Tower of Death — Floor of Wisdom (3)
"Everyone, snap out of it!"
The people around me looked as though something had taken hold of them. One by one, they began drawing whatever weapons they had on them.
Wait. Don't tell me—
I edged backward at the sight of all those blades and staves coming out. Every last one of them looked ready to treat me as the enemy. And then Jin-hwan, standing closest to me, changed.
Attribute Conversion
— Darkness —
That's Attribute Conversion?
The instant Jin-hwan's clothes bled into black, he stretched a hand toward me.
A hand that will guide enemies to the grave.
Hands of darkness burst up from the earth at the same moment.
Ghk—
The passage was already cramped. I threw myself backward to get clear of Jin-hwan's attack and dropped into a fighting stance.
What the hell is going on?
Everyone but me looked possessed. I had no idea why I alone was still lucid, but at least they hadn't gone completely under. That was something.
"I have to snap Jin-hwan out of this somehow."
Jin-hwan had a skill that cured status ailments. If I could get him back, the others would come around in no time.
But can I actually pull that off?
Every person in front of me was a ranker — the best in their respective fields. The thought of fighting all of them at once while trying to bring Jin-hwan back to his senses sat heavy in my chest. Even if the odds were nothing, I couldn't just stand here. Give up now and the Calamity would unfold exactly as it was meant to, and countless people would die. That could not be allowed to happen. One way or another, I had to wake Jin-hwan up.
"Haaawn. Why'd you call me all of a sudden?"
"I need you to deal with those guys."
"Hm? Those guys?"
Ursula looked over the vacant-eyed crowd in front of her with something like interest.
"They've all lost their minds, haven't they?"
"Yeah. Can you hold the others off while I snap Jin-hwan out of it?"
"Heh. That much is nothing."
She said it with total confidence, then strode forward and unfurled her tentacles.
Whoosh—!
Ursula's tentacles shot out in every direction and seized people one after another. In a heartbeat she had every last one of them bound.
"This is too easy."
The entire group had been subdued in an instant. I watched them strain uselessly against the grip of her tentacles, then darted toward Jin-hwan.
A breath composed of darkness.
Jin-hwan opened his mouth wide as I closed in and unleashed the breath straight at me.
KRAAAAAANG!
The passage was too narrow to dodge. The blast slammed into my shield head-on.
Ghk—
The impact was vicious enough to make the shield shudder as if it might come apart. I gritted my teeth, weathered it, and kept pushing forward.
Just a little more!
Once I was nearly on top of him, I twisted the shield and deflected the stream of darkness aside, then cut hard to the right and closed the last of the distance.
Sorry about this!
I figured it would take a real shock to bring him back, so I cocked my fist and went for his head—
Thud! Crash!
Something smashed into my solar plexus so fast I never saw it. The blow launched me across the passage and I hit the wall hard.
"Cough— what the hell was that?"
I started to lift my head, trying to make out whatever had hit me.
A chill crawled up my spine. Killing intent flared from the right. I got my shield up just in time.
KRAANG!
Something hammered into the shield with bone-breaking force. If I hadn't raised it, I would have been dead.
Crack. Crrrack.
The shield broke?
The plate shield that had held up just fine against Jin-hwan's breath shattered outright. That was how hard the hit had been.
What in the world—
I glanced toward Ursula and caught it immediately: one of her tentacles had been severed clean through.
Someone's missing…
Of all the people Ursula had been holding, one was gone. Korea's Rank 1 Paladin — Kang Ha-seong. Which meant the thing attacking me right now was him.
Where is he?
I swept the passage, but there was no sign of him anywhere. Then a blur of movement snagged at the edge of my vision — something flickering back and forth right in front of me, too faint to tell whether it was actually a person. I locked my eyes on it and stared until the shape began to resolve.
Kang Ha-seong?
It had to be. I wasn't about to sit there and take it. I drove my knife straight at the movement.
Shlk!
Did I get him?
I hadn't. What I'd stabbed was an afterimage he'd left behind. Kang Ha-seong had already circled to my back, and he slammed into me with everything he had.
"Guh—!"
I went down hard, sprawling forward. I tried to get my feet under me and stop him somehow, but it was nowhere near that simple.
Receiving the baptism of light, the body's movement speed is raised to the extreme.
Whoosh—!
Kang Ha-seong vanished from in front of me in a blink. There was no catching him at my speed. Not even close.
Damn it. Just focus on waking Jin-hwan.
Fighting Kang Ha-seong was impossible right now — I made that call and tried to put everything I had into bringing Jin-hwan around.
And then—
Raises the target's affection toward you to the extreme.
Geum Bit-na-ra brushed her fingertips across her lips, then pressed that same hand to Ursula. My hold on Ursula shattered.
"Haha. You've got to be kidding me."
Every other ranker came free of Ursula's tentacles at once. Worse — Ursula herself was coming for me now. I had to get Jin-hwan back, and I had to do it fast. There was no other way out of this.
I lunged toward him — and Kang Ha-seong stepped into my path. He leveled his sword at me, and the blade flashed.
An attack that severs the enemy's life in a single stroke.
It was over in an instant. Kang Ha-seong's sword punched straight through my heart.
I'm going to die like this?
There was still so much I hadn't done. I never thought I'd go out this absurdly.
Thud.
I went down. Jin-hwan walked toward me, slow and unhurried.
"Jin… Jin-hwan."
"……out of it."
"Wh… what?"
He was muttering something over my fallen body, and I couldn't make sense of a word.
"……snap out of it."
I still couldn't tell what he was saying. Then Jin-hwan suddenly raised his hand and started slapping my face.
Slap! Slap!
Huh?
Something was wrong. Why was he hitting me all of a sudden?
And in that moment—
Slap! Slap!
"Hah—!"
The shock of Jin-hwan's slaps seemed to shear my mind clean in two — and then consciousness slammed back into me. I looked around.
Slap! Slap! Slap!
"Ssaem! Snap out of it!"
Jin-hwan was really laying into my face. I ignored the slapping long enough to check my chest. My heart was sitting right where it belonged, perfectly intact.
Haha. So I was the one who'd lost it?
I tried to sit up. Jin-hwan kept right on slapping.
"Hey. That's enough."
"Huh? You're awake? Tch…"
"What?"
"Ah… nothing. Haha."
He'd been enjoying himself, apparently. I got to my feet and asked him what had happened, and Jin-hwan walked me through it, piece by piece.
Not long after we'd entered Passage 1, everyone except Geum Bit-na-ra had lost consciousness and gone down. Her resistance to anything temptation-related was high enough that the mental attack hadn't touched her, so she'd woken Jin-hwan first, then used him to bring the rest of us around.
"Haha. So Passage 1 isn't it, then?"
"No. Doesn't look like it."
"Then which one is?"
"The others are talking it over right now, but they haven't found an answer yet."
We all gathered and went another round of debate over which passage to take, but among nine hundred and ninety-eight of them, there was no telling which one was real. Time just kept slipping away.
Thirty minutes left. We still hadn't settled on a passage. With so little time remaining, picking one meant we wouldn't get to try another — so every choice had to be made with care. We turned it over and over, and by the time ten minutes remained—
Ten minutes remaining.
A hint is being provided for all of you who are struggling.
A hint?
Maybe we'd looked so lost it had taken pity on us. A hint dropped in to break the deadlock.
The next floor is the Floor of Cooking. Delicious dishes that will captivate your eyes, enchant your nose, and delight your mouth have already been prepared there.
That was the whole hint. Time kept running. We had less than ten minutes left.
"That's it?"
"Seems like it."
"What kind of hint is that?! Who doesn't already know the next floor is the Floor of Cooking?!"
A hint that wasn't a hint. Was there a single person here who didn't already know that? It had been public knowledge before we'd even set foot in the Tower of Death.
"Is this how it ends?"
"Let's just pick a passage and go. We're really out of time."
"I think we have to."
There was no telling how long it would take to move through a passage, and the clock was still bleeding out. We had to commit to one and start moving.
"Wait!"
Kim Pu-reum had been watching us fidget. She raised a hand and stilled the whole group.
"The next floor is the Floor of Cooking — that's what it said, correct?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And that delicious dishes have already been prepared?"
"From the way it was worded, yeah. Why?"
"In that case…"
Kim Pu-reum turned it over for a moment, then came over to me and started asking questions.
"When you checked the passages earlier, you said there was one you couldn't even enter, didn't you?"
"Yeah. One of them was completely filled with water."
"Which number was that?"
"Number 2."
She confirmed it with me, then walked slowly toward Passage 2. She seemed to check something for a beat — and then she called everyone over.
"The answer is here."
"Here?"
"Yes. Let's go, everyone. We're out of time."
Her words left the others puzzled, but the clock wasn't going to wait. We all started into Passage 2. And the moment the last of us stepped inside, text appeared.
You have discovered the passage leading to the 2nd Floor.
Please proceed to the 2nd Floor within the remaining time.