Beyond the Tenth Floor
“GRAAAARGH!”
Whoosh! Fwoosh!
Just before Sil-iens could land, the hellhound roared and wrapped its body in a thick shroud of pitch-black flame. A reek of sulfur stabbed at the nose, and a wave of searing heat rolled out with it.
“Right. Not going to die easy, are you.”
“Grrrr.”
Jun took a step back and sneered. The beast bared its teeth and snarled back, as if to say, So what? What exactly do you think you can do? For something that could barely move, the attitude was absurdly arrogant — but it had something to lean on, and that was why it could afford the swagger.
What now.
Whether it was a trait or something else, the hellhound’s black flames burned everything that entered them. Anything with form, of course — and even formless things like electricity and wind were no exception. Neither sword nor psychic power could land a hit.
The fact that it still couldn’t escape the Heavenly Demon Descent Step suggested it couldn’t burn space itself, but that didn’t solve the present problem. Jun’s triple cores were already running near their limit. Even with Skill-CPU handling the information processing, the cores themselves couldn’t keep up; any further magic or techniques were out of reach.
And even if the cores had had room to spare, punching through those black flames would have been hard. From the way the earlier storm and the black fire had annihilated each other, their powers were roughly equal. With the beast dug in on pure defense, any all-out attack from this side would just end in the same mutual destruction.
I don’t know whether to admire its ability or the fact that I’m matching a Yellow-rank monster blow for blow.
If there had been no angle at all, he would have simply joined forces with his wives and been done with it. But he could see enough of an opening that he wanted to finish this on his own.
“Hmm… would that work?”
While turning the problem over, Jun remembered he had an item that might serve. He opened Dowonhyang at once.
Ziiing—
A hand’s breadth in front of him, at hip height, the entrance to Dowonhyang appeared, laid out horizontally. From its center, a sword hilt rose into view. Jun took hold of it and drew the blade free. A longsword adorned in silver and blue gemstones emerged, gleaming softly, its beauty on full display.
Grade: Gold
Type: Sword (Longsword)
◈ Cutting Power: High
◈ Durability: High
◈ Aura Amplification: Exceptional
A sword used for a lifetime by an arrogant king who dared call himself the Conqueror King. Having shared countless battlefields at his side, it rose to the rank of a true treasure. A crushing defeat has since lowered its standing — yet the power it gained upon reaching that rank has not been lost.
Innate Ability: Energy Drain
The Solo King, summoned through an easter egg on Jun’s first adventure. The demonic sword Grid had been the reward for defeating him, and its performance was so absurdly high it was hard to believe it had come from a first-floor easter egg.
Well. Even so, this is the first time I’ve actually drawn it to use it.
Goooo—
As if on cue, Grid began to keen with a low, sinister hum. At the same time a faint itch stirred at the edges of Jun’s mind — but it didn’t last long.
Yeah. No problem for me.
Holders of a Psychic Core already had extremely high resistance to mental attacks, and Jun went further still — both his psychic power and his traits were tied to the mind. On top of that, the iron will he’d gained through elixirs was not easily shaken, and the Blessing of Health his father-in-law had tossed him out of pity covered the health of the spirit as well. Stacked together, Jun’s mental resistance was all but absolute. Fortuna had said it would take something on the level of a god to touch his mind.
The reason he still hadn’t used Grid until now was his wives’ worry — that it had once been a treasure-grade armament, and who knew what might happen. There hadn’t really been a good moment to use it, either. But you couldn’t leave a fine blade sitting in storage forever just because you were afraid of nicking a finger. A situation perfectly suited to putting it to work had finally arrived; trying it once wouldn’t hurt.
“So go easy on me, yeah?”
Jun glanced back as he said it.
“…This humble one could simply have put out the fire.”
“I could have used my trait as well.”
Dohwa and Rebecca, who had finished cleaning up and come up behind him at some point, grumbled with clear dissatisfaction. But that was as far as it went. They had complaints, not objections; neither of them said another word.
“All right. Time to put in some work for once.”
With his wives’ silent permission, Jun poured Aura into Grid without reservation. His Aura Core had been devoted entirely to supporting the Magic Core, so there was still enough left to power an item.
Whoosh!
From a blade far too beautiful for its name, green flames bloomed.
Whoosh! Fwoosh!
But the fire was every bit as greedy as the name promised. It writhed with an ominous hunger, devouring the surrounding energy with a voracity that rivaled the triple cores themselves — mana, demonic energy, and even the hellhound’s black flames.
Exactly what Jun had wanted.
“Grk? Gwaang?”
While he savored the hellhound’s thoroughly panicked noises, Jun turned his attention inward.
…Nice.
Energy was flooding in through Grid in a tidal surge — so much that he no longer needed to draw mana and demonic energy through the cores at all. So he redirected the cores’ function entirely to refining what came through the sword. The green flames seemed to have filtered out some of the impurities once already, but even so, using the energy raw looked like a bad idea. Force it through as-is and, at best, the cores would suffer; at worst, body and mind would break down along with them.
Even after refining through the cores, residual impurities — leftover thoughts, by the look of them — still clung to the energy that had come from the demonic power and the black flames. The odds of a real breakdown had dropped a great deal, but it still felt unclean to use. Clearing residual thoughts usually required some special method, so an ordinary person would just grit their teeth and use it. Fortunately, Jun had that special method.
Crack! Crackle!
Electricity rose inside him like an enraged dragon and swallowed the impurities whole. They struggled to survive, but there was no escaping a dragon’s maw.
Purification of impurities through electricity. With the enemies’ presence so ominous, he’d drawn in demonic energy just to pad his strength a little, then — fretting over the aftereffects — tried this improvisation on the spot. The results were better than expected. Improve it a little further and he wouldn’t have to keep asking Dohwa to pull demonic impurities out of his body, or carefully stick to pure mana for fear of the backlash. In short, he could use his powers as freely as he did on the surface world.
Just like a Demonic Human.
“The flames are dying down a lot. Getting tired, are we?”
“Hmph!”
While he’d been lost in thought the black fire had visibly thinned; when he needled the hellhound about it, the beast snorted as if to say, Don’t be ridiculous. But its huge eyes were shaking hard, as though he’d struck a nerve.
A moment later, Grid drank down the last of the black flames like a matchstick’s dying spark. After that, no more fire rose. The hellhound closed its eyes, as if it had given up.
“Just checking — any interest in surrendering?”
“Keng!”
Not the forced sneer from before, but a genuine one. Jun swung Grid without a second thought.
Thud.
The hellhound’s head and body split cleanly in two.
“Hyaaaah! Just die already!!!”
Thud! Thud!
“Nngh! Mmoooh!”
Crack!
Right on cue, the minotaur that had been taking a one-sided beating from Fortuna finally failed to block her attacks; its skull caved in and it died.
“Good work, For.”
“Hnyaaah~. I’m tired. Jun, hold me.”
She dropped her weapons and came straight into his arms, clinging like a puppy putting on the charm. She didn’t look so exhausted she couldn’t stand, but the act was cute enough that he held her tight the way she wanted. Soft, heavy warmth pressed against his chest. The tension of combat drained out of him all at once, strength leaving his limbs. Confirming with his heart rather than his head that the fight was over, Jun surveyed the battlefield.
Two massive monster corpses. Three slender women’s bodies. And one black-robed man’s corpse, already dead from a Railgun shot before the real fighting began. The pile of adventurers’ corpses that had been heaped in the corner was gone — already claimed as nourishment by the labyrinth, it seemed.
“Dohwa, Rebecca. What about the other three?”
“Just in case, this humble one did not kill them. They were knocked unconscious and moved into Dowonhyang.”
“My love, if you permit it, I will interrogate them. They may know something of our enemies.”
“Well done. But skip the interrogation. We’ll hand them over to Carol once we’re out. Let’s call this adventure finished as it is.”
His wives nodded in understanding. But how were they supposed to leave? And where was the boss — the banshee?
Woooom—
While Jun fretted over that, the corpses began to dissolve into pure white blessing and gather into one. The three women’s bodies and the black-robed man’s were no exception.
“…They’re being treated as boss monsters?”
“Mm, looks like it. Maybe it has something to do with that ability to move between floors freely…”
Fortuna trailed off, uncertain. It sounded plausible enough that Jun filed it away.
A short while later, every corpse had turned to blessing and vanished without a trace. Three Yellow-rank monsters — counting the black-robed man, who could presumably transform into one — plus three Green-rank adventurers: the combined mass of blessing was enormous compared to what they’d seen on the fifth floor.
Thump.
A portion of it broke free and fell to the floor. The sheer amount of blessing made Jun curious enough to want a closer look — but before he could, the rest of it split in two, and one half was absorbed into his body.
Ziiing—
A divine blessing wrapped gently around his overworked cores. Cradled in that embrace, the cores reflected on the day’s limits and began to grow. Jun closed his eyes and watched that growth in silence, with a quiet, aching hunger.
When it finally ended, he opened his eyes and murmured softly:
“I reached it.”