Chapter 31
Chapter 31
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 31
Chapter Title: Carving Magic
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“Alright, it’s a territory deployment showdown.”
At my command, the desert sands began to writhe.
At the same time, the slime started to move as well.
Dozens of sticky tentacles rose from the polluted swamp.
Tentacles whipping toward me like lashes.
“Sand Totem.”
Two summoned sand clones blocked the tentacles right on cue.
One of the tentacles, shaped like me, wrapped around a sand clone entirely.
The coiled tentacle burrowed into the sand, squeezing tight before shattering the clone to pieces.
The crumbled sand clone scattered across the ground.
“Damn…”
I furrowed my brow.
The slime’s mucus tainted the sand black with poison.
The polluted sand no longer obeyed my control. It was hard to recover and reuse.
I’d lost two fingers worth of totem material.
“Tch…”
A few more tentacles came flying my way.
This time, I used my entire right hand to form a massive sand clone.
In an instant, a 3-meter-tall colossal sand giant appeared before me. It too bore my likeness.
Several tentacles coiled around the giant’s limbs like snakes.
“Urgh…”
The giant groaned as it began a test of strength.
I didn’t miss the opening.
Dozens of sand projectiles scooped up from nearby.
While the giant pinned down the tentacles, I unleashed a barrage toward the slime’s main body.
Boom boom boom boom!
Holes riddled the slime’s body.
Foul-smelling mucus splattered everywhere.
The ground where the mucus landed began to bubble and blacken with corruption.
The enemy’s field had expanded instead, giving me a headache.
“Grrruuub!”
That wasn’t all.
Small slimes made of mucus began crawling out from the polluted ground.
“Wow, what a pattern this guy has…”
I kept consuming sand to produce normal-sized sand clones.
To deal with the mini-slimes popping out from all sides, one by one.
The battle gradually devolved into chaos.
The massive clone was still locked in a struggle with the main body’s tentacles, while dozens of small clones tangled with the mini-slimes.
I clicked my tongue softly.
“This isn’t good…”
A war of attrition favored the enemy.
My sand clones were an original application of the Sand Totem technique.
To create freely moving sand totems, I had to incorporate even a small part of my body.
The problem was the corruption. Once a clone crumbled, the polluted sand didn’t return, steadily draining my body.
The right arm I’d been feeding in bit by bit had vanished up to the elbow.
“Urgh…”
To make matters worse, my head throbbed from overload.
Right now, I was controlling one massive sand giant and ten small sand clones.
Far beyond the number I could usually handle.
Control was incredibly difficult.
It felt like running ten monitors at once to play a game.
One slip-up like this, and it was over. A single small mistake could turn the tide.
“Time for Plan B.”
I steeled my resolve.
I turned my entire right arm from elbow to shoulder into sand.
Then I gathered most of the sand created by Desertification and mashed it together.
Mana drained rapidly as a colossal form began to take shape.
Moments later, a 5-meter-tall massive sand golem slowly revealed itself behind me.
It too resembled me.
The shadow it cast over the area.
The swamp slime hastily retracted its extended tentacles.
I could feel its clear wariness.
But it was pointless.
I charged the sand golem at full power.
With each step the giant took, the ground shook, and I felt mana pouring out of me.
Ruuuuumble!
The sand golem hurled itself straight into the swamp.
The impact of its immense mass. Polluted swamp water splashed everywhere.
I hid behind a pre-made totem to block the flying filth.
“…Mission success.”
The sticky swamp was instantly filled with the massive amount of sand the golem had brought.
And finally, the slime’s core, hidden at the swamp’s deepest point, revealed itself.
I prepared the spell I’d used on the 10th floor to hunt the orc warlord.
A spell that used my entire remaining opposite arm.
A massive sand spike replaced my arm.
No hesitation. I fired the spike spinning wildly in place.
Shiiiing!
The enormous sand spike tore through the air.
Boom boom boom!
With the sound of bursting drums, the slime’s core exploded in all directions.
The short but grueling battle ended.
“Haa… That was tough for real this time.”
I collapsed to the ground, catching my breath.
No wonder this floor required a large party.
A familiar clear message floated before my eyes.
[You have cleared Tower Floor 15 (EXTREME).]
[Will you exit the Tower? Y/N]
[Remaining Time: 1h 17m]
The same message as on the 5th floor.
But I had no intention of leaving now.
My body hadn’t fully recovered yet.
First, I recovered the polluted parts of my body and the sand.
As I brought the World Tree’s seed close, the corrupted sand gradually regained its original color.
I’d heard other purification seeds had capacity limits, but this one apparently didn’t. It had been serving me well for several floors now.
Even so, purifying all the sand took quite a while.
I restored the blackened sand to its original hue and carefully reabsorbed it into my body.
Now it was time to farm the hidden piece I’d been waiting for.
My true purpose for coming to the 15th floor.
Meeting the Magic Carver to repair my invincible VPN.
“Still a bit nerve-wracking, but…”
This time, I’d prepared multiple countermeasures.
It should be fine.
Finally, Insight Eye picked something up.
Something squirmed beneath the bottom of the now sand-filled swamp.
I extended my arm and manipulated the sand covering the ground.
Controlling such a large amount of sand was quite taxing.
Crack.
As I thrust my arm forward, the earth split open.
The item at the swamp bottom revealed itself.
It was some creature’s egg, pulsing like a heart.
Its surface was smooth like glass, with red vein-like patterns wriggling creepily over it.
“Ugh, how the hell did Fridge find something like this?”
I picked up the item and searched for the path.
I felt uneasy holding it directly, so I levitated it in the air with sand and carried it along.
Finding the path was easy.
The closer I got to the egg, the more violently it pulsed.
Soon, I arrived before a massive tree.
A trunk thick enough for several adults to encircle with their arms.
The tree had an incongruous stone door.
“Ah, damn. This is making me tense for no reason.”
Open the door, and that crazy mage from before would be inside.
Fridge said it was definitely safe, but that was on Hard difficulty.
No one knew what would happen on Extreme.
“Better to be safe.”
I took the time to turn the entire surroundings into sand. A foothold for emergency escape.
It was best to prepare everything possible before meeting the Magic Carver.
Even that didn’t fully reassure me.
I had a sand clone, far away, open the door instead.
The condition to open the door was one: bring this egg from the swamp floor to the tree.
Creaaaaak.
Sure enough, the door opened soon after, and a voice came from inside.
“Hmm? And who might you be?”
Hello, Magic Carver…
Huh?
I squinted.
A familiar line. But the voice was completely different.
Not the aged, mad tone. A young, calm voice laced with intellect.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
I checked inside the door.
Standing there wasn’t the mad old man.
Instead, a young man in his twenties stood there.
Neatly combed-back black hair. Glasses giving an intellectual air. A robe fitted perfectly to his frame.
“Uh…?”
His pitch-black eyes remained the same, but they held no madness.
Instead, the young man’s eyes gleamed with a thirst for knowledge, as if piercing through all principles.
No one mentioned this?
The Magic Carver—no, the young Magic Carver—saw the pulsing black egg and clicked his tongue.
“Hmm, so this one failed in the end…”
He casually reached out.
The egg floated into the air and crumbled to dust in an instant, vanishing.
The core item of my mission was disposed of so anticlimactically.
His gaze shifted from the cleared egg to my sand clone.
He narrowed his eyes with interest.
“Oh ho, a golem made of sand… Fascinating mechanism. Different from a standard golem… What’s the control range? Mana circuits?”
The young man muttered to himself nonstop as he circled the sand clone.
Then, suddenly, he whipped his head around.
Toward me, far beyond the clone.
As if he’d known my position from the start.
“Ah, so you must be the creator of this golem. Why not come in? I’d like to treat you to some tea.”
A polite tone.
But I had my sand clone shake its head in refusal.
My eyes remained fixed on the emergency exit button in one corner.
‘On the 5th floor, the error happened the moment I entered that guy’s room…’
I had no intention of repeating the same mistake.
So far, so good.
If he showed any strange behavior, I’d hit the exit button immediately.
At my reaction, a faint smile tugged at the young man’s lips.
“Ah, you’re wary. Well, I suppose it’s hard to enter a strange mage’s lab. I understand.”
He nodded lightly.
“If you won’t come into my lab, then I’ll come out.”
The moment the young man finished speaking, his form distorted like a heat haze.
And in the very next instant.
The young man stood not inside the door, but right in front of my main body.
“How’s this? At this distance, you can relax and talk, right?”
He maintained a proper distance of five or six steps from me.
His attitude clearly showed consideration for me.
As I began to question this completely different demeanor from the 5th floor version.
The young man, peering intently at me up close, had his expression turn to shock.
His face was that of someone who’d seen something that shouldn’t exist in the world.
“Y-you… What is that?”
Huh? What?
No idea. What’s he talking about?
But I knew exactly what to say right now.
“Ahh, this? I see… You don’t know about it.”
My instincts were telling me.
I could wring a lot out of this guy.