Chapter 178: [Tower of Lust, 44th Floor] My Friend's Mom Is a Villainess Executive
"Enough!"
"You are, at best, human — a tiny, frail little creature!"
"You are no match for the great Omankoros!"
"But if such a lowly thing still wishes to challenge me, the Queen—"
"then climb to the fiftieth floor and face me openly!"
"That is, of course, if you can cut your way through my army and make it that far!"
"Ohohohoho!!!"
With those parting words, the Queen — Omankoros or whoever she was supposed to be — vanished.
Time-worn gray clouds stretched out endlessly overhead, and we stared up at them, our minds blank.
Ian especially couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry, her lips quivering violently.
"Mom… I finally found her, and…"
"…Yeah. Yeah."
"After everything… I pushed myself so hard… built the guild up until we could actually come rescue her…"
"………"
"Oh dear… and she's made an absolute fool of herself…"
"Th-that was… really rough on you, huh."
"Huaaaah~! What the hell am I even supposed to do about this!!!"
She crouched down and curled into herself, weeping, wailing, and laughing bitterly all at once.
She must have needed time to sort out her feelings, because she carried on like that for a while. I did my best to comfort her, we took a short break, and then we set off again — the air between us excruciatingly awkward.
[Tower of Lust, 43rd Floor]
"AAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
About ten minutes after that.
"Designate! Fifty [Fireball (E)]s! Fifty [Ice Spear (D)]s!!"
"Fire—! Fire—! Fire—!"
Along with the Great Witch Ian's deafening roar, hell itself descended upon the battlefield.
The dance of flame and ice frolicking across the sky wrecked everything in sight and redrew the terrain altogether.
Desperate to vent the stress knotted up inside her, she was taking it all out on the poor, defenseless lust demons and their bases.
These demons were supposed to be the enemy, but for the moment they had transformed into the victims.
"Hiiiyaaah!!!"
"The Great Witch is here!"
"Everybody retreaaat!!"
"Urk!?"
"S-spare me! Beams are pouring down!"
"The guy's no better!"
"A couple of certified lunatics is coming!!!!"
While fire and ice fell like a downpour from the heavens, I took the ridgeline instead, unleashing my eyeball beams.
All I had to do was sweep my head from side to side as I fired, and anything my gaze crossed dropped dead on the spot — it was about as easy as auto-hunting gets.
"Why is that guy shooting beams out of his eyeeees~~!?"
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!!!!"
"Look at this! You think those two are the type to answer just because you asked~!?"
"Run awaaaay!!"
"Aaaah! Beams incoming!!!"
"You tell us to run — run WHERE!? The base is already half-gone!"
"Fire and ice above, beams below — we're being torn in half, I'm telling youuuu!!!!"
Ian handled the area attacks with skills; I handled the line attacks with beams. Neither of us had planned it, but we'd split the workload perfectly.
Between the thunderclaps, I could hear the lust demons' cries of despair, and honestly? It felt pretty damn good.
Her stress seemed to drain away along with them, too — she stopped screaming and finally broke into loud laughter.
"H-hahahaha, ahahahaha!!! Changki, you really do shoot beams out of your eyes~! That's fucking hilarious~!"
"Human potential knows no bounds. You can fly even without wings if you set your mind to it, and with enough effort, even a human can fire beams."
"Coming from the one guy who can actually do it, that's infuriatingly convincing~!!"
And even while cackling like that, Ian kept hurling fireballs and ice boulders without restraint, staying in perfect sync with me.
With lights of every color flashing all over the place, this looked less like a battlefield and more like a disco.
"Now I understand ve~ry clearly why you called me here."
The former world Rank 1, 【Hundred Eyes】 Lee Soyeon, was on the fiftieth floor of the Tower — brainwashed, no less.
From the looks of it, she'd been planted at the fiftieth-floor Gate and turned into some kind of boss gimmick.
Which was why Ian, her own daughter and unable to bear showing anyone that disgraceful state of hers, had come to me for help.
"Am I the only one who feels like that wasn't just ordinary brainwashing?"
"I think so too. Probably the Tower's doing. Last time, the fiftieth floor was where we ended things, so I'd bet it deliberately reworked the gimmick with that in mind."
"So our objective is to reach the fiftieth-floor Gate and do something about the former Rank 1 hunter, Lee Soyeon?"
"Probably. And the opponent is my mom? No ordinary hunter could handle her. I know it's the fiftieth-floor Gate and all, but the difficulty is just plain vicious."
Well, she was Rank 1, after all.
Worldwide rankings, at that.
But given every bizarre gimmick this Tower had thrown at us so far, a Rank 1 who'd actually fight you head-on almost felt like an upgrade.
When a dungeon is this underhanded, the world's strongest hunter turning against you barely qualifies as a surprise.
"Oh, right — Ian. There's something I've been curious about for a while now. Mind if I ask?"
"Before we talk — you can fly, right?"
"You saw as much earlier, didn't you?"
"Then let's talk while we fly. From the looks of it, this floor's more or less cleared out."
She held out her palm.
"Designate. One [Witch's Broom (D)]."
She settled her rear onto the broom her skill conjured and floated straight up into the air, true to the word.
Looking every inch the Witch her title promised, she recited once more.
"Designate. One [Wind Blaster (D)]."
A gust generated at the broom's tail became thrust, propelling her and the broom forward.
To give chase, I crouched as low as I could, then sprang upward like a released coil, expelling my aura.
There we go. Aura flight: success.
Blasting the aura wrapped around my whole body out behind me, I flew like Superman.
That made flight attempt number two. Having gotten the hang of it, my aura consumption had dropped considerably, and Ian caught up to me in no time.
"So that really is how you fly. Can you keep up with the aura drain? What if you fall out of the sky?"
"Believe it or not, I haven't even burned through five percent."
"You really are a monster…"
But there was something I wanted to hear about more than boasts.
When I threw her a look mid-flight, the Witch hurled herself toward the pillar of light at the edge of the map, loading up skills as she went.
[Tower of Lust, 44th Floor]
We began the bombardment the moment we arrived.
Ian and I tore across the sky — me carving up the ground with eyeball beams, the Great Witch beside me drowning it in fire and ice, flattening everything into a wasteland.
However they had prepared for this, the enemy opened up with anti-air fire, but no amount of pink beam blasts could dampen our aura.
"…So what was it you wanted to ask?"
"How a mother-daughter pair like you two ended up as hunters. Hunter families are rare enough as it is, but a mother and her daughter?"
"Huh? That's a way too personal question. Don't tell me you're after me too~?"
She grinned slyly.
I answered that cat-that-got-the-cream attitude in kind.
"Says the one who was shrieking over her own mother's pathetic state until just a minute ago."
"Exactly. Which is my point. You, putting your hands on girls who aren't sound of mind and drawing them into your arms — that's a genuinely nasty habit of yours~?"
"Anyone hearing that would get the wrong idea. When have I ever done anything to deserve a misunderstanding like that?"
"You pulled exactly that on Auntie Jita at that drinking party a while back."
"………"
Did I… do that?
Now that I thought about it, I might have said something awfully similar to Nayami earlier today, too…
But her parents are deceased, so what's wrong with suggesting we visit their grave together?
Who knows.
From where I stood, I'd done my absolute best — but apparently that's not how it read to everyone else.
"Why that face? Don't tell me — you've been pulling the same stunt on other people besides Auntie Jita?"
"Beats me, man."
"If you don't know, who would?"
"It's not like I do it on purpose — how am I supposed to know?"
"A lecher from birth, huh. Good grief."
Ian looked at me the way you'd look at a sex-crazed lunatic.
But even that look didn't last long.
She tittered — uhehe — and pulled up alongside me, flying wing to wing.
"But relax~! I know you're not the kind of trash who screws helpless women and struts around about it, so I'll take that into consideration~!"
"No clue why I have to hear that from you, but… sure. Real grateful here."
I scattered some beams across the ground myself, part contribution, part stress relief.
The lust demons fled shrieking, and the frontline base on the forty-fourth floor was obliterated in the blink of an eye.
"So what you're curious about is why my mom and I became hunters in the first place, yeah?"
"If it's something hard to talk about, I can pretend I never asked."
"Why so curious? Because a mother and daughter are both top rankers~?"
"She's someone I'm about to help rescue, for one. Knowing her background might come in handy somewhere down the line. There's nothing else to it, so you can drop that worry right now."
"I know full well you're not the type who'd go after my mom."
Ian giggled, then spilled her heart out as casually as if she were making small talk.
"Our situation's nothing special. You've probably figured it out already — you've never once heard me talk about my birth father, right?"
Birth father.
Not Dad, not even Father — the most distant word she could possibly have chosen.
One word was all it took to get the picture.
"So — a divorced family?"
"Yeah. It's not like divorced households are rare in Korea, or anything worth making a fuss over."
It seemed like a topic she hadn't wanted to open, but with the floodgate now broken, her grievances came pouring out.
"I told you before, right? My mom is a genuinely foolish person. She doesn't know how to turn down the men who come flocking because it feels nice. She's missing some crucial piece of what makes a person a person — enough that she'll warmly welcome the kind of lunatics who groom her own daughter and then throw themselves at her trying to become her husband."
Fifty [Fireball (E)]s!
Fifty [Fireball (E)]s!
Fifty [Fireball (E)]s!
She kept loading skills even in the middle of her story.
"On the other hand, the man who was biologically my father was garbage. A gambling addict and a drunk. My sweet-natured mom stood behind that man anyway, propping him up and playing the devoted wife. She even worked part-time jobs on the excuse of 'helping cover his gambling money' — and did all the housework on top of that, mind you."
Everything around us went up in flames.
Every time she spoke, Ian's voice climbed higher, and the devastation dealt to our surroundings grew worse.
"But what good did all that earning do~? He blew every cent on gambling, bullied her into handing over money for his booze, and when I got my first period, the insane bastard even screamed at me to go make money selling my body if that's what it took! Thank god I stepped in — if things had gone even a little differently, my mom might have ended up standing hollow-eyed somewhere out on the streets at night!"
Even just listening, my blood boiled. This was fury I could sympathize with.
The world is wide and full of trash beyond imagining, but that guy was something else entirely.
"This'll run long, so I'll skip the middle parts and get to the point. I ran away with my mom to the Tower. Even in the middle of all that, she kept defending that man, which drove me up the wall, but once I explained what he'd tried to do to me, she finally had no choice but to accept it."
"But why the Tower of all places? Isn't that way too dangerous for women?"
"I know. I'm well aware that a mother-daughter hunter duo is practically suicide. But we had no choice. The debt that man left behind made life in the outside world impossible. There were other circumstances I can't talk about with other people, too. So the two of us climbed the Tower out of sheer necessity, got lucky with skills, and made it big."
Circumstances she couldn't share with others, huh.
It seemed like the kind of thing that could get dangerous if I pried too deep, so I didn't ask.
Just then, a new pillar of light appeared, opening the way to the next floor — and out of nowhere, Ian said this:
"Maybe it started around then? My mom became unnaturally weak when it came to men. Back when my father was still around, she at least knew to turn a man down once he learned she was married… but now she tries to say yes to every man who shows her the slightest interest…"
That explanation never got to run its course — we were already moving on to the next floor.
Floor 45 now.
Call it the Rank 1 effect — this had turned into a speedrun for the record books.