The Trial of Eternity
Laktusha's instincts screamed at him.
That he could not win.
That no attack would land.
At least not in my current state—
He was certain of it.
That woman, the Blade Dragon God, was invincible.
There was nothing more foolish than fighting an invincible opponent.
But he could still test her.
Shaaaaaak!
His Sword Gang stretched outward. It swelled without end, growing larger and larger, until at last Laktusha poured the sky-blanketing mass of it down in a single blow.
KRAAAAAAAAAANG!
An unavoidable strike.
The Blade Dragon God simply watched it come.
And the moment the attack touched her—
Forced nullification.
Only the portion of Sword Gang that entered her domain returned to nothing.
An ability that could even neutralize Sword Gang itself.
Then what remained was pure skill.
Laktusha thrust his right foot forward.
Whoosh!
In a single bound he closed the distance, his blade sweeping for the Blade Dragon God's head.
Clang!
The bones of her wings elongated and caught the strike.
She blocked it.
A gleam lit Laktusha's eyes.
She had nullified the Sword Gang, yet she had physically intercepted a direct swing of the sword. That meant she still responded, to some degree, to direct physical blows.
She's coming.
Invincible did not mean she had no offense. It only meant her defense alone was infinite.
Having been summoned here, the Blade Dragon God still had to bring Laktusha down.
Shashak!
Swaaaaak!
Bones erupted from her back in long, lashing lengths and began to attack him—like tentacles. Countless tentacles surged in from the front.
Zeeeerk!
Laktusha's muscles ballooned in an instant.
All defense. I abandon the very idea of attacking.
Invincible or not, her offensive power could not possibly match that defense. Laktusha poured every scrap of his energy into pure defense alone.
Go on. Try to break through.
Armor that would never be pierced. In this state, Laktusha himself was invincible. Even the brutish, mindless onslaught of Baal of the Four Calamities had failed to crack his armor.
He wanted to see what happened when invincible met invincible.
Shuuuuk—!
I blocked—
Thuk—!
Thuk-thuk-thuk-thuk!
"Union. Are you conscious?"
Union, the Mage of the Golden Rule.
At the sound of someone's voice, he slowly opened his eyes.
"Ugh…"
The moment he did, his brow furrowed of its own accord. Randolph's golden statue blazed like a second sun, seizing his vision with merciless brilliance.
The tower entrance.
This was the entrance to the Tower of the War God.
But his body would not move an inch.
Baal's curse.
The reason was obvious. Baal's curse had saturated every part of him. The only silver lining was that he was still alive.
"…Gracia."
Union looked at the man sitting beside him and spoke the name. Gracia answered in the same flat expression and tone as always.
"You did something stupid."
"…How am I still alive?"
"You don't remember?"
"Remember what?"
At the question, Gracia's brow tightened slightly.
"The fight with Baal. You challenged it the moment you entered the tower, didn't you? And you escaped on your own, so of course you're still breathing."
The fight with Baal!
Union had indeed challenged Baal the instant he set foot in the Tower of the War God. Even he—a master of every twisted, inventory-based attack imaginable—had only managed to shave off about fifteen percent of Baal of the Four Calamities' health. The monster simply possessed stamina and raw power that outstripped even Union's ingenuity.
But the truly terrifying face of Baal had been something else entirely.
"Ah…"
Union's body trembled in fine, rapid shudders. Only then did he remember why he was still alive.
Honestly, the shape of the battle itself had been almost monotonous. With overwhelming firepower—or proper preparation—chipping away at Baal's health was not difficult. The problem came after.
"The curse… Y-you must not challenge it. You must not subjugate Baal…!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Baal is… nothing more than a sacrifice prepared to gather curses."
"Gather curses? For what?"
"To summon even more terrifying things into this tower!"
Union's face went white.
That was why he had fled on his own. Baal was nothing but a high-health meat slab. He could have cut deeper into its health if he had wanted to—but he had pulled out the moment he realized Baal was bait.
The Baal of the Four Calamities summoned here was a concentrated mass of curses. A sacrifice prepared to enact a greater, more dreadful curse still. How vast a curse required a sacrifice of Baal's caliber, he could not begin to guess.
But if someone climbed the tower, failed to purify the curses, and simply killed Baal, an uncontrollable Catastrophe Curse would begin. So Union had broken off the fight and chosen escape. Subjugating Baal alone was nothing compared to what would follow.
Gracia's gaze grew heavier.
"What gets summoned after?"
"…I don't know. What I do know is that if you kill Baal without thinking, everything that exists and everything that does not will be summoned in a single tangled mass. Everything will twist, and in the end calamity itself will devour the tower and blanket the world."
Union had lived a long life. As the first Court Mage of the empire, he had witnessed the extremes of countless schools of magic—including the curse arts. But the curse being enacted here, in the Tower of the War God, was on a scale even he had never experienced. Why a curse fit for the mythic age was unfolding here and now remained a mystery.
Baal is not the only sacrifice.
Every form of curse had gathered in this place. He had only realized it after striking Baal—so vast and so powerful that even the Mage of the Golden Rule had failed to perceive it at first.
Are they trying to summon one of the Four Great Evil Gods?
Balakgas. Angra Mainyu. Ghaz. Diablo.
Was one of those evil gods themselves about to be called forth? If so, Pangenia would face yet another form of Ruin. A Pangenia that had lost its goddess would never be able to stand against such a being.
"Baal has already been subjugated."
"…What?"
For an instant, Union's eyelids trembled violently.
"A Swordmaster named Laktusha is said to have done it."
"Without properly purifying the curses?"
"Most likely."
"Ah…"
Union's face twisted with despair.
The offering of the sacrifice was complete. Why else would Baal have been made so easy to clear even on the first floor? Think about it for even a moment and the trap was painfully obvious—and yet someone had cleared it anyway.
Union bit his lip and asked,
"What was summoned next…?"
"The Blade Dragon God."
"The new Dragon God born on Earth?"
"Seems so."
"…We'll have to find the condition for invincibility that even Isera never discovered before we can subjugate her."
The second commander of the Demon Lord's army. Even Isera—who had devoured two other Dragon Gods—had never found the Blade Dragon God's weakness. How were climbers of this tower supposed to find it? It was impossible unless everyone pooled their minds. And even then, whether a clear was possible at all…
This was a Dragon God who had held a degree of advantage over Isera from the moment of her birth. She would be far stronger now than she had been then—strong enough that even prediction failed.
"Union. Do you have any idea why the Blade Dragon God was summoned?"
Gracia asked with a grave look. Even he could not make sense of it. Baal of the Four Calamities, and the Blade Dragon God—what connection could possibly link those two summons?
Union shrugged with a half-resigned face.
"If you're curious, ask her yourself. Why she answered the summons at all."
The Blade Dragon God was Earth's guardian—a sacred being. Why she had answered a curse-mediated summons was something only she would know. The masters of the Abyss, perhaps—but a being of a completely opposite nature being summoned was, without question, an anomaly.
"You said she was invincible, didn't you?"
"Gracia. If you're that curious, climb the tower. She might even tell you the condition."
Every key lay inside the tower. Those who challenged without climbing it would never solve this problem. Of course, it would not be easy.
The trials of other towers are mixing in as well.
Baal's death had thrown even the tower's trials into chaos. The difficulty had spiked sharply. And so Union had abandoned the climb.
Even if the trials of other towers mixed together, a trial was still a trial. As long as a challenger did not give up, some possibility remained. But there was one exception.
Why did it have to be that tower's trial…
Of all things, the trial of that tower had mixed in—the trial that was absolutely impossible to clear. The Trial of Eternity.
Former Champion Sancha.
Seeing the changes in the tower, he made up his mind.
I will climb to the end of the tower and challenge Randolph again!
This was a chance heaven itself had given him—to face Randolph once more. Like Randolph, he would climb to the tower's peak and, as a challenger, reclaim the Champion's seat!
"Hm…?"
Having reached the twentieth floor, Sancha could only stare in bewilderment at the trial unfolding before him.
The level of 10,000 Skeleton Soldiers matches the challenger's level.
Use of all tools except equipped gear is forbidden.
All blessings and protections are stripped away.
Clack!
Clack!
Ten thousand skeleton soldiers stood arrayed before him. The problem was that they were qualitatively different from ordinary skeleton soldiers.
Faced with a situation he had never anticipated, Sancha spoke without thinking.
"Why is this trial in the Tower of the War God…?"
The Tower of Mystery, which grew harder the stronger you became—the tower that only the monsters of Kramdel had ever challenged. One of its trials now stretched out before his eyes.
Time flowed on.
Helplessly, relentlessly, it kept flowing.
48 hours have elapsed.
Clear the Tower of the War God!
In 13 more days, the Tower of the War God will collapse and the curse will be released.
Clearing the 20th floor of the tower will grant a hint for clearing Phase 2.
Hints grow more specific with each floor ascended.
Notices kept stacking. The situation grew more dangerous by the hour. Only by climbing higher could they find the hints needed for a clear. But once Phase 2 began, everyone abandoned the challenge.
It was not simply a problem of the Blade Dragon God. The phenomenon itself—the tower's trials changing on floor twenty and above—was the real crisis.
The Tower of Mystery. Even among the trials of a tower so brutal that monsters struggled to climb it, this was ranked among the absolute worst difficulties!
The mood on Player Talk grew even grimmer. But the conclusion everyone reached was the same.
There truly was no answer. Three days passed, then four, and the Blade Dragon God's health remained locked at one hundred percent. Shadows began to settle over people's faces.
Until, on the fifth day, a new message appeared.