The Red Crystal
Subspace (S)
The instant light gathered at the railgun’s muzzle, Do-yun triggered the strongest defensive skill he possessed.
Trying to watch and dodge would already be too late. The moment there was even the slightest chance of being caught in the aftershock, he had to be ready.
KWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA!
The round tore free of the railgun with a thunderous roar and slammed into the ground. This shot had clearly been meant to finish Kairos for good; the crater left by his earlier fall doubled in depth. At that power, no amount of physical toughness would have let anyone survive. Whether even a scrap of the corpse remained was doubtful.
This is no time to stand around staring.
One wrong move and Do-yun himself could end up just like that corpse. He canceled Subspace to conserve mana and scrambled up the outer wall as fast as he could.
“Idiot lizard.”
Shiina, who had worn that perpetually languid expression the whole time, whipped her broom around just as quickly. Lingering nearby and getting mistaken for one of Kairos’s companions would have been a catastrophe.
With the sky suddenly clear, the railgun swung its aim toward the ground.
The railgun’s top priority is eliminating any threat to the Company.
The reason it had never revealed itself even when the building was collapsing was simple: it only activated when an external threat was detected. The weapon burned through enormous energy just to fire, so the conditions that satisfied its trigger were correspondingly strict. Thanks to Kairos’s spectacular misfire, however, the relic of a previous generation had finally woken from its long sleep.
The railgun itself isn’t actually the real problem.
The odds of it locking directly onto Do-yun were low. A misaimed shot while he was plastered against the wall could punch a hole straight through the building. He had activated Subspace out of pure reflex earlier, but on second thought there was no need to fear the railgun at all.
What mattered was that its activation meant every other defensive system on the outer wall was coming online as well.
Clack-clack.
Having sensed enemy attack, the Company building entered combat mode on its own. The outer walls split open, revealing plasma guns and machine-gun turrets everywhere. Those still on the ground took one look and scattered, each scrambling for their own survival.
“All this chaos over one damn troll.”
Do-yun fought through the throbbing headache and kept sweeping his gaze left and right, calculating the least suicidal path upward. Before long, however, something felt off and he paused.
There are fewer active weapons than I expected.
They looked intimidating, but only a fraction were actually firing. He dug through his memory for the cause and soon let out a quiet sound of admiration.
Overflow.
The spell he had unleashed the moment he entered the building—the one that destroyed every mana-infused object—had clearly damaged the Company’s defense network. In a situation spiraling toward the worst possible outcome, it was at least one positive variable.
“That changes things.”
A sharp glint entered Do-yun’s eyes as he studied the turrets jutting from the wall. Weapons that wouldn’t fire were no different from ordinary architecture. The already slanted outer wall had just gained a convenient set of footholds.
He planted a foot on the nearest machine-gun turret and launched himself upward with full force.
Bash (F)
With the skill layered on, his climbing speed became incomparable to before. Other challengers eventually realized the Company’s defenses were malfunctioning, but by then Do-yun was already a distant speck far above them.
Woooong.
The railgun’s murderous gaze continued to sweep between ground and sky. Avoiding its fire meant hugging the building, yet not a single challenger still on the ground possessed the mobility for that. Anyone that agile had long since entered the interior, and the faster runners had simply fled beyond the weapon’s range while it recharged.
Crash!
In the middle of it all, Company windows shattered and massive shapes came bursting out one after another. Even Do-yun, who had Bash, had left those windows alone for fear of the aftermath. The ones smashing through them without hesitation were the monsters Angelina had released.
“KRAAAAAH!”
Monsters charging forward with eyes full of madness, turrets automatically opening fire in response—the area around the Company building had become a literal battlefield. Climbing while stuck to the wall was no longer the issue for anyone except Do-yun, who had already climbed high enough to be clear of the chaos.
“What a complete mess.”
He kept his limbs moving steadily and only tilted his head down for a quick glance. Challengers were scattering in every direction, more focused on putting distance between themselves than on fighting. They had no choice. The railgun above Do-yun’s head was still pouring out beams of light.
Bee-eeing.
Every time the fully charged railgun fired, dozens of monsters were shredded and the terrain itself was rewritten. The challengers were fleeing with everything they had simply to avoid being caught in those blasts.
“Glad I’m not mixed up in that.”
Unhindered, Do-yun continued his ascent and soon found himself face-to-face with the railgun itself.
I’d love to cut this thing off and take it with me too.
He eyed the barrel, mouth watering. Until he properly reinforced his scabbard, every use of Sun Swordsmanship risked destroying it. Stocking spare scabbards wasn’t a bad idea, and he still hadn’t decided what to do with the extra Yellow Crystal Ciel had helped him secure.
“Pass for now.”
The railgun was currently keeping other challengers from approaching his position. Wrecking it would only invite every flyer in the area to swarm him like bees. He glided past it without a second thought and kept climbing.
Hwoosh.
The rooftop sat high enough that he could almost grab the clouds if he reached out. At last Do-yun arrived at the place also known as the chairman’s office.
What greeted him, however, was nothing more than an ordinary cement wall that looked thoroughly unremarkable.
“Did we climb too high?”
Ciel poked her head out of Do-yun’s pocket and murmured. She had a point—by charging straight for the summit he might have overshot and reached a place he never needed to visit. Without prior knowledge, Do-yun himself might have made the same mistake.
“No. This is the right spot.”
This was the heart of the Company, a secret space reserved for the highest-ranking executives. Naturally it was layered with every kind of disruption and camouflage device imaginable. The plain wall in front of him was the cumulative result of all those systems working together.
They said it’s something like a magic mirror.
From the inside you could see the outside world clearly; from the outside the interior remained opaque. The wall before him went a step further and even imitated the texture of cement.
Skills still won’t work, of course.
Just like when he had exited earlier, Shadow Step was unusable. The skill required something to enter his field of vision. Smashing a hole in the wall with his fists was equally out of the question.
“It’s obviously tough enough that I wouldn’t even leave a scratch.”
Reaching this floor from the inside required navigating countless traps and mazes. By comparison the exterior was relatively lightly defended—which meant the designers had decided external intrusion was simply impossible and poured every resource into fortifying the interior layout.
That doesn’t mean there’s no way in.
Do-yun turned his gaze to the wind coiled around his body. The closer he climbed to the sky, the stronger the wind spirit’s power had grown, until it rivaled what it had been on the eighth floor.
“Sylphy, I’m counting on you.”
A stream of wind extended from his fingertips and prowled across the surface, searching. The gentle current swept the wall until it located a spot where air could pass. Moments later it detected the faintest tremor of airflow. Invisible to the eye, yet air was definitely moving there.
“Of course. Even executives still have to breathe.”
Do-yun muttered under his breath and clenched his fist. The wind spirit poured out power in answer to his will.
Crunch.
The wind that had slipped into the ventilation duct pressed outward from within. A section of the seemingly solid wall popped free like a Lego brick. Walls of this type were built to withstand external impact, but they were surprisingly vulnerable to pressure applied from the inside.
Thud.
Do-yun threw himself through the opening and took a moment to steady his breathing while he surveyed the room. He had finally reached the Company’s top floor—the place called the chairman’s office—and the atmosphere was nothing like he had vaguely imagined.
A polished wooden desk, a deep-brown leather sofa, landscape paintings decorating the walls… He had expected the cold, precise aesthetic of a company leading high-tech innovation. Instead the interior felt antique, steeped in analog sensibility, almost as if he had stepped into a noble’s mansion.
— The first time I reached the top floor, all I felt was emptiness.
— I’d fought through every trap to reach the summit, and there wasn’t a single reward in sight.
— I searched every corner thinking there might be a hidden safe, but all I found was dust.
— Then, purely by chance, the fountain pen sitting on the desk caught my eye!
Following the memory, Do-yun walked over to the desk. Various documents lay scattered across it, along with a fountain pen for signing them. At a glance it looked like an unremarkable prop.
Click.
When he opened the pen’s cap, a crimson gem hidden inside reflected a brilliant light.
“This is the Red Crystal.”
Until Jeong Se-ah revealed the existence of colored crystals, there had been only one method for clearing the ninth floor: wander around and scrape together as many white crystals as possible. After she discovered the Red Crystal, everything changed. The assumption that clear crystals came in only one form was shattered. Yellow, green, and blue crystals were found afterward as well, yet the Red Crystal still held the highest value by far. The benefit of obtaining it simply could not be compared to anything else.
Select a skill to enhance.
Without the slightest hesitation, Do-yun stretched out his hand and closed his fingers around the Red Crystal. The system window appeared before his eyes.