The Scent of Death

The first thing Mu-saeng did was pull two pitons from his pack.

Climbing pitons—hardened steel spikes meant to be hammered into sheer rock faces. Scraping them against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠each other with harsh, grating strokes was step one.

Screeeeeeech—!

A piercing, ear-splitting screech tore through the air, but the kobolds didn't so much as break stride.

"Grrrrr!"

"Bark! Bark, bark, bark!"

"I managed to run off a Shadow Wolf with this once, but... tsk."

[Did you honestly think they'd turn tail just from a little racket after spotting you in broad daylight?]

This wasn't like disorienting a swarm of cave bats.

Nor was it like spooking a solitary wolf.

Kobolds were far from simple beasts. They lived in packs, coordinated in hunting parties, and walked upright as beastfolk monsters—crude though their clothing and crude stone hatchets might be. When a pack locked eyes on an intruder who had trespassed into their territory, they weren't about to scatter over an unpleasant noise.

[Don't tell me that's all you've got up your sleeve, Kim Mu-saeng?]

Wahsh let out a loud kkwak! as he asked. It wasn't anxiety prompting the question—it was pure, unfiltered curiosity. He wanted to see just how this insolent human intended to handle forty snarling kobolds snapping at his heels.

"Of course not."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Besides, those forty weren't the whole problem. They were merely scouts and perimeter sentries. Deep within the warrens, far more kobolds still lurked.

He has to know that much, at least...

Wahsh knew Mu-saeng possessed more than enough foundational knowledge to grasp that reality. Which begged the question: what else could he possibly do from here?

"There we go. I knew it'd be around here."

Mu-saeng sprinted across the terrain before skidding to a halt, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Wahsh followed his gaze and cocked his yellow head in bewilderment.

[Kkwak? A mud pit? What, are you planning to drown them in slop?]

That question left Mu-saeng staring in disbelief. It was the same bizarre impression he'd gotten back when they first met.

"Uh... yeah? Honestly, it's pretty impressive your brain even went there."

[...What's that supposed to mean?]

This duck might be an Administrator, but does he know absolutely nothing about the practical world?

Mu-saeng wisely kept the thought to himself.

"Hup!"

Without hesitation, Mu-saeng hurled himself headfirst into the thick, squelching mud. He splashed around like an unruly toddler, thrashing and rolling until every inch of his clothes was caked in grime. All the while, his hands worked feverishly inside his opened pack, kneading and prepping something hidden within.

"Bark! Bark!"

Krr-kheong, the lead scout, barked sharply. The prey's scent had stopped moving.

"Grrrr... bark! Woof, woof!"

A packmate chattered from the flank, pointing out that the intruder had bathed in mud to mask his odor.

"Grrrr... snarl."

A pointless struggle. They had already spotted him with their own eyes, and they knew the mud flats like the backs of their paws.

"Bark!"

At Krr-kheong's command, the pack fanned out in a wide crescent, systematically surrounding the quagmire.

"Bark! Bark, bark!"

Cresting a gentle knoll, Krr-kheong and his brethren finally saw him. The human was floundering helplessly in the mud, his movements frantic and clumsy, his eyes wide with panic. Had the fool truly believed he could cover his stink and crawl away in time? Too late.

Crunch, squelch, crunch...

Krr-kheong crept forward at a deliberate pace. Even against their agonizingly slow stalk through the trampled weeds, the human looked utterly cornered, flailing without a plan. Then, just as the pack closed the ring—

Whoosh—!

"Grrr?!"

Something sailed through the air.

Thud. A dark chunk landed right by Krr-kheong's paw. Similar projectiles rained down across the perimeter, landing near several other packmates.

"...Sniff, sniff."

Its identity was plain to see: dried meat, smeared with a light film of mud.

Krr-kheong followed his basest instincts and took a deep sniff. Meat, without a shadow of a doubt. What beast it had been carved from was impossible to tell, but his gut screamed that it was food—savory, chewable, edible food.

"Grrrrr..."

Krr-kheong glanced back up at the quarry. The human was gesturing frantically with trembling hands, waving toward the scraps. Was he begging for his life, offering a tribute of rations so they would spare him?

"Grrr. Bark!"

"Woof, woof, woof!"

"Snarl..."

The rest of the pack reached the exact same conclusion. The intruder posed no threat whatsoever. Eat first, they thought. And once they finished the appetizer, they would butcher the human too. They were monsters; a few measly scraps of jerky would never buy his freedom.

Krr-kheong snapped up the dried meat in a single gulp. A faint trace of salt hit his tongue. And then...

"Woof?"

A fishy tang? A subtle, sickening stench?

There had been no odor a heartbeat ago. It had smelled completely safe. What was this vile aftertaste?

"Wurrk?"

"Bark, grrr— bark!"

Panic gripped Krr-kheong. Pandemonium erupted through the pack.

"Kyarak?!"

"Bark— kuhhh..."

Their limbs locked up. What was happening? What had gone wrong? It wasn't merely that their arms and legs refused to obey—

Thud. Thud.

One by one, every kobold who had swallowed a morsel collapsed rigid onto the dirt. The ones who had hesitated hung back, whimpering in confusion, powerless to comprehend the catastrophe unfolding before them.

"Three, four... nice. More than twenty of you took the bait."

Splash... shhhhhh...

What was that noise?

Krr-kheong, fighting with every fiber of his being to remain upright, looked on in horror. The prey was pouring clear water over his head, calmly rinsing the mud from his skin and clothes. Once clean, the human drew an object from his coat and began rubbing it vigorously against his torso.

A thin sheath, resembling tree bark. No, not bark—skin. A shed molt, covered in gleaming scales.

"Bark?"

In that instant, Krr-kheong's nostrils caught the drift.

A scent.

An aroma eerily identical to the meat he had just swallowed. Not the smell of dried flesh, but the suffocating essence lying beneath it...

"Listen up, boys. Burn this smell into your brains. It's the scent of the thing that's going to slaughter you."

Step. Step. Step.

Krr-kheong couldn't comprehend the human tongue, but the realization slammed into his primitive mind like a sledgehammer.

...We're going to die.

The oppressive pressure, the chilling intent rolling off the human was suffocating. He had to run. He had to flee! But how? His body wouldn't budge! The packmates whose limbs still worked were frozen stiff, looking around in abject terror, waiting for an order that never came.

"Ku... kuhng, kuh..."

His jaw wouldn't move. He couldn't even bark.

How long had it been since that foul stench entered his mouth? As Krr-kheong trembled violently, the human drew closer, step by agonizing step, brandishing a gleaming, razor-sharp blade. Dangerous. Unspeakably dangerous.

Move! Move, damn it!

At that exact moment, the paralysis loosened its grip.

"Awooooooooooooo—!"

Krr-kheong let loose a terrified howl.

Run! Back to the den!

Every able-bodied kobold whirled around and sprinted for dear life. Watching their retreating backs kick up clouds of dust, Mu-saeng smiled faintly.

[...Diving into the mud was just a performance?]

"Pure theater. I had to draw all their attention onto me so they wouldn't look too closely at the jerky."

Had he just lobbed poisoned bait at them while standing still, their predatory wariness might have made them ignore it. Had they been wild beasts, natural caution might have won out. But because they were monsters—pack-hunting beastfolk who felt superior to an unarmed, panicking human—Mu-saeng had been certain they would swallow the trap.

[Then why are they running away now? Not a single one of them actually died, did they?]

"Because I reek of the exact same venom. Man, though, the fishy stench on this skin is no joke."

The moment the first few kobolds seized up, Mu-saeng had rubbed Sraken's Molt (S), liberally coated in dilute venom, across his skin. The kobolds had ingested jerky laced with microscopic traces of the colorless, odorless toxin harvested from Sraken's Poison Fang (S), suffering instant, total paralysis. And in that helpless state, they had experienced the rawest horror known to living things: staring down an approaching executioner while unable to twitch a finger.

[Is that really all it takes?]

"What do you mean, 'is that all'? I've been on the receiving end of that terror myself. Trust me, there's nothing on earth scarier than that."

The despair Mu-saeng had felt when staring into the maw of Sraken—the feeling of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the entire world collapsing in on him—was burned into his soul. And terror, above all things, was infectious.

[Hmph... Fine, but why let them flee? What's the point of scaring them off instead of slaughtering them here?]

"Because this trick doesn't just work on kobolds—it works on Shadow Wolves and worgs, too. It's a universal quirk of canine-type monsters. They assess threats almost entirely by scent, and the moment they realize an enemy is hopelessly beyond their power, their behavior follows a strict script. They—"

Mu-saeng broke into a steady run, trailing the fleeing pack. But unlike their scattered descent from the rolling hills, the retreating survivors were now sprinting in a tight, uniform heading.

"—they run straight back to their alpha. The only being they believe can protect them."

In other words, the moment they fled, Mu-saeng had pinpointed the exact burrow of the Kobold King. And a hound that had once tasted true, bone-chilling terror would never dare bare its fangs again—especially not canine monsters bound to a rigid hierarchy.

"Bark, bark, bark, bark!"

"Bark! Grrrr— bark, bark!"

With Mu-saeng chasing them down while cloaked in the stench of Sraken's venom, the kobolds were practically wetting themselves as they ran, their frantic yelps echoing across the earth. All that remained was the final step.

"Found you."

"Grrrrrr..."

Waiting at the entrance of the deep burrow stood the Kobold King, a hulking brute nearly the size of a grown man.

What followed could hardly be called a battle.

[...Ha.]

Wahsh snorted in sheer disbelief.

The Kobold King didn't even have a chance to swing his weapon.

Splashhhhh—!

As the massive hound-man roared and charged, Mu-saeng simply uncapped a canteen and doused the beast's face with water. Naturally, it was water laced with potent neurotoxin milked from Sraken's Poison Fang (S).

The moment the mist soaked through the Kobold King's nasal membranes, stung his eyes, and trickled past his lips—

"K-Kweeeeh..."

Any semblance of a fight was extinguished instantly. His limbs stiffened like seasoned timber. With a heavy, comical thud, the Kobold King crashed flat onto his face.

Around their fallen ruler, the remaining kobolds were rooted to the spot.

"Whimper... whimper..."

"Yip, whimper."

They couldn't even summon the courage to run. They simply stood shivering in place, wetting the ground beneath their paws. Mu-saeng calmly tipped another measure of venom from Sraken's Poison Fang (S) into a fresh canteen and gave it a swirl.

"I put a heavy dose in this batch, so you won't have to suffer through the paralysis. It'll be over instantly."

Perhaps it was the closest thing to mercy he could offer. Mu-saeng walked down the line, splashing water methodically over the petrified monsters.

[...What are you doing, watering petunias? Good grief.]

Wahsh grumbled under his breath at how utterly anticlimactic the raid had been.

"Aw, what? No super-bonus rewards for going way above and beyond, Mr. Administrator?"

[...Quit talking out of your ass.]

Barely five seconds had elapsed between the fifteenth kill and the appearance of the clear prompt. Taking down five additional targets in that window was a feat few could manage, let alone butchering forty-nine extra monsters. Anyone with half a brain would agree that expecting someone to pull that off on the 2nd Floor was sheer madness.

"Oho, now that's what I call a haul."

His total bonus damage against small monsters had climbed to a staggering forty-five percent. And the raw stat gains he'd pocketed in just a few minutes were staggering.

"Should we keep rolling right into the third... floor?"

Mu-saeng had taken half a step toward the ascending light when he suddenly froze. Free stat points and permanent trait amplifiers were already far beyond anything he'd ever experienced during his years of dungeon crawling, but then another chime rang out.

"Wait, you can even get skills like this...?"

He had needed the kobolds to ingest just enough venom to paralyze them without snuffing out their lives, forcing him to meticulously measure out fractions of a drop.

"I guess bustin' my ass back when I dosed that One Way bastard—sweating bullets trying to measure out a quarter of a quarter of a droplet—wasn't for nothing after all. The effort actually paid off."

True growth occurred only within the Mythic Tower. No matter how many times an Awakener repeated the same actions inside external dungeons, the system never acknowledged it. Everything happening right now was a brand-new revelation for Mu-saeng.

And then came the formal skill description.

Until now, he had relied on crude methods like watering down doses in canteens or masking them with mud to alter their concentration, but now...

"Hmm, though the name is kind of... pfft."

Punning on sleeping alone in an empty room, was it? Well, who gave a damn about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the name? Selective component extraction and potency regulation could now be executed with a single mental command!

Mu-saeng couldn't hold back the chuckle bubbling up from his chest.

So this is what it really means to climb the Tower. No...

Twenty-nine years after awakening, for the first time in his entire life—

This is where the real ascent begins.