Chapter 139: Zone 10 Boss (1)

“Eeek...!”

Screams erupted all around me.

When I turned my head, I saw that the climbers’ faces had gone deathly pale.

One of them met my gaze and vanished on the spot.

After him, people began dropping out one after another, while those who remained started shouting in panic.

“I, I’m not one of them...! It was that guy over there who voted for Round 6!”

“The fuck are you talking about! I voted for Round 1!”

“That was you, wasn’t it? You were the one riling everyone up with that German bastard earlier!”

“It, it wasn’t me, it was him! Don’t pin this on an innocent man!”

“The ones who just left are the ones who picked Round 6!”

It was a complete shitshow.

Nearly a third of them had bailed in an instant, while those left behind did nothing but shout over one another.

I raised my foot and slammed it into the ground.

Booom!

Only then did the uproar die down.

“All of you, get out.”

At my words, the remaining climbers, who had been eyeing one another warily, began to leave one by one.

“I, I really did vote for Round 1. Person123, sir...”

Someone muttered that on his way out, sounding deeply aggrieved.

I looked up at the sky and let out a sigh.

This is such bullshit. Seriously...

I stood there for a while before turning my gaze.

Toward the one person who still hadn’t left.

Section Chief Shin stood stiffly in place, her expression as grave as it could possibly be.

“...I’m sorry.”

Then, without warning, tears began streaming down her cheeks.

With everything else already weighing on me, seeing her suddenly break down caught me completely off guard.

“It’s always you carrying the burden, always you... If I’d just done my job properly...”

All that came out of her mouth were apologies, one after another.

The image of her from earlier flashed through my mind—refusing to abandon the core even with her life on the line.

“...Did you vote for Round 6 or something?”

At my question, Section Chief Shin flinched and quickly shook her head.

“No, of course I didn’t...”

“Then what are you apologizing for? The ones who chose it are the ones at fault.”

Out of a hundred people, hadn’t the votes been split almost evenly between Round 1 and Round 6?

...Right.

There was no reason to let myself sink into despair over the ugliness some people showed. No reason to be disappointed in everyone.

I couldn’t afford to forget that the world was also full of people like Section Chief Shin, standing right there in front of me.

I looked at the Tower’s message again.

‘In the end, you’re the root of all evil.’

If even this had been one of the Tower’s calculated moves...

Then it wouldn’t shake me anymore.

Did it want me to lose all faith in people? Did it want to crush whatever love for humanity I still had left?

Go ahead.

Keep trying.

I’m not going to end up like the version of me on Floor 10.

Never.

“Tower, you absolute son of a bitch.”

Muttering the words like an incantation, I turned my anger around completely and directed it somewhere else.

The part of me that had felt as though it were slowly being stained by something dark settled back down.

Of course, my feelings were one thing...

But things couldn’t keep going like this.

From here on, I needed to take a much firmer line.

Barely 300 days remained.

It was already hard enough pouring every ounce of my attention into clearing Nightmare. I couldn’t have something like this happening in the real world every time one of these floors came around.

If I kept going soft and the world ended in some absurd way because of it, there wouldn’t be a bigger joke than that.

If I made it out, I’d post something on the Communication Channel.

At the very least, I needed to make an example of the man who had supposedly been the first to stir up the crowd.

By killing him.

‘...If I make it out, that is.’

But there was something I had to deal with before that.

The Joint Battle was over.

It had ended with 109 deaths.

Still, at least I’d managed to stop the massacre.

Now it was time to settle the price for forcing my way into Floor 5.

[Contract Terms]

– The Tower shall, the instant the contract is formed, open every zone of Floor 5 up to Zone 10 and cause the bosses of Zones 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 to appear

– ‘Person123’ shall slay all of the bosses of Zones 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 within one hour of the moment the ‘Joint Battle’ ends

[Should the contract go unfulfilled, ‘Person123’ will be permanently barred from Nightmare difficulty.]

I read through the contract terms again.

“I know you did everything you could to stop it, right to the very end. Thank you.”

“N, no. I didn’t.”

“You should head out too, Section Chief. I need to regroup and get to work.”

Now I had to pull myself together and go hunt the bosses.

Section Chief Shin wiped away her tears and looked at me, her eyes filled with worry.

“...Are you going to be all right? The contract...”

“Like this is the first time the Tower’s tried something.”

I gave her a grin.

“For all its scheming, this thing is still no match for me. Don’t worry too much.”

Section Chief Shin stared at me blankly for a moment, then bowed her head.

“...Thank you for saving a hundred million lives. Please stay safe.”

And with that, the last person finally left.

I exhaled and began clearing out the frozen monsters.

Within one hour of the moment the Joint Battle ended, it had said...

Which meant the countdown would begin the instant I killed the last remaining monster.

So I left one alive.

I restored my Willpower to full and activated the Warp Device.

The strategy I’d worked out was simple.

Starting with the Zone 6 boss, I would kill as many as I could handle on my own.

The moment I reached my limit, I’d use Radiant Incarnation.

I had one hour.

I should be able to handle the Zone 6 boss with my own strength... and maybe Zone 7 too, if things went well.

According to the Demon King, however, the Zone 10 boss would be such a powerful monster that even with Radiant Incarnation and the Demon King’s power, victory wasn’t guaranteed.

And once Radiant Incarnation ran out, there was absolutely no chance I’d be able to deal with it myself...

So all I had to do was make sure there were at least ten minutes left on the clock before I faced the Zone 10 boss.

[0:05]

The Warp Device’s timer was almost up.

Crunch!

I killed the last remaining monster.

[Round 6 has ended.]

[Round 6 result: 99,999,891/100,000,000]

[A total of 0 Non-Climbers will die at random.]

[The ‘Joint Battle’ has ended.]

[The reward ‘All Climbers Curse Immunity’ is granted.]

The messages appeared one after another.

Ha. And this one too... It ended up like this after all.

Curse Immunity for climbers.

It was the option I had deliberately avoided during the Isolation Zone Incident because I’d figured nothing good would come of it.

I’d think about that later.

This wasn’t the time to worry about it.

[Time Remaining Until Contract Fulfillment: 59 minutes 59 seconds]

The countdown appeared.

I warped straight to Zone 6.

I had warped to Zone 5 often enough that I already knew the distance to Zone 6.

Zone 6.

A desert region.

The instant I arrived, I shot high into the sky.

Racing through the air with Air Walk, I swept my gaze across the ground below.

Zone 6 was larger than Zone 5, but there was no fog here to obscure my vision, so I should be able to find the boss soon enough.

...Or so I had assumed.

Zone 6 was far, far larger than I’d expected.

There was no sign of the boss anywhere.

Damn it. If simply finding the boss eats up this much time, isn’t that going to be a problem?

‘Should I just use Radiant Incarnation now?’

If I used it, I’d find the boss in the blink of an eye.

But the whole reason I was doing this myself was so I could delay using it for as long as possible and preserve every last second of its duration.

At this rate, though, it looked like I was going to have to use it anyway...

That was when a massive shape finally came into view far off in the distance.

The boss.

Found it.

I immediately dove toward it.

Nearly all the monsters in Zone 6 were machine-type, and the boss was no exception.

It resembled a mechanical spider, with several legs mounted around a spherical body.

Once I had nearly closed the distance, I scanned it with Weakness Insight.

A red haze appeared inside the spherical body.

Zzzzzt-

At that exact moment, the eye embedded in its body lit up and fired a blue laser straight at me.

My Sixth Sense reacted immediately.

I kicked off the empty air and slipped past the beam.

Then I answered with magic of my own.

Fireballs streaked toward the boss and slammed into its body all at once.

Booooom!

It must have been protected by some kind of barrier...

A polyhedral curtain of light covered the boss’s frame, much like my Skin Hardening skill covered mine.

According to my Sixth Sense, this was a boss I could handle.

So I began fighting in earnest.

Boom! Boooom!

I focused first on pounding away at the barrier with magic.

The plan was to weaken it with other spells, then finish breaking through with Destruction Ray and Hellfire Eruption...

But the boss’s counterattack was just as relentless.

The eye in its body fired lasers without pause.

And they weren’t merely straight shots.

The beams split into multiple strands, curved through the air, and chased me like guided missiles.

Shwaaaaa!

I tore through the air in a chaotic path, weaving away from the homing beams.

The boss continued firing even as I dodged, until dozens of laser strands were chasing me at once.

An idea occurred to me.

So I deliberately let them accumulate.

I closed in on the boss, using the textbook method for shaking off homing attacks.

As I approached, the boss fired another straight laser.

I twisted aside by a hair, then used Leap to bring myself right up against its body.

Take it back, you bastard.

An instant before impact, I teleported to the opposite side of its body.

And then...

Boooooom!

It worked exactly as planned.

Caught directly in the middle, the boss took every single one of the homing beams that had been chasing me.

I pulled away from the blast radius and landed on the ground.

The barrier surrounding its body had been almost completely shattered.

Then the staggering boss turned toward me.

Its eye lit up again.

Red this time, not blue.

My Sixth Sense screamed a warning.

Some kind of finishing move?

Sixth Sense judged its power to be roughly on par with Destruction Ray, so I stopped time.

I restored all of my depleted Willpower and raised Mirror Barrier.

At that same moment, an enormous red beam erupted from the boss’s eye.

This was the same Mirror Barrier that had reflected even the Destruction Ray of Floor 10’s Person123.

Naturally, the red beam was sent straight back at the boss, completely undiminished.

Together with an enormous explosion...

‘That’s it.’

The boss’s barrier shattered completely.

More than that, the attack seemed to have reached the machine itself; part of its body had visibly caved in.

I immediately stopped time again, restored my Willpower, and then,

before the boss could make any final desperate move, I gave it no chance to recover and unleashed spell after spell.

Flame Strike struck its weak point first, followed by Hellfire Eruption, and finally Destruction Ray.

One after another.

The Destruction Ray punched clean through the boss’s body.

After taking the full magical combination head-on, the boss finally collapsed.

[The Zone 6 boss has been slain.]

[Zone 6 boss slaying reward obtained.]

[Zone 6 boss first-kill reward obtained.]

Next.

The instant the messages appeared, I moved straight on to Zone 7.

Zone 7 was...

A dense jungle filled with colossal trees.

And, naturally, it was far larger than Zone 6.

I raced across the vast jungle for a while, scanning the ground beneath me.

And then,

‘Fuck.’

No good.

At this rate, finding the boss alone would take forever.

It was time to use Radiant Incarnation.

Couldn’t you have given me a little more time, you son of a bitch?

‘Please, Demon King. I leave it to you.’

From here on, all I could do was trust the Demon King and pray.

Fwoooosh!

The instant I activated Radiant Incarnation,

the Demon King took control of my body, clicked his tongue, and moved.

Traveling at light speed, he circled Zone 7 dozens of times in less than a second.

And then...

‘There.’

He found the boss in the middle of the forest.

A liquid creature with a translucent purple body.

The Zone 7 boss was a giant slime.

An overwhelmingly massive one.

Shaaaaa!

And the Demon King went straight to work.

He compressed his power and unleashed an enormous cone of freezing breath.

The boss, along with all the trees surrounding it, turned into grains of ice and scattered into the air.

[The Zone 7 boss has been slain.]

[Zone 7 boss slaying reward obtained.]

[Zone 7 boss first-kill reward obtained.]

One-second kill.

Next.

We moved on to Zone 8, where, absurdly enough, the entire field consisted of ocean.

The Demon King dove beneath the surface and raced through the water in search of the boss.

He found it quickly.

The Zone 8 boss was a creature resembling a moray eel.

I could tell through my Sixth Sense.

From Zone 8 onward, these were bosses I never could have defeated on my own.

The Demon King compressed an immense amount of cold.

The Zone 8 boss froze together with the surrounding seawater and shattered into pieces.

Next, Zone 9.

Zone 9 was nothing but open sky, without a single patch of ground to stand on.

Is this seriously a place where you can’t even move around unless you have some kind of flight skill?

The Zone 9 boss soon came into view.

A pure white giant with wings like an angel’s...

This time as well, the Demon King unleashed his power the instant they encountered one another.

Booooooom!

At Zone 9’s level, the boss actually attempted to resist the Demon King’s attack.

The giant swung the greatsword in its hands, and five-colored radiance collided with the freezing cold.

That was as far as it got, of course.

The cold froze even the five-colored radiance before swallowing the giant’s body whole.

Frozen solid, the giant shattered into pieces and fell into the endless depths below, where no ground could be seen.

[The Zone 9 boss has been slain.]

[Zone 9 boss slaying reward obtained.]

[Zone 9 boss first-kill reward obtained.]

[Time Remaining Until Contract Fulfillment: 52 minutes 9 seconds]

Roughly eight minutes had passed since I started.

Just as I’d expected, the Demon King had erased the Zone 7, 8, and 9 bosses almost instantly.

Dealing with all three of them hadn’t even taken ten seconds.

Radiant Incarnation still had 9 minutes 50 seconds remaining.

Now there was only one enemy left.

The Zone 10 boss.

The real problem.

The Demon King headed toward the final zone.

Zone 10.

It was...

Nothing but a ruined wasteland.

Beneath a full moon stained blood-red, black earth stretched endlessly like the land of the dead.

But the instant he set foot inside Zone 10...

Unlike in every other zone, a message appeared.

[‘Corrupted Hero Beldihard’ has detected an intruder.]