Chapter 155: Nightmare Floor 12 (2)

I realized something was wrong a beat too late.

‘What the hell is this...’

A strange emotion was quietly blooming inside me.

Why had the Demon King’s words bothered me enough to irritate me for that brief moment just now?

I frowned and stopped time.

Within the frozen time, I calmly settled my mind.

The influence of the negative emotion still hadn’t disappeared...

But once I recognized that something was wrong with me, it became a little easier.

My current mental state was clearly abnormal.

The cause?

There was no need to even say it.

It was obviously because of the purple water I had just drunk.

‘...Pride.’

I realized which of the Seven Deadly Sins the lion represented.

Right, this was the emotion of pride.

For now, it seemed my guess was correct.

That I could absorb the Seven Deadly Sins by drinking the water in the basin.

More importantly, I had wondered if this might be the case...

When I absorbed one of the Seven Deadly Sins, did the emotion of that sin directly affect me? Like this?

‘Fuck.’

The Tower bastard was pulling yet another new kind of bullshit.

I shook off the pride that kept trying to invade my thoughts.

Since Time Stop had no effect on it, was this something that acted directly on my mind itself?

Still, at this level, I seemed to be sane for now.

[Pride(X)]

The problem was that I still hadn’t fully absorbed the sin.

I needed to drink more. Probably a full cup.

If one sip affected me this much... how strong would the effect become if I drank an entire cup?

I released time and pulled an item out of Subspace.

The Heavenly Music Box, which had the effect of calming the body and mind.

I wondered if this might work.

♪~ ♬~

I activated the music box beforehand, then picked up the cup again.

After mentally preparing myself, I slowly drank the water.

While glancing sideways at the air to see whether the X beside Pride would change.

Then, after draining almost the entire cup and leaving only about one sip...

[Pride(O)]

[Greed(X)]

[Envy(X)]

[Wrath(X)]

[Lust(X)]

[Gluttony(X)]

[Sloth(X)]

...It changed!

I immediately pulled my mouth away from the cup.

[An ‘Exit’ has appeared somewhere in the forest.]

Another message followed.

But I had no time to pay attention to it right away.

Because a torrent of negative emotion immediately crashed over my mind.

“...”

It was several times stronger than when I had taken only one sip.

Only I mattered, only my thoughts and actions were right, and everyone else felt utterly insignificant...

But that was true, wasn’t it?

Who in this world was actually better than me?

The other Nightmare Climbers couldn’t even properly clear a single floor by themselves unless I uploaded strategy information for them.

If it weren’t for me, Earth would already have been destroyed dozens of times over.

I was the one and only savior of this world.

Everyone else just needed to praise me. That was the sole reason all those insignificant things existed.

I heard the Demon King laugh.

Kukuku, you’ve completely lost it, brat.“What are you laughing at? You’re just a loser clinging to me so you can keep yourself alive.”

...What did you just say, you bastard?No, that wasn’t right.

I couldn’t do this. This wasn’t me.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and tried to calm myself.

I focused on the melody of the music box.

It definitely had an effect.

As I listened to the melody, my mind gradually settled and calmed down. Good, this was much better.

“Haaaa...”

After regaining a trace of composure, I opened my eyes again.

“...You know I didn’t mean that, right, Demon King?”

The Demon King merely snorted as though he found it ridiculous.

I shook my head.

I bit down hard on my lip until it bled.

The feeling of pride hadn’t disappeared.

For now, I had only barely managed to push it into one corner of my mind.

I kept the music box running.

Maintaining my precarious mental state, I checked the message before my eyes.

[An ‘Exit’ has appeared somewhere in the forest.]

Since I had absorbed one or more sins, the Exit had appeared as announced.

I stepped through the air with Air Walk and flew up into the sky.

I searched the forest for the Exit.

‘...Is that it?’

It didn’t take long before I spotted a faint light leaking from one side of the forest.

I descended toward it.

A single door stood all by itself in empty space.

Light seeped out through the gap around the door.

When I approached and touched it, information appeared.

[Special Item: Exit]

If you open the door and enter, the Nightmare Difficulty Floor 12 challenge will be completed, and you will be transported to the Reward Room.

...It really was the Exit.

I opened the door slightly.

Inside the frame was something that looked like a portal.

So if I entered here, Floor 12 would be cleared...

But I didn’t do that immediately.

Because it felt fucking suspicious.

‘That’s it?’

The mental effect of this sin was seriously fucked up, but Nightmare ended with just this?

Finding the Exit hadn’t even been difficult.

I shifted my gaze back to the messages floating in the air.

[Once you absorb one or more sins, an ‘Exit’ will appear somewhere in the forest.]

[Once you absorb all seven sins, ‘Holy Water of Purification’ will appear somewhere in the forest.]

[You may complete the floor by using the Exit or consuming the Holy Water of Purification.]

You could complete the challenge just by absorbing a single sin...

Then why did absorbing all seven sins exist as a separate method of clearing the floor?

‘Holy Water of Purification.’

I focused on those words.

Judging from the name, it seemed like an item with the effect of purifying something.

And what it purified was obvious.

What else could there be besides the sins?

“...”

Let’s think.

If the Holy Water of Purification was an item capable of removing the sins I had absorbed...

Then conversely, didn’t that mean the sins I had absorbed wouldn’t disappear if I used the Exit?

Even after I cleared the floor and went back outside. Like a permanent debuff.

A chill ran down my spine.

That would make the balance work.

Otherwise, why the hell would anyone stupidly absorb all seven sins?

If you absorbed only one sin and ended the challenge, you would have to carry that sin as a penalty exactly as it was.

That had to be it.

Right now, I had absorbed Pride.

At the moment, I was barely maintaining my composure with the help of the music box.

...What would happen if this state continued forever?

Could I handle it?

Of course I could. Who the hell was I?

There was no way I couldn’t handle something this patheti... fuck, there it goes again.

I slapped myself across the cheek again.

This was terrifying. This unstable mental state becoming permanent?

I would stop being myself.

I stared hard at the Exit.

‘What if I leave first, then challenge the floor again...’

What about obtaining the Holy Water of Purification through repeated clears?

But I doubted the Tower would allow something like that.

Maybe the system made it impossible for the Holy Water of Purification to remove sins absorbed during a different attempt.

...There was only one absolutely reliable method.

Absorb all the remaining sins and clear Floor 12 with the Holy Water of Purification.

For now, I returned to the fountain.

“Haaa...”

I pressed the buttons one by one.

The lion was purple, and the dragon was red.

The snake was green, the goat pink, the fly yellow, the donkey blue, and the fox orange.

I didn’t know which sins the other six corresponded to.

All I could guess was that red was probably Wrath.

And pink... maybe that was Lust? Could the donkey be Sloth?

There wasn’t much point in figuring it out.

If I was going to absorb them anyway, I had to absorb all of them.

Soon, I made up my mind.

I was still afraid to clear the floor in this state. Afraid of what I might become.

Those dark thoughts from earlier.

What if my heightened pride caused me to inflict great harm on the world? What if I ended up like myself on Floor 10?

And these emotions would also be fatal when climbing the Tower from now on.

In Nightmare, where caution mattered more than anything else, pride was...

Look at me, I was already going crazy.

If I was going to drink them, then I should just fucking drink all of them. What was the problem? Was I seriously unable to endure even this much? Conceit and arrogance kept raising their heads inside me again and again. They were trying to overpower my reason.

And this was happening even though I knew perfectly well that something was wrong with me.

Hey...“Could you shut up for a second! You’re distracting me, seriously.”

You insignificant creature, We’ve tolerated enough of your insolence.“No, I’m sorry. What is it?”

Still grimacing, I listened to the Demon King.

Hand over your body. We shall absorb the remaining sins.I thought for a moment, then asked.

“Can you handle them, Demon King?”

Do you truly need to ask?“No, don’t boast like that. Are you sure they won’t affect you?”

The Demon King remained silent for a moment before answering.

That remains to be seen. But surely We would fare better than you?Of course, the Demon King was an existence of a vastly higher level than me.

Even so, he was just some old man with stupidly powerful magic, and there was nothing else about him that was better than me... Ah, fuck, seriously.

I smacked my head several times and continued thinking.

What if the Demon King was affected by the sins too?

No matter how incredible the Demon King was, he was ultimately still within the Tower’s grasp.

Just as even the Demon King couldn’t destroy objects that the Tower had designated as indestructible, what if the Tower had simply decided that this would affect the mind no matter what? What if it was that kind of system?

Then even the Demon King wouldn’t be free from the influence of the sins.

And if the Demon King’s mind became warped and he refused to give my body back to me, that would be the absolute worst outcome.

Besides, I didn’t even know the exact mechanism behind how this worked yet.

Did the absorbed sins affect the Demon King and me separately, or did whoever currently held control of the body receive the full influence of the sins...

I even considered having the Demon King drink the water as a test and then immediately hand the body back to me, but if it was the latter, then the moment I handed over control, the Demon King would also be affected by the Pride I had absorbed.

The Demon King becoming even more prideful than he already was?

If he seriously dug his heels in and refused to give my body back, it would be a disaster.

“...No. It’s too risky for you to drink it, Demon King.”

Can you handle it yourself?I glared at the basin and picked up the goblet.

“I can.”

I had to drink it.

There was no other choice but for me to drink it.

I would be able to endure it somehow.

Having made up my mind to absorb the remaining six sins as quickly as possible, I immediately scooped up a full cup of water from the basin.

Fox, orange.

Without hesitating, I gulped it down.

[Greed(O)]

Then the mark beside Greed changed to O.

So the fox represented the sin of Greed.

That made two sins absorbed.

I was about to absorb the next sin immediately, but stopped.

...The emotions were surging in again.

Come to think of it, all I had ever done until now was take losses.

Why had I uploaded all that Nightmare strategy information to the Communication Channel without gaining anything in return?

That was my property.

Priceless information I had obtained by risking my life and suffering through all that shit, something no price could ever properly measure.

What a waste, such a fucking waste...!

Everything I had given to the world until now without receiving anything in return felt so unbearably wasteful!

Why the hell had I done something so wasteful? You stupid bastard.

Being praised as a savior? Did that put food on the table or something?

The same went for training Taylor and Ye Cheon-wi. What the hell did I gain from helping those bastards...

“Ugh...!”

Rrrrip!

While clawing at my head, I ended up ripping out an entire fistful of hair.

The melody, focus on the melody of the music box.

I did my best to ignore the rancid mass of emotions invading my mind.

After spending a long while calming myself, I finally regained my composure.

Of course, it was a precarious calm, like thin ice that could shatter at any moment.

‘...Still, I can handle this much.’

For now.

I looked down at the fistful of hair I had just ripped out.

Ah, my hair... what a waste... No, no.

I grabbed hold of my mind as it tried to get pulled somewhere else again.

Just keep going like this. Hurry up and absorb the remaining sins too.

I pressed the dragon button without thinking too much about it.

The water in the basin turned blood-red.

I filled the cup to the brim and downed it in one go.

And...

[Wrath(O)]

“...!”

Like an active volcano erupting.

An irresistible surge of scorching emotion exploded upward in an instant.

I grabbed my forehead and staggered.

...Those vermin bastards.

While I was sacrificing everything for the sake of the world, those pieces of trash only knew how to think about their own gain.

Even after I begged them that much, they still pulled that shit during the Joint Battle.

They were probably laughing and enjoying themselves even now. In the end, Climbers had gained Curse Immunity and gotten exactly what they wanted.

Disgusting. Revolting.

It felt like my brain was boiling.

Why the hell were they even alive? Pests that contributed absolutely nothing to the world.

Kill them.

Yeah, kill every last one of them.

Booooom!

I threw the music box aside and launched myself high into the sky.

Stepping through the air with Air Walk, I flew toward the location of the Exit.