So, About the Floor 2 Theme
The moment we slipped out of the safe zone, the swamp's soggy humidity and musty reek assailed my nose.
"Kkureureuk-."
Apparently the swampy stench was to his liking, because Mandoki went limp against me, stretching out in one long, lazy arch.
"Mandoki, quiet...!"
Mandoki just blinked up at me with those blank, dopey eyes, as if to ask what my problem was.
"Fine, fine. I'll quit nagging."
"Kkureuk-."
We pressed on, picking our steps carefully through the sodden ground. One thing was certain: this was no stamina theme. The time-limit counter that was supposed to spring up the instant we left the safe zone never appeared. That left exactly two hypotheses. Monsters. Or escaping the swamp.
"Please... let it not be monsters..."
The monster that makes its home in these humid, poison-saturated wetlands is the lizardman. Word was that Floor 2 held only one, but with no telling where the thing might burst out from, it spelled real danger for a non-combat class like me.
For a combat-class hunter, the dreaded part would be having to slog out of a swamp this thick with toxic fumes. For me, though, with Ten Thousand Poison Vigil at my side, escaping the swamp would be easier than taking candy from a baby. The only price? Getting a little filthy, that was all.
Squelch.
The forest's edge. Even the Amazon would have been more comfortable than this. It hadn't even been that long since we left the safe zone, and already my whole body was sticky.
"And there are a ton of bugs, too."
As long as no lizardmen showed up, gathering poisonous insects would be more than doable.
"Mandoki, from here on, follow close behind me — carefully."
[The Ten Thousand Poison Toad has consumed poison.]
[Ripening poison energy.]
"Kkureuk-."
"Don't eat anything weird — what are you even eating?"
"Kkureuk-."
Maybe because this was our first outing together, Mandoki carried not a shred of tension.
Well, I'm just glad one of us looks relaxed.
We inched forward, little by little. We'd come in quite a ways by now, yet with nothing but the same scenery repeating itself, this had to be a swamp theme after all.
"Alright, nice..."
That was when I spotted a suspicious trace on the ground — something that cinched my nerves another notch tighter.
"...Aw, come on. It's footprints."
Lizardman tracks. With that, it was settled: this was no swamp theme. It was a monster theme.
Stay calm.
The only attack skill I had to my name was Poison. Back when the Association ran its verification training on it as an E-rank skill, its attack power had been downright pathetic. It would buy me time to run — and that was about it. Better to take my time gearing up properly before making any attempt. Acquiring the Green Water would take that much longer, but what choice did I have? My life was worth more than money.
Rustle.
Then it came — a wrongness I should never have heard from behind me, whispering at the edge of my ear. Not Mandoki. Mandoki isn't nearly agile enough to make a crisp little rustle like that. Which meant—
"Damn it...!"
I spun around to find a lizardman flicking its tongue, ferocious reptilian eyes gleaming.
"Kereuk-."
A humanoid monster wearing a lizard's face. Roughly human in height, it was distinguished by razor claws and a barbed spike at the tip of its long tail.
"..."
The moment I turned and glared the thing down, it lowered its body, wary, as if to take my measure. The way it sized up its opponent before attacking was chilling in its own right.
I need to bolt.
Mandoki stood caught between me and the lizardman. The one mercy: the creature didn't seem the least bit interested in Mandoki, who wasn't even worth a mouthful. Which meant...!
"First strike wins, you bastard! Poison!"
Shouting Poison for the first time in years, I felt mana converging at the tips of my palms.
Sssssss!
What the—?!
The sheer volume of mana rippling off my body was anything but normal. The green mass of poison that had pooled there — as if it had drawn on my mana clear down to its limit — came surging straight at the creature.
Fwoosh!
Startled, I fumbled the angle of my hand, and the shot slammed into the lizardman's leg.
"...Kereuk?"
"...What?"
Poison was supposed to be one of those bottom-tier basics — a skill that lobbed poison bullets. But the thing's leg was simply gone.
Thud.
"Kereureu..."
One skill, and its leg had been severed outright. Whether the poison — Poison's baseline effect — had spread through its body, the creature lay collapsed, shuddering. Its suffering was not a pleasant thing to watch.
"No... why is this..."
The Poison I'd just fired was a skill I had never once seen in my life. Its instantaneous destructive power was enough that I'd have believed it was C-rank or higher.
"Kkureuk-."
Mandoki, apparently a touch startled himself, came waddling over, his plump bulk swaying.
Before long, the lizardman met its end, done in by the dispersed poison and massive blood loss.
"..."
Why had it changed so much? The skill itself hadn't changed. If something had...
"Status window."
So that was it — Poison's performance had jumped because of the change in my mana rank. A mana rank that had climbed three full steps, from D to A. Now I understood why hunters with high mana ranks blitzed through the lower floors.
"Mandoki, you okay?"
"Kkureuk-."
Mandoki checked out fine. I walked over to the fallen lizardman. The mouth of the creature that had been alive mere moments ago bore the traces of vomited blood.
"He's really dead. Then a gate must have spawned somewhere."
According to what I'd read on the Hunter Gallery, when the master of Floor 2's monster theme died, a gate appeared at the lizardman's nest.
"The sternum should be about here, right?"
Shunk.
With my longsword, I split open the lizardman's chest and drew out a single jewel veined with blue light.
◈ A crystal in which the lizardman's mana has condensed
The quintessential prize of the loot you reap from slaying monsters. I could have gone after the other byproducts too, but...
"Why bother?"
None of the byproducts a lizardman had to offer were worth a dime, as far as I could tell. Now, before hunting down the gate — I needed to get moving on the whole reason I'd come to Floor 2 in the first place.
"Mandoki, let's go find the Green Water."
"Kkureuk-."
The lizardman's nest — found only after barely scraping through hours of wandering. Who knew how tightly the creature had stashed its home away? The nest was hidden inside the crevice of a massive boulder, the very one Mandoki had happened to bolt into while foraging for poison to eat.
"If it weren't for you, I might never have found it?"
Thanks to Mandoki, I'd located the gate and made it all the way to the one place I could obtain Green Water: the lizardman's nest. A "nest," they called it — to the naked eye it was nothing more than another swamp. Five meters around or so, its defining trait being thick mud deep enough to swallow you to the ankles.
"Shall we get this grunt work started?"
Here was the reason I'd never managed to get my hands on Green Water: starting now, I had to dig straight down through this bog. The shovel I'd purchased in advance at the Hunter Shop. A tool built for one purpose alone — carving through earth — and with mana sealed inside it, it dulled the strain of digging through the Tower's terrain.
Squelch, thud.
With the smooth, clean feel of it driving home—
Whoosh!
I began digging down into the mud.
"Mandoki. Fend for yourself for meals. Looks like there's plenty to eat around here."
"Kkureuk-."
Mandoki set to work devouring the moss clinging to the nest's walls, while I set to work on the mud.
"Heave!"
Glub. Glub. Glub.
Partway through the dig, the shovel met a sudden resistance, and water came welling up around it.
"That's it!!!"
Just how many hours had I been shoveling this muck? My body was already slathered in some liquid — swamp humidity or sweat, impossible to tell — and my mud-splattered clothes had lost every trace of their original color. And still.
"Mandoki! It's done!!!"
"..."
Seriously... you're dozing off on me? Your master is over here slaving away, drenched head to toe. Which meant, I supposed, that I'd been digging every bit as long as it felt.
Glub.
From the spot where the shovel stood planted, green water began to seep and then gush upward, little by little.
A viscous green liquid that, at first glance, could pass for nothing but polluted water.
◈ Contaminated water generated in the deep reaches of the swamp, steeped in poisonous energy
◈ Mana Conductivity:10%
And polluted water it was. It did see use as a poison ingredient, but there were plenty of reasons hunters never bothered harvesting it. Digging down through the earth was a colossal pain, for one. And even if you braved poisoning yourself on the toxic fumes to dig the stuff out, Green Water's effects simply weren't worth the trouble. An item of negligible value, plain and simple. Had I never learned of mana conductivity, I'd have dismissed it as nothing more than a second-rate toxin, wouldn't I?
But. Not anymore. I knew mana conductivity existed now — and I knew I could carry this water out with that property preserved intact.
"Time to start scooping it up."
Glub.
Green water crept in to soak my ankles. Even setting the Severing Magic Poison aside, there would be uses for this, no question. From my inventory I pulled out a number of pouches made of wild buffalo leather. A somewhat pricey item, but I'd bought them as an investment in the future.
"Fit it snug against the opening so the air can work its way out..."
Five pouches, filled to the brim. And with that, every last ingredient for the Severing Magic Poison was in hand.
"Mandoki, get up. Time to head out."
"Kkureuk-."
Who knew how much the thing had packed away — Mandoki's body had turned a vivid green. And somehow he seemed even bigger than before...
"I think you might need to go on a diet."
"..."
Since when does this guy skip his "Kkureuk-"?
"We'll settle this once we're out of here! No dinner for you tonight."
"Kkwe-reuk-."
Scooping up the newly bulked-up Mandoki, I stepped toward the rippling gate.
Shaaaaah!
The light delivered me back to the Poison Lab.
Ding!
[Congratulations! You have cleared Floor 2 of the Black Tower.]
[You have acquired the Green Theme reward.]
The clear message and the reward message popped up side by side. The kind of message that puts a smile on your face no matter how many times you see it.
"Well then — time to get ready!"
Not many days remained until I'd be handing the Severing Magic Poison over to Min Jiyeong.