The Lobby between Floor 2 and Floor 3 was different from the first one.
Bigger. Louder. The vendor stalls had actual storefronts instead of folding tables. An information board the size of a bus displayed floor rankings, guild recruitment ads, and a scrolling ticker of recent deaths that nobody looked at directly but everyone tracked from the corner of their eye.
The death ticker was new. It hadn't existed in Jaehyuk's first climb. That, or he'd never noticed it because he'd been too busy being nobody.
He noticed it now.
Three names had scrolled past in the time it took him to cross the Lobby. Three people who'd entered the Tower this morning and wouldn't leave. Floor 2 had a 4% fatality rate. Low by Tower standards. High by any human standard that still meant anything.
Somin was quiet.
She'd been quiet since the portal. Since the boss chamber. Since the wall.
다시 시작. Iteration: 6.
He hadn't explained it. She hadn't asked. But the silence between them had changed texture. It wasn't the comfortable silence of two people who didn't need words. It was the pressurized silence of someone building toward a question they'd already decided to ask.
He found a bench near the wall. Away from the crowd. Away from the information board and its ticker of names.
"Sit," he said.
She sat.
He pulled up his status window.
[ YUN JAEHYUK ]
Rank: F
Floor: 3
STR: 16 | AGI: 18 | END: 15 | PER: 17 | WIL: 19
Skills: Shadow Step (F-Rank)
Titles: ???
Tower Recognition: 0.12%
The stats were climbing. Floor 2's S-rank clear had given a generous bump. But he was still objectively weak. A mid-tier Floor 5 climber could snap him in half. The stats of a man who'd cleared two floors with knowledge instead of power.
Knowledge was a wasting asset. Every floor he cleared, the advantage shrank. By Floor 20, other climbers would have enough experience to match his predictions. By Floor 50, raw stats would matter more than pattern recognition. He needed to build power, real power, before the knowledge edge expired.
But that wasn't the immediate problem.
The immediate problem was the woman sitting next to him who'd stopped talking, which was the Somin equivalent of a tornado siren.
"Okay," she said.
One word. No rambling. No nervous laughter. Just: okay.
"Ask," he said.
"The writing on the wall. In the boss room. Korean. 'Start again.' And a number." She turned to face him. Her eyes were steady in a way they hadn't been on Floor 1. Two floors of the Tower had filed down her nervousness and left something harder underneath. "You read it like you understood what it meant."
"I did."
"And the wolf. And the cave. And the waterfall. And the boss pattern. And the way you knew my name before I told you."
He hadn't known her name before she told him. He'd known it from a different timeline. The distinction mattered to him but wouldn't matter to her.
"You're going to think I'm insane," he said.
"You killed a wolf with your fists in eight minutes and got an S-rank clear on Floor 2 without a weapon. I'm past the insanity threshold. Just tell me."
He looked at her. Really looked. In his first life, Lee Somin had died on Floor 23 without anyone caring enough to notice. In this life, she was sitting next to him on a bench in the Lobby with steady eyes and a healing skill that had evolved under pressure in a way that shouldn't happen before Floor 10.
She deserved the truth. Or at least enough of it.
"I've climbed this Tower before," he said.
She didn't blink.
"Not in a dream. Not in a vision. I climbed it. Seven years. Floor by floor. I made it to Floor 147. And then I died." He paused. "And then I woke up on Floor 1 with every memory intact."
The Lobby noise filled the space between them. Vendors calling out. Climbers arguing. The death ticker scrolling.
"That's not possible," Somin said. "The Tower resets everything. Memories, stats, skills. Everyone knows that."
"Everyone knows that because the Tower has never let anyone keep their memories before."
"So why you?"
"I don't know."
"The writing on the wall. Iteration 6."
"There were six people before me. Six regressors. People who died and came back with their memories, just like me." He tapped his index finger against his thumb. The habit he couldn't break. "I'm number seven."
"And the person in the grey coat?"
He stopped tapping.
"You saw them too," he said.
"In the Lobby. After Floor 1. Near the vendor stalls." She swallowed. "They were doing that thing. The tapping. Your tapping."
"I know."
"Jaehyuk." Her voice dropped. "Is the grey coat one of the other six?"
He'd been asking himself the same question since the staging area. The finger tapping. The ??? title. The way they appeared exactly where he went, like they were following a path they already knew.
"I think so," he said. "Iteration 6, maybe. The one who carved the message on the wall."
"What happened to them? To the first six?"
"I don't know. The message said 'start again.' Not 'I succeeded.' Not 'I cleared the Tower.' Just... start again."
She was quiet for a moment. Processing. He could see it behind her eyes, the same way he could see the gears turning in a boss monster right before it committed to an attack pattern.
"You came back for a reason," she said. "You're not just climbing. You're doing something different this time."
"Yes."
"What?"
He thought about Floor 143. About the people he'd trusted who'd sold each other to survive. About bleeding out alone in a corridor. About the names on his list and the seven years of knowledge burning in his skull.
"Everything," he said.
She held his gaze for five seconds. Six. Seven. Then she nodded, once, with the finality of someone who's made a decision they won't revisit.
"Okay," she said. "I believe you."
"Just like that?"
"You've given me no reason to doubt you. Everything you've said would happen has happened. The wolf pattern. The cave path. The waterfall. You told me to trust you about Vanguard and I did. You told me to stay behind you and I did." She stood up from the bench. Brushed off her pants. "Besides, if you were lying, you'd be better at it. You're a terrible liar."
"I've been told."
She almost smiled. The first smile since the boss chamber.
"So what's Floor 3?"
He stood. Floor 3. The Proving Grounds. An open arena where climbers fought each other in randomly assigned pairs. Not to the death — the Tower pulled you out at 10% HP — but the fights were real, the injuries were real, and the rankings were public.
In his first life, Floor 3 had been where he'd learned what he was: a punching bag. Weak stats, no combat skills, matched against fighters who'd been training since childhood. He'd lost his first match in fourteen seconds.
This time was different. Not because his stats were higher — they weren't, not meaningfully. But because he had Shadow Step and seven years of watching combat at every level of the Tower. He'd seen S-rank fighters move. He'd memorized their footwork, their timing, their tells. He couldn't replicate their power. But he could replicate their patterns.
"Floor 3 is an arena," he said. "One-on-one fights. Random matchups."
"You're going to fight someone."
"Yes."
"Without a weapon."
"Shadow Step is a weapon. People just don't know it yet."
"Your Strength is 16."
"My knowledge is seven years."
She gave him the look. The one that said you're insane and I'm aware of this and I'm choosing to stay anyway.
"Can I at least watch?" she said.
"Healers get assigned to the sideline. You'll be healing whoever loses."
"So I'll be healing you."
"Your faith in me is overwhelming."
"Your Strength is 16, Jaehyuk."
He walked toward the Floor 3 gate. The stone archway was wider than the previous ones. Through it, he could see sunlight. Actual sunlight, or the Tower's simulation of it. The arena was open-air.
His status window flickered.
[ ??? title resonance detected. ]
[ Proximity alert: Another ??? holder is within 100 meters. ]
Closer. The grey coat was closer than last time. 200 meters in the cave. Now 100.
Following him. Closing the distance.
Jaehyuk looked around the Lobby. Hundreds of climbers moving, talking, trading. Any one of them could be the grey coat without it.
Then he saw something that made his blood stop.
Near the Floor 3 gate. Leaning against the wall. Not in a grey coat — in a Vanguard Guild uniform. White coat, golden emblem.
But the hand resting against their leg was tapping. Index finger against thumb. The same rhythm. Jaehyuk's rhythm.
The person looked up.
Their face was young. Mid-twenties. A face Jaehyuk had never seen before in either timeline. Sharp features, calm eyes, the kind of stillness that came from knowing more than the room expected.
They looked directly at Jaehyuk.
And smiled.
Not a friendly smile. Not a threatening smile. The smile of someone seeing a move they'd predicted three steps ago.
Then they pushed off the wall and walked through the Floor 3 gate without looking back.
A Vanguard member. With the tapping habit. With the ??? title within 100 meters.
Somin appeared at his shoulder. "Jaehyuk? You're doing the staring thing."
"The grey coat is in Vanguard."
Her face changed. "What?"
"The other regressor. Iteration 6. They joined Kang Dohyun's guild." He watched the gate where the figure had disappeared. "They're inside the system I was planning to tear down."
The Floor 3 gate hummed. Sunlight poured through. The arena waited.
And the question that had been circling since the boss chamber wall carved itself deeper into Jaehyuk's skull:
If the previous regressor had joined Vanguard instead of fighting it, there was a reason. Either they'd been corrupted by Dohyun's influence.
Or they knew something about the Tower that Jaehyuk didn't.
Something that made the villain the right side to be on.
"Let's go," he said.
They stepped through the gate.
And somewhere inside the arena, wearing a white coat and a borrowed smile, Iteration 6 was waiting for the match they'd already chosen.