Transcendent Gene

Frontier, the furthest humans had ever managed to colonize. It was a settlement on Neptune, a planet that used to be an Ice Giant, but the atmosphere was nothing like that anymore.

As its name suggested, Frontier was a place that humanity always regarded as their greatest achievement.

However, at this moment, it had been turned into a wasteland. 

Calamities approached from all sides. Great entities that humanity could never even hope to deal with appeared and drove them into a corner. 

Those who stood in Frontier and fought this final battle were the last that humanity had to offer. They were its "only survivors."

"That man" was certainly not supposed to be here. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! 

The constant explosions sent shockwaves tearing through the simulated atmosphere. He was standing far away from the battle, but even he could feel the pressure. If it weren't for the equipment on his body, he would have been dead.

See, it wasn't that he was in a place of safety.

There wasn't such a place remaining, and if he had to guess, he was probably the only non-combatant remaining in the world. 

He was only safe because the Calamities focused on the strong. He hadn't been spotted because he stayed far away from the strong people that were present here.

'Dammit.'

The life he led was not one of battle. Humanity started to face calamity decades ago, but he had never once been on the frontlines of the conflict.

He spent his life on the sidelines. After all, he was never someone with power. He received basic training, but that was the extent of it. He could not fight the fight that humanity was currently facing.

"Haha…"

He laughed to himself. The defeated expression on his face couldn't be hidden. 

What was the point of anything if he couldn't fight now?

"This is humanity's final stand."

He looked back at the battlefield in the distance. The faces he saw there were not unfamiliar to him.

No, they were all people he saw as close friends and family. 

"Leave. Run as far as you can. There's an escape pod hidden in the base. As long as you can reach it, you can survive."

"We'll cover your back, kid. Don't worry about anything and don't look back. You're the smartest of us all, so I'm sure you'll be able to figure something out."

"You are our hope. Let us use our bodies to secure your path of escape."

Those were the words they fed him as they shooed him away. However, he could not listen to their warnings. When he reached the base, he had no choice but to look back. 

There they were. The faces of the people he'd grown to love. Some of them were twisted in pain, some of them were shining with fierce determination, and some of them were on the ground attached to cold corpses. 

There wasn't a shred of "hope" in any of them. 

"Haa…"

With a heavy heart, he turned his back. He could not allow their efforts to be wasted. 

He walked into a hidden entrance on the side of a large man-made mountain. This place used to be a hangar, but there was only one small vehicle remaining inside. It was a starship no larger than a car that was clearly only meant to fit one person.

The man didn't utter a single word as he climbed into the cockpit. After entering his genetic data to start up the machine, he looked at the screen with a wry expression.

It asked him to set his destination.

'But what destination can I possibly set?'

They told him to run, but–

"–where can I possibly run to?"

Everything was gone. It had all been systematically destroyed while they, the people of humanity, were unable to do anything to stop it.

Earth, their original world, was gone. The settlements on Mars and Venus were gone as well, along with all other signs of human civilization other than what remained on Frontier. 

They wanted him to escape and find a way to stop the Calamities, but there wasn't anywhere for him to–

"–there is one place."

There was a single place left standing, but it was not the territory of humans. It belonged to nobody and could never be conquered. It stood in the center of the solar system, beneath the Gehenna Tree like it was a pedestal for the great entity.

"The Tower of Babel."

It was said that the person who conquered the Tower would be granted any wish. Many had attempted it in the past, but none had succeeded.

'Any wish, huh…'

He daydreamed about it as his hands inputted the coordinates. 

Not long after, the starship launched and quickly rushed out of the atmosphere.

The man's face only darkened when he saw this perspective. 

Because, from here, he could see Frontier being destroyed like every other piece of human civilization.

This planet would not last much longer.

Nor would the people fighting on its surface.

"Haa…"

His heart was cold at this point. The number of people who'd died in his arms was not so small anymore. 

"You wanted me to do something to fix this…?"

Perhaps they also knew that it was an impossible ask, but they used it to give him hope.

"Yeah, after all this time, only a shitty thing like hope is left."

Even if he was smart, he wasn't going to be able to find a way out of this situation. 

"The only thing I can do is rely on hope."

He had to rely on the futile wish that something would change.

"I've spent my entire life running away. I've never been able to protect this world from the frontlines. But now that it's come to this…"

As his shuttle entered the space outside of Neptune, the planet cracked in half. The fleeing ship was chased away from the outer edges of the solar system by a great explosive force brought about by the destruction of the planet. 

With that, it was official. 

He was the only remaining human.

"...I have to fight."

That was his last thought for a long time. Space travel took time even with the use of spatial leap technology. For the next three years, he would find himself in a cryogenic sleep. 

When he opened his eyes again, he could already see it in front of him. 

There used to be a place on Earth called something like the Leaning Tower. It collapsed a long time ago, but the Tower of Babel looked something like what that would have been if it had been built properly.

Only, on a much larger scale.

The massive tower was black in color rather than white, had the same diameter as a moon, and was roughly as tall as the distance between Earth and the Moon.

"There isn't a physical entrance. From what I've heard…"

He recovered from cryogenesis easily, as it was something he was already used to. From there, he did something incomprehensible.

In the depths of outer space, with the beautiful sight of the Gehenna Tree in front of him, he opened the cockpit of the starship and leapt out.

He was not an evolved person. He'd never trained his body in any way. 

In other words, he did not have the means to resist the dangers of outer space.

"To enter the Tower of Babel, prove that you are willing to sacrifice everything."

Risking his life was enough, wasn't it?

The cold pull of death tugged on his consciousness. His skin visibly turned blue as the breath was taken from his lungs. He opened his mouth, begging for air, but he knew it would not come.

If anyone said this kind of death was painless, they were lying. His blood froze and his body swelled into a ball. Every system inside of him was twisted and broken.

He did not make sound. It wasn't because he was brave, but because he no longer had a voice.

He could only silently cry out in his own mind until his vision turned black. 

This was the first time he died.