Chapter 58
Chapter 58
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: 26th Floor
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Heat was rising from the basement.
Enveloped in a bad premonition, I stepped out into the living room. A faint red glow leaked through the crack in the door leading to the basement.
I grabbed the basement door handle.
“Ow, hot!”
I screamed involuntarily and let go. The metal handle was scorching hot, like iron heated in a fire.
My palm was bright red.
Only after wrapping my hand in sand was I able to open the door.
Click.
As soon as I opened it, a sweltering blast of hot air hit my face.
The moment I realized it was an emergency, one thought flashed through my mind.
“Where’s Chohogi?”
The basement was his room.
He had fallen asleep there last night, too.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, I endured the heat and descended the stairs.
“What the hell….”
The scene before me was a disaster.
The basement was no longer a cozy sandy beach.
About a third of the room had completely transformed.
The floor was glass and obsidian, formed from sand that had melted and solidified again. It looked just like the site of a volcanic eruption.
At the center of it all was the Mountain’s Heart.
A rock in the middle of the room, periodically emitting red light and spewing hot steam.
It seemed the core from the 25th floor boss I fed him yesterday had acted as the trigger.
But right now, the cause wasn’t important.
I desperately searched for Chohogi.
No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see him.
“Chohogi!”
No response came.
I bit my lip slightly in anxiety.
He hadn’t turned into glass, had he?
Just as my vision started to darken.
Beyond the steam, in one corner of the room, I spotted an area that looked remarkably intact.
It was where the staff made from the World Tree’s roots had been planted.
The Legendary-grade staff was emitting a subtle aura on its own, protecting a small space from the overwhelming heat—like a barrier.
And right at the base of that staff was a small huddled figure.
It was Chohogi.
Curled up in a tiny ball, sleeping soundly, oblivious to what had happened.
He was fine. Alive.
“Phew…. Thank goodness.”
A sigh of relief escaped me naturally.
My legs nearly gave out.
I rushed over immediately and carefully pulled out the staff and Chohogi together.
As soon as I cradled him in my arms, he woke up and looked up at me with bewildered eyes.
Only after a moment did he grasp the situation, and he clung to my neck.
His little body was trembling faintly.
I patted his back to reassure him.
At that moment, Chohogi lifted his head and stared straight at me.
A dejected expression.
He tapped the top of his head.
It was the safety helmet I had made for him.
One corner of the hat he cherished so much was singed black.
He alternated between looking at me and the hat, his face on the verge of tears.
Seriously, in a situation like this, his only worry was the hat.
I let out a hollow laugh and comforted Chohogi.
“It’s okay. I’ll make you an even cooler one later. With diamonds, something that sparkles.”
At my words, Chohogi finally seemed to perk up a bit and burrowed deeper into my arms.
Holding him close, I glanced once more at the wrecked basement.
First, I had to deal with that rock somehow.
Right now, only about a third of the basement floor had melted, but that was just the beginning.
As I continued climbing the tower and fed stronger machine cores into that rock, the heat would only intensify.
What would it be like right before reaching the 30th floor?
“It won’t punch a hole through the ceiling, will it….”
Just thinking about it was terrifying.
How could I handle that thing?
The first idea that came to mind was the mage gallery’s refrigerator.
As an A-rank ice mage, she might be able to easily suppress that level of heat.
I considered asking her for help.
“No, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
But I quickly dismissed it.
First, she wouldn’t know anything about this unidentified rock. It was a reward from Extreme.
Second, even if she used cooling magic to suppress the heat, it would only be a temporary fix.
Magic effects don’t last forever.
I couldn’t keep asking her to cool the basement until I reached the 30th floor. In the end, I had to solve it myself.
I racked my brains.
To block the heat, I needed correspondingly powerful insulation.
Among the materials I could create with my abilities, the most suitable was orichalcum.
I drew out all the orichalcum power I had stored in my body.
Sand and rocks began to move according to my will, taking shape.
Pink metallic sand compressed, forming a thick, sturdy box.
A perfect airtight structure with no seams.
After completing the lid perfectly, I placed the Mountain’s Heart inside.
Thud!
The moment the lid closed, the heat filling the basement vanished as if by magic.
I touched the surface of the box.
It felt warmly heated, but not enough to melt anything around it.
“Phew….”
Only then did I exhale in relief.
I had barely managed a temporary seal, but lingering unease remained.
“I need to hurry up, toss it into the 30th floor, and grab the reward.”
I muttered while cleaning the basement.
***
[Entering Tower Floor 26 (EXTREME).]
“It’s not a mine?”
I was momentarily taken aback upon arriving on the 26th floor.
The massive cave looked like it had been through a war.
Completely different from previous floors.
Kobold corpses scattered everywhere, wreckage of shattered machines rolling among them. The floor had huge shell craters, and the acrid smell of gunpowder still stung my nose.
At the end of that ruin.
A massive fortress wall and gate completely blocked the cave passage.
More like a hatch than a castle gate, it revealed nothing of what lay beyond.
“Where are the enemies?”
I scanned the surroundings warily.
Only corpses and debris—no sign of anything alive or moving.
An eerily silent battlefield.
That unnatural quiet amplified my unease.
It was right then.
Kigigigik-!
The machine wreckage scattered around me began moving all at once.
What I thought were mere scrap metal pieces floated up, drawn to each other, and started reassembling in midair.
Drills instead of legs, caterpillar tracks instead of heads.
All sorts of debris fused grotesquely, creating new forms of mechanical soldiers.
“No way these are mithril too?”
I recalled the 25th floor boss. Surely these mobs weren’t that sturdy?
Reflexively, I created a tungsten bullet and fired.
The body of the nearest machine device was pierced clean through and exploded in one shot.
Definitely not mithril.
Confirming that, I didn’t hesitate any longer.
“Let’s end this quick.”
I planted the staff in the ground and unleashed my mana.
Desertification—full deployment.
Waves of sand surged fiercely from beneath my feet.
Kurrr rumble!
The mechanical soldiers, just finishing reassembly, didn’t even get a chance to move before being swept into the sand torrent and shredded.
Kobold corpses, machine wreckage—all turned to a handful of sand and vanished.
When the waves finally subsided, nothing remained in the cave except the massive fortress wall.
Traces of the battlefield gone, only endless dunes and the fortress blocking the way ahead.
“That gate looks insanely tough….”
I muttered as I walked toward the wall.
I had to get inside there to proceed to the next stage. A simple, clear goal.
Kikikigigik!
At that moment, dozens of openings appeared atop the wall.
Turrets. Countless turrets all swiveled toward me at once.
“Uh….”
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang-!
Without warning, they opened fire.
Dozens of shells streaked toward me, trailing fire.
I immediately erected a thick sand barrier around myself.
Made lavishly with orichalcum mixed in, thicker and heavier than any barrier I’d created before.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Each shell impact shook the world.
Cracks formed and repaired repeatedly.
Occasionally, blue-glowing shells flew in, sending electricity crackling over the barrier.
“This is insane….”
At this rate, even getting close to the wall would be tough.
I decided to change strategy.
If breaking through head-on was hard, go under.
I dug into the sand beneath my feet like a trench.
Covering my head with a thick sand wall, I advanced forward.
I tunneled forward for quite a while.
The wall came into view. Peeking above ground, the wall up close was overwhelming.
It sealed off a space dozens of meters wide without gaps.
Its surface was smoothly processed, no seams between bricks at all—as if a single massive boulder had been carved whole. A perfect monolith.
I couldn’t even guess how it was made.
Just in case, I cast Erosion on the wall.
As expected.
The spot where the staff tip touched corroded only minutely; the speed to turn it to sand was agonizingly slow.
“This is mithril too?”
I let out a hollow laugh.
These crazy bastards. Curses slipped out naturally.
Do they have money to burn? Are they treating mithril like roadside pebbles?
Making this entire massive wall out of solid mithril.
“Are they preparing for some epic racial war with their fate on the line?”
But no matter how sturdy the wall, I could just go around.
I dove underground again.
Planning to dig deep under the foundation and slip past.
“Damn, they even anticipated this?”
But my plan was quickly thwarted.
No matter how deep I dug, the mithril wall extended endlessly.
Up, down—no way around.
“Every floor in the 20s is full of these creepy freaks.”
I gave up digging and resurfaced.
Only one way left.
Head-on breakthrough.
Pierce straight through the toughest gate.
I gathered diamond power once more.
This time, not a simple blade.
I spun diamond particles at high speed, forming a massive drill.
An evolution of my previous technique.
“Giga… Drill… Break!!!”
Shouting the name I made up on the spot, I charged the giant diamond drill at the gate.
Kakakakakakakang-!
A horrific friction sound filled the cave.
The diamond drill clashed with the mithril gate, sparking wildly.
Fortunately, it worked.
The gate began shaving away rapidly.
Even so, the gate’s thickness meant it would take ages to drill through.
Meanwhile, the turrets atop the wall relentlessly bombarded overhead.
My head throbbed. Mana depleted like mad.
How much time passed?
It felt like over five hours of drilling.
Finally, the drill tip felt empty air.
“Finally through….”
Exhausted, I collapsed flat on the ground.
The diamond drill and overhead barrier dissolved into sand and scattered.
Strength drained from my body; I couldn’t even twitch a finger.
“Haa… I’m gonna die.”
As I sat there catching my breath.
A familiar message appeared before my eyes.
[Congratulations on clearing Floor 26 EXTREME difficulty.]
The familiar clear message.
But something was different from usual.
No mention of the Ranking 1 bonus that always followed.
“Not first place this time?”
I muttered in disbelief.
26 straight first-place climbs broken like this?
My clear time dragged too much?
I felt wronged.
It’s EXTREME difficulty—shouldn’t they give more leeway?
Then, three skill books appeared before me.
“Level up?”
Two were gold, the remaining one gleaming with iridescent platinum light.
A Platinum-grade skill book.
My eyes sparkled too.
“Whoa…. Finally pulling one of these from bare ground….”
The next moment, the promised change began in the skill book.
[First Clear Bonus applied!]
The platinum light intensified, soon shining in brilliant rainbow hues.
Rainbow grade.
Top-tier skill, on par with Erosion.
“Yeah, snag this and rechallenge—problem solved?”
I grinned, as if I’d never complained.
Ranking 1?
With another skill like Erosion, I could snatch it anytime.
Mesmerized, I reached for the Rainbow skill book.
The skill book dissolved into particles of light, seeping into my body.
Simultaneously, new knowledge and power imprinted in my mind.
[Summon Skill: Sandworm]
[Grade: Rainbow]
[The God of the Earth descends.]
[Show your reverence.]
“…?”