An Unscheduled Shopping Spree
A snap of Maia's fingers, and two people vanished into thin air.
“Very well! Human bearing the second mark, and… lackey of this wretched world! Even if I must slaughter you, I will pry the truth from your corpse!”
Sorcerer Maia, the Last Sorcerer, was thoroughly consumed by madness. Had this transpired inside the Tower, Kim Mu-saeng’s legs would have trembled so violently he wouldn’t have known what to do. But this wasn’t the Tower. It was a dungeon.
“Sounds like she’s talking to you, Wahsh.”
A relaxed smirk spread across Mu-saeng’s face. She got rid of Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah for us? Blown clean out of the room? With zero witnesses left to watch?
〈Executing with Administrator Authority〉
“That’s practically doing us a favor.”
Without prying eyes, it simply meant there were no longer any constraints holding Wahsh back. With a single spoken command, the true power of an Administrator was unleashed for the first time in ages. The flow of time ground to a dead halt—not merely for Maia, but across the entire chamber.
“Wahsh! Did you freeze the whole dungeon, or—?”
“No,” Wahsh replied, his alien voice clipping through the stillness. “Only the perimeter around this creature. Look at what you need to look at, take what you need to take, and then we leave, Kim Mu-saeng.”
“Right. Got it.”
It was undeniably a terrifying, peerless authority, yet Mu-saeng couldn't help noticing the pronounced digital flickering rippling across Wahsh’s yellow rubber body. The visual noise and static were noticeably worse than moments ago.
“I told you not to look at me with pity,” Wahsh snapped.
“Pity? Perish the thought. As your contractual partner and fellow stakeholder, that was merely a gaze of deep, heartfelt con-cern. Let’s leave it at that. You can recover quickly from this, right?”
Executing Disk Defragmentation... [1%] [2%]...
Wahsh offered no verbal answer to Mu-saeng’s inquiry. Instead, a semi-transparent blue hologram appeared between them, displaying his recovery progress.
Looking back on it now, it really is a shame, Mu-saeng mused inwardly. Wahsh had been forcefully transmitted and initialized while his download progress was halted at a mere seventy-three percent. While dungeons offered the freedom to exert power away from the watchful eyes of the Tower, that didn’t mean his reserves were bottomless. Tampering with the delicate framework inside the 55th Dungeon was bound to be vastly more demanding than tweaking the monster respawn rate in the 22nd Dungeon—a reality they had already confirmed during their earlier tests.
A sudden thought crossed Mu-saeng’s mind.
“Wait, why did you freeze her in the first place? Couldn’t you have just wiped her out?”
Wahsh adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses, looking at Mu-saeng as though the human had lost his mind.
“Kkwa—ak? Didn’t you come here to acquire a guardian? Wasn’t this entire venture born out of your duty of good faith to climb the Tower faster, Kim Mu-saeng?”
“Hm? Well, yeah.”
“Then take one. Were you planning to leave empty-handed?”
Mu-saeng blinked, still thoroughly lost. “Take one? Take what? The core from the 5th floor? Are you telling me to go search for that?”
Did he mean snatching back the core handed to Maia so they could deliver it to the genuine Maia on the Tower's 55th floor? To Mu-saeng’s reasoning, that seemed like the only logical conclusion.
“You utter fool—! Does that primitive brain of yours refuse to turn?! Ignorant ape!”
“Hey, explain it properly! What am I supposed to take?” Any Awakener operating on standard common sense would have arrived at the exact same conclusion.
“If you pick a guardian, I will reassign its ownership permissions to you! This is a dungeon! How many times must I explain the concept of simple hacking to an ape like you?!”
“……Wait, what? Huh?”
Mu-saeng’s eyes widened. Who could have imagined this place would turn into an all-you-can-grab department store? Hacking? He can just rewrite the ownership data?
“Then… why didn't you say that from the start, Wahsh?! If you’d told me that earlier, I wouldn't have had to put on that pathetic dog-and-pony show in front of Maia!”
Wahsh cocked his head, looking utterly baffled by the grievance. “Kkwaak? You were striving to fulfill your obligations with utmost good faith through your own capabilities. Was I supposed to stand in your way, Kim Mu-saeng?”
Wahsh had held back because he believed Mu-saeng could resolve the encounter on his own merits. In his own convoluted, alien way, he had placed his faith in his contractor.
Mu-saeng smacked his lips, chastened. “Tsk… well, put it like that and I can’t really argue. True enough, if things had gone the way I planned, we wouldn't have needed this.”
“Besides, as I warned you before, even within a dungeon, excessive exertion risks drawing the attention of those bastards atop the Tower. Primitive creature… no matter how many times I explain system logic, you still fail to grasp the basics.”
As if any Awakener on the face of the earth could grasp an Administrator’s logic, Mu-saeng thought, biting his tongue. There was no time for petty banter.
“Hey, Wahsh. Can I only take one guardian? Since we’ve already frozen time and you’re rewriting the ownership code anyway, what about, say… thirty of th—”
“KKWAAAAAK—!”
The piercing, indignant screech of an oversized rubber duck echoed through the silence of the 55th Dungeon’s inner sanctum—the chamber colloquially known as Mama’s Room.
“Ow, my ears! Fine, fine, I get it! Ms. Geum Soo-ah will be blasting her way back here any second anyway. Let’s see… what should I pick…?” Covering his ears, Mu-saeng turned to survey the chamber. A wry grumble escaped his lips. “Why does every major crossroads in my life happen under these conditions? Incomplete explanations, ticking clocks… You’re actively trying to drive me to an early grave, aren't you?”
Even as he complained, his eyes turned sharper and more calculating than ever before.
What do I need?
The reconnaissance files from Korea One Way Group’s Southeast Asian branch flashed through his memory. According to the raid data, the ones that inflicted the heaviest casualties were the humanoid models—sharing the exact same aesthetic as the machine he had encountered on the 5th floor. In fact, among the mechanical army deployed to protect Maia, humanoid guardians formed the overwhelming majority.
A humanoid would be the most versatile on paper, but…
It was practically equivalent to adding another living person to his party. It would theoretically be capable of performing any task a human could. Yet the real question was: could he actually pilot it effectively? If I take a fully articulated humanoid and it ends up crawling around on the floor because the control interface is too intricate, it becomes dead weight.
The craftsmanship of these machines was leagues beyond the crude, cobbled-together automaton he had built before. But high performance came with high operational complexity. A humanoid chassis inherently demanded a sophisticated intellect or immense processing capacity to pilot.
From that perspective, it’s far more rational to pick something that doesn’t demand intense micromanagement—something specialized that supplements what I can’t do alone.
Fortunately, the workshop wasn’t limited to bipedal frames. There were massive, quadrupedal constructs and towering minotaur-like guardians as well. Grabbing one of those minotaurs would let me steamroll any floor boss in a one-on-one duel, but…
How would he transport it? Where would he store it? The Anything Pocket compressed spatial volume, but it didn't reduce physical mass. He couldn't just walk around riding a two-story mechanical juggernaut outside the dungeon, either. How on earth would he explain that to Geum Soo-ah and Yoon Pyo?
Keep the requirements focused.
Compress the necessary functions. Prioritize ease of deployment and operation. Ensure it would be an asset inside the Tower, not merely inside dungeons. Maximize utility across diverse scenarios. When he laid out the criteria, the conceptual blueprint narrowed down considerably. The only lingering question was whether such a guardian actually existed within this room.
Rumble…!
A deep tremor shook the cavernous hall, accompanied by the muffled roar of distant shockwaves. Geum Soo-ah’s high-output skills were tearing through the outer corridors.
“Primitives, all of them. Are they trying to bring down the entire ceiling?” Wahsh grumbled.
Ignoring the duck’s complaints, Mu-saeng swept his eyes across the vast laboratory. This was Maia’s personal research facility. To annihilate Mu-saeng and Wahsh, she had activated every operational prototype and security unit in the vicinity. If what he sought existed, it was bound to be here.
“Found it.”
Mu-saeng’s gaze locked onto a specific chassis tucked near the periphery of the assembly line. This one? Should I go with this?
K-BOOOOM!
Another violent shockwave rattled the stone foundation. Wahsh glanced toward the hallway with an irritated twitch of his bill, but Mu-saeng’s focus never wavered. Calculations and tactical simulations ran through his mind in fractions of a second. Capabilities. Limitations. Applications. The verdict was instantaneous.
“All right. Wahsh, we’re going with this one.”
“Are you entirely certain, Kim Mu-saeng? There will be no second chances. Once this bug is purged, an exploit like this will never present itself again.” Wahsh made it explicitly clear: there would be no returning to the 55th Dungeon later to trade it in for a different model.
Mu-saeng gave a firm nod. “Lock it in.”
Wahsh asked no further questions. As soft, radiant data streams began to envelop the chosen machine, Mu-saeng suddenly remembered something and dashed toward the central platform.
Wahsh stared in disbelief. “What are you doing now?!”
“I know I can’t swap guardians, but grabbing one little accessory won’t hurt, right?”
“What could you possibly want with that?!”
“I was planning to buy protective gear anyway,” Mu-saeng called back, expertly unhooking the item. “Once the bug is fixed, she won't be needing these anymore. Better for me to recycle them than let good equipment turn to scrap!”
Wahsh stared at him in stunned silence. “…Your cognitive framework operates in an entirely different dimension.”
“Heh, you’re making me blush. No need for such lavish praise.”
That wasn’t a compliment, you shameless barbarian. Defeated by an unrivaled wall of brazen practicality, Wahsh simply shook his duck head.
“The reassignment is complete.”
“Perfect. Then—”
Mu-saeng scooped up the newly registered guardian and stowed it smoothly inside his Anything Pocket. In the next breath, his hand slipped into his coat and produced Sreyken's Poison Fang. The bug had to be corrected to prevent administrative anomalies, but the physical manifestation before them still needed to be disposed of cleanly. There was no need to expend any more of Wahsh’s precious administrative bandwidth on an execution.
“On three. One, two, three.”
Operating in perfect synchrony, Wahsh released the temporal stasis a microsecond before Mu-saeng drove the curved fang home. Squelch.
It was the venomous fang of the Master of Snakes—the supreme ruler of the 66th floor. No matter how formidable the Last Sorcerer was as the monarch of the 55th floor, an entity of that tier stood zero chance of resisting venom drawn eleven floors above her station.
“Guh… kkh…!”
Maia’s dying gasp was cut short. Before she could utter a single word of a final curse, the neurotoxin and necrotic poison petrified her flesh. Her body crashed onto the cold stone floor like a hollow statue. Across the chamber, every single guardian construct ground to a synchronized halt, their optical sensors dimming to absolute darkness following the demise of their creator.
Mu-saeng lingered for a quiet second, staring down at the fallen sorcerer as though offering a silent moment of respect, before turning away.
“Let’s go.”
He wasn’t without questions. The desperate inquiries Maia had shrieked at the very end—the truths she had sought across thousands of resets—were things Mu-saeng had pondered himself. He knew Wahsh likely possessed answers to a great deal of them. Yet Mu-saeng swallowed every word. Now was not the time to pry open Pandora’s box.
“Hey, Wahsh. What happens if this exact kind of bug breaks out on the real 55th floor of the Tower?”
“……Hmph. We’ll find out when we get there,” Wahsh snorted dismissively.
For now, that answer was enough. Mu-saeng broke into a sprint toward the exit. With the guardians neutralized by Maia’s death, nothing barred his path, allowing him to reach the grand corridor in record time.
He arrived just in time to witness an awe-inspiring spectacle.
An intricate labyrinth of pristine ice mirrors conjured by Yoon Pyo refracted blinding, concentrated beams of light in an infinite geometric cascade. Caught in the dead center of the optical crossfire, a massive minotaur guardian was pulverized down to its fundamental atoms, vanishing from existence without leaving so much as a speck of ash behind.
“Whew… To think I’d get to see this in the flesh. Seriously unreal! The signature combination of Geumseong’s Raid Director and Vice Director! The deadliest tandem strike in South Korean history, right? I got the whole thing on video—mind if I upload it to You-Tube?”
Mu-saeng strolled into the hallway, casually angling his smartphone camera toward Geum Soo-ah. Both she and Yoon Pyo froze, staring back at him in stunned disbelief. A tempest of unasked questions swirled in their eyes. What happened to Maia? What happened to the mechanical horde? Why are you here, completely unharmed? How did you slip past that security grid?
Yet before she could interrogate him about any of it, a glaring, absurd detail caught Geum Soo-ah’s attention—one that demanded immediate explanation above all else.
“Those… goggles… where did you get those?”
Resting snugly over Mu-saeng’s eyes was a pair of sleek, transparent sports goggles. The exact pair that Sorcerer Maia had been wearing moments prior.
Mu-saeng pushed the bridge up his nose and gave an easy, breezy grin.
“Ah, these? Mama didn’t need them anymore. So I brought them along.”
Neither Geum Soo-ah nor Yoon Pyo could fathom the bizarre logic behind the statement. And yet, looking at the utterly unbothered porter before them, they found themselves with no choice but to accept it.