Chain Quest (2)

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"...What a pain."

After reviewing the target with the Queen, I had returned to the elven village. Now I was sighing as I read the comments piling up under my post.

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Pa-at─!

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So basically, right now, the Tower was telling me to kill that thing. That gigantic-maximum sludge freak of nature... all by myself?

"What kind of horse shit is this..."

Tower, you miserable bastard of a realm. Come here and sit down for a moment. What do you call this garbage you're serving up as a Floor 5 boss? A mid-boss, you say, you little shit? I know your management style is always objectively cursed, but there are limits to how much nonsense even I will swallow...

Damn Tower. Damn Lunatic difficulty.

"Haaah..."

I sighed once more and closed the gallery window in front of me. Venting my irritation with a nice long trash-talk session had felt great, but I had no intention of giving up. Writing the quest off as "fucked" would have been an option, if the rewards being held hostage weren't so absurdly good.

Rewards: Ticket to Floor 6, Skill Enhancement Ticket x1, ???

"They're definitely tempting, I'll give them that."

A Skill Enhancement Ticket, and a question mark. The latter I couldn't guess, but the former was an objectively broken reward. A coupon that let you upgrade any skill of your choosing, regardless of rank? Even just enhancing my Transmutation (A) skill right now would carry A-rank-plus value. As for the question mark, no clue what that might be...

But the Queen had said she'd give me a World Tree Branch, so maybe that's what it meant? Or something even better. Either way, it meant one more reward in my pocket.

"Which means I really do have to take down that insane gigantic-maximum smoothie..."

Honestly, the strategy itself wasn't the problem. Thanks to my resistance skill, my body was immune to poison. No matter how apartment-sized the thing was, it couldn't actually hurt me.

"Why not just dive right in and go for a swim??"

Of course, my clothes would melt off completely. Then I'd emerge like that in front of the elf queen and Iris... get publicly shamed by some random brat on my way home... So really, it was just a matter of sacrificing a sliver of my dignity. All it would cost me was a few new misunderstandings along the lines of tags: public and tags: exhibitionism.

"...Absolutely, absolutely not."

I shook my head in revulsion, having briefly imagined myself swimming through that colossal blob of slime. The melting clothes were bad enough, but the smell was the real dealbreaker. I wasn't lying when I said it reeked of rotting garbage. Rotting garbage that had been left to fester for a month in a sewer drain during monsoon season, that is. If not for a stomach tempered by years of the gallery's most cursed images, the smell alone would have had me retching on the spot.

"Besides, how am I even supposed to find the core?"

There were purely practical problems too. The Sludge Blob was bigger than your average apartment building. It wasn't even tall and narrow, so its actual volume was even more obscene. And I was supposed to get inside that thing and locate its core? Never mind swimming through sludge — how was I supposed to breathe?

So setting aside the melting-clothes issue entirely, physically taking the thing down was impossible. Which left only one option: the magical approach...

"......"

"...Wh-why are you staring at me like that?"

Startled by my sudden look, Iris shot the question back at me. Her hands were trembling like leaves — withdrawal symptoms, clearly. Had someone confiscated her stash? A moment later she began backing away from me, her face full of suspicion.

"S-staring at me like that won't change anything...! Most elves can't even get close to that thing to begin with, and with my meager magic..."

"Relax. Nobody asked you to hunt it."

"...Then what are you going to do?"

"What do you mean, what am I going to do?"

The truth was, I'd decided how to handle this ages ago. I'd just been a little late asking for Iris's consent.

"Wh-what's with that expression...?"

"......"

I looked back and forth between the ring on my finger and Iris. A gift left behind by that deranged firepower fanatic, Hong Yeon-hwa. A single-use item, yes, but one that could reproduce her S-rank skill.

Having finished my deliberations, I asked Iris in the lightest tone I could manage.

"Iris."

"...Yes?"

"Would it be okay if I burned down your forest?"

"......?"

Within seconds, Iris's face had flooded with horror.

A short while later. Atop the World Tree.

"NoooOoOoOo──!!!!"

Iris, hauled up here by the scruff of her neck, was shrieking as I held her in place. Ignoring her entirely, I took in the scenery before me, savoring the rush of wind against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my skin.

"Mmm... I'll admit the view is something else."

A sea of clouds spread far, far beneath my feet. Whirling winds sent the leaves swaying like a running pack of wolves. The name "World Tree" was well earned — in terms of romance, at least, it delivered.

Of course, that was only because the damn thing was a colossal cannabis-scale mega-tree.

At some point Iris had slipped free of my grip and was now clinging flat against a branch of the World Tree like a cicada, shivering violently and wailing.

"I said no...!! I told you very clearly I wouldn't do iiiit...!!!!"

"It's fine. You never had a choice to begin with."

"Put me dooown!! You know I'm terrified of heights!!!!"

"Suck it up."

I felt bad for her acrophobia, but this height honestly wasn't anything yet. We were about to go much, much higher.

"And what do you MEAN, burning down the forest...!! The forest is an elf's very lifeblood, you know—"

"Let's see... where is that sludge bastard..."

Tuning out Iris's screams, I scanned our surroundings.

"...Oh, found it."

Locating the thing wasn't difficult. The creature was the size of an apartment building, and the forest around it had been stained pitch-black for a good stretch. It was the kind of sight that made the Queen's description — a parasite gnawing at the forest — feel entirely justified.

Just as I was gazing at the corrupted woods in fascination, a familiar voice reached me along with a presence nearby.

"You begged me to raise you atop the World Tree out of nowhere, and I wondered what sort of madness you were planning..."

The person responsible for magically ferrying the two of us up here — the elf queen, Sylvia — regarded me with an expression of keen interest.

"What manner of scheme drove you all the way up here? Even a Great Archmage would find it no simple task to unleash magic upon the beast from this distance."

"Obviously I'm not casting from here."

Even for Hong Yeon-hwa, throwing magic across several kilometers wouldn't be feasible. And even if it were, no one could project enough firepower from this range to erase that massive body from existence.

And I can't exactly get up close to fire it, either.

The thing was half-melted slime to begin with. Even firing from point-blank range, landing a clean hit on its exact center would be a nightmare. And if I misjudged the distance even slightly, I'd be caught in the blast myself.

Which meant...

"I have one more favor to ask."

"And that would be?"

"Could you fling the two of us over there with your magic?"

"......"

At my utterly deranged follow-up, Sylvia looked at me the way one looks at a lunatic.

"......"

"......"

How long did that awkward silence stretch on?

"...Pfft."

A sudden burst of air escaping through her lips. Sylvia's shoulders shook once.

"Pff-ah, ahaha!! Ahahahahat!!"

And then she burst into laughter so violent it brought tears to her eyes. After laughing for a good long while, she turned to me with a face as innocent as a child's.

"Ahh... yes, of course. Only an utter madman would have set foot in the Melek Great Forest."

"...So you can do it, right?"

Her unexpected reaction made me ask with more than a little anxiety. But my worries proved unfounded; Sylvia answered with a faint smile playing at her lips.

"It shall be done. Such a task is no more trouble for me than plucking a leaf."

"Wa-wa-wait, hold on...!! What did you just say?? Who's flying WHERE??"

Iris, finally catching up to the situation, frantically interjected — but it was far too late.

"Hooaaam..."

Sylvia invoked her magic, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. Roaring winds, surging mana. Equations and intricately structured circuits etched into the empty air. Having painted all of it in the span of an instant, she stubbed out the cigarette and exhaled.

"...Whew."

A single wisp of smoke rose between her parted lips. And then—

"Wind Press."

At those two softly spoken syllables, Iris and I were launched skyward atop a raging typhoon.

WHAAAAM━━!!!

"Ugh...!"

An impact far beyond imagination. Inertia and wind pressure crushed against my skin while my hair and clothes whipped around like they were having a seizure.

"Kyaaaaaah-wubblbblbbwhuEE──"

Perhaps flying hundreds of meters through the air was simply too cruel a fate for an elf with acrophobia. Before long, Iris's spectacular screams rang out beside me — and then she went limp like a puppet with cut strings, fainting dead away as she painted the sky with white foam.

"Gurgle..."

"......"

Good grief. Useless elf. What am I supposed to do with you if you pass out from just this? Now there's literally no point in having brought you along.

"...Transmutation."

Pang!

I couldn't exactly leave the fainted Iris hanging there, so I formed a foothold with my Transmutation skill and grabbed hold of her swaying body. Hoisting the princess over my shoulder like a sack of luggage, maybe a dozen seconds or so passed?

Just as the arc of our flight crested its apex, the blackened forest drew steadily closer. The colossal creature that had looked like a bean from moments ago was now swelling to a respectable size before my eyes.

Glrrgh... bwueeeegh...

"......"

Seeing that face up close again... was genuinely not easy. But somehow, against all odds, we'd flown true — not a single deviation off course.

I guess the Queen's aim is just that good.

Indulging in that pointless thought, I pulled mana potions from my Inventory and downed them one after another.

Gllluuurk...

Dring!

The moment the potion hit my stomach, the notification popped up as if it had been waiting for precisely this. I brushed it aside and chugged the remaining four bottles straight down my throat.

Gulp... hack, cough-kheh!!

Chugging that fast gave me a few audible swallows, but the doping was complete. No way my mana would run short now.

Then, slowly feeling the power building up inside my body, I began pouring my mana into the ring.

Vrrrrrrmmm──

"Ngh... hot...!"

The ring scorched hot, as if it might burst apart at any second. A violent resonance, like the death rattle of a computer drawing its final breath. At the same time, the enormous mana within my body began to be siphoned toward my fingertips at a terrifying rate.

Vrrrrrrmmm──

A magic circle unfurled, centered on the ring. Unrecognizable script. Equations of intricate geometry. Great rings encircling them all.

The circle that took shape became a channel. A single path, along which mana sprinted at full tilt. Once... twice... again. Repeating the same route, endlessly. Overlapping. And along the layered path, the mana accelerated anew.

Vrrrrrrmmm──

"Aaah..."

Part of me wondered if this was really okay, but by then the majority of my mana had already been swallowed by the ring. Stopping now would have been far too late. The circle layered itself again. The mana sprinted faster. By the time the stacked circles pushed past ten and climbed to roughly twenty—

──Krring!!

The ring shattered, unable to withstand the colossal acceleration — and in that same instant, the spell it had inscribed finally plunged straight down.

Over the elven forest, a mushroom cloud bloomed.