The Bus Slug
There's that team that hit the rankings and then ditched the country, right?
Those bastards posted a seven-second clear on Floor 0, yeah?
Our summoner got pissed that they cleared and bailed.
So starting from Floor 1, he matched seven seconds right where they could see it.
Look! I'm right here, in the country you threw away!
That record of yours, where you barely scraped seven seconds and only on Floor 0?
I can do it after Floor 0, too!
That's what this was!
Copium engine: FULL POWER!!!!!
I'm not going anywhere.
People are saying the clear rankings suddenly changed, and the board just pops up in front of your eyes on its own, so that's how everyone saw it.
You don't exactly go looking at that thing, right?
Pretty sure that's the first time I've seen the unranked floor rankings in almost a year.
Now?!
Shall we say yesterday's single serving of meat, the one I had to buy, ran me seventy thousand won?
Last time I offered my summon the seasoned pork ribs I love most in the world.
She says if I bring out something like that one more time, there will be no forgiveness.
Still, she let it slide the first time, so our beastkin summon is pretty nice, right?
Sorry, imaginary beastkin.
The more I kept at it, the better I seemed to be getting.
"What are you writing so intently?"
"Ah, it's just... Clara, this is something only I should know for now."
"I know what this is!"
Clara's eyes sparkled, as if she had just seized upon some great truth.
This is déjà vu... It's exactly like the first time, right after she was summoned, when I told her to put some clothes on.
"You want to monopolize me! You mean to hide your wife away and keep her as yours alone!"
She had, of course, grabbed the wrong end of the stick entirely. A while back I'd said I would go out by myself to buy Clara's knight uniform. So that was why she'd agreed so readily back then, wearing that oddly pleased look!
"...Y-yeah. That's right?"
"I love you too!"
She squeezed.
Beaming, Clara threw her arms around me. I didn't have the heart to dump cold water on a face that happy.
And thinking about it, she wasn't entirely wrong.
"So, about the Floor 5 strategy..."
Good work making it this far.
You all came here to make a wish, right?
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for even an Iron aptitude to push its skill aptitude up to Bronze!
That said, I don't really recommend it.
Just make an ordinary wish and cut down on what you have to offer.
I'd rather you didn't hand over your liver and your gallbladder both.
Honestly, isn't a Tower Passport basically second prize in the lottery? Be satisfied with that. You can get one for a single year of lifespan.
I mean, there are people carrying disabilities and the like who offer up lifespan to fix themselves....
I'm not going to say a word about that.
But plain skill enhancement—I'm begging you, please stop.
Not that you'll listen if I say it, right?
Anyway, mage classes, go running before you step onto Floor 5.
They hold plenty of marathons these days.
Enter one. Don't bury yourself in the Tower—enjoy reality a little, too.
As for the Floor 5 guide itself, there isn't much else to explain, is there?
As long as you don't try to fight this bastard, the Bus Slug, anybody can clear it without losing their life.
The reach on those mouth-tipped antennae is pretty long, though. Five meters, maybe?
Measure your distance.
Step into that range and you just die.
Watch out for that, and if you can jog for fifty minutes without stopping, anybody can clear it.
Run laps around the lake.
Yeah, yeah, it feels like crap when the message pops up saying you fled because you didn't kill anything this floor.
But come on, how are you supposed to kill a level-5 Bus Slug in fifty minutes.
Anyway, a clear is a clear.
Take notes, newbies.
"Did you sleep well?"
I woke the way I did every morning now, to the heart-pounding bliss of Clara's sleeping-beside-me wake-up call. I saw Dad off. I ate breakfast, and Clara drank barley tea at my side. While I looked over the gallery guide, I briefed her on Floor 5 one more time.
"I understand perfectly. We go in at once."
"Right. System window."
Ding!
"Enter the Tower."
Choose.
[Floor 0] [Floor 1] [Floor 2] [Floor 3] [Floor 4]
[Floor 5]
The list of floors I could choose had grown quite a bit when I wasn't looking. I touched Floor 5.
At once I was transferred into the Tower, into the Preparation Room. Beyond the transparent wall lay a field fifty meters to a side, scaled to Floor 5.
Once again Clara gathered me up in a princess carry herself, walked me all the way to one wall of the Preparation Room, and set me down with care.
If I clear Floor 5 and make a wish, is this the end of the princess carry? Why does that feel a little disappointing?
"We just have to catch that?"
Beyond the Preparation Room's transparent wall, it was not another entry in the sunfish series I was slowly getting sick of.
The so-called Bus Slug.
It had earned the name by being a brown slug the size of a bus.
Set the size aside, and compared to the Floor 4 hand-sunfish, the looks are actually an improvement, aren't they?
All that had really changed was where the eyes and the mouths sat. Where a mouth ought to have been, it wore a single enormous eye, and at the tips of the two long antennae—where eyes ought to have been—it wore a mouth apiece.
For a body that huge, the antennae were thin and the mouths small: antennae as thick as a forearm, mouths the size of a fist.
The only real problem was how hard the thing was. Iron-ingot hard.
Even the sunfish series, no bigger than a front door, felt larger once you were standing in front of one, and now a creature the size of a bus had shown up all at once and left you wondering how you were supposed to kill it. And yet...
Floors whose number ended in five carried a special system.
The most important part, of course, was the wish.
On floors like 15, 25, and 35—the floors that landed on a five—you could make a wish.
And you could clear those floors without killing anything. The system window had said as much, in its own way.
Survive.
[Yes] [No]
50:00
On this floor, simply running for those fifty minutes was enough to clear it.
Killing the thing was impossible at unranked level to begin with.
The other great peculiarity was that the monsters of these floors would appear again later, on higher floors. When they did, you would have to kill them to clear.
It looked almost as if the Tower were telling you to prepare in advance, smoothing the climb for you.
Which was why the usual Floor 5 wish was a skill enhancement.
An Iron aptitude received its skills at Iron grade, and this could raise them to Bronze.
If you were a summoner, you wished for something your summon would like.
But what I wanted this time was...
"Clara, are you really sure? It's a funny thing for me to say while I'm sitting here in your arms, but we can clear this just by running."
"Leave it to me!"
"Then I'm trusting only you. Shall we start right away?"
"Any time!"
"Here we go!"
—Pap.
The transparent wall vanished, and in the same instant Clara broke into a run.
O Flame
Before the Bus Slug's single great eye, a flame the size of a fist bloomed, then roared up all at once, just as it had before.
But the Bus Slug did not burn away on the spot the way the sunfish series had.
A pale, translucent violet fluid poured from every inch of its body, and because of that the fire never properly caught.
Tap-tap.
Clara closed in on the Bus Slug.
The long antennae came stabbing in like spears, aiming for her head and her lower body the moment she entered their reach.
Kang! Kang!
The sound was like steel striking steel.
A heavy weight settled into the blade. Even Clara's strength of 43 was only just enough to bat them aside.
Set against the sunfish series, which she had sheared clean through, the difference in hardness was unmistakable.
Even so, it was not more than her sword could turn. She pressed in closer still, right up to the Bus Slug's eye.
The eye sat where a mouth should have been, and she meant to drive her blade into that one huge, revolting eye.
The Bus Slug was desperate too. It lashed both antennae like whips, with no pattern at all.
Kang! Kang! Kang! Kang! Kang! Kang! Kang!
Tap-tap.
Clara opened the distance for a moment.
By the thing's construction, eye and mouths sat close together, so the nearer she drew to the eye, the faster the antenna-mouths came. At that speed, even Clara could not keep batting them aside forever. Piercing the eye was not going to be easy.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
She manifested the Yearning O Flame three times in a single breath.
Counting the fire already burning before the great eye, there were now four: one on the Bus Slug's back, and one along each flank.
Thick violet slime kept gushing out without end, shielding the Bus Slug, but it could not gush forever.
Faced with the sudden multiplication of flame, an even darker violet fluid poured forth—but the Bus Slug, as if it had felt the danger, tried to shift its ground.
Clara used that moment to circle wide and sprint for its rear.
She was going for the tail, the one place where she had not yet called O Flame.
In the end the Bus Slug could not relocate. It simply turned in place to follow her. The antenna-mouths could not reach all the way back to its tail.
Kang! Kang!
Clara darted this way and that, never staying still.
So long as she was not in front of it, even inside the antenna-mouths' range the attacks were not all that fast, and she could handle them.
But...
Kang! Kang—! Crack!
With a sound of rupture, half of Clara's sword leapt into the air.
"Clara!!!"
The Bus Slug's violet eye rolled.
"There is no problem!"
In her hand, only half a sword remained.
Clara quickened the pace of her steps, slipping from side to side. She beat aside the antenna-mouth aimed at her face and took one step left. She beat aside the one aimed at her right leg and took one step back to the right.
With nothing but half a blade, she turned them cleanly.
It was running out. The violet fluid the Bus Slug spewed kept evaporating in the fire. But the Bus Slug attacked only Clara. It simply chased, by instinct, whatever stood nearest in its sight.
Kieeeeeek!!!
The Bus Slug let out a cry that was unmistakably pain.
At last O Flame had boiled away every layer of slime wrapped around it and set the body itself alight.
The Bus Slug's violet eye swept the surroundings.
And then...
In the end, it made for the lake beside it.
"You will stop right there!"
"It's all right, Clara! Leave it be!"
Soon the Bus Slug had sunk its whole body into the lake, and it began to scream.
Kieeeeeeeeeek!!!
The roar shook the sealed space around us. In the lake where the Bus Slug had vanished entirely, bubbles came burbling up.
Ding!
And then, in the midst of that long exchange, the sound I had been waiting for arrived.
"What?"
Had the system window broken again?
A window had come up, but there wasn't a single character on it. Ah. There it was now.
You have cleared Floor 5.
Clear time: 77 seconds
You have entered the Floor 5 clear rankings.
You are now rank 1 on Floor 5.
Register your name?
[Yes] [No]
◈ Lowest-Grade Magic Stone Fragment
◈ Elixir of Youth — 1 Second
Clear rewards have been increased.
The price you must offer is reduced.
Will you speak your wish?
[Yes] [No]
"Whoa!"
"Why did we clear? Ah! The lake water was salty. Did that kill it?"
"That's right! On Floor 4 I told you the lake was salty. The lake is seawater. The Bus Slug is a freshwater slug, so it couldn't stand salt water. You did so well, Clara. Really."
"I love you too!"
Hop, hop.
Clara came bounding over, delighted, and threw herself into my arms.
"Oh! An iron sword that doesn't break easily!"
Among the reward items, as if someone had been watching this exact moment, was something that fit the situation perfectly.
"And get this—this time it was seventy-seven seconds. Did you aim for the seven?"
"It was a coincidence!"
The gallery was going to spin up another round of bizarre theories.
It wasn't important, so I let it go. What was truly astonishing was something else.
The message said the price I would have to offer when I made a wish had dropped sharply.
Now that I thought about it, on Floor 5 alone the completion line was not You have cleared, but You have succeeded in fleeing. Because I was the first in the world to actually clear Floor 5, the price of the wish seemed to have been reduced.
The price you must offer has been reduced.
Will you speak your wish?
[Yes] [No]
Just how far would it cut the offering?
I touched Yes, and spoke the first wish I had been holding in my head.
"Fix my crippled lower body. I cleared it first, so how much do I have to offer?"
Choose.
[10 Years of Lifespan] [All Teeth] [Hearing]
[Cancel]
Yeesh... still a bit much, wasn't it?
Even so, you could fairly say the offering had been reduced.
Overseas, there had been a hunter who healed a crippled lower body with a wish. What he offered was half his remaining lifespan. Set beside that, this was certainly cheap.
But I was not offering a single scrap of lifespan.
I intended to live a long time. And more than that...
A Tower had simply risen in the spot where I was standing, and that was how my lower body had been crippled.
I had seen something on the gallery. A way for someone carrying a disability like mine to gain from a wish of the Tower. You deceived the system window.
"Heal only my right leg. What I'm offering is the sensation in my left leg. The offering got discounted, so this should be possible, right?"
It was sensation I didn't have anyway. I would offer that, and be healed by it. If even one leg was restored, I would at least be able to stand. Heart pounding, I waited for the system window to answer.
Your wish has been granted.