The Greatest Machinery
The Street of Murder, residential district.
The streets at dawn were shrouded in silence.
Two players walked while conversing.
“Are you sure it’s okay to go this way?”
“I told you, it’s fine. No signs of them for three whole days.”
“Still, the clocktower feels risky. That area’s beastman territory.”
“What’s there to worry about? I already graduated from there.”
“The tiger might be gone, but the fox and wolf are still around.”
“Then what do you want to do? Other players have the main paths completely blocked. You wanna hand over all your gear and crawl past them? One wrong move and you’re dead.”
“Even so…”
“Even so, my ass! The only decent farming spot left is over there. If we keep wandering around like this, the level gap will just get us killed. You know that, right?”
He wasn’t wrong.
They had fallen behind in growth because they failed to secure any early farming opportunities after running into enemies right at the start.
The player named Dante scratched his head irritably.
“Ah, I see it. The clocktower.”
“Shh. Keep your voice down.”
“Why bother lowering my voice? The moment we stepped in here, we were dead if those guys were still around.”
“There could be other players besides them, you idiot.”
At Ansu Party’s words, Dante fell silent.
Soon after, Dante’s eyebrows twitched as he stared at the clocktower.
“Hey, look at that.”
“What? Did you find something?”
“No, well… the clock up there.”
“The clock? Why?”
“Isn’t it stopped? The hands are in the exact same position as last time I saw it.”
“The clock stopped?”
Ansu Party glanced up at the clock atop the tower, then shook his head.
“What does that have to do with us? Let’s just farm the area before someone else beats us to it.”
At that moment, Dante suddenly shouted.
“Hey! Hey! Your body—your body!”
“My body? What about it?”
Ansu Party looked down at himself.
And immediately recoiled in shock.
“Shit! What the hell is this?!”
Whoosh.
His body had burst into flames.
Ansu Party frantically patted himself down in panic.
Fire clung to his arms as well.
“What is this?! Dante! Help me!”
“Ansu Party, are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?! What are you doing?! Help me already!”
Dante’s face turned deathly pale as he watched Ansu Party’s entire body burn without him showing any sign of pain.
“Foxfire…”
“What?”
“That’s foxfire, isn’t it?”
Ansu Party’s face also went white as he finally realized the situation.
“I… I need to… Urgh!”
Ansu Party collapsed as his legs burned away completely.
“Dante, Dante! Take me with you. I can’t feel my legs.”
“Damn it! What graduation?!”
Dante sprinted in the opposite direction of the clocktower.
Or at least, he thought he did.
Slash.
In an instant, the city flipped upside down.
“Guhk.”
Of course, the city hadn’t actually flipped.
Dante’s head, severed by Valkar’s cleaver, simply rolled across the ground.
Crunch.
Dante tried to beg for his life without even understanding what had happened, but no sound came out.
“Guh… guhk…”
Then a woman’s voice reached Dante’s ears.
“Valkar! The door’s open!”
Door?
Words Dante couldn’t comprehend.
Valkar let out a roar.
“GRAAAAAARGH!”
At the same time, Valkar’s foot came down. Thud. Dante’s head was crushed.
“Time for revenge!”
Valkar’s eyes burned like flames.
* * *
Click-click-click! Click-click-click!
BOOM!
Breaking through the madly ringing sound of the mainspring, Yoon Taeyang burst out of the clocktower.
-Escape!
-Finally, that was so damn tedious.
-Yoon Taeyang! Yoon Taeyang! Yoon Taeyang! Yoon Taeyang!
“How long has it been since I last saw sunlight.”
Yoon Taeyang squinted as he welcomed the sunlight.
While the inside of the clocktower wasn’t completely without light, it had been very dim.
Stepping out of the dark, damp clocktower brought a sense of liberation, even though he hadn’t truly been trapped.
Control has been transferred.
Red and blue lights descend upon player Yoon Taeyang simultaneously.
“Whew. Good timing on the shift too.”
Yoon Taeyang’s appearance had changed noticeably after exiting the clocktower.
He wore a fairly decent set of leather armor, new boots, and gloves.
The only thing unchanged was Aksharon’s shed skin worn beneath the leather armor.
Though it was a hidden stage, the clocktower was still a building.
Even excluding artifacts, he had managed to farm a decent amount of supplies.
‘The amount of supplies that respawn per building is fixed, so it wasn’t a groundbreaking power boost, but it was still pretty worthwhile.’
Yoon Taeyang checked the presence of the pocket watch in his inner pocket with his body while scanning the surroundings.
As expected, he was preparing for a beastman ambush.
Since his trail ended at the clocktower, there was a high chance they were waiting for him nearby.
It was also possible they had given up and moved on to the next stage after so much time had passed.
‘If they were that type, they wouldn’t have such a bad reputation among players.’
From a human perspective, beastmen were a race that ignored favors but repaid grudges tenfold.
GRAAAAAARGH!
A distant roar.
“See? I told you they were around.”
Yoon Taeyang immediately dashed toward the sound.
Two beastmen.
Though the wolf and fox were inferior to the tiger, fighting two at once would clearly be difficult. Yet Yoon Taeyang showed no hesitation.
Once he committed to running seriously, the surrounding buildings blurred past in an instant.
“YOU BASTAAAAAARD!”
The wolf beastman screamed from the opposite side.
“Kid, that’s loud.”
Yoon Taeyang suddenly twisted his body mid-run.
Fwoosh!
A pure white flame suddenly erupted in the air.
The fox beastman’s signature move—foxfire.
Foxfire had a brief precursor that made the area opaque before interfering with reality.
While the precursor was short and hard to detect, it was more than enough for a player of Yoon Taeyang’s caliber to dodge when focused.
“Learned a thing or two inside the clocktower.”
The fox beastman excelled in sorcery including foxfire, while the wolf beastman specialized in close combat, swordsmanship, and tracking.
“Now, where are you, little fox.”
In PVP, when facing a warrior and a mage, the standard was to kill the mage first.
The fox beastman was closer to a Taoist than a mage, but whatever.
Grrrrr.
“I am Valkar! I shall slay you and offer your flesh and bones to comfort Mute’s soul!”
Valkar drew the cleaver from his back and roared.
Yoon Taeyang’s eyes sparkled.
Red light had descended upon Valkar’s body.
“Good timing, good positioning too.”
-The fox is definitely nearby too! Don’t forget to take her out first!
“I know!”
Foxfire and illusions.
Leaving the fox beastman alone would double the difficulty of the fight.
Yoon Taeyang dodged Valkar’s ferocious strike and launched himself forward, focusing his senses.
Whoosh.
Valkar’s cleaver grazed past Yoon Taeyang by a hair’s breadth.
Normally he would have closed in for a counterattack, but Yoon Taeyang didn’t.
Yoon Taeyang’s chest area turned opaque.
Confirming the precursor, Yoon Taeyang threw himself backward and looked toward the building on his left.
‘There.’
Yoon Taeyang’s mana perception pointed exactly in that direction.
“Coward! Are you running away?!”
“You’re fighting two-on-one and calling me a coward? Got no shame?”
“GRAAAAARGH!”
Thud.
Yoon Taeyang blatantly showed his back and leaped through a window into the building.
Crash!
“KYAAAAH!”
His senses hadn’t been wrong.
The fox beastman Arin reacted instantly and thrust her dagger forward.
A split-second ambush that left Yoon Taeyang no time to check his surroundings.
“Whoops.”
Yoon Taeyang acrobatically twisted his body and grabbed Arin’s wrist as she aimed for his neck.
“Where do you think you’re touching, you disgusting bastard!”
Bang!
In an instant, Arin transformed into a massive giant and flung Yoon Taeyang away with her enhanced strength.
Immediately after, Valkar also entered through the window Yoon Taeyang had come through.
In front: the transformed fox beastman Arin.
Behind: the cleaver-wielding wolf beastman Valkar.
Despite being in a tougher situation than when facing the tiger beastman Mute, Yoon Taeyang’s expression remained calm.
Grasping the pocket watch, Yoon Taeyang muttered.
Fast-forward.
Click-click-click-click-click!
The hands of the pocket watch began spinning rapidly.
The mainspring of The Greatest Machinery is being wound rapidly. (Cooldown: 12 hours)
Player Yoon Taeyang is granted the Fast-Forward Stage 1 buff.
Stage 1.
All physical activities proceed three times faster.
Duration: 1 minute.
“Not bad.”
Fast-forward had five stages, each with different speed multipliers and durations.
For example, Stage 2 accelerated things sixfold but only lasted 30 seconds.
Stage 3 accelerated things twelvefold but only lasted 15 seconds.
Since this was his first time using the skill, he had set it to Stage 1.
If it had been six times or twelve times faster, adapting would have been difficult.
Yoon Taeyang grinned.
Thud.
Yoon Taeyang’s figure shot forward.
Arin predicted his trajectory and laid down foxfire.
The path instantly became opaque, but Yoon Taeyang didn’t stop.
‘I’ll break through with speed.’
Three times.
He had thought it sounded low when he heard the description, but the effect was far more tremendous than imagined.
Enough that he thought he would have struggled with control if it had been Stage 2 or higher.
Fwoooooosh!
“Crazy!”
The giant-transformed Arin screamed in a high-pitched voice, startled.
It was surprising. The speed was absurd.
Yoon Taeyang closed the distance to Arin in an instant and stomped down. Bang. He executed the Transcendental Jin-gak.
Crackle-crackle-crackle!
Transcendental Jin-gak – Dragon Ascension Fist.
BOOOOOOM!
Upon impact, the fox beastman’s transformation dispelled as she was driven headfirst into the ceiling.
“Ah, shit. Even mana processing got faster, so it’s hard to intervene.”
“GRAAAAARGH!”
Immediately, the wolf beastman Valkar’s cleaver came slashing toward Yoon Taeyang’s back.
But—
“Too slow.”
Whoosh.
Yoon Taeyang’s single casual sidestep rendered the attack meaningless.
Yoon Taeyang grinned.
“So this is what they mean when they say ‘gear diff, gear diff’?”
Valkar bared his teeth threateningly, but to Yoon Taeyang’s eyes, he looked like a black sphere.
* * *
Thud.
Even the wolf beastman Valkar fell to Yoon Taeyang.
Andromalius, who had been watching the crystal ball, covered his eyes with his hand.
“The Greatest Machinery. To think he obtained that artifact.”
“This is ridiculous. A human from Earth defeating a tiger beastman! On only the fifth floor! And with incomplete farming at that!”
Belial bit her red lips hard.
Dantalion shrugged.
“I can’t retract the bet. I did tell you, didn’t I?”
Andromalius shook his head repeatedly.
“Dantalion, your insight amazes me every time I see it. How are you always so accurate?”
“Always? I get plenty wrong myself.”
Though he was almost always right when making bets.
Dantalion smiled brightly.
“Hah, gathering keys the moment he enters the stage. Really…”
“Earth-origin humans need an advantage. Wasn’t that something all Demon Kings agreed on?”
Belial started to retort, then stopped.
Earth had no mana, and Earth’s humans had multiplied their power by rapidly developing civilization instead.
In exchange for losing their civilization, they were given a certain amount of information.
This had actually been agreed upon in a meeting among the Demon Kings related to the Dimensional Labyrinth.
“Whew, I’ll send the souls to you later via terminal.”
“Me too. I’ll do the same.”
“Yes, make sure you send them properly.”
Dantalion smiled brightly.
Belial glanced at the screen.
“That said, that human is definitely interesting.”
“The best player I’ve seen recently, right?”
“He’ll be climbing up soon, won’t he?”
Andromalius nodded.
“Probably.”
“This should be fun.”
Belial licked her lips with her tongue.
Andromalius rose from his chair.
“I’ll be going first.”
“Ah, then I’ll go too.”
Belial stood up as well.
Soon, left alone, Dantalion smiled.
The Dimensional Labyrinth, which had been stagnant for so long.
Yoon Taeyang so far seemed certain to become a game changer for the Dimensional Labyrinth.