The Handfish
They trying to hit a lucky seven or something?
Every so often, an item from the Tower came with an option attached. Very, very rarely.
Blocks any attack, exactly once.
That was the description riding the gaudy bracelet I'd picked up — the option called Absolute Defense.
"How does a ridiculous item like this drop on the third floor?"
"What did you get?"
Clara came over to my side as she asked.
"The system window."
Everything acquired in the Tower was stored automatically in the system window's inventory. I took it out and showed her.
Clara turned the bracelet over in her hands. To the eye, it was nothing but a gaudy band of color.
"Hmm~? It doesn't look special at all."
"The option on it is absurd. Want to check the description?"
"Hm? Any attack whatsoever...? Then it would be all right even if my Yearning touched it?"
"Ah, that won't work. Your fire is a sustained attack, so... even if I wore this, it'd be dangerous up close."
"Still, what a relief. Even if that fish attacks my husband, we'll have one chance! I should wear several of them!"
"Wouldn't it be better if you wore it, Clara? I don't even fight..."
"My husband's safety is what matters most!"
"Clara, I..."
I met her eyes and took her wrist. She could have shaken me off just by standing up, and yet she stayed perfectly still. Onto that obedient wrist, I fastened the bracelet. It resized itself to fit her small wrist — as expected of something that had come out of the Tower.
"Ahem! This is... a gift I really wanted to give, with my wife in mind... Let's call it that?"
Softly, she folded into my arms.
So small. So slender...
"I love you too!"
I was glad I'd said it, embarrassment and all. The line I'd seen on Clara's favorability — I wouldn't mind if I died — had been circling my head and wouldn't leave.
"Wow! Unnie, first place again! You're incredible!"
"For my husband, there is nothing I cannot do!"
"A romantic!"
Han Suyeon, as ever, overreacted to every word out of Clara's mouth. On top of that, she shot a glare my way and muttered under her breath.
"Someone this precious, stuck with someone that shabby... No, but that's why she became my unnie... No, but still..."
She trailed after Clara like a duckling, pitching her voice so only I could hear. I almost rose to my family-register mate's bait, then swallowed it. A big brother's supposed to let it slide. And anyway, maybe this was a blessing. Whatever the world thought of summons, Clara got along with the whole family.
It was Sunday, and Suyeon was getting ready to head back to the dorms.
"Unnie, next week I'll come Friday night!"
She squeezed her tight. Clara was quite fond of the girl who followed her around calling her unnie.
"I'm already looking forward to Friday."
Clara hugged her registry-mate close, openly reluctant to let go.
"Hkk! Unnie...!"
"Anyone watching would think this was a separated-family reunion, kid."
"Ahem. It's been a while — how about a hug for Dad too, my girl?"
"Well then, see you on Friday!"
My family-register mate didn't so much as answer our father. She opened the front door and was gone in a flash. He watched her go, then retreated into the master bedroom. For some reason, his back looked lonely.
Hahahaha
Last time I looked, there were comments about people's trauma flaring up in the Floor 3 Preparation Room?
Congratulations.
You lot made the top ten percent, at worst!
Top ten percent of what?
You're steaming with it.
Ugliness.
HAHAHAHAHA
No way lol, how ugly do you have to be to fail in the Floor 3 Preparation Room lmao
Ah, that's fucking hilarious lol
Yeah. This is what happens when an Iron's face is a lost cause, same rank or not.
But relax.
Floor 4 is fine.
Fewer aftereffects, you ask?
No.
Floor 4 is a genuine newbie buzzsaw.
Even if you quit, you won't be able to tell yourself it was because you were ugly.
The Tower's been standing a while now, hasn't it?
Plenty of people have made it as far as the Handfish, and the ones who've actually seen it look pretty damn shaken.
The write-ups are so detailed I had nightmares off the text alone.
Lots of people drew it and uploaded the pictures, so search Handfish.
If you can stomach that, then go ahead and try.
Trauma aside, plenty of people flat-out refuse to face it because it looks so fucking hideous.
Anyway, I'm done talking about what the Handfish looks like.
So, this guide.
First problem is where the thing stands.
This bastard never comes out of a lake ten meters across.
The lake isn't deep. About a meter.
Which is why you need at least one Assassin.
You know Instant Footwork, the skill you get for picking Assassin?
Use it.
Three seconds and you'll be right in front of the Handfish.
Problem is, in those three seconds the Handfish will already have yanked out six of these piece-of-shit tentacles.
Still, no big deal. The tentacles are pretty soft.
Even the basic dagger you get when you choose Assassin cuts them fine.
Cut them and they die. Cut fast. An Assassin only has to focus on that.
Everyone who isn't the Assassin — you turtle classes lumbering up from the back.
You circle all the way around the lake and come at the Handfish from behind. Don't charge the front and pull tentacle aggro for no reason.
Once you're there, stab the belly like crazy.
The blade goes into the legs too, but the belly is the money shot.
Especially — its eyes are completely empty, right?
So it can't see ahead. The only thing it knows how to do is pull tentacles out of its eyes.
If the Assassin misses even one tentacle, you're fucked, got it?
These things are about the size of a two-liter bottle, yeah?
The torso immediately swells to double size. Obscenely.
How?
By sucking your blood.
So take note, newbies.
After reading the gallery's Floor 4 guide, I explained it to Clara separately.
LovesNewbies is a famous ranker, but the way he talks...
There was too much profanity in it. I didn't want any of that sitting in Clara's eyes.
"So — what if it just stays in the lake, and fire doesn't work?"
"Then I go and cut it with a sword."
A sword?
Right. Among Clara's traits, there was swordsmanship.
"Are you sure that'll be all right? They said the lake is about a meter deep..."
I thought about her height. Moving while more than half-submerged would be miserable, wouldn't it? And without something like an Assassin's Instant Footwork, it seemed like it would be rough.
"Just leave it to me!"
Once again I was princess-carried by a girlish elf and gently enshrined against one wall of the Preparation Room. This feeling... I like TS web novels, but that does not mean I wanted to be treated like this. Worse, after only three times I was starting, little by little, to get used to it.
This... might actually be kind of nice?
That a feeling like that could creep up on me at all was the more troubling part. I shook the strange mood off as it rose and fixed my eyes past the Preparation Room's transparent wall. Right. I am inside the Tower. Composure. Composure.
"Are you all right this time, too?"
"I want to cut it down right this instant!"
Floor 4 was especially hideous, and I'd been worried. Thankfully, for nothing. It was the sunfish line again, of course, standing in the middle of a lake a meter deep.
Floor 1 had the tentacles. Floor 2, the lake and the tentacles. Floor 3, the legs, the lake, and the tentacles. Up to there, it was the same. The one new addition was a hand, stuck on beside the eye. It looked as if someone had severed it at the wrist and pasted it there, and with that hand it was covering its own eyes — the same shape of hand you'd use to play peekaboo with a baby.
And you think that's enough to call it hideous? Obviously I am not saying the Handfish is the most hideous of the sunfish line for that alone.
Because the thing is, it doesn't actually have eyes.
Wait in the Preparation Room long enough, and it spreads that hand to show you its eyes. Empty eyes. Where the eyeballs ought to be, there are no eyeballs — only a pitch-black dark, like a sinkhole.
Wide open. Then a soft tap. Just now, the Handfish had spread its hand, shown the hollow eyes, and covered them again.
"Did you see that just now? You're all right even with that?"
"I really, truly want to cut it down right now!"
I was more than twenty meters away, hardly close enough to make out the details, but Clara could see far just fine. She had surely confirmed it exactly. The high energy she always carried didn't so much as waver. At this rate, we would be fine.
"Then I'm counting on you, Clara! Shall we start?"
"Right now!"
"Here we go!"
The instant the transparent wall vanished, Clara ran.
"Drebo—"
This time she couldn't afford to wait. The Handfish simply stood where it was, unmoving, inside that lake. That didn't mean it was doing nothing. Instead it opened the hand and showed the empty eyes it had been covering. Bloody tears were already spilling from them, and from that seep two purple tentacles wormed their way out. In a blink, two tentacles the size of two-liter bottles had each crawled free of the Handfish's eyes.
By then Clara had reached the lake in exactly two strides. A speed pushing fifty let her eat fifteen meters in a single burst.
Plip. Plip. Plip. Plip.
And then something I could hardly believe: Clara didn't stop at the water's edge. She kept going, quick light steps carrying her straight across the surface of the lake.
"—Empire—"
The tentacles weren't idle either. Two a second. Four of them had already crawled from the Handfish's eyes and dropped into the lake, and they swam for Clara fast.
Fwhip. Fwhip.
They leapt for her as she ran the water. The first pair out of the eyes lunged to drink her blood.
Shhhk.
Clara's sword swept through the air as if drawing a crescent moon. Both hands on the hilt, she carved a half-circle right in front of her body.
Shhhk.
Another crescent. The two that followed were cut down in the same breath. A faint light leaked from the ceiling of the field, caught the blade, and turned the sword's path into a flowing ribbon of light. On the lake that received it, a crescent moon rose and vanished.
Shhhk.
She cut the tentacles that had only just begun to emerge from both eyes, then spun, fast as a top. She used the centrifugal force.
"—SHHHK!!"
The sword's path drew a full circle. For an instant a full moon seemed to rise on the lake — and the Handfish's head came off.
Splash.
Swordsmanship
Fwip!
The Handfish's head sank into the lake. When no more tentacles crawled from its eyes, Clara cleared the water in a single leap. She had been submerged to the waist, but one bound was enough.
"O Flame."
⟨ Yearning ⟩
FWOOSH!
Clara manifested her Yearning upon the Handfish. Head gone, it simply stood there, as if it no longer knew what it was supposed to do. Whatever was happening to the legs sunk in the lake, the body out in the open was swallowed at once by searing flame. Even with its whole body wrapped in fire, the Handfish only stood still.
And so, for a little while.
Ding~!
You have cleared Floor 4.
Clear time: 7 seconds
You have entered the Floor 4 clear rankings.
You are now Rank 1 for Floor 4 clears.
Register your name?
[YES] [NO]
◈ Lowest-Grade Mana Stone Fragment
◈ Elixir of Youth (1 Second)
◈ Assassin's Clothing of Tough, Heavy Leather
"Ptooey, ptooey! Lake water got in my mouth! It's so salty!"
And so Clara had cleared Floor 4 in seven seconds. Again.
As you know, the Floor 4 field is forty meters by forty.
There's a lake a meter deep in the center, about ten meters across.
The Handfish stands in the middle of the lake, so the distance from the Preparation Room is about twenty meters.
The problem is that meter-deep lake.
An elephant beastkin cannot reach it in seven seconds.
This is something we need to think about.
The summon is actually going along with what he says.
It matches the summoner's opinion exactly?
Those stuck-up summon bastards?
My summon is this strong.
I like the number 7.