Chapter 40
The next day, I went straight to the door leading to the 19th floor and opened it.
The moment I stepped through, a heavy, oppressive air stabbed at my lungs.
It felt several times more toxic than on the previous floors.
“Ugh….”
The air was so disgusting it made me gag on reflex.
A normal person would have collapsed from respiratory failure the instant they stepped inside.
I’d never heard that the 19th floor was this bad, so this must be another Extreme thing.
But I quickly felt fine.
Because the World Tree Seed was blazing with a blue light more intense than ever.
The seed greedily sucked in the toxic miasma around me and spat out clear, pure mana in its place.
Thanks to that, the air around me was pleasant, as if I’d turned on a powerful air purifier.
The seed’s output had been getting stronger by the day.
Which meant my place had turned into a total disaster….
Carefully, I activated desertification.
Since I’d gathered a lot of clues on the 18th floor, this time I planned to secure only the bare minimum amount of sand.
Then something strange happened.
The pendant hanging around my neck began trembling, emitting a faint green glow.
The pendant I’d picked up on the 18th floor. A withered leaf of the World Tree.
Since it was a growth-type item, I’d brought it with me, thinking it’d be best to keep wearing it.
It trembled as if resonating with the World Tree Seed floating above my head.
The seed, in turn, responded by radiating an even brighter light than before.
And then, an unbelievable sight unfolded before my eyes.
The lush jungle blocking my path split open on its own like Moses parting the Red Sea, clearing the way.
“What the hell is this…?”
I pushed my vision to its limit.
Then I saw it.
A thin green beam extending from the pendant was pointing deeper into the jungle, showing the way.
It was obvious at a glance that something was there.
“No way I’m passing this up.”
I couldn’t contain my curiosity and headed down the newly opened path.
Of course, I didn’t let my guard down.
I set two sand clones in front of me.
Super Prototype and the regular Sand Clone No. 1.
As I walked along the path, the scenery around me grew more and more bizarre.
Before long, lizardman corpses began to appear.
Every single one had died with their bodies pierced or slashed by something sharp.
“Dark elves…?”
But the injuries were far too deep and brutal to have been the work of any dark elves I knew.
The wounds looked like they’d been raked by some enormous predator.
The damage to the corpses became worse and worse the farther I went.
By the end, I even found a dark elf corpse that had been torn limb from limb.
It was clear. Something here had massacred them.
At last, I reached the end of the path the light was guiding me toward.
There, a gigantic waterfall was crashing down the cliff with tremendous force.
Around the waterfall lay huge trees, uprooted and toppled over.
And midway up the cliff—
Beyond the curtain of falling water, I could barely make out a stone temple.
Covered in moss and vines as if proof of its age, the temple looked so precarious it seemed ready to collapse at any moment.
An ancient ruin. And the guardians protecting its entrance.
The guardians were completely different from any dark elves I had seen so far.
Their bodies were twisted beyond recognition.
Branches and vines protruded from every part of them, as if someone had forcibly fused a treant and an elf together.
Their eyes gleamed with madness.
“Kwoooaaargh!”
The moment they noticed me, they all let out bizarre shrieks.
One of them swung a vine-made arm.
An attack that reminded me of the tentacles from the 15th-floor slime.
Kakang!
Before I even had to react, the sand barrier around my body surged up on its own and deflected the tentacle.
I gave the sand clones an order.
“Don’t push it. Just try to catch one.”
Super Prototype and No. 1 rushed one of them.
From behind, I fired sand bullets to take out the others in advance.
Bang!
The head of the nearest one vanished with a single shot.
I stepped back and watched Super Prototype fight.
One of them caught the spear swung by Super Prototype with its bare hands.
Creak.
As its arm stretched out, it pierced straight through Super Prototype’s torso.
Sand spilled out from Super Prototype’s body.
I anxiously bit my lip.
“The core can’t get hurt….”
Right now, Super Prototype’s core—a body made from my own flesh—was at the center, with sand clinging to it and bulking it up.
If its core got pierced, Super Prototype would be done for.
In other words, all the training I’d put into it over the past few days would be wasted.
But Super Prototype didn’t back down.
If anything, even while impaled, it lunged forward and grabbed hold of the thing’s body.
No. 1 didn’t miss the opening. It rushed in from the side and stabbed the thing’s head with its spear.
“Ke….”
The elf-treant hybrid let out a short scream and collapsed.
It had been an easy fight, but to me it had been a nerve-racking one.
“…From now on, prioritize defense.”
I said that while repairing Super Prototype’s shattered body.
Super Prototype was soon restored to pristine condition.
Even with my nagging, it seemed to be completely wrapped up in the thrill of victory.
As soon as it was repaired, it regained its energy.
Super Prototype and No. 1 faced each other, gave a clumsy high five, then started bouncing in place, unable to contain their excitement.
“Jeez….”
Watching them, I couldn’t help smiling.
Anyway, there was nothing left blocking my way now.
Naturally, I decided to go inside the ruins.
If there wasn’t a Hidden Piece in a place like this, that would be the weird part.
“What’ll come out of here… a skill book? An item? If possible, I’d rather have an item.”
Filled with anticipation, I stepped into the ancient temple.
The interior of the ruins was swallowed by pitch-black darkness.
Darkness so thick I couldn’t see an inch ahead.
But the moment I stepped inside—
The pendant around my neck emitted that faint green glow again.
In response to that light, the patterns carved into the walls and ceiling of the ruins began lighting up one by one with a blue glow.
“Oh….”
I let out an involuntary exclamation.
The darkness receded, and at last the true form of the ruin was revealed.
Gigantic murals filled the walls.
I was overcome by the feeling that I’d stepped into a museum.
“Stuff like this is usually no-photography territory.”
I muttered as I pulled out my phone.
I turned on the flash and took pictures of the murals.
I couldn’t just look at something this precious and move on.
I almost wanted to leave a line of Korean graffiti in the corner of the mural, but I held back.
There were four murals in total.
The first depicted a gigantic World Tree shining brilliantly.
Beneath it, countless elves were living peacefully.
Elves with kind, beautiful faces.
The atmosphere changed completely starting with the second mural.
A black tower was rising up from the ground.
Because of it, the once-brilliant World Tree was rapidly withering.
The tree turned black, and the lush forest, tainted by toxic miasma, began turning into jungle and swamp.
The elves were crying out at the sky with faces twisted in pain and despair.
The third mural depicted a split.
Beneath the withering World Tree, the elves were divided into two groups.
One side had skin that was turning pitch-black as they fell.
It was what the dark elves I knew looked like.
They were aiming their weapons at their still-unchanged kin, and vice versa.
The final, fourth mural showed the end of the story.
The unchanged elves were lying fallen, bleeding.
The World Tree had now turned completely black, becoming a tree of calamity with not a trace of life’s energy left in it.
Meanwhile, a few elves who had survived were pulling something from the World Tree’s core.
It was a small seed.
I recognized it at a glance.
It was the very seed of the World Tree floating above my head.
They cradled the seed carefully in their arms and set off into the distance, leaving their ruined home behind.
All the puzzle pieces fell into place.
This was the origin of the dark elves.
The tower had appeared, and the World Tree—their home and their god—had been corrupted.
In the process, some had been tainted by the corruption, while others resisted to the very end.
In the end, the ones who resisted left with the seed, and those who remained became the dark elves of today.
I realized why the dark elves had ambushed me.
“So the reason dark elves only showed up for me is because of this seed?”
This forest was originally their land, and the seed was their last hope.
But I only let myself be sentimental for a moment.
I quickly came to my senses.
“That’s one thing, and this is another.”
I immediately started searching the ruins from top to bottom.
There was no way a place this dramatic would just have murals and nothing else.
There had to be some hidden item or skill book somewhere.
“What the hell, why isn’t there anything?”
But after searching for a long time, nothing turned up.
I even brought in the sand clones, Super Prototype and No. 1, to carefully inspect every corner of the ruins.
Every crack between the bricks, even under the dust-covered altar.
But there really was nothing.
No, that couldn’t be right, could it?
In a place this unusual, shouldn’t there obviously be some legendary item lying around?
That’s how it always was in games.
Ah, right. Games?
“Ah, right. Places like this are the kind where you smash everything apart until something pops out….”
I clapped my hands together. A belated realization.
I started using the weathering skill.
Carefully, I began turning the walls into sand.
A sort of excavation work.
But the result was the same.
Still nothing.
“Seriously, nothing?”
Before I knew it, the ruins were almost completely wrecked by my own hands.
The beautiful murals had long since vanished without a trace.
I didn’t care. It was just the sad history of elves already dead.
It’s not like the elves inside the tower exist in real life anyway….
That was when I turned the entire cliff—including the ruins—into sand.
My body was suddenly bathed in light.
Along with the familiar sense of floating, the feeling of being forcibly expelled from the tower.
A familiar clear message appeared before my eyes.
[Congratulations on clearing Tower 19F (EXTREME).]
[First-clear reward…]
“The heavens…!!”
I shouted into the air, my voice full of indignation.
Unable to hold back my rage, I turned on my computer the moment I got back home.
And I immediately logged into the Mage Gallery and told them everything that had happened today.
[Title: Seriously, how is there no Hidden Piece in a place like this?]
Author: ㅇㅇ(H33.333)
Found some ancient ruins on the 19th floor.
(Mural photo.jpg)
No matter how I look at it, doesn’t this scream Hidden Piece?
But it didn’t give me anything.
I’m seriously so annoyed I’m starting to get nasty.
The Mage Gallery users reacted to my grievance with disbelief.
ㄴ Magic Is Firepower: No, even murals count as Hidden Pieces…. There’s no way anyone had found this before.
ㄴ pkkatju: It wouldn’t make sense to pick up one item on every floor lol
Meanwhile, Refrigerator showed interest in something completely irrelevant.
ㄴ Refrigerator: A mural related to dark elves?
ㄴ Refrigerator: They show up on the 30th floor too, so why is there a ruin here? Then what are the ones on the 30th floor?
ㄴ Refrigerator: And the fact that the black tower appears in the murals is pretty unsettling.
I answered her serious analysis curtly.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(H33.333): That’s not important. It’s not like thinking about it would get me an answer anyway. I don’t care about that stuff.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(H33.333): The important thing is that I don’t have a Hidden Piece to brag about in the Hunter Gallery….
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(H33.333): I can’t even boast about the murals in Hunter Gallery. This is so unfair.
ㄴ Refrigerator: So you’re mad not because you couldn’t get an item or a skill book, but because you lost your chance to flex?
ㄴ Magic Is Firepower: Why is that the thing making you angry?
The mages reacted as if I were the absurd one.
Why the hell can’t they understand this?
pkkatju. You’d understand me, right?
But my hopes were betrayed.
ㄴpkkatju : You’re so greedy, you know. If you go to the 20th floor tomorrow, it’s obvious you’ll come back with some weird thing all by yourself again.
“Tsk….”
She was right, so I couldn’t argue back.
Still, the 20th floor.
The day I’d finally be registered as a hunter was right around the corner.