“It’s been a while?”0

I stared straight into his gleaming reptilian pupils, holding his gaze as the one corner of his mouth lifted into a faint smirk. Something felt wrong, and a quiet sense of discord stirred inside me.0

This was our first time meeting in person, but he was looking at me with such familiarity that it felt strangely intimate, as if he were greeting someone he already knew. There was no way watching me climb the tower would create such a look.0

Does Kalain, as a challenger, also carry memories from before Ha Hee-Jeong’s regression?0

Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t make sense for him to act like this was a reunion.0

“The phantoms,” Kalain murmured softly. “When one fades, all of its experiences return to their original.”1

Ah.0

The two floors involving Kalain had come back to haunt me. With his explanation in mind, his greeting sounded a lot more reasonable. Although this was our first time meeting face-to-face, this wasn’t his first time interacting with me—the past trials formed a kind of indirect connection. This turn of events caught me completely off guard. I had assumed the phantoms were...0