Chapter 289
CHAPTER 289
Late Saturday afternoon.
The day the announcement for the 90th-floor raid.
Juhyeok and his party entered the Black Tower’s 90th floor on Earth #43.
The raid itself wasn’t difficult.
But the timing mattered.
Korean time, 5 p.m.
They said they’d do it then, so a promise had to be kept.
“It’s five minutes to go.”
“Young master, it may be time to bring it out.”
Shall we?
“Brakios, come out!”
Swoosh!
Braki slipped out from inside Hongho.
He was already in his true form.
He didn’t even try to run away.
He was just lying flat against the ground.
His eyes were dead.
He didn’t look like he had any intention of resisting.
For a moment, my heart softened.
‘Tsk tsk, if only he hadn’t eaten people, I could’ve accepted his surrender.’
Even a dog you’ve raised gets put down if it bites a person and goes berserk.
So how could you ever accept a man-eating dragon as a companion?
Ttirring!
[The 90th-floor administrator, Side-Horned Evil Dragon, Blackhorn Evil Dragon Brakios, has returned to the Black Tower.]
[System error has been corrected.]
[90th-floor mission: Defeat the Side-Horned Evil Dragon, Blackhorn Evil Dragon Brakios.]
The mission was assigned.
“Let’s end this cleanly.”
No dragging it out.
While we’re at it, should I try using an item?
Consumes 10 Platinum Badges to explosively increase the abilities of one bound summon for 10 minutes.
There’s a penalty too.
After using this, the summon is forcibly dismissed after 10 minutes, and designated summoning is disabled for 10 days.
But I have tickets that remove status penalties.
Who should I use it on?
How about Lord Mad Demon?
If his potential explodes—
The power of the blood-soaked battlefield incarnate, the most ferocious Mad Demon of the martial world?
“Try it on this old man. It should be entertaining.”
But then Kosak spoke up.
“Hmm, Lord Mad Demon makes me uneasy.”
“What?”
“Your title includes the character for madness, doesn’t it?”
“So?”
“What if it’s not potential that explodes, but madness, and the old man completely loses his mind?”
“That’d be a disaster.”
“What if he can’t tell shit from soybean paste and charges at you, barking, Summoner-nim?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to use it on me instead?”
…
At this rate, someone’s going to get hit.
“Summoner.”
“Yes, Lord Mad Demon.”
“After dealing with Brakios, before removing the potential explosion penalty, let’s kill just one more.”
“… Don’t kill him.”
“Understood. I’ll leave him breathing.”
The time had come.
About one minute remaining.
Juhyeok took out the whistle.
He designated the Mad Demon.
“Hororororok!!!”
In that instant—
Woooooooom—
The space around the Mad Demon began to vibrate.
Srrrk!
White hair shot upward toward the sky, eyes bloodshot.
Pajijijik!
A storm of qi erupted from his entire body.
‘Holy—!’
A chill ran down my spine.
My skin prickled.
Just looking at him gave me goosebumps.
Did he really go mad like Kosak said?
Even Brakios, who had been lying flat on the ground, felt the Mad Demon’s pressure.
As if realizing his impending end—
Papap!
He sprang up, spread his wings, and took flight.
“N-no… I can’t die like this.”
But—
Swoong, swoong, swoong.
The sky was already filled with thousands of crescent-shaped azure sword auras.
Tsppit! Tspipipipipipit!
Brakios was shredded midair by the sword aura.
Seogeok, seogeogeok!
Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere.
The side-horned evil dragon Brakios was being dismantled in real time.
“Wow.”
…
Complete deboning.
Complete disassembly.
Thudududuk.
Scales, teeth, claws, and even dragon bones fell to the ground.
Even the blood.
The blood of Brakios, scattered through the air, was gathered drop by drop by the Mad Demon’s void-grasp and slowly descended.
It seemed he thought killing him outright would be boring.
He was extracting materials for weapons, equipment, and alchemy.
While the dragon was still alive.
Thanks to that, Rajiks was ecstatic.
Taeng! Paenggerururung.
“Hoee!!!”
Ssssh! Sssh.
He frantically scooped up the falling dragon byproducts.
What about the blood?
He emptied the contents of elixirs and potions he was carrying and filled them with dragon blood instead.
And finally—
Seogeok!
The seven-sided dragon heart pulled from the dragon’s chest.
Sss.
Subspace storage complete.
Ttirring!
Mission success message.
Farewell, Brakios.
In your next life, try eating orcs instead of people.
Is the reward another high-grade mana stone this time?
He’s an ancient dragon—at least a supreme-grade mana stone, right—
[Side-Horned Evil Dragon, Blackhorn Evil Dragon Brakios 1/1]
[You have successfully completed the 90th-floor mission.]
[Reward: 5 Trait Enhancement Runes.]
“… Huh?”
What?
Trait enhancement runes?
Did I hear that right?
I hurriedly opened my inventory.
“Oh!”
It’s real.
They’re runes.
How long has it been since I got trait enhancement runes?
And five of them at once.
Now the number of simultaneous summons is 27.
“Yes!”
“Congratulations.”
“A decent reward for once.”
“It seems the causal backlash from the administrators’ interference has arrived.”
Causal backlash.
That’s right.
They interfered with the tower conquest, so they have to pay the price.
“But why is Mr. Kosak so quiet today?”
“He already ran away.”
Ah!
Seeing the Mad Demon in a state of potential explosion must have scared him.
If he got caught now, he’d be deboned and dismantled.
“… Where’s Lord Mad Demon?”
“I am here.”
Aren’t you going to chase Kosak?
“Because of the penalty…”
Right.
After 10 minutes, the summon is forcibly dismissed.
Juhyeok took out a penalty removal ticket for bound summons from his inventory.
Rip!
After removing the penalty—
Spot!
The Mad Demon chased after Kosak in the direction he fled.
The potential explosion effect would end in 10 minutes anyway.
Mr. Kosak.
Survive for the remaining time if you can.
Meanwhile—
Ttirring!
A resounding, miraculous conquest message rang out.
This was followed by achievements and a world event announcement.
With this, the Sync-Out Wave came to an end.
Then what about the 91st floor?
“I’m not sure we’ll even be able to receive a mission.”
“The same administrators who interfered on the 89th and 90th floors are behind this. The 91st won’t be any different.”
“I don’t think they’ll even let us enter.”
“You can tell without trying.”
“They might outright ban entry.”
“That’s possible. Since they blatantly blocked mission assignment, they could block entry altogether.”
The administrators must be desperate.
If we reach the 100th floor, they die.
But there’s always a solution.
With the success of the 90th floor, the Black Tower’s influence over Earth #843 should have loosened significantly.
Then?
A foothold would be prepared for our Whitey, Lord Godbaek, to return.
We could apply direct pressure to the Black Tower, or open the back door and unravel it from behind.
We’d just casually clear it and suck the causal backlash dry.
‘Let’s go in first.’
After exiting the tower—
“Enter the 91st floor.”
Spot!
[Entering the Black Tower of South Korea, 91st floor.]
“Hm?”
“We were able to enter.”
All that’s left is to see if they give us a mission.
But—
“This place is…?”
It was a familiar environment.
A pitch-black sky and equally black ground.
Strangely shaped grass and trees all around.
“Where have I seen this before?”
“From the girl’s memories, it seems like the Demon Realm.”
“It is the Demon Realm, Master.”
Confirmation from the succubus Diamat.
That’s right.
It was the Demon Realm.
The 91st floor, the beginning of the Great Journey.
But this time, it was different from before.
“To enter the Demon Realm from another Earth’s Black Tower, didn’t we have to enter twice?”
“That is correct. You would enter the 91st floor, accept the Great Journey mission, and then be transported to the Demon Realm.”
In other words, the 91st floor was merely a waiting room for the Great Journey mission.
It wasn’t a floor where the actual mission took place.
But here, we entered the Demon Realm directly without any intermediate step.
It made sense.
In the past, when we dimensionally transferred to the Demon Realm from Earth #1001’s Black Tower 91st floor, the White Tower intervened.
As a result, we were sent to the dimensional energy storage facility.
Juhyeok and his bound summons completely looted the energy fuel rods.
To prevent that, they must have removed the intermediate process.
“So they said it was renewed, and they really tore everything down and rebuilt it.”
“They must have been afraid of Whitey from the White Tower.”
“Back then, they even gave trait enhancement runes just for reaching the 91st floor.”
“Cheap bastards. That wasn’t even that much.”
“But we did get five on the 90th floor.”
Anyway.
“So, no mission yet?”
“There’s no error message, sir.”
“There’s no way they’d just hand it over so easily—”
At that moment!
Ttirring!
[91st-floor mission: Defeat the Demon Realm’s Demon King(s王), Dantalion.]
[Time limit: 15 hours.]
[Failure condition: Death or mission abandonment.]
Huh?
“They gave us a mission?”
“They did give one.”
“We got a mission.”
“They’re actually letting us take it.”
“They gave it.”
“They gave it, but I thought I was dead for sure.”
“Hoee?”
Yes, yes, Mr. Kosak.
As long as you’re alive, that’s what matters.
That aside, the mission—
“They want us to kill a Demon King. Name’s Dantalion.”
“… Dantalion? Isn’t that a cliché?”
What cliché now?
“You see it a lot in web novels and webtoons. He’s famous. Dantalion—the weakest of the Demon Kings. Always gets beaten up by the protagonist and dies. A guy you step on to move forward.”
Then Diamat chimed in too.
“Kosak’s right, Master. That bastard Dantal—he’s a Demon King, but he’s really weak. He’s probably just a copy, too.”
A copy, huh.
“Judging by the environment of this Demon Realm, it’s clearly been copied and pasted.”
“Ah, I see.”
Makes sense.
Since the connection to the real Demon Realm was cut off, they probably just remodeled the 91st floor to look like it.
Suddenly—
Sssht, sssshht!
Countless humanoid tower monsters appeared ahead.
“They’re a Demon Realm army made up of demon soldiers. And yes, those are copied souls.”
“Where’s Dantalion?”
“He should be in the rear.”
Is that so?
Then shall we get started?
We’d already used all five trait enhancement runes, and we could even bring in new bound summons to fill the remaining slots.
Five times a day.
We started from the 90th floor, so up to the 94th.
Since we’re climbing anyway, let’s go as far as we can—before the administrators pull any more tricks.
—
Black Tower Control Room, Earth #843.
The administrators were suffering day by day, as if their blood were drying up.
Parthalon on the 89th floor had been defeated.
All that remained was the ancient dragon Brakios on the 90th floor.
They didn’t even expect the summoner to be killed.
They just hoped—please, don’t get caught.
Please, drag it out for as long as possible.
But that hope burst like a bubble.
Brakios was dragged back into the tower and conquered.
This time, they watched the process in detail.
They couldn’t do anything—only watch.
[ ….. ]
[ …. ]
[ …. ]
An unimaginably bizarre method.
He brought Brakios inside a gourd?
Who could have ever predicted that?
This is insane.
Where did he even get such an item?
It’s similar to subspace storage, but different.
It seems to be a method of placing living beings into a dimensional space and retrieving them.
[That gourd-shaped item is not a Tower item.]
[Of course it isn’t.]
[Then where did it come from?]
[It must be from another dimension. Practically a mythic-grade item.]
[Haah.]
It certainly looks that way.
An item overflowing with authority, enough to ignore the Tower’s rules.
[If it’s him, he could definitely acquire something like that. Summoning traits are originally tied to dimensional connections.]
[Could he be a dimensional traveler?]
[In my opinion? One hundred percent.]
The authority of dimensional travel.
A power possessed only by a tiny number of the highest-ranking nobles even in the main base.
No wonder they were defeated.
And it would be the same here.
[Huh?]
[What is it?]
[Th-this is bad.]
[… What could possibly be worse than this?]
[He’s entered the 91st floor.]
[ …. ]
Well, it was expected.
He does it five times a day.
If he didn’t, that would’ve been stranger.
They couldn’t block him anymore.
They had already exhausted the authority allowed by causality to interfere with the 89th and 90th floors.
The moment Brakios was defeated, their fate was effectively sealed.
[… Should we write our wills in advance?]
[I already did.]
[Alright. I’ll write mine now.]
The wills were meant to be attached to the next dimensional transmission.
But who knows if they’d even be delivered.
Who would care about low-level administrative staff?
Especially dispatched personnel who failed their mission.
The Sinkhole Wave attack had also failed.
The mana density in Earth #843’s atmosphere was thinning.
As a result, the amount of dimensional energy being harvested was rapidly decreasing.
Every means available to them as administrators had been blocked.
For now, all they could do was wait for countermeasures from the main base.
But would that even work?
Wasn’t he the summoner who erased even an Archangel?
There wasn’t much time left.
In two days, he would reach this place.
—
The event for successfully conquering the 90th floor.
A world announcement that sinkholes were gradually being sealed.
Of course, it wasn’t immediately verifiable.
The announcement hadn’t been out for long.
Still, the number of tower monsters crawling out of sinkholes had noticeably decreased.
Wave defense battles became dramatically easier.
Clear results began to appear.
As if they had been waiting, messages flooded in from all over the world.
Unbelievable, wonderful, incredible, thank you—thanks to you, the world has been saved.
The media ran headline after headline.
It seemed they had prepared the articles in advance.
<Parallel-Universe Player of South Korea Finally Does It! All Holes Will Soon Be Sealed.>
<World Leaders Rush to Send Praise.>
<Acting Head of the Australian Government: “This Is a Truly Moving Moment.”>
<Australian Refugees: “Thanks to you, we will go back home.”>
<The Nobel Committee Announces: Parallel-Universe Player Confirmed for the Nobel Peace Prize.>
<Soon, peace will arrive. Monsters will only be seen inside the Tower.>
<The game is over. Chully weapons are still useful, but what about golems?>
<Breaking: U.S. Government Announces Golems Will Be Displayed at the National Cemetery After Complete Wave Eradication.>
<We must never forget the players who gave their lives to defend against the waves.> <North Korean Chairman Kim Il-jung Also Sends Praise to the Parallel-Universe Player.> <Chairman Kim Il-jung Expresses Regret That Political Issues Prevented Aid to South Korea Until Now.>
<North Korean Government Issues Official Protest to China and Japan, Urging Recognition of Baekdu Mountain, Gando, and Tsushima as South Korean Territory.>
<Anonymous Player Confesses That Internal Mana Is Gradually Decreasing After the 90th-Floor Success Announcement.>
<Player Abilities Returning to the Past? Unchanged Inside the Tower, Ordinary Humans Outside.>
<Will Villain Players Who Abused Power Finally Be Judged?>
Online communities were just as heated.
L: Hey, those articles saying players’ mana is decreasing—are they true? Any players here, speak up.
L: I’m a player, and yeah, I definitely feel something like that.
L: What level are you?
L: Level 21.
L: That’s low. And you still feel it?
L: If anything, higher-level players probably feel it more.
L: So mana disappearing affects players too, huh.
L: Isn’t that obvious? Tower monsters are disappearing too.
L: We’re going back to the old days—when players couldn’t use abilities outside the Tower.
L: Haah… I feel kind of conflicted.
L: At least it’ll be easier to deal with villain players.
This, too, was causality.
If monsters could come outside, then of course players had to be able to use their abilities outside as well.
But now it was different.
The boundary between the Tower and reality—once erased—was slowly being rebuilt.
L: Honestly, I’m worried about that guy.
L: Who?
L: The parallel-universe player from South Korea. He won’t be able to use his power in reality either, right?
L: Ah… right. Even if he’s level 100, he’ll be just an ordinary person outside.
L: What if someone targets him?
L: China and Japan are the scariest. What if they try to kidnap him?
L: Maybe that’s why he hasn’t revealed his identity.
North Korea came up too.
L: What’s with North Korea? Japan, fine, but why provoke China?
L: Yeah. They’ve been freeloading all this time.
L: It is suspicious how suddenly they’re acting like this.
L: Did you see Kim Il-jung on TV?
L: Yeah, he looked really thin. Like he’s got a terminal illness or something.
L: Maybe that’s why he had a change of heart.
It was at that moment, as posts kept coming in—
Suddenly, ttring!
L: What?
L: What is it?
L: Looks like a world announcement.
And then—
[World Announcement: Black Tower of South Korea, 91st Floor Cleared! A South Korean player has conquered the 91st-floor mission with miraculous ability, earning an EX rank.]
L: Huh?
L: Ah!
L: What?
L: Whoa!
L: 91st floor—this is insane.
L: Is our player made of steel or something?
L: Seriously. He should take it easy.
L: I’m tearing up just watching this. A man who only knows how to climb the Tower.
L: But what’s EX rank?
L: Probably higher than S+++, right?
It didn’t ring just once.
About twenty minutes later—
Ttring!
[World Announcement: Black Tower of South Korea, 92nd Floor Cleared! A South Korean player has—]
L: Again?!
L: W-wait.
L: Whoaaa!
L: How many times is this today?
L: This makes the third.
L: At this rate, he’ll really do it five times a day.
L: Haah… my husband doesn’t even manage five times a year.
Five times a day.
He was the greatest player in the parallel universe—
Bong Juhyeok.