The Golden Mound on the Second Basement Level (3)
[Charm increased by 1.]
[Charm is now 10.]
[The banner for the Rot Legion is now active.]
[You can recruit 7 Rot soldiers.]
[Head near a Rot soldier to recruit it as a soldier.]
Ooh! I can actually recruit Rotters?!
I had a rough idea this was coming, but...
Han Yejin disappeared in a flash, but thanks to her, I could finally put the
I felt even guiltier and more aching for her.
If I could just eat the Nobel Prize: Rot Virus, I could help her in no time.
So digging the tower was the real fix to everything after all.
Dig! Dig!
* * *
The next morning, I popped into K-Temp Bank for some shopping. After lunch, I headed out in the afternoon to the second basement level, wearing the work clothes with the Rot Legion banner.
Level 1 was as quiet as when I left it.
But as I swept the flashlight around, I saw a few new Rotters had dropped in and were wandering the floor for no reason.
I stepped onto the floor of the second basement level and approached the closest wandering Rotter.
[A suitable monster exists to recruit as a Rot Legion soldier.]
[Recruit this monster into the Rot Legion?]
[Yes] [No]
He looked pretty pale all over, but there were no badly rotted parts, so he almost looked like a living person.
A pang of guilt hit me for a second.
Just 48 hours ago, that Rotter in front of me had been a human made of blood and flesh just like me.
Was it okay to just shove him into my “legion” and use him as a soldier?
But the next moment, his murmur washed the guilt away completely.
“Uuuuu~ it hurts~ soldier~ I want to be a soldier~”
Is that so?
I immediately hit Yes.
Maybe joining the legion would ease that pain.
Huuuung~
A nice sound rang out as my work clothes banner and the Rotter’s head above it lit up with orange rings at the same time.
[This monster is now a loyal soldier of the Rot Legion.]
[Issue orders to the soldier.]
“Does it still hurt?”
“Y-yes, less~ less than before~”
So that was it.
Recruiting as a soldier had benefits.
I had plenty to do anyway, so I ordered right away.
“Move around the bunker.”
“Uaaa~”
The Rotter let out a groan that sounded like an answer and started walking shakily toward the bunker.
“Dig up the dirt piled around here.”
As soon as the order landed, the Rotter immediately dropped to the ground and started digging the dirt on the bunker wall with his bare hands.
I handed him the cheap shovel I had prepared in advance. But the Rotter tossed it away and kept digging with his hands.
He didn’t know how to use tools.
Which meant he couldn’t use weapons either.
The dirt had been trampled and trampled countless times by all these Rotters.
That’s why the work was painfully slow for the bare-handed Rotter.
This was going to take forever.
I walked around and recruited six more Rotters, making them do the same thing. The Legion banner seemed to allow recruiting up to seven monsters per 1 charm point.
Now the seven Rotters were all stuck to the bunker like RTS game workers, digging up dirt with all their might.
Time passed and the tiny mounds were crushed enough to look almost flat.
“Now reach into the dirt and find gold coins.”
“Ah~”
“Aahuuu~”
They followed the order and started digging gold coins out of the dirt with their hands.
Two days ago, over 30,000 Rotters had died. Of them, 3 to 4 percent died because of the sacred power from my shovel that got thrown outside the bunker window.
Of course, the amount of gold coins those dead Rotters dropped wasn’t much.
Most of them were the ones standing near the center.
In other words, mostly low-floor ones from floors 0 to 9, Tower Scavengers who didn’t have the luxury of carrying “worthy items.”
After confirming the Rotters were working hard, I turned around.
Because there was something else to do.
I immediately pulled out my lucky compass and headed toward the direction it was pointing.
The compass spun 360 degrees, but right now it was mostly pointing at a flat plane, so the direction had to be close to the ground.
Here and there on the floor were still-living body parts of Rotters crawling or twitching. Every time I saw them, I blasted the area with Titanium Space and freed them.
A little later, I stood at a spot on the second basement level.
An ordinary dirt floor with no marks or features.
But the compass was clearly pointing right there.
I took out the Titanium Space shovel and dug down about 1 meter.
Ting-
Soon I hit a stone slab that sparked off my shovel.
I swept the dirt away and closely examined the surface of the slab.
There was a suspicious hole in the middle, just like before.
I took out the master key I had obtained last time and tried fitting it into the hole.
Shr~
Klang~
*★ Title obtained! ★*
[Master of the Second Basement Level]
[Skill point +1 obtained.]
▼ From now on, the underground level managed by the system will be directly managed by the owner of the master key.
[Special privileges of the Second Basement Level Master]
[Specify a waypoint in the Second Basement Level.]
[Specify an external Tower waypoint connected to the Second Basement Level.]
Whoa, what is this?
The best news was that I no longer had to go down through the Centipede Cave to get here.
Thanks to the master’s privilege, I could open a waypoint connecting the outside of the Tower to the Second Basement Level.
This was completely good news.
It was true that every time I went to the excavation site at the government complex, I was on edge that someone might spot me, and passing through the Centipede Cave carrying cigarette juice in my body was secretly stressing me out.
I looked for the waypoint in the Second Basement Level.
It was not far from the keyhole.
Normally, when finding a new waypoint in a new floor, the team that first conquered the first floor was supposed to report it to the association.
But I didn’t feel like doing that kind of thing, and I didn’t want to.
The underground was all mine!
Because I was going to monopolize the underground.
I tested it by specifying a new waypoint from the Second Basement Level.
The target location was a space not far from the bunker.
From the air, something like a huge intangible stamp slammed down onto the ground.
Kuuuung-
Kwaang-
It made a pretty big sound and raised a cloud of dirt.
The Rotters working nearby jumped in surprise.
And a dazzling pattern mark was faintly visible under the intangible stamp.
I could make something like this outside too?
I thought about where the safest place would be that no one would even notice if I went in and out.
A mountain? My house basement? The roof? Under my bed?
I’d think about that and decide later.
Next.
[Decide the dispatch floor count for the Rot soldiers.]
[Decide the dispatch conditions for the Rot soldiers.]
The next privilege of the master was sending the Rot soldiers of the Second Basement Level to each floor of the Tower.
Currently, it was set to floors 4, 16, 37, 42, 44, 58...
But if I changed the floor count here arbitrarily, Rotters would pop out on other floors too.
But at the very end there was a strange item.
[Dispatch floor count]: Second Basement Level (absolute principle)
[Dispatch conditions]: 8 per 24 hours (absolute principle)
[Dispatch time]: 1 hour 12 minutes later (absolute principle)
[Dispatch location]: View 3D map
[Dispatch target]: Random
[Additional dispatch]: None
...
What?
Rotters were already being dispatched to the Second Basement Level?
From what I had seen with my own eyes, the Second Basement Level had nothing but one huge Ougre.
But why... were Rotters being dispatched there?
Suddenly something hit my head.
Feed!
The Tower was using Rotters as feed for the Ougres!
Ougres eat a lot of human flesh.
I immediately tried to cancel the dispatch to the Second Basement Level.
[(Absolute principle) The master cannot change it.]
I see.
It meant they had set it so I couldn’t starve the Ougre to death.
But I could only change the absolute principle of sending 8 per 24 hours; I could freely change dispatch location, target, additional dispatch, etc. with the master’s privilege.
For floors other than the Second Basement Level, the default dispatch condition was “whenever a vacancy occurs” on all floors.
After figuring that out, I could come up with a hypothesis about the purpose of this place in the Tower’s underground.
A system that keeps monsters underground and sends them to each floor of the Tower.
In other words, it was in charge of regenerating the monsters.
Anyway, now...
I had acquired an enormous power to freely change the dispatch conditions of that Rot.
Like a game editor.
If I changed the dispatch condition to “1 per minute on floor 44”?
Floor 44 would fill up with Rotters in no time and I’d be sick with monster extermination.
[Generate a named Rot soldier.]
The next privilege.
Immediately generating a named Rot soldier.
I immediately tried generating it.
[No hero Rotter exists that can become a named Rot in the Second Basement Level.]
[Summon high-level Rotters dispatched to each floor now?]
Whoa.
I understood what he was saying.
While playing RTS games, sometimes normal units appear with tens of kills, turning into heroes.
The Tower would be the same.
Even if it was a normal Rotter, if it got lucky, or occupied an incredibly good terrain, or had a naturally superb original talent, there could be a hero with tens of kills.
I immediately pulled up the list of hero Rotters and sorted them in ascending level order.
“...!”
The top one had a level of 24 even though it was a Rotter.
I immediately summoned the one on floor 16.
Juuuung-
Red light flashed for a second and one Rotter was summoned in front of me.
And the moment it saw me, it raised its hand and charged at me aggressively.
“Aaaah~ die~ dieee~”
I was startled.
Instead of “Kill me~” it had a battle cry of “Die~” and its swinging arm was so powerful it made a whirring sound...
Plus, the speed and stamina of this guy were on another level compared to the slow Rotters I had experienced so far.
I immediately pulled out the Titanium Space shovel, reversed it so the shovel blade faced me, and seriously faced off with the guy.
Tang- tang-
The guy even raised his arm to block my shovel handle attack.
If I wasn’t level 15 right now, I might not be sure I’d win.
Of course, because the guy’s level was 24.
But even with the Rotter limit, his base “physical” stats alone added up to 92.
Finally, I tested the main ability of the guy.
I leveled him up a bit and ran away to see.
Dadada-
Dudu- dududu-
He surprisingly kept up well.
Of course, compared to an adult man’s full sprint speed, it was pretty late.
But it was jogging pace.
Good.
I immediately canceled the recruitment of one Rot soldier and recruited this guy.
Huuuung~
Just like before, my work clothes banner and the hero Rotter’s head above it lit up with orange rings at the same time.
[This monster is now a loyal soldier of the Rot Legion.]
[This soldier has the qualifications to become a non-commissioned officer.]
[Promote this soldier to non-commissioned officer?]