Floor 6 (1): Snorting Is Harder Than It Looks
◈ Details: A hallucinogen circulated on the black market. Stimulates the central nervous system, inducing temporary wakefulness and hallucinations.
"......"
A zip-lock bag full of white powder that, no matter how I looked at it, looked terrifyingly dangerous.
I had a long staring contest with the bag sitting on the floor before finally mumbling, a look of utter confusion on my face.
"This..."
Am I allowed to do this...?
No, wait, that's not what I mean...
"Am I allowed to eat this...?"
Some strange feeling of guilt had crept up on me, apparently.
The Ferum Flower nectar and the World Tree leaves had been fine, relatively speaking. They just looked less like drugs, is all. If I squeezed my eyes shut, they were the kind of thing you could choke down somehow.
But the white powder sitting before me now was different.
This was the real deal. Actual drugs!
White powder in a zip-lock bag!
The thing I'd seen a hundred times in movies and shows like them!!
And the name just came right out and said it — synthetic hallucinogen. No dressing it up with roundabout words like "nectar," "leaves," or "potion." This was drugs, plain and simple, drugs as drugs.
And yet, I couldn't exactly afford not to take it.
For obvious reasons...
EX-grade trait: Drug Addiction.
To grow this trait, I had to take drugs whether I liked it or not. And I couldn't even coast on a single kind of substance — there was a limit to how far any one family of drugs could push my addiction rate.
The variety of drugs obtainable inside the Tower was limited. Which meant every last scrap of contraband was precious to me.
...Hearing myself say that, I sound like a genuine junkie, but whatever.
"......"
Deliberating wouldn't change anything. It wasn't like I was skipping the dose just because it happened to be a crime. High-rank Awakeners all live with one foot over the legal line anyway.
I picked up the little plastic bag of drugs in front of me, stuck out my tongue, and poured the powder inside straight into my mouth.
"Bleeeh..."
The powder dissolved sweetly against my tongue, quickly followed by a numbing rush and a bitterness so extreme it burned.
"Ughh..."
A new substance has been consumed!
Addiction Rate increased by 5%.
I swallowed the horrible-tasting powder, and the notification of my rising addiction rate popped up before my eyes. Five percent — same as any other C-grade substance like alcohol. Not a bad haul for a single dose.
Beeeep──
But had something gone wrong? A warning tone blared belatedly, and red alert windows began crowding my vision.
Improper method of administration detected!
Absorption efficiency has dropped drastically!
Addiction Rate decreased by 4%.
"Huh...?"
What the hell, why is it dropping? That's not how you're supposed to take it?
Four of my five percent had just evaporated. Which meant my absorption efficiency had come out at a catastrophic twenty percent.
As I made a face of pure bewilderment at the mind-boggling loss, a window of a kind I'd never seen before materialized alongside the familiar notification chime.
◈ Certain substances suffer greatly reduced absorption when taken orally.
◈ Try methods such as injection, topical application, smoking, or mucosal administration!
"...The fuck?"
Despite its perfectly placid tone, that window was spouting some genuinely hardcore advice.
Injection, topical application, smoking, mucosal administration. Just hearing the words was enough to make me feel unhinged. And of those four, the first three simply weren't possible with a bag of white powder.
Which left mucosal administration. And as far as I knew, there was exactly one way to administer white powder through a mucous membrane...
"I'm supposed to snort this...?"
It sounded like complete lunacy, but it was the only method left. And honestly, you saw it all the time in crime movies, didn't you? Those scenes where addicts roll up a banknote and inhale the white powder through their nose.
I didn't really understand the mechanics of how it got absorbed, but movies wouldn't have put those scenes in for nothing. If I imitated them roughly, it would absorb somehow.
The problem, though...
"...No way."
The psychological barrier wasn't just high — it was sky-high.
Seriously? White powder? Up the nose? Mucosal administration? Just hearing it made my vision swim, my hands and feet start trembling, and handcuffs flicker before my eyes. I half expected someone to kick down my front door yelling FBI, open up! at any second.
It felt like I was about to cross a line that was never meant to be crossed. The law-abiding citizen inside me was screaming.
But.
−4%
It wasn't as if I had any alternatives. For all my reluctance to snort the stuff, a four percent addiction rate was no trivial amount to throw away. Recovering it would take chomping down four whole cigarettes.
So after agonizing over it for another long while, I picked up the bag — as casually as I could manage — and began murmuring excuses to myself.
"...Come to think of it, it's not exactly criminal, not really."
Let me say it again: I wasn't trying to commit a crime. I was simply taking drugs in order to grow my trait, that's all.
"It's not like I'm taking it to get high like some other people. I don't even want to snort drugs. I'm being forced to because of my trait. Did I ever get addicted and become a menace to society? Did I ever cook the stuff and push it on anyone like some dealer?"
...Granted, I had fed it to someone. Not a human, granted — an elf. And wait, weren't those caffeine candies I sold Hong Yeon-hwa also, in a sense, drugs?
Anyway.
"Sniff sniff..."
Having completed my lightning-speed self-rationalization, I opened the zip-lock bag and gave it a sniff. Unlike its vile taste, the smell was nearly odorless. There was the faintest trace of chemicals, but nothing severe.
"...Right then."
I carefully poured the white powder into my palm, then — like someone swallowing a pill — tilted my head far back and dumped the whole lot into my nose.
Sniff.
Snort.
......
"......!!"
My nasal cavity suddenly began itching like a madman. A sneeze was coming, right now, no questions asked. I clamped my hand over my nose in a panic.
"Eh, eh... ehh..."
But you can't hold back a biological reflex forever, can you? My clamped hand proved useless, and I sneezed almost immediately.
"Eh... AH-CHOO──!!"
A rising cloud of white dust. A fog like a fire extinguisher going off blanketed the entire room.
"...Snf, huhah?"
And so I made a dumb sound with an even dumber look on my face, and thought.
I'm screwed, aren't I. How do I clean this up? Can I vacuum it up?
"No, cleaning aside..."
The absorption efficiency...? Did it actually get in there properly...?
But because I'd sneezed every last gram of it out in a dust cloud, the notification telling me my addiction rate had risen never arrived.
"DAMN IIIIIT...!!"
I let out a scream that bordered on a wail.
Seriously, how the fuck is anyone supposed to snort this?! How is a human being supposed to take drugs through their nose instead of their mouth?! It was such a fine powder that it literally billowed into smoke — I couldn't have held back that sneeze if I'd tried. For someone with a pollen allergy like me, it was a literal instant-sneeze button.
How do actual junkies huff this stuff every single day? Do they come with a built-in sneeze-suppression trait or something?
"Ugh... snf."
I snorted the leftover powder out of my nose with a great phwoah and checked my gains. After all that chaos, a measly one percent. Present-day me was now exactly 0.01 times stronger than past me.
...Forget absorption efficiency — at these numbers, there was simply no point. Honestly, I'd have been better off eating it the normal way for even a single percent. No wait — even then it would only have been ten percent. One mouthful of Ferum Flower nectar would've topped that.
"What a ripoff..."
No more of these dumb stunts; from now on I'd just have to scrounge for drugs in the Tower. I'd ask Iris for some more Ferum Flower nectar.
"...Snf. Anyway. Let's call this done."
With the trait-grinding wrapped up, I pulled a slip of paper out of my inventory — it looked just like a ticket from an old movie theater.
"Now the question is where to spend it..."
The Skill Enhancement Ticket, my reward for clearing Floor 5. An item that let me pick one skill from those I owned and raise its rank. Naturally, since it was called a skill enhancement ticket, skills were the only thing it could upgrade — traits like my Drug Addiction or Drug Immunity were off the table.
"...Of course. The EX-rank and S-rank ones are all traits."
Even so, this was still a busted item. In a Tower that adored gacha and probability rigging, being able to choose the skill you wanted to strengthen was an enormous advantage.
So, settling for what was available, I opened my status window to check my skills.
"Status window."
My current skills were Transmutation (A), Inventory (A), Swordsmanship (C), and Come Eat, Pigeon (E).
...Come Eat, Pigeon (E) was, obviously, excluded.
That left three, and among those I ruled out Swordsmanship (C).
"Not really any use for it at the moment."
I had used it to knock some thugs flat, but my main weapon was still metal spike projection, not the sword. Even in close combat with a blade, what mattered was using my two other skills rather than the Swordsmanship passive.
"Which leaves these two..."
If I had to pick between them, Transmutation (A), obviously. I mean, what would upgrading Inventory even do — more capacity and range? The storage and retrieval speeds were already plenty fast. Besides, there was a real reason to push Transmutation further.
"Right now, Transmutation can only really handle metal and drugs."
Freely transmuting anything other than metal was still beyond me. Not that it was impossible — it just took so long that it was useless in combat. Maybe because the first thing I'd practiced on was energy drink cans? Or, wait, surely it's not that an alchemist can only handle iron... No, that can't be it.
"Plus, I'm curious how strong it'll be at S-rank."
You never know, right? Maybe I'd pick up something like human transmutation and make myself a chimera out of a dog and a little girl. At that point I'd have to join the Association and qualify as a State Alchemist.
...Anyway. Moving on.
Transmutation (A) → Transmutation (A+)
Using the Skill Enhancement Ticket on Transmutation instantly pushed it from A to A+.
Keen to test the upgraded skill's power, I pulled out an aluminum can and activated it.
"Transmute."
CRACKLE!!
A single aluminum can unraveled as if taken apart thread by thread, reshaping itself into the form of a sword. It felt less like transmutation and more like reconstruction — creation, even.
Clank!
The product was a dagger about the size of a recorder — roughly the same size as the one I'd made on the day I Awakened, out of a few dozen cans. For some reason it even seemed heavier than the original can had been. Whether equivalent exchange had gone out with the bathwater, I couldn't say.
"Well, good for me, either way."
Muttering that, I stowed the finished dagger in my inventory. I'd taken care of all my business at the black market, and with this, I'd used up all my overdue rewards too.
All that remained was to climb the Tower again.
"Shall we?"
It was about time to resume the ascent.
Would you like to enter Floor 6?
[ YES ]
Vvvvuum──
The sensation of the landscape warping around me. Apparently I'd gotten used to it by now, since no motion sickness came; I took a deep breath as I surveyed the forest around me.
"Ahh... the fresh, green scent of phytoncides..."
Grrrulk... guhweeeeeck...
"...Yeah, no. That's not it."
What washed over me was the all-too-familiar stench of a sewer. And this reek was far worse than anything I'd smelled before.
Then I took in the transformed scenery of the forest, and I could only stare, slack-jawed.
"What the hell is wrong with this place."
Most of the forest had been dyed a blackish violet — the same look as the woods around that enormous Black Sludge's territory. The soil lay soggy and soaked, reeking of sewage, and wisps of purple smoke rose from the gnarled, withered branches.
But that wasn't even the worst of it.
Grrruueeeck...!!
Had they noticed my presence in that brief moment? Black Sludges began oozing out from between the trees. And their numbers were anything but ordinary.
Grrrrulk... buweck!!
Gweck, grrrrrrk!!
Eck... ugh, eck...!!
"...What."
North, south, east, west. Three hundred sixty degrees, front and back. Everywhere I looked, Black Sludges came crawling out of the woodwork. A monstrous horde that couldn't even be compared to the three I'd faced on Floor 3.
I lost my will to fight for a moment under that overwhelming quantity, then forced the corners of my mouth upward and grumbled to myself.
"Whoa whoa, seriously...?"
Mr. Tower, sir? Is this for real? That thing's supposed to be a Floor 5 mid-boss? I'm counting at least ten just off the top of my head?
Dear godawful management: I am extremely angry right now. How angry? Exactly ten skill gacha tickets' worth. So if this is a burning event, I trust the corresponding rewards for a swift return to normalcy will be forthcoming...
"...Oh, dammit."
But no matter how long I waited, no main quest appeared. So after wearing a thoroughly deflated expression for a few seconds, I heaped armfuls of aluminum cans out of my inventory and took up a battle stance.
"Whatever... doesn't matter."
The me of Floor 3 and the me of now weren't even in the same league anymore. Ten Black Sludges? Free sandbags, crawling right up to me on their own. Perfect test subjects for trying out my newly strengthened Transmutation.
"Well, aren't I just the luckiest bunny girl alive."
So saying, forcibly armed with positive thinking, I stirred my mana to deal with the Black Sludges that had already crawled within arm's reach. I was about to pour mana into the aluminum cans and spray metal spikes in every direction when —
"Wind Cutter."
Along with a voice I knew well, a rain of wind blades fell from the sky.
KWA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-CRASH!!!!
Under the invisible blades raining down like a sudden downpour, the terrain flipped over as if it had been carpet-bombed. The Black Sludges caught on top of it had their cores shattered, melting away without even leaving a trace behind.
"......"
Magic of unimaginable power. I stared blankly at the scorched, devastated forest.
But it only lasted a moment. An elf had appeared out of nowhere, and from a distance she spoke to me.
"It's been a while, Human."
A face I knew well. But the body beneath it was not.
As I stood frozen in confusion, the elf spoke again, her voice laced with a faint smile.
"Or should I say, A-yeon, was it?"
Iris. When we met again, she had become a hag.