#42 Inverted Skyscraper
#42 Inverted Skyscraper
"At last..."
My body wasn't worn out, but my mind was. A high-rise building—we'd climbed over a hundred and twenty floors to finally reach the top.
"It's up here."
A fierce wind blasted us as we stepped onto the roof, dizzyingly high. Below us spread a breathtaking view. The emerald sea had drawn much closer. When I glanced down, a wave of vertigo hit. I'd thought I didn't have acrophobia, but I felt like I was about to develop it.
"Kyuuuut!"
Unlike me, Perry let out a cry that made the high-altitude wind sound almost pleasant. And it figured—we were more than 500 meters in the air. The peak of Loteworld Tower. Meanwhile, Baekrok conjured a staircase of magical footholds. At the end of that staircase—about thirty meters above the rooftop—something shimmered in the air like a heat haze.
"That?"
"That is the entrance to the dungeon."
A dungeon suspended not on the ground but in midair, almost 600 meters up. Well, dungeons had even appeared underwater before, so why not in the sky?
'...Without Loteworld Tower, this climb would've been brutal.'
We'd have run out of magical power long before reaching 600 meters. As we stepped up the footholds Baekrok had made, he spoke calmly.
"Be careful."
I intended to be. Dungeons were unpredictable. For all we knew, there could be unexpected threats just like back in the volcanic zone.
That was the moment. We crossed the boundary—
"......?"
—and suddenly I plummeted. My mind went blank. A beat later, panic hit and I hastily conjured a foothold to break my fall. I steadied my breathing, calmed myself, and took in my surroundings. That was when I understood the fundamental problem with this dungeon.
'The floor?'
There wasn't one. There was no solid ground. Well, more precisely, there was ground, but—
"Screeeech—!"
A cry echoed out. The air in every direction teemed not with a single land beast but with winged creatures that roamed the open sky. And that made sense, because the floor and ceiling were inverted. Where the floor was supposed to be lay an endless abyss like a colossal sinkhole, and overhead, an entire cityscape stretched on the ceiling, upside down.
Inverted Skyscraper—an upside-down city. That was the true nature of this dungeon.
Without wings, you couldn't survive here. As I was taking stock of the place, Baekrok approached and asked if I was all right.
"Are you unhurt?"
"You could've warned me."
"I did say be careful."
Just before we entered, he had told me, "Be careful." ...I'd naturally taken it to mean don't let your guard down in a dungeon. I heaved a sigh. Perry, though, chirped happily. For Perry—the only one of us with wings—a dungeon like this was no different than any other.
'...If I'd come a year from now.'
I might've been able to ride Perry into combat. Did Perry read my blatantly obvious stare? In a hurry, the little dragon fluttered up onto Baekrok's head.
'Not like I'd try it right now anyway.'
With a wry smile, I checked my remaining magic. I could maintain footholds for about an hour, but when actual fighting started, that time would drop sharply. I needed to reach the inverted skyscraper as fast as possible.
'Looks like it's almost 500 meters from here.'
The distance to the skyscraper was nearly 500 meters—about the height of Loteworld Tower's rooftop. That's how much farther we still had to climb. Just as I gritted my teeth and prepared to generate more footholds, a bird changed direction. It had spotted us.
'...Damn.'
I'd hoped to avoid a fight until we reached the skyscraper, but it was hurtling toward us, picking up speed. I narrowed my eyes and focused my sight. What I saw was a large hawk with four pairs of wings.
[Thunder Hawk]
[Body Length 1.16m] [Body Height 38.6cm] [Weight 29.8kg]
[STR 211] [AGI 524] [VIT 447] [MP 251]
[Skill List]
[Superior Acceleration (C)]
524 Agility. And Superior Acceleration on top of that. It kept accelerating, faster and faster, until finally its passage unleashed a deafening roar.
"———!"
In that instant, the Wolf's eyes sharpened. The roar still echoing meant it had broken the sound barrier. A sonic boom. Now I understood how it had earned the name "Thunder."
'Impressive.'
Baekrok, who'd been watching calmly, nodded his head. Not just the sonic boom—its terrifying speed condensed water vapor around the Thunder Hawk's body, wrapping it in what looked like a shroud of cloud. Under normal circumstances, its wings would be soaked and it would struggle to fly. Even before that, ordinary birds would die from the shock of the sonic boom alone. But the hawk's magical power and high vitality protected it from the aftereffects.
'If it collides with us.'
Even the Wolf wouldn't come out unscathed. Baekrok, however, showed no worry and simply observed. The hawk dove straight down like a fall. Baekrok could read the Thunder Hawk's flight path as though it were drawn on a map. And if he could read it, the Wolf certainly could. Soon, something was launched from the Wolf and tore through the cloud layer enveloping the hawk in an instant.
'A spike.'
When I concentrated my magic to enhance my vision, I saw the projectile spike had pierced the Thunder Hawk clean through. In the next moment, red blood scattered into the empty sky. Already deployed, the shadow ripped the hawk apart and sent it plummeting into the abyss. The Wolf let out a single sound.
"Ah."
Killing the Thunder Hawk wasn't hard, but I'd completely forgotten this place had no floor. The hawk fell, became a speck, and finally vanished from view entirely. The Wolf clicked his tongue in regret.
"...Experience points."
One more pain-in-the-ass penalty added to the list. In this floorless place, I'd have to catch my prey and hold onto it if I wanted to devour it. Frustrated, the Wolf exhaled a heavy, emotion-laden sigh.
'Too many things to worry about.'
And even right now, this very moment, my magic was draining. Reaching the skyscraper took priority. The Wolf and Baekrok took turns creating footholds, stepping up through empty air.
***
"So, she's awake and all."
"Well, there's a bit of a problem, you see."
Kang Tae-ho scratched his temple with his index finger.
"Anyway, Yuri's probably gonna be out of it. Let's just go, just us."
"Are you out of your mind?"
At the blunt reply, Kang Tae-ho scratched his head. Honestly, no matter how strong Neverland's monsters were, unless they were facing a boss, they didn't pose much of a threat to top-tier Hunters. And since the objective wasn't to clear it but just to contain it, they could mostly focus on Zones 1 and 2—Hong Yuri's absence wouldn't be a dealbreaker.
"Forget Zone 5, which we've never even reached. What about Zone 3? And Zone 4? The Squares have already bowed out too. Tae-ho. If you're gonna kill yourself, do it alone."
"......."
"The others'll be pointing fingers at you. Sure, they'd still curse you even if you backed out now, but deep down, you know they'd all be relieved."
The plan had been bulldozed forward because it was Kang Tae-ho proposing it. But everyone involved—including Baek Gun-tae, who'd trusted him and prepared, and the Temple's Ju-gyo—were quietly uneasy. Given how things had turned out, part of him thought this was for the best. Let the other clans gather experience and aim for the next opportunity. That was the smarter choice. Baek Gun-tae met Kang Tae-ho's eyes with a serious gaze.
"You're not the kind of man who doesn't understand what I'm saying. If you insist on being stubborn here."
"Hoo..."
With a line that final, Kang Tae-ho blew a puff of breath to ruffle his bangs. He had no other option. He understood perfectly what Baek Gun-tae was telling him. The situation had changed, and insisting on the same course now was nothing but a brat throwing a tantrum. He'd only put it out there on an off-chance, never really expecting it to stick.
"Welp, I hear you."
Still unable to hide his disappointment, Kang Tae-ho nodded with a short sigh. The moment the expedition's objective shifted from conquest to containment—a moment that was, to be sure, a letdown for him—it also, ironically, became the moment when clans that had kept silent about Neverland until now finally came forward to announce their participation.
***
The shadow tore the charging creature apart, and moments later my tentacles caught its remains. I felt a brief relief that I hadn't repeated my earlier mistake. Then the foothold nearly shattered under the weight, forcing me to pour in more magic.
[Coatl consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
'Good timing.'
I'd learned to create footholds in the volcanic zone, and I'd honed the technique in my fight with Hong Yuri. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't enough of a struggle to hinder movement. If we'd come to this dungeon even just a little sooner, I'd have been completely helpless.
"You've grown accustomed."
I nodded at Baekrok's words. By now, creating footholds at long distances like him wasn't particularly hard. I was starting to think we might clear this dungeon more smoothly than expected when the unforeseen happened, barely 100 meters from the skyscraper. There had been monsters attacking us now and then, but all of them had been small fry. Then, in the far reaches of the open sky, I saw something that made my mouth drop open in a daze.
"...A dragon?"
A long body stretching dozens of meters. A creature that roamed the sky with easy leisure, wreathed in clouds like some kind of spirit. Its shape was unmistakably draconic—no. No, despite the extreme resemblance, the decisive differences were that it had no legs, and no horns.
Yes. It wasn't quite a dragon.
"Something that never became a dragon."
[Bicheonmang (Flying Sky Python)]
[Body Length 35.4M] [Body Height 2.52M] [Weight 38T]
[STR 511] [AGI 430] [VIT 479] [MP 511]
[Skill List]
[Dragon Scale (C)] [Acceleration (D)] [High-Speed Flight (D)] [Tough Skin (E)]
An imugi whose domain was the open sky. My instincts told me that this was surely the dungeon's boss. Its stats were slightly lower than the Earth Serpent's, but I bit my lip.
'We're up in the air.'
Fighting on the ground and fighting in the air were entirely different levels of difficulty.
'And more than anything.'
Even if we managed to kill it, how in the world could we eat it? Even if Baekrok and I both created footholds together, I was certain we wouldn't be able to support something weighing over 30 tons for even a single second. As I stood staring helplessly, the creature spotted us too. Its eyes gleamed.
"Baekrok!"
With a nod, Baekrok created dozens of footholds. Each one was several meters apart, but that distance was no problem at all. We kept leaping, but in the end we couldn't shake it. Its enormous maw thrust toward us. At that moment, Perry's Blink came to the rescue.
"Kyuuuut...!"
We narrowly escaped, landing on new footholds, back into the air. Before the pursuing maw could thrust at us again, Perry used Blink one more time. Ten meters. The instant we gained height over empty air, I managed to hurl Baekrok upward with my tentacles.
'Got it.'
Baekrok seemed startled at first, but he quickly grasped my intention and bit down hard on the edge of the skyscraper. His jaws clamped tight, quivering as they supported us, and with Elasticity we climbed onto the skyscraper as fast as possible.
"———!"
The Bicheonmang was still coming. Before it could swallow us, a spike I shot out drove deep into its eye socket. While it convulsed in pain, my tentacles smashed through the rooftop and yanked Baekrok inside.
"That was close."
Baekrok murmured with relief. It had been a hair's-breadth crisis, but we'd escaped somehow. The Bicheonmang glared at us for a long time as if memorizing our faces, but even it wouldn't dare follow us into the building. I clicked my tongue in regret.
'I wish it would've tried...'
If we weren't in the air, I was confident I could hunt it. That stung worse than anything. —In any case, we had finally reached the edge of the inverted skyscraper.