The Gale Unleashed
Why now?
Do-yun forced his eyes open against the wind that kept trying to shut them and stared ahead. Kaya had likely obtained the Rune of Glory on the second floor. Yet he couldn't understand why she would burn it now, of all times.
It's a consumable she wouldn't use even when she was about to die.
She hadn't used it on the ninth floor either, when Do-yun had burned through two of his Runes of Resurrection. Of course, back then she probably hadn't expected two of her life stacks to vanish at once. Either way, it was clear Kaya had valued the Rune of Glory highly.
"Long time no see."
Kaya's voice rode the wind and carried far. Where her gaze fell stood a Nightmare that had been shifting its form to match her.
"Finally, we meet."
The amber eyes fixed on the Nightmare held no fear—only pure madness. Watching that, Do-yun gave up trying to figure out her reason for using the Rune of Glory.
How do you make sense of a lunatic?
Kaya hadn't exactly seemed mentally stable to begin with. Coming face-to-face with a Nightmare that had raked through the deepest parts of her unconscious wasn't going to have a positive effect. Right now, she looked so far gone that even the barest shred of reason was beyond her—far enough gone to immediately pull out and smash the Rune of Glory she'd been saving.
Whoooosh.
The Rune of Glory itself might have been used on impulse, but there was no denying Kaya's raw power. Wrapped in wind, she made it abundantly clear why she had earned the moniker of Gale.
BOOOOM!
The instant Kaya kicked off the ground, her form literally vanished. Only the sharp sound of wind being torn apart suggested she was still moving.
Thwack.
A fist swung at a speed the eye couldn't track. With that single blow, the surrounding air exploded outward all at once.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
Compressed wind howled along the fist's trajectory, shredding everything around like blades. In the brief glimpses of her limbs, swirling currents of wind coiled around her hands and feet—currents so perfectly synchronized with Kaya that they made even movements beyond her limits possible.
"Nyahahahat!"
With movements that defied belief, Kaya toyed with the Nightmare completely. One moment she was facing it head-on; the next she appeared behind it. She shot into the sky, then double- and triple-jumped, zigzagging through the air as she changed direction.
Slap.
Do-yun, who had been staring blankly at the spectacle, slapped his own cheek to drag his drifting focus back. It was certainly an interesting fight to watch, but he couldn't just stand there and gawk.
"I can't let an opportunity like this slip by."
The aftereffects of Kaya's Rune of Glory had formed a massive current of wind across the entire tenth floor. Those wild currents had even stimulated the wind spirit, letting Sylph reclaim a far stronger presence.
"Sylph. Can you watch that and copy it?"
Honestly, he didn't expect Sylph to perfectly recreate the wind currents wrapping Kaya's body. Kaya had honed that technique enough for the Tower to bestow the name Gale on her, after all. Even something that just lightened his body a little would be more than welcome.
"That isn't how you make a request of a spirit."
Then Elysee, standing beside him, cut in—and the situation changed.
"You need to convey more vividly exactly what you want."
It was a concept he'd never heard before in his life, and Do-yun couldn't hide his bewildered expression.
"Weren't spirits just beings that help their contractors on their own?"
Until now, he'd thought a spirit's power was something beyond his control. All a contractor could do was designate the direction of the power or the desired result. How it was accomplished, and by what method, was left for the spirit to decide.
"That's true as well. But if you want delicate work done, you need to convey your intent more precisely, more deeply. Especially with lower-ranking spirits."
"How do I do that?"
Do-yun asked, excitement bleeding into his voice. What was coming from Elysee's mouth was knowledge of a level no spirit-caller on Earth had ever reached.
Come to think of it, no one would know spirits better than Elysee.
Unlike Earthlings, who only first encountered spirits in the Tower of Trials, Elysee had lived among them long before she ever entered. Her knowledge and experience would be incomparably more systematic than the rough, improvised understanding Earthlings had pieced together.
"Place your hand on the spirit brand. Then vividly picture the scene you desire."
Following Elysee's low, quiet voice, Do-yun rested his hand on his forehead. And he kept repeating a single scene in his mind—a landscape of storm-like wind wrapping his body, lightly pushing his footsteps, and loading speed into his fingertips.
Whooooosh.
With a faint vibration, the air began to stir. His hair fluttered lightly; the hems of his clothes gently stirred. Do-yun soon felt clearly that something had changed.
Whoosh.
An unfamiliar sensation—as if the surrounding wind had synchronized with his breathing. When he put a little force into his toes, the wind pushed his body, smoothly assisting his movement. It felt like an invisible hand was pressing against his back.
So this is how you properly handle a spirit.
Spirits weren't mere support tools. Infinite potential had been lying dormant—enough even to imitate another person's techniques.
The moment Do-yun, having realized that fact, tried taking a test step forward—
Whoosh.
The wind wrapping his body scattered into nothing. Having entrusted his body to the wind, Do-yun lost his balance and staggered.
"There's a time limit, huh."
Barely managing not to fall, Do-yun muttered under his breath. Well, since it was an imitation of power, the consumption would naturally be higher than when the original user employed it. Still, just learning this was possible was a major gain.
About five seconds, roughly.
A short window, but more than serviceable as a card to play at a decisive moment. Having gained a new technique, Do-yun lifted the corner of his mouth and looked at Elysee. It was thanks to her advice that he'd learned placing a hand on the brand was the trigger for communicating with a spirit.
He'd meant to thank her for it, but Elysee's gaze wasn't on him at all. Lifting his head to follow her line of sight, Do-yun realized what she was looking at.
"So here you are, fellow Daoist."
Wind-Weathered Immortal Seo Hwi. Another challenger who had decided to board the same ship as Elysee even before Do-yun had. The immortal who had been riding a cloud like a vehicle leaped lightly down and landed before him.
"I am ashamed. I fell into a heart-demon and wasted your time, fellow Daoist."
"By heart-demon, you mean the Nightmare?"
"Indeed. In a moment of carelessness I fell to the heart-demon, but when the fierce wind blew, it scattered like an illusion."
Working from circumstantial evidence, Do-yun could roughly interpret Seo Hwi's words.
Kaya's wind affected even Nightmares in other places?
Kaya was sucking in the surrounding air like a vacuum cleaner. In the process, the Nightmare standing before Seo Hwi must have been affected as well. Only after the Nightmare vanished before his eyes had Seo Hwi come to his senses—and only then thought to seek out Elysee.
Having pieced that much together, Do-yun frowned.
"Then you haven't taken down a single Nightmare either?"
"Shamefully, that is so."
For a moment, Do-yun couldn't find anything to say. These people climbed all the way to the top of the Tower of Trials—so why were their mental fortitudes this weak?
No. Maybe I should think of it the other way around.
Perhaps climbing the Tower of Trials was exactly what had made their minds fragile. Despairing at the fact that even with great power, they could change nothing—it was the kind of burnout returnees on Earth experienced all the time.
Whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean...
Of course, to Do-yun—who was barely scraping by day to day—it was completely unconvincing.
"Let's move for now."
Do-yun continued his thoughts as he moved in the opposite direction, so as not to get caught up in Kaya's battle. Seo Hwi might be fine, but letting Elysee face a Nightmare as things stood would be a very poor decision. Thanks to the words Do-yun had given her, her face probably wouldn't rot away like last time if she faced a Nightmare again—but the fact remained that what Elysee would have to face was a doppelgänger.
Beating a doppelgänger alone is impossible.
That said, they also couldn't just swarm in and pile on. A Nightmare might constantly swap its form mid-battle, and the common knowledge that most beings are most vulnerable while transforming didn't apply to Nightmares. Do-yun had simply carved through transforming ones with brutish, overwhelming attack power. Attacks from Seo Hwi and Elysee, with their thoroughly ordinary stats, would just get absorbed.
"You two stay far back and stick to ranged attacks only."
So Do-yun decided to propose the surest method—one that didn't require taking that kind of risk. Namely, launching ranged attacks from a distance the Nightmare wouldn't even notice.
A cheat that exploits the fact that multiple people exist on the tenth floor.
Unlike the Tower of Trials, where there had been only one person and one Nightmare, the Tower of Ascension overflowed with both—which was what made this approach thinkable. While Do-yun first held the Nightmare and locked its form in place, Seo Hwi and Elysee would snipe it down from afar.
"Would that kind of method even count as overcoming fear?"
Ciel tilted her head and threw out a challenge, but Do-yun was half-convinced this method would work. Even Ciel, who as a fairy should know the Tower's rules better than anyone, hadn't flat-out said it wouldn't. She'd only answered vaguely because, by common sense, it seemed like it shouldn't.
And things like this usually have a high chance of working.
Scanning the surroundings for Nightmares, Do-yun blinked when he spotted something strange. Far off, something like a crimson curtain was surging toward them.
"How can anyone commit such a wicked act?!"
And after hearing Seo Hwi's reaction, Do-yun realized he hadn't been seeing things.
A blood-red wave.
A tidal wave made of a staggering volume of blood was sweeping across the ground toward them.