Chapter 31
“Now then, it’s a domain expansion showdown.”
The desert sand writhed at my will.
At the same time, the slime also began moving.
Dozens of sticky tentacles surged up from the polluted swamp.
Tentacles lashed toward me like whips.
“Sand Totem.”
The two sand clones I’d summoned in time stepped in to block the tentacles.
One of the tentacles wrapped around a sand clone shaped like me
and coiled around it as it was.
The coiled tentacle then dug into the sand and squeezed, shattering the clone to pieces.
The crumbled sand clone scattered across the ground.
“Damn….”
I frowned.
Where the slime’s mucus touched it, the sand turned black with poison.
The tainted sand no longer obeyed my control. It would be hard to reclaim and use again.
I’d already lost two fingers to the totem.
“Tch….”
A few more tentacles came flying at me.
This time, I made a giant sand clone using my entire right hand.
In an instant, a massive sand golem nearly three meters tall appeared before me. It, too, took my form.
Several tentacles coiled like snakes around the sand golem’s limbs.
“Nngh….”
The giant groaned and began a test of strength.
I didn’t let the opening slip by.
Dozens of bullets formed by scooping up nearby sand.
While the giant held the tentacles in place, I unleashed a barrage of bullets at the slime’s main body.
“Puh-buh-buh-buh-boom!”
Holes were punched all through the slime’s body.
Noxious-smelling mucus splattered everywhere.
Wherever the mucus landed, the ground began to bubble and turn black with contamination.
If anything, the enemy’s field had actually gotten larger, and it gave me a headache.
“Gurgle!”
That wasn’t all.
From the contaminated ground, little slimes made of mucus started wriggling their way out.
“Wow. This is seriously some bullshit pattern….”
I kept consuming sand to create ordinary-sized sand clones.
It was to take on the mini slimes springing out from every direction, one by one.
The battle was gradually turning into a melee.
The giant clone was still locked in a strength contest with the main body’s tentacles, while dozens of smaller clones tangled with the mini slimes and fought.
I clicked my tongue softly.
“This is bad….”
A war of attrition was unfavorable to me.
My sand clones were an application of the Sand Totem skill through my own unique method.
To make a freely moving sand totem, I had to put at least a small part of my body into it.
The problem was contamination. Once the sand collapsed, it got tainted and wouldn’t come back, so my body kept being consumed.
My right arm, which I’d been slowly feeding in, had by then disappeared up to the elbow.
“Ugh….”
To make matters worse, the overload started pounding at my head.
Right now, I was controlling one giant sand golem and ten small sand clones.
That was far beyond the number I normally controlled.
The control was too difficult.
It felt like playing a game with ten monitors open at once.
If I made even one mistake going like this, it was over. One small slip-up could turn the whole battle around.
“I need to go with Plan B.”
I steeled my resolve.
I turned everything from my right elbow to my shoulder into sand.
And I gathered up most of the sand created by desertification
As mana burned away rapidly, a gigantic shape began to form.
A moment later, a 5-meter-tall giant sand golem slowly emerged behind me.
It, too, took my form.
A shadow fell over the area.
The swamp slime hurriedly began pulling back the tentacles it had extended.
I could feel the creature’s obvious wariness.
But it was pointless.
I sent the sand golem charging with everything I had.
Every time the golem took a step, the ground shook and I could feel mana draining away fast.
“Kwooooom!”
The sand golem threw itself straight into the swamp.
The impact of its immense mass sent the contaminated swamp splashing everywhere.
I hid behind the totem I’d prepared in advance and blocked the splattering filth.
“…Mission accomplished.”
The muddy swamp was instantly filled in by the enormous amount of sand the golem brought with it.
And at last, the slime core hidden at the deepest point of the swamp revealed itself.
I prepared the spell I’d used on Floor 10 when hunting the Orc Great Chieftain.
A spell that used up my entire other arm.
A massive sand stake took the place of my arm.
There was no hesitation. I fired the stake, which had been spinning wildly in place.
“Swaaaash!”
The giant sand stake tore through the air as it flew.
“Puh-puh-boom!”
With the sound of a drum bursting, the slime core burst apart in all directions.
The brief, grueling battle was over.
“Haa… That was really rough this time.”
I sank to the ground and caught my breath.
No wonder you’d bring a big party to a floor like this.
The familiar clear message floated before my eyes.
[You have cleared Tower Floor 15 (EXTREME).]
[Would you like to leave the Tower? Y/N]
[Time remaining: 1h 17m]
The same message as on Floor 5.
But I had no intention of leaving now.
Because my body still hadn’t fully recovered.
First, I reclaimed the contaminated bits of my body and the sand.
As I brought the World Tree’s Seed close, the contaminated sand gradually regained its original color.
I’d heard other Purification Seeds had a capacity limit, but this one didn’t seem to have one. I’d already been using it well for several floors now.
Even so, it took quite a while to purify all the sand.
I restored the blackened sand to its original color and carefully absorbed it back into my body.
Now it was time for the hidden-piece farming I’d been waiting for.
My true purpose for coming to Floor 15.
Meeting Maggakno to repair the invincible VPN.
“I was still a little freaked out, though….”
Still, I’d come up with several countermeasures this time.
It should be fine.
At last, something came into view through Insight.
Something was writhing beneath the swamp floor, which was now filled with sand.
I stretched out my arm and controlled the sand covering the ground.
There was so much sand to control that it took quite a bit of effort.
“Crack-.”
As I thrust my arm forward, the ground split apart.
The thing at the bottom of the swamp revealed itself.
It was the egg of some creature, pulsing continuously like a heart.
Its surface was as smooth as glass, and on it, red vein-like patterns wriggled unpleasantly.
“Jeez, how did Fridge even find something like this?”
I carried the thing and found my way.
I didn’t want to carry it directly in my hand, so I kept it floating in the air with sand.
Finding the path was easy.
The closer I got to the egg, the stronger its pulse became.
Before long, I arrived in front of a massive tree.
A tree so thick that several adults holding hands could barely wrap around it.
There was an incongruous stone door set into the tree.
“Damn. I’m getting nervous for no reason.”
If I open the door, that crazy mage from back then will be in there.
Fridge said it was definitely safe, but that was on Hard difficulty.
No one knew what would happen on EXTREME.
“No harm in making sure.”
First, I spent some time turning the entire area around me into sand. It was basically a launch pad for emergency escape.
It was best to do every preparation I could before meeting Maggakno.
Even that didn’t put me at ease.
I even went far away and had one of my sand clones open the door.
There was only one condition for opening the door: bring this egg, which had been at the bottom of the swamp, to the tree.
“Creeeeak-.”
Sure enough, the door soon opened, and a voice came from inside.
“Hmm? And who might you be?”
“Hello, Maggakno….”
“Huh?”
I frowned.
A familiar line. But the voice was completely different.
It wasn’t the voice of an old, crazed man. It was young, calm, and tinged with an intellectual lilt.
“Who is this guy?”
I checked inside the door.
What stood there was not a mad old man.
Instead, a young man who looked to be in his twenties stood there.
Neatly combed-back black hair. Glasses that gave him an intellectual air. A robe that fit him perfectly.
“Uh…?”
His pitch-black eyes were the same as ever, but they held no madness.
Instead, the young man’s eyes shone with inquisitive curiosity, as if he could see through every principle.
He never said anything like this before, did he?
The magic-carving old man—no, the magic-carving young man—clicked his tongue at the pulsating black egg.
“Hmm, so this ultimately failed after all….”
He casually reached out a hand.
The egg floated up into the air, then crumbled away like dust and vanished in an instant.
The item at the heart of my mission had been dealt with far too anticlimactically.
After disposing of the egg, his gaze turned to my sand clone.
He narrowed his eyes, as if intrigued.
“Oh, a golem made of sand…. Interesting operating principles. It’s different from a simple golem…. How far does its control range extend? And the mana circuit?”
The young man circled around the sand clone, muttering to himself nonstop.
Then he suddenly snapped his head around.
Toward me, far beyond the clone.
It was as if he’d known my position from the start.
“Ah, so you’re the creator of this golem, I take it. Why don’t you come in? I’d like to treat you to tea.”
A polite tone.
But I had the sand clone shake its head in refusal.
My eyes were still on the emergency escape button in one corner.
On Floor 5, the moment I entered that guy’s room, there had been an error….
I had no intention of making the same mistake again.
So far, so good.
If he showed anything suspicious, I could just press the escape button immediately.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of the young man’s mouth at my reaction.
“Ah, you’re wary. Well, it would be hard to enter a mage’s stronghold when it’s your first time seeing him. I understand.”
He gave a light nod.
“If you won’t come into my laboratory, then I’ll just come out.”
The moment the young man finished speaking, his figure warped like a heat haze.
And then, the very next moment.
The young man was standing right in front of my real body, not inside the doorway.
“How about it? At this distance, you should be able to talk comfortably, yes?”
He kept a comfortable distance of about five or six steps from me.
It was an attitude that made it obvious he was being considerate of me.
Just as I was beginning to question the young man’s behavior, which was completely different from how he’d been on Floor 5,
the young man’s expression, as he stared at me from close range, was filled with shock.
He looked like someone who had seen something that should not exist in this world.
“Y-you… what on earth is that?”
“Huh? What?”
I didn’t know. I had no idea what he was talking about.
But I knew exactly what I needed to say right now.
“Ah, this? I see… you don’t know, then.”
My instincts were telling me.
That I could probably squeeze a lot out of this man.