There’s a truly amazing fact.
The subspace pouch has no weight limit.
In this cursed Tower where there’s no such thing as a status window, inventory, or skills, that alone makes the subspace pouch ridiculously valuable.
Sure, there’s a limit to how many items it can hold—but not how heavy they are.
No matter how big or heavy something is, it fits inside without issue.
There’s a reason so many guilds dive into hard-mode dungeons in the hopes of getting one.
And even then, it’s not guaranteed to drop.
No wonder they lose their minds.
Me?
I know a few dungeons that drop them for sure—so it’s no big deal.
…Although, there is also a mimic that pretends to be a pouch and slurps people up like noodles.
I’ll explain that one later.
Kkerrrrrk…
The ant’s body, now missing its head, wobbled unsteadily before collapsing, its limbs giving out as life fled its form.
A perfect little chunk of protein.
I shoved it into the subspace pouch and shook off the green fluids clinging to my sword.
One ant like that could easily keep me fed for two days.
But starting tomorrow, Yuhana would be getting a taste of the bug life, which meant I needed to find more food for myself—either kill another ant, or fish in the lake.
Not that the “fish” were anything close to normal.
I’m talking about the infamous face-fish. The ones with human-like faces.
They pack the underground lake on the first floor wall to wall.
They even speak.
If you catch one, it’ll beg—“Please, don’t kill me,” “Spare me!” Real heartbreaking stuff.
Soft-hearted people usually let them go.
But me?
I’m the guy who sucks ant blood just to stay alive.
You think I’d let a fish go just because it talks like a person?
Cut the head off and it’s no different from any other fish.
“Bit of a walk to the lake though…”
Still, I had time today.
Yesterday, I had to save Yuhana and raid that storage, but today?
I had a buffer.
Things would stay relaxed like this for the next couple of days, until we escaped the first floor.
Which meant now was the perfect time to stockpile.
Better to live in abundance than starve in the unknown.
With that, I headed toward the lake.
Along the way, I ran into a pack of wolves and goblins.
Took their heads off. All of them. Nice and clean.
“Gotta admit, it is pretty.”
I’d arrived.
The lake shimmered in emerald tones, light dancing across the rippling surface like a galaxy of stars.
Would’ve been a breathtaking sight—if it weren’t for the wriggling face-fish beneath the waves.
[A human? It’s a human! Damn, how long’s it been since we saw a real face?]
[Man, after staring at wolves and goblins all day, that mug’s a breath of fresh air.]
[That guy? Ew. Looks like some sleazy playboy. And those dead eyes—what is he, a regressor or something?]
Obviously, I couldn’t hear them.
They were underwater.
But I had a knack for reading lips.
A little side skill I picked up after enough regressions.
Face-fish conversations were… crude, to say the least.
Honestly, they were kind of funny.
Full of raunchy banter—though with fish as the baseline, it did feel a little surreal.
Still, as long as it’s entertaining, right?
I lingered a while, watching, then slowly reached into the water.
Of course, this lake wasn’t filled with normal water. It was acidic.
Leave your hand in too long, and it would start dissolving your skin, then your muscles.
But for a few minutes?
Totally safe.
I knew from experience—tried it myself in one of my more suicidal info-gathering runs.
[Uh-oh? That guy’s trying to grab one of us!]
[Bullshit. Humans freak out just looking at our faces. They think we’re eating our own kind—GAH?!]
I snatched one that hadn’t bothered to swim away.
Chopped its head off.
Blood streamed from the wound, its severed head and deep red blood gently dripping into the lake.
[ALEX!!!!!]
I could see one of them wailing, mouth agape in grief.
Didn’t faze me.
Survival of the fittest. The weak get eaten.
That’s just how it is.
I tucked the fish meat into the pouch and got to my feet.
It was time to head back to the shelter.
“Ah, you’re back?”
As I slipped into our resting place, I saw Yuhana sitting cross-legged on the ground, nose buried in a magic tome.
She was gripping her staff, sweat beading on her forehead, probably from waving it around and testing spells.
She looked up and greeted me, slightly breathless.
I gave a half-hearted reply and pulled a large chunk of ant meat from the subspace pouch, placing it on the ground.
Yuhana immediately grimaced in disgust and muttered under her breath.
“W-Why is it always ant meat? Don’t we have, like, wolves or… anything else?”
“Goblins have venom in their blood and muscles. Wolves carry a leukemia virus. Ants are the only safe option.”
“Ugh…”
Yuhana didn’t ask how I knew that. Maybe it meant she was starting to trust me—blindly, at that.
Not the healthiest mindset, but since I was the object of that trust, I wasn’t complaining.
Yuhana, by nature, didn’t trust people.
She didn’t even like them. Under normal circumstances, she and I wouldn’t have gotten close, let alone formed any trust.
Guess the suspension bridge effect really does work wonders.
Or maybe it wasn’t that.
Maybe it was her underlying dependency disorder.
In a situation where she needed someone to rely on, she latched onto me after losing her previous anchor.
If I had to guess, that’s the more likely cause.
Either way—As long as she didn’t try to kill me, I had no problem being her emotional crutch.
“You’re still hungry, right?”
“I-I’m fine…”
“If you keep forcing yourself like this, you won’t be able to do anything when it actually counts. At least hydrate.”
I said that while cutting into the ant carcass, slicing through the artery where the main blood vessels ran.
Green blood spurted out like a fountain.
I cupped some of it in my hand and drank, then motioned for her to do the same.
Yuhana twisted her face in horror and refocused on her spellwork.
I didn’t press the issue.
Tomorrow’s bug-mukbang would take care of it.
As for why I wasn’t giving her the face-fish instead—It was simple.
We’d be eating far worse things on the higher floors of the Tower.
I had to break down her aversion now, before it got in the way.
Old habits are hard to kill, after all.
Give her something too “normal” to eat now, and she’d resist touching bugs or mutant beasts for ages.
Her brain might accept the logic, but her body would refuse.
That’s why I had to vaccinate her early.
The surprising part?
She was insanely quick to adapt once she experienced something.
After just seeing an ant carcass, she was already desensitized to human corpses.
Same went for all sorts of acts and survival tasks.
She picked them up fast.
So instead of treating her to nicely grilled fish, it was better—long term—to let her get used to tearing into ants.
Unfortunate for her, sure.
But once you bring a regressor on board, there are certain things you have to put up with.
After all, regressors don’t have the same emotional depth as normal people.
Especially not one who’s done the same cycle a hundred times.
Sometimes I wonder—Wouldn’t it be nice if there was another regressor?
We could talk shop, slay dark gods together, maybe even commit double suicide side by side.
Conquer the 100th floor, hand in hand.
But sadly, the only other regressor around was that damned evil god.
A newbie regressor, at that—one who only remembered their first death.
Still, a regressor’s a regressor.
Just my luck, right?
But what can you do? That’s the Tower for you.
[Tutorial Notification: Day 3 of Floor 1 has begun.]
As usual, I woke before dawn.
I did some light sword swings, then settled into some breathing exercises—which eventually turned into a full-on Qi brunch session.
By the time I wrapped up, Yuhana was groggily rubbing the sleep from her eyes, dragging herself upright.
At the same moment, a thunderous groooowl echoed from her stomach.
It was so loud it sounded like a cruise ship was setting sail nearby.
Or maybe a whole warship.
Whatever the case, her mental state had clearly jumped aboard that ship and left port.
She sat motionless, hands covering her face.
Still, she was holding up better than most.
When people get hungry, pride and composure are usually the first things to go.
But Yuhana? She still had a sliver of dignity left.
And that’s not something you can appreciate unless you’ve gone two days without food.
“You still not gonna eat?”
I asked while roasting a thick ant leg over the fire.
Yuhana stayed quiet for a moment, then whispered in a tiny voice.
“…What does it taste like?”
A change from before.
No instant rejection.
No turning up her nose.
I smirked and stabbed the cooked leg into the dirt.
“Slight umami with a sour aftertaste. Objectively? Not good. But it’s edible.”
“…Really?”
She slowly scooted closer and sat beside me.
For a moment, she just enjoyed the warmth of the fire, fueled by ant carcasses.
Then her eyes locked on the steaming ant leg.
She swallowed.
Hard.
Then, resolutely, she pointed at it.
“C-Can I have that?”
“Take as much as you want. There’s plenty more.”
The mukbang show was finally about to begin.
I handed her the roasted leg and gave a little grin.
Yuhana peeled off the tough outer shell like she was eating a crab leg, and as she stared at the golden, roasted meat inside, she made every bizarre facial expression imaginable.
Honestly, ant meat didn’t look that bad.
Aside from the pitch-black color of the legs, the overall visuals weren’t too far off from a king crab.
But there’s no helping the visceral revulsion one feels at the thought of eating an insect—especially one the size of a human.
For a 21st-century Korean, chances to eat bugs don’t exactly come by often.
Yuhana may not have grown up in luxury, but it wasn’t like she’d been raised in conditions so harsh that picking bugs off the ground to eat was a normal thing.
No matter how hungry she’d ever been, eating bugs probably never crossed her mind.
So for her, this moment was undoubtedly a major step forward.
Go on, eat it! Prove your purity through devouring!
“Uuuugh… ahh…”
Finally, Yuhana opened her mouth and took a tiny bite of the meat.
Then she chewed, face contorting like she’d just eaten puke.
After a moment of painfully moving her tongue and teeth, she gulped it down with an audible gulp.
“Uwehhh…”
She stuck out her tongue and scrunched her face.
I let out a soft laugh at the sight.
“Still, it’s not completely inedible, right?”
“…Yeah… it kind of tastes like fermented skate…”
Reality: it tasted like absolute crap.
I sliced open the ant’s thorax, tore off a blood-slicked piece of flesh, and tossed it onto the fire.
Once it was cooked enough, I split it in half and handed a portion to Yuhana.
Without hesitation, she began chewing the meat, face twisted in all sorts of ways.
But she didn’t spit it out or throw up.
She just kept saying “one more” until she’d stripped the entire ant clean, leaving only the exoskeleton behind.
I ate just enough to keep myself moving comfortably, so really, it wouldn’t be wrong to say she ate almost all of it herself.
Small frame, surprisingly large stomach.
Thinking back, the biggest expenditure in our guild’s budget was always food.
Mostly because of Yuhana and Daymond, those two gluttons.
It made sense for Daymond—he was strong and massive—but with Yuhana, it was a mystery where all that food went.
Maybe it all went to her unnecessarily oversized chest and ass.
One of the great unsolved mysteries, even after 99 regressions.
“Oppa.”
After eating, we passed the time with idle chat.
There was no need to push ourselves—escape would be possible starting tomorrow.
It was best to conserve strength today.
“I can use magic now.”
“Oh, for real?”
“Y-Yeah! Want me to show you?”
I nodded, and Yuhana stood up with her staff, concentrating on the air before her.
Then she muttered something under her breath, her eyes flashing.
“Water Bomb.”
Pashushk!
As she chanted, steam condensed in the air, forming a small droplet.
The droplet trembled violently, then exploded like a bomb.
Scalding water sprayed outward, and the resulting gust blew both our hair around.
“Wh-What do you think?”
She looked at me expectantly. I was genuinely impressed.
“That’s amazing.”
As I’ve said before, there’s no status window in the tower.
The only interface we get is the guide panel.
So there’s no such thing as leveling up and choosing “Mage” as a class or anything like that.
To use magic, you have to understand how to awaken the magical circuit, learn the properties of elements, and mentally run the ritual while channeling mana into it.
Not an easy task.
When I first tried learning magic, I struggled for an entire year with just the beginner’s manual before I could finally spark a flame weaker than a lighter, and even then, I was overjoyed like a child.
But Yuhana?
She started casting real magic the day after reading the beginner’s guide.
Anyone who’s ever dabbled in magic would understand how ridiculous that is.
Of course, from an outsider’s point of view, I’d look like a monster too.
I created an aura circuit—basically a dantian—the moment I regressed, and even had lightning-aspect mana. Without knowing about my regression, they’d naturally assume I was a genius.
But Yuhana didn’t regress.
She awakened as a mage with pure talent alone.
Life is unfair.
Still, I didn’t feel any resentment toward her.
After all, she was someone I’d lived with before, one of the few people who’d chosen to die with me when I was broken.
Sure, she’d kidnapped and imprisoned me, but she’d never actually killed me.
Okay, maybe she blew off both my legs once so I couldn’t escape—but even so, she was a good, pure person.
At least by regressor standards.
And honestly, she wasn’t much different in real life.
Something just snapped whenever she got involved with me, but aside from that, she wasn’t evil.
Just… trust-averse.
As she skipped back to me, I gently patted her hair and said, with genuine sincerity:
“I’ll count on you.”
“Yes! Ehehehe…”
She smiled brightly, and I smiled back.
Thus ended Day 3.
[Tutorial Notice: The fourth day has begun since entering the first floor.]
[The exit has opened. The boss monster, Gatekeeper, has spawned.]
[A time limit has been imposed. Failure to escape in time will result in being trapped here forever.]
[Time limit: 71:59]
The exit had opened.