Destruction Ray, an epic -grade magic-type skill.
Its destructive power was beyond anything I’d imagined.
The Amalgamation, which had shrugged off everything I threw at it with Fla Strike and regenerated in the blink of an eye, just died.
“This is literally a destruction beam, isn’t it?”
[Willpower: 250]
One use of the skill and my Willpower was practically zeroed out, but that wasn’t a problem at all.
With a skill like this, I could probably take down just about anything short of an absurdly powerful enemy.
It felt like I’d gained an ultimate move.
I spent a mont drunk on the sheer power of Destruction Ray, then looked down at the necklace.
Might as well ta this thing while I’m at it.
If that blast could one-shot even The Amalgamation, there was no way Plligas could withstand it.
[Would you like to use ‘Item: Plligas’s Blood Necklace’?]
I refilled my Willpower completely, waited for Destruction Ray’s Cooldown to reset, then activated the necklace imdiately.
The writhing shape of a beast began to coalesce before my eyes.
Well, hello again. Nice to see you.
I appreciated the help last ti, but I’m sorry it has to be this way.
GRAAAOOOH…!
The mont Plligas fully manifested and tried to let out a roar, I stopped ti.
‘Be reborn as my Familiar.’
After 300 seconds of ntal Concentration, I fired a fully charged Destruction Ray straight ahead.
The instant Plligas materialized, a gaping hole was blown clean through its body, and it scattered apart, just like The Amalgamation.
God… the destructive power was awe-inspiring no matter how many tis I saw it.
A little cheap, maybe, but a win was a win.
The scattered remains of Plligas turned to smoke and were sucked back into the necklace.
[A Master-Servant Contract with Plligas has been established.]
The ssage appeared.
I had successfully made Plligas my Familiar.
[Item: Plligas’s Blood Necklace]
A necklace infused with the blood of Plligas, a predator of the demon realm. You have successfully summoned Plligas into the mortal world, defeated it, and ford a Master-Servant Contract. If Plligas takes severe damage, it will be Reverse Summoned, and you must wait 24 hours before summoning it again.
The item description had changed.
Reading through it, it seed like the summon duration was unlimited by default.
The only catch was a 24-hour Cooldown for re-summoning if it took heavy damage and died.
“Not bad.”
So as long as it didn’t die, I could keep it summoned indefinitely.
I re-summoned Plligas right away.
Hssss-
Plligas appeared before .
Unlike monts ago, it didn’t roar.
Was it just my imagination, or did its eyes look a little gentler?
It stared down at blankly, so I decided to try giving it a command.
“Sit.”
Plligas promptly crouched down.
“Stand.”
Plligas stood up.
“Sit, stand, sit, stand…”
It sat and stood and sat and stood.
The thing was so massive that every movent kicked up a gust of wind.
“…Roll left. Roll right. Don’t roll right, lift your left foot. Don’t lift your right foot, put your left foot down.”
In any case, Plligas followed my commands perfectly.
The thing had turned into a complete lapdog.
Though its face was closer to a feline than a canine, admittedly.
I reached up and patted Plligas on the head.
“Let’s get along, Plli. From now on, you’re Plli.”
Its fur wasn’t soft in the slightest; it was rough and coarse like sandpaper.
More importantly, there was sothing I absolutely had to try now that I’d tad a Familiar like this.
I leapt up onto Plligas’s back.
“Let’s go, Plli. Ti for a good run.”
Obviously, I had to try riding it.
At my words, Plligas let out a low rumble and shot forward like an arrow.
I nearly got thrown off, barely hanging on by gripping the fur at the scruff of its neck.
“Whoooaaaa…!”
Fast. It was genuinely fast.
I spent about an hour that day riding Plligas across the plains at full gallop.
*
Several days passed since the Nightmare 3F clear.
[Vodka: Why isn’t Person123 posting anything…]
[HuHu: When’s the 3F info post going up?!]
[PeaceOfMind: What, did you place an order? Person123 needs ti to organize before posting]
[Chokar: I’m just curious how horrific this one was]
[Jaxon: Both 1F and 2F were worse than anything you could imagine, so]
Everyone was waiting for Person123 to post on the Communication Channel.
He’d never announced he would share the 3F intel, but he always did after clearing a floor. That was just what he did.
And sure enough, this ti was no different.
[Person123: Here is the 3F clearing intel.]
The mont Person123 posted, every ounce of attention on the Communication Channel converged on it.
[Person123: It’s a plains area. Undead swarm in from all directions right from the start. You’re given weapons: a sword, a mace, and a spear. The Undead’s combat strength is estimated at around early-to-mid Level 10s. Their defense is even weaker than that, and you need to crush their heads for a confird kill. Other than the fact that the Undead are more nurous and stronger, there’s no major difference from other difficulty tiers up to this point.
However, the Nightmare difficulty clear condition is not to survive for 10 minutes until sunrise. In Nightmare, the sun sets instead. As the sun goes down, stronger Undead erge in greater numbers, and once the sun sets completely, an uncountable horde pours out. You can’t hold out against it, and even if you could, it wouldn’t clear the floor.
To clear, you first need to find the entrance to the underground passage as soon as you enter. Roughly 700 ters from the starting position at the one o’clock direction, there’s a patch of bare stone ground without a single blade of grass. Break through the ground and the passage…]
A lengthy 3F intel post.
People reacted with shock, and the Communication Channel erupted into a frenzy of discussion.
[WhiteSwan: Wait, the sun SETS…?]
[ReadyGo: Self-destructing Undead and beast-type Undead aren’t even surprising anymore at this point]
[Mousetrap: And what’s this about collecting gems underground? Nightmare difficulty is just straight-up dirty;]
[LostCowBrainPills: The cube thing is absolutely insane lmao, so now you need to practice Rubik’s cubes to clear floors?]
[Sasaki: Person123, are you telling you’re even the best at cubes?]
[Pacific: But is it even possible to solve one in under 20 seconds?]
[HawaiianPizza: It’s possible with practice. The world record for a 3x3x3 cube is in the 2-second range.]
[Specter: The boss maxes out at Level 50-sothing? So Person123 fought it head-on?]
[Tornado: Obviously he just confird it through Repeat Clearing and dipped]
[Kentucky: But is Person123 really Level 30 right now? Nightmare gives 10 levels per floor, right?]
U.S. Tower Climbing Managent Bureau Headquarters, Main Assembly Hall.
Taylor, the United States’ sole Nightmare 3F Climber, was present alongside other key figures from the Climbing Bureau.
On the projector screen at the front of the room, a reorganized summary of Person123’s Nightmare 3F intel post from the Communication Channel was displayed for everyone to see.
“…So the crux of the third floor is minimizing the ti spent collecting the three gems underground.”
Max, the Nightmare training project lead, continued the presentation.
“The gem on the right path is, as you can see, easily and imdiately retrievable. The gem on the left path, which has spike traps, should also be retrievable without too much difficulty using a pull-type skill that draws objects toward you.”
“Sothing like… the normal-grade skill Sticky String, for example?”
“Exactly. And finally, the cube trap on the center path…”
Max brought up another slide.
“After consulting with Arica’s top cube experts, the conclusion is that if the sole goal is breaking the 20-second barrier, we can compress the advanced CFOP thod down to only the essential components and minimize the training period.
In that case, with a comfortable tiline, approximately eight weeks of practice at one hour per day should be sufficient. The practice period might run longer than expected, but the cube trap shouldn’t pose a significant problem either.”
The people seated around the room nodded. Their faces were dead serious, without a trace of levity.
“The biggest challenge is expected to be the boss. This is based on information that includes Person123’s subjective assessnt, but going by the fact that it took three minutes to activate the Sun Emblem, the boss that appears is estimated to have a combat strength of around mid-Level 20s.
Since the boss reportedly grows stronger the more ti passes, it stands to reason that reducing the ti would weaken it proportionally, but this hasn’t been confird yet.”
“If the three-minute boss is at that level, wouldn’t it be dangerous given Taylor’s current Level?”
“Yes. It would be dangerous.”
“Then we need to cut the ti below three minutes, and we also need confird intel on whether doing so actually weakens the boss… Would it be difficult to ask Person123 to verify that as well?”
Max was, within the Climbing Bureau, perhaps the one person who could claim sothing resembling a rapport with Person123.
It was already widely known that any attempt to discuss topics outside of Nightmare clearing strategy would get absolutely nowhere with him. Max, who had been exchanging ssages with him since the early days of the first floor, had essentially fallen into the role of liaison.
Max nodded, his expression slightly uncomfortable.
“I’ve already made the request, and he accepted. However, he did say that the verification might take quite so ti.”
The reason for his discomfort was that he felt deeply indebted to Person123, and the debt kept growing.
Here was soone spoon-feeding them everything, and they still couldn’t so much as open their mouths wide enough to swallow it properly. That was essentially the situation.
But what could they do? This was a matter of life and death for Taylor, the sole hope of Arica’s Nightmare climbing efforts. They had to swallow their pride a hundred tis over and keep asking.
Of course, Person123 readily accepted the request. It was simply his nature; if it was help related to clearing, he never refused.
The fact that soone like that was at the very forefront of Nightmare was nothing short of a blessing for all of humanity.
Director Ban spoke up.
“What exactly does ‘quite so ti’ an…?”
“I was able to get a bit more detail in a separate conversation. Person123 says the delay wasn’t any other part of the clear; it was the cube that took over a minute too long. So to cut below three minutes, he needs to practice the cube, and that’s why verification will take ti.”
Director Ban tilted his head, still looking unconvinced.
“But didn’t he say that if you don’t solve the cube within 20 seconds, the underground gets flooded with Undead?”
“That’s correct. But Person123 said he used a Concealnt-type skill to avoid the Undead and finished solving the cube. Apparently, the cube itself can still be completed even after the ti limit expires.”
“…A Concealnt skill?”
“Yes. So in theory, if you have any kind of skill that hides your presence, you don’t strictly need to et the 20-second ti limit. But since the goal is to minimize total ti anyway, it’s a moot point.”
And besides, a Concealnt-type skill was sothing that, as of yet, had never been known to exist in the world.
That was exactly why the Director and everyone else were surprised by what Max had just told them. It ant Person123 possessed that kind of skill on top of everything else.
After the eting ended, Director Ban spoke privately with Max and Taylor.
“I agree. If we can just confirm that the boss weakens, a successful clear should be well within reach. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you receive full support.”
The presentation had also served as a forum to explain what kind of support the 3F clear would require and how viable the attempt actually was.
No matter how important it was, they couldn’t pour skill stones and items into a venture with zero prospect of success.
“I’m counting on you once again, Taylor. I’m sorry to keep putting this burden on you, but you are this country’s hope.”
At Director Ban’s words, Taylor gave a faintly self-deprecating smile.
“Should I really feel burdened by sothing like this? All I’m doing is climbing the Tower comfortably using the intel that man provides.”
“And yet only two people have managed even that, you being one of them. Person123, he has to be regarded as sothing beyond the normal scale entirely at this point.”
Even just having cleared up to Nightmare 2F was a genuinely remarkable feat. Person123 was simply in a league of his own.
That was precisely why the Climbing Bureau had changed its approach to simply following in his footsteps as closely as they could.
Director Ban was genuinely curious, though.
Person123, the man who now essentially held the lifeline of all humanity in his hands. What kind of person was he, really?
*
“Hah, this isn’t easy.”
I rolled around on my bed, fiddling with a 3,000-won Rubik’s cube I’d bought from Da_so.
Solving it in under 20 seconds isn’t easy at all.
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