Natural Disaster
He called my name!
Aron trembled from head to toe. The moment that man spoke his name, a surge of raw emotion crashed through him with a force he could not contain.
Ever since he had stood at death's threshold and beheld the two goddesses, Aron's entire worldview had been overturned. It had been a miracle — nothing less. The rotting limbs that had reattached themselves, the divine power that had flooded back into his withered body — those were mere footnotes beside the single most shattering event of his life. Of that, he was certain.
I have been chosen!
If this was not a divine revelation, then what was?
For all that he had been dismissed as a spoiled brat and a troublemaker, Aron had been a devotee of the goddesses from the day he was born. Yet he had never once laid eyes on them. He had assumed no one ever would. He had even believed the Holy Father — the Pope who claimed to commune with the goddesses directly — was a fraud. The Goddess Sect, as far as Aron was concerned, was nothing more than a goddess business: a commercial enterprise dressed in holy robes.
And then —
That man alone, of every soul in this world, is the one who receives the goddesses' love! His choice is the goddesses' choice. I have been saved…!
He had forgiven Aron's sins. He had spoken Aron's name. And in that instant, the two goddesses had smiled upon him.
True salvation. If this was not salvation, then nothing was.
And so he owed a response worthy of the gift. A prayer of adoration? If that man was as good as a goddess himself, there was no reason not to recite one. He would cry it out with joy. No — even that was not enough. If he meant to prove his devotion, he would have to go further.
Aron cast himself aside once more and offered up his life.
And in that moment —
"A miracle…!"
Aron beheld a miracle.
KRRRUMBLE! KRA-KOOM!
The instant he rose to his feet and declared his challenge, the tower began to shake.
Sancha's face twisted.
A force that rocks the tower itself. It isn't Karas…
This was not the work of Martial God Karas. The source of every tremor stood right before his eyes — that man.
Still, Sancha shook his head inwardly. Whatever the man intended, it would not matter. No matter what he tried, moving Sancha from this spot was impossible.
Position Lock. So long as I remain here, I am invincible.
This trial had been designed with failure in mind from the start. It was also Sancha's method of dealing with challengers personally. He was far too strong for a mere trial, and fighting challengers face-to-face was beneath his station. So the tower itself had imposed a restriction that prevented him from clashing with them directly.
But that restriction could be circumvented easily enough. Present a suitably convincing trial, and if they failed, he could step in himself. Even a one-in-a-million chance of success was enough for something to qualify as a trial.
Aegis — the Shield of the Gods.
That was the shield for this purpose. Having surpassed his limits and achieved Transcendence, Sancha had seized a single absolute authority. The invincible shield he had claimed upon returning from death: Aegis. While fixed in place, he could convert every one of his stats into defense.
It could never be pierced. It could never be broken. It was absolute invincibility.
Feel the wall.
The wall that no challenger could ever surmount. The man might have rattled him on the sixteenth floor, but it would not happen again. Sancha wanted him to taste the same helplessness he himself had once felt. And once the trial failed, he fully intended to face the man himself — after crushing every other challenger first.
Randolph.
Sancha had been waiting for nothing else. He had been restored within the tower and remade into a "trial" for that sole purpose: to fight properly, just once more. To savor again that overwhelming rush. To face Randolph — and Wilhelm — not as the Demon of Jealousy, but as he was now.
"Hm…?"
But the tower, once it had begun to shake, started cracking open on a far greater scale.
CRACK!
CRRRACK!
The floor split apart. Everything was collapsing. Something was wrong — truly incomprehensible. The broken pieces were not regenerating. The tower possessed an automatic restoration function. Martial God Karas himself had reclaimed his full divinity and stood as its master. There was even an administrator managing the place. How could anyone bring the tower down?
A tower with a divine presence could not be destroyed. Even if you killed the deity, the tower would continue operating on its own as part of the "trial." And yet someone was collapsing it?
It isn't the whole tower that's falling.
Sancha pinpointed the problem with perfect clarity. Not the tower. This floor — specifically, the trial of the seventeenth floor — was collapsing.
"What have you done…!"
He was certain the man standing before him was the cause. On the sixteenth floor the man had unleashed some unfathomable "terror of instant death," and now, rather than face the trial properly, he was pulling another stunt. Of every challenger, he alone was impossible to read. Sancha had handed him a trial, and the man had decided to smash the entire floor to pieces!
"W-what—!"
"I-it's collapsing!"
"What the hell is this all of a sudden…!"
KRRRRUMBLE!
It was falling. Vanishing. Dropping away. The sheer absurdity of it left Sancha speechless. As he plummeted toward the depths, he watched the man smile — and spoke.
"…You pass."
He was no longer even startled. If anything… the man was so thoroughly unpredictable that Sancha found himself almost looking forward to whatever impossible phenomenon he would produce next.
Done.
I watched Sancha fall and smiled. His trial required you to make him move, or force him outside the circle. In other words, all I had to do was erase the circle itself.
The Hidden-grade talisman Natural Disaster inflicted absolute spatial collapse on every surrounding domain — even if that domain was a dungeon or a tower fixed in place as a trial.
I cleaned out the Golden Rule Shop and combined everything with the Hidden Talisman Cube.
That combination had been pure coincidence. While using infinite refreshes to sweep every useful talisman from the Golden Rule Shop and feeding them into the cube, the cube had suddenly begun to glow. I combined them on a hunch, and the result came out as Hidden grade.
[Hidden]
◈ Equipped to the Archetypal Armor — ability amplified by 1.5×
◈ Inescapable Phenomenon
◈ Absolute Domain Collapse
◈ Collapse range scales with mana
◈ Recharge Time: 15 days
That was the full list of options. But the description alone was more than enough. The power to shatter absolute domains — whether a sacred sanctuary, a territory unfurled by divine authority, a dungeon, or a tower. It destroyed them all.
I was not exaggerating. This thing was genuinely extraordinary. It was similar to Mystery Destruction, yet not quite the same.
If I destroy the barrier over the Holy City, everything standing between Randolph and his goal will be nullified.
The goddesses' barrier over Holy City Adrium could not be removed even with Mystery Destruction. But with the Natural Disaster Talisman, even that invincible barrier — the one that detected and repelled all non-humans — could be broken. Of course, the moment it shattered they would notice… but the mere fact that a way in now existed was already monumental.
The ability to smash any barrier cast over any domain. Used well, finding treasure dungeons hidden behind barriers would be trivial.
And that was not all.
…Incredible.
Watching its power unfold before my eyes, even I was struck with awe. The entire seventeenth floor was coming down. Deploy this in the middle of an enemy force and they would be annihilated on the spot. It rivaled a tactical nuclear strike.
…The problem was that I was being sucked in along with everything else.
How far down does this go?
I had not anticipated this. Falling from the seventeenth floor should have landed me on the sixteenth. But I was dropping without end, without bottom. I had assumed that passing the trial would automatically transfer me to the eighteenth floor.
Whoosh!
Whoooosh!
As if answering that thought, warps began appearing all around.
"Warps!"
"We're saved!"
One by one, the falling challengers vanished into the warps and were forcibly relocated. The collapsing fissures were slowly filling back in. The tower was restoring itself. Those who had passed the trial were being moved to the eighteenth floor.
But it did not take long for me to realize something was wrong.
…What about me?
Everyone around me had been transferred through the warps. I thought my turn would come next. But no matter how long I waited, no warp appeared.
I just kept falling. Down. Endlessly down.
Caw?
Caw!
The crows tilted their heads as they watched the seventeenth floor vanish.
The Ash Clan. The crows who worshipped Martial God Karas as their deity. Unlike the Omen Clan, the Ash Clan held neither the authority nor the ability to manage the tower. They were the crows who governed calamity, death, and trials.
Caw!
Caaaw!!
And so the Ash Clan soon fell into a restless panic. What now? Martial God Karas had left his post. Sensing something amiss, he had gone to the thirtieth floor and had not reappeared for a long while. But if they left the seventeenth floor to collapse, the entire tower would be affected.
"Caw! Caw!"
Then it happened.
Waddle. Waddle.
A plump crow the size of a human child came waddling into view, its body thick with fat.
Caw!
Caw!
Caaaaaaw!
The Ash Clan erupted in cheers at the sight of it. At last! The Omen Clan — the very administrators who managed this tower! It seemed that when Champion Randolph had been summoned, the Omen Clan had been summoned along with him.
"Caw!"
Leave it to me!
The Omen Clan crow thumped its chest with a wing. Then, with complete confidence, it set about restoring the collapsing seventeenth floor.
Shwoooom!
Shwaaaaah!
It sealed the cracks and rebuilt the ceiling. The seventeenth floor rapidly returned to its original form.
Clap, clap, clap!
The Ash Clan applauded. As expected of the Omen Clan. When it came to managing the tower, no one surpassed them.
Caw?
Then one of the Ash Clan crows raised a question. One of the challengers who had fallen with the floor was missing.
"Caw?"
The Omen Clan crow blinked. During the restoration, it had definitely returned the challengers to their proper state as well. And yet one was gone?
Caw!
Caw!
Caaaaaaw!
In an instant the Ash Clan crows erupted into a frenzy. This was bad! This was really bad! He must have fallen into the gaps between the floors!
The Omen Clan crow froze solid as stone. The gaps between the floors. That place was neither the Abyss, nor the surface world, nor even the Heavenly Realm — it was an entirely different world altogether. And what lay within those gaps was known only to the Omen King.
— The gaps between the floors are known only to our Omen Clan.
— But an administrator must never look into the gaps between the floors.
— Naturally, one must never enter them, nor allow anyone else to enter.
— This is the absolute law that the Omen Clan must uphold!
— Even if the world itself is ending — never!
The absolute law every tower administrator was bound to keep. The vow that every Omen King throughout history had drilled into their successors with the utmost gravity!
And if one of the challengers had fallen into those gaps? Then this crow had broken the administrator's inviolable law.
…This was a disaster. A crisis of a lifetime.
"C-caw…?"
Wh-what do I do?
The Omen Clan crow went deathly pale and trembled from wingtip to wingtip.
How long had I been falling?
A day? Two days?
…I had no idea. All I knew for certain was that I had been plummeting for so long that time itself had lost all meaning. For a drop from the seventeenth floor to the sixteenth, this was far too long.
And just as even the concept of time began to blur —
Fwoooosh!
Light suddenly flooded outward. The entire domain began to change. The radiance was so fierce that I squeezed my eyes shut against it, frowning hard.
And when I opened them again —
Where the hell am I now?
The world had transformed completely.
— Gooooooooh.
Before me, two colossal crows loomed so vast they seemed to touch the edge of the sky.