Chapter 19
After defeating the enormous Black Sludge with Hong Yeon-hwa's magic.
Iris and I, who had fallen freely under the pull of gravity, crash-landed somewhere in the forest.
"Waaaaah──"
KABOOOOM!!
"Ow... My head..."
It felt like the hangover after drinking five bottles of soju the night before.
I rubbed my aching tailbone and staggered to my feet.
Clatter!
After taking a few unsteady steps, I tripped over a lump of aluminum near the crash site.
A half-charred sheet of aluminum, crushed beyond recognition.
Just before the shock wave hit, I'd poured all the aluminum I had into making a shield.
"Al... are you okay...?"
......
"Oof. That must hurt."
I gathered the crumpled 'Al' and put it away in my Inventory, then sat on a nearby rock and downed the healing potion Hong Yeon-hwa had given me.
[ You have consumed a new drug! ]
[ Addiction rate has increased by 1%. ]
"Ugh... It tastes fishy..."
"......"
Meanwhile, Iris, who'd been sprawled on the ground with her butt stuck up in the air, had apparently woken up. She glared at me with a deeply disgruntled look.
"...Did you bring me along just for this?"
"For what?"
"Don't play dumb! You used me like crazy when we landed...!!"
"Oh... That?"
To be fair, it would've been a struggle to land without Iris's wind magic.
Why else would I have brought her along?
I couldn't land on my own, so I'd brought her as a substitute for a parachute.
'Hey, hey!! You crazy woman!! Wake up already!!'
'H-Huh...? Hwe...? What...?'
'If you don't wake up right now, we're both going to fall to our deaths...!!!!'
'......??? W-Wind Cushion!!'
As I recalled slapping her across the face just before landing, Iris yelled at me tearfully, sounding utterly wronged.
"Don't treat an elf like a!! Portable!! Parachute!!"
Unfortunately, though, I had something far more important to worry about than Iris's feelings.
With my heart pounding, I checked the Awakened Community window.
'Did it get recorded...?'
It got recorded, right? The video turned out okay, right?
It was all in one take, so I was a little worried about how it came out...
< video_d869a143 >
"Oh...!! Ooooh...!!"
"Huh?? Are you listening to me??"
"Yeah."
I let Iris's continued nagging go in one ear and out the other, then immediately uploaded the video with a post to the Tower Gallery.
[ Lunatic Floor 5 Clear ]
[ Posted by: 39.7 ]
< Video of the Sludge Blob vanishing without a trace in the explosion >
- Anonymous Climber: ?????
- Anonymous Climber: You killed it?? That thing??
- Air Raid Alert: The Lunatic clear bar is ridiculously high;;
- Anonymous Climber: Why does the video start in the sky...?
└ Anonymous Climber: For real, you're flying like a cannonball??
Despite the post having no explanation, comments started pouring in almost immediately.
Then, every time I refreshed, a bunch of upvotes came rolling in, and it wasn't long before my post made it to the featured posts.
[ ☆ Lunatic Floor 5 Clear (58) ]
"Nailed it."
For now, this was enough.
As much as I wanted to enjoy all the attention pouring in, clearing the Tower had to come first.
And...
'The board owner never engages with the users.'
It had long been a tradition on the Awakened Gallery for board owners to act like jerks.
To get even more attention later, I also needed to maintain my air of mystery for now.
Ding!
"Oh, the clear notification popped up."
"...Huh? Clear?"
"It's a thing."
Right on cue, the quest-clear notification chimed.
I vaguely explained it to Iris and checked the system window that appeared before me.
[ Main Quest Cleared. ]
[ You have cleared Floor 5 on Lunatic difficulty. ]
[ Clear rewards will now be granted. ]
[ You have obtained a Floor 6 Entry Ticket. ]
[ You have obtained a Skill Enhancement Ticket. ]
[ You have obtained ???. ]
"Claim."
Flash─!
With a gleaming effect, items spilled out of thin air.
One was a ticket made of luxurious black paper, embossed with gold lettering.
The other was an unidentified potion in a finger-sized bottle.
Iris saw them and tilted her head before asking me:
"What are those? Potions?"
"...I don't know either."
Slosh!
I gave the glass bottle a light shake. The liquid inside sloshed and reflected a variety of colors.
It looked a lot like opal.
You know, that rainbow-colored gemstone.
Except more transparent and in liquid form.
[ ??? ]
- Rank: ????
- Details: An unidentified potion.
"....."
The item's description was strange, too.
The name was a question mark, and so was the rank.
Even the details only said it was unidentified.
'...Should I try drinking it?'
For a moment, I felt tempted to try the potion, but then I shook my head and put it away in my Inventory.
I'd nearly gotten into trouble recently after accidentally eating a World Tree leaf.
The World Tree leaf was S-rank, and this potion's rank was a question mark. That made it even more concerning.
The same kind of intuition as before warned me, 'If you eat this now, you're gonna die.'
My addiction rate wasn't lacking, so there was no need to take an unnecessary risk.
"Ugh... I yelled as soon as I woke up, and now my head hurts..."
"That's what you get for overdoing it."
"...You're one to talk?? This is all because of your ridiculous plan in the first place!!"
As I finished sorting through my Floor 5 clear rewards and braced myself for round two of Iris's nagging,
a silver-haired elf soon appeared, riding on the wind.
"I can't believe you really defeated that enormous thing... and with such a reckless method, too..."
"M-Mother?"
As expected, it was Her Majesty the Queen.
I immediately asked her:
"We got it, right?"
"Yes. It's definitely dead. Of course, the nearby forest ended up going up in flames because of it..."
"...Uh..."
She put a peculiar emphasis on 'going up in flames,' and I felt a twinge of guilt, so I quietly looked away.
Sylvia only shrugged, though, as if she didn't mind.
"A forest is a forest. It'll grow back someday."
"Th-that's a relief..."
And here I thought...
I'd be thrown in the dungeon for burning down the forest.
What, I go out of my way to kill a monster and then get treated like a criminal?
Think about what elves are like on average. It could definitely happen.
Sylvia was just being generous.
It was the kind of magnanimity you'd expect from the queen of such big-hearted elves.
Sylvia continued speaking.
"Yes. You've completed the mission, so you deserve your reward, don't you?"
"Couldn't have put it better."
Then she handed me a branch of a reasonable length.
"Take it. This is the branch of the World Tree I promised you."
When you complete a mission, you naturally receive a reward.
And that reward was an S-rank item.
[ World Tree Branch ]
- Rank: S
- Details: A branch of the World Tree, the sacred tree of the elves. It has great magical value and a mild calming effect.
"Ooh...!"
Of course, hearing that it was a branch from an enormous cannabis plant was a bit of a letdown...
Still, this item seemed more like a material than a drug.
"Thanks."
"Yes."
I bowed my head and put the World Tree branch she'd given me away in my Inventory.
Watching me, Iris cautiously asked from beside me:
"Are you leaving again?"
"Looks like it."
"Ugh... I didn't get any candy this time..."
Now that she mentioned it, a lot had happened this time, so I hadn't given Iris any candy.
And it wasn't just that. I'd also used her like a parachute while we flew hundreds of meters through the air.
...Now I kind of felt bad.
Should I give her some caffeine candy?
But Sylvia grabbed Iris by the ear faster than I could take the caffeine candy out of my Inventory.
"Don't talk nonsense, Iris. What are you thinking, letting an elf princess get high on drugs every day?"
"Ow...! S-Sorry...!"
"You need to learn a little self-control."
After finishing her motherly scolding, Sylvia gave me a faint smile and a brief farewell.
"I'll be waiting for your return. We elves never forget a kindness."
"...Yes."
And with those words,
the long fifth floor came to an end.
*
*
*
After I returned home,
I finished my shower and resumed the Gallery lurking I'd put off.
[ ☆ Lunatic Floor 5 Clear (492) ]
"There are a lot of comments."
Nearly five hundred comments had piled up during the short trip back from the Tower.
I forgot all about drying my wet hair and started going through the comments one by one.
- Anonymous Climber: Wait, what was that voice...?
└ Anonymous Climber: The way you choke halfway through is seriously so damn cute lol
└ Child-Lover: Ooh... Ooh, ooh...
└ Great Mage: That's just a kid...
└ Anonymous Climber: The reactions are so divided, this is hilarious lol
└ Saintess: Just both of you die, please...
The first comments I saw were about my voice.
This was the first time my voice had been revealed in a video, so I could more or less understand the reactions.
"No, still, calling me a kid is a bit much..."
How do you call a grown adult a kid?
My voice just sounds young because it's high-pitched.
Great Mage... I'll remember that username.
I'll downvote them every time I see them from now on.
- Speed Vegan: You said you're a melee swordsman... why are you using magic...?
└ Anonymous Climber: No lmaoooo
└ Air Raid Alert: What a scrub
└ Anonymous Climber: This guy can't get anything right
└ Anonymous Climber: Swordmaster 39.7 is... discontinued...
└ Daehyeop: Ehhh??? Hontou???
"You've realized."
Of course, realizing that now didn't really change anything.
Besides, my specialty wasn't magic. It was alchemy.
Though watching me fire metal missiles around, you might wonder what the difference was.
- If a Cow Burns, Carbon: I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
└ Anonymous Climber: ?
└ Anonymous Climber: Why's this guy suddenly acting like this
└ Anonymous Climber: Welcome, firepower freak
Just then, I spotted a familiar verified user's comment.
While everyone was collectively puzzled by her cryptic words, another verified user replied.
└ Save the Newbies: The magic Carbon uses is in the video. Looking at that pillar of fire, is it some kind of Inferno variant?
└ Save the Newbies: And if you look closely, it comes from the ring, not his hand. Maybe he got an artifact from someone? Something like a Magic Stock Ring.
└ Anonymous Climber: What? How is that actually right?
└ Anonymous Climber: How do you even analyze something like that...?
└ Anonymous Climber: For real, it's only onscreen for about 0.1 seconds;;
"...Huh?"
What? How did he actually figure that out?
He analyzed a shot that only appeared in the video for 0.1 seconds...?
"The vegan ham next door couldn't even get my class right."
Of course, it was an insult to compare that scrub with the Tower Gallery GOAT, Save the Newbies.
Though I'm not sure you could still call him a newbie.
- Anonymous Climber: So Carbon's met 39.7 before...?
└ If a Cow Burns, Carbon: Heh.
└ Anonymous Climber: Uh? Could this be...
└ Anonymous Climber: @Scarlet Letter, moddddd!!
└ Scarlet Letter*: ......?
└ Scarlet Letter*: Our Gallery doesn't exactly ban people from being friends...
└ Anonymous Climber: Whaaat
└ Anonymous Climber: No buddy-buddying... doesn't exist...?
└ Anonymous Climber: No, fuck, where have you ever heard of that
└ Scarlet Letter*: Please read the pinned post...
With the sight of the head mod shedding tears over people who still didn't read the pinned post as today's final comment, I finished going through the thread and checked out the Top Posts on the other galleries.
[ Anyone see the Association's recruitment notice this time? ]
[ Job at the Baekhwa Guild vs. Grade 9 civil servant at the Association ]
[ Looks like something's going on on Floor 0 ]
[ What does the Baekhwa Guild even have besides the Ice Emperor? ]
[ The all-time Ice-Emperor-less Ice Emperor Team Cup ]
The Top Posts were still split between the ongoing Baekhwa Guild flame war and the newly surfaced Association recruitment notice.
Of course, after my latest post, my Floor 5 clear video had crushed those topics.
"What? Just a normal Awakened Gallery."
Anyway, what was this recruitment notice from the Association about?
From a quick skim, it seemed the Association was temporarily recruiting Awakened with C-rank or higher...
"...Boring."
It wasn't exactly the kind of thing that got my dopamine going.
I hated boring, pretentious topics like that.
I'd have to ask Hong Yeon-hwa to sum it up for me later.
"Oh, right. The clear rewards."
I continued lurking on the Gallery for a while, but then
I suddenly remembered the forgotten rewards for clearing Floors 4 and 5. I opened my Inventory and laid them out on the floor.
"I have to humblebrag about these..."
Not bragging about them wasn't an option.
The whole reason I climbed the Tower in the first place was to humblebrag on the Gallery.
[ World Tree Branch ]
[ Superior Magic Stones x10 ]
[ Skill Enhancement Ticket ]
[ ??? ]
But aside from the Skill Enhancement Ticket, these items didn't have any obvious use for me right now.
And the Superior Magic Stones in particular were a bit of a white elephant at the moment.
My transmutation skill wasn't very advanced yet, so I could only work with metals. I couldn't use them for crafting.
And they weren't hard-to-find materials, either. I didn't need to extract their mana, since I wasn't short on mana right now.
"...Should I sell them?"
So naturally, my thoughts turned to selling them.
After all, magic stones were the main source of income for most Awakened.
They made money by selling magic stones and a few monster drops.
Of course, I'd been screwed over all the way to Floor 5, fighting an unlucky slime and drug flowers, so I hadn't gotten either.
Magic stones only dropped from animal-type monsters, and toxic slime and drugs weren't exactly things I could sell as monster drops.
[ Superior Magic Stones x10 ]
"But now I have magic stones, too."
And not just ordinary ones. Superior Magic Stones.
They had an extremely low chance of dropping from ordinary monsters and were guaranteed only when you defeated something like a mid-boss.
But I'd gotten ten of them just as a Floor 4 clear reward.
For reference, a regular low-grade magic stone sold for around 100,000 won.
Mid-grade ones went for anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million won depending on the market, while no one knew the going rate for high-grade ones.
"Then... at least ten million won...?"
High risk, high return
It was definitely a reward befitting Lunatic difficulty.
"Hehehe."
Suddenly thrilled at the thought of making money, I posted on the Awakened Community to ask where I could sell the magic stones.
[ I have 10 Superior Magic Stones. Where can I sell these??? ]
[ Posted by: 39.7 ]
< Photo of 10 Superior Magic Stones rolling around on the floor >
I got these as a Floor 4 reward, but I have no idea what to do with themㅠㅠㅠㅠ
I want to sell them quickly, but I still want a fair priceㅠㅠ
- Anonymous Climber: What???
- Air Raid Alert: Humblebragging bastard...
- Anonymous Climber: The audacity ㄷㄷ
- Anonymous Climber: Ugh... That tone is so fucking annoying
- If a Cow Burns, Carbon: This is a secret comment
└ Anonymous Climber: (This is a secret comment)
└ (OP) 39.7: Sure~ I sent you a message~
└ If a Cow Burns, Carbon: You didn't, you bastard lmao
- Anonymous Climber: Aren't those worth a few hundred thousand each???
└ Anonymous Climber: No, there aren't any on the market right now, so they're worth even more
└ Anonymous Climber: Holy;;;
As expected, useless comments started pouring in as soon as I posted.
The discussion about the going price was at least somewhat useful, though.
I kept refreshing, waiting for a useful comment, when a familiar verified user's comment soon appeared. I tilted my head and muttered:
- Great Mage: What about the black market?
"The black market...?"
It was a comment I couldn't possibly just ignore.