Tower of Despair: 10th Floor (3)
Squelch!
Jang Cha-yul’s spear punched through Rex’s hide.
Crack!
Hwang Dae-un’s blunt weapon slammed into the beast’s foot and sent a shockwave through it.
For the first time since they entered, they were finally dealing real damage.
—Kyaaaaaah!
Rex howled in pain and refused to take it quietly. It threw its body back, roared, and lashed out with its claws in a relentless flurry.
Clang-clang-clang!
Baek Yeon-ho’s shield caught every blow.
“Ghhhk!”
The impact still hit like a truck. Without Baek Do-hee’s healing behind him, he would have been knocked out long ago.
Hyun Si-woon was already on the move, sword aura flashing as he carved into Rex from every angle.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed.
“Rotate! Don’t foul each other’s paths!”
At Si-woon’s shout, the formation they had drilled thousands of times in the training yard unfolded like clockwork. Hwang Dae-un filled the space Jang Cha-yul left, and the instant Dae-un pulled back, Kang Si-a’s arrow punched through the opening.
Twang! Thunk!
Si-a’s arrows in particular hunted the wounds they had already torn open and the soft points beneath them with merciless precision.
—Kyaaaaaaaaah!
Mad with agony, Rex let out a berserk roar. Golden eyes blazed with killing intent as it swung its claws at Baek Yeon-ho, the closest target.
It switched targets.
Si-woon’s eyes sharpened. The beast that had been stalking only him now had no room left for focus; it was simply attacking whatever stood nearest.
Clang-clang-clang!
Yeon-ho did not dodge.
“Kehk!”
Blood burst from his mouth, but he held.
I have to hold.
The skill of his legendary shield—Mountain’s Echo—returned ten percent of every impact to the attacker. Which meant the stronger the enemy hit, the more of that force Yeon-ho had to absorb himself.
I’m not dying to this anyway.
He still had one more trump card: the Heart of the Strong he had once bought from Lumi. While worn, it radiated an aura that raised the Strength of every ally within ten meters by two. And when the wearer took a fatal blow, it could, just once, detonate the heart’s power to nullify all damage and blast surrounding enemies away.
“Yeon-ho, don’t push yourself too hard!”
Baek Do-hee shouted from behind him.
Too hard…
Yeon-ho clenched his teeth. If he didn’t push, his party would die. Right now, all he could do was endure.
And then—
“The shell!”
Kang Si-a’s voice cut sharp.
“It’s already growing back! We have to prep the dissonance pattern again!”
The window with the carapace down lasted only about thirty seconds. Fail to force Phase Two inside that window and they would be stuck repeating the first pattern.
This is looking bad.
Si-woon frowned. A veteran’s instincts were screaming. This enhanced Rex regenerated at a ridiculous rate. Leave it alone long enough for the shell to finish and it would almost certainly heal itself back to full. And their side?
Yeon-ho’s face had gone a sickly yellow.
Si-woon made the call on the spot.
“Just pour on more damage! All the way!”
“Yes!”
“Understood!”
Their movements turned rawer, more reckless. Every one of them felt it in their bones: this was the moment to empty the tank.
“Hraaaaaah!”
Hwang Dae-un roared. He was about to unleash the strongest finishing form he could currently manage—a technique he had only landed a handful of times through the entire training period.
Stone Crush!
A lunatic idea: stacking the rotational force of Collapsing Mountain with the destructive power of Shattering Stone. His entire body became a living cannonball and drove into Rex’s flank—then began to spin.
Crrraaaack!
The rupture sound was on another level entirely. Several of Rex’s ribs caved in at once; the massive body lost its balance and staggered.
Whiiish!
Kang Si-a’s bowstring hammered arrows into the creature’s face without pause, while Si-woon wrung out every last drop of strength and carved deep into the nape of its neck with Moon Trace.
Perfect coordination. Explosive damage packed into a single heartbeat.
And then—
—Kwaaaaaaaaaah!
Golden energy erupted from Rex’s body like a storm. The entire altar screamed with the pressure; the party was driven back before they even realized they were moving.
Crrrk-crrrk-crrrk!
Over the body that had been shredded only seconds earlier, the shattered Resonance Carapace reformed—thicker and harder than before.
Clang! Clang!
At the same time, the two chains that had bound its forelegs snapped with a thunderous report.
“That’s it!”
“Phase Two!”
“Nice!”
The party’s eyes went wide.
It actually worked?
Even before the enhancement I figured we’d have to beat it down ten times over…
Heh.
Half a year of training had not been wasted after all.
“Yeon-ho hyung! Sit this turn out!”
“I can still—”
“I said rest!”
Baek Yeon-ho staggered to a corner, dropped to one knee, and gasped for air.
Not stamina so much as hitting the wall.
He had been tanking attacks strong enough to crater the ground with nothing but his shield and body. Better to recover fast and rejoin than force it.
—Grrrrrrr…!
Rex, forelegs free at last. Its golden eyes dropped to the floor.
Here it comes.
Every nerve in Si-woon’s body went taut. Phase Two’s core pattern: Resonance Amplification. The floor sigils would light, and instant-death area blasts would erupt from them on a cycle. The pattern itself was not that complicated—there was no need to make it complicated. Knowing it still did not make dodging easy once you were locked in combat with Rex.
The problem is…
There was no guarantee it would match the pattern Si-woon remembered. Phase One had already been different.
“Wipe every pattern you know out of your heads!”
Si-woon shouted.
“Scatter! Don’t just stare at the floor! Treat the whole space as the danger zone! Whatever comes, read it and react!”
“Roger!”
They fanned out without a wasted step.
In that instant—
Wooooom—!
Rex drove its forelegs into the ground. The sonic sigils across the altar floor flushed blood-red as one.
Just as expected.
But—
“Above!”
Kang Si-a’s razor-sharp cry split the air. Every head snapped up on pure instinct.
The ceiling was glowing red.
Not the floor.
Damn it!
Si-woon swore inwardly.
Different from the very first beat.
Rrrumble!
Dozens of massive sonic pillars began raining down at random from specific zones of the ceiling. Instant-death. Blocking was not an option. A graze would turn a body into mist.
“Dodge!”
KRAAAAAAAAAASH!
The floor tore like paper; shrapnel sprayed in every direction.
“Ghhk!”
Hwang Dae-un hurled his heavy frame clear—just barely—but a flying shard carved deep into his forearm. He hadn’t taken a pillar head-on, so he was still alive.
The brawl dissolved into pure chaos. There was no fixed safe zone.
“Watch the ceiling! Dodge toward the parts that aren’t lit!”
“Cha-yul noona! Behind you!”
“Kyaa!”
Jang Cha-yul’s scream tore free. Rex’s claws had raked across her waist in a single flashing pass.
“Don’t just watch the ceiling! You still have to fight Rex!”
“Ugh!”
Cha-yul scrambled back with desperate footwork, but Rex’s movement had grown far more cunning. It was reading the escape lines people used to avoid the descending pillars and cutting those paths off with its claws in advance.
“Noona! Ceiling!”
KRAAASH!
A sonic pillar detonated right behind her. The shockwave threw Cha-yul’s balance forward.
“Look out!”
Baek Do-hee’s scream rang out. Rex’s next strike was already lined up on Cha-yul’s head.
Earthen Wall.
Si-woon raised a hand.
Crrrack!
Stone burst from the floor and bought Cha-yul a heartbeat of cover. But rock from an Earthen Wall was nothing to Rex.
KRAAASH!
To the beast it might as well have been paper.
The situation was a nightmare. They could not cluster—clustering tangled their paths and raised the odds of eating an instant-death pillar. And yet they could not simply stand and watch either.
Si-woon and Dae-un closed on Rex together while Cha-yul broke for another patch of relative safety.
Boom! KRAASH!
Pillars still hammered down at random from above while Rex, fully free, rampaged across the floor. Attack and evade at the same time, under conditions that punished even a flicker of lost focus with death.
Is this even meant to be clearable?
This difficulty is insane.
For party members who had been riding Si-woon’s knowledge down every shortcut, this was the first time the true Tower of Despair had shown its face.
Dodge. Cut. Dodge again.
“Yeon-ho hyung, you’re in!”
“Y-yeah!”
“Cha-yul noona, rest!”
“Th-thanks!”
Yeon-ho and Cha-yul swapped. Rest, of course, was not real rest—just holding position as far from Rex as possible while never taking their eyes off the ceiling.
Then—
“Gyaaah!”
Blood fountained from Hwang Dae-un’s gut.
“Dae-un!”
Baek Do-hee, still treating Cha-yul, cried out. She wanted to use Saint’s Prayer, but she couldn’t—she had to keep moving because of the ceiling.
“Do-hee, go to him.”
“What about you?!”
“I can manage with a potion—hurry!”
“Got it!”
She sprinted across the floor again.
“Hyung—Hyeong-nim! My stomach—my stomach—”
“Stop whining! Focus and fight!”
Si-woon was ice. A gut wound? Of course it hurt. It just did not impress him much. He had been run through dozens of times himself. Anyone who wanted to climb higher had to learn how to swallow that kind of pain.
“If you lose focus it’s not your stomach that gets opened—it’s your head! Minimal pressure on the wound and get over here!”
“Y-yes!”
“I’ll buy the time!”
Twang! Twang!
Kang Si-a’s arrows hammered Rex’s weak points without rest. One buried itself beside an eye; another sank into the joint of a foreleg mid-stride. The raw damage was light, but the relentless harassment was more than enough to fray a predator’s nerves.
—Kraaaaaah!
Rex’s patience finally snapped. It aborted its attack on Dae-un, wheeled, and charged Si-a.
Si-a did not flinch. She waited as if she had been expecting it, then twisted her body by a hair’s breadth at the last possible instant. Her movement looked exactly like a matador flourishing a red cape.
Swish!
She slipped off Rex’s charge line, fell back while drawing her string, and—
Twang!
—loosed.
Her awareness stayed wide open even then.
“Dae-un! Seven o’clock—ceiling!”
“Whoa! Thanks!”
Fighting and still looking out for the others. Completely, endearingly solid.
But she was still an archer. She could not finish Rex alone.
“Si-a, draw it this way. We take it together!”
“Yes!”
She read Si-woon’s intent at once and shifted her angle of movement.
In that same breath—
“……!”
Jang Cha-yul, catching her breath, went wide-eyed. She shouted immediately.
“Si-woon!”
He turned on pure reflex. Cha-yul was pointing at the floor.
“The floor!”
That single word sent ice racing down Si-woon’s spine.
The floor?
No way.
Wooooom!
With the sound, the blood-red floor sigils flared even brighter. A pattern he knew by heart—one he had simulated dozens of times for the clear. Phase Two Resonance Amplification’s floor pattern.
Why now?
He knew exactly what it meant. This damned tower intended to stack the ceiling pattern on top of the original floor pattern and crush them under both at once.
“…Crazy.”
For the first time, the curse left his mouth instead of staying inside his head.