The floor.
The walls.
The ceiling.
Everything shook.
The entire floor where my blood had been scattered seemed to come alive and move, trembling ever so faintly.
The red liquid wriggled here and there like a living creature.
At first, the blood moved quietly, like puddles pooled on the floor.
Then, soon—
-SURGE....
A sea of blood swept through the floor that had been full of ruins.
It dragged along fragments of buildings, moss, and even stone pieces that had been stuck to the floor.
“Wh-what...?”
It surged toward me.
“D-don’t come!!”
It was clearly my blood,
and it should have been a part of me.
Yet without realizing it, I stepped backward.
And soon, the blood tide surged in all at once.
It was like a red flood rushing in all at once.
From the floor.
From the walls.
From the ceiling.
It poured down.
The blood stretched out like enormous tentacles.
Toward me!
“Fuck!”
At the sight, which came far too suddenly, I turned around.
-TAP!
And stopped where I stood.
-SURGE....
A sea of blood was rushing in from behind me as well.
Only then did I look around.
Only after that did I realize.
“E-everywhere....”
Every direction, all 360 degrees.
A sea of blood had covered this entire floor.
“...Did I really die this many times?”
I only had a moment to sink into that thought.
“Th-this isn’t the time.”
I whipped my head around.
“That!”
I looked at the center of the ruins,
at the fragments piled high like a tower.
“Eek!”
Without hesitation, I ran toward it.
-TAP! TAP! TAP!
Using my high stats, I stepped up the cliff like the protagonist of a martial arts novel and climbed all the way to the top of the tower.
But....
-SURGE...!
“Crazy...!”
The sea of blood rose broadly into the air toward me, who stood high above, like a blackout curtain spread over the floor.
At last—
“Guh, ugh!”
It reached right before my eyes.
I squeezed my eyes shut and raised both hands into a blocking posture.
The edge of the sea of blood touched my arms.
Then it swallowed me whole.
“Mmph, mmph!!”
The sea of blood took the form of an enormous sphere and floated in the air, wrapping around me at its center.
And, and....
“...Mmph?”
After the fear of drowning came over me, I realized.
“...I can breathe?”
I was submerged in a sea of blood, but I could breathe.
And slowly,
[ Ring! ]
along with a notification sound—
[ Blood Absorption: An immense amount of blood, enough to fill the floor, is absorbed! ]
A strange feeling came over me.
My body was accepting the blood as if it were familiar with it.
[ Bioenergy rapidly recovers! ]
[ Physical regeneration speed rises sharply! ]
[ Stats rise exponentially! ]
And,
the final notification sound.
[ Throne of Blood effect temporarily manifests! ]
“...Throne... of Blood?”
In that instant,
I felt a foreign sensation in my body.
-SPLASH!
The sphere made of blood was absorbed into my body in an instant.
-THUD.
Without understanding what had happened, I landed on the top of the tower of fragments.
-WRIGGLE....
I clenched my hand,
then opened it.
While I still had no idea what was going on?
“.......”
I looked at the Golem, which was still kneeling motionlessly.
“...St-Status Window?”
[ Flash! ]
────────────────
Name: Yoo Da-huin
Class: ??? (Curse of Immortality)
Level: 1 (Unable to level up)
────────────────
Vitality: ∞
Strength : 8 ( + 200 )
Stamina : 5 ( + 200 )
Agility : 6 ( +200 )
Magic Power : 0
────────────────
Trait: 『Curse of Immortality』 (Detailed information available)
Skills:
[ Pain Numbness LV.5 (MAX) ]
[ Enhanced Regeneration Speed LV.5(MAX) ]
[ Death Detection LV.5 (MAX) ]
[ Blood Absorption LV.1 ]
[ Hidden Skill: Intimidation ]
[ Hidden Skill: Overcoming Death ]
────────────────
Death Count: 20,101
────────────────
“T-two hundred?!”
The amount my stats had increased by was shocking.
Dumbfounded, I pressed Blood Absorption in the Skill window.
-PRESS.
[ Flash! ]
────────────────
Skill: [ Blood Absorption LV.1 ]
Absorbs discharged blood back into the body.
Effects vary depending on the amount of blood absorbed.
Regeneration speed increases.
Overall stats increase.
Blood can be controlled.
────────────────
“!”
The part that drew my eye the most was, without a doubt, the final line that said, ‘Blood can be controlled.’
“...What does that mean?”
But I only had a moment to think.
-RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE....
The Golem, which had stopped moving, slowly rose.
Then it looked this way again, its red eyes shining.
-THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
Then the bastard ran toward me quickly, as if it had never been kneeling at all.
-GRIT!
I ground my teeth for a moment.
“...Damn it, I don’t know!”
-THWACK!
I stretched my hand toward the bastard.
“Bl-Blood... uh, so....”
I thought about the word for a moment.
“...Discharge?”
As if responding to that word—
-WRIGGLE.
I felt as though the blood flow in my entire body had reversed.
“...Kuh?!”
My heart seemed to stop for a moment.
Then it began beating three, four times over itself.
“Kuh, kuh...?!”
A massive pain wriggled out from my chest, and my breathing quickened.
And soon—
-WRITHE...!
A red sphere formed at the tip of my palm.
-WHOOSH!
Red blood shot toward the Golem in the shape of a spear.
-THWACK!
The charging Golem was struck in the shoulder by that spear and stopped in place for a moment.
-WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Soon, countless spears flew from my palm.
Several,
-THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
dozens,
-THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
hundreds.
-THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
The spears rushed down on the Golem.
Before long, the Golem was restrained in place, its entire body pierced by red spears and unable to move an inch.
-WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Even so, the spears did not stop firing.
“Cough!”
Blood sprayed from my mouth, and even that blood rose into the air and was absorbed back into the red sphere formed in my palm.
“St-stop!”
Groaning in pain, I barely managed to shout with one eye closed.
-CUT!
Only then did the spear fire stop, and the red sphere was absorbed back into my palm.
“Haa, haa, haa.”
And what I saw before my eyes was the Golem, its entire body restrained by red blood, glaring at me with red eyes.
“...Blood. Blood, huh?”
And what I looked at was the bastard’s core.
The core tinged red.
-TAP!
I went down to the floor.
-STEP, STEP, STEP.
Then I cautiously approached the restrained Golem.
-SLIDE.
I slowly reached out my hand toward the bastard’s core and shouted.
“Blood Absorption.”
At that—
-WHOOOSH....
A strand of blood from the bastard’s core was absorbed into my body like a thread, and the red orb regained its original blue color.
And the bastard’s red eyes, too—
-FADE....
only then changed back to their original blue.
[ Ring! ]
[ Hidden Boss – Immortal Golem has disappeared. ]
[ Mini Boss – Incomplete Golem has appeared. ]
“...Hmm.”
Only now did I understand clearly.
I did not know the exact details,
but it seemed certain that my ‘blood’ had acted as the medium and transformed the bastard into the ‘Immortal Golem.’
Anyway, was I really in any state to care about that right now?
-SLIDE.
I picked up a stone fragment from the floor.
Then I threw it with all my strength at the bastard’s core.
-WHOOSH! CRASH—!
And the stone fragment that struck the core dead-on—
-CRACK, CRAAACK....
Began to crack.
-SHATTER!
Then it broke with a loud sound.
-RUMBLE, RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE....
At that, the eyes of the Golem, whose whole body had been bound in red, went out.
The rocks collapsed, and before I knew it, only hundreds of spears made of my blood remained on the ground.
[ Ring! ]
Only then did a notification window appear before my eyes.
[ Cleared the 25th floor of Namyangju Tower No. 2! ]
───────────────────
[ Floor: 25th Floor ]
[ Climber: Yoo Da-huin ]
[ Clear Time: 102 hours 12 minutes 18 seconds ]
[ Previous Best Record: 5 minutes 21 seconds ]
───────────────────
[ Clear Condition Met ]
▶ Defeat 1 Incomplete Golem (Mini Boss) complete
[ Climb Ranking: Lowest ] (Currently 1,982nd)
“Phew.”
Once the tension left me, I plopped down where I was.
It had been a floor where, for the first time in a while, I experienced pain and exhaustion.
It wasn’t that it had been particularly frightening or terrifying.
It was a floor where I had felt helpless, not knowing how I was supposed to defeat the bastard.
“Death Detection... This really does seem like it’ll be useful in all kinds of ways.”
The Skill, Death Detection.
I had not yet figured out the exact principle behind how it worked, but one thing was certain: it seemed to be a Skill that found the opponent’s weakness and conditions for death, then materialized a suitable Skill.
That had been the case when I fought the Wraith Soldiers, and it was the same with learning ‘Blood Absorption’ this time.
And Blood Absorption and the Throne of Blood, huh....
“This’ll be useful in all kinds of ways too.”
That aside, how should I put it?
The higher I climbed the tower, the more absurdly strong I seemed to be getting.
“...If you put this in grades, I wonder what grade of Hunter I’d be.”
S-grade? A-grade?
I was climbing this tower to die, so was it really right for me to keep getting stronger like this?
Around the time that thought crossed my mind—
[ Ring! ]
[ Clear time has set the all-time longest record! ]
“.......”
Of course.
It was the all-time longest record again this time.
I felt embarrassed that, even for a moment, I had thought, Have I gotten stronger?
“Forget it. I should just keep climbing.”
I wondered roughly how many floors there were to the top.
Thinking that.
[ Continue climbing to the next floor? ]
[ Yes / No ]
-PRESS.
I pressed the Yes button.
***
-CRACKLE, CRACK.
“Damn it...! What the hell is going on?”
As Oh Yuk-il came out of the ruins and cracked his shoulders and neck loose, the playfulness had vanished from his face.
Anger. Tension.
His expression was complicated, mixed somewhere between those two emotions.
It was different.
That bastard was not a monster that belonged on the 25th floor.
But did that mean no one had cleared the 25th floor before?
That was not it either. Namyangju Tower No. 2 had already been cleared up to around the 60th floor by the Typhon Guild.
In that case, there was only one answer.
“...Yoo Da-huin, you son of a bitch...!”
He did not know what the hell had happened.
But Yoo Da-huin, the bearer of the ‘Curse of Immortality,’ had done something.
That was Oh Yuk-il’s conclusion.
-THWACK!
Oh Yuk-il drew knives into both empty hands.
-TAP TAP TAP!
Then he charged at the Golem.
-WHOOSH!
He quickly caught the fist thrusting toward him.
-WHIRL!
Then he spun his body in the air.
-SLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASH—!!
With that arm as the center, he quickly rotated in a circle and cut through the stone.
-CRUNCH, CRUNCH....
Soon, the rock cracked and fell away in chunks.
Oh Yuk-il smiled and landed on a high ruin.
-THUD.
“Of course. What could a 25th floor be—”
However.
-RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE...!
The shattered rocks reassembled again, and it was ‘reviving.’
“...Tch!”
Oh Yuk-il clicked his tongue and crossed the pair of knives again.
His main weapons were small knives.
His methods of attack also suited them.
Vital-point attacks using high agility, dagger poison attacks using Skills,
and fast attacks that inflicted multiple hits and pain.
But all of those methods
did not work well on a Golem made of stone.
“Of all things....”
Did that mean the matchup was bad? No, not that either.
To begin with, he was an SS-grade Hunter aiming to clear the uppermost floors of the tower.
Against a monster from a low floor like the 25th floor, compatibility should not have mattered.
That was why he could instinctively feel it.
“This thing... is at least 70th-floor level.”
The corners of Oh Yuk-il’s mouth trembled with tension.
When he bit his own lip with a grind, a single line of blood flowed down.
“.......”
-SLIDE.
Then, he pulled a sheet of paper from his chest and held it with both hands.
-THUD, THUD....
The Immortal Golem slowly approached Oh Yuk-il, its red eyes shining.
"Fuck!"
Oh Yuk-il—
-RIP!
spat out a curse and tore the paper he was holding.
Oh Yuk-il.
An SS-grade Hunter, failed to defeat the Immortal Golem that Yoo Da-huin had successfully subjugated.
-WHOOSH!
Abandoning the tower’s subjugation, he escaped the tower by using an Emergency Escape Enchant Page.