Floor 34: Sewer Cleaning (1)

Before my vision had even cleared, the stench punched straight into my nose.

It was a smell beyond anything words could describe. Ha Heijeong had warned me, but the reality was worse than anything I could have imagined. Urk. The gag rose out of me before I could stop it.

I clamped my breath shut and forced the nausea down—but Dobby couldn't.

"Guaaagh—!"

He doubled over, retching over and over.

I hurriedly fished two Bubble-Oxygen Tanks out of my pocket dimension and held them out. Fist-sized spheres of compressed air—wear one on your head, and the thin membrane of air expands to wrap your whole body.

"Here, Dobby."

"Kkik!"

Even as I handed him the tank, the stench wrung another dry cough out of me. Every breath I took drove the reek deeper into my throat and nose. Urk. Suppressing a retch, I hastily pulled my own tank on.

"Haaah."

My breathing settled in an instant. Air as crisp and clean as if I'd stepped into a deep forest flooded my lungs. There was a strange dissonance between that freshness and the sewer spread before my eyes, but having just escaped that stench, it almost felt blissful.

Still, as I caught my breath and started to move, I caught a faint whiff of the odor clinging to me.

Oh, come on…….

It seemed some of the smell had soaked into me during those few unprotected moments. It wasn't as bad as before, at least.

Well, it'll fade soon enough.

I shook out my head and body once for no good reason, then turned my attention to the notification window.

Sewer cleaning. It matched what Ha Heijeong had told me—except for the details. A pleasure planet, and monsters. What she'd described was a trial to capture a first-grade criminal in an empire's sewers.

But I wasn't flustered. Trials changing on a whim was hardly a once-in-a-while occurrence.

It's probably harder because I'm climbing as a solo party.

That aside—a hundred monsters in eight hours. That meant twelve or thirteen kills per hour. Roughly one monster every five minutes, and the monsters on Floor 34 were unlikely to be pushovers.

It was tighter than I'd expected.

I turned my gaze to the sewer stretching ahead. A path about three meters wide, with massive channels of wastewater running on either side. Runoff spattered down from sewer pipes bolted to the walls, fouling the walkway too.

If I wanted to hit a hundred kills, I'd have to move fast.

"Dobby."

"Kkik?"

"Draw your sword. Let's go."

I took a step forward. Beneath the oxygen bubble that enveloped even my feet, the wastewater squelched and sloshed.

I'd been walking for ten minutes and hadn't met a single monster. If I wanted to finish this trial in time, I should have already killed two by now…….

Just as impatience began to creep in, a giant rat exploded out of the wastewater.

Finally!

Relief came before the tension of battle did.

A single giant rat filled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the entire path.

It stood about two meters tall, with a monstrous bulk—together with the body behind it, it looked five times my size. Honestly, it resembled a monster more than a rat…….

But close enough to a rat, and I'd rather call it a rat than fumble around with an absurd name like Rooktrika.

"Skreek!"

The giant rat's red eyes, which had been swiveling left and right, locked onto me. It let out a low squeal and peeled back its upper lip—haphazard rows of protruding tusks made for a grotesque sight.

The rat bunched its forelegs, readying itself to charge.

Huh?

Come to think of it, there was nowhere to dodge a charge. The sewer ceiling was too low to leap clear, and I couldn't sidestep either—Dobby was behind me, and I wasn't about to plunge into the wastewater just to evade a rat.

I'll just have to charge in and take it first.

Just as I readjusted my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grip on the axe and made to spring, a belated instinct told me this rat was no pushover. I'd taken it for an oversized rodent, but by the aura it gave off, it felt on par with the ship captain we'd faced on Floor 31.

How does that make any sense?

The doubt flickered and died—catching the rat came first.

My foot slamming into the ground and the rat's charge happened almost simultaneously. The distance collapsed in an instant. The rat was faster than I'd expected—while I wasn't going all out, it was nearly matching my speed.

I hoisted the axe in both hands and drew it back over my shoulder. Tensing my shoulder muscles, I brought it down toward the rat's skull.

"Kyek!"

The giant rat wasn't about to sit still and take it either. In that split instant, it threw its head up and wrenched its jaws wide open.

What's it trying to do?

Stay like that and its mouth gets ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠split in half, no?

CRACK—!

But my prediction missed. The moment the rat snapped its jaws shut, those massive molars clamped down on my axe, locking it in place. A few of its teeth shattered under the impact, but the bite strength was unbelievable.

Dazed, I found myself staring at the rat's fur—matted with filth and rotting food scraps. Even through the oxygen tank, the stench felt like it was seeping through.

Damn it.

I was the one shoved back. Maybe because of the size difference, I was losing the contest of weight. On top of that, the rat with my axe in its teeth kept kicking its legs in a frenzy.

I tensed my legs in a hurry, but the floor, slick with wastewater, gave way beneath me.

"Ghk!"

It was slippery enough that I nearly went down on my back. I quickly loosened my stance and tightened my core to keep my balance.

From behind me came Dobby's scream.

"Kkii-iik!"

If I gave any more ground, Dobby would get caught up in it too. I didn't want to burn Flash Step over a mere rat…… but I had no choice.

The moment Flash Step carried me forward, I drew a dagger from my Shadow Arm and stabbed wildly into the rat's skull. The shadow arm wasn't my own hand, so I could plunge the blade in again and again without worrying about the filth.

"Kkii-ik! Kreek—iik!"

A short death rattle. Only then did the rat's four legs stop kicking, and its jaws went slack, releasing the axe.

"What the hell is this……"

The absurdity of it left me speechless. What kind of rat, just because it was big, fights on par with the ship captain from Floor 31?

Worse, I'd been overpowered in raw strength after the first clash. Sure, I hadn't gone all out, and sure, I'd been caught off guard and lost my balance for a moment—but this was ridiculous.

They say the Tower gets harder with every floor, but……

Isn't this going too far?

As I exhaled a sigh, it hit me—my trial had changed. The pleasure planet. Not a pleasure city or a pleasure kingdom, but an entire planet. The other ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠climbers were getting an empire's sewers.

The scale of the words alone was different.

Ordinary beings can't travel between planets.

Anyone who came all the way to an asteroid just to indulge in pleasure had to be a powerhouse beyond the norm. Beings with out-of-spec strength—deities, perhaps, or Administrators.

Hm, or maybe not? Could deities really fail to clean up something like this?

They say a cold dawn wind can revive even the dead, or something like that…… The question nagged at me, but I soon decided it was possible. Even if this wasn't a place deities personally visited, one thing was certain: beings above a certain threshold of power came here.

Besides, I didn't go to amusement parks and pick up other people's trash either. It finally made sense. The lesser beings that lived parasitically beneath creatures like those—even the rat-equivalents would be stronger than I could imagine.

A cleaner scrubbing the sewers of a pleasure planet, huh……

I wasn't trying to demean the profession, but handing this to someone as a trial? It left a bad taste in my mouth. I was already being toyed with by the deities' schemes, and now this—cleaning the sewers of a place where they might come to indulge themselves.

Well, I could complain all I wanted, but I was the bottom of the food chain. Nothing to be done. And I couldn't refuse the trial anyway.

If I want to stop being the bottom… I need to clear this Tower as fast as possible.

Too much time had already slipped by. If I wanted to finish within the limit, I had to keep moving.

Right then. Time to start cleaning.

I'd picked off three more. Two giant rats and one weasel-like monster. When I wasn't letting my guard down, they weren't that hard to fight.

But I couldn't stop the anxiety from gnawing at me. Twelve kills an hour was the bare minimum quota. I needed eight more in the remaining twenty-three minutes, and the clock was crushing me. These monsters only popped out of the wastewater occasionally, and even spotting them was a struggle.

Hold on—they all burst out of the wastewater, didn't they?

Am I actually an idiot?

Why didn't I think of this?

I wasn't supposed to hunt monsters along the walkway at all. I was supposed to go after the ones in the wastewater. The point wasn't to avoid the filth—it was to dive into it.

Right, I'd thought it was strange from the start. The monsters were showing themselves far too rarely. There had to be monsters teeming in all that vast wastewater. They just weren't coming out.

And fighting enemies in the water happened to be one of my specialties.

"Kkik! Suyeok! What's wrong?"

When I suddenly stopped in my tracks, Dobby threw the question at me. I turned back to him and grinned.

"Nothing—we've just been playing this like idiots. Let's get out of this filthy place fast."

"Kkik?"

Dobby cocked his head. Instead of answering, I spread both arms toward the wastewater on either side of the path. Lightning flickered and rippled along my arms. I poured out a quarter of my mana and loosed it into both channels at once.

Rough bubbles burst continuously from the wastewater, and at the same time, mana came flooding back through my gauntlet. I checked the notification window.

"Ohhh."

Yes. That's the way.

I shouted my joy inwardly. A single discharge had taken down twenty-three. Now I just had to walk for another five minutes or so and repeat the process. If I played my cards right, I could finish the trial and be back in the Waiting Room inside the next twenty minutes.

While I was thinking, the monsters' corpses came bobbing up to the surface of the wastewater. Among the rats and weasels, I caught glimpses of stranger creatures too. Novel as the unfamiliar monsters were, I moved on quickly. The sooner I was out of this filthy place, the better.

"Kkik! Suyeok! Over there—"

"Hmm? What is it?"

"Kkik! Something's there! I can feel it!"

Dobby had spotted something odd after I'd loosed lightning a couple more times. I followed his gaze.

Through the ripples pushed up by the corpses floating on the wastewater, the upper edge of a passage beneath the sewage was faintly visible. I thought I might have seen it wrong, so I blasted that spot with lightning to splash the water away—and it became even more distinct.

Amid the wastewater, a small, lumpy tunnel. A passage that ran independent of the direction the sewage flowed. And it was too shoddy to have been built deliberately—more like a burrow someone had dug open……

Dobby really is a living hidden-mission navigator, isn't he?

"I'm guessing we should head that way?"

"Kkik! No! We just happened to see it while walking!"

At my question, Dobby shook his head. Hmm, that changed things. Dobby's intuition hadn't triggered—the thing had simply caught his eye.

Still, it smells like a hidden mission, doesn't it?

I focused on my instincts, but my sixth sense didn't react at all.

What was the right call here? It really could be nothing more than a sewage channel, or a burrow the monsters came out of. If luck was against me, I could go chasing a hidden mission and end up bathing in raw sewage.

The Bubble-Oxygen Tank would protect my body, of course…… but if I got careless and took an attack in that dark, blind wastewater, the tank could tear, and I'd be drenched head to toe in filth.

Not that getting dirty is a big deal. I hate it, but I can wash. It's not like I'm in any position to be squeamish. But……

The real problem was the possibility that it would all be a waste of time. On top of that, visibility underwater was nonexistent, the tunnel was barely wide enough for a single monster to squeeze through, and even with the Essence of Lightning, I had no idea how long that passage ran. If I got pinned front and back inside it and took a pincer attack, Dobby could end up in real danger.

I sank into deep thought, standing there in place. I'd already killed sixty-two monsters. Time-wise, I had plenty of slack. All I had to do was decide: go, or don't.

All right. What was I going to do?