Five Stars 2
The Full Moon Wolf of the tenth floor and the Orc Kingdom of the twentieth shared a certain resemblance.
A special individual that had learned to harness the Tower's mana would break free into the outside world. The Adventurers' Guild would post a subjugation request, and countless NPCs would flood in as competitors to the players. Then, right before the boss encounter, a single event scene would play out.
In the Full Moon Wolf's case, even when you charged in ready to thrash it, it would howl once and vanish into the dark. In the Orc Kingdom's case, an army of orcs far beyond what any player could handle would pour out—only to be wiped clean by a high-ranking mage's hand.
Which meant that what remained ahead of us now was nothing but the boss fight.
That crazy bitch—is she actually doing this?!
Antenor had just unleashed an area-of-effect spell, so he was half-exhausted. We'd contracted him through our party in the first place, so him jumping in wasn't a problem. Rebecca, though—Rebecca was a different story. She had dropped low amid the blast and the aftershock and gone charging in on all fours like a beast.
No matter how much she acted like a wild animal with its eyes rolled back, the fact remained that she was the leader of a mercenary company hundreds strong. Which meant she had more than a few subordinates under her who knew how to work their brains.
If Rebecca tore the orc boss's head off claiming she was collecting her bar tab, the Rebecca Mercenary Company—bound by contract to the Guild—would come swarming in to demand the subjugation reward. If they argued that Rebecca had handled it, so the spoils belonged to her company, who could possibly refute them?
So I ran. Beneath my feet I felt the hard, smooth surface of the melted pyramid, and I all but flew to its peak. Out of habit I flicked open Han Se-ah's stream window and gave the surroundings a quick glance.
What lay before me was a summit plastered with ominous, blood-red magic circles—and an entrance so pitch-black I couldn't see an inch ahead. The structure seemed to mimic a pyramid as well: you entered through the dark opening at the peak and descended from there.
I glanced back and saw my party, already recovering faster than the other adventurers, racing toward the pyramid. Thanks to their barrier and shield magic, they hadn't been caught in the aftershock, and the eardrum-shredding noise hadn't rattled their brains—so they were right on my heels.
With the camera drone that had somehow teleported onto my back trailing me like a tail, I plunged into the darkness.
"What the—he reached the top in three steps?!"
A playful male voice rang out through the pitch-black darkness where I couldn't see an inch ahead. Confirming in the most ridiculous way that some things never change no matter how the world does, I let out a snort of laughter—kheup.
Grinning mid-sprint might have looked strange, but luckily the viewers assumed I'd just slammed into a corridor wall and taken it as a battle cry.
As a pyramid-shaped altar covered in magic circles, the interior had probably once had mana-powered lighting—but the lightning that had struck outside was the problem. Just as no household appliance survives a direct lightning hit, the pyramid's insides, after that high-tier magic baptism, looked like an apartment building mid-blackout.
Which was why I was currently barreling down a dim corridor by pure body force.
"Is that thudding sound up ahead just him body-checking his way through?"
The good news was that my eyes were gradually adjusting to the dark, letting me see a little ahead—and that the structure descending into the pyramid's underground was a simple spiral corridor, winding down like a staircase.
As I stopped slamming my shoulders into the walls and grew used to the darkness, my feet picked up speed. And yet it was still quiet up ahead. Rebecca—had she really gone running through the dark like a nocturnal animal after charging in on all fours?
Among the dealer skills there were things like Hawk Eye or Beast's Gaze—eye-related abilities. Maybe she had one of those. Or maybe, as a field-hardened mercenary, she simply knew the tricks for securing vision in the dark.
After running down for quite a while, a wide open chamber appeared.
"Dieeeeee—!"
Apparently we'd gone past the pyramid and down into the underground. In that enormously vast chamber, sure enough, Rebecca was rampaging with her red hair whipping about like a beast's mane.
What little light there was in the dim chamber came from braziers set atop totems. Every time that scarlet mane flared like sparks through the darkness the flickering flames couldn't fully drive back, several orcs crumbled into smoke and vanished.
Variant warriors and variant shamans disappearing without a single mana stone or byproduct—probably to prevent people from farming summons for easy money.
"You insane human! How dare you interfere with my great work!"
"Great work my ass—pay my bar tab, you son of a bitch!"
Facing Rebecca was an orc… a chieftain, I supposed? A massive, pitch-black orc with something like an Indian feather headdress dangling in layers from its head. Whether it was a shaman or a dark mage, every sweep of its hands summoned more variant orcs.
Like the orc shaman we'd captured for a quest, it was covered in tattoos, deeply colored, and built like a massive orc warrior. But even if it was a bit bigger and buffed by the boss, at the end of the day it was still an orc. There was no way it could beat a berserk 5★ melee dealer.
At least she hasn't stolen the boss's last hit.
It looked like a boss with a gimmick of infinitely summoning adds on a timer—and the fortunate part was that Rebecca was personally beating the summoned warriors to death as stress relief. Thanks to that, the orc chieftain that seemed to be the boss was frantically croaking away, busy summoning trash mobs.
This was a creature that spoke human language and had aimed to assassinate royalty. It seemed to have figured out that the moment it stopped summoning minions, its head and torso would part ways—so it was pouring everything into the summons, even breaking out in a cold sweat. Almost pitiful, really.
"If it weren't for you lot, my grand design would have been complete! The long-cherished wish of our race!"
I'd been about to charge in and smash the boss then and there, but the thing started screeching as if the injustice of it all was too much to bear. How to put it—it was the classic scene of a villain laying out every detail of his plan for the protagonist.
Rebecca seemed too busy enjoying the feel of punching variant orcs to care about killing the boss, so I waited for the rest of its speech.
"I could have claimed the blessed forest and toppled the detestable human kingdom!"
Yeah, no. That was never happening.
The orc chieftain had grown talkative, perhaps sensing its own death with that clever head of its. But as if to prove that an orc was still an orc, its grand plan was absurdly far-fetched.
The Avergne Forest, blessed by the Goddess, was literally a blessed forest. Even without human management, plants thrived, sweet fruit grew, and small animals flourished there.
Use it as a base to solve the basic food problem, then overthrow the kingdom with an endlessly summonable army of variant orcs—that was the grand design it was so passionately ranting about. Of course, it was nothing more than the delusion of a frog in a well, one that had only ever known the inside of the Tower.
"…Truly, a monster chasing empty dreams."
"That orc army got wiped by a single mage in the first place."
My party members, arriving late, muttered under their breath as they heard those near-screams. Unfortunately for it, this was a fantasy world where superhumans who split mountains and soared through the sky actually existed. Being able to summon infinite variant orcs meant nothing.
The only humans this creature had ever seen and fought were two types: the Intermediate-grade adventurers stationed on the twentieth floor, and the female knight dispatched for investigation.
Obviously, a female knight stuck with such a tedious chore wouldn't be a high-ranking officer of the knight order. Assigned to scour the forest for orc traces alongside commoner adventurers, she would have been a bottom-rung knight who'd only just shed her squire's badge.
Since it had been able to hunt both adventurers and knights through its variant shamans, it had no choice but to look down on humans. The result of an arrogant orc brain that couldn't even imagine Upper-grade adventurers, high-ranking mages, or the Royal Knight Order—was this sorry spectacle.
"I've heard everything I wanted to hear. Time to wrap this up."
Rebecca had acted like she was about to kill the boss monster on the spot, but she seemed to enjoy beating the big variants to death bare-handed so much that she was only diligently thrashing the summoned monsters. Thanks to that, I'd gotten to hear the full complaint-slash-plan-explanation.
Timing-wise, other adventurers could start flooding in after Han Se-ah any moment now. So I tightened my grip on my shield and mace and stepped forward—only for something to plant itself squarely in my path.
Rebecca. The same Rebecca who'd been so enthusiastically beating variant orcs to death.
"Hm?"
"Hey. Hold up a sec."
"Hold up for what, exactly?"
"That thing looks special. Let's split it fifty-fifty, man. You should know the drill—did coming down from the thirty-seventh floor kill all your instincts?"
I was baffled, not understanding what she meant by splitting the boss fifty-fifty—but this time Han Se-ah caught on fast. She stepped forward with the camera and started talking with Rebecca.
"Split it fifty-fifty… you mean capture that orc alive?"
"Yeah, that's it. You're sharper than Roland."
"Do not underestimate me, humans!"
"Ugh, for fuck's sake…. Hey, Roland! You handle the variants for a bit!"
Treating the orc boss like a sack of borrowed barley, Rebecca launched into an explanation for Han Se-ah in her trademark cocky drawl. Same as when we'd captured the variant orc shaman—special individuals like this sold for far more alive than as byproducts.
Handing it over to the Magic Tower as a test subject was fine. Or, if it could be taken outside the Tower, delivering it to the kingdom could earn collective credit and renown.
"Uh, what do I do about this? Does capturing it still complete the main quest? And if we capture it, doesn't that mean no gate gets made? If they keep it alive forever for experiments and the gate never appears, I'm the only one screwed. The reset only goes back to that morning—specifically the morning of the day you hit the sleep button—so by then you can't even reverse it."
The problem with this perfectly reasonable proposal was Han Se-ah's quest. Having never considered the wild solution of capturing a boss monster alive and selling it off, she started fretting. This was the first virtual reality game, and she was ranked first in progress—of course there was no information.
Capture the boss for greater rewards and renown?
Or kill the boss and clear the quest safely?
The viewers' opinions split every which way, every possible take flooding in, and Han Se-ah herself sank into deep thought. Rebecca, watching this with visible frustration, was about to throw in a word when I made the call.
In situations like this, the safe play was the right play. What if we captured it and it got handed over to the royal palace instead of the Magic Tower? We'd have to abandon the twentieth-floor gate and walk all the way from the tenth floor to the thirtieth.
"You—you bastards!"
The orc chieftain, enraged by the continuous disregard, timed its fury perfectly. It flailed both hands as if unleashing a finishing move, and the mana swirling through the cavern condensed into something like a miniature typhoon and came flying at us.
Shield Master
Of course—at my voice, whispered so quietly no one else could hear it—that ominous mana returned fully to its master.