Chapter 288: Isaac's Identity
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 288: Isaac's Identity
“Th-these filthy bastards… These filthy bastards!”
The spectral remnant of Archmage Isaac muttered in spite of himself. When this race first entered, he had been utterly fascinated. They were a species completely different from humans. No, it would be more accurate to say his heart pounded with excitement because they were the first challengers to ever discover his dungeon.
He hadn't paid much mind to the fact that they weren't human. The only thing that mattered was that visitors had finally arrived; nothing else registered. It was surely a side effect of waiting alone for challengers for so long.
Although he was merely a spectral remnant and was aware of that fact, Isaac still thought of himself as the Isaac of old. After all, he possessed all the memories and was capable of thought.
That was why he couldn't help but feel enraged by the current situation.
The testing grounds and magic tower he had spent his entire life cultivating and creating were being turned into a complete ruin. On the screen, a massive figure was relentlessly pounding on a wall. It was already the third time.
“Uwooooooooh!”
Craaaaaash!
Craaaaaaaaaaaaaash!
“Keep it up, Goff! Pave the way…”
The 8th floor was never meant to be a testing ground like this. It was a battlefield meticulously designed around the concept of friendship, a floor engineered so that escape was only possible when everyone worked as one. Yet with every swing of a fist, it crumbled. The ceiling, which was supposed to press down on the challengers, was instead breaking apart and rising higher.
Dammit…
It had been the same on the 5th floor, the 6th, and the 7th.
Each time, they came up with some absurd reason to desecrate the dungeon in the most ridiculous ways, and with each act, the efforts of his entire life were collapsing, one by one.
The chimeras he had gathered from all over the continent and the golems he had built for the challengers were smashed beyond repair. The magic legion on the 7th floor was gone without a trace.
He had never even heard of such ignorant brutes.
The moment they moved to the 9th floor, an unwanted voice escaped his lips.
“Welcome to the 9th floor, challengers. The trial of patience has been prepared for you.”
The protocols Isaac had programmed before his death forced him to speak. He wanted to forget the explanation and just scream at them to get out, but he couldn't. It was the first rule in the first chapter of the manual for when challengers arrived in the dungeon.
‘Explain the rules.’
Even if he didn't want to, he had to explain the rules. Even if he clamped his mouth shut, the voice emerged on its own.
He desperately wished he didn't have to explain. The reason was painfully obvious: even if he explained the rules, they wouldn't understand and would just find some bizarre way to break through anyway.
As his voice echoed, the giant Ogre named Goff was muttering again on the screen.
“As I thought, Isaac wants us to stop him… Even as he tells us to leave, he continues to explain the rules…”
“He must be fighting against his own corrupted inner self. We should hurry. The situation seems far more serious than we thought.”
That son of a bitch.
The worst of them all was the one with the tail and horns—the one his companions called Blood Dagger. That bastard was one of the few sane ones here. He could tell just by looking into his eyes. He undoubtedly knew what this place was meant for and had worn the same expression as Isaac throughout the entire dungeon crawl.
An expression of disbelief. An expression that said, this isn't right.
And yet, in an instant, he had framed Isaac as a corrupted being.
A spectral remnant can only act within the scope programmed by its caster before their death. It has free will, but that’s the extent of it. It could never become corrupted, even if it wanted to.
The high-level magician they called Choi Eunju surely knew this as well. But she didn't say a word.
Just one sentence—That’s wrong. A spectral remnant can’t be corrupted—could solve everything. But she kept her mouth shut.
Moreover, that tailed bastard was a master of storytelling. While there were some grains of truth, the narrative he spun was not something one could just invent on the spot.
An archmage who left behind his legacy for future generations, despite knowing he would become corrupted.
As the brutes clashed with the tower's soldiers, they muttered in low voices.
“For Isaac.”
“For Isaac, a human who knows honor.”
“For the Archmage. With my own hands, I will end his suffering.”
“Wait for us, Archmage Isaac…”
The giant bull-man was even calling him by name as if they were friends. Isaac had not forgotten the grudge he held against him for turning his magic soldiers, which had taken a year to create, into complete dust.
Those… bastards…
He had to rush out right now and stop them from coming any closer. If he didn't, something terrible would happen. The fact that he could only wait here was agonizing…
For a moment, he couldn't understand why, on his deathbed, he had configured himself to wait on the final floor and watch the challengers.
Their advance up the tower had the force of an unstoppable storm. Though he was just a spectral remnant, he felt as if tears were about to burst from his eyes.
Everything was being destroyed, one by one.
Wil… Wilson.
Wilson, his only friend, though they couldn't speak or understand each other, was crumbling under the dagger of a human woman.
The magic walls, with mana infused into every single brick and spells painstakingly carved into them; the magic mirror, a success born from dozens of failed calculations; the massive, self-moving greatsword containing all sorts of essences—he shouldn't have been able to hear their voices, but he began to hear them all the same.
‘Master… thank you for everything…’
‘Thank you for protecting and cherishing us.’
‘It was… an honor… to have been able to serve…’
Voices like these were the kinder ones. When the creations he had poured so much effort into and cherished were destroyed, he even heard auditory hallucinations of them resenting him.
‘I was not born to end up like this! Isaac! My master! Is this what you wanted?!’
‘If I had known I would die so miserably, I would never have been born as your golem! Isaac!!’
The golem he had created to serve as a guide for the jungle-themed 12th floor was shattered the moment it encountered the demon called Blood Dagger.
‘Isaac… you deceived me… I will curse you even in death! Isaac!! I should never have trusted you.’
‘I will be waiting for you in hell… Isaac. My master…’
Of course, he knew they couldn't actually speak or think these things. But when he remembered how he had painstakingly crafted each and every one of them, he couldn't bear it.
Perhaps it was because he himself was a spectral remnant. These creations were not meant to perish so meaninglessly. They were beings meant to be faithful to their given tasks, to complete their missions to the very end, and even upon deactivation, to fall with a smile, knowing they had fulfilled their duty.
While he was lost in thought, the Golem Dragon on the 15th floor was also smashed to pieces. It was absolutely beyond repair.
“Hmm… This trial was indeed enjoyable.”
“The trial of patience was also quite good. But we have no time to waste. Goff, Isaac awaits us.”
“Hmm. We must hurry.”
He wanted to beg them not to come up. These were no ordinary beings. They were dangerous… beings that must never set foot on the final floor. Isaac anxiously bit his nails.
*
“Hmm… These are some fine armaments… Does he wish for us to vanquish him with these very weapons?”
“That’s highly likely. These armaments would probably fetch a good price outside of here, too.”
Goff and Black Spear nodded as they looked at the gear scattered on the floor. To me, they didn't seem particularly useful, but they were certainly close to A-rank. The humans' eyes glinted with a touch of greed. Of course, Storm Shadow simply nodded.
“You may take what you like. Park Ahjung, I will give you the first choice, so think carefully before you decide.”
“Y-Yes. Thank you very much.”
Her face immediately brightened. It must have been quite overwhelming for her to keep up with the momentum of this group, which had sensed Archmage Isaac's non-corruption. She was no doubt thinking that she had made the right choice in following them.
As I too was searching for a decent weapon in the Golem Dragon's lair, I heard Choi Seulgi's voice.
“The rewards are pretty good, though. As expected, the items that drop this far up are decent. If we could, I’d want to mass-produce them for the soldiers in the North.”
“They may be basic weapons… but the quality is certainly good.”
“That’s just because the things you have are so exceptional. This doesn't look like a basic weapon at all…”
Choi Seulgi was right. The weapons I possessed were, like Ha Yuri's Holy Sword, in a league of their own. It wasn't that they didn't have weaknesses, but my various weapons compensated for each other's flaws, making them unnoticeable.
“And that Park Ahjung and the 49 humans really hit the jackpot today. That last Golem Dragon was pretty strong. If it had just been them, they would have never made it this far up. Or if they did, it would’ve taken them a long time, maybe three years.”
I nodded. The Golem Dragon at the end was strong enough that Goff and I had to face it together. Of course, I felt I could have handled it alone, but this was to save a little time. After all, we had a mission to bring peace to the corrupted Isaac as quickly as possible.
I spoke to Choi Seulgi again.
After branding Archmage Isaac as corrupted, I had stopped caring about the dungeon's mechanics and thrown myself into the fray alongside the Green Skins. But now that we had climbed so high, I was curious how far we had come.
“By the way, what floor was it that your old party got stuck on?”
“We already passed it…”
“Really? How…”
“I don't know either… We came up in such a frenzy…”
The terror of inertia. I didn't know for sure, but thinking we were probably about halfway through gave me another burst of energy. After roughly organizing our things, I immediately moved to the next floor.
“Get out! Humans! This is the end!! Your last chance!”
Isaac's voice rang out. For some reason, I felt he was getting more and more agitated with every floor we cleared.
“Leave this place at once!!”
In an instant, the group broke through the 20th floor. We crossed the floor with a lake using teleportation and smashed the teeth of a giant chimera whose mouth served as an entrance.
It wasn't a normal exploration, but the more we moved through the dungeon, the more I could feel how meticulously calculated its design was.
But even more surprising than the calculations was the time and effort poured into this dungeon. It wasn't something that could be easily made by simply controlling golems. Every single part was handcrafted. Like watching a well-made movie, every prop shined, and the occasional clues seemed intended to impart a rather noble message.
Since we were ignoring all of that and just bulldozing our way through, it was only natural that he was praying for us to leave as soon as possible. After thinking we had climbed for quite a while longer, Isaac's voice was heard again.
“Challengers. The next floor is the last.”
“No, challengers! This is the last! Go back down at once!”
It was the information input phenomenon Choi Eunju had told me about. The spectral remnant was insisting they leave, but the system Isaac had programmed into it before his death dictated otherwise.
“Are we finally releasing Isaac from his suffering?”
“A shame it has come to this.”
The Green Skins each nodded and made their way to the floor above. The situation couldn't be more exciting. I, too, threw myself onto the next floor with Choi Seulgi and Choi Eunju, but my eyes widened at the sight before me.
The Green Skins were also bewildered, but the expressions on the humans' faces were especially shocked.
“..............................”
For a moment, the chamber was engulfed in silence.
Staring ahead, Choi Seulgi was the first to mutter.
“It was a woman?”
Walls lined with what looked like a massive library, countless armaments, and splendid decorations.
And a woman with glasses, looking our way with anxious eyes.
It was Isaac, known as the greatest mage on the continent before the summoning ritual began.