Chapter 149: Nightmare Floor 11 (3)

I returned to the third passage.

The bowl on top of the altar and the last remaining treasure chest.

I looked down at the bowl and thought.

A gimmick where I had to fill a bowl almost as large as my entire body with blood.

“This is too much.”

Was there really no other way?

I had already confirmed that pouring water into it would only make it burn away immediately.

...What about the blood of some other creature instead of mine?

But there weren’t any other creatures inside this dungeon.

The bats had disappeared when the white bat died, the golem knights weren’t living creatures, and the mimics didn’t bleed either. All they spewed was something like acid.

I doubted it would work, but I dragged over a dead mimic and let the acid inside it drip into the bowl.

Fwoosh!

Flames surged upward.

I tossed the mimic’s corpse aside and sighed.

...Guess there was no helping it.

Actually, if I really wanted to do it, it wasn’t impossible.

I had a semi-immortal body.

As long as my head remained intact, I wasn’t going to die from blood loss.

Even if I drained every drop of blood from my body, I probably wouldn’t die.

Well, it wasn’t like I had ever actually tested that... probably?

And with my level now above 120, plus the abilities of the Frozen Hydra and the Slime King, my body’s regenerative ability was currently pretty damn incredible.

Fuck it, let’s just do this~.

I held my hand over the bowl.

With the Sword of Heaven’s Gatekeeper, I slashed my wrist.

Slash!

Blood burst out along with a sharp sting of pain.

The skin on my wrist regenerated within seconds, and the bleeding stopped.

So I kept cutting my wrist open again and again to drain more blood.

Since I had a body that wouldn’t die anyway, the fastest method would have been to just stab every major artery in my body and drain the blood all at once...

But I didn’t really intend to go that far.

If I drained a massive amount of blood at once, faster than my regeneration could keep up with, my brain wouldn’t get enough blood and I’d lose consciousness.

Going by a rough estimate of the bowl’s volume...

It was hemispherical, with a diameter a little over one meter.

Even accounting for the thickness of the bowl itself, it looked like it could hold at least 300 liters.

And assuming my body contained around five liters of blood...

That meant I would have to repeat the process of draining all the blood from my body at least sixty times!

“Amazing.”

A hollow laugh escaped me.

In the end, it was just a matter of Willpower and time.

I could endure the pain, but I had no idea how long this was actually going to take.

I kept slicing open my wrist and letting the blood flow.

Only a thin layer had finally begun covering the very bottom of the bowl.

And so my insane blood-drawing challenge began.

But as I kept going, I realized that bleeding from my wrist was simply way too slow...

Stab!

Partway through, I changed the target to my abdomen.

Fuck, that hurts.

When I stabbed the area around the major artery in my abdomen, blood poured out in streams.

I could feel my body rapidly growing cold.

I let my body sag over the bowl and groaned.

As I kept draining blood, dizziness gradually started washing over me.

My body’s regeneration couldn’t keep up with the amount of blood I was losing.

Whenever that happened, I stopped drawing blood and rested.

Passing out would be troublesome.

Drain.

Rest.

Drain.

Rest.

I repeated it over and over.

Normally, the blood collected in the bowl should have coagulated quickly, but it never hardened.

It wasn’t particularly surprising.

I figured it was probably due to the power of the bowl.

Either way, filling the entire thing was clearly going to take much longer than I had expected.

Several hundred liters sounded simple when said out loud, but filling all of that with human blood was a completely absurd amount.

I had brought enough food to last several days, so I rationed it as carefully as possible.

More than food, drinking water became the real problem because the moisture in my body dried out incredibly quickly.

I solved that with the Demon King’s magic.

All I had to do was melt ice and drink it.

“Ugh...”

Of course, it wasn’t remotely comparable to the pain of having my entire body burned back on Floor 4.

But spending twenty-four hours constantly stabbing myself with a sword and draining blood while remaining anemic the whole time was mentally exhausting.

Still.

I did it.

After more than three days had passed, I finally filled the enormous bowl completely with my own blood.

If this had been a blood donation, they should’ve given me a thousand movie tickets.

Then—

Rumble!

Suddenly, the blood inside the bowl began swirling and draining away like water disappearing down a sink.

I panicked for a moment, then quickly relaxed.

Once all the blood had vanished, a key appeared at the bottom of the bowl.

That was fucking exhausting, you bastard Tower.

I opened the treasure chest with the key.

Surely the final chest wouldn’t be empty too.

Considering this was Nightmare, there was still a decent chance of that happening, but...

Click.

“Oh.”

This one was finally not a mimic.

And inside the chest was a large golden key.

It looked like the key that could open the stone door back in the starting area.

Before moving on, I rested until my body was back in perfect condition.

Rest over.

I returned to the starting area.

With my guard raised as high as possible, I approached the stone door and stopped in front of it.

Getting this far had actually been relatively smooth.

Sure, the blood-drawing mission had been incredibly fucked up...

But was it because both my overall capabilities and the range of things I could do had increased so much?

For Nightmare, none of the five passages had actually been that difficult to solve.

Of course, I didn’t let my guard down even slightly.

If anything, that meant I had to be even more cautious.

The floor still wasn’t cleared.

I inserted the key into the hole in the stone door and turned it.

Rrrrrumble—

The stone door slowly opened.

The passage beyond it was made entirely of golden crystal walls.

I followed the passage forward...

And soon the path ended, revealing a vast chamber.

Hundreds upon hundreds of chests were scattered chaotically across the golden cavern.

And on top of a small table in the center of the cavern sat a key.

Hmm... what was this?

I stopped time for a moment and observed the area.

At a glance, it looked like I was supposed to use that key to open the surrounding chests.

Even a rough count put the number of chests at several hundred.

Was there one correct chest hidden among them?

There wasn’t really any other information I could infer.

I resumed time and approached the key.

I picked up the key from the table.

Then—

Boom!

I turned around at the sudden thunderous noise.

The stone door I had entered through had closed.

And then—

Rrrrrrrrumble!

Green liquid suddenly began pouring up from the floor of the cavern.

“...!”

A liquid like the acid from the mimics.

And it was rising at a terrifying speed.

I stepped on Air Walk and moved up into the air.

Then I stopped time again.

‘A time attack?’

It had started the instant I touched the key.

Was it trying to trap me °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° here and dissolve me in acid?

Was I supposed to find the correct chest before I melted to death?

Sixth Sense didn’t react.

That was because Sixth Sense only responded to dangers that directly threatened me in the immediate moment.

But anyway...

‘Doesn’t really seem dangerous.’

The mimics’ acid was still poison in the end.

Judging by what Sixth Sense was telling me, its toxicity was about the same as the deadly poison lake in the second passage.

Meaning even if my entire body was exposed to the acid, the only thing it could really threaten was my hair.

Not that I had any left.

Even if the entire cavern filled with acid, I had the Sea Dragon’s Orb, so breathing wouldn’t be a problem either.

First, I should probably start opening the chests.

I resumed time.

I dropped back down and began opening them.

Kieee—!

Mimic.

I killed it, then quickly opened the second and third chests.

More mimics.

By the time I had opened around ten chests, the acid was already up to my waist.

...It wasn’t hurting me, but wasn’t this filling way too fucking fast?

I continued opening chests and killing mimics.

Even if I tried to move as quickly as possible, there was inevitably a limit to how fast I could go.

Just like the chests in the other passages, the exteriors of these chests were all classified as indestructible.

I had to open every single one individually with the key.

By the time I had opened more than a hundred...

The acid had finally reached the ceiling of the cavern.

Completely submerged, I continued opening chests while holding the Sea Dragon’s Orb in one hand.

My clothes and bag had already dissolved, and some of my lower-durability items had melted in the acid as well.

The only things still intact were my durable body, the key, and the chests.

It didn’t really matter since all the destroyed items would be restored once I cleared the floor anyway...

But the real problem was something else.

There were only around ten chests left now.

And yet I still hadn’t found the correct one.

Every single chest so far had been a mimic.

An ominous feeling slowly crept over me.

Then, when I finally opened the very last remaining chest...

‘What the fuck?’

This one was a mimic too.

I killed the final mimic and looked around in bewilderment.

There were no chests left.

Something was wrong...

Just like Nightmare always did.

I followed the passage back toward the entrance.

Of course, the tightly shut stone door wouldn’t open.

There wasn’t even a keyhole on this side.

I stopped time.

‘What did I miss?’

There was nothing left in the cavern now.

Was opening the stone door and entering this place itself the trap?

I kept thinking and thinking.

Then suddenly...

‘...The acid.’

Now that I thought about it...

The acid filling this cavern was completely identical to the acid the mimics spewed.

Same color.

Same toxicity.

A ridiculous idea suddenly occurred to me.

What if this entire cavern...

Was actually the inside of a mimic?

I activated Weakness Insight.

I looked through the murky surroundings, scanning everything from the passage to the cavern itself.

And soon, I found it.

A red haze rippling across one section of the wall.

Something that would never be marked if this were nothing more than an ordinary cavern.

The corner of my mouth lifted.

‘Bingo.’

Opening all those chests had been a complete decoy from the very beginning.

The real answer was this.

The boss of Floor 11 was...

I approached the red haze and stabbed into it with the Sword of Heaven’s Gatekeeper wrapped in Heavenly Aura Blade.

...Rrrrrrrrrrumble!!

A violent current suddenly surged around me.

With tremendous pressure, I was swept backward as though being sucked toward the entrance.

The tightly shut stone door flew open, and my body was spat outside.

I recovered my bearings, stepped repeatedly on Air Walk, and escaped the tsunami of acid.

Then the sight that unfolded before me was...

“Whoa.”

A gigantic mimic.

As the entire dungeon collapsed around it from the vibrations, an unimaginably enormous mimic twisted its body in a frenzy.

I had just come out of its mouth.

This thing was the boss of Floor 11.

Boom! Booom!

Chunks of rock rained down over my head.

With Skin Hardening active, I ignored them and observed the boss mimic.

There were no weak points marked anywhere on the outside of its body by Weakness Insight.

Just like the other mimics, I would have to attack this one from the inside.

Just as I thought about going back into its mouth and attacking the weak point again...

Kuweeeeeek—

The boss mimic vomited out a huge number of smaller mimics as though giving birth.

The mimics bounced wildly across the waves of acid and lunged toward me.

I stabbed some of them to death, smashed others away, and killed still more with Finger Flick as I advanced toward the boss.

Then I threw myself back into its mouth.

The inside of the boss’s mouth was swarming with mimics too.

Boiling acid, falling debris, and mimics everywhere.

It was absolute chaos.

But it didn’t matter.

Their poison couldn’t affect me at all anyway.

I forced my way straight through every obstacle and returned to the spot where the boss’s weak point had been.

Stab!

Once again, I drove the Sword of Heaven’s Gatekeeper deep into the weak point and violently twisted it around.

Kkeeeeeeeeeee— 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The boss mimic sounded like it was dying of pleasure.

Its agonized scream echoed through the cavern like a howl bouncing through a cave.

As I continued attacking the weak point, the area covered by the red haze gradually expanded like cracks spreading outward.

With Heavenly Aura Blade, I mercilessly sliced through the entire weak-point area and carved chunks out of it.

And eventually...

“...!”

The entire wall twisted and tilted toward me.

I stepped repeatedly on Air Walk and landed safely on the ground.

As I caught my breath, a message appeared.

[Nightmare Difficulty Floor 11 has been cleared.]

“Whew.”

A laugh escaped me.

Floor 11.

It had taken a little while, but in the end, it was an easy clear.

[Absorbing the power of the floor.]

[Level increased.]

[Level increased.]

[Level increased.]

.

.

.

[Level increased.]

[You are the first to clear Nightmare Difficulty Floor 11.]

[Moving to the Reward Room.]