An Infiltration from Below

The standard clear condition for the 11th floor was simple: hold the fortress for fifteen days.

Awakeners were thrust into a desperate siege, tasked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with holding the line against a massive coalition of diverse monster tribes launching continuous, coordinated assaults.

"Mhm, mhm. Basically, all I gotta do is take off the chieftain's head."

In other words, shattering the coalition from within was the secret objective. Naturally, accomplishing such a feat was anything but simple.

"That's right," Wahsh warned, floating beside him. "But don't take it lightly, Kim Mu-saeng. We're talking a straight-line distance of over one kilometer. The chieftain resides at the most heavily fortified, fiercely guarded heart of the vermin's encampment."

Having run 11 Dungeon several times as a sherpa, Mu-saeng was well aware of the difficulty. Simply holing up inside the fortress and surviving was an excruciating ordeal. That was precisely why every known strategy guide advised climbers to spend all daylight hours heavily reinforcing the defenses.

To cut through the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enemy's dense encirclement, reach the enemy coalition's commander, and slay him in his own lair?

"Well, I know the layout... though I've personally never tried doing it myself."

Of course, a rare few had pulled off such madness in 11 Dungeon before: veteran Awakeners who had already reached much higher floors. They were high-level climbers who strolled back into low-floor gates purely out of boredom to see if there were any rare drops worth pocketing.

In gaming terms, that was something only veteran hardcore players could pull off by smurfing in a beginner hunting ground.

To fight through the monster hordes of the 11th floor and execute their commander, one needed S-rank or A-rank abilities and the stats of someone who had cleared the 25th or 30th floors.

"Kkyakyakyakyat! And you still intend to try, Kim Mu-saeng?" Wahsh cackled, his rubber wings flapping mockingly. "The one leading that swarm of vermin is a mutant high orc, boasting the highest intellect of his kind and the raw physical strength of an ogre!"

The boss was an absolute anomaly. Factoring in every variable, only one conclusion remained: starting from the 11th floor, where the novice tutorial officially ended, finding and clearing hidden conditions was brutally difficult.

"Yeah, sounds totally doable."

"Kkwak?"

Mu-saeng casually brushed off the terrifying odds and gave a firm nod. He had calculated the route, cross-referencing Wahsh's explanations, his own extensive dungeon knowledge, and the resources currently at his disposal. After running the simulation in his head, a clear solution had emerged.

"Works out great, honestly. I needed an excuse to field-test the guardian anyway. As soon as Hyun-gu hyung catches up, we dive right in, Wahsh."

"K-Kkyakyakyakyat! Fine, let's do it your way, Kim Mu-saeng! I like the sound of that!"

With the preparation and planning stages checked off, only one step remained.

Execution.

Let's bring this siege to an early close.

Mu-saeng slipped away from the command post while Park Hyun-gu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was resting, channeling Mage Maia's Magitech to activate the guardian he had pilfered from 55 Dungeon. Now completely bound to his authority, the miniature silver-gray construct hummed to life.

Bzzzzzzzz...

"Fascinating..." Wahsh murmured, eyeing the device. "So this is what you kept it for, Kim Mu-saeng."

"Heh, look at it. It's the spitting image of a scarab beetle," Mu-saeng said with a grin. "Had a hunch it'd be built for this sort of work. Originally I just thought about using it to dig pit traps, but this is way better."

Mu-saeng looked out over the parapet of the fortress wall. Through the thermal and magnification lenses of his tactical goggles, the sprawling monster encampment came into sharp focus. Near the center stood an immense command tent, encircled by multiple perimeter rings of heavily armed guards.

Locking his gaze onto that exact coordinate, Mu-saeng issued the command.

"Dig."

The tiny silver scarab vanished into the earth in the blink of an eye, churning through soil and bedrock without kicking up a speck of dust. Mu-saeng smacked his lips, surprised by the realistic constraint despite the golem's efficiency.

"Even with a five-fold speed increase, it's still going to take over three days? Digging an underground tunnel really is no joke."

Even with a quintupled structural destruction rate, one tiny golem could only displace so much dirt when carving a passageway tall enough for an adult human to crawl through.

Wahsh hovered in circles around Mu-saeng's head, snickering gleefully.

"Kkyakyakyat! If you want an uncivilized, oversized bag of flesh like yourself to crawl through the earth, what did you expect? It's a single tiny golem!"

"That's why I said I needed a few more," Mu-saeng grumbled, clicking his tongue. "Tch. Hey Wahsh, maybe later we can drop back into 55 Dungeon and—"

"Silence! I already told you that system exploit won't work twice!"

"Aw, stingy bastard... Wait, actually..."

"Now what?"

A sudden thought struck Mu-saeng. Hacking guardians out of 55 Dungeon was impossible now that the system had patched the irregularity. But did he really need to steal more from the Tower?

"If I hand this little guy over to an engineer and ask them to reverse-engineer and clone it, wouldn't someone be able to reproduce the design?"

Inventing a magitech golem from scratch was near impossible on Earth. But reverse-engineering a working prototype? Making a copycat knockoff?

"...Your cunning never ceases to amaze me, Kim Mu-saeng."

It was entirely feasible. They wouldn't be conjuring something out of thin air; they had an intact, functional sample in hand. The development costs wouldn't be astronomically unrealistic either.

"Come on, there are plenty of nicer ways to put it, like 'doing everything possible to survive.' Why make it sound like an insult? Heh. Let's head back. Time to go shoot the breeze with Hyun-gu hyung."

Mu-saeng strolled briskly toward the Awakeners' staging tents with a wide grin. Watching his retreating back, Wahsh let out a quiet scoff.

"It was a compliment, you infuriating ape."

Though his words were sharp, the little duck's beak curved into an unmistakable smirk.

"Shaman... arrive... tomorrow tomorrow."

"Sorcerer too. Come. Two sleeps."

Inside the massive command pavilion, a troll and an orc bowed low, delivering their reports in halting Common. They were unusually intelligent specimens for their kind, typically revered as elite champions within their respective tribes. Here, however, they trembled, keeping their eyes glued to the dirt floor.

Perched upon a raised dais of packed earth and stone, the supreme commander of the coalition stared down at them from his carved throne.

"They will arrive in time," the chieftain grunted. "Good. Both of your tribes shall be rewarded with fresh meat."

"Th-Thank you!"

"Meat! Eat human meat!"

Overjoyed as though they had just received royal treasure, the two emissaries prostrated themselves once more before scurrying out of the pavilion.

Only then did Odawara rise from his throne.

Stepping toward the tactical war map laid out on a central table, the mutant high orc commander bared his jagged tusks as he shifted crudely carved wooden markers around the besieged fortress.

"Kuh-kuh-kuh... Enjoy your fleeting breaths, humans."

Recently, the human defenders had suddenly deployed a neurotoxin so horrific it had momentarily caught even Odawara off guard. But cowering behind stone walls and relying on such cowardly tricks would only buy them two more days at best.

"Once the spellcasters join the front..."

No matter how desperately the humans resisted, they would crumble. From ranges far beyond the reach of their poison mists, demonic spells would batter the fortress walls into rubble.

And even if the walls hold, it matters not. Once the cyclops vanguard arrives, our siege lines can bombard them with boulders. And if even that fails to breach them, the moment the harpy flocks darken the skies—

It would be over.

At that point, even if the humans made a desperate, suicidal sally out of the gate, they would be butchered without inflicting a single casualty. But merely breaching the fortress was never Odawara's true ambition.

The objective was to smash through the bottleneck and surge straight into the kingdoms of mankind, slaughtering everything in their wake! To deliver a catastrophic, mortal blow to their civilization, timing was paramount.

Strike before they can mount a defense.

In a single overwhelming wave.

Inflict ruin so absolute they could never recover.

In fact, their stubborn defense works in our favor. Far better that they gather here like sheep rather than scatter across the plains... Kuh-kuh-kuh.

A grand campaign to wipe humanity from the realm—Odawara possessed both the intellect and the brute might to see it done. Nor would his ambitions stop with driving out the hairless apes; he knew exactly what pawns to move to claim ultimate dominion over this world.

"The Demon Realm will present an obstacle, of course... but if I can somehow manipulate the dragons into the fold, I can orchestrate a war of mutual destruction between them and the—Hm?"

Odawara paused his grand monologue. A subtle oddity caught his attention.

The fire...

The iron braziers illuminating the pavilion were flickering.

Why would the flames waver?

The heavy iron braziers were driven deep into the packed earth. The tent flaps were sealed tight, and not a breath of wind stirred the air. There was no earthly reason for the torches to tremble.

"Hmph."

Nothing appeared out of place. Yet a prickle of unease crawled across Odawara's thick hide—a faint, sickening premonition that set his nerves on edge.

He scoffed at himself. There was no conceivable threat. Beyond the canvas walls stood his most trusted retinue. The high orc royal guard—the peerless masters of close-quarters combat among all greenskins—stood sentinel in rigid formation around his quarters.

Is it anxiety? Am I truly feeling rattled over a single human outpost? No, it isn't the fortress. That stone cage is merely a symbol of their wretched world... Anxious over the day we cleanse this earth of those vile parasites—

Odawara drew a deep breath, attempting to steady his thoughts.

He never got the chance.

Bzzzzzzzz...

A minuscule insect drifted past his vision.

A tiny silver-gray speck fluttered inches from his snout, stealing his focus for a fraction of a heartbeat.

"Where did—Mmph?!"

His voice died in his throat. Before his mind could even process the leather-gloved hand clamping violently over his snout, Odawara looked down with bulging, bloodshot eyes.

Bursting through the center of his chest was a jagged, gleaming barb.

A blade? No. It was a massive, petrified fang dripping with virulent black venom.

That was his final thought.

The light drained from Odawara's eyes, and his massive frame went limp. He died without ever realizing that directly behind his earthen dais, a narrow tunnel had been bored clean through the soil, just wide enough for a single human to slip through.

Mu-saeng swiftly retracted Sreyken's Poison Fang and lowered the mutant chieftain's massive corpse to the ground. Not even a whisper of sound disturbed the tent.

It was finished.

Without their supreme commander to hold them together, the coalition would fracture overnight. The high orc tribe would lose its dominant grip, giving the scheming trolls and the numerous common orcs an opening to mutiny. The cyclopes had only allied out of personal respect for Odawara's strength and would never take orders from ordinary high orcs. The harpies, ever opportunistic, would flee the moment they smelled chaos.

Come daybreak, the grand alliance would devour itself from within.

The siege was over. The Tower system officially verified that the fortress had been saved.

Yet the trial was not quite finished.

"What are you daydreaming for, Kim Mu-saeng?!" Wahsh squawked in a frantic hiss. "Get back through the tunnel, or we're going to get caught!"

He had to pull back immediately.

When clearing a floor in a party, all members had to cast a unanimous vote before the portal to the next floor would activate. In their case, Park Hyun-gu and Kim Mu-saeng had to mutually decide whether to proceed to Floor 12 or exit to the lobby.

A clear message did not freeze time in the surrounding world. To leave the 11th floor through either path, the two of them had to regroup back at the fortress.

Just as Mu-saeng turned toward the escape hole, an object sitting on Odawara's war table caught his eye.

"Yeah, I know, but look at this... Huh?"

The instant he stepped toward the table to inspect it—

Rustle.

The heavy leather flap of the tent was pulled aside.

"Blood. Smell."

"Chieftain. What happen?"

Two towering high orc bodyguards stepped inside, freezing mid-stride as their yellow eyes locked onto Mu-saeng.

For a heartbeat, total silence gripped the tent. All three figures remained completely motionless, paralyzed by mutual disbelief.

"Uh..."

Even with all of Mu-saeng's quick wit, there was no excuse in the world that could smooth over standing above their dead chieftain with a poisoned blade in hand.

Not that words would have mattered anyway.

"KRAAAAAGHHHH!"

"HUMAAAAAN!"

The two guards let loose an earth-shattering roar in unison.

Beneath the radiant glow of the full moon, the entire monster encampment erupted into pandemonium.