City-Destroying Contingencies
Every floor holds at least one cheat key capable of turning the situation completely on its head.
The sixth floor had the crystal that granted Sun Swordsmanship.
The seventh held a staff that could chant SS-rank magic, along with a life-draining magic circle installed throughout the entire Magic Tower.
On the eighth, that role belonged to the World Tree itself.
And the horde of monsters standing before him looked extremely likely to be the contingency the Company had prepared for the ninth floor.
“Kwooooaar!”
An ogre.
A green-skinned giant of massive build. Virtually immune to physical damage and possessed of overwhelming brute strength. Danger rating: red. City-annihilation class.
“Kheh-heh-heh!”
A lich.
A robed skull whose eye sockets poured blue light. Capable of forming ice masses in midair and raising the dead as undead. Danger rating: red. City-annihilation class.
“Gurrrk.”
An abomination.
A grotesque mass of flesh whose face and limbs were impossible to distinguish. Absorbed surrounding objects into its body and continued to grow larger. Danger rating: red. City-annihilation class.
Red. Red. Red.
No matter where he looked, monsters of horrifying danger ratings stood waiting. On Earth, ear-splitting sirens would have been blaring from every direction by now.
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
Do-yun pulled his hand back from the hilt he had been about to grip and prepared to turn and run. If it had been only one of them, he might have considered fighting it out somehow. City-annihilation class or not, they were nothing compared to the earth dragon he had faced on the eighth floor—a worm powerful enough to corrupt the very source of life that was the World Tree. That thing had been worthy of a black rating, the kind Earth had assigned to only three creatures in its history.
And I cut that worm down in a single stroke with Sun Swordsmanship.
It would have been impossible without Shiina’s help, but a success was still a success. Even so, the confidence he had gained from that victory forced him to take a full step back from the sight before him now.
Monsters were waking one after another, roaring. Whirrrr. The continuous sound of glass cylinders opening made it clear that more monsters were almost certainly being added even outside his field of view. Unless he wanted to destroy yet another scabbard, there was no need to throw himself into unnecessary danger.
“Ahahahaha!”
Yet Angelina, the one who had actually caused this situation, burst into laughter as if she simply could not hold it in. Watching her make no move to flee, Do-yun paused for a moment. No matter how eccentric she was, he doubted Angelina would have pulled a stunt like this with zero countermeasures prepared.
Come to think of it, she handled the control panels pretty skillfully too. Could she be from the ninth floor?
He shook his head almost immediately. The tone she had used when referring to the Company earlier had carried a clear distance, not the familiarity of someone who already knew them. Even so, her attitude remained brazenly confident, as though every safety measure were already in place.
“Krrrrrk.”
At that moment the monsters spotted Do-yun and began closing in. Out of residual hope he chose to watch them rather than flee. The distance shrank from a hundred paces to fifty, then from fifty to thirty.
Yeah. Looks like I was wrong after all.
He concluded that Angelina had prepared no safety measures whatsoever. He had simply misread the bravado of a mad scientist. Just as he started to turn and run belatedly—
“Kwaaang!”
Angelina made the sound with her mouth and flicked her fingers. At the same instant a tremendous noise erupted and the floor beneath the monsters’ feet collapsed.
Kurururung.
Do-yun’s thoughts briefly froze as he watched the monsters tumble downward. No skill-activation notice had appeared. Only after a few seconds did he realize what had happened.
“You already knew that spot was weak.”
“That’s right! I may not look it, but my observational skills are excellent, you know?”
With the first floor collapsed, large sections of the building had become highly unstable. Angelina had been fully aware of the crack that ran between her position and the monsters. That was why she could remain so calm even as threatening creatures approached.
Still, that was reckless.
Any number of variables could have intervened. The crack might have held the monsters’ weight just fine. An agile one might have leapt clean over it without ever touching the weak point. Yet Angelina had acted immediately, as if she considered fretting over such trivial variables a waste of time.
Just like she said—this is going to turn into absolute chaos.
Do-yun watched the monsters pouring downward. The building was already listing because they had brought down the armory. Adding a pack of red-alert monsters into the mix would create a level of confusion among the remaining challengers that was all too easy to predict.
“Haha! Fall further, fall!”
Do-yun quietly slipped away behind Angelina’s back. Fortunately she seemed completely absorbed in the monsters and never noticed his absence to the end.
“Haa. She’s exhausting.”
Angelina was a time bomb that could go off in any direction. Having to stay tense around her every second drained both body and mind at an alarming rate. He would gratefully use the scabbard she had made for him, but he would rather not run into her again if he could help it.
— Minimap.
Do-yun walked forward while examining the structural diagram of the Company that spread before his eyes. Unfortunately the minimap’s nature meant he could not determine his current position, so the information it provided was limited. Still, it was far better than nothing—there was no denying that.
If I cut across around here, that should do it.
Recalling that he had come up from the armory, he studied the map. His destination was none other than the elevator located at the exact center of the second floor.
Having to use an elevator while the building is collapsing…
The irony drew a dry laugh from him. Under normal disaster conditions like an earthquake, boarding an elevator was a terrible idea. If it stopped mid-operation, the car itself became a coffin. The elevators inside the Company, however, were different.
They said it was a high-tech transport system using anti-gravity technology.
Not a conventional lift that relied on pulleys and cables, but something closer to a teleportation device that used anti-gravity to launch passengers straight to the desired floor in a single shot. Of course, even using it would still leave several more gates to clear before reaching the top, but it would drastically cut the time needed to ascend.
Tak.
Yet when he actually arrived at the destination, Do-yun could only fall silent. The entrance to the teleportation device that should have been standing solid was completely wrecked. Squeezing between the shattered concrete fragments to get inside would not have been difficult, but there was no guarantee the facility would still function even if he forced his way in.
“……Maybe I shouldn’t have collapsed the armory.”
Guessing the reason was easy. The first floor was the structural core supporting the entire Company building. Forcibly destroying the central support pillars meant every other facility inside had little chance of remaining intact.
No—maybe this is actually for the better.
He decided to change his thinking. He was not the only one who could no longer use the transport system. If no one could benefit, the relative loss was not that severe.
And now we even have the monsters Angelina released on top of everything else.
Those still isolated on the first floor would have to search even more desperately for a way upward.
Kugung.
At that moment the ground shook again. A dull vibration traveled through the walls, and the floor where Do-yun stood began to tilt sharply to the left.
“Kh!”
Objects that had lost their balance rattled and rolled across the floor. Nearby metal shelves and furniture crashed down noisily. Flickering lights threatened to go out at any second. Do-yun bent his knees, found his center of gravity, and clenched his teeth. In conditions like these, even the stairs no longer seemed like a good option.
Wait. Do I really need to insist on climbing from inside?
The idea that he had to use the passages the Company had prepared was nothing but a fixed notion. As long as he could reach the top somehow, the method itself hardly mattered. Watching objects slide steadily in one direction, a good idea suddenly formed in his mind.
Tak.
Do-yun changed direction and sprinted toward the outer wall. Running up the floor that now slanted like a hillside, his feet slipped more than once, but he solved it by jamming his hands into the cracks and anchoring himself.
“Is this some kind of window?”
He stopped in front of a translucent membrane that showed the outside scenery. When he tapped it lightly with his hand, the elasticity was absurd. The surface was as transparent as glass, yet it felt like something that would require tremendous force to break.
“Just smash it with Bash again, Doyun-nim!”
Ciel, already accustomed to his methods, swung a tiny fist. This time, however, Do-yun had no choice but to respond negatively.
“This isn’t the kind of thing you can break with force.”
Tapping the membrane again had told him everything. It possessed the property of returning any absorbed impact exactly as it was received. Bash could shatter it, yes—but an equal and opposite reaction would slam into him.
“Then what do we do?”
“You’ve already seen it once, haven’t you?”
He gave the startled fairy a confident smile. The isolation barrier the Sentinels had used—he simply needed to apply the same method he had used to pierce that.
Shadow Step (F)
The moment he activated Shadow Step, which carried a teleportation effect, his body instantly relocated beneath a ventilation duct on the building’s exterior. Clinging to the metal to arrest his fall, Do-yun thought to himself,
Performance like this is hard to believe for an F-rank skill.
In Bash’s case the coefficient had been abnormally inflated, making it usable. Shadow Step, however, was efficient even without that kind of bug. It was probably the original skill Grham had refined inside the Tower of Trials.
“Its original rank couldn’t have been something as low as F either.”
As a teleportation-type ability it had to be at least A-rank—possibly even S-rank. He shook his head to force his focus back onto the immediate situation.
Kiiik.
Even now the Company’s building continued its slow tilt. The sole symbol of civilization that had once towered over this cold, empty city was collapsing. Yet Do-yun felt not the slightest guilt for having created the scene with his own hands. He knew this civilization had never been built on a clean foundation.
“This should be enough.”
What entered his vision instead was the angle of the outer wall. The smoothly tilted surface was practically optimized for climbing.
Whiiiiing.
Scaling the building from the outside in howling wind would not be easy, of course—but it was still far better than remaining inside, trembling over whether the floor or ceiling would come down next. And for Do-yun, who had already stepped outside, one more advantage remained.
The spirit’s power, thought lost, is returning.
The farther he rose from the ground and the closer he drew to the sky, the more the power began to reclaim its strength.
“Not bad at all.”
Having regained perfect balance that did not so much as waver even in the gale, Do-yun looked up toward the summit of the Company.