Chapter 201: Judgement Lightning
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 201: Judgement Lightning
Did Yernil mention bowfishing?
It’s a method of fishing that’s banned in Korea.
The reasons being that it’s too dangerous and cruel.
But there’s an even more dangerous and harmful fishing method. I don’t know about cruel, but in terms of sheer destructiveness, it’s undoubtedly the king of all fishing techniques.
‘Battery fishing.’
It’s a method where you use something like a lead-acid battery to blast an entire school of fish with an electric shock.
An incredible number of fish are stunned and float to the surface, completely decimating the ecosystem.
Just like the top of this altar right now.
Crack!
The moment the current from Judgement Lightning flowed down the Void Waterfall, the expressions on both the Lancer and the Monster Shark hardened.
They knew. They knew this magic was destructive enough to pose a serious threat to them as well.
CRACK!
The Monster Shark, which had been charging its main cannon, was electrocuted and collapsed. The same happened to the Lancer, who had been trying to regain his footing.
The Primitive Troops charging up the slippery steps, the Water Ghosts drifting about, the Mermaids fighting the Primitive Troops…
All were powerless before the lightning imbued with Wizus’s authority.
The powerful current flowed through the water, distinguishing between friend and foe. The lightning, infused with Wizus’s wisdom, was selectively striking down his enemies.
“My god…”
Aimus, Back Attack, and Yernil were all speechless with shock. The power of this Tier 7 binding magic was stronger than any spell I had ever used.
Its range wasn’t as vast as, say, Ball Lightning, but right now, the waves created by the Void Waterfall had enveloped all the enemies as one, allowing me to inflict massive damage on all of them.
On top of that, they were all in a ‘wet’ state.
BOOM!
After the high-voltage lightning swept through, nothing remained on the altar but the lifeless bodies of the fallen.
Thud, thud.
The monsters from the 7th and 8th floors fell like autumn leaves.
“Ugh…”
But the Inter-floor Lords were a different story.
They had taken significant damage and were electrocuted, causing them both to fall, but they weren’t dead.
“You son of a bitch…”
The Lancer was the first to recover. His legs were still weak from the shock, so he used his spear as a support to stand up.
“Caleb!”
Aimus leaped in front of him. The shark from the 7.5th floor also began to push itself back up.
Vweeeeee!
The monster’s main cannon turned toward us again.
However…
[Your turn. Time remaining: 60 seconds]
[Action Points: ■■]
There was no easy way for it to fire in front of the Temporary Hourglass.
*
If we fought them four-on-two, could we win?
Hmm.
It wouldn’t be easy.
Not even with them having taken heavy damage and being electrocuted.
When you’re not certain, it’s best not to gamble.
There’s no need to fight right now. The priority is to escape. It would be better to pick them off one by one later.
We’ve already accomplished our goal here. For now, let’s just get out.
So, how could we escape from these two monsters?
“Move.”
With psychokinesis, I retrieved the orb the monster had dropped when it was electrocuted.
The Orb of the Void Vortex.
The vortex it created could generate a portal based on the Labyrinth’s waterways. It could go anywhere, from the 1st floor’s Blessing Fountain to the 9th floor’s.
Why not the 10th floor?
Because the 10th floor doesn’t have a Blessing Fountain.
That’s why, in the game, this item was actually pretty useless. After all, if you had the vortex orb, it meant you’d already defeated the 7th-floor Glutton. That meant you could clear the 8th floor, which meant you could just take the elevator to the 9th.
And it was rare for a high-floor adventurer to have business on the lower floors. At least, by the game’s standards.
[Your turn. Time remaining: 33 seconds]
[Action Points: ■□]
“Move.”
Things had worked out… surprisingly well.
Judging by the number of Primitive Spearmen, they must have been planning to summon something incredibly powerful at the altar.
But thanks to that dwarven shark bastard showing up and causing a ruckus, we not only stopped the summoning but also got the altar for free.
Now, all we had to do was escape.
[All Action Points have been consumed.]
[Ending turn.]
As my turn ended, I grasped the Orb of the Void Vortex.
“Open. Void Vortex.”
*
Labyrinth, 5th Floor.
Two temporary allied parties, eight people in total, were adventuring together.
“Hyaaap!”
Bernard, a Paladin of Nathaniel, smashed a moving cactus with his mace. The cactus’s sap spurted out like blood. It was actually quite refreshing and felt good.
“The 5th floor is truly suffocating,” said Priestess Emma.
“I’m so thirsty just standing here.”
“Look over there!” shouted Greg the Barbarian, who had been crushing a cactus with his two-handed axe.
“An oasis!”
He excitedly sprinted toward it, the first to take off.
“No!”
Birtanen, who knew more about the 5th floor, hastily grabbed the barbarian.
“That oasis is a Death Oasis! Don’t touch it!”
There were two types of oases on the 5th floor. One was the Death Oasis, and the other was the Life Oasis.
The ‘really pretty oasis’ Avison had mentioned was the latter, and as a special area, only one of them was hidden somewhere on the entire 5th floor.
The hundreds of other oases were all Death Oases.
“Monsters are lying in ambush near that oasis. And even if you kill them all, it’s hard to drink the water. Because every sip you take inflicts a negative status effect.”
“If we’re talking status effects, I’m about to die of thirst and dehydration right now!” Greg yelled.
“We have a paladin and a priest with us! They can cure most status effects, right?”
“...?”
Birtanen found himself strangely persuaded by the barbarian’s bizarre logic.
“Is… that so?”
“It would have been great if I could have summoned rainwater with my Cumulonimbus for everyone to drink,” Avison said, looking a little dejected.
The moment he had summoned his cloud, it had been beaten down by the scorching sun and evaporated in an instant.
A little rain had fallen, but it was just a few pathetic drops that no one could drink.
“How did Caleb manage to clear the 5th floor?” Jikal wondered, thinking of Caleb, a pioneer with a similar build.
“Sir Caleb said he just stepped on a trap and fell to the 6th floor.”
“…”
A solemn silence fell over the group again.
That wizard’s cursed luck was on another level, even compared to the two parties who had just been chased by a One-horned Ox.
“Huh?”
Greg the Barbarian, who was scouting near the oasis, spotted something strange.
“Everyone, get over here!”
Drawn by his urgent call, Birtanen’s and Bernard’s parties gathered and discovered a strange scene.
It was a scene of a massacre.
Monsters had been slaughtered en masse. But that wasn’t all…
“Is… is this… a Frostian?”
Bluish skin and long, flowing blue hair.
Delia, the leader of the Frostian tribe from the north.
And her three party members.
They must have been elites from the 8th floor or higher, but they had been annihilated.
“Hmm.”
Birtanen examined their bodies.
“It seems they killed all the monsters and then died from drinking the oasis water!” said Astin, the dwarf wizard.
“I don’t think so. They may not have been from the Deep Layers, but all four were high-floor adventurers. They wouldn’t have died from a mere status effect from an oasis,” Paladin Bernard said.
Followers of Nathaniel were accustomed to determining the cause of death from a corpse.
“There’s a stab wound,” Emma said, finding a wound on Delia’s side.
“There’s one on her neck, too,” Birtanen added.
And just then.
“Pfoooooo!”
Something shot out of the Death Oasis, spraying water everywhere.
It was a cobra.
A cobra with muscular shoulders and arms, its long body writhing.
Another Inter-floor Lord.
*
“Whoa!”
Yernil shot out of the Blessing Fountain, flailing wildly.
“What, what is this! Where are we!” he shouted, aiming his bow in every direction.
But there was no one around.
This wasn’t the primeval grasslands of the 8th floor.
It was the Abyss, filled with skulls and bones.
Mysterious lights like lanterns drifted here and there. They were will-o’-the-wisps, born from the phosphorus of corpses igniting in the air.
Sob, sob. Ughhh…
The sound of someone crying could be heard. A banshee.
“Where are we?” asked Back Attack, who had also emerged from the Blessing Fountain.
All four of us were in the fountain.
“The 9th floor.”
I had summoned the vortex, and it had swallowed our entire party at once.
And transported us to the 9th floor.
“Everyone, get out.”
I said as I climbed out of the fountain, water dripping from my soaked clothes.
There were two things to check now.
First.
“Compass.”
The Compass of Greed could have its hidden power unlocked at the Primitive Altar.
To do this, you had to offer a sacrifice, which was usually monsters.
The method was to bring a certain number of monsters alive to the altar, place an item like the compass in the Blessing Fountain, and then slaughter the monsters.
It sounded simple, but it was actually quite difficult. Subduing and capturing monsters like the Primitive Spearmen on the 8th floor was no easy task.
But this time, the altar was already swarming with monsters, so the condition was met. I was holding the compass while I was in the Blessing Fountain, and the combination of the Void Waterfall and Judgement Lightning had wiped out all the sacrifices…
[Compass of Greed]
It worked.
The compass’s shape had changed. It was originally a flat disk that only pointed north, south, east, and west, but now it had become a ‘sphere’ that could rotate 360 degrees in all directions.
As if it were trying to track targets on the Z-axis as well.
With this, I could not only find treasure rooms but also input what I was looking for directly.
“Everything about my past that I can’t remember.”
The subject was a bit vague.
If such a thing didn’t exist in this world, the compass wouldn’t react. But if it did exist…
Trrrrrr!
Suddenly, the compass needle began to spin at an incredible speed.
Click!
Then it stopped, pointing clearly at a specific spot.
Good.
Let’s go see what’s there.
I refuse to be a piece dancing on the chessboard Wizus has laid out. I will step outside of it.
But before that.
“Let’s use the fountain one by one.”
Things were too hectic before, so we couldn’t do any skill farming at the fountain.
But now is different.
“Let’s each find a skill here before we go.”
I’ll go first.
*
The two introductory skills I already knew about were presented first.
[You can select an Introductory Hourglass Skill. Choose one of the following.]
① Memory Book Editor: During your turn, you can open your memory book and swap spell slots. Swapping one slot consumes 1 Action Point.
(This skill can be activated during an Hourglass turn. Cooldown: 1 hour.)
② Mind Controller: Consume 2 Action Points to issue a command to a party member of a lower level than you, regardless of their trust level. If the command goes against their alignment, they will obey but enter a temporary ‘Madness’ state.
(This skill can be activated during an Hourglass turn. Cooldown: 1 hour.)
Originally, besides the two skills above, ‘Time Trader’ and ‘Direction Adjuster’ also existed as introductory skills. I had learned both of them, and Time Trader was now offered as an Adept skill.
[You can select an Adept Hourglass Skill.]
① Paradoxical Time Trader: Consume all 60 seconds of the Hourglass’s time to rewind real time by 60 seconds.
It was an insane ability, but it came with the massive restriction of destroying the hourglass, so I had never touched it.
Instead, the Adept skill I had learned was ‘Ranged Direction Adjuster.’
And that skill was now…
[You can select an Expert Hourglass Skill.]
① Hyper-focused Wand: Consume 1 Action Point to summon Wizus’s magic wand, which lasts for the remainder of the current turn.