Chapter 52: 12th and 13th Floors
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 52: 12th and 13th Floors
"For the bonus stats... I'll put them all into Strength!"
My defense... well, that'll go up naturally if I just keep pushing myself, and my Divine Power is unnecessarily high right now. Of course, Divine Power will become very important later on, but for now, it's not that useful.
Couldn't I just learn and spam magic?
You can't learn standard offensive magic with Divine Power.
It's the same reason someone who uses mana can't suddenly use the Heavenly Demon's Divine Art.
Unless it's through an item or an equipment skill, you can't use it even if you learn it.
Of course, there are offensive skills that use Divine Power, like Holy Arrow, but they're not powerful unless you level them up, and it's a waste of money to learn skills I won't even use later.
Therefore, I invested all 21 bonus stat points into Strength.
Strength: 93.6 → 135.6
My Strength had finally increased enough for me to act like a proper Awakened.
- She's strong as hell.
- What a cheat......
- It's weird how this feels normal now. Isn't this a level others can only dream of? lol
- I'm so dumbfounded I'm speechless. Her Strength is over 100...? On the 11th floor?
"The 12th floor... I'll clear it in 10 seconds and be right back. Just wait a moment!"
- She can do it in 10 seconds?
- Isn't that a place where you can get trapped for years...?
- No way, is she going to do that?
[The ordeal will now begin. The recommended number of participants is 4.]
"Start it for one person."
The 12th-floor ordeal is simple. You just have to break through a labyrinth.
[The ordeal will now begin.]
With a floating sensation, my body was transported into a dark labyrinth.
And the moment the ordeal began,
"Full Charge Over Speaaaar!!!!"
I slammed the skill right into the wall to my right from the starting point.
It was the special skill from Dojester's... no, Diana's Spear.
<Full Charge Over Spear>
After remaining stationary for 5 seconds to gather power, you can execute a single thrust with up to double your strength.
Cooldown: 1 hour.
I tensed my thighs, leveled the spear toward the right wall, and charged. Gathering all the strength in my body, I plunged the spear into the wall.
Boom!!
With a tremendous roar, the wall shattered. Through the scattering dust, I could see the final boss, the Minotaur, charging furiously toward me.
- ???
- Wait, she's actually breaking the wall?
- Wow... that's something you can't do even if you know about it...
- How much Strength does this bitch have?
Kuuuwoooooooh!!!!
It was an elite Minotaur, 1.5 times larger than the one I fought with Yoon Seong-gi on the 8th floor, armed with armor and a giant axe.
I lightly dodged its axe, slipped inside its guard, and thrust my spear, piercing the Minotaur's chest in a single blow.
The fearsome boss monster—the one that would almost certainly kill at least one member of a four-person party after they struggled all the way through the labyrinth—collapsed in an instant.
[You have cleared the ordeal. Clear time: 16 seconds. Your reward will be increased for solo play.]
The 12th floor was a place where the reward grade was determined by the clear time.
That's why, although the labyrinth's layout changed slightly, the difficulty, starting point, and end point never did.
And the end point was always just beyond the right wall from the start.
You might think this is a cheat, but it was as if The Tower itself was saying, "If you have enough strength to break through this wall, you don't need to suffer through this bullshit."
"I'll just get this reward and then pop home for a bit."
- Uh... isn't this supposed to be hard?
- Where's the Lee Do-hee falling into labyrinth traps?
- Isn't this basically hacking?
- 19 seconds is an S-rank reward, so with the solo bonus, is it SS again?
- I want to climb like that too...
[Please select your SS-rank reward.]
"What a sweet deal..."
Yeah, there should be trials you can breeze through like this every once in a while, right?
From the 12th floor onward, there's no specific theme for the rewards, except on special floors. You just get random rewards that make you think, "Something like this can drop?"
Traits, skills, secret manuals, equipment, elixirs—all sorts of strange things could appear.
Of course, you wouldn't get something completely incompatible.
A mana user wouldn't get a martial arts trait like the Heavenly Martial Body, which would be useless to them. Very rarely, something odd might appear, but in those cases, it would come in a tradable form like a skill book, secret manual, or weapon. At the very least, a minimum safety net was guaranteed.
"Alright!! Let's see what we get!!!"
Three cards floated in the air. The moment I received my reward was always the most exciting.
- Honestly, it's about time her luck ran out.
- Please be breast milk.
- Just pick one already.
- ?
- Pick one, you bitch!
- Show us!
As I hesitated slightly in the air, the viewers grew impatient.
"Okay! I'm picking!!"
Tadadak!
I flipped all three over at once.
'I wonder...?'
[Ting~]
[SS-rank Rapid-Fire Archer]
Greatly increases proficiency with bows, with a particularly significant boost to reloading speed.
"Eh... this one's not great."
Next card.
[Additional Bonus Stats: 5]
"This one... is insurance. Not bad. It's nice to get one of these every now and then."
A choice that's known as "insurance."
If the other options were meaningless or trash, this was better than the alternatives. That's why rewards like bonus stats or skill enhancement tickets were usually called insurance.
And the last card was...
[SS-rank Nutrient-rich Breast Milk]
You develop a constitution that produces a large amount of breast milk.
A child raised on the breast milk of a woman with this trait will grow up to be very healthy and strong.
"......Hah!"
'What is this...'
Dumbfounded, I let out a dry laugh and read it again. No matter how I looked at it, it was a perverted trait.
- lolololol
- Huh? It's really breast milk!!!!
- You're used to this stuff by now, right?
- The Tower administrators definitely enjoy sexual harassment.
- Do-hee, am I the only one who thinks that's actually pretty good?
- You should sell your breast milk to make money, Do-hee.
- This will probably get a Lewd Power bonus too.
- Seriously, if she sells her breast milk, she'll make a fortune, right? Parents would probably pay a high price for it.
"Eh... still, that's a bit... Even though I've, uh, had relations, I'm not even pregnant... Isn't it weird for me to produce milk? The first one might be useful later, but if I pick every little thing just in case, I'll end up a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I'll just take the bonus stats."
I received 5 bonus stats for the SS-rank clear, and another 5 from the additional reward choice.
Bonus Stats: 10
"I'll just put these into Strength, too."
Strength: 135.6 → 155.6
After dumping all my stats into Strength, I briefly left The Tower.
My outfit was quite embarrassing, but it was better than being naked, and I was used to these kinds of stares by now.
Before the reporters could swarm me, I ran home quickly and turned on my computer.
"Phew... I'm just going to do a little shopping!"
First, I withdrew the money I'd received from donations on Pantheon TV and checked my balance.
[Tower Bank Remaining Balance: 1,154,454,500 won]
'1.1 billion? That's not as much as I thought.'
Even if I was making money while being sexually harassed, there was a limit.
Humans are creatures of adaptation. At first, people got a dopamine rush from watching me get raped and donated a lot, but as they kept watching, they were bound to get used to it and bored.
Of course, it was too early to say they were bored, but the growth rate had definitely slowed down a bit compared to before.
Still, I was grateful for this much.
"Thank you, everyone. I'm going to spend all this money right now!"
- You're going to spend it all?
- She's reinvesting all of it? lol
- See, I told you she's a Tower-addict.
- It's actually amazing how she's transparently sharing her bank balance.
- Do-hee, aren't you going to pay off your debt?
"The debt... I'll pay it back later when I have a bit more breathing room!"
I logged into the Hunter Market for the first time in a while.
On the side, I pulled up the <Growth Research Board> on my fan cafe to compare prices.
"Thank you so much to the person who posted this. It's... Dotamuk, right? I'll make good use of it."
- She's gonna make good use of Dotamuk....
- Change your username lol
- His dream is to fuck her, after all~
- But why is she suddenly shopping?
"Right now, I can still force my way through. But starting from the 15th floor, it might be a little difficult on my own. I'll buy what I need now, and then come back to re-equip after I pass the 15th floor!"
On the 15th floor, a new item slot opens up, as it does every five floors.
Not only that, but if I don't consume them now, many elixirs will become unusable later due to stat restrictions. I needed to consume these things quickly whenever I had the money.
After about an hour of shopping, I ran back to The Tower without any warning.
I grabbed a quick meal of kimbap sold inside The Tower and, without any delay, challenged the 13th floor.
"Here I go."
Swoosh!
[The 13th-floor ordeal will now begin.]
Once again, I was alone.
I felt a floating sensation and opened my eyes to a new scene.
Before me was a dense forest of trees.
Faint streams of light filtered through the leaves fluttering in the wind.
And...
A shuriken flying right at my face!
Shuk!
I tilted my head to the side to dodge it and swung my spear rapidly through the empty air.
Splat!!
Something seemed to be sliced in mid-air, and blood splattered everywhere.
"Starting with this bullshit, are we?"
With dull thuds, the bodies of three people dressed in black fell from the sky.
The theme of the 13th-floor ordeal was escape.
The mission was to flee from a constantly pursuing squad of assassins to a target destination.
"But there's no need for that, is there? I'll just go kill them all!!"
I could see assassins taking positions among the trees in the dense forest.
Black masks, black clothes.
Their metal weapons glinted in the light that trickled through the leaves.
Since their vanguard had died so anticlimactically, they didn't charge in, instead circling me and watching for an opening.
"Hah, they're just like gnats."
I didn't have the patience to wait for them.
Paang!
I kicked off the ground and leaped.
Spotting one of the assassins flitting about in the treetops, I thrust my spear into his heart.
And in that instant,
I felt killing intent from all directions.
As if they had been waiting for this very moment, the assassins emerged in unison, throwing all kinds of hidden weapons—throwing stars, shuriken, daggers, poison needles.
'You're the ones who are trapped.'
Kicking the assassin with the spear in his chest away, I used the recoil to change direction in mid-air and pounced on them instead.
I closed the distance, parrying or dodging the incoming projectiles as best I could, narrowing the space between myself and the assassins.
Normally, once a person is in the air, it's difficult to change their direction or posture.
But I was a little different.
Without hesitation, I brandished my spear freely even in mid-air. With every flash of my weapon, assassins fell like autumn leaves with short, dying screams.
Using the falling corpses and the attacking assassins as footholds, I moved smoothly, as if performing a circus act in mid-air.
It was the same when I fought the Deputy Warden in the 11th-floor detention center; three-dimensional combat—moving through the air and creating footholds out of nothing—was my specialty.
One thrust of the spear, one assassin.
They couldn't even retreat in the air.
They were hunted by me.
Thud...!
After a short aerial battle of about ten seconds, I landed safely on the ground.
And at the same time,
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!!!
The corpses of the assassins and their severed limbs rained down in a shower of blood.
'Now... I feel like it's slowly coming back...'
It felt like this frustratingly weak body was finally starting to pull its weight.
Still, I must have overdone it a little, as I clenched my slightly trembling hands.
The sense of omnipotence from my past life, when I felt I could do anything, came flooding back.
Although I was caught off guard by a surprise attack in my last life, in this life, I would become so strong that I could repel any ambush.
"Phew... this isn't the end, is it? I don't know what kind of assassin group this is, but I'll go and crush them all."
The Hidden Ending of the 13th floor.
It ends when you find the assassin group that tried to kill you and wipe them all out.
For the True Ending, you have to uncover the reason you're being chased and clear your name, but that requires brains, deduction, eloquence, and the ability to rally others rather than strength, so it takes too long.
I was just going to cleanly get the Hidden Ending and get out.
Seeing as the assassins weren't special martial artists or ability users, the base difficulty of the ordeal was B-rank.
If I secured the solo play bonus and the Hidden Ending bonus, I could still get an S-rank reward.
Fshuuuung!!
I saw a red signal flare go up nearby.
It was probably a signal that the vanguard had failed.
"Oh, I guess I should head over there."
I took off running, like a predator that had just spotted its prey.