Chapter 18
[ Fuckfuckfuckfuck) Gallery bros, somebody save me... ]
[ Posted by: 39.7 ]
< Photo of an apartment-sized blob of slime >
Why the hell is something like this showing up on Floor 5?
- Anonymous Climber: ???????
- Anonymous Climber: What the fuck is that
- Great Hero: They have something like that as the Floor 5 boss...?
- Anonymous Climber: Lunatic difficulty is no joke;;
- If a Cow Burns, Carbon: Just set it on fire
└ (OP) 39.7: ;;;;
- Anonymous Climber: Make a giant grape smoothie, Jack!
└ Speed Vegan: Except now it spews poison and is immune to physical attacks
└ Save the Newbies: Fuck, that's horrifying
“Sigh...”
After checking our target with the queen, we returned to the elven village.
I sighed as I read the comments piling up on my post.
Flash─!
[ Main Quest (Linked) ]
Defeat the Black Sludge and earn the trust of Sylvia, the Elf Queen.
(Optional) Defeat the Sludge Blob. (0/1)
- Reward: Floor 6 Entry Ticket, Skill Enhancement Ticket x1, ???
So, in other words...
She wanted me to kill that thing?
That insane Sludge Gigantamax?
...By myself?
“What the fuck, that doesn't even make sense...”
Tower, you fucking bitch.
Come over here and sit down for a minute.
What the hell is going on with the Floor 5 boss?
You said it was a mid-boss, you bastard.
I know your usual management is a total shitshow, but there's a limit to how much bullshit I can take...
Fucking Tower.
Fucking Lunatic difficulty.
“Sigh...”
I sighed again and closed the Gallery window in front of me.
I'd been cursing it out because I was pissed, but I had no intention of giving up.
The rewards being held hostage were too good to abandon the quest just because it was a pain in the ass.
- Reward: Floor 6 Entry Ticket, Skill Enhancement Ticket x1, ???
“I have to admit, those rewards are tempting.”
A Skill Enhancement Ticket and a question mark.
I had no idea about the latter, but the former was definitely an insanely good reward.
A coupon that could enhance any skill, regardless of its rank?
Even if I only enhanced my Transmutation (A) skill, that alone would be worth more than an A-rank item.
I had no idea what the question mark was...
But the queen said she'd give me a branch from the World Tree. Maybe that was it?
Or maybe it'd be something even better.
That would mean getting one more reward, after all.
“So I have to kill that insane Grape Smoothie Gigantamax...”
Actually, the strategy itself wasn't much of a problem.
Thanks to my resistance skill, I was immune to poison anyway.
No matter how big it was, even if it was the size of an apartment building, it shouldn't be able to hurt me much.
“Should I just dive right in and swim around?”
Of course, all my clothes would melt.
Then the Elf Queen and Iris would see me like that...
And on the way home, some random kid would humiliate me in public...
In the end, all I had to do was give up a little bit of my dignity.
Though I might get misunderstood as having tags like tag:public and tag:exhibitionism added to my profile.
“...Absolutely not. No way.”
I imagined myself swimming through that enormous mass of slime for a moment, then shuddered and shook my head.
My clothes melting would be a problem, sure, but the smell was even worse.
I'm not even joking. It smells like food waste.
Except it's been rotting in a sewer through the rainy season for a month.
My stomach was so hardened by all the nasty pictures on the Gallery that I could probably only stand the smell without throwing up because of that.
“Besides, how am I supposed to find its core?”
There was also the purely physical problem.
The Sludge Blob was bigger than most apartment buildings.
And it wasn't tall and narrow, so in terms of its actual size, it was probably even bigger than that.
I was supposed to go inside and find its core?
Forget swimming through slime—how was I supposed to breathe?
So even setting aside the problem of my clothes melting, there was no way I could kill it with a physical attack.
That left magic as my only option...
“......”
“...W-why are you looking at me?”
Iris stammered when she noticed me suddenly staring at her.
Her hands were trembling like crazy. Looked like she was going through withdrawal.
Had her stash been confiscated or something?
Then she began backing away from me, suspicion written all over her face.
“I-I can't help you...! Most elves won't even go near it, and with my meager magic skills...”
“It's fine. Who said you had to fight it?”
“...Then what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
I'd decided what to do a long time ago.
I just hadn't gotten Iris's consent yet.
[ Magic Stock Ring (A) ]
“W-what is it...? That look on your face...”
“......”
I looked back and forth between the ring on my finger and Iris.
A gift from Hong Yeon-hwa, the firepower-obsessed lunatic.
Even though it was single-use, it was an item that could reproduce her S-rank skill.
After thinking it over, I asked Iris in a casual tone.
“Iris.”
“...Yes?”
“Would you mind if I set your forest on fire?”
“......?”
Iris's face soon filled with shock.
*
*
*
A little while later.
At the top of the World Tree.
“Nooooooooo──!!!!”
Iris, whom I'd dragged along, screamed with the back of her collar in my grip.
I ignored her and admired the view as the wind swept past us.
“Hmm... The view really is amazing, at least.”
An ocean of clouds stretched far below us.
The wind howled, and the leaves swayed like a pack of wolves running by.
It really lived up to the name of the World Tree. The view was breathtaking.
Of course, that was because the tree was a gigantic cannabis plant.
Iris had slipped free of my grasp at some point. She clung to a branch of the World Tree like a cicada, trembling as she shouted.
“I said I didn't want to...!! I told you I wasn't doing it...!!!!”
“It's okay. You never had a choice in the first place.”
“Just put me down already!! I'm scared of heights!!!!”
“Oh, dear.”
I felt bad for her, since she was afraid of heights, but this wasn't even that high yet.
In a little while, we'd be going much higher than this.
“And what do you mean, setting the forest on fire...? To elves, the forest is as precious as our lives—”
“Let's see... Where's that Sludge Blob...”
I ignored Iris's anguished cries and looked around.
“...Oh, there it is.”
It wasn't hard to find where the monster was.
It was apartment-building-sized, and the forest around it had turned black.
It was easy to understand why the queen had called it refuse that was eating away at the forest.
As I gazed in fascination at the polluted forest, I felt someone approach and heard a familiar voice.
“When you suddenly asked me to take you to the top of the World Tree, I wondered what crazy thing you were planning...”
The one who'd used magic to bring us both up here.
The Elf Queen, Sylvia, looked at me with interest and spoke.
“What do you intend to do up here? Even a great mage would have trouble using magic against it from this distance.”
“Of course I'm not going to use magic from here.”
Even Hong Yeon-hwa couldn't cast magic from a distance of several kilometers.
And even if she could, there was no way she could unleash enough firepower to erase something that huge.
'But I can't get close and shoot it, either.'
It was practically melted into a giant slime.
Even if I got as close as possible, it wouldn't be easy to hit it right in the center.
And if I misjudged the distance, I could get caught in the explosion too.
So...
“I have one more favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Could you use magic to send the two of us over there?”
“......”
At my absurd request, Sylvia stared at me like I was insane.
“......”
“......”
How long did the silence continue in that awkward atmosphere?
“...Pfft.”
A sudden puff of air escaped someone.
Sylvia's shoulders gave a little bounce.
“Puhaha, ahahaha!! Ahahahahaha!!”
Then she burst into laughter so hard that tears came to her eyes.
After laughing for a long while, she spoke to me with an innocent, childlike expression.
“Haa... Right. No one but a human this crazy could have made it into the Melek Great Forest.”
“...So you can do it?”
Her unexpected reaction made me ask with an uneasy look on my face.
But it seemed my worry was unfounded. Sylvia smiled faintly and said,
“I will. Something like that is as easy for me as plucking a leaf.”
“W-wait, wait a second...!! What did you say?? Who's going where??”
Iris belatedly grasped what was happening and hurriedly cut in, but it was already too late.
“Inhaaaale...”
Sylvia lit the cigarette clamped between her lips and began casting her spell.
The wind whipped around us, and mana gathered.
Formulas and complicated circuits appeared in the air.
Sylvia drew them all in an instant, then put out her cigarette and exhaled.
“...Phew.”
A thin trail of smoke rose between her slightly parted lips.
And then...
“『Wind Press』.”
At the two low-pitched syllables she uttered,
Iris and I were shot into the sky, riding a typhoon.
BOOOOM
━
━
━
!!!!
“Ugh...!”
The impact was beyond anything I could have imagined.
Inertia and the pressure of the wind crushed against my skin. My hair and clothes whipped about as if they were convulsing.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaauubububup──”
Was soaring hundreds of meters into the air too much for an elf with a fear of heights?
Before long, Iris let out a pitiful scream beside me.
Then Iris went limp like a puppet with its strings cut, fainted, and decorated the sky with white foam.
“Gurgle...”
“......”
Honestly, what a useless elf.
How could she pass out from just this much?
That defeated the whole point of bringing her along.
“...Transmutation.”
Bang!
Still, I couldn't just leave the unconscious Iris where she was, so I used Transmutation to make a platform and caught her limp body.
I slung the princess over my shoulder like a sack of luggage. About a dozen seconds passed.
The arc of our flight reached its highest point, and the blackened forest drew closer.
The enormous monster that had looked like a little bean a moment ago was now considerably larger.
Gurgle, bluuuurgh...
“......”
Seeing that face up close again... It really wasn't easy.
Still, it looked like we'd managed to fly in the right direction without veering off course.
'I guess Her Majesty has good aim.'
As that ridiculous thought crossed my mind, I pulled a mana potion out of my Inventory and drank it.
[ Lesser Mana Potion x5 ]
“Gulp...”
Ding!
[ You have consumed a new drug! ]
[ Addiction rate has increased by 1%. ]
A notification appeared as soon as I drank the potion, as if it had been waiting for me.
I ignored it and poured the other four bottles straight down my throat, too.
[ You have consumed a drug. ]
[ Addiction rate has increased by 1%. ]
[ You have consumed a drug. ]
[ Addiction rate has increased by 1%. ]
[ You have consumed a drug. ]
[ Addiction rate has increased by 1%. ]
[ ...... ]
[ ... ]
“Gulp... Cough, hack!!”
I choked a little from drinking them in a hurry, but that finished my doping.
That should keep me from running out of mana, at least.
Then I felt the energy slowly building inside me and began pouring mana into the ring.
Vroooooom──
“Ugh... It's hot...”
The ring heated up as if it were about to burst.
It let out a fierce resonance, like the sound of a computer dying.
At the same time, the massive amount of mana inside me began rushing toward my fingertips at a terrifying speed.
Vroooooom──
A magic circle formed around the ring.
Unrecognizable characters.
Formulas made of complicated geometry.
Large circles surrounding them.
The magic circle that had been drawn became a conduit.
A single path, along which mana raced.
Once... twice... again.
It followed the same route without stopping. It overlapped.
Mana accelerated again along the overlapping paths.
Vroooooom──
“Uh...”
I wondered if this was okay, but by then the ring had already sucked up most of my mana.
It was far too late to stop now.
The magic circle overlapped again.
Mana raced through it, accelerating.
Eventually, the number of overlapping magic circles passed ten and reached about twenty.
──Kiiing!!
As the ring shattered, unable to withstand that enormous acceleration,
the engraved spell finally plunged straight down.
『Inferno』
A mushroom cloud rose over the elven forest.
The final line preserves the chapter's closing image.