Chapter 34: Steel Tower (2)

A faintly laid mist.

Beyond it, a blurred metallic wall vaguely visible.

At the base of the Steel Tower, whose circumference could not even be guessed, a faint mist was laid.

In the vacant lot where the Steel Tower rose, there was a stillness that even instilled a sense of reverence.

The blurred mist, the enormous tower filling the field of vision, and the sacred stillness felt there.

All of these combined made the vacant lot of the Steel Tower feel like a place detached from reality.

An enormous Object on a scale difficult to compare to buildings, something that should be compared to a mountain.

The Steel Tower.

No matter how many times I looked at it, it was a tower of an incomprehensible scale.

The spacious vacant lot, as vast as the enormous tower, was filled only with stillness. Strangely, Objects did not seem to approach near the Steel Tower, so it was extremely quiet.

I approached the Steel Tower and placed my hand on the surface of the tower that looked like an enormous wall.

A cool sensation.

On the spotless surface of the tower without a speck of dust, it felt as if some pulsating force was throbbing.

The condition for destroying the Steel Tower was the same as I had confirmed before when I looked again.

[Nostalgia]

Is that how you read it, 'nostalgia'?

Suddenly, what's with the English?

Among the Objects whose destruction conditions I had checked, the Steel Tower was the only one with a condition written in English.

In fact, initially it wasn't even English.

I remember it being written in Russian? Or some outlandish and unfamiliar characters I didn't know.

However, as I stayed around the Steel Tower and checked the condition every day, it had somehow changed.

But it still hadn't changed to Korean.

Why English?

With such a condition, whether it's Korean, English, Russian or an alien language, it's equally useless.

[Nostalgia]

Longing. Longing for one's hometown.

Or longing for the past.

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't get a sense of how to fulfill this condition.

Does making the Steel Tower feel nostalgic clear it?

Or does the Steel Tower have a hometown, and I have to take it there?

Even when I lived in Seoul Forest, it was a condition I couldn't figure out at all, and still can't now.

I was hoping that after a long time, the phrase might have changed, or a new idea would come to mind when I saw it again.

It was a more frustrating condition than something blatantly difficult to guess like Lophiohilus.

It made me feel like it was actually a solvable problem, but I was just too stupid to solve it.

***

I was slowly climbing up the smooth wall of the Steel Tower.

The slope was almost vertical, making it physically impossible to climb, but using ghostification made walking up the wall not too difficult.

The giant mole, the size of a house, that I had defeated with ghostification a year ago seemed to be able to fly through the sky, but strangely I couldn't do the same.

Logically speaking, if I could step on the ground at a point where I could pass through walls, shouldn't I be able to step on air as well?

I wish someone could give a lecture on these subtle Object abilities.

There was a reason for leisurely climbing the Steel Tower amidst the current situation of Seoul being utterly destroyed.

It was because of something I had found strange since a year ago.

With the destruction condition of

[Destruction of the Main Body]

It seemed to be a type that could infinitely regenerate until the main body was destroyed.

It was enduring the Steel Tower's civilization-crushing power with that regenerative ability.

Fully revealed after piercing through the mist, the human-like Object was not a normal human.

Human-sized, human-shaped silhouette, human-like movements, but it could not be called human.

A face twisted in agony. Blackened, long-dried blood. Rotten eyeballs.

It was merely a corpse walking with the aid of machinery.

Emanating an eerie atmosphere, the machine zombie ignored me and kept walking.

Towards the Steel Tower.

Arriving right before the Steel Tower, the machine zombie's agonized expression faded as a twisted smile spread across its face.

Spreading its arms wide to embrace the Steel Tower, a violent tremor erupted along with terrifying shockwaves rippling out in all directions.

Thump.

Thump.

It was the Steel Tower's pulsation.

The zombie was pulverized and disappeared, caught in the pation, but the pulsation that had started did not stop, continuing several more times.

I discovered the cause of the pulsation!

I had witnessed the moment the pulsation occurred.

***

Seeing the periodic pulsations, those zombies seemed to be sent regularly from somewhere.

Sure enough, heading back the way the zombie had come from the north, another machine zombie could be seen walking from afar.

If I could stop this zombie from reaching the Steel Tower, I could block the Steel Tower's pulsation.

But how?

Even enduring the civilization-crushing power of the Steel Tower, it was obvious that it would instantly regenerate even if its arms and legs were blown off.

Just as I was thinking that I would have to track the movement of these zombies to the end and destroy the main body for this situation to end, I felt something strange.

In fact, it was an uneasiness I had felt from the moment I first saw this machine zombie.

The mechanical zombies didn't quite fit the description of Objects.

I could say that each part seemed to be acting separately?

Upon closer inspection, while the Object appeared as one whole Object from afar, up close each part was a separate Object.

The skin, heart, skeletal frame, internal organs - they were all different types of Objects.

When I pulled out what seemed to be the core heart, a golden heart and blood vessels came out all at once.

Then the destruction condition of [Destruction of the Main Body] disappeared.

Having lost the ability to infinitely regenerate until the main body was destroyed, the machine zombie instantly turned to dust.

Left behind where the zombie had been were human blood, flesh, bones, and unidentifiable animal organs.

The intricately crafted golden heart and sturdy metal skeletal frame made of a tough alloy had vanished into dust.

Was it an Object made by combining multiple Objects?

If so, was it man-made?

It was a type of Object I had never seen before.

It seems like separately acting Objects were linked together into one by the golden heart, but I had never heard of such technology being developed.

And that combined Object was causing the Steel Tower's pulsations?

Was this Steel Tower pulsation incident something that was intentionally caused by someone?

I felt an even greater need to track down the main body behind these machine zombies.