Hey!!! Tower!!!! I Said Don't Stop Me!!!!

That's right, the Tower. Why hadn't I thought of it until now?

Such a simple answer had been right in front of me all along.

The Tower was a place where you could get wealth, fame, power—anything? Then...

"If I climb to around the 100th floor, they'll give me some kind of weapon or skill that can kill immortals, right!!"

-Ah, right.

-Climbing the Tower because you want to die is a pretty novel idea...

-Is this the stream where that crazy person with a death wish is climbing the Tower?

-But do immortal-slaying weapons actually exist?

"If they don't, I'll get one even if I have to destroy the Tower!!!"

-Didn't you say you're not with Jumyeolhoe?

-If you won't give me what I want, then you and I are both going to die!

-Oh, but I just come back to life? Huh, now I'm pissed.

-A rational mind that's gone 360 degrees off the rails

-I heard there was a stream where a dragon was sighing nonstop, so I came to check it out. What the hell is this?

"Entering the Tower!!"

There's no time to wait. I wanted to climb the Tower right this second!!

Come at me, all of you!!

I'm right here!!

[Defeat the Hellfire Chainsaw Demon.]

-Bwaaaaaaah!!

Beyond the corpses cut to pieces here and there, I heard the rough whirring of a hunk of metal wrapped in chains of sharp blades.

And what I saw in the darkness was a single red demon charging toward me with a chainsaw raised overhead.

"A chainsaw!! I can't believe they'd give me a weapon that can chop logs!! Come on, let's see you cut me up with that—"

-Ding~

But another message from the Tower immediately popped up before me.

It said...

[If you lose any part of your body to an attack, you will be forcibly ejected.]

"Fuck!!!"

KWA-BOOM!!

-Whoa, a 180-degree high kick!

-It even set a condition to kick them out because they can revive lol

-Tower: Yeah~ go try killing yourself for days on end~ I'll just kick you out~

-That crazy bastard figured it out fast, damn Tower lololol

The demon's chin was kicked upward, cracking its skull and sending it spinning through the air before it landed face-down. The chainsaw it had dropped plunged into its head, making sure it was dead.

"It's such a shame I can't take the chainsaw with me. If I got bored, it'd be nice to use it to cut my own neck off."

-You're the only person who'd cut their own throat because they're bored, you know?

-You'd charge straight into an avalanche and be happy about it.

-At a volcano, would you fucking dive into a crater full of flowing lava?

It was such a shame the loot was random. On top of that, the Tower had even taken the drastic measure of kicking me out if I made even the slightest mistake.

So that's how you're gonna play it, huh?

"Next!"

[Defeat the Super Protein Minotaur.]

[If your body ruptures, you lose a body part, or you break a bone, you will be forcibly ejected.]

As I wondered for a moment what "Super Protein" meant in a room with torches mounted on the walls, I heard the ground rumbling with heavy thuds.

A monster with the body of a man, muscles bulging so much that its tendons stood out, and the head of a cow was approaching.

[Pro...tein...]

-Did that bull work out at a gym? What the hell are those muscles...

-Someone's gonna see that and ask if it's on steroids.

-Whoa, those biceps.

-Wait, didn't that thing just say "protein"?

-It kind of reminds me of that gym-rat monster in a webtoon I know...

"I wonder what it'd feel like to have my heart ripped out by those huge hands..."

Its thudding footsteps shook the ground, and my body—though I wasn't doing anything—shook with it. It felt like I'd fall over if I let my guard down even a little.

When a huge fist came flying at me, I dodged behind it. The ground where the fist struck shattered completely, sending debris everywhere.

Then, as the bull-headed monster started to raise its body, I leapt backward, turned in midair, stretched out my arms, and grabbed its horns one by one.

Grab.

"If only the ejection condition weren't in place!!"

KWAANG!!!

[Mooooo!?]

I spun quickly and bent my legs, adding the force of the rotation to my strength. My armored knees struck the bull-headed monster right in the snout, breaking the horns I was holding and bending its body sharply backward.

"Oh, right. I learned something while fighting that skeleton..."

Thud! Crack!

"They say anything that moves on two legs dies if its head gets buried below its shoulders. Can other Awakened do this, too?"

-No idea.

-Maybe a high-level combat-class Awakened could?

-A demon-ripping-and-tearing combat technique passed down through the ages, all the way from the days of our lord Doom!!

-We saw a humanoid before, but seeing it with a bull's head is a nice change of pace

I climbed onto its shoulder while it somehow managed to keep its balance, raised my leg high, and stomped down. Its head was driven below its shoulders, its muzzle pointed upward, and it died instantly.

Judging by the viewers' reactions, apparently this sort of thing was sometimes possible in games, too.

"By the way, who's this Lord Doom?"

-There is one. A badass who rips demons apart and kills them.

-A real 120 out of 100 man who even destroyed the Creator God!

-Ah, the chainsaw! A fine means of communication!

-My gun is huge! And beautiful!!

I didn't really understand, but judging by all the reactions, he seemed to be quite famous. Maybe I'd look him up sometime.

Seeing everyone get so talkative made me curious.

"Then, next floor."

The 21st floor was like a wide-open auditorium with butchered corpses strewn all around, and the 22nd was some kind of high-ceilinged maze.

The 23rd was... a cave? But I could feel the heat.

[Defeat the Great Lava Slime.]

"What does 'lava' mean?"

-Molten rock.

-Magma.

-That thing has a core, so it's one of those types you can kill by breaking it.

'A core?'

As I wondered about that, a monster appeared, crawling out of the lava: molten metal so hot it had taken on a slime-like form and was moving.

Little bits of rock clung to the hot slime, and I could see a glowing sphere at its center. Was that the core?

If I just stuck my hand in and pulled it out...

[If any part of your body melts, you will be forcibly ejected immediately.]

"Tch."

-They were definitely about to stick their hand in and pull it out.

-Not 'about to'; they absolutely were, yep.

-Most Awakened would dodge first, but this person has no plan B.

-Is that why the Tower keeps threatening to kick them out at the slightest thing?

It tried to swell up and engulf me with a gurgling sound, so I dodged by flying.

I only had fire-type skills, so I wondered what to do, but luckily this was one of the types with a core. In other words, its weakness was right there in plain sight.

And I had a way to take it out in one shot right above me.

"With these!"

'KWA-BOOM!!'

-?

-What was that? A stalactite?

-That's one huge rock.

-Wait, is that...

I kicked one of the huge, pointed rocks jutting downward, each larger than me in both length and width. It shook with a loud boom, and cracks spread across it.

Was it too thick? One hit hadn't broken it. But that was exactly why it was enough.

'KWA-BOOM!!!'

I hit it with a side kick once more. It cracked with a crunch, the fracture reaching all the way across, and at last the huge, pointed rock fell.

[!!?]

The slime sensed something above it and seemed startled when it saw the shadow growing beneath it. It tried to dodge, but it was already too late.

'KWA-KRA-BOOM!!'

If it's got a core, you pierce it and pop it. Even if I missed the core, a rock this heavy could easily crush it before it melted.

I went down, pushed aside the rock that had split in two, and checked. Fortunately, the slime's core must have been destroyed by that hit, because it had melted into ordinary lava.

More importantly, was that split, sphere-like thing the slime's core? I got the clear notification, so...

I immediately plunged my hand in, grabbed the fragments of the sphere, and ate them along with the melted body.

"Munch, munch (hiss~)... It's hot, but it's pretty edible."

-Why the hell are you eating that!?

-I've seen slime mukbangs, but this is the first time I've seen a lava mukbang!!?

-Smoke is coming out of their mouth!!!

-Aaaaaaaah!!!

-Tower, noooooo!!!

"Oh. Eating this raised my stamina and mana. If anyone wants to get stronger while climbing the Tower, you might want to give it a try..."

-I can't eat that, and I don't want to!?

-Forget eating it, the moment it goes in your mouth your tongue and teeth are guaranteed to melt, aren't they?

-Even if you coated your mouth in mana to protect it somehow, your esophagus and all your other organs would get cooked next, wouldn't they??

-You'd have to be as tough on the inside as a dragon to pull that off.

-I've heard there are special slimes you can eat, but damn, lava's going too far...

-Is that because they're a phoenix? Do phoenixes live in volcanoes and drink lava when they're thirsty?

Unfortunately, it seemed other Awakened couldn't eat this lava slime's core. So was I the only one who could?

Apparently, some people who filmed monster-eating mukbangs even ate slime mucus.

They said it was sometimes possible to remove the acidity by heating it, while other kinds could only be eaten after being treated through a special process.

"Oh, by the way, what kind of byproduct does a Lava Slime drop?"

-If you manage to beat it, you have a chance of getting rare metal. According to the lore, it's made from the things the Lava Slime ate being smelted inside it.

-Its heat resistance is insane. An ingot made from it didn't melt or break even after being left in magma for hours.

-They're saying they'll use it to make exploration equipment for inside volcanic craters, but no one knows how that'll go.

So rare metals could be made through monsters, too. That was definitely fascinating.

"I was going to try making it to the 25th floor, but now there's a condition where I'll be kicked out if I take any damage, so I'm a little unsure. Can I leave for now?"

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-It's standard to go up one floor at a time and prepare as much as possible, anyway.

-True. If they hadn't added the no-damage condition, they would've kept going for five floors in a row.

-What about the dragon who climbed ten floors at a time?

-That one is just on another level.

For now, I left the Tower and went back outside.

I had no idea what you were supposed to do with the Super Protein Minotaur's tendons...

Is this the rare metal the viewers mentioned? It's completely black. It seems to absorb light, too... Huh?

"A chainsaw!"

Come to think of it, they said you could get weapons or armor with a certain chance even outside every tenth floor. Was this one of those?

"Well, let's give it a try... Huh?"

The moment I tried to start it up, the chainsaw suddenly slipped out of my hands and rose into the air.

At the other end, Ms. Mi-reu was holding it up by gripping the flat sides of the chainsaw blade with her fingers.

"I'm confiscating this."

"What!? No! That's my weapon!"

"You think I don't know you're planning to use the excuse of 'just trying it out' to put it against your neck?"

In the end, Ms. Mi-reu confiscated the chainsaw. Later, it was moved to another facility, where it proved very useful for cutting huge logs.

What a shame... I still don't know what it feels like to be cut by a chainsaw, so I wanted to try it myself...