Nightmare Floor 5 (1)

I'd tried the calming spell.

It hadn't done a damn thing.

"Well, I did snap out of it a little faster."

Though that was probably just because I'd dragged out the goblin hunt for way too long.

"Last time, I—ugh."

Just thinking about it made my head throb.

In my entire life, I had never known it was possible to mince goblins that finely.

Doing it while the calming spell left my mind serene had only made me sink deeper into the work—more thorough, more meticulous, more completely committed to the butchery.

"The calming spell doesn't work at all!"

What? A spell that soothes even monsters? One that might plunge you into depression if you used it?

All of it was complete bullshit.

I poured my rage into a post on the gallery. The reaction was explosive.

"Huh?"

The mood was turning weird. More users were starting to doubt me than believe me.

"Uh. This is…"

This kind of atmosphere was not good.

The gallery was descending into chaos, a tangled mess of bait posts and hot takes.

And the final nail in the coffin was one user's post.

The post that had called me out vanished in an instant.

Then a notice went up.

"What?"

What the hell was this lunatic saying?

Banning me? And demanding I take a verification shot to prove myself?

Was he seriously trying to strip this seat of its gallery privileges?

"Th-this is completely absurd!"

Falling for throwaway-account rabble-rousing and banning an innocent mage awakener!

I was furious. I wanted to scream, but I held it in.

"Hoo."

Calm down. History is full of pioneers envied and resented by lesser men.

What was done couldn't be undone, so better to find a solution.

"Thankfully, I do have a verification shot."

I'd planned to post one to the gallery today anyway, so I'd already taken photos in the reward room.

One shot of a rough black box. And one of me throwing up a peace sign in front of it.

Post those and I could at least prove I was an awakener somehow.

The only problem was—

"It looks completely photoshopped."

A photo of a girl's hand—looking for all the world like a late elementary schooler, middle schooler at absolute best—throwing a peace sign in front of a reward box.

The realism was so low it scraped the floor. It looked like a scam using one of those trendy four-cut photo booth frames.

I hadn't known, but apparently those places were collaborating with Guardians these days to make dungeon-background photo frames. It was a whole trend.

Which only made my picture look even more like a cheap fake.

"Should I have filmed a video?"

Super and higher-ranked awakeners sometimes recorded their Tower runs.

Though Super, I'd heard, had a custom filming drone built specifically for raid footage.

I'd glimpsed the price once by accident—the number of zeros had blown past anything I'd imagined, and I'd nearly had a heart attack.

"I don't really want to go that far."

I wanted to make money, sure. But I didn't actually want to get famous enough for it to be exhausting.

"I just want to get rich without my face going public."

A total contradiction. I knew perfectly well it was nonsense in practice.

"Anyway, I need the ban lifted first."

On the off chance it might work, I sent the head mod the verification shots I already had.

The bastard was diligent enough that he'd already left an open chat link in his gallery log. Thorough little man.

"Ugh."

So the reward box photo and my half-assed verification shot alone weren't going to cut it.

I'd plastered the hand photo with so much mosaic it was hard to even guess the age, so of course that was the reaction.

I was planning to climb the fifth floor soon anyway, so getting a proper verification shot wasn't a big problem in itself.

It was just that—

"I'm pissed."

They dared to corner this seat with a smear campaign? Was I supposed to just take it?

No. I was going to pay them back in full.

Those who thrived by the gallery shall fall by the gallery.

"In that case…"

I'd fire off a dazzling burst of fireworks worthy of the name Heavenly Demon itself.

Before entering the Tower, I ran through one last check.

"Gear all equipped."

I'd packed the necessary items too.

There'd been less stock on the market than expected, so a full third of the money I'd made selling mana stones had gone up in smoke—but I decided to call it an investment in a grand fireworks show.

I was going to knock those Mage Gallery bastards clean out.

As I entered the fifth floor, the system text I'd seen so many times it was practically familiar floated up before me.

"Hmm."

The fifth floor of the Tower featured a mid-boss.

The Goblin Centurion.

Given that the tenth-floor boss was the Goblin King, the fifth floor was essentially a taste of what was coming.

"He's big."

About one and a half times the size of a normal goblin, maybe.

Ordinary goblins stood a full head shorter than me, but this one towered two full heads above. Roughly the same height I'd been before ending up in this body.

For our eyes to meet naturally, I had to look up and he had to look down—an arrangement that was thoroughly unpleasant.

"Do not look down upon this seat, you worm."

Daring to look down on me? He was a hundred years too early.

"Keruk."

The creature didn't move rashly.

Instead, the pack of goblins escorting the Centurion began closing the distance one by one.

"Hah. So it's a numbers game now?"

The escort was substantial.

Until now, no matter how the compositions varied, they'd never exceeded ten. Today they clearly blew past several dozen.

Goblin Centurion—did that mean he actually commanded a hundred?

Most were ordinary specimens, but variants dotted the pack here and there.

"So just die, is that it."

You've made it this far. You thought it'd be ten again, didn't you? If you can't handle it, then die right here.

I will kill you somehow. If the Tower had intent, it was surely laced with malice of exactly that sort.

"How unfortunate for you."

If you'd been hoping for a picture of this seat's crushing defeat, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

Today, I planned to go out in spectacular fashion.

"Ah—right. One more thing to deploy first."

Wuum!

A compact drone lifted from my inventory and rose into the air.

That little thing would capture every second of today's fireworks without missing a frame.

It might not look like much, but it was a mana-engineering-treated piece of equipment—nearly ten million won's worth of high-end gear.

"Preparations complete. Shall we begin?"

Rejoice, you worms.

This seat shall personally demonstrate the supreme martial arts you could never witness even if you died and came back.

"Haste. Haste. Haste."

I layered haste magic over my body again and again.

Haste was a spell that forcibly pushed the body past its limits. Stack it too aggressively and muscle fibers simply tore under the strain.

In other words, permanent disability was a real risk.

But what of it? If the muscles tore, you just stitched them back with healing magic and downed a potion. That was what those things were for.

Of course the pain didn't simply vanish—but for me, that was no great problem.

"Here I go."

Boom!

One foot cracked the earth. The next launched me into empty air.

My explosively accelerated body left ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a thick afterimage hanging in the void.

My heart hammered as if it would burst, flooding every limb with blood, while my brain spun at a furious clip to keep pace with a world gone madly fast.

My head burned like it might catch fire on the spot.

But that was fine. Didn't they say pain makes you whole?

"Ahah!"

Even pain was just a fleeting pleasure. I simply swung the Ink Blade like a madwoman.

A merciless dance swept the battlefield. For looking like a single asura of slaughter, the form had earned its name.

And then, where the goblins had stood, a blood-red mist rose into the air.