Two years. Two years had passed since that jarring awakening in my ruined home. The concept of time had become fluid, marked only by the shifting light of the sky and the constant, grinding grind of my quest. The entire sprawling urban landscape that had once been Seoul was now an empty, ravaged shell. Every district, every alley, every high-rise had been scoured clean of the creatures that now populated this new reality. My proficiency mark, once -99%, now glowed steadily at -80%.
The path to Babel, once a distant promise, was now a tangible reality. The tower loomed directly before me, impossibly vast, its dark, monolithic form piercing the distorted heavens. It wasn't just tall; it was an architectural impossibility, a structure that seemed to siphon light from the sky, its surface scarred with ancient, indecipherable symbols that hummed with a low, resonant energy. I had cleared the entire city leading up to its base. There was nothing left alive to stop me. No more experiments, no more practice subjects.
The air around the tower was thick with a palpable tension, a static hum that vibrated in my bones. The ground itself felt different, colder, harder. This wasn't just a building; it was the epicenter of whatever had occurred, a nexus of immense, terrifying power. My senses, honed to an absurd degree by years of constant engagement with death, told me it was empty within its immediate perimeter, a vast, silent maw waiting to swallow me whole.
A profound sense of isolation settled over me. Two years of relentless combat, of becoming something both more and less than human. The 'monster' within had fully awakened, disciplined by endless death and rebirth. My connection to the Original Tongue of the End was absolute, granting me an intuitive mastery over the nuances of Death and Corrosion. I could feel the subtle currents of existence and non-existence, the whispers of things coming to their absolute conclusion. My Death Aura was a tangible extension of my will, a cold, oppressive blanket I could spread or retract at will. My physical stats were far beyond any human baseline.
I took a deep breath, the stale air doing little to soothe the tremor in my chest. The fear was still there, a ghost of my former self, but it was overshadowed by a burning curiosity and an unyielding determination to find my family. This was it. The final destination of this twisted journey.
I stepped across the invisible threshold, the boundary where the scarred ground of the city met the impossibly clean, smooth base of the tower. The moment my foot crossed the line, reality warped. The air shimmered, the towering walls of Babel dissolved around me, and a blinding flash of light consumed my vision.