You Should Have Digested Faster
Defeat 50 Mana-Devouring Bats.
⚠ Warning: Mana-Devouring Bats absorb magic.
Woojin's foot met damp stone. The cave was dark, and the only sound was water dripping from the ceiling at steady intervals. He kindled a small flame above his palm.
Light spilled outward, and the ceiling moved. Not the rock—the black shapes blanketing it stirred, lifting their bodies and unfurling their wings.
Kieeek—!
Dozens of red eyes opened at once.
Mana-Devouring Bats.
On the fourth floor, a mage was not counted as a combatant. The guide Woojin had looked up before entering the Tower was simple enough, and it even closed with a note that tried to be helpful.
1. Never use magic.
2. Hide behind your party members and stay out of the way.
3. Once the fight begins, endure it—even if you desperately want to cast.
4. If you still can't endure it, leave the party.
Remembering it, Woojin looked openly incredulous.
"You call that a guide?"
Any mage would have taken it as an insult to their pride. He didn't care. The mages who had earned that reputation were nothing like him.
He looked up at the ceiling. Information gathered beforehand was only a reference. There was something he needed to confirm for himself.
A thin current leapt from the tip of his index finger.
Crackle!
A Lightning spell, throttled to the lowest output it would bear, shot toward the nearest bat. The creature opened its mouth.
Kieek—!
Blue current was sucked into its maw and vanished without a trace. For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then a blue glow spread beneath the black fur.
Crackle! Crackle-crackle—!
The light began near the heart and raced out to the wingtips, and the bat's body slowly swelled. Thin wings thickened. Curved claws lengthened into spikes. The blue light, by contrast, faded little by little, and the dimmer it grew, the stronger the bat became.
Woojin's eyes narrowed. It had not erased the magic in an instant. It had swallowed the spell first, then slowly unraveled the mana array and converted it into power of its own.
"Closer to digesting a meal than absorbing one."
At last the blue light disappeared completely.
In that instant the bat kicked off the ceiling and plunged.
Boom—!
Its speed was nothing like the others. A black afterimage drove straight for Woojin's face. He slipped one step aside just before it reached him. His body was still not much different from that of an ordinary human in this world, but the senses honed through countless battles in his previous life remained. An attack of this degree, he could evade well enough.
The bat shot past the place where he had been standing.
Crunch!
Long claws buried themselves in the rock wall behind him. A fist-sized chunk of stone broke free and rolled across the floor. Woojin glanced at the shattered wall.
"That would hurt."
The bat, its sure kill gone wide, seemed furious.
Kieeeeeek—!
At its cry the bats on the ceiling rose as one. Countless wings beat until they blotted out his view entirely—two from the front, three from overhead, the rest sweeping back along both walls. In a breath, the swarm had him surrounded.
Woojin didn't move. He opened his hand instead.
Fwoosh!
Small bursts of flame bloomed one after another. The Fireballs multiplied in a blink until fifty of them ringed him in a circle. They were far smaller than the ones that had burned the goblins on the first floor—smaller than a fist, and not the least bit threatening to look at.
The bats' reaction was anything but ordinary. Red eyes locked onto the Fireballs.
Kieeek—!
Mouths gaped as if they had found prey. Woojin swept his hand, and the fifty Fireballs scattered in every direction. The bats forgot they had been attacking him and chased the flames, shoving and colliding, wings beating as each tried to swallow one first.
One of them gulped a Fireball down.
"Eating well."
The flame did not explode. Neither did the second. Nor the third.
Ordinary magic carried a fixed mana array. The moment a bat swallowed a spell, that array began to unravel from the outside until it dispersed back into mana that had never been arranged at all. The Fireballs of every mage who had entered the fourth floor before him would have vanished the same way.
Woojin's magic was different.
Being swallowed did not mean he had lost control. Until a spell was fully dismantled, it remained under his will. The last Fireball disappeared into a bat's belly, and darkness settled over the cave again. The meal was finished. It was time they returned to their original target.
The swarm turned. Countless wings swung toward Woojin at once.
In that moment a single red light kindled in the dark—inside a bat's belly. Then the light bloomed elsewhere too.
One.
Two.
Ten.
And fifty.
Red stars filled a cave that had been nothing but black. The glow spread vividly through the bats' bodies. They had not yet finished digesting the Fireballs.
Woojin reshaped the arrays of the mana that still remained. The formation that had been holding the flame together turned inward. Mana on the verge of scattering drew into a single point, and inside the bats the Fireballs completed a new arrangement—not a form meant to burn, but a form meant to explode.
The red light within them brightened all at once, unnaturally so.
Kieek?
The bat that had swallowed the first Fireball seemed to sense that something was wrong. The swarm flung their wings open in alarm, and the red stars dropped toward Woojin together. Sharp claws closed in from every side.
He did not dodge.
"Some table manners."
He clenched his hand the way a man presses a detonator.
The foremost bat swelled first.
BOOM!
Red light tore out from inside the black body. That blast was only the start.
BOOM—! KRA-KOOM—!
Fifty red stars detonated one after another. For an instant a blinding flash ripped through the cave. Shockwaves overlapped and shook the floor, and black debris whirled away through the fire. The chain of blasts fused into one.
KRAAAAAANG—!
The blaze that had filled the cave slowly died. Embers pattered down onto stone scorched black. Of the bats that had blanketed the ceiling only moments ago, not one remained.
Woojin brushed the dust from his hands.
"You should've digested faster."
All Mana-Devouring Bats have been defeated.
Calculating clear rank.
The existing highest record has been surpassed.
Bonus experience corresponding to your rank has been granted.
Your level has increased.
Your level has increased.
· · ·
Your level has increased.
Clear reward: 4,000 Gold
Grace Period of the Republic of Korea: +30 days
It occurred to him, vaguely, that it was getting hard to tell whether he was climbing the Tower in order to buy magic, or buying magic in order to climb the Tower. It didn't matter much. He could simply do both.
In the Tower Management Bureau Situation Room, a reconstructed image of the fourth floor rose on the main screen. Blackened bat remains littered the floor. Most of the corpses were split open, as if they had burst from the inside.
One staffer zoomed in on the image.
"This is them getting indigestion from eating the magic, isn't it?"
The employee in the next seat stared as if the theory were hopeless.
"All fifty of them at once?"
"Mass cafeteria poisonings have been everywhere lately."
"Do bats eat cafeteria food?"
"They eat magic, don't they?"
Listening to the pair of them, the Situation Room Director pressed a hand to his forehead.
"Both of you. Quiet."
The photograph alone could not reveal how the fight had actually gone. Two things were certain. The bats of the fourth floor had swallowed magic, and immediately afterward they had exploded from within.
The analyst spoke carefully.
"It looks like he detonated them before the magic was fully absorbed."
"That's possible?"
"Normally, no."
"Normally?"
The analyst pointed at the record in the corner of the screen.
Challenger: Dekaron
Clear Rank: S-Rank
The Situation Room Director let out a sigh.
"Yeah. Of course he could..."
The first floor still bore the scorch of an entire landscape burned away. The second looked like the site of a meteor strike. On the third, a goblin unit had collapsed all at once, every body charred from head to toe. And on the fourth, bats that swallowed magic had died bursting open from the inside.
There was no telling what he had done, or how. The result, at least, never changed. He had accomplished something common sense insisted was impossible.
The analyst muttered at the photograph.
"Director. Are we sure what we do is analysis?"
"Why?"
"Because the conclusion is the same every time."
The Situation Room Director asked it flatly.
"And what's the conclusion?"
"No idea. But Dekaron did it, anyway."
"..."
Silence settled.
Another staffer, paging through the logs, stopped.
"Director."
"What?"
"This person hardly rests at all."
Entry times from the first floor through the fourth lined up on the screen. After each clear, the wait before he entered the next floor was a few dozen minutes at the longest. From finishing the third floor to stepping onto the fourth, it had not even taken ten.
The Situation Room Director checked the clock.
"When he comes out of the fourth floor, where do you think he'll go?"
"If it's the same as before..."
The staffer pointed at the entrance to the fifth floor.
"The next floor."
The Situation Room Director stood.
"Send someone to the fifth-floor entrance. Watch everyone who passes through the gate. The moment Dekaron's entry alert appears, identify exactly who went in."
"Yes, but there's one problem."
"What?"
"Floor 5 is a boss fight. Parties of about ten usually challenge it. Finding a party could take time."
The Situation Room Director considered that, then gave the order.
"Someone of that caliber might already have a fixed party. Just send them now."
"Yes, sir!"
Woojin returned to the lobby floor. There were more people than usual. Perhaps because of the S-Rank alerts stacking one after another, the name Dekaron was drifting from every corner.
"The fourth floor was S-Rank too? No way!"
"Is he even actually a mage?"
"What's a mage supposed to do on the fourth floor?"
"Cheered from the back, I bet."
Woojin passed between them. There was no particular reason to correct anyone. He had seven thousand gold on hand, and Ice Spear cost ten thousand. No point stopping at the skill-book shop. He headed for the fifth-floor entrance as if it were the only natural next step.
Unlike the other floors, a red sigil and a line of text floated above the gate.
Recommended party size: 10
Woojin looked at the words for a moment.
"Ten people..."
That was a lot. It was also something he already knew. He walked up to the gate without hesitating.
A short distance away, a plainly dressed man was watching him. He was a field agent the Tower Management Bureau had sent in a hurry. The Situation Room Director's voice reached his ear over the radio.
The agent answered, careful with his voice.
"I've arrived at the fifth-floor entrance and I'm standing by."
The agent looked at Woojin in front of the gate.
"There's still only one person."
"He appears to be waiting."
Then Woojin stepped through the gate.
The agent's eyes went wide. A moment later an alert rose on the Situation Room screen.
Challenger Dekaron has entered Floor 5.
The entire Situation Room stirred.
From the other end of the radio, only silence answered.
· · ·
The frustration got the better of him, and the Situation Room Director shouted.
"......Target confirmed."
New text rose above the gate.
Recommended party size: 10
Current entrants: 1
The agent stared blankly at the words.
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