Chapter 513: The Crossroads of Life and Death
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 513: The Crossroads of Life and Death
The moment I met the Tower Lord's gaze, filled with contempt, disgust, and killing intent, only one thought crossed my mind.
‘I’m fucked.’
Cold sweat poured down my spine like a waterfall, but I forced myself to act as if nothing was wrong.
If I showed any sign of panic in this situation, it would be a dead giveaway.
‘...Calm down. They say you can survive being dragged away by a dragon as long as you keep your wits about you.’
I took a slow, deep breath.
The threat, like a cold blade held to my throat, set off alarm bells, but there’s always a way out, even if the sky is falling.
I had a response prepared for just such a moment.
“Ahem, I believe you’ve misunderstood something, Tower Lord.”
“Misunderstood?”
The Tower Lord snorted, glaring at me with icy eyes.
As if daring me to talk my way out of this.
Knowing this was a critical juncture, I continued nonchalantly.
“It’s not like I’m a goblin in heat. Would I dare get an erection in your workshop, Tower Lord?”
“So, you’re saying you weren’t?”
“Yes. It’s embarrassing to say this, but... the truth is, I’m on the larger side. What you saw, Tower Lord, was strictly my pre-erection size.”
“...What?”
For the first time, a flicker of bewilderment crossed the Tower Lord’s eyes. At the same time, her gaze briefly lingered on my crotch.
She might have been surprised by the blunt word ‘erection,’ but she seemed more taken aback by the fact that what she’d seen was my pre-erection size.
But it was only for a moment; her gaze turned murderous again.
“...Don’t bullshit me. I’m certain it wasn’t that big yesterday.”
“Of course it wasn’t. There isn’t enough room to store it in my underwear, so I usually tuck it to the side. But how would you know I didn’t do that yesterday...?”
“...”
Faced with my sly defense and a counterattack that zeroed in on the key point with AI-like precision, the Tower Lord could only remain silent.
The moment I saw that, I was certain I had escaped the threat of death.
Moreover, the thought that I’d even gained the upper hand against the Tower Lord almost made the corners of my mouth curl up.
‘Act natural. It’s not completely over yet.’
One wrong move and the situation could turn dangerous at any moment.
“If you find it hard to believe, I can show you directl—I’m sorry.”
Just as I was about to bluff, grabbing for my belt, I met the Tower Lord’s murderous glare and immediately shut my mouth.
One more word, and I might be found as a corpse by the lake the next day.
A strange silence settled over the workshop.
After a while of tapping her fingers on her arm and sipping her black tea, lost in thought, the Tower Lord slowly spoke.
“...It seems I misunderstood, just as you said. I formally apologize.”
“It’s alright. All that matters is that the misunderstanding is cleared up.”
Truthfully, she didn’t look like she genuinely believed me.
But it wasn’t as if she could ask me to drop my pants right here, so the nuance was that she would let it go for now.
‘Well... it should be fine. It’s not like I was lying.’
My dick did react on its own to the fact that the Tower Lord’s weakness was her ass, but it wasn’t a full-blown erection.
While I was trying to suppress a smile, the Tower Lord took out a familiar wooden box from her clothes.
“Is that the pill from yesterday?”
“No, it’s a prototype we scrapped during development. There were a few left in the workshop.”
“A prototype...?”
“There are some minor differences, but you can think of it as having roughly twice the effect.”
“Oh.”
“However, it does have a minor flaw where the side effects are quadrupled.”
“...?”
The Tower Lord pushed the wooden box toward me.
“Take it.”
“...??”
“I didn’t originally plan on bringing this out, but considering your performance yesterday, I think I can have some expectations.”
“...”
Four times the side effects meant the probability of dying also went up fourfold.
Thanks to that, the pill before me started to look like poison.
“...Tower Lord, I’d like to confess my wrongdoing and beg for forgiveness now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The Tower Lord feigned ignorance without a change in her expression.
Just as I had done a moment ago.
“There’s no need to worry too much. Even quite promising mages have been living as vegetables after taking this pill, but you were fine, aside from the physical exhaustion, weren’t you?”
“...That was my limit, though.”
“Stop whining. That pill was originally created with the premise that I would intervene within thirty minutes of it being taken. But you endured on your own for nearly half a day and even expanded your cognitive space within the astral plane. Among all the mages in the world, you can count the number of people who can do that on two hands.”
I wondered for a moment why she was giving me such uncharacteristic praise, but I soon realized her words were bait cast by a fisherman.
How did I know?
‘The Tower Lord would never praise me out of pure goodwill.’
Nevertheless, just as the saying goes that praise can make even a whale dance, the praise from the absurdly beautiful woman sitting across from me began to sway my heart.
‘...It’s not just anyone, but an archmage watching over me. Isn’t it worth a try?’
The mages who became wrecks after taking the pill so far were broken in an instant, before the Tower Lord even had a chance to intervene, but I was different.
Just yesterday, hadn’t I endured for nearly half a day, just as she said?
‘Right, if I was going to give up, I should have run away long ago. It would be stranger to refuse an opportunity like this now.’
Hoo—
I calmly collected my breath, then reached out and picked up the pill.
I started to feel a little nervous.
But at the same time, I was also filled with anticipation.
Because I thought that today, I might be able to achieve what I couldn’t yesterday when I hit my limit.
Gulp.
“Um, Tower Lord...? I don’t really feel anything. Is something wro—?!!!”
Thump!!
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
My consciousness faded.
My soul was separated from my body with the unpleasant sensation of being forcibly pulled out by someone.
-!!!!
Shooting up through the building at an incredible speed, I reached the stratosphere in the blink of an eye.
A sense of crisis washed over me; at this rate, instead of entering the astral plane, I might be dragged to the underworld.
‘I have to... st-stop...!!’
I tried to resist the unknown force grabbing me by the collar, but I realized too late that I couldn’t use magic power or internal energy in my soul state.
You make do with what you’ve got, as they say.
I tried to endure somehow with my superhuman mental strength, but instead of slowing down, I only got faster.
‘The effect isn’t just twice as strong...!!’
It felt like it was easily more than ten times stronger.
For a moment, I thought the Tower Lord had lied to assassinate me, and I hurriedly opened the dating app.
Tiring—
[Would you like to rematch with Cheon Yeo-hwa?]
[Y/N]
Just as I was about to try and escape this situation through a match—
A screen popped up on its own, shimmering in the corner of my vision.
[You have acquired the skill, ‘True Word’.]
‘...What is this?’
It was the notification I’d checked two days ago.
Why on earth did it reappear in a situation like this?
In the flow of time that began to slow down even though I hadn't used Thought Acceleration, the memory of when I first obtained that skill in the tower flashed through my mind.
Unlike other skills and traits, where you learn how to use them the moment you acquire them, ‘True Word’ was not like that.
No matter how much I wracked my brain, I couldn’t even get a hint of how to use it.
Out of frustration, I asked the ‘Dancing Destroyer’ several times, but all I got back was silence.
As if telling me to figure it out on my own.
Staring at the screen before me, I instinctively reached out into the empty air as if possessed.
Just as I was slowly getting closer to the moon than to Earth,
Thump—
My vision expanded as if to encompass the entire vast universe, and the sensation of my mana circle, dantian, and the ‘soul’ beyond them amplifying uncontrollably filled my entire being.
A detailed explanation was impossible.
It was truly the unknown.
But I could declare this one thing with certainty.
—The skill and my soul were resonating.
Amidst this strange phenomenon that was impossible to describe with words, I murmured softly.
[Stop.]
-!!!!
It wasn’t a voice simply conveyed through my vocal cords.
The moment the resonance of my soul itself spread through all of space like a vibration, I was finally able to stop my ascent.
But even so, the unknown force was still struggling to drag me away.
Just a moment ago, it had been an overwhelming power that was impossible to even resist.
But now, it felt like a child tugging at my clothes, whining to play.
[Disappear.]
At that single, softly resonating word, the pressure of the force holding me evaporated completely, like a goblin at dawn.
And then, an extreme sense of exhaustion washed over me.
‘Gasp, gasp, gasp...!!’
I collapsed in space, clutching at my intangible chest.
I had been pushed to the brink of exhaustion yesterday too, but this was on a completely different level.
This wasn’t simple physical depletion.
It felt as if my very soul was about to scatter like dandelion seeds.
‘It’s not just the backlash from using True Word...!’
Was it because using True Word while under the effects of the prototype pill allowed me to feel the contours of my soul more clearly?
I instinctively realized two things.
One, that this space, which looked like outer space, was slowly eating away at my soul.
The other was that this place was the path to hell—
In other words, the road to the underworld.
This was just my speculation, but the force that had been trying to drag me away was the powerful gravitational pull created by the underworld.
It went without saying, but I had to escape this place as quickly as possible.
If I stayed, there was no telling what might happen.
I shouted with all my might.
[Fall.]
-!!!!
The moment I did, my body began to hurtle toward Earth at an incredible speed.
It was a speed approaching the sound barrier.
Chills—!
‘?!!!!’
But there was ‘something’ behind me, chasing me at that speed.
It was an instinctual certainty.
Suppressing the urge to look back, I broke through the stratosphere and returned to the White Magic Tower. I pushed my soul back into my unconscious body, which stood there soulless.
Then, without hesitation, I threw myself into the other universe that existed beyond my physical body.
Splash—!
*
“Haa... I really thought I was going to die.”
Sprawled in the middle of a desolate planet reminiscent of Mars, I let out a sigh of relief.
It was still a vast, lifeless space, and it was still after my life, but for some reason, I felt this place was cozy.
If I had to make an analogy, it was like the difference between being at home and being abroad.
If you get lost in Korea, you can still communicate, but you can’t in a foreign country.
It was obvious which situation would be more confusing.
Deciding it was something like that, I pushed myself up.
‘Was it ‘a blessing in disguise’?’
I almost departed this life, but thanks to that, I learned a tiny bit about how to use True Word.
‘Of course, it’s only at the level of knowing whether the accelerator is on the left or the right...’
But for now, that was enough.
Taking a slow, deep breath and closing my eyes, I commanded the planets scattered haphazardly across the vast astral plane.
[Move.]
Rumble—
The time had come to seriously aim for the 6th Circle.