Past, Reminiscence.
Purgatory.
The Inverted Tower, said to have been built by some eccentric architect in ancient times.
That tower had a theme for every ten floors.
The ten sins humans were born carrying, recorded in ancient scripture.
‘Ten Sins.’
The evils humans committed throughout their lives.
Among them, the theme from Floor 81 to Floor 90 was [Regret].
‘......Cold.’
Perhaps because of that trait, those ten floors were bound together as one.
Floors 81 to 90 had to be cleared all at once.
With ten floors compressed together, their density was on a completely different level from the floors before.
Ding-!
[The phenomenon ‘Regret (SS-)’ occurs.]
[Your trauma is recreated on the floor.]
The floor showed the entrant three regrets.
Past, future, present.
The turning point of regret that existed at each point in time.
The entrant had to break through each recreated trauma one by one.
But if they failed to cast off their lingering attachment, they would be trapped in that Nightmare forever.
‘Where... am I?’
Among them, the first regret.
Past, Reminiscence.
“Ugh, uuuh...”
Javert opened her eyes through a fog of consciousness.
It felt as if terrible nausea had seized her heart.
She let out a breath that was almost a retch.
“Cough...”
White breath bloomed.
It was not the solitary cell.
Above her head, instead of a low ceiling, she saw a dark blue night sky.
Maybe it was winter, because snowflakes were fluttering down in her vision.
“......?”
A building that looked as if it had collapsed.
Javert was sprawled among the ruins.
‘What is this? I was definitely in the solitary cell...’
The woman could only stare in confusion.
The scenery had changed in an instant.
Javert had been trying to kill herself in the academy’s underground prison.
But a boy who appeared out of nowhere had stopped her, then yanked her powerless body close.
‘......And I think I lost consciousness after that.’
The last thing she remembered was herself and the boy falling somewhere.
When she came to, she was looking at a scene completely unlike the solitary cell.
Javert steadied her dizzy mind.
Had she been caught in illusion magic?
Could Student Viktor use magic too?
Leaving those questions aside, Javert forced her fallen body up.
“Huuh...”
For now, she needed to understand the situation.
Whatever had happened, if she looked around, she might be able to figure it out...
Wobble.
“Ugh...?”
Her leg gave way as she stepped onto the rubble and stood.
Javert nearly lost her balance on the spot.
The woman stumbled and came to a stop.
‘What... is this?’
Something felt wrong.
Walking, something she normally did without thinking, felt awkward.
Javert looked down at her own body.
Then a blank murmur slipped out.
“......I got younger?”
That was exactly it.
Javert’s body had returned to the way it looked when she was young.
Had time been rewound by about ten years from her original point?
She seemed to be around thirteen or fourteen.
“What is going...”
A smooth body without a single scar.
It was nothing like her twenty-three-year-old self.
She stared in a daze for a moment, then the cold air brought her back to her senses.
‘Wait.’
Wrongness.
Deja vu.
Unease.
Those sensations tangled together.
Javert realized what they were.
The only things hovering at the tip of her nose were the metallic smell of blood and a terrible burnt stench.
Her heart sank.
‘This is...’
A body that had somehow become about ten years younger.
A building ruthlessly half-destroyed.
A stale burnt smell.
Cold air and light snow.
And herself, sprawled in that scene.
‘No.’
That was impossible.
As she chewed on that denial, a voice colored her ears.
“Javert...!”
It was a voice she had missed.
A sound she had never forgotten for even a single moment in her life.
The girl’s mind went blank.
“Ah.”
Serian Droit.
Mother.
The person who had pulled her out of the gutter.
And the person who had taught her about love and kindness.
“......Mom?”
An old woman stood before Javert.
With her back to Javert, she had her fists clenched as if trying to protect her from something.
Whooooosh-!
Light was raging around the old woman.
Javert’s eyes shook without her realizing it.
Because the scene was strangely familiar.
Across from the old woman stood another woman.
“Ah, fuck. This is annoying...”
Leysha.
The widow from the slums Javert had been close to as a child.
When the cold wind blew, her brown hair whipped in every direction.
“Kil...lian...?”
Javert felt as if her heart had stopped.
The woman’s real name was Killian.
She was a Cultist executive who had planned to kidnap Javert.
She was also the person who had murdered Serian and shoved the girl’s life into the abyss.
“You wicked thing! How dare you try to covet my daughter with your filthy hands!”
“For an old hag, you’re damn stubborn!”
Serian was fighting desperately to protect her daughter.
But her opponent was a high-ranking Cultist executive.
For an old woman whose skill had declined, she was too much to handle.
“Just... die already!”
Puh-eok-!
Javert did not even have time to move.
A pitch-black fist shot forward and pierced deep through the old woman’s stomach.
“Nooooo!!!”
The girl screamed before she realized it.
Her usual expressionless face shattered completely.
A distorted cry rang out into the winter night sky.
Killian pulled out her fist and clicked her tongue as if things had become troublesome.
“I wasted time because of you.”
The exact line she remembered.
The scene the girl had hated and regretted was recreated.
“Tch... The pursuit team will be here soon too. Should I call it here and run for today?”
Killian turned away as if she had lost interest.
Javert staggered forward and approached the half-dead old woman.
Something hot flowed down her cheeks.
Whether it was blood or tears did not matter.
The girl only held onto her mother, who lay sprawled on the ground.
“Mom...! Mom!”
She could not understand what was happening.
Her arms moved on their own and embraced the old woman.
Serian’s body was wet, and blood had pooled thickly on the ground.
“Javert... our beloved daughter.”
Again,
the exact line she remembered.
“It’s not your fault. It was just... bad luck...”
A wrinkled hand stroked the girl’s cheek.
It left behind a red mark.
A few coughs.
As expected, the old woman breathed her last.
Before her, Javert screamed until it felt as if her vocal cords would snap.
Ding-!
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
An announcement rang out inside Purgatory.
Right after that, the girl’s consciousness cut off.
***
A cold night.
Javert opened her eyes in the exact same scenery.
“Ugh, uuugh...”
A churning urge to vomit surged up with terrible nausea.
It felt as if her whole brain had been crushed.
Javert panted for breath.
The body she hurriedly looked down at was that of a fourteen-year-old.
‘I came back again...?’
The same place.
The same situation.
The same composition.
“Ah, fuck. This is annoying...”
“You wicked thing! How dare you try to covet my daughter with your filthy hands!”
“For an old hag, you’re damn stubborn! Get lost already!”
“If you wish to harm my child, you will have to kill me first!”
The same people.
The same lines.
The same smell.
‘No... At this rate, it’ll end up like just now.’
Javert’s mind was in chaos.
But her judgment was quick.
The girl drew up as much divine energy as she could.
She wrapped light around her whole body and stepped forward to help her mother.
“Huuup...!”
“What’s this? The brat came to die on her own?”
The divine energy the girl deployed with all her might.
But its output was hopelessly lacking.
It seemed to be less than one percent of what she could originally produce.
“Fuck, are you kidding me? You’re going to challenge me with this pathetic power?”
Bbeok-!
Javert was sent flying helplessly.
The girl rolled across the ground, powerless.
“Urgh...!”
“Javert!”
It was not simply because she had grown younger.
The 90th floor itself was suppressing the entrants’ resistance.
Purgatory’s environment was unreasonable.
The one-hundred-floor Inverted Tower did not forgive the incompetent.
If they could not complete the task, escaping that Nightmare was forever impossible.
“How nice of you to look away. Die, you old hag!”
The required task was to overcome regret.
For Javert, whose life itself was regret, it was practically impossible.
“Mom...!”
Puh-eok-!
Once again, the fist pierced the abdomen.
The old woman collapsed onto the ground.
The woman turned away.
The girl sank down and screamed.
Ding-!
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
Again.
Javert opened her eyes in the winter night.
“Uuugh...!”
Nausea.
Winter.
White breath.
“Mom...!”
The woman.
The girl.
Mom.
“Javert... our beloved daughter.”
Nightmare.
Regret.
Repetition.
“It’s not your fault. It was just... bad luck...”
Puh-eok-!
Puh-eok-!
Puh-eok-!
Serian was murdered over and over again.
She was pierced after letting her guard down, crushed after clashing, and torn apart without mercy.
At times, it seemed as if she might win, only for her body to burst apart from a trump card Killian suddenly pulled out.
Javert could not save her in any form.
Ding-!
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
The entire sequence was a trap meant to deceive the girl.
On the off chance it might work, Javert even killed herself first.
But the phenomenon still repeated.
The floor’s notifications, voices like announcements, rang in her ears again and again.
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
[Failed to clear Regret ‘Reminiscence.’]
[Restarting the configured trauma.]
Mother’s stomach was pierced.
Time rewound.
Mother’s head burst.
Time rewound.
Mother’s heart was ripped out.
Time rewound.
“Aah...”
The wrongs she believed she had committed.
The Nightmare she had failed to shake off all her life repeated dozens of times.
“Javert... our beloved daughter.”
A fading breath.
The words Mother left behind were the same every time.
And those words tormented Javert the most.
“It’s not your fault. It was just... bad luck...”
Everything was her fault, yet the woman only told her not to think that way.
She stroked Javert’s cheek as if telling her not to blame herself.
Each one of those moments ate away at Javert’s heart.
If only she had cursed her instead. If only she had scolded her, it would have been better...
‘I hate this.’
The scene had already repeated for the fortieth time.
Javert only shed quiet tears.
Her powerless hands tore uselessly at her own hair.
A sob caught in her throat, and only a shrill scream rang out beneath the night sky.
‘I want it to stop, please... anyone, save Mom...’
The shell that had been like steel was completely broken.
Soft flesh lay exposed, and the girl who had been hiding in the wardrobe raised her head.
A voice longing for salvation.
“Haha! That mom of yours is annoying, so should I kill you first?”
Had the dazed Javert caught her eye?
Killian rushed toward the girl.
Javert could not even think of resisting.
She only sat there in that hellish scene, as if she had given up.
“Die!!”
That was when it happened.
A streak of black flew in from somewhere and knocked the fist away.
Chaeaaang-!
“Krgh...?!”
“Activate. Thorn.”
A murmured activation phrase.
Right after that, dozens of thorns drove Killian back.
The sudden fierce assault covered the space.
Kuuuuung-!
In the end, the woman was sent flying and crashed into a building on the opposite side.
A tragedy that had repeated forty times.
For the first time within it, a variable had appeared.
Javert could only raise her lowered head in a daze.
There stood a black-haired boy, like the night sky, looking down at her.
“Chief Investigator.”
A scar bloomed like a flower on his face.
When their eyes met, the boy gave a faint, complicated smile.
“I apologize for being late.”
“Mom!”
The scythe’s form loosened in the boy’s hand.
Lua instantly returned to the form of a small child.
Lua toddled over, then threw herself into her smaller Mom’s arms.
Javert remained dazed the whole time.
Through her blank expression, only the tears that had gathered flowed down.
“Professor Javert.”
“......”
Viktor reached out.
Fourteen.
He stroked Javert as she had been when she was still young, the wounded child.
His body heat was warm enough to melt the cold air of the winter night.
Lua, who rubbed her cheek against her, was the same.
“......Student Viktor.”
“I wanted to come sooner, but something didn’t go the way I wanted.”
The boy spoke as if he felt ashamed.
Her tangled red hair was gently smoothed out.
Srrk.
His hand rummaged inside his robe.
Before long, Viktor pulled out a mask.
It was the distinctive mask he always wore.
“You can relax now.”
The boy placed the mask over the girl’s face.
So she would no longer be hurt.
So she would no longer suffer in this Nightmare.
“I’ll break it all for you.”
“......”
A kind voice.
Gentle warmth.
Sreung.
Viktor gripped Lua again and stood.
Before him stood the trauma that had turned Javert’s whole life into hell.
“What the hell are you?! Where did a small-fry bastard like you crawl out from...!”
When had she gotten so close?
Killian was swinging her fist with her eyes wide.
To that woman, Viktor answered in a tone without much feeling.
“Well.”
Seogeok.
For a moment, pitch-black flashed.
“I’m an unlicensed psychotherapist.”
And then,
Killian’s head was cut off and flew into the sky.
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