back once you’ve sorted out your feelings,” Anton’s voice faded into the distance.

*

Two days had passed since I stumbled out of the trial room.

I spent those forty-eight hours in an absolute daze. Anyone looking in might have screamed at me for wasting precious time with the Nemesis breathing down our necks, but the revelation had paralyzed me. The psychological shock was suffocating.

“Yusin! Hey, Yusin!”

Eunsol was climbing onto my lap again, fussing and pulling at my sleeve to get my attention.

She had been chattering away about some drama at school, but suddenly stopped and glared at me, pouting. “Yusin. Are you even listening to me?”

“…Huh? Yeah. What did you say?”

“You big dummy!”

“Ack!”

She threw her arms around my neck and let her entire body weight hang off me, nearly dragging my upper half over the table. “You’ve been acting super weird for the past few days!”

Jin Bora, who had been quietly sitting on the sofa across from us, set her phone face-down on the coffee table. “Yusin. Did something happen during the trial?”

I swear, I really can’t hide anything from the five-years-in-the-future version of Jin Bora.

“Nothing much,” I deflected.

“If nothing happened, why are you keeping us in the dark? You haven’t mentioned the theme of the eighth floor, or what kind of enemies you faced. You used to always brief us so we could strategize together.”

“Because it wasn’t anything worth discussing.”

She crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing with blatant suspicion. “I knew it. You’re definitely hiding something.”

Before she could press the issue, a familiar cluster of light gathered in the air, coalescing into Ea’s holographic form.

“Tower Master, the candidate for the seventh-floor administrator position has arrived.”

“Great, send them up.”

Saved by the bell. Jin Bora withdrew her piercing gaze and sighed, standing up from the sofa.

“Come on, Eunsol. Let’s give him some space to work.”

“Huh? No way! I want to hang out more!”

Is there a helpline I can call for a middle schooler’s severe clinginess?

I shrugged and patted the couch. “It’s fine, you guys can stay.”

Bora blinked. “Are you sure?”

“You’re both floor administrators too. Consider this an interview panel. Help me evaluate the guy.”

“Yay! You’re the best, Yusin!” Eunsol cheered.

A moment later, the magic circle elevator flashed with teleportation light, depositing an unfamiliar figure into the room. He looked to be in his early forties, with sharp, calculating eyes, a wire-thin frame, and a pristine white lab coat. The prime candidate for the seventh floor.

“I am Derrick Rosbash.”

An unprecedented genius and notorious eccentric hailing from the United States. Even after undergoing a late awakening as a player, he had stubbornly remained in the scientific field. He was the founding father of modern hunter weaponry, specifically the engineering behind ’Hunting Devices.’

We stood and offered our hands in greeting. Ea gracefully materialized to serve tea and a tray of light pastries for the group.

“I must admit, I was quite surprised you actually entertained my proposal,” Derrick said, taking a seat and immediately getting down to business. “Unexpected, to say the least.”

“I just want to clarify the terms face-to-face. My contract spans exactly six months. During that period, I wield absolute authority over the project’s direction. Furthermore, I am granted unrestricted access not only to the seventh floor’s archives but also to all raw data recovered from the otherworld.”

Derrick leaned forward, his sharp eyes pinning me down. “And, crucially, when my term concludes, I am free to take my findings back to the U.S. without any interference from the Magic Tower. Is that correct?”

“That’s exactly right.”

Jin Bora and Eunsol shot me bewildered looks. Clearly, I had left this part out of my previous briefings.

“The terms are almost entirely in my favor,” Derrick noted, crossing his long legs. “It naturally breeds suspicion.”

“Historically, the Magic Tower has maintained draconian security over its internal tech and facilities. Why throw open the vault doors to the global scientific community now? Forget just me—how many of the outsourced researchers do you honestly expect to remain loyal to the Tower once they have what they want? I’d love to know what your true angle is here.”

“My angle is simple,” I said, resting my chin on my intertwined fingers. “We have to survive first.”

He stared at me in silence.

“This isn’t the time to hoard revolutionary tech just to line our pockets with patent royalties,” I elaborated. “The world is literally on a six-month countdown to annihilation. Humanity needs to pool its resources right now, or none of this matters.”

“So you’re willing to hemorrhage potential monopolies for the greater public good.”

I nodded firmly.

“I’ll gladly take the hit. I am handing over everything—the raw seventh-floor data, the translated schematics, every scrap of magi-engineering theory we possess. What you decide to build with it after this is over is your business. In exchange, I need tangible, battle-ready results within six months. No excuses. That is my one and only demand.”

“Hmm.” Derrick pinched the bridge of his nose, doing mental calculus. “The minimum development cycle for a project of this scale is three years. Six months isn’t just tight, it’s—”

“Ah, so you’re already prepping your excuses. Are you not confident in your own genius?”

Derrick’s expression visibly stiffened at the insult. I didn’t give him a chance to interrupt.

“I don’t care if you reverse-engineer the tech for your own gain. I don’t care if you take the blueprints back to the States. I promised you a blank check—unlimited funding, exotic materials, unrestricted lab access. Whatever you need, you get. Isn’t that the eternal scientist’s complaint? ’I can’t innovate with this pathetic government budget.’ Well, I’m removing the budget cap entirely. But now you’re whining about the timeline? If you can’t handle the pressure, step aside and spend the rest of your life making excuses.”

Derrick slammed his hands onto the table, his knee cracking against the underside as he shot up from his seat. “I’ll do it. Make me the General Director of the seventh floor.”

I smiled thinly. “I love the enthusiasm. But this isn’t a job you can just claim because you got fired up, Dr. Rosbash.”

The moment the words left my mouth, the elevator flashed again in rapid succession. Five men and women in business-casual attire stepped out into the office.

“Derrick! What the hell are you doing here?” one of the women gasped.

“Unbelievable. To think I’d have to look at this hack’s face again,” a tall man sneered.

“You think I’ve forgiven you for that stunt at the Nobel committee?”

It was a small, fiercely competitive world at the top. They clearly all had history, with blatant hostility crackling in the air.

I spread my arms welcomingly. “Yes, welcome. You are all candidates for the director position.”

A sharp, dangerous glint entered their collective eyes. As the undisputed geniuses of their respective fields, they were well aware of my blatant tactic: lock them in a room and let their legendary egos battle it out. They probably thought I was an arrogant kid playing games with my betters.

Which meant it was time to drop the bait.

Ea moved smoothly to the table, distributing identical, thick dossiers to each of them.

“These are copies of the translated schematics excavated from the Magic Tower’s seventh floor,” I announced. “Take a look.”

They flipped open the folders with practiced indifference. Three seconds later, the indifference vanished.

“DNA Non-adhesive Processing?” one muttered, leaning in so close his nose almost touched the paper. “Technology like this actually exists?”

“This mana-regulation matrix…” another whispered, frantically flipping pages. “This is at least thirty years ahead of anything we have.”

Magi-engineering was an entirely alien discipline, utterly detached from Earth’s evolutionary timeline. Now that these obsessive minds had been given a taste of otherworldly physics, they were hopelessly hooked.

As they practically drooled over the schematics, I leaned back and interlaced my fingers. I had the absolute high ground now. Even knowing I was manipulating them, they had no choice but to dance to my tune.

“I’m putting thirty minutes on the clock,” I said smoothly.

Six brilliant heads snapped up to glare at me.

“I want you to analyze that data. In half an hour, I expect a pitch on exactly what viable results you can deliver in six months, complete with a theoretical roadmap. I’ll hear your proposals and crown the General Director.”

I clapped my hands together once, the sharp sound echoing in the room.

“Time starts now. Impress me.”

Fierce, competitive sparks practically visibly ignited in their eyes.

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