Impossible Difficulty: Floor 11

Back when Cheon Seoah first encountered the Legion in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ansan.

Having finished farming Floor 10-1, I returned to Earth.

We had swept ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Floor 10-1 clean of every useful item we could find. Most of them were weapons — bows and spears — which went straight to the elite Void Monkeys.

Of the twenty items total, four stood out as worth a closer look.

I pulled out the jewel box the Saint had hidden against her chest in the ruins. Inside were two fingernail-sized green stones.

When I'd first found the box inside the ruins, only one stone had been in it — useless on its own. But when I encountered it again at the Papal Hall, both stones were sitting there intact.

"Come to think of it, that necklace has never activated even once."

Saint Ailia's Necklace, acquired way back on Floor 5-1. The ability to block a fatal attack once every twenty-four hours had not triggered a single time, even now, on the eve of challenging Floor 11.

"It's not defective, is it…?"

"Heehee, this ring is so pretty!"

Lucy beamed at her newly acquired ring. In combat she reverted to ghost form, which made wearing items difficult — but this particular ring shifted its shape to match the user's state.

"How is it? Feeling clearer-headed?"

"Yeah! It's like how I used to feel before I got into HuntGal!"

"Browsing HuntGal gives you a headache?!"

"Not exactly! I can just feel my brain melting into dopamine!"

"Then maybe you should cut back a little…"

"With this, I can browse even more!"

Lucy clutched the ring and laughed.

"Something about that feels wrong…"

She was a lesser god who had once threatened an entire dimension. Was it really okay for her to fall this hard into community addiction? Then again, it was still better than her obsessing over getting stronger and vacuuming up all our points.

I quietly opened the community and handed it over to her. Lucy was the most powerful combatant in our entire Legion. If she ever started actively demanding level-ups, refusing her would be nearly impossible. Being able to manage a force like that with nothing more than community access was a bargain by any measure.

Next on the agenda: clearing Floor 11 of the Tower.

Before entering, I surveyed our surroundings.

"Woof!"

"Ook!"

Our Legion had settled into a cave on the mid-slope of some nameless mountain deep in the Taebaek Mountain Range. The cave wasn't particularly deep — just large enough for a Void Pond the size of a small pond. Void Dogs and Void Monkeys steadily hunted monsters and brought resources back.

It was early April, fresh green leaves just starting to sprout. As long as we didn't clear-cut the dense forest, there was no risk of our Legion showing up on satellite imagery.

"Wriggles, how's the situation?"

"It's not Wriggles — it's Puffy!"

"…Lucy, just go browse your community."

"Okay!"

I shut down Lucy's weird interjection and turned back to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Void Pond's manager.

"What's the status on the surrounding gates?"

"We've discovered a total of thirty-seven gates. The only real threat is a B-rank gate spawning Orc Warriors, located seventeen kilometers to the northeast."

"How far have we searched?"

"We've covered five peaks centered on this mountain where the Legion is based."

"That should be fine."

If anything dangerous had been nearby, Poppy and I would have needed to handle it ourselves. But the sole B-rank gate was a good distance away, and anything C-rank or below could be dealt with by the Void Dogs alone.

"Prioritize production of lightweight Void Dogs, and mix in Void Monkeys gradually."

"Understood."

I laid out the plan going forward with the Void Pond's manager. We might not be cutting trees to stay hidden, but that was no reason to stop hunting monsters.

Fresh magic stones and monster byproducts continued to pile up in the Void Pond. The Void Monkeys' deft hands made them excellent at extracting magic stones and useful materials from carcasses.

Looking at the magic stones accumulating in my subspace and stacked against one wall of the cave, I thought of the resources ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠we'd left behind in Ansan.

"I wonder if Seoah got her gift. I even wrote it in the post — she wouldn't show up empty-handed, right?"

When we left Ansan, I'd ordered the Legion to hand over resources whenever the other side showed goodwill. We would work alongside humanity going forward — but I had no intention of playing the sucker and giving everything away for free.

"Humanity and the Legion need to be equal partners. Neither side should depend entirely on the other."

"But for equals, isn't the Legion kind of pathetic right now? Later on, humanity will be the pathetic ones."

Lucy asked without looking up from her HuntGal post.

"Turns out you don't need equal strength to form an alliance."

Even when the balance of power was lopsided, matching interests could still produce a genuine partnership. From humanity's perspective, no soldiers were more cost-effective than the Legion. From the Legion's perspective, no one else could supply the luxuries it craved the way humanity could.

"The monkeys are skilled, sure… but they can't match thousands of years of human culture overnight."

"Oh right! Haram, how much pork cutlet and spicy pork do we have left?"

"Still plenty."

The "human power" the Legion needed did seem heavily skewed toward food, but still — Legion and humanity could become mutually beneficial partners.

I walked over to Lucy, still deep in HuntGal, and reached for the system window.

"…I need to enter the Tower now. Hand it over."

"Five more minutes!"

"Keep this up and I'll put a time limit on it."

"Huk — no!"

Lucy hastily left comments for her HuntGal friends and returned the system window to me.

"…Lucy, people are going to start paying attention to you soon. You okay with that?"

"Really?! Does that mean one of MY posts is finally going to hit popular? I won't have to spam other people's popular threads anymore!"

"…"

The people on the Hunter community still thought Lucy's account was just a troll using the same nickname as the Impossible difficulty user.

But right about now, Cheongung Guild and the military would be meeting the Legion through the post I'd written. Before long, they'd figure out that Lucy's account belonged to the Impossible difficulty user.

"Well, it won't get matched to the real me. At least it'll throw the villains off the scent."

"Huh? What will?"

"Nothing."

Unlike childlike Lucy, I was intelligent and had excellent naming sense. Unless I revealed myself as the Impossible difficulty user first, no one would connect that account to me.

"Alright! Time to enter Floor 11?"

"Let's go!"

"Woof!"

"Ook!"

"Ah — you guys need to go into the subspace."

"Oook…"

For the elite Void Monkeys to enter the Tower with me, they had to ride in the subspace. I stuffed them into the remaining free slots — five elite Void Monkeys in total.

"No sub-objective? That's rare…"

There was only one situation where a floor had no sub-objective: when the main objective's difficulty was so abnormally high that completing it alone counted as a Perfect Clear.

"It was the same on Floor 5, when I was the boss."

"That's because you were that strong, Lucy."

"Heehee."

Granted, none of my boss stages had sub-objectives either — but that was because the bosses themselves were that powerful.

The Lucy who appeared on Floor 5 had been a boss mob you could barely survive without a holy relic. Floor 10 had produced a Basilisk, a monster that surpassed even the Doppelganger Lord. Both floors had been far more difficult than the rest.

So what exactly was waiting on Floor 11 that it didn't need a sub-objective?

"We'll just have to find out the hard way."

"Let's go! Fresh off a dopamine detox, this body will take care of everything!"

With this little information, even Transcendents wouldn't be able to guess much. I started Floor 11 immediately.

The Safe Zone vanished, and a ruined city appeared. A shattered fountain, rusted benches, trees and brush planted throughout — all of it said this place had once been a park.

"Doesn't look medieval… more like the industrial age, roughly?"

"Steampunk?! I saw that in the thirteen worldbuilding types I catalogued on HuntGal!"

The city around us was too developed for the Middle Ages, but the buildings were too short for anything modern.

"Haram, this looks like a dead city, but there are lights on?"

"Yeah. Some of the streetlamps are broken, but…"

Back on Earth it was still broad daylight, the sun high overhead. But the sky of Floor 11's world was painted black, stars glittering above. The city looked long abandoned — collapsed in places — yet the streetlamps along the park and roads still cast a faint glow, bathing the city in an eerie light.

"Anyway, let's check the area first."

"Woof!"

"Ook!"

The elite Void Monkeys emerged from the subspace and raised their bows and spears. At the same time, ten lightweight Void Dogs burst from the Void Pouches and scattered into the surroundings.

"I'll set up a Void Pond here first…"

Just as I was about to start constructing a Void Pond at the broken fountain—

Rustle!

The brush at the edge of the park shook.

"Something's—"

"Kyaaak!"

A middle-aged man came charging at us from beyond the brush.

"Whoa! A zombie?!"

"Doesn't quite look like a zombie, though?"

"Ook!"

The elite Void Monkeys pinned the charging man down.

"Oook…"

Three elite Void Monkeys piled onto him, but even their enormous arm strength couldn't hold him easily.

"No major wounds, and no sign of intelligence…"

I was calmly assessing the man's condition when—

Splash!

A green liquid came flying from somewhere and drenched an elite Void Monkey's upper body.

"Kiiiiiieek!!!"

The elite Void Monkey, soaked in green fluid, screamed and thrashed on the ground. The man broke free of the restraint and lunged at me.

"Kyaaak!"

"Strength over five hundred, senses under three hundred?"

I easily dodged his attacks while measuring his combat power. He was stronger than even a Void Dog with its body reinforced by mana. After trading a few blows and confirming nothing else unusual, I made my decision.

Slash.

I took his head off. An S-rank blade reinforced with over a thousand points of mana severed his neck like cutting tofu.

Thud.

The moment his head hit the ground—

Whoosh!

"Huh?!"

The man's body didn't stop. It kept charging straight at me.

Slash! Slash!

I immediately cut off his arms and legs. Even with all four limbs severed, the body kept twitching. Worse — something began growing from the stumps where the limbs and head had been cut.

I flipped the body over with my sword and examined it carefully, spotting a bulge protruding from the upper back.

Rip!

I sliced open the shirt he was wearing and found a red mushroom burrowed into his back.

"This is… a mushroom…?"

"Oookiii…"

"Huh? Whoosh, are you okay?!"

The elite Void Monkey that had been doused in green liquid earlier. I'd assumed the Legion's regeneration would handle it, but the attack was outpacing the healing — its movements were growing sluggish.

"You've got to be kidding me…"

A red mushroom was starting to sprout from the elite Void Monkey's back where the liquid had touched it.

"Stay alert!"

"Woof!"

The green liquid had come at a speed even I couldn't react to. That meant it was traveling at near-supersonic — or faster. I turned my gaze, searching for whatever had fired it, and then—

"…Huh?"

"Ha… Haram?"

"Woof! Woof! Grrraaawr!"

A city swallowed in darkness, broken only by sparse lamplight. From every shadowed street, countless people emerged and began closing in on us. The infected lifted the corpses of the lightweight Void Dogs that had just run out on recon, holding them high overhead.

"They got the Void Dogs…?"

Splash!

Green liquid streamed right in front of my face. I only realized an attack had come when the fluid splashed against a translucent barrier.

"Kieeek!"

From a nearby rooftop, something with unnaturally long limbs and a mouth torn open far too wide roared down at me. At a glance it resembled a human, but its entire body was stained a deep green. Green fluid dripped from its grotesquely oversized maw.

"Okay, this is just unfair."

"Kieeeeeek!!!"

Countless monsters charged straight at us.