Chapter 167
It was the moment we stepped through the city gate.
“Ah! Boss!”
“Ugh!”
The pirates standing behind us screamed.
I too felt a prickling sting in my right forearm, like being poked with a needle.
“What is this?”
When I rolled up my forearm, a strange pattern had been etched into my skin.
A simple image: a circle with a thick horizontal line across it.
It looked like a coin you’d often see in games.
“It looks interesting.”
“It won’t come off?”
The crew rubbed at the tattoos in confusion, but no matter how hard they scrubbed, they wouldn’t budge.
Teach said, as if he knew something.
“It looks like an old gold coin.”
“A gold coin?”
“There were ancient coins that looked like this. Perhaps this city was once a place that used them.”
“That’s a little unsettling…”
I instinctively felt a sense of foreboding.
At the very least, it wasn’t something like an amusement park Magic Pass ticket.
“For now, I need to erase it.”
Without hesitation, I turned the tattooed section into sand.
Swish.
The tattooed skin and muscle scattered into grains of sand in an instant, then returned to my original body.
Fortunately, once that was over, the tattoo had disappeared cleanly.
“Do you guys want to erase yours too?”
“Cutting the skin out here is a bit… we still don’t even know what this is.”
“Let’s just leave it. It doesn’t even hurt.”
But this was a method only I could use. The other crew members couldn’t copy it.
And making themselves injured right before a situation likely to turn into battle would be just as dangerous.
With a nagging sense of unease, we headed into the ruined city.
“This looks pretty old…”
It felt like what ancient Greece would look like if it had sunk beneath the sea whole.
Grand columns reminiscent of temples, massive statues with broken faces.
Perhaps because they’d been submerged for so long, they were covered in moss and barnacles.
“The statues are weird too.”
At first I hadn’t noticed because their faces were broken.
But as we went deeper in, statues in somewhat better condition came into view, and I could spot the grotesque details.
They had octopus or fish heads on human bodies, or grotesque forms with multiple arms.
“This is creepy…”
Then Teach showed me his compass and said,
“This is a little strange.”
“Why?”
“The needle keeps pointing backward. Toward the gate we came through.”
“Did we miss something at the gate?”
The explorer’s compass that reveals hidden pieces.
I quickly headed back toward the gate with only Teach.
“This isn’t pointing at the gate?”
“It keeps pointing behind us.”
“Since when was it like this?”
“At least until we came in here, it was pointing forward the whole time.”
“It changed after we entered the gate?”
I propped my chin on my hand and thought for a moment.
A hidden piece behind us? But we’d already passed through there.
More importantly, this was inside the Tower.
The enemy was bound to be further inside.
“Maybe your compass is broken?”
“Why don’t you take yours out too, Captain?”
At that, I took out my own compass.
“See? It’s perfectly fine.”
My compass was still pointing deeper inside.
Though it did shake from time to time.
“Why is it shaking like this? It feels like the target keeps changing.”
Tilting my head, I returned to where we’d been.
For now, going forward was the right choice. We had to clear the Tower, after all.
“Huh? It’s not shaking anymore.”
“Mine’s pointing forward again too.”
The unease kept mounting, but we decided to let it go for now.
There wasn’t anything else worth trying anyway.
Then it happened.
Enemies burst out from the ruins of the collapsed buildings.
[Kyaak!]
They looked similar to the fishmen we saw on Floor 41.
But they stank even worse, and they were bigger than before.
Behind the fishmen, a gigantic golem appeared.
A guardian soldier made of rock, coral, and barnacles.
“At this level…”
If I stepped in, I felt like I could take them all out in six seconds.
It had also been a while since my feet had touched solid ground inside the Tower.
And there were no more restraints now.
“This time, let’s see what you can do. How much stronger have you gotten?”
I stepped back one pace and stood with my hands behind my back.
I intended to see just how skilled the pirates really were.
“Understood. Everyone, prepare for battle!”
“Aye, aye!”
At Teach’s shout, the pirates drew their weapons in unison.
If I remember correctly, back on Floor 41 these guys had struggled just to deal with fishmen.
But now?
“Kill them all!”
Crack!
Every time Teach swung his sword once, a fishman was cut down.
The other crew members did the same.
Their individual strength was still lacking, but they moved as a unit and hunted down the enemies with ease.
“Not bad.”
At this rate, they seemed comparable to my mass-produced clones.
That was when the first skirmish ended easily.
“Wahaha! I suddenly feel strength surging through me!!”
“My sword feels lighter than usual!”
“Look! I can even lift this statue!”
“…?”
The crew suddenly reported strange symptoms.
Some of them had suddenly gotten stronger, or faster.
“No way they’re leveling up, right?”
That can’t be right.
At some point, I’d begun to think that the beings inside the Tower might not simply be fabricated NPCs.
That thought grew even stronger after I used the Tower revisit ticket.
But even so, leveling up just from killing a few monsters was too much, wasn’t it?
It still needed verification.
After walking a little farther, more enemies appeared.
“Try taking those out too.”
“Piece of cake!”
The crew really did win the fight much more easily than before.
I watched them closely.
Would there really be another level-up?
Just then.
“Oh! Captain, take a look at this!”
One crew member held up his forearm.
The tattoo on his arm wriggled, and its shape and size became a little clearer.
“Everyone, show me your forearms.”
I checked everyone’s arms.
Except for me, who had erased mine from the very start, everyone’s tattoo had grown larger than before.
Especially Teach, who had killed the most monsters; his tattoo was more than twice the size of anyone else’s.
“Now that I look at it, it doesn’t seem like a coin anymore…”
It was one of those moments where something felt like it was about to click into place.
Then another enemy cut us off.
One fight after another.
But the pirates no longer hesitated.
“Everyone! Sweep them all away!”
“Waaah!”
“Move, I’m the one who’s killing them!”
The pirates charged forward in a frenzy.
The fishmen were no longer a match for the pirates, who had become much stronger thanks to the power of the tattoos.
There wasn’t any sign of side effects, no matter how you looked at it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have erased mine, either?”
It was a chance to raise my stats too. It was infuriating.
“No, maybe you can level up without the tattoo too.”
After thinking it over, I summoned the Sandworm for the first time in a while.
Until now, because we were in the middle of the sea, it hadn’t had any chance to shine throughout the 40th-floor stretch. But now there was land.
Rumble rumble rumble!
With the earthquake, the Sandworm, back to its original size for the first time in a while, stretched.
“Keep pushing forward. All the way to the end over there.”
At my command, the Sandworm charged.
Kwaaaah!
An attack of overwhelming mass.
Fishmen and golems alike were reduced to dust and swallowed into the Sandworm’s mouth.
“Hey, Captain, you’re already strong. That’s not fair.”
“Quiet. I’m checking whether the strength is coming to me too.”
In one go, I hunted down about as many enemies as the whole crew had just taken down.
But I couldn’t feel even the slightest change.
“Looks like you really do need the tattoo after all…?”
I clicked my tongue in disappointment.
The other pirates started muttering among themselves too.
“The captain got greedy and messed it up…”
“Then just give it to me.”
“Sigh…”
“You little punks are awfully cocky today, huh? Got a little stronger and now you can’t see straight?”
Only then did the pirates quiet down.
I pointed ahead.
“Enough. Let’s just follow it all the way. That seems to be the end anyway.”
Far ahead, at the end of the path the Sandworm had carved, a gigantic temple came into view.
Its golden roof and white marble pillars glittered.
Unlike the half-collapsed buildings around it, the temple stood alone, perfectly intact.
Even the usual barnacles or starfish hadn’t attached themselves to it.
Creak, creak, creak.
When we arrived in front of it, a huge marble statue blocked our way.
It was probably the guardian of this temple.
“Hup!”
Once again, there was no need for me to step in.
Teach’s sword slash split the guardian statue clean in two.
Teach’s tattoo grew even clearer.
“This looks like an eye.”
I think goat eyes looked something like this.
The only difference was that, where eyelids and skin should have been, there were only strange wrinkles.
With an even stronger sense of foreboding, I stepped into the temple.
“Treasure!”
The temple’s interior was magnificent.
One side was piled high with gold coins and jewels, and the walls were covered with unrecognizable patterns.
The crew rushed toward the treasure pile, eyes wild with greed.
I took a moment to look around.
Behind the altar stood a huge chair.
A chair too large for a person to sit in.
It, too, was decorated with gold and marble, giving off a luxurious feel.
“The design’s a little similar…”
Its size and shape reminded me of the inner world I’d visited every time I got stronger.
There was always a sand giant sitting on a throne there.
It was a throne that gave off a very similar vibe to that chair.
“….”
Then the parrot, which had been still until now, silently took flight.
It flew toward the altar.
Behind it was a gigantic deity statue.
A deity statue similar to the statues we’d seen in the city so far, but even more grotesque, with a crushed face.
The parrot was heading toward its head.
At the same time, my compass began to tremble.
The needle spun all the way around and pointed to a new target.
The compass needle pointed straight at the parrot.
‘Come to think of it, I never liked that birdbrain from the start.’
Even a glance made it obvious something was off.
At this point, it couldn’t be a coincidence.
That damn bird. It was definitely connected to the boss.
‘Sorry, Teach, but I have to kill it before it can trigger anything.’
Teach would understand.
I quietly extended a finger and took aim at it.
Then it happened.
Bang - !
A sharp gunshot rang through the temple.
“?!”
“What the hell!”
Not just me, but every crew member who’d been picking up treasure turned around.
Smoke was rising from the gun barrel.
The one who had fired the gun was none other than Teach.
“Tsk. Guess I was fond of the little guy after all.”
Teach clicked his tongue and put the gun away.