Chapter 19
When I was studying Awakened people, I once heard a story from Mi-reu.
On the floors that corresponded to the top floors of each Tower, there were places where races from other worlds lived—races believed to be the predecessors of special classes.
I don't know how she remembered all that while rushing up the Tower, but she said she wouldn't have become Bureau chief if she hadn't.
Apparently, people cleared the 30-floor Towers without anything unusual happening, but things started getting strange in the 50-floor Towers, and by the 70-floor Towers, everything had gone completely off the rails.
An elf with a huge hole where their beautiful face used to be.
Dwarves whose strong, sturdy muscles had gone beyond turning limp, blending together until they became formless beings resembling giant slimes.
Beastfolk who hadn't merely turned into hideous beasts, but had transformed into monsters with the traits of different animals mixed together.
Mermaids and mermen who had mutated into grotesque, spine-chilling forms.
Orcs who had lost most of their original forms and become monsters covered in blades that could extend.
Even vampires, who had lost their reason—not just from sudden, horrible thirst, but also their original appearances, transforming into abominations.
Apparently, there were races that had mutated into monsters, which most people had encountered at least once while climbing the 70-floor Towers.
And now, in the 100-floor Tower.
I was looking at the final fate of a race from another world with my own eyes.
-Hey, where'd the elf big brothers and sisters who were amazed to see an unfamiliar outsider on floor 30 go!!!
-Even the kids ended up like that?
-This fucked-up (strong profanity censored)
-So this is why Awakened people suddenly stopped wanting to climb the 100-floor Tower!?
There was another reason Awakened people didn't want to climb the 100-floor Tower, even though it was the hardest and had the best rewards.
It was because they couldn't even imagine what had happened to humans while the other races were perishing in such a wretched state.
Especially since most of them had been fine from floors 30 to 70. For Awakened people who'd seen them on the lower floors, even experiencing it indirectly on floor 70 would be a huge shock.
'Can they still use the things they used in life?'
Cutting things apart with wondrous swordsmanship, firing several shots at once from a distance, or casting magic.
They were doing all of that perfectly well, even with black holes in their faces.
It seemed the parasite was much more dangerous than I'd thought.
If even races with abilities this powerful had ended up like that...
"...Disgusting."
I raised my fingers and swung my hand like an animal clawing, and five blades tore through the elves in front of me.
The elf I'd first encountered put up a barrier and blocked it, but it was already badly cracked. I immediately moved behind the elf, shattered it with the flames that formed, hooked my foot around their neck, knocked them to the ground, and cut their throat.
'I'm sorry, someone's wife.'
It didn't matter if arrows stuck into my body or magic blew off my arms and legs.
They'd grow back anyway.
Unfortunately for the parasites that had taken over the elves' bodies, I was practically their natural enemy.
By the time I was shooting fireballs to knock down and burn the elves firing arrows from afar—
'Crack!!'
"Eh."
Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain, and my waist was severed, sending my upper body spinning through the air.
Looking through my upside-down vision, I saw the elf whose head I'd separated standing up perfectly fine and using magic.
Their head was still severed from their neck, just like when I'd cut it off earlier.
-Fucking desecrating the dead!!!!
-Shit, that bug bastard really doesn't understand human feelings
-Doesn't understand feelings? That's just straight-up ripping someone apart
"That's seriously too much."
Was the hole in its face just an entrance? Could it have been inside the torso from the start?
I immediately set my body on fire and revived, and at the same time burned the headless elf, parasite and all, from the inside out.
After fighting through several cycles of dying and reviving, I burned everything that had once been an elf without leaving a single corpse behind.
Some of them had only their heads left, though...
I apologized to the viewers, picked up one of the severed heads, and used a blade made of fire to cut it open a little.
"...There isn't even a brain, let alone a skull. I guess that parasite ate it all."
-I didn't want to know that, goddammit...
-What is this, Parasyte?
-Even the parasites in Parasyte died when their heads were cut off... This is worse...
Since I hadn't gotten a notification that I'd cleared the floor yet, there must've been more hiding in the area.
When I knocked down a treehouse, a bunch of parasites were writhing around inside.
Even one or two parasites at a time were springing out of the mass and trying to get inside me.
So I burned them.
When I opened a door set into a tree trunk and went inside, an elf was floating in the air. Tentacles the same color as the parasites protruded from where the elf's head, arms, and legs should have been, connecting to various parts of the tree.
I saw the eggs nearby.
I burned them all.
After killing the male and female elves in one house, I saw a baby elf lying in a cradle.
It was already too late.
So I burned it.
I burned every last one.
Not a single one left.
"Fuck."
-It's too much that even the baby ended up like that...
-Maybe that's one reason the videos got taken down...
-Is this what 'despair' is?
The ashes of elves who hadn't even left corpses behind drifted through the burning forest.
I wondered whether they'd captured survivors and forcibly transformed them; a few elves with holes in their faces were bound all over and hung upside down from ropes tied to tree branches.
Since they were already burning from the inside, there was no chance the parasites would come out.
Going farther inside, I saw a rather magnificent building.
The inside of the building had been smashed and damaged in places. It looked like there'd been some kind of battle, because all the books and such had been torn to shreds.
Inside, a shriveled, dried-up male elf who seemed to be some kind of important figure sat motionless, with blades like swords, spears, and daggers stuck all over his body.
Since no parasite was coming out of the hole, the one inside seemed to have either escaped already or died.
On the table in front of where he sat was the only book left, apparently one he'd written himself.
"Who is he?"
-A High Elf. You can see that guy sometimes, with a certain probability, while climbing a 70-floor Tower...
-He was a little arrogant, but he properly rewarded people based on their contribution. He wasn't a bad guy...
-That guy was insanely strong. But he died...
Was he someone like royalty?
For even someone like him to end up like this...
I absentmindedly picked up the book and opened it. It was written in a language I didn't know, which looked like Elvish.
But the notification window translated the Elvish for me.
[The World Tree's body and mind have been taken by 'that thing.']
-Wasn't the World Tree just a big tree?
-The World Tree with the elves in the Tower was the real deal
-Looks like the actual one was attacked...
[All of my people have been enchanted by that vile being that imitates the voice of the World Tree.]
[They were offering their own bodies, saying they had to accept the blessing.]
[Those who were still unharmed were dragged away by force.]
[The other races were each falling in their own ways.]
[Even those exalted ones were somehow holding out alongside the humans who were still alive, but they were gradually being pushed back.]
[We had put up a barrier and were somehow holding out. I don't know how long we can last.]
['That thing' itself crossed the barrier and appeared before us.]
"......"
-...I have no words
-Us, too
-Seriously, despair is dripping from every line
I didn't know what the timeline was, but the writing recorded the moments as they slowly headed toward ruin.
Had the one who took the World Tree used powerful mind control to make them choose to become infected?
Then, as the High Elf held out with the remaining survivors and steadily thinned their enemies' numbers, had the source of the parasites itself finally stepped in?
And the next page recorded their end.
[In the end, even those who remained were infected.]
[I had to grant them all peace with my own hands, but they change quickly.]
[I have been suppressing the bugs inside my body with mana and recording this, but my time is near as well.]
[When this world falls, the thing that destroyed my people...and the other races will set its sights on the next world.]
[Ancestors, I am sorry. We could protect nothing.]
[If nothing else, I hope this record will instill caution in those still alive.]
[And...'the wicked' must be stopped at all costs—]
"It ends around here."
Had he run out of mana just before finishing the record, then squeezed out the last of it to stab all the blades nearby into his torso, perhaps to pin himself in place...
More than anything, these weapons. When I picked one up, it absorbed mana.
On top of that, the blades embedded all the way into the floor were firmly stuck and wouldn't come out. So even after the parasites woke up, they couldn't control the body and seemed to have abandoned it to look for another host.
There was nothing else to get besides the book I'd already put in my Inventory.
I ended up burning not only the High Elf's corpse and the building, but also the trees. I burned every place that bore the traces of the elves' lives.
A place that had once held someone's memories and precious moments was being engulfed in flames and reduced to ashes.
How much time had passed? The trees, their entire bodies engulfed in flames, had turned pitch-black.
Their roots must have been sturdy, because they hadn't fallen over even after that, but their leaves had all turned to ash, leaving only the huge branches.
As I stood dazed in a place where nothing living remained, a note arrived along with some items.
[The Dark Elves were in the same situation... Those were memories I didn't want to bring back...]
-Uh... Is that a Constellation?
-Whoa, from the way they're talking, it looks like the Phoenix personally burned down all the places where the elves and Dark Elves lived.
-I feel like the Phoenix probably burned the dragons along with them, too?
-What the hell happened to the Constellations?
'So that's what it was.'
If it had been someone else, maybe the instruction would have been like before, telling me to defeat someone or other.
But this was a place connected to the Phoenix Constellation's memories. More than that, it was a memory of having to burn the elves who had been destroyed with my own hands.
The reason there was only one phrase, 'Purify,' was that the Phoenix was the one who had 'purified' the elves.
And considering that one of the items I received was called 'The World Tree's Last Leaf,' it seemed the Phoenix had destroyed the World Tree personally, too.
At first, I'd thought she was the bitch who'd arbitrarily made it impossible for me to die, but now...
...Sigh. I don't know either.
Anyway, I should check out the skill I just got...
[Resurrection: Fully revives another person. Limited to once per person (number of uses increases as skill level rises)]
"What the hell is this now?"
Somehow, I got a skill that made me feel like Awakened people were going to beg me to team up with them.