The Rune of Glory

There isn't only one way to clear the seventh floor's trial.

Even escaping this underground waterway alone proves as much. Following the current had simply brought him to the nearest pipe. A structure this massive was never managed by a single pipe to begin with.

So I just need to leave this bastard behind and head somewhere else!

Do-yun gritted his teeth as he twisted clear of another flying dagger. He wanted nothing more than to take a passage where an easier opponent waited—but Grham refused to let him go.

"Where do you think you're going without me!"

Grham spun a dagger between his fingers and let out a manic laugh. Ignoring him and running was no easy feat. Grham's class was Assassin—a genuine assassin, incomparable to the ghost form Do-yun had experienced on the sixth floor.

"Kh!"

Fleeing inevitably left openings. Even now, Grham was reading Do-yun's weaknesses with uncanny precision and sinking his teeth into them. He couldn't afford to take that kind of risk lightly.

Do-yun quickly stepped back from a floor marked with a skull symbol. Black spikes erupted from the spot where he'd been standing moments before. Skills deployed with perfect timing and placement. Without Absolute Sight, his body would already have been riddled with holes.

Taat.

Dodging the spikes, he accelerated forward. Grham predicted his path and flung several daggers, but Do-yun moved a beat faster than expected and closed the distance.

"Die!"

He thrust his sword at Grham's body right in front of him—but Grham's form vanished like smoke in an instant.

By the time Do-yun recovered, Grham was already behind him. He urgently swept his sword in a wide arc, but Grham had already pulled back and was throwing another dagger.

"This is seriously annoying!"

"Everyone who died to me said the same thing."

The skills themselves weren't particularly powerful. The shadow awl was fast but didn't pack much force, and the shadow spikes took a long time to rise. True to their F-rank, they came loaded with various penalties—but the problem was the person using them.

So this is what it means to have climbed the Tower of Trials to the end.

Grham excelled at reading the flow of battle. The moment Do-yun inhaled to swing his sword, an awl shot out. Spikes summoned at the spot he was about to step constrained his movement. The only reason Do-yun was holding on was his nearly double stats—and Grham's overly cautious behavior, wary of Do-yun's sword to an excessive degree.

Is it because he saw Bash's power on the second floor?

Do-yun's attacks had shredded even the labyrinth walls. Both Grham and Do-yun knew that a single solid hit would reverse the situation. That was why Grham never allowed him to close the distance. Just when Do-yun thought he'd gotten close, Shadow Step would open the gap again. From afar, Grham would throw daggers, gnawing away at his nerves in a relentless cycle.

At this rate, even creating an angle with Afterglow is difficult.

If Do-yun were fleeing, it might be different. But when he had to pursue, Afterglow wasn't much help. As Do-yun parried the thrown daggers and watched for an opening, a sudden light filled his vision and he flinched.

And Grham didn't miss the opportunity.

Fwit.

A finger-sized dagger sank into Do-yun's arm. Closer to a needle than a dagger, it seemed designed with something other than simple damage in mind.

"Haha! Got you!"

Grham's expression was triumphant. Even though it was a tiny weapon relative to Do-yun's whole body, his face held the certainty of victory.

"The moment you spill even a drop of blood, the magic circles around us start absorbing life force. You're finished!"

Grham pointed leisurely at the magic circles on the walls. If he was right, Do-yun had no chance of winning. And yet Do-yun's face remained utterly calm.

"Sorry, but I have a body that can't bleed."

Do-yun casually tossed the needle he'd just pulled out onto the floor.

Damage alerts from bleeding kept popping up before Do-yun's eyes, but no blood flowed out at all. It was the power of the HP system provided by the Tower of Trials. Bleeding was merely a status effect that continuously drained health—it didn't actually make you bleed.

"What kind of nonsense is that."

Grham, who had been banking entirely on this, could only look dumbfounded. After all, the HP system only existed inside the Tower of Trials. Having chosen to challenge the Tower of Struggle, that kind of beginner protection system should have long since disappeared. And yet Do-yun was still acting as if those rules applied.

"I don't know what trick you're pulling, but that doesn't change the fact that you're on a time limit!"

Even while flustered, Grham didn't change his approach. The specially crafted dagger was something Grham had put real effort into making—it inflicted bleeding that was effectively impossible to heal naturally.

"If anything, if you're based on an HP system, your health will drain even faster."

As he spoke and organized his thoughts, Grham's expression turned pleased again, triumphant once more. It was genuinely a dangerous situation. In the corner of Do-yun's vision, damage notifications were still steadily appearing.

"Ah. You mean this."

But when Do-yun covered his forearm with his other hand and then pulled it away, the continuous damage notifications vanished without a trace.

Poison and curses required special skills, but something as simple as bleeding could be resolved by topping off his health. It would be systemically strange for bleeding to continue when health was already full, wouldn't it?

"Must be disappointing that your plan fell apart."

"That's cheating!"

Grham screamed, his face flushed red. The hand gripping his dagger trembled with rage.

"How am I supposed to deal with you if you ignore even a bleeding effect enhanced by the Rune of Evolution!"

Do-yun looked slightly surprised at that. A bleeding effect enhanced by the Rune of Evolution. So that dagger had been hiding a secret like that.

"Just consider yourself unlucky."

If it hadn't been Do-yun with his HP system, Grham's strategy would have worked quite well. The matchup was simply terrible. As Do-yun adjusted his grip on his sword to continue the second round, he paused at the unusual stance Grham was taking.

Unlike his previous pattern of repeatedly throwing daggers from a distance, Grham slowly lowered his body and dropped the dagger resting in his hand.

"What? Giving up?"

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He said the words, but Do-yun's instincts warned him this situation wasn't that simple.

Suuk.

A black stone emerged from Grham's chest. A stone that seemed to suck in all surrounding light—it clearly wasn't an ordinary object.

"Luck, huh."

Grham muttered in a quiet tone.

"Shall we test whether I'm really the unlucky one?"

The moment Grham clenched the stone, his shadow began to ripple as if alive.

Goooooh.

The air around them suddenly grew heavy. The shadow starting from Grham's feet spread out like ripples—until it finally reached beneath Do-yun's feet.

"Using this will leave nothing of my body, but I have no choice."

Hearing Grham's resigned mutter, Do-yun finally realized what he had used.

The Rune of Glory.

A miracle that temporarily unsealed a portion of restricted power.

I've never once chosen the Rune of Glory from the Hall of Fame rewards. So how?

Frowning at the unexpected variable, Do-yun soon realized where his thinking had gone wrong. He'd only been able to control other people's rewards starting from the third floor onward. That was when the consecutive first-place Hall of Fame benefit had kicked in. So he had no way of knowing what rewards others had received on the second floor.

"Kh!"

Do-yun swung his sword at the shadow that was trying to grab his ankle as if alive.

The shockwave bursting from the tip of his sword suppressed it for a moment—but the shadow moved tenaciously, beginning to shrink Do-yun's space.

This is getting dangerous.

Do-yun quickly assessed the flow of the shadows. Unlike ordinary skills, this wasn't a simple technique. It felt as if the surrounding space itself had turned into an enemy.

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"Hah, hah!"

Grham's condition didn't look good either. Blood vessels stood out in his bulging eyes, and the parts of his body in contact with the shadow were crumbling from the extremities. But it seemed Do-yun would be swallowed by the sea of shadows before Grham hit his limit first.

Jjeok.

The shadows gathered and took on a form resembling a massive beast.

He swung his sword loaded with Bash again—but unlike before, when it had shown even a slight hesitation, all the impact was sucked straight into the shadow.

There's no answer like this.

He thought as he looked at the shadow that seemed ready to devour him at any moment. Simple physical force couldn't deal meaningful damage. The shadow's weakness was light. And as it happened, Do-yun had a skill that could produce a similar effect.

But there was a reason Do-yun had been saving this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skill.

Once I use it, I have to finish things then and there.

Through various experiments in the Sanctuary Room, he'd learned something additional. Once Scorching Sword was activated, it couldn't be stopped. A flame that burned until every last drop of mana in his body was drained. With his mana depleted, there was essentially nothing Do-yun could do—so if he failed to end it in one blow, he might be the one who went down instead.

"But I have no choice."

Do-yun looked up at the shadow that had grown massive enough to fill the entire passage. And as the shadow monster closed in, he ignited the flame on his sword.