Plant-Type Monsters 3
Floor 35 had gone from swamp to jungle overnight, overrun by ash-gray trees that had sprouted with wild abandon. As I smashed a path forward through the ones that had even claimed the roads, weary sighs spilled from my companions' mouths.
Not a single monster in sight — just trees packed so tight they choked the view. Maybe that was what had them so fed up. Watching Kayden draw her sword and join the tree-felling, I could see the frustration written all over her.
"If they grew this much in a single day, won't the whole floor be so packed in a week that you can't even set foot on it?"
"Yeah, that tracks. They've already pushed past the Tower's passageways — wouldn't surprise me if they've swallowed other floors by now."
Listening to the party grumble, a comment from chat suddenly came to mind. With this many vines, why not get intel from the Magic Tower, craft bombs out of troll byproducts, and just wipe the whole lot? That was the gist of it.
It had been nothing more than chat bait to turn Han Se-ah into a bomb maniac, but looking at the situation now, the idea somehow felt like it had a point.
Thinking about it game-logically — when a place is this densely packed with plant-type monsters, there's usually a quest where you spray some herbicide item instead of fighting them head-on. Of course, that was the experience of an RPG you played with keyboard and mouse…
"Good grief. They've completely filled the clearing."
"Which way do we even go now? …Grace, are you picking up anything?"
"Nope. Everything's plant-type and nothing's moving, so I'm not sensing a thing."
Seeing the party half-defeated at the sight of trees blanketing the wide clearing only lent more weight to that theory. Maybe we weren't supposed to come straight to Floor 35 at all — maybe we were meant to rescue people, get out, pick up some hint from the Magic Tower, and then come back.
Tell me to fight a giant-class monster and I'd raise my weapon without a second thought. Even if an endless army of orcs appeared, I was confident I wouldn't flinch.
But hunting for the roots of some parasitic plant somewhere among thousands of gray trees, or for a quest-update hint? That I had no confidence in. You'd probably need a natural-born 6-star archer just to find the damn thing.
"Ah, hell. This is hopeless. This doesn't feel like a map you're supposed to wander around. Did the Magic Tower and the Temple team up to seal the entrance before anything starts? Feels like we came too early."
Han Se-ah seemed to be thinking along the same lines. Standing beside Grace, who was scanning the surroundings, she turned toward the camera and started grumbling. She'd streamed all kinds of games herself, so of course she'd wonder whether forcing our way through this dense jungle was really the right call.
But for all the doubts, we'd already broken through the passage and made it to what used to be the safe zone. Turning back now would waste time, and it wouldn't look great for her stream either.
I was finding myself more and more invested in Han Se-ah's broadcast, but that couldn't be helped. Even a one-in-a-million chance of her quitting the game was unacceptable. As the number-one streamer and a public figure living a warm, well-fed, peaceful life, I wanted her to clear this game all the way to the end.
Playing around with a sub-1% chance and calling yourself broken was fine when it was just a game. But when my life and my future were on the line, I wouldn't tolerate even a fraction of a percent.
"Hah… At this rate, there's no end to it. …No choice, then."
"What's wrong, Roland? What are you planning?"
"You all should head back down to the lower floor for a bit."
At the sudden retreat order, the party's eyes went round. Even with ash-gray trees everywhere, they clearly hadn't expected me to not even try. Of course, I wasn't running away without trying. Precisely the opposite.
When you absolutely needed results, the simple and stupid method was best — and executing simple, stupid methods was basically my specialty.
"…Hey, is this really how you're supposed to clear this quest?"
Through the stream window, Han Se-ah muttered under her breath, thoroughly done with it all. The party resting in tents near the passage looked a little pale with worry for me — but Han Se-ah's complexion was bad for an entirely different reason.
After all, just as I watched her through the stream, she was watching me through the camera.
…Ugh, shit. Can't see a thing.
After sending the party down to Floor 34, I drew in holy power without hesitation. The ash-white vines — which had been completely still — came surging toward me like zombies jolted from hibernation. As if determined to make me feel firsthand how the Sanctuary had been destroyed, the entire world wrapped itself in vines.
It was like stepping into a swimming pool filled not with water but with plants — or like accidentally jamming your head into a thicket of overgrown shrubs.
A body reinforced with holy power. A mace reinforced with mana. Countless enemies pouring in. From there, the work was simple, mindless repetition. Since I couldn't see ahead anyway, I just gritted my teeth and smashed everything around me.
CRASH—
BOOM—
Every time the mana-charged mace hammered empty air, the shockwave alone shattered hundreds of vines and sent them flying. And still the vines kept coming, hungering for the holy power in my body, as if their numbers were truly infinite.
Still — infinite they were not.
"I mean… Roland's the one doing all the hard work, so I feel like a real bitch saying this, but… does he seriously have to go that far? There's that saying about taking the long way when you're in a hurry. Maybe going around was the proper clear method all along?"
The one silver lining was that the hologram window stayed with me. The vines had buried me so completely that not a single ray of light got through — which also meant Han Se-ah's camera was only filming the squirming mass of vines from above. I could browse the internet all I wanted without getting caught.
Recalling my school days of putting on a stream in the background while grinding for maple-leaf game hunts, I fired up a variety show I'd bookmarked on the hologram window. If these things only multiplied by sucking up holy power, then my smash rate would outpace their growth rate. Easy.
Looks like retreating really had been the right call. The grind went on so long that a flicker of regret actually poked its head up.
"……Um, Roland? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, don't worry. I'm fine."
I watched one variety show, checked Han Se-ah's stream for a bit, watched a web-drama summary, then an indie horror game and a trash-game guide stream — and in that near-meditative state, I pulverized vines without a thought in my head.
By the time the endless tide of vines finally thinned enough for my vision to open up, the algorithm had nearly fed me a military video about what would happen if the Chinese army deployed human-wave tactics against the 7th Mobile Corps. That's how long it took — long enough that Han Se-ah shut down her stream with a thoroughly exhausted look on her face.
"So, Roland? I've got a question."
"Hm?"
"Why did you… go this far? Smash everything, I mean."
Grace, who'd climbed up into the scene of utter devastation, put the question to me. It really had been a brutally stupid approach by any measure. Even I'd started regretting it while zoning out to videos about the mysteries of the cosmos and the horrors of the deep sea.
But there was a reason I'd chosen this brainless method.
"Irene? Float some holy power into the air, same as last time."
"Are you sure that's all right?"
Hesitant but trusting, Irene gathered a mass of holy power and lifted it skyward. As the soft white orb of light drifted up, the party flinched and reached for their weapons.
"Nothing reacting nearby, right?"
"No, nothing at all."
"Then tracking should work. Let's head back toward the safe zone and use the holy power as bait — see which direction the remaining ones are in."
"Ah…!"
For all their tension, the surroundings were dead quiet. Of course they were — I'd swung my weapon in every direction and turned the entire ground upside down.
The vines that had lunged like snakes were now ash, scattered far off with the dust. The ash-gray trees that should have been wrapped in those vines had all been uprooted and smashed to pieces by the aftershocks of my rampage, rolling across the dirt.
I'd thought I was holding back, but looking at how wide an area got swept up, the nameless god's blessing was stronger than I'd expected. Well — that would explain how stomping the ground once sent me flying into the sky.
"Whoa. Not a single vine left on the trees. The ones that were here must have all crawled over to Roland near the passage. Can plants that move like this even still be called plants? Aren't they just snakes?"
And so began the exploration of Floor 35 — vines gone, only trees remaining. Irene and Grace fretted that a full day might have passed while I was swinging my mace, insisting I should rest… but if I'd wanted to rest, I wouldn't have done something this stupid in the first place. I'd have just visited the Magic Tower.
They say a weak body makes the mind work harder — but as I set off, I found myself thinking that next time, I really ought to use my head a little more.