"How many floors do you think the tower has?"
The question hung in the air.
Woonhee blinked, taken aback by the sudden shift in his tone.
She looked away from the dark tunnel, her brow furrowing in thought.
"Most experts from the Walker's Org and the government research centers think it's close to a hundred..."
"Humanity has only mapped up to the fifties, but the mathematical projection of the Tower's mana-density suggests a cap at one hundred.
Past that, the physics of our world wouldn't just make sense.
And when you look at the towers from the outside, even though they spiral upwards into the clouds... they don't look to be any more than a hundred floors."
Kang Min stared at the flickering neon light reflecting in his half-empty water bottle.
'A hundred floors.'
He thought, a bitter, silent laugh echoing in his mind.
'In the old world, we all thought the same when we first started climbing.
We thought there was a ceiling we could touch.'
He leaned back against the cold metal of the train car.
'But turns out, after the 0.1% of climbers were left we found out Earth wasn't the only place with a Tower.
This is already common knowledge now, considering the Fable floors starting at Floor 11...
... but most people here view those as made-up scenarios or simulations created as trials.
It's portrayed to them like a game.'
His grip tightened on the bottle.
'But the higher you go, the more the simulation fades.
You run into people from other worlds, other civilizations that were swallowed long before ours.
You find yourself on missions where you have to help them survive, or they have to help you.
The floors being just a hundred... it wouldn't contain all of that.
It couldn't.'
He looked up at the ceiling, seeing past the concrete and the dirt.
'But what if the 666th floor I reached wasn't the last?
How last is "last"?
Even now, after everything, I'm still asking myself the same question.
How long will I climb until I find the [End]?
Did... he make it to the end?
Or did he just find a bigger cage?'
He looked at Woonhee, who was watching him with a mixture of curiosity and growing unease.
'I made up my mind to climb again.
Only this time, I'm not stopping at the records of the past.
I'm going until I break through the ceiling.'
A sudden, low vibration hummed through the soles of their boots.
The heavy, metallic grind of wheels on tracks.
From the darkness of the southern tunnel, a train began to roll into the station.
It had no lights.
Its steel body screeching against the rails in a way that sounded like a scream.
Woonhee stood up, her hand flying to her throat.
"A train? But the power is off..."
The train ground to a halt between the two platforms.
The doors began bulging outward, dented from the inside.
Then, the glass shattered.
A tide of Parasitic Calamities.
Leech-like organisms the size of torsos, covered in pulsing blue veins and jagged, lamprey-like mouths.
They poured out of the broken windows, dragging the half-consumed remains of civilians they had snatched from a bunker further down the line.
Across the tracks on Platform 4, the "Variable X" girl reacted before the first leech touched the ground.
Her katana left its sheath with a sound like a winter wind.
She leaped from the concrete bench.
Vrip—!
The blade moved in a perfect, horizontal crescent.
Three leeches were bifurcated mid-air, their pale, acidic blood spraying against the side of the train.
She landed in a low crouch and pivoted.
Kang Min watched her from the shadows of Platform 2.
'She's good.'
"Woonhee, get the people into the back of our train!"
"Seal the doors!"
"What about you?"
"I'll hold the gap!"
As Woonhee scrambled to lead the terrified survivors away, Min stepped into the fray.
He didn't want to show his hand...not with Variable X watching from across the tracks.
'Since we made eye contact at the Walker's Org...the image she has of me is a simple porter...'
The girl was a whirlwind.
She used the verticality of the station, sprinting along the side of the stationary train cars.
Every strike was a kill.
She moved between the leeches, her blade severing with surgical precision.
Kang Min, meanwhile, played the part of the struggling porter.
He stayed in the "blind spots" of the station's pillars.
When a leech lunged at a stray survivor, Min appeared behind it.
His kills were silent.
Pressing it into the base of a leech's skull with a microscopic burst of [Compression].
The creature would go limp, looking as though it had simply missed its mark and died on impact.
Whenever the girl's back was turned, Min would snatch a parasite out of the air and crush its core with a single, muffled squeeze of his fist before tossing the corpse into the dark tracks.
To anyone watching, it looked like the Variable X girl was doing 90% of the work while the lucky porter was just dodging.
Within ten minutes, the platform was a graveyard of severed parasites.
The girl stood in the center of the carnage, her breathing barely elevated, her katana dripping with pale ichor.
The silence returned, heavier than before.
Min wiped a smudge of purple blood off his cheek, turning to check on Woonhee.
"Is everyone—"
SHING.
The air beside Min's ear hissed.
Before he could react, a cold, sharp edge was pressed firmly against his jugular.
The Variable X girl had crossed the tracks in a single, silent leap.
Her black eyes were fixed on his, her face inches from his own.
The platinum-blonde strands of her hair swayed slightly in the cold draft of the tunnel.
"Don't move!"
"Hey!"
Woonhee shouted, taking a step forward.
"What are you doing? He was helping!"
The girl didn't look at Woonhee or any of the survivors.
Her entire world was narrowed down to Kang Min.
With a swift, brutal movement, she swept his legs and pinned him against the concrete pillar, her forearm crushing his windpipe just enough to maintain control, her katana never leaving his throat.
"Why are you traveling with a calamity?"
She asked the room.
"What... what are you talking about?"
"He's just a player who awakened as a porter!"
One of the survivors mentioned.
"My perception of power levels and mana-flow is wider than anyone else's."
She said, her voice echoing in the quiet station.
She leaned in closer to Min, her nose almost touching his.
"I've been wondering why this specific station...this low-level transit hub became the primary feeding ground for the swarm.
Why the gate opened directly above this building."
She pressed the blade harder against Min's skin, drawing a single, thin line of crimson.
"The calamities aren't attacking Seoul at random..."
She revealed, her eyes burning with a mixture of fascination and loathing.
"And the only reason they've been coming here...
..the only reason they consumed that bunker and followed this train...
...is because of the death aura this man is emitting."