“Oh…”
I looked over the accessories.
I actually got all three.
If I’d only picked one, the Reward Room probably would have contained just the one I chose, right?
So hidden rewards could depend on what I did. Good thing I went all in without hesitating.
I picked up the necklace.
It was a silver chain adorned with a small gemstone in the center that looked like a ruby.
Only now did the item information pop up.
[Item: Plligas’s Blood Necklace]
A necklace infused with the blood of Plligas, a predator of the demon realm. Summoning Plligas into the mortal world and defeating it will allow you to form a Master-Servant Contract. The necklace will be destroyed upon failure. (Level 50 recomnded)
[Would you like to use ‘Item: Plligas’s Blood Necklace’?]
It was similar to what Heilin had explained.
So the idea was to summon it, fight it, and only after defeating it could I use it as a Familiar.
“Level 50 recomnded…?”
The use prompt appearing ant summoning it was technically possible.
But a Level 50 recomndation obviously ant the thing was as strong as a Level 50.
After clearing the hidden quest, I’d gained another five levels, putting at Level 30.
I’d probably die if I fought it, wouldn’t I?
What kind of reward is sothing I can’t even dream of using yet?
I moved on for now.
[Item: Bandiul’s Bracelet]
A bracelet inhabited by the dark spirit Bandiul. The higher your affinity with Bandiul, the more abilities you can draw out.
Next was the bracelet. The dark spirit’s power.
This one I could try out right away.
No prompt appeared, so I put the bracelet on.
“…!”
Dark energy seeped out of the bracelet in wisps.
It gathered in the air before my eyes and took the form of a small sphere.
This is the dark spirit?
I cautiously reached a hand toward it.
But like smoke, it couldn’t be touched; my fingers passed right through.
“…Hey?”
I tried greeting it, at least.
If affinity was important, that ant I needed to get on good terms with this thing.
The round little dark spirit circled my head as if sizing up, bobbing along, then drifted back in front of .
What is this? Strange, this feeling.
As if sothing had connected us, I could faintly sense the spirit’s mood.
It seed to be saying sothing like, Well, you’re not too bad.
“Good to hear. So you’ll let use your abilities, right?”
According to Heilin, the ability was seeing through darkness. She must have ant Dark Vision.
The Reward Room wasn’t dark, so I couldn’t test the ability right away.
“Don’t you have any other abilities? Can’t you just show sothing, anything?”
I poked at the untouchable spirit as I spoke.
I could sense the spirit grumbling in annoyance, so I stopped.
It was kind of cute, though.
“Alright, sorry. Let’s get along from now on.”
The dark spirit, Bandiul, slipped smoothly back into the bracelet.
If Dark Vision was the only ability, it didn’t seem like it would be all that useful, but…
‘I should think of it as a growth-type.’
It said I could draw out more abilities as affinity increased, so I’d just have to look forward to that.
Lastly, the ring.
[Item: Dafria Family Ring]
A ring engraved with the Dafria family crest. It is proof that you have done a service to the Dafria family.
That was the entire description.
Does this thing seriously have no effect at all?
I turned the ring over in my hands, examining it from every angle.
“Why did sothing like this even show up?”
Still, it was listed as an item, so maybe it had so use sowhere?
Heilin had said she’d grant one favor if I ca to the Dafria household, but the 2nd floor clear was over now.
It wasn’t like I’d ever see her again anyway… Hmm.
Having checked all the accessories, I moved on to the straightforward reward: the Skill Stone.
[Skill Stone: Sixth Sense (Rare )]
Upon use, you will acquire ‘Skill: Sixth Sense (Rare )’.
[Skill: Sixth Sense (Rare )]
Your sixth sense is heightened, allowing you to better detect danger.
Classification: Physical Type (Passive)
Willpower Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Another passive skill.
The grade was Rare instead of just Rare, befitting a hidden reward, but… ah, it still felt a bit underwhelming.
“How co I never get Magic Type skills?”
Not a single Magic Type skill had dropped on this entire 2nd floor.
They say Magic Type skills are harder to get than Physical Type skills to begin with, but still.
I guess I should just consider myself lucky that I got nothing but Magic Type on the 1st floor.
I read the description of the Sixth Sense skill.
Better detection of danger, it said. The description was vague.
This was the kind of thing I’d only be able to test when I actually found myself in a dangerous situation.
[Difficulty: Nightmare]
[Floor: 3]
[Level: 30]
[Willpower: 600]
[Skills: Teleportation (Rare ), Sixth Sense (Rare ), Fla Strike (Rare)( 1), Exaltation (Rare), Leap (Normal)]
Heilin’s accessory trio, plus the Sixth Sense skill.
That was everything from the 2nd floor hidden rewards. My level had gone up by five, too.
I’d gotten a lot, sure, but… there was a strange sense of emptiness.
One I couldn’t use yet, one was a growth-type, one was a decoration, and the skill was a passive. Given all that, I couldn’t help feeling that way for now.
Oh right, I forgot one thing.
There was also the useless Supre Magic Stone.
I tossed the newly acquired stone onto the heap of Magic Stones piled in a corner of the Reward Room.
Well, let’s think positive. In the long run, this is actually better.
The necklace recomnding Level 50 ant the thing I’d be taming as a Familiar was that strong.
If I cleared the 3rd floor’s hidden quest too, I’d be at Level 45, so maybe I could challenge it then.
“The 3rd floor, huh…”
Co to think of it, I was already treating my entry into the 3rd floor as a foregone conclusion.
Probably because I’d felt it so clearly while clearing the 2nd floor.
Hoping soone else would clear this insane difficulty for was, in the end, nothing but a futile wish.
…Yeah, it’s ti to stop hoping for that.
It was about ti I made up my mind for good.
*
I rested for a day, then went straight back in to do a Repeat Clearing of the 2nd floor.
Now that I’d finished the hidden quest, I needed to compile the floor’s information and post it.
What I needed to verify was the exact location and number of Illusion Platforms.
This ti, I’d check each platform one by one, jumping on them to see if there were any Illusion Platforms besides the fourth one.
I used Leap and Teleportation to move up to the third platform.
Standing before the fourth Illusion Platform, I rubbed my chin.
The chanism was clearly that the hidden platform only appeared once the illusion vanished, right?
If that was the case, wouldn’t it work to just trigger the platform from a distance instead of stepping on it directly?
I fired a Fla Strike at the Illusion Platform.
The fireball passed clean through the Illusion Platform and sailed off to the other side.
The Illusion Platform vanished, and the concealed platform beside it appeared.
“Works.”
With this thod, there was no need for a skill that allowed midair movent.
It would require so kind of ranged attack, though.
I leaped toward the platform.
“Ugh.”
I’d been planning to make it without Teleportation, but I failed.
I used Teleportation to get myself up onto the platform.
Even trying it again, this isn’t easy.
It might actually be good training to jump around here and hone my body’s sense of movent. Sothing to consider.
I stepped on the remaining platforms one by one.
Five, six, seven… all perfectly normal platforms, no traps.
And then the eighth platform, the last one before the large floor.
“…?”
Standing before the eighth platform, I felt an odd sensation.
How to describe it… a slight discomfort?
The source of that discomfort was unmistakably the eighth platform.
I realized the cause almost imdiately.
Wait, is this…?
‘Could this be the Sixth Sense skill’s effect?’
It was supposed to help better detect danger.
I’d already known the fourth platform was dangerous, but I hadn’t known anything about the eighth yet.
And if I was getting this feeling, then that one must have been an Illusion Platform too.
I fired a Fla Strike.
Sure enough, the platform vanished like an illusion and a hidden platform appeared.
‘So that’s how this skill activates.’
That’s pretty good, actually.
Of course, the Sixth Sense skill hadn’t told exactly what was dangerous or how.
I’d only known the platform was an illusion because I already had that context in my head. If I’d had no information at all, all I would have gotten was a vague sense that sothing about the eighth platform was dangerous.
But even that alone was incredibly useful.
The biggest burden in clearing the Tower was, above all, the absence of information.
Complete unknowns, where there was no way to tell what kind of danger lurked ahead.
Latecors might not have to worry, but anyone doing a first clear had no choice but to shoulder that burden.
With a skill like this, that risk could be significantly reduced.
Nice. Yeah, nice.
Satisfied at having confird the new skill’s effects, I crossed over to the large floor.
I’d confird that the first platform section had Illusion Platforms at the fourth and eighth positions, and then went on to verify the rest of the traps.
The glowing platforms were in the sa spots as every other ti I’d seen them, and the sa was true for the sections of floor that shot upward.
After finishing all my checks, I entered several more tis to make sure the trap positions didn’t change between runs. They didn’t.
If there happened to be differences from person to person, there was nothing I could do about that. I’d just have to include a warning.
But thinking back to when Rhino and I had compared notes on the 1st floor in detail, even the smallest details had been identical between us, so the 2nd floor was probably the sa.
“Ti to post this.”
It had taken quite a while, but I’d finished compiling the information.
Back in my room, I lay down on the bed and began writing a post in the Communication Channel.
*
Several days had passed since the Nightmare difficulty 2nd floor was cleared.
Everyone’s attention was focused solely on one question: who had cleared it?
The Nightmare Communication Channel had been nothing but silence, and there had been no news through the dia either. The only developnt was the United States issuing an official statent that it wasn’t them.
[Baekseok: The US must be kicking themselves. If they’d just waited a bit longer to attempt it, they wouldn’t have lost soone by such a narrow margin.]
[Hobak: Why isn’t anyone posting anything in the Nightmare channel?]
[Hashbrown: Who do you think cleared it? US says it’s not them, so I’m guessing China.]
[Reolib: Whoever it is, I just hope they keep pushing upward.]
[Freemin: But am I the only one who thinks Person123 cleared it again?]
[Hanwol: This ti, I’d say that’s unlikely. The consensus is that he’s an Unregistered Climber, after all.]
The 1st floor was one thing, but from the 2nd floor onward, being able to receive outside support made an enormous difference.
The prevailing and reasonable assumption was that it wasn’t Person123, the first Nightmare clearer who was known to be an Unregistered Climber, but rather other nationally backed climbers who had cleared the 2nd floor.
Sure, as the first to clear, he would’ve picked up a First Clear Reward, but even so, could that really compare to having an entire nation funneling Skill Stones, Skill Enhancent Stones, and items into a single climber?
[Mateus: It’s gotta be China, right? They’re investing in their Nightmare climber just as heavily as the US.]
[Hwaseok: China does seem the most likely.]
[Rusawektok: I heard a rumor it’s Russia.]
Amid the swirl of speculation, a single post quietly appeared in the Nightmare Communication Channel.
[Person123: Here is the clearing information for the 2nd floor.]
Just as it had been a year ago, the post began with a single concise line.
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