“Haah…”
As he listened to the news that the 7th floor had been cleared, Bilon sank back into his office chair and let out a long sigh.
Mr. Kim had done it again.
By now, it was hard to even imagine him failing a clear.
Bilon felt relieved, and at the sa ti, ashad.
He too had sworn to do his best in his own position… but the experint he’d run on Mars not long ago.
The Tower’s power had reached all the way to Mars, perfectly intact, and the faint thread of hope he’d dared to cling to had collapsed.
No matter how far one fled from Earth, was escaping the Tower’s clutches simply impossible?
Was the future of humanity really sothing that could be entrusted to nothing but a single man, Mr. Kim?
He wanted to take even a sliver of that heavy burden off the man’s shoulders, but Bilon felt the weight of his own inadequacy cut into him all over again.
The world called him a genius, but next to a superhuman like Person123, he was nothing more than an ordinary man.
“Are you all right, sir?”
Standing beside him, his secretary Ellen asked the question as Bilon dragged his hands down his dry face.
Bilon exhaled deeply once more and spoke.
“We have to keep going anyway, don’t we?”
“Sir?”
“Figuring out a way to screw over that damned Tower. Whether it’s escaping Earth or whatever else.”
Of course, there was no giving up.
Rather than eroding him, failure and despair were always the very force that drove him to try once more.
For humanity, and for Mr. Kim, fighting his lonely battle all by himself.
He had no choice but to keep struggling, without ever stopping.
*
[Chicken Sandwich: Excellent work, Mr. Kim. I’m truly delighted that you made it back safely from the 7th floor as well. Humanity has been granted another year to live. You really are an extraordinary man…]
I checked the ssage from Bilon and sent a reply.
On the days I cleared a Nightmare, it wasn’t just Bilon, Whispers flooded in from all kinds of people.
But the only one I ever bothered answering was Bilon.
“Mmmrgh…”
I closed the Communication Channel, stretched, and yawned.
The 8th floor already, huh.
Thinking back to the 1st floor, when things had spiraled all the way down to just a few hours before the world ended…
It honestly felt like a miracle that I’d sohow clawed my way this far.
In any case, that was another year bought.
I’d taken a day off, so it was ti to get back to work and grind through everything I had to do.
I entered the 6th floor to test out the skill I’d just acquired.
If I was going to do it, I wanted to try its power on a boss.
[Only the final Nexus remains!]
[The boss is being summoned!]
I cleared out all the Nexuses, then summoned the boss, a colossal Ogre.
Grrraaahhh-!
[Skill: Hellfire Eruption (Epic)]
Erupts a powerful pillar of hellfire within a 20-ter range. Requires 30 to 150 seconds of ntal Concentration to cast. The longer the ntal Concentration, the greater the skill’s power and range.
Classification: Magic Type
Willpower Cost: 700
Cooldown: 2 minutes
I stopped ti, channeled 150 seconds of ntal Concentration, and then.
Cast a fully charged Hellfire Eruption with the boss as my target.
A red, magic-circle-like ring appeared beneath the boss’s feet, and then…
Whoooosh!
A blindingly crimson fla surged upward like lava.
“Whoa…!”
The heat washed over even from where I stood.
When the flas vanished, the boss was gone.
Not even ash remained. It had simply been annihilated.
The boss might not have been all that high a level, but the destructive power was incredible.
‘Damn.’
It was a chargeable Epic-grade skill, and with the bracelet and the Fire-Type Mastery effects, the damage was inflated by a full 80 percent…
Maybe it was only natural that it put out this kind of power.
Now that I’d used it, the strike radius was substantial too. Around two ters, maybe?
The new skill’s specs were a hundred percent satisfactory.
I finished the skill test and exited the 6th floor.
“Demon King.”
I called out to the Demon King.
– What.
“I think you and I need to have a serious talk.”
I could feel the Demon King’s reaction, as if to ask what nonsense I was suddenly spouting.
The power the Demon King had displayed on the 7th floor, while occupying my body, was beyond anything I’d imagined.
I needed to understand it in more detail.
“Demon King, when you’re in my body you can use other powers besides the skills I have, right?”
– And?
“Spreading cold everywhere, hurling blades of ice, those were all magic too, weren’t they? But how do you use magic with no cool… no Cooldown at all?”
That was what had surprised the most.
The Demon King answered as if I were pathetic.
– Are you under the delusion that the skills you possess are magic?
“…They aren’t?”
– They’re nothing but shells that mimic the form of magic. They aren’t even your true ability, and because the Tower slapped restrictions on them, that’s why they have things like Cooldowns.
I asked again.
“So your magic isn’t a skill the Tower gave you, it’s real magic?”
– Correct.
“And that’s why you can use it freely, with no Cooldown?”
– Do you need a waiting period every single ti you move an arm or a leg?
So, in other words…
The magic the Demon King used wasn’t an ability granted by the Tower, it was the Demon King’s own innate power.
Which was why he could wield it freely, with no restrictions like cooldowns.
– As long as the mana is infinite, that is.
“You an Willpower, right?”
The Demon King had been using my Willpower to cast his magic.
And my Willpower was, for all practical purposes, infinite.
The greatest weaknesses of Magic Type skills: ntal Concentration and the heavy Willpower cost.
I’d solved both of those weaknesses with my Ti Stop cheat and had been using Magic Type skills all this ti.
But there was one thing, just one, that even Ti Stop couldn’t do anything about: the Cooldown.
And yet the Demon King could use magic with no cooldown at all.
My one and only weakness was being completely covered.
Of course, considering how my body had frozen over, it wasn’t as if he could use it without limit…
– You wretch, who said I’d keep helping you?
The Demon King said, as if exasperated.
He said that, but in the end he’d helped on the 7th floor too, because it was dangerous.
I asked the Demon King.
“So why do you keep coveting my body, anyway? What is it you’re trying to do with it?”
Was he about to say sothing like conquering the Earth using my body.
– And if I were?
“Then obviously, no.”
– I gave up on that too, you damnable fool. The whole world could be in your grasp, and why on earth do you keep refusing it?
The Demon King said it with a shudder of disgust.
Then again, back when he’d first entered my body, he was the type to throw a fit day in and day out, screaming at to kill everyone, to rule the world.
He had quieted down a bit lately, sure.
I said:
“Then how about this. If you just keep a few conditions, I can hand the body over to you for a couple of hours a day.”
– …Conditions? What are they?
At the words “hand the body over”, the Demon King asked back, sounding startled.
Sure, going forward, whenever I found myself in a crisis, the Demon King would have no choice but to step in and help anyway.
But still, the 7th floor had been cleared safely thanks to him.
I’d received a huge favor, and just wiping my mouth and walking away from it honestly weighed on my conscience a little…
And if I wanted to keep receiving his help down the line, wouldn’t it be better to maintain a smooth relationship?
“First, going forward, cooperate actively with my Nightmare clears. Unless you want to die along with , you’ve got no choice but to help anyway.”
– Tch… is that all?
There was more, of course.
“And I’ll only hand the body over inside the Tower, not outside it. Above all, hurting other people is absolutely off the table, and the mont I tell you to give the body back, you give it back imdiately.”
If he just kept that much, there was no real reason I couldn’t lend him the body.
And even if he got any funny ideas, all I had to do was stop ti, so there was at least a minimum safeguard in place.
“If you keep these conditions, I’ll hand the body over to you for two hours a day.”
The Demon King spoke, displeased.
– Are you joking with ? Then there’s nothing I can actually do.
“And without conditions like these, who knows what kind of havoc you’d wreak. You looked stir-crazy, so I was trying to at least let you stretch your legs now and then, but if you don’t want to, fine.”
– What are you talking about. I never said I didn’t want to.
The Demon King said hurriedly.
Okay, then it’s a deal.
“I’m counting on you from here on out.”
– Hand it over right now.
“Sure. But hold on a second.”
While I was at it, there was sothing I wanted to test.
[You have entered the 6th floor on Nightmare difficulty.]
I explained things to the Demon King and entered the 6th floor again.
I pushed all the Nexuses, dealt with the boss, then.
After whittling the final third Nexus down to 1 percent HP, I handed the body over to the Demon King.
“Tch, such a hassle…”
Bang!
Grumbling, the Demon King leapt into the air.
Whether it was so kind of flight magic, the Demon King could soar freely through the air as well.
He rose high into the sky, up to a height where the whole arena was visible at a glance.
Anyway, what I was trying to do right now was…
Test how long my body could withstand the Demon King’s power.
As I’d seen on the 7th floor, the Demon King’s power couldn’t be used infinitely.
Keep using it, and the body freezes over and collapses. The body can’t withstand the power, he’d said, hadn’t he.
In that case, I needed to figure out exactly how long it could hold up.
That was the only way I’d be able to use the Demon King’s power strategically in future Nightmare clears.
‘Maximum output, if you would.’
The Demon King began casting magic just as I’d said.
Kraaaaaaaa-!
Just like on the 7th floor, a deep blue chill raged all around.
[Willpower: 0/5,000]
The Willpower drained in an instant.
I imdiately stopped ti and restored it.
The Demon King kept using his power, the Willpower ran out, I restored it.
After repeating that a few tis, frost slowly began to creep over the body and freeze it.
And once it passed ten tis.
Crack!
Cracks began to spread across the body.
So this is roughly where the strain kicks in.
In terms of ti, a little over a minute had passed.
On the 7th floor, the body had been sheared in half after firing magic wildly for 150 seconds, so…
Even being generous, holding out for more than three minutes seed impossible.
Would the ti I could endure grow as my level rose, maybe?
Now for the next experint.
I ca back down and took the body back from the Demon King.
“Ugh…”
A horrific, brutal cold.
I could barely move my body at all.
I imdiately tried using Rapid Regeneration.
Fwoooo-
But the frozen body didn’t lt; it stayed exactly as it was.
The Demon King inford with a sneer.
– My cold cannot be undone by a regeneration ability that pathetic.
Hm, so it doesn’t work.
So once I ended up in this state, recovering on my own was impossible.
Not unless I cleared the floor to recover, anyway.
Boom!
I fired a Fla Strike and chipped away the 1 percent of HP left on the Nexus.
This was exactly why I’d set things up beforehand so I could clear imdiately.
[You have succeeded in clearing the 6th floor on Nightmare difficulty.]
I finished the Repeat Clearing and moved to the Reward Room.
Only then did the body recover.
I worked my thawed-out body and thought.
‘I’ll need to use it carefully, with control.’
Spamming it at the very end of a clear, like on the 7th floor, was one thing.
But if I started spamming the Demon King’s power in the middle of a clear and the body began to freeze over, I’d be screwed.
Well, even so…
Even taking all that into account, several minutes of unlimited magic spam was an ability no different from a broken, overpowered cheat.
I felt like I’d gained a solid trump card to keep in my back pocket.
If I could even count on the Demon King’s help, I found myself looking forward to just how much easier my future Nightmare clears would beco.
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