All Nightmares Cleared

All the Nightmares have been defeated?

It took him no more than a heartbeat to grasp the situation. If every Nightmare was gone, that meant the tenth floor's trial was over. The turn of events left him reeling, but Do-yun never stopped swinging his sword. Finding the cause of this mess could wait—the enemies right in front of him came first.

An even more vicious sword stroke tore through the air and swept toward them—but this time, neither Kaya nor El Sion took any damage. Their bodies were already wrapped in white light, growing fainter by the second.

Return!

Do-yun understood what that white light meant at once. The system had said the return to the Sanctuary Room would begin in one minute; it had never said returning sooner was impossible. Anyone who had already finished off their Nightmare could leave before the forced recall kicked in.

"So you figured you wouldn't get the answers you wanted inside a minute," Do-yun muttered under his breath, lowering his sword.

Neither of them had any real need to fight him. What they wanted wasn't simply to put him down—it was information. Kaya needed to hear it spoken aloud, and even El Sion must have decided there wasn't enough time to drag anything useful out of a corpse.

"You. Someday you're going to pay the price for that secret."

"Pray you die somewhere I can still reach."

Kaya and El Sion each left a venomous curse behind and vanished. Whether that counted as good luck or bad was hard to say.

"Still, I'm so glad you made it out alive!"

Ciel seemed to land firmly on the good-luck side, simply happy that Do-yun had survived at all. The outcome was more than a little disappointing, but Do-yun decided not to dwell on it. He hadn't gained anything—but he hadn't lost anything either.

If we'd really gone all out, who knows how it would have ended.

He might have been able to eliminate Kaya and El Sion for good. Or he might have burned a stack of the Rune of Resurrection for nothing and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠walked away empty-handed.

No matter how I look at it, I probably would have won…

Do-yun slapped the rising arrogance off his own face before it could take root. This was no time for useless daydreams.

"Why did every Nightmare suddenly get wiped out?"

Even while he'd been facing El Sion, plenty of Nightmares had still been alive. Nowhere near few enough for the tenth floor to end this abruptly. Only one phenomenon came to mind as a possible cause.

That white light that poured down from the sky.

Right after the light that healed everyone's wounds had fallen, the notice that the tenth floor was over had appeared. And according to Absolute Sight, the one who had fired that light was unmistakably Lunia.

"What the hell happened up there?"

Do-yun looked up—and before long spotted a billowing cloud drifting down toward them. The same cloud Seo Hwi and Elysee had ridden into the sky.

He opened his mouth to ask what had happened, then realized he didn't need to. Their faces said everything.

"Don't tell me you couldn't take it down?"

Disbelief colored Do-yun's voice. After everything he'd risked to hold their attention, they had failed?

"We managed to land a critical blow on the vampire. But someone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else got there first."

Elysee's voice was as calm as ever, yet a quiet loneliness ran underneath it. Their full-force assault had driven the vampire to the brink of death—only for a chunk of metal from somewhere to blast the dying creature's head clean off.

"I suppose we weren't the only ones who thought of killing someone else's Nightmare."

Do-yun squeezed his eyes shut. The thought that every hardship on the tenth floor had been for nothing made his head swim. He forced the emotion down as best he could, but a note of accusation still slipped into his tone.

"What about the other Nightmares? Even if it wasn't the vampire, there should have been more left."

They had only gone after the vampire to dismantle the Wave of Blood. Clearing the tenth floor didn't require the vampire specifically—any remaining Nightmare would have satisfied the condition.

And the Wave of Blood had been full of Nightmares swept in from all over.

Killing even one of them would have achieved the minimum goal. The two standing before him with their heads bowed like defeated soldiers looked as if they hadn't managed even that.

"The moment the cleric unleashed her power, they all turned to dust and blew away."

Seo Hwi, who had kept silent until now, finally spoke. His silence, it seemed, had been the sound of him crushing down his rage. With every word, thick killing intent aimed at Lunia leaked out.

"To possess the power to purify evil, and yet leave a vile demon to run free…"

Only then did Do-yun remember something he had overlooked. Because Lunia had been healing the vampire and treating it like a subordinate, the fact had simply slipped his mind.

Clerics are the natural enemies of evil-attribute monsters.

Ordinarily a healer with nothing but barriers and recovery skills had almost no way to suppress an enemy. Against evil-attribute monsters, that premise flipped completely. Healing skills that would restore an ally's health inflicted lethal damage on evil-attribute monsters instead. And Nightmares, no less than vampires, were clearly evil-attribute creatures.

"Damn it. How did I miss that?"

Lunia had insisted over and over that she specialized only in recovery and defense. It hadn't been simple bragging—it had been a calculated bluff meant to cloud his judgment.

I just didn't have enough experience.

Do-yun rebuked himself as he chewed over the painful mistake. He had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠known the principle in his head, but he had never seen it play out in a real fight, so the realization had come too late.

So whatever Nightmares were left just melted under a single wide-area heal from Lunia.

The white light falling from the sky had been a healing radiance that closed the wounds of challengers like Do-yun. To the Nightmares, even a brief exposure had been a catastrophic attack that made their bodies crumble.

"So the Wave of Blood was a tool to scrape every Nightmare in the corners into one place…"

At last everything made sense—why the forced-return notice had appeared and the whole situation had ended, and why Seo Hwi and Elysee wore such rotten expressions.

"Do-yun did everything he could. It is only that our own cultivation fell short."

Hearing Seo Hwi speak so calmly, Do-yun couldn't bring himself to say a word. The ones who had been eliminated were the two of them; getting angry at them would have been a strange picture indeed.

"And it is not entirely over, either."

Seo Hwi kept staring into empty air, as if something were visible there. Only then did Do-yun realize what was showing in the man's field of view.

"A notice about the losers' revival match?"

The fifth floor, like the tenth, had been a first-come, first-served trial. Unlucky challengers could fail to clear it no matter how strong they were—an unfair design. But the Tower of Ascension had at least installed a safety net in the form of the losers' revival match.

"Indeed."

Seo Hwi nodded, confirming it. In that case, the situation wasn't necessarily turning out badly.

People who enter the losers' revival match seem to go through a different process.

If they shared information afterward, he might dig up a few more secrets about the Tower. And judging by the fact that Lunia, who had been eliminated on the fifth floor, was walking around just fine, the odds of them making it back looked solid enough.

With the forced return almost upon them, Do-yun left one last line before they parted.

"If you find an open area, fire a flare into the sky. Contact me any way you can, and I'll get there as fast as possible."

With that, Do-yun's vision flooded with white light. When he opened his eyes again, the sealed walls of the Sanctuary Room filled his sight.

"You're more affectionate than I expected."

"Shut up."

He pinched the cheek of Ciel, who was grinning in a thoroughly annoying way.

"It's only because it's useful."

If the losers' revival match ran anything like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the one on the fifth floor, those two would likely be placed near the center of the trial. Racing to Seo Hwi and Elysee would be as good as heading for the most important point on that floor. There was no guarantee it would work the same way this time—but buying insurance never hurt.

"Weeell, if you say sooo. There's really no need to be embarrassed, you know?"

Even with her pronunciation mangled by the pinched cheek, the smile on Ciel's face showed no sign of fading. Do-yun chose not to answer and turned his gaze forward instead. He wasn't embarrassed—there were genuinely important notices stacking up in front of him.

Part of why Do-yun had been able to overwhelm other challengers was the wide range of rewards he had collected—but an even larger part was that those challengers had been under heavy constraints, with most of their power sealed. Now that they had entered the Second Zone, they would reclaim a portion of that suppressed strength. From here on, they would come at him with bizarre tactics on a completely different level.

"Huh?"

There was no need to drown in worry, though. The lifting of power constraints applied to him as well.

The skills he had obtained by killing challengers who had been in the losers' revival match—because they had originally belonged to other challengers, the system raised their ranks for him. Do-yun, who had expected to walk away with nothing, couldn't hide his delight at the unexpected windfall.

"Bash doesn't change?"

He waited for the next notice with a faint flicker of hope, but the system did not go that far. Comparing the skills that had changed with the one that hadn't, Do-yun soon arrived at a theory.

"It doesn't upgrade just any skill—only skills that weren't originally F-Rank get their rank raised."

The mechanism behind Shadow Step had always been far too broken for an F-Rank skill. It must have been an S-Rank or higher skill that had been forcibly demoted. Entering the Second Zone had apparently lifted part of that restriction.

Ding! Ding!

Any number of other notices from clearing the tenth floor crowded his vision, but Do-yun decided to put checking those rewards aside for the moment.

Hmmmm.

At some point, a golden portal had formed in the center of the Sanctuary Room. The administrative angel of the Second Zone—an angel who, according to Remiel, possessed power great enough to send him back to the Tower of Trials if she chose—was about to set foot in the Sanctuary Room where Do-yun stood.