Chapter 29
Chapter 29
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: 14th Floor (2)
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I stepped into the 14th floor of the tower with my heavy bag.
Today, all my senses felt unusually vivid.
I could see the faint flow of poison qi mixed into the humid air.
These were things I hadn't been able to see before.
This was thanks to the newly acquired Insight Eye skill.
True to its description—"What you see isn't everything"—it was making the invisible visible.
"This poison qi is just another form of mana, huh."
The divine essence that dwells in all things in the world.
It was simply mana in another form.
The poison qi on the 10th-floor levels was nothing more than mana in a twisted state.
I pulled out the World Tree seed from my pocket, now grown to the size of a soccer ball.
It was embarrassing to even call it a seed anymore.
As soon as I took out the seed, the air flow around me changed.
The mana mixed with poison qi was sucked into the seed, and pure, purified mana flowed out from the other side.
It was like a massive air purifier filter.
"What if I plant this and a World Tree grows later...?"
For a moment, I felt an urge to plant it in the hills behind my neighborhood and raise it.
In boring Daejeon, where the only local landmark was a single bakery, it might make for a nice one.
A city with a World Tree.
Researchers and tourists from around the world would flock there.
It'd revive the stagnant economy of Daejeon, too.
"But I need mine for the 20th-floor hidden piece... Ah, I wish I could get another World Tree somewhere."
Putting aside my pointless, boring imaginings, I began clearing the area.
The goal of today's climb was purely magic training.
I had to deal with the monsters that would interfere with my training in advance.
I casually unleashed Desertification, then took out the goblins that had lost their camouflage and turned into idiots.
By the tower's system, wiping out all the monsters would auto-clear the floor.
This time, I planned to stay on the floor as long as possible for training.
So I needed to leave a few alive.
I created a few sand clones and had them securely capture one goblin.
Then I surrounded the area with tall sand walls.
A perfect sand prison was complete.
"Ah, I should poke a breathing hole."
It would be a huge problem if it suffocated to death.
I drilled a small hole in one side of the wall.
"Hmm, still not reassuring..."
I had a guppy fish when I was a kid.
They'd die for no reason at all.
Sometimes a few would accidentally get sucked into the drain while changing the tank water.
Goblins were the same.
They were so weak to me now that a light tap would kill them.
Ephemeral deaths.
I caught two more goblins from nearby as backups and imprisoned them the same way.
Now, even if one suddenly dropped dead, I wouldn't have to worry about an accidental clear.
Only then did I feel a bit at ease.
Next target: the Trents.
I plowed up the ground with Desertification as I searched the jungle.
Soon, the hidden Trents were revealed.
With a familiar gesture, I harvested their fruits.
The harvested fruits were all greedily devoured by the World Tree seed.
And I discovered another new fact.
"This isn't trash after all."
The shriveled fruits spat out by the World Tree seed.
Before, I'd thought they were garbage and just tossed them.
But viewed through Insight Eye, they were different.
Mana wasn't the only thing flowing in the Trent fruits. Poison qi flowed alongside it.
Trents were absorbing the mana and poison qi abundant in this jungle.
They used the mana as their own nourishment and concentrated the leftover poison qi into fruits.
That was the true nature of the fruits.
"Wait, so people have been eating Trent shit all this time?"
Was that why taking the fruits kept them neutral?
Humans were just serving as their bidet?
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
"I was gonna buy some fruits later to try..."
But the wrinkled fruits the seed had eaten and spat out were different.
The poison qi was perfectly filtered out, leaving only pure life force condensed within.
"It's shit eaten from shit, so it's kinda gross..."
I stared at the purified fruit, deep in thought.
My instincts told me eating it would definitely help.
But its appearance and origin were seriously off-putting.
"Eh, screw it, I'll just eat it. It looks good at a glance..."
Yeah, I've eaten dirt from the roadside before.
What couldn't I eat now?
I squeezed my eyes shut and popped the fruit into my mouth.
And spat it right back out after 0.1 seconds.
"Ptoo! Ugh... This tastes fucking awful...."
It was an indescribably horrific taste. Astringent and fishy flavors ravaged my tongue.
This was no food for humans.
Even after gargling with water several times, the awful taste lingered.
But I had a last resort.
"If it tastes bad, just make the taste disappear, right?"
I used the Pulverization skill to turn the fruit into sand.
When it came to eating sand, I was an unrivaled expert.
I put the sand in my water bottle and shook it.
The key was to gulp it down before the sand settled.
Without hesitation, I swallowed a mouthful of sand.
"Hmm... It tastes a bit different from my usual sand...?"
Maybe because it had an original form, it felt different going down.
Soon, I felt a heavy lump of magical power sliding down my esophagus.
Then, something warm settled in the pit of my stomach.
Instinct told me: this was an elixir.
I processed and swallowed all the remaining fruits the same way.
Gulp, gulp.
"Uh... This might be bad..."
It was on the tenth one.
Suddenly, my insides felt like they were on fire.
I was certain something was wrong.
I hurriedly sat cross-legged and began meditating.
Looking inward, I saw a massive amount of uncontrolled mana rampaging wildly inside me.
How do I control this?
The mana thrashed through my veins like living snakes gone berserk.
"Urgh..."
Dizzying pain clouded my mind.
If I left it like this, my body would burst from the inside.
I desperately focused my consciousness to control the mana flow, but it was futile.
Like trying to dam a flood with my palms.
My awareness was swept away by the rampaging mana.
The sand around me began to go berserk.
A massive sand wave rose, and a sharp sandstorm whipped up.
The entire desert I'd created came alive, grinding everything around it to dust.
I sat in the center of that storm, trying somehow to control the power.
"No, at this rate, I'll get swept away...!"
I was standing firm against this enormous flow.
But the more I fought, the more fiercely the mana rebelled.
"No, this isn't the way."
Amid the body-tearing pain, a forgotten sensation suddenly revived.
The moment I made the sand totem. The memory of crumbling my own arm back into a handful of sand.
Back then, I'd thought: sand is sand, even scattered. No need to be bound by form. Not even my body.
"Yeah, that's it."
I had been treating this rampaging mana as an external enemy.
No, it wasn't like that.
The divine essence within was connected to the world.
But my body was made of mana too.
This was part of me as well.
I gave up on becoming a dam resisting the mana torrent.
Instead, I decided to open a path for the water.
I maxed out Insight Eye.
I focused on the divine essence within.
It was the core of my magical power, the vessel holding all that was me.
I didn't force the rampaging life force into the vessel.
Instead, I poked holes in it.
Concentrating my mind, I drilled small, fine holes one by one.
The vessel became a sieve, letting the mana flow through.
The divine essence within began to change slowly.
Its faint outline sharpened. Fine sand started rising from my toes.
The elixir's mana mixed perfectly with my original mana, becoming one.
"Haaaa..."
I exhaled deeply.
The sandstorm that had raged madly around me stopped as if by magic.
The sand grains, scattering wildly in all directions, suddenly aligned in unison.
I opened my eyes.
Sand grains floating in the air sparkled like stars in the night sky.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
The surroundings were completely devastated.
The sand prison where I'd kept the goblin was gone without a trace.
And before my eyes floated the familiar clear message.
In all that chaos, the poor goblins must have all died.
"...Rest in peace, goblins."
I offered a brief eulogy and left the tower.
My training plan had fallen apart after just one day.
I had to wait a full day to climb the tower again.
But it wasn't for nothing. I looked down at my feet.
Whoosh, both feet turned to fine sand and scattered.
The divine essence within had been dyed just a little more with sand.
I was much closer to my original goal.
But full-body sandification was still a long way off.
"...What the hell do I use foot-sandification for?"
I sighed.
It wasn't like I could shoot toe bullets once my fingers were gone.
Plus, legs were hard to use as magic reagents.
And running away would be a disaster.
If only the sandification had started from my head or heart.
***
Over the next four days,
I repeated the same process four more times.
I roamed the 14th floor, harvested fruits, turned them into elixirs, and used them for training.
The first day's rampage served as good medicine; absorbing the elixirs and controlling the mana grew smoother with each passing day.
Finally, on the fifth day.
I sat still in the middle of the room and closed my eyes.
Time to check the results of the past five days.
Focusing my mind, the familiar sensation rose from my toes.
Whoosh.
Both feet turned to fine sand and flowed to the floor.
But it didn't stop there.
The sandification sensation passed my ankles, climbed my calves, crossed my knees, and rose unimpeded to my thighs.
I opened my eyes.
My lower body was no longer made of flesh and bone.
Below my waist, only a pair of sand pillars remained.
"Success."
I smiled in satisfaction.
I reverted my sand lower body back to normal.
The five days of intensive training were over.
Now, my next goal was clear.
The 15th floor. Time to meet the old man who cuts magic again.