A faint mist spread across the ground.

Beyond it, the blurred metal wall came into view.

The base of the Iron Tower, whose perimeter seemed impossible to estimate, was shrouded in a gentle mist.

The clearing where the Iron Tower stood was filled with a quiet that evoked a sense of reverence.

The hazy mist, the colossal tower filling the view, and the serene silence that seemed almost sacred.

All these elements combined to make the clearing around the Iron Tower feel like a place disconnected from reality.

A colossal Object that couldn’t be compared to a building but had to be compared to a mountain.

The Iron Tower.

No matter how many times I saw it, the sheer scale of the tower was something I couldn’t fully comprehend.

The vast clearing around the enormous tower was filled with nothing but silence, as Objects strangely avoided approaching the Iron Tower, making it eerily quiet.

I approached the Iron Tower and placed my hand on its surface, which looked like a massive wall.

A cool sensation.

The surface of the tower was spotless, and it felt like there was a rhythmic pulse of energy within it.

The destruction condition of the Iron Tower was the same as when I last checked.

[Nostalgia]

That’s how it’s read, right?

Why is it in English all of a sudden?

The Iron Tower is the only Object I’ve encountered with a destruction condition written in English.

Actually, it wasn’t even English at first.

I remember it being in Russian? Or perhaps some strange, unfamiliar script that I couldn’t recognize.

But after spending so much time around the Iron Tower, checking the condition daily, it eventually changed.

Yet, it still hasn’t changed to Korean.

Why English?

That condition seems equally useless whether it’s in Korean, English, Russian, or some alien language.

[Nostalgia]. A longing for home. A yearning for the past. Or perhaps a longing for times gone by.

No matter how much I think about it, I can’t figure out what to do with this condition.

Does it mean I need to make the Iron Tower feel nostalgic?

Or does the Iron Tower have a home that I need to take it to?

Even when I was living in Seoul Forest, this was a condition I couldn’t understand, and I still don’t know.

I was hoping that after some time, the wording might have changed, or that I’d have some new idea, but nothing.

It’s a more unsettling condition than something blatantly difficult to guess, like Agu’s.

It makes me feel like it’s a solvable problem, but I’m too stupid to figure it out.

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

Although the slope was nearly vertical, making it physically impossible to climb, walking up the wall wasn’t too difficult when I used my ghostly state.

The massive, house-sized mole king I dealt with a year ago could fly, but for some reason, I couldn’t do the same.

Logically, if you can phase through walls, shouldn’t you also be able to stand on air?

It would be great if someone could give a lecture on these nuanced Object abilities.

There was a reason I was leisurely climbing the Iron Tower while Seoul was being torn apart.

It was because there was something I had found peculiar since a year ago.

There was a bizarre phenomenon, something that would come to mind first if anything strange were to happen with the Iron Tower.

Since I was the only one who had climbed the Iron Tower, perhaps it was a secret only I knew?

It’s difficult for humans to reach this point, and Objects strangely avoid the Iron Tower.

What I discovered was that the view from high up on the Iron Tower was different from what you’d expect.

It wasn’t just a case of being surprised by the height; the scenery wasn’t even Earth anymore.

Standing on a ledge jutting out from the middle of the Iron Tower, I felt the wind blowing against my face, making my hair flutter.

As I looked around, I was greeted by a distinctly different landscape.

The view from the top of the Iron Tower was definitely not Korea.

There was no coastline in the distance, nor the ruins of North Korea.

In fact, it wasn’t even Earth.

The first thing that caught my eye was the seven moons.

Seven moons, each a different color of the rainbow, dominated the sky.

Unlike the colorful moons, the land below was black, as if diseased.

‘Hmm.’

But the landscape didn’t look much different from what I had seen a year ago.

If it were related to the violent changes of the pulsation, the scenery should have shown more dramatic shifts.

The massive moons in the sky seemed close enough to touch, but I probably could never reach them from here.

It wasn’t just a matter of the physical distance to the celestial bodies in the sky.

It felt like there was something beyond a physical distance, something that made the distance between the Iron Tower and the landscape unimaginably vast.

Even knowing I couldn’t reach them, I couldn’t resist jumping when I saw those enormous moons.

Hop, hop.

It was something I did every time I climbed the Iron Tower before descending.

After jumping from the dizzying height of the Iron Tower and landing in the clearing below, the atmosphere had completely changed.

What’s different? I wondered, and then I realized the sense of reverence in the silence was gone.

Creak, creak.

The once quiet clearing now echoed with the discordant sound of metal scraping against metal.

Beyond the mist, constantly.

Creak, creak.

Through the faint mist, the silhouette of a human figure could be seen.

It was a human, staggering forward with a metallic sound.

A twisted, blue hand suddenly shot out from the wall of mist.

The grotesque hand, reeking of rotting flesh.

The silhouette beyond the mist appeared human.

A human with mechanical parts embedded in them.

Those mechanical parts were crumbling to dust under the influence of the Iron Tower, but they were regenerating just as quickly.

An Object? A machine?

Upon closer inspection, I saw that the figure was indeed an Object.

Its destruction condition was [Destruction of the Core].

It seemed to be the type that could regenerate infinitely until the core was destroyed.

It was enduring the civilization-crushing power of the Iron Tower with that regenerative ability.

As the Object-human emerged fully from the mist, it was clear it wasn’t a normal human.

It had the size, silhouette, and movements of a human, but it couldn’t be called one.

A face twisted in agony, blood that had long since dried black, and decayed eyes.

It was merely a corpse walking with the aid of mechanical devices.

The creepy mechanical zombie ignored me and continued walking.

All the way to the Iron Tower.

When the mechanical zombie reached the base of the Iron Tower, its pained expression vanished, replaced by a twisted smile.

It spread its arms wide and embraced the Iron Tower, and with a violent vibration, a terrifying wave of energy rippled outwards.

Thud.

Thud.

It was the pulsation of the Iron Tower.

The zombie was pulverized by the pulsation and disappeared, but the pulsation didn’t stop, continuing several more times.

I had discovered the cause of the pulsation!

I had witnessed the moment it occurred.

Seeing that the pulsations happened regularly, it seemed these zombies were sent periodically from somewhere.

Sure enough, as I followed the path northward, where the previous zombie had come from, I saw another mechanical zombie approaching in the distance.

If I could stop this zombie from reaching the Iron Tower, I could prevent the pulsation.

But how?

This creature could withstand the civilization-crushing power of the Iron Tower, so it would likely regenerate instantly even if I broke its limbs.

Would I have to track the zombies back to their source and destroy the core to end this situation? Just as I was thinking that, something strange occurred to me.

In truth, I had felt something off about this zombie from the moment I first saw it.

The mechanical zombie didn’t quite feel like a typical Object.

It felt as though its parts were functioning separately.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that while the Object appeared unified at first glance, up close, it was clear that each part was a different Object.

The skin, the heart, the skeleton, the organs.

They were all different kinds of Objects.

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

With that, the destruction condition of [Core Destruction] disappeared.

Without its infinite regenerative power, the mechanical zombie quickly crumbled to dust.

What was left in the place where the zombie had stood were human blood, flesh, bones, and the innards of some unidentified animals.

The golden, intricately crafted heart and the sturdy metal skeleton made of strong alloys had also turned to dust.

Was this a composite Object made by combining several Objects?

Was it man-made?

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

It seemed like someone had used the golden heart to bind several separate Objects into one, but I had never heard of such a technique being developed.

And to think that this composite Object was causing the pulsations of the Iron Tower?

Was this entire Iron Tower pulsation crisis triggered by someone?

Now I had even more reason to track down the source of these mechanical zombies.