Chapter 89: Cult (1)

I was transported to the Reward Room.

The first thing I did was inspect my rewards.

As expected, there was one item and one Skill Enhancement Stone.

‘No Skill Stone this time, huh.’

The Skill Enhancement Stone was purple, which meant it was Epic-grade.

At present, the only Epic-grade skill I possessed was Subspace.

Would enhancing it increase its storage capacity?

Right now, Subspace could hold up to one hundred kilograms.

Still, using a Skill Enhancement Stone on what amounted to little more than an inventory skill felt wasteful. Its current capacity was already more than sufficient, so I had no pressing reason to expand it.

For the time being, I decided to hold on to the stone.

If I obtained a more useful Epic-grade skill later, enhancing that would be the better choice.

Next came the item.

Hidden-floor rewards were usually connected to the Hidden story in some way.

So what was this?

I picked up the object, which resembled an identification card.

[Item: Kalundi Empire 2nd Class Citizenship]

[Second-Class Citizenship of the Kalundi Empire. As a subject of the Kalundi Empire, you are entitled to imperial protection. Upon use, summons two Kalundi knights to serve as escorts for thirty minutes. After use, the item enters a twenty-four-hour cooldown.]

“...So it really is citizenship.”

Come to think of it, the prince had promised to grant me citizenship as a reward for winning the match.

Apparently, its effect took the form of a summoning ability.

It summoned two Kalundi knights to escort me for thirty minutes.

I decided to try it.

Pop!

A faint flash of light appeared, and two Kalundi knights materialized on either side of me.

“Excuse me?”

I tried speaking to them.

Whether they were unable to answer or simply unwilling, neither gave any response.

I began walking around.

The two knights obediently followed close behind.

“Stop.”

I gave them several different commands, but they ignored every one.

They merely continued trailing me, faithfully performing their role as escorts exactly as the item description stated.

Would they react if I attacked them?

Whack!

I punched one of the knights.

He did not even attempt to defend himself. He simply took the blow and toppled to the floor.

A moment later, he rose again and returned to my side.

Hmm...

What kind of ability was this supposed to be?

The knights were certainly strong, but all they did was follow me around as escorts. On top of that, they disappeared after thirty minutes.

It did not seem particularly useful.

I dismissed the summoned knights.

In any case, the Floor 6 Hidden had been cleared without further trouble.

[Difficulty: Nightmare]

[Floor: 7F]

[Level: 85]

[Willpower: 4,050]

[Skills: Destruction Ray (Epic+), Subspace (Epic), Sixth Sense (Rare+) (+2), Teleportation (Rare+), Rapid Regeneration (Rare+), Scorching Zone (Rare+), Fire-Type Low-Tier Mastery (Rare+), Sword of Light (Rare+), Cavalry Charge (Rare+), Flame Strike (Rare) (+5)...]

I left the Tower.

After returning home, I entered Floor 6 again.

It was time to publish the Floor 6 information guide.

I repeatedly entered and exited the floor, organizing everything I had learned and writing it up in the Communication Channel.

—Why dost thou waste thy time writing such drivel?

The Demon King asked.

“Because I’m the top record holder.”

—And?

“So I share information that will make it easier for everyone else to clear the floor.”

—That is precisely what I am asking. Why wouldst thou do such a thing?

The Demon King sounded genuinely incapable of understanding my reasoning.

—From what I have seen, shouldst thou fail to clear the Tower, this world is doomed. Is that not so?

“More or less.”

—Then thou shouldst reign as emperor, with all beneath thee offering worship and adoration. What art thou doing instead? The fate of the world rests in thy hands. Use that power to threaten the masses and force them to kneel before thee.

There he went again, spouting deranged nonsense.

“I’m not doing that.”

—Why not?

“...Because I’m a normal human being. Unlike you, Demon King.”

The Demon King truly seemed incapable of saying anything that was not morally bankrupt.

Then again, he was a Demon King. Perhaps that simply came with the title.

—What a maddening fool.

Ignoring him, I continued working on the information post.

Then a thought occurred to me.

“Demon King, what happened to your world?”

I paused before continuing.

“It was destroyed by the Tower’s Curse in the end, wasn’t it?”

I found myself wondering whether the Demon King’s world had also become a living hell, its inhabitants transformed into the Fallen.

The Demon King did not answer.

...Had I asked too casually?

After all, I was speaking about the destruction of his entire world.

I decided not to press him and returned to finishing the post.

***

Following Person123’s defeat of the Zone 4 boss, people eagerly awaited the release of his Nightmare Floor 6 clear guide.

The Floor 6 clear had taken him unusually long, leaving everyone on edge as they wondered what kind of obstacle he had encountered.

[Person123: Here is the Floor 6 clear information.]

Just as he had promised, the Floor 6 guide appeared before long.

[Person123: ...The difference from the other difficulties is that Nightmare has three lanes. Each allied spawn produces one Goblin, while each enemy spawn produces three Ogres...]

As always, the contents were shocking.

There were three lanes, and the enemy units were Ogres.

Worse still, failing to destroy the Nexuses in the correct order caused the number of monsters to double while their Resistance continued to increase.

There was even a trap hidden in the solution.

The very first Nexus the climbers had to destroy was their own.

[Sushi: ...The monsters double every time you get the order wrong? And there are three lanes on top of that?]

[Dururu: Damn, that is genuinely awful.]

[Gaiheun: I wonder how many times Person123 got the order wrong before he cleared it. Tell us that too.]

[Trojan Horse: Even he probably wouldn’t think to destroy his own Nexus first. Doesn’t that mean he must’ve failed at least three times?]

[Venom Fang: Three mistakes would mean seventy-two Ogres spawning every thirty seconds. Yikes.]

[Pantba: The clear took two hours. Maybe he got it wrong even more times than that...]

[Storm: No wonder Alejandro failed. How is anyone supposed to clear that on their first attempt?]

[Tarantula: Person123 did.]

[Park Jae-woo: He’s a god. He doesn’t count.]

As always, people clicked their tongues at the sheer cruelty of Nightmare difficulty while praising Person123, who had somehow managed to clear it yet again.

“...So, much like Floor 3, it appears the only significant threat on Floor 6 is the boss.”

The meeting was taking place in the main conference room of the United States Climbing Bureau headquarters.

Those seated around the table nodded as Max presented his analysis and summary of Person123’s Floor 6 clear guide.

The greatest obstacle on Floor 6 would ordinarily have been determining the proper order in which to destroy the Nexuses, as well as surviving the penalties for getting it wrong.

Person123, however, had revealed every detail of the floor’s mechanics.

The climbers following behind him should now be able to destroy the Nexuses in the correct order without much difficulty.

Even with three separate lanes, the defensive turrets should be capable of holding back three Ogres at a time while the Nexuses were eliminated one by one.

The real problem was the boss.

According to Person123’s report, it was an Ogre of extraordinary size.

It possessed no special abilities, but its strength was monstrous and its vitality exceptional.

Its estimated level was approximately sixty.

For the climbers approaching the floor at level fifty, it would be a terrifying opponent.

Person123 had mentioned that its movements were sluggish, however, so they would have to exploit that weakness.

He had already handed them nearly everything they needed.

The remaining burden was one the latecomers would have to shoulder themselves.

‘It truly feels as though he is entering an entirely different realm.’

The United States Secretary of Defense, who was attending the meeting, watched with a grave expression.

Person123 consistently displayed a degree of strength that made no sense for his expected level.

Even when he had only cleared as far as Floor 4, he had instantly killed both Wang Kai—the top record holder on Hard difficulty at the time—and the Zone 3 boss.

Having now cleared Floor 6, he must have grown significantly stronger once again.

Person123 was humanity’s savior.

The notion that he might turn against humanity seemed unthinkable.

Even so, the Secretary of Defense had no choice but to consider every possible contingency.

How effective would modern conventional weaponry be against the world’s strongest climber?

What strategy could possibly be used to counter him?

Yet Person123 had also defeated the Zone 4 boss alone, an enemy estimated to be at least level eighty.

At this point, attempting to predict the limits of his capabilities might already be a meaningless exercise.

Magic Stones continued to accelerate the advancement of human technology.

But Person123 also grew stronger with every floor he cleared.

No matter how rapidly technology progressed, it could not keep pace with a man whose strength seemed destined to multiply exponentially year after year.

The Secretary of Defense felt a renewed sense of profound gratitude.

Humanity’s fate rested in the hands of someone as virtuous as Person123.

Had he possessed even the slightest desire to dominate the world, there was no telling how much chaos he might already have caused.

The Secretary of Defense could only hope that Person123 would continue clearing Nightmare difficulty—and that, until the very end, he would remain humanity’s savior.

***

After publishing the Floor 6 guide, I entered Floor 5.

I wanted to investigate the monsters inhabiting the newly opened Zone 5.

The moment I crossed the boundary beyond Zone 4’s frozen plains, I found myself in an environment that was difficult to describe.

It resembled some kind of unexplored forest.

“Eerie.”

A blanket of pure white mist covered the entire area.

Visibility was so poor that I could barely see what lay directly ahead of me.

Diul’s Dark Vision allowed me to see through darkness, but it could do nothing against mist thick enough to physically obscure my surroundings.

I continued along the forest path.

The monsters here would be level fifty at most.

Even if one attacked me without warning, I still had Sixth Sense.

On top of that, after drinking the Frozen Hydra’s Blood, my body was now nearly impossible to kill under ordinary circumstances.

And even if I lost my way in the mist, I could simply warp back.

There was no real danger of getting lost—

The instant the thought crossed my mind, Sixth Sense sent a faint warning through me.

I stopped time just as a monster burst from the mist beside me.

‘A skeleton?’

It was not a living creature.

It was nothing but bone.

Yet its shape was not human.

It resembled the skeleton of a dinosaur.

I completed Mental Concentration and released the time stop.

Schhhk!

I activated the Sword of Light and severed the Bone Dinosaur’s head as it lunged forward to bite mine off.

“This thing had no presence at all.”

Or perhaps that was not quite right.

It seemed more likely that the mist itself was concealing the monsters’ presence.

Either way, the terrain of Zone 5 was dangerous in its own right.

Detecting monsters was difficult until they were almost close enough to strike.

As I wandered through the forest, I encountered Bone Dinosaurs and Giant Inchworms.

Naturally, neither posed much of a threat to me.

There were probably other kinds of monsters deeper inside the zone, but I decided I had seen enough for one day and warped back.

The oppressive mist made the area exhausting simply to walk through.

‘I should post a warning.’

I immediately shared the information I had gathered about Zone 5 in the Communication Channel.

For other climbers, merely entering the zone appeared extremely dangerous.

Given the nature of the terrain, hunting speed would probably be considerably slower than it had been in Zone 4.

It seemed I would have to wait until after clearing Floor 7 before searching for the Zone 5 boss.

All I could do was keep moving forward.

My daily routine remained unchanged.

I entered Floor 5 to hunt monsters, then repeatedly traveled in and out of Floor 6 to help the other Nightmare climbers prepare for their own clears.

And so, time passed.

—...According to current statistics, domestic membership in the Person123 Church is estimated to have exceeded three million. Its growth continues to accelerate with every passing year...

I had finished lunch and was relaxing on the couch while watching television.

My phone began to ring.

I checked the caller.

It was Ju-won hyung, an older friend I had been close to during college.

“Hello? What’s up, hyung?”

I answered the call, but the voice coming through the speaker sounded strangely somber.

—Seo-hyeon... have you, by any chance, been in contact with Jiu recently?

“...Jiu noona? No. Why?”

Jiu noona was Ju-won hyung’s girlfriend.

The last time I had seen her was back then—

when the Association had been clashing with the United States government and the followers of the Person123 Church had been demonstrating in the streets.

I had spotted her standing among the protesters.

We had not really spoken since.

—It’s nothing. Sorry for calling you out of nowhere.

“What is it? Did something happen?”

Ju-won hyung was clearly trying to brush the matter aside.

His voice sounded so troubled that I kept pressing him, unable to ignore my concern.

Eventually, he released a heavy sigh.

—Right now, Jiu has cut off all contact with me and her family. With everyone...

“What? What are you talking about?”

—Haah... It’s just...

He hesitated.

—I’m almost certain Jiu has gotten herself involved with some kind of strange cult.