7. Odusasa
Five Head-Death Snake.
(Five Head-Death Snake).
Otherwise known as Odusasa.
A being arranged to carry out the final removal of any remaining players during the seven days of cleaning.
Once it stops lying coiled, and the temple doors open and it reveals itself, every player on Floor 2 dies along with the deadly poison mist.
It was, quite literally, the cleaner of the Floor 2 trial.
[Constellation <Eternal Flame> covers its eyes with both hands.]
[Constellation <Blood-Red Hair> is watching you.]
[Constellation <King of Muspell> is watching you.]
"Good."
CRACKLE......
[You have been afflicted with <Status Ailment: Poison>. Your life force decreases continuously.]
[*This is a poison with a special effect. Your Strength stat additionally drops sharply.]
The poison mist that welled up along with Odusasa began to melt everything around it.
But Lee Jin-hyeok simply strode boldly into the mist.
[By the effect of the skill <Indomitable Star>, you are freed from all status ailments.]
"Come here."
Swish.
"Earthworm."
GAAAAAAHK!
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
Like a signpost in the mist, the <Adept's Sword> lit a flame.
CLANG!
He drew the sword boldly, but force on this level was nowhere near enough.
The <Adept's Sword> merely bounced off Odusasa's scales.
'This much? It's tougher than I expected.'
Not having expected to fail to leave even a scratch, Lee Jin-hyeok shifted his position.
HSSSSSHK—!
Sure enough, the four heads other than the central one spewed deadly poison.
Pitch-black, swollen poison sacs shuddered, and a stench that stabbed at the nose spread out.
Even with immunity to poison and status ailments thanks to <Indomitable Star>, there was nothing good about being hit by that.
That poison was fundamentally sticky, and it restricted movement.
[Activating the skill <Goblin Chieftain>.]
Gurrrrk!
Gurk, gurk!
At Lee Jin-hyeok's skill activation, the goblin undead that had been standing idle began to swarm.
Skeletons that were nothing but bone.
Zombies with only flesh left on them.
And ghouls with reinforced skin and bone.
'My mana is too short to control more than a few dozen at once.'
Swish.
'Even this much is enough to pull Odusasa's attention.'
As long as the material was goblin, they wrapped around Odusasa without discrimination.
"Hsssssk?"
The undead that were supposed to obey its commands and clean the players away alongside it were instead sinking their teeth into its own body?
And leaving that human, a living creature, untouched to do it?
From Odusasa's position, it was absurd.
Drawing a red dagger from inside his robes, Lee Jin-hyeok advanced.
It was the <Blood-Red Claw>, usable only by Goblin Chieftains.
The <Blood-Red Claw>, which only Goblin Chieftains used, was not sold in the system-provided <Auction House>.
In the first place, it was an object the goblin Constellation <Blood-Red Hair> had granted to Goblin Chieftains alone.
Which meant this blade was hard to come by once the tutorial ended.
Even so, Lee Jin-hyeok had a total of nine <Blood-Red Claws>.
Because the Goblin Chieftains he had killed in the tutorial came to ten in all.
"Shall we begin?"
The thing was undead.
However huge and hard it was, its reactions were inevitably slower than they had been in life.
'What matters.'
He wedged the <Adept's Sword> into the gap between scales, then drove the <Blood-Red Claw> in after it.
'is that gap.'
CLANG!
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
One of the weak points of monsters made of corpses, like undead, is 'flame.'
Thanks to the flames wrapped around it, the <Blood-Red Claw> slid between Odusasa's scales with relative ease.
'There.'
However hard its scales were, the gaps between them could not be protected.
Unless it belonged to the dragon race, which shields even the spaces between its scales with mana, it was a fairly effective line of attack.
[You have removed 1 scale from the Floor 2 Cleaner <Odusasa>!]
[Your experience rises.]
As a result, before long one of its scales fell away.
'It gives experience just for removing a scale.'
As though boasting that it was a being of another order entirely.
But Lee Jin-hyeok was not frightened in the slightest.
He had, after all, fought far stronger monsters while climbing the Tower.
SCREEEEECH—!
Scale fallen or not.
Odusasa simply handed down punishment to the ones attacking it, as though nothing had happened.
The frail goblin undead could not withstand the impact and were destroyed.
[Constellation <Fire That Killed the Mother God> watches your strategy with interest.]
[Constellation <King of Muspell> focuses on your flames.]
'The strategy is working properly.'
Lee Jin-hyeok smiled.
Odusasa had two weaknesses.
The first was the elements that could actually damage its body, fire and Divine Power.
And the second was its lack of combat experience.
Odusasa had no match.
It was a natural enough thing.
Its main body was the shed skin of an 'Imugi,' the apex predator among serpent-type monsters, and four giant cobra corpses had been attached as auxiliary heads.
Add the deadly poison mist supporting it, and the players taking the Floor 2 trial died without even resisting.
The only experience it had accumulated since becoming undead was slaughter, not combat.
That thing had never once fought properly.
And because it was undead, it could not even feel pain.
Scales falling away or not, its own body collapsing or not.
It noticed nothing at all.
'If it had at least met a worthy rival once in its existence, perhaps.'
Swish.
'but not one player taking the Floor 2 trial has ever knocked so much as a scale off it.'
It was overwhelming to that degree, which was why it had no idea what posture to take when at a disadvantage.
No, it did not even know what being at a disadvantage or an advantage meant.
So in any situation it simply pushed forward with force.
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
CRUNCH—!
A second <Blood-Red Claw> bit into Odusasa's scales and lodged in the gap.
[Constellation <Eternal Flame> cheers you on!]
[Constellation <Dawn King of Zhonghua> studies your movements closely.]
'That's the second.'
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
CRUNCH—!
'Three.'
While Odusasa's five heads were shaking off the goblins clinging to it like a pack of mad dogs.
Lee Jin-hyeok was steadily, and without the thing noticing, driving <Blood-Red Claws> into it.
His targets were the part made of the 'Imugi's shed skin,' its body, and the central head.
The spacing was uniform, as though measured with a ruler.
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
Four, five, six.
[You have removed 1 scale from the Floor 2 Cleaner <Odusasa>!] x4
[Your level has risen!]
Its scales fell away one by one, and the number of <Blood-Red Claws> buried in its body grew.
The moment the seventh dagger sank in.
FIZZLE......!
The goblin undead controlled by the <Goblin Chieftain> skill were all smashed to pieces.
'Damn.'
Lee Jin-hyeok was not a necromancer.
So he could not use demonic energy to revive them, or make new undead from the corpses around him.
He could only control the 'goblins' that had been here from the start.
[Constellation <Dawn King of Zhonghua> warns that all of your soldiers are dead now.]
HSSSSSSHK—!
Now the only enemy Odusasa faced was the living human Lee Jin-hyeok.
Following the <Dawn King of Zhonghua>'s warning, Odusasa's five heads lunged at Lee Jin-hyeok in an instant.
SLAAASH—!
The four heads spewed thick corpse poison, restricting Lee Jin-hyeok's movement.
HSSHYAK!
At the movement-restricted Lee Jin-hyeok, the central head spat fire.
It was a fierce flame beyond any comparison with the <Enchant: Flame> Lee Jin-hyeok handled.
[Constellation <Fire That Killed the Mother God> marvels, saying it has not seen Odusasa's breath in a long time.]
"So it knows how to use its little tricks."
It had no combat experience, but it had the experience of slaughter.
So when killing the few players who survived, it had been in the habit of sweeping them away with wide-area attacks like this.
'Damned if I advance, damned if I retreat?'
The volume of corpse poison from the four heads was vast enough to mistake the surroundings for a lake.
That corpse poison was sticky, and it had the property of conducting fire well.
Slip aside to dodge the fire from the central head and his movements would slow, and the damage from the flames would be far greater.
Which left only one answer.
'Break through head on.'
FWOOOOSH—!
Gripping two <Blood-Red Claws>, one in each hand, he drove into the central head's flames.
[Constellation <Flame of the Southeast> is astonished!]
[Constellation <King of Muspell> is delighted, saying it has never seen a madman leap head on into Odusasa's breath.]
[Constellation <Eternal Flame> rises from its seat, hands clenched with sweat.]
A choice that put even Constellations, unmoved by most things, on edge.
That was only natural.
Odusasa's flame breath.
It was the most powerful of all the attacks the thing possessed.
'Now!'
When Lee Jin-hyeok drew out the necklace, it began to respond.
[The item <Burning Frost> absorbs heat.]
[The item <Burning Frost> absorbs heat.]
[The item <Burning Frost> absorbs heat.]
There were two things <Burning Frost> could absorb.
Chill and heat.
In preparation for exactly this moment, Lee Jin-hyeok had absorbed only chill with <Burning Frost> and had not absorbed heat.
'Hrrrgh......!'
[The item <Burning Frost> absorbs heat.]
[The energy stored in the item <Burning Frost> is at maximum!]
In an instant, Fire Attribute 19 filled up.
The flame absorption of <Burning Frost>.
And the cold chill held by <Eternal Frost>.
Thanks to those two elements, Lee Jin-hyeok could push straight through Odusasa's breath.
SCREEEEECH—!
In that moment the other heads twisted their bodies faster than expected, and the flow changed.
'Damn.'
But Lee Jin-hyeok, with his superb reflexes, dodged their breath and their movements.
FLASH!
And so he was able to come right up to Odusasa's mouth.
CHOMP.
"Hssaak?"
Seeing Lee Jin-hyeok appear before it in an instant, Odusasa swallowed its opponent whole.
But the thing did not know.
That Lee Jin-hyeok had intended from the start to get inside its body.
He was aiming at the fact that an interior is inevitably more vulnerable than an exterior.
"Now."
[Activating the skill <Mad Blood Rampage>.]
[All stats held are amplified fivefold.]
[The Mana stat is amplified tenfold.]
CRACKLLLLE—!
Red light seeped into both of Lee Jin-hyeok's eyes, and the mana wrapped around his body and his flesh began to run wild.
[Activating the skill <Enchant: Flame>.]
Flames coiled around the two <Blood-Red Claws> held in his hands.
Lee Jin-hyeok's current Mana stat: 350.
Flames that seemed ready to burn the whole world coiled inside Odusasa.
And that was not the end of it.
CRACKLE—!
[Excessive power of flame gathers into the item <Blood-Red Claw>.]
The two in Lee Jin-hyeok's hands.
And the seven <Blood-Red Claws> buried in the thing's body.
These nine blades began to resonate with the flames.
'I have to get out.'
Just before the explosion began, Lee Jin-hyeok let go of the two <Blood-Red Claws>.
Then he swung the <Adept's Sword> strapped to his back and cut Odusasa's lower jaw.
Even among its interior, that was the weakest spot.
Hssseeek?
The lower jaw was severed in an instant.
Lee Jin-hyeok slipped out through the gap and ran as far as he could.
[*Warning! The item <Blood-Red Claw> is destroyed, momentarily producing a powerful explosion effect.]
The nine <Blood-Red Claws> began to explode in a chain.
KABOOOOOM—!
An overwhelming explosion, enough to scorch the surroundings bare.
WHOOOOSH!
Overwhelming heat, flame, and the aftermath of the shock swept over everything around and began wiping it out of existence.
The force was greater than expected, so Lee Jin-hyeok too ran quickly to escape.
Thanks to <Mad Blood Rampage> amplifying his Strength, Vitality, and Agility fivefold, securing a safe distance was an easy matter.
"Hoo......"
BOOOM! BOOOM!
Watching Odusasa and the flames keep bursting apart, Lee Jin-hyeok wiped away sweat.
"That wasn't easy."
[You have slain the Floor 2 Cleaner <Odusasa>!]
[You have acquired 5,000 points!]
[You have accomplished an impossible achievement!]
[You have accomplished a first achievement!]
[Your level has risen!] x7
Leaving countless messages and hologram windows behind him, Lee Jin-hyeok sank to the ground.
[A number of Constellations are wild with excitement at your achievement!]
[Constellation <King of Muspell> sponsors you with 3,000 points.]
[Constellation <Eternal Flame> sponsors you with 3,000 points.]
[Constellation <Fire That Killed the Mother God> sponsors you with 2,000 points.]
[Constellation <Dawn King of Zhonghua> sponsors you with 2,000 points.]
An enormous quantity of points came in, and the Constellations were in an uproar.
'Good. With this.'
Points were always welcome, of course, but what he was after right now was something else.
'The hidden piece Dang So-wol spoke of. I can find the <Imugi's Inner Core>.'