No Easy Escape
-31 HP
-46 HP
Fist-sized chunks of stone hammered against his head and shoulders. Even so, Do-yun kept swinging his sword without pause.
BOOM. CRASH!
The more shocks he drove into the structure, the more fractures spiderwebbed outward and the more debris came raining down.
"Stop it, you crazy bastard! You're getting caught in it too!"
The thug scrambled to hold him back. From where he stood, this looked like nothing short of a mutual death wish.
In practice, it isn't far from that.
If you only considered what Do-yun had said to the thug, it might have sounded like a one-sided trap. In truth, the far more dangerous position belonged to Do-yun himself—closer to the collapsing center.
And yet he had every reason for that brazen confidence.
"That should be enough."
Judging the rate at which the ceiling was coming down, Do-yun finally drew his sword back and activated a skill.
Subspace (S)
His body darkened into a translucent shadow. What Subspace granted was complete immunity to physical impact. The stones plummeting from above passed straight through him without so much as grazing his form.
"Well then—good luck."
Leaving the thug staring after him in hollow disbelief, Do-yun headed deeper into the armory. He needed to check on Angelina, who was still somewhere inside.
"Well now."
The inner chamber was in even worse shape than the corridor he had just left. The hallway had only been within the blast radius; this was where he had poured his strength to bring the place down in earnest.
Rrrumble.
The ceiling twisted and sagged bit by bit. Gray dust streamed from the nearby walls. At the very heart of that ruin, Angelina was scooping up firearms scattered across the floor.
Am I seeing this wrong?
Do-yun blinked hard, refusing to trust his eyes. Rubbing them changed nothing. Angelina—standing in the middle of a building in its death throes—was lining her pockets.
It wasn't a bad idea, exactly.
Not bad… but still.
She must have prepared some way to handle the impact before doing this, right?
Thud.
Right then the ceiling above Angelina split with an ominous crack. A massive chunk of stone dropped straight toward her head.
She never even noticed until the rock struck her crown. She staggered and crumpled where she stood.
Thump.
Wearing an expression of pure incredulity, Do-yun sprinted toward her. She must have lost consciousness in a single blow—or simply been unable to use her abilities—because blood was already streaming from her scalp.
Fortunately, a few sharp slaps to the cheek brought her around at once.
"Do you have two lives? What on earth are you relying on to act like this?"
Even Do-yun, who genuinely possessed more than one life, never wandered around that carelessly.
Grasping the situation a beat late, Angelina gave an awkward laugh and scratched her cheek.
"I thought the force field was still working."
She tapped her chest. With a crackling hiss, a translucent blue barrier flickered into view—the same force field that had once stopped Do-yun's bullet cold.
Snap.
But the barrier before them now sputtered as if it might die at any second, too fragile even to stop a single falling stone. Guessing why a field that had once shrugged off bullets was this broken was not difficult.
El Sion's doing, no doubt.
Potions and Angelina's own abilities had patched her up flawlessly for now, but originally a gaping hole the size of a greatsword had been punched clean through her chest. Damage to the device seated there had been inevitable.
"Normally it can take a Titan-class main cannon three times over, but ever since I entered the Tower of Ascension the performance has dropped."
The complaint she muttered carried more than a little weight. The fact that a device the size of her palm could stop a war machine's main gun was startling enough, yet the detail that seized Do-yun's attention was the latter half.
"The performance of your equipment dropped after you entered the Tower of Ascension?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
Angelina looked genuinely puzzled, as if wondering why anyone would ask something so obvious. It was the same expression Robin had worn when Do-yun asked about the clear rewards of the Tower of Trials—knowledge every other challenger already possessed, and only he did not.
So even the gear you carry has limits imposed on it, the same way stats and skills do.
No wonder she had been walking around so carelessly. Years of leaning on equipment far too superior had eroded her sense of danger. Knowing in your head that the performance had dropped was one thing; unlearning habits carved into the unconscious was another matter entirely.
"Ugh, after clearing the Tower of Trials I never got hurt once…"
Angelina seemed aware of it too; she rubbed the blood seeping from her scalp. There was no time, however, to wait patiently while she stared down at the red as if it were a novelty. The armory's collapse was still accelerating with every second.
"We need to move. Now."
Do-yun seized her arm and swept the surroundings at a glance. The only passage in sight was the single entrance where he had just faced the thug. Given the nature of an armory, they had deliberately limited access for security.
He had not the slightest intention of leaving through that corridor.
By now a flood of challengers will have poured in.
Few lunatics would keep fighting among themselves while a commotion this loud was underway. Most of the people nearby would come here to assess the situation. A head-on collision with every last one of them was an extremely poor option.
The reason Do-yun was hurrying now was something else entirely.
If there's no passage, you make one.
He glanced up at the ceiling, still spiderwebbed with fresh cracks. That was the escape route he and Angelina had agreed on beforehand. Leaving through the ceiling meant they could get out without meeting a soul. No one in their right mind would linger in a place where the floor itself was collapsing in real time.
Rrrumble.
Any further delay and there would be no rubble left to stand on. The original plan had been for Angelina to craft something like a staircase with her ability so they could climb.
"Sorry! I used the last of my mana repairing the wound."
Judging by the troubled look on her face, that plan would have to go in the trash. Even with the early plan headed straight for the garbage bin, Do-yun did not lose his composure.
When has anything ever gone according to plan anyway?
In a situation that shifted by the second, plans always went awry. More often than not, when life hung in the balance, he had relied on improvisation to match the moment.
Hold on. Look at this.
Midway through assembling a new plan, Do-yun's expression turned strange. Absolute Sight was telling him that spare mana still remained inside Angelina's body. Not a large amount, certainly—but not the empty tank she claimed either.
"Could you maybe go a little sloweeerrrr—!"
Unable to keep up with his speed and being half-dragged along, Angelina bit her tongue. He had simply yanked her forward using his high Agility stat.
"If you don't want to bite your tongue, keep your mouth shut."
Tossing the still-dazed Angelina that single line, Do-yun looked up at the ceiling. The hole was wide enough for one or two people. Fixing his aim on it, he tightened his grip on her hand.
"W-Wait a second! You're not seriously going to throw me up there, are you? I don't even have any mana right now!"
"I'm sorry, but this is the only method that comes to mind at the moment."
Of course safer, more comfortable options existed. But Angelina was still lying right up to the end, and that alone was enough to make him unwilling to abandon this approach.
Bash (F)
Empowered by the skill, Do-yun's hand shoved Angelina hard. The trajectory that carried her, however, was just a touch off from the spot he had first aimed at. With Bash behind the throw, slamming into a wall would have turned her into a smear of blood. That deviation was exactly what he intended.
"W-What are you doing?!"
"Quiet and watch."
Calming the flustered Ciel, he kept his eyes locked on Angelina. The moment she left the ground, the woman who had been making weak little noises already had her hand buried in her crossbody bag.
Pssht.
A wire shot from her wrist, traced a curious arc, and buried itself in the ceiling. Using it as an anchor, Angelina moved with sharp agility and slipped cleanly through the hole.
Remarkably smooth for someone who supposedly had no mana left.
A brief silence settled. Angelina broke it first, grinning wide as she opened her mouth.
"Was it that obvious?"
"Even so, just sitting there and taking a rock to the head was going a bit far."
No matter how much she relied on her gear for defense, failing to notice a falling chunk of stone right overhead made no sense. Without Absolute Sight, he would have been thoroughly taken in. Familiar talk of benefactors and that deliberately sloppy exterior had clearly clouded his judgment.
Get your head on straight.
Do-yun recalled the way she had piloted the Destroyer on the seventh floor, rampaging through everything in sight. Behind that bright smile lurked a madness whose depth he could not even begin to measure.
"Well, I figured I could freeload a little more comfortably than expected. Shame it didn't work out."
Grinning openly now, Angelina no longer bothered to hide her true colors. Regret sat plain on her face, and through it glinted a fragment of the mania she had been concealing.
"What on earth is going on?"
"What do you think? She tried to take me for a sucker and got caught red-handed."
He delivered the cold truth of the world to Ciel, who was still sputtering and failing to keep up.
Angelina uses Reassembly (F)
Watching the staircase form exactly as he had first planned, Do-yun let out a sigh. Somehow nothing ever came easy.
As he climbed the stairs, a thought settled into place.
Once we reach the top…
The place where another Yellow Crystal he needed still waited. Time to claim a crystal that would let him itemize one more object.
And of course, in the process—leave Angelina behind.
He glanced sidelong at the twin-tailed girl beside him and made the quiet, firm resolve to himself.