A soft fog lay spread out.
In the distance, a blurry metallic wall could be seen.
At the base of the steel tower, whose circumference was impossible to estimate, a gentle fog had settled.
The open lot where the steel tower rose was filled with an almost reverent stillness.
The hazy fog, the massive tower dominating the view, and a sacred stillness made the place feel otherworldly.
All these elements combined to make the steel tower’s lot feel detached from reality.
A building couldn’t compare in scale—this object was on a mountain-sized level.
The steel tower.
No matter how many times I looked at it, its overwhelming scale left me speechless.
The destruction condition for the steel tower remained unchanged from the last time I checked.
[Nostalgia]
Is it pronounced “Nostalgia”?
Suddenly what kind of English is this?
This was the only object I’d encountered with an English destruction condition.
Actually, at first, it wasn’t even English—it was something absurd and unfamiliar, maybe Russian or some alien script.
But while staying near the steel tower, checking daily, it somehow changed.
Still, it never translated into Korean.
Why English?
Even if written in Korean, English, Russian, or alien language, this condition seemed equally useless.
[Nostalgia].
Nostalgia. Yearning for home.
Or longing for the past.
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out what to do.
Do I need to make the steel tower nostalgic?
Or does it have a hometown I need to return it to?
I had no clue back when I lived in Seoul Forest, and still don’t now.
I hoped revisiting would bring new ideas or changes to the text.
This was worse than a straightforwardly cryptic condition like those Hungry Ghosts.
It felt like a solvable problem that I was just too dumb to solve.
I was slowly climbing up the smooth wall of the steel tower.
Though nearly vertical, ghosting made walking on walls effortless despite being physically impossible.
The house-sized Giant Mole that used to fly around when I destroyed its ghosting ability couldn’t do what I was doing now.
Shouldn’t you be able to walk on air if you can walk on walls?
Someone needs to give a lecture on these weird object abilities!
Given Seoul’s current chaos, there was a reason I was leisurely climbing the steel tower.
There was something odd I’d noticed since a year ago.
Something so strange that if anything unusual happened at the steel tower, this would be the first thing I’d think of.
Since I’m the only one who has climbed the steel tower, maybe this is a secret only I know.
Humans find it hard to reach here, and objects strangely avoid approaching the steel tower.
The peculiar thing I discovered: the view from high up on the steel tower doesn’t match expectations.
It’s not just impressive height—it’s that the landscape itself ceases to resemble Earth.
Standing on a protruding part of the steel tower, my hair fluttered in the strong wind blowing straight at me.
The surrounding scenery was definitely different.
The view from the steel tower was clearly not Korea.
There was no coastline where it should be, nor any sign of the ruined North Korea.
In fact, it wasn’t even Earth.
The first thing that caught my eye were seven moons.
Seven colorful moons boldly asserting their presence.
Unlike the colorful moons, the ground was sickly black.
“Hmm…”
But this scene didn’t seem much different from what I saw a year ago.
If this was related to the throbbing changes, the landscape should show more dramatic transformations.
The big moon hanging in the sky seems close enough to touch but probably isn’t reachable here.
Not talking about physical distance—it feels like there’s something beyond mere physics separating them.
The distance between the steel tower and this landscape feels unimaginably vast.
Even knowing I can’t reach it, seeing such a huge moon makes it hard not to jump.
Plop plop.
Climbing the steel tower always ends with a mandatory jump before descending.
*
After leaping down from the towering steel tower onto the open lot, the atmosphere had completely changed.
What changed? The solemn stillness was gone.
Geeek gekk.
The silence was replaced by the harsh clanging of metal.
Constantly, from beyond the fog.
Geeek gekk.
Through the hazy fog, a vaguely human shape appeared.
Clanking and staggering, it walked.
From beyond the foggy barrier emerged a grotesque hand.
A bluish, twisted hand emitting the stench of decaying corpses.
Though clearly humanoid, it wasn’t entirely human.
A human body embedded with machines.
The machines, affected by the steel tower, were crumbling into dust but regenerating at a similar speed.
Object? Machine?
On closer inspection, this was definitely an Object.
Destruction condition: [Destroy Core].
It seemed this type could regenerate infinitely until the core was destroyed.
Its regenerative power resisted the steel tower’s civilization-destroying effects.
When the fog cleared fully, the Object-human revealed itself as far from normal.
A distorted face of agony, blackened dried blood, rotting eyes.
It was merely a corpse kept moving by mechanical assistance.
The eerie mechanical zombie ignored me and continued walking.
Straight toward the steel tower.
Upon reaching the steel tower, the zombie wiped the pained expression and grinned grotesquely.
With arms wide open, it embraced the steel tower, triggering violent vibrations and a terrifying shockwave spreading in all directions.
Thump.
Thump.
The steel tower’s pulsation.
The zombie, caught in the pulsation, turned to dust and disappeared, but the pulsation continued multiple times.
I found the cause of the pulsation!
I witnessed the exact moment the pulsation occurred.
Judging by the periodic pulsations, these zombies likely came regularly from somewhere.
Sure enough, heading north where the previous zombie came from, another mechanical zombie was spotted in the distance.
Stopping this zombie before it reached the steel tower would stop the pulsation.
But how?
It survived the steel tower’s civilization-destroying effect, and severing its limbs would just lead to instant regeneration.
As I pondered whether I needed to track the zombies to their source, I sensed something strange.
An unsettling feeling I’d felt since first encountering the zombie.
This mechanical zombie didn’t quite fit the definition of an Object.
Each part seemed to operate independently.
On closer inspection, though appearing as one Object overall, each body part was actually a separate Object.
Skin, heart, skeleton, internal organs.
All different types of Objects.
When I extracted the core heart, a golden heart and vascular system came out together.
The destruction condition [Destroy Core] disappeared.
Having lost its infinite regeneration ability, the mechanical zombie instantly turned to dust.
Left behind were human flesh and blood, bones, and unidentified animal innards.
The golden, intricately crafted heart and sturdy metal skeleton vanished into dust.
Was this an Object assembled from multiple Objects?
Then was it man-made?
I’d never seen this kind of Object before.
It seemed individual Objects were linked by a golden heart to create a single unit, but I’d never heard of such technology.
And if this composite Object caused the steel tower’s pulsation…
Was this entire steel tower pulsation incident orchestrated by someone?
There was now even more reason to track down the mechanical zombies’ origin.
