Chapter 10: The Latecomers (1)

The item description caught me completely off guard.

A Rare+ skill?

And this wasn’t even an ordinary Skill Stone.

It was offering me a choice—one skill out of five.

True to its name as a spellbook, every option was a magic-type skill.

I began reading through the descriptions one by one.

[Skill: Lower Mind Control (Rare+)]

Dominates and controls the minds of lesser creatures of low standing. Up to ten entities can be controlled simultaneously. Requires 3 minutes of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 200

Cooldown: 1 hour

Lower Mind Control.

According to the description, it allowed me to control lesser creatures of low standing.

Was this the spell the old wizard had used to control the Goblins?

[Skill: Teleportation (Rare+)]

Teleports within a range of 10 meters. Requires 30 seconds of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 150

Cooldown: 1 minute

This one was Teleportation.

A simple, straightforward teleportation ability, just as the name suggested.

[Skill: Corrupted Flame (Rare+)]

Sprays a Corrupted Flame that decays living organisms. Requires 20 seconds of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 20 per second

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Corrupted Flame, huh?

This appeared to be an offensive skill similar to Flame Strike.

[Skill: Shadow Swamp (Rare+)]

Spreads a Shadow Swamp across the area to bind and damage enemies. Requires 3 minutes of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 200

Cooldown: 10 minutes

Wait. Could this be...?

The description sounded remarkably similar to the spell the old wizard had used.

Some kind of area-of-effect skill, perhaps.

[Skill: Life Drain (Rare+)]

Absorbs the life force of nearby living organisms. Requires 1 minute of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 10 per second

Cooldown: 1 minute

And finally, Life Drain.

An ability that absorbed the life force of living creatures.

The description, however, didn’t explain what absorbing life force actually did.

What was the benefit? Would it heal my injuries?

“Hmm...”

So I had to choose one of these five.

The Mental Concentration time and Willpower cost weren’t even worth considering.

For me, the only things that mattered were the skill’s effect and its cooldown.

Lower Mind Control and Life Drain.

I eliminated those two immediately.

For starters, Lower Mind Control’s cooldown was far too long.

One whole hour? Seriously?

On top of that, the phrase “lesser creatures of low standing” was frustratingly vague.

If it could only control monsters on the level of Goblins, then it wasn’t an ability worth coveting.

I rejected Life Drain for similar reasons.

There was no way to tell exactly what benefit I would gain from absorbing life force.

‘Probably health recovery or wound healing.’

Judging by its Willpower cost of ten per second, it seemed to be a sustained skill that remained active once cast.

But could I actually use it during combat?

Would I still be able to move while it was active?

There was also the requirement that I remain close to the target.

All in all, there were simply too many uncertainties.

That left three skills.

And this was where the real dilemma began.

Each of the remaining skills had its own distinct advantages.

[Skill: Corrupted Flame (Rare+)]

Sprays a Corrupted Flame that decays living organisms. Requires 20 seconds of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 20 per second

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Like Life Drain, this one consumed Willpower by the second.

But didn’t that mean I could continue using it indefinitely, as long as I still had Willpower left?

And since the description said it “sprays” the flame, I could roughly imagine what form the attack would take.

Probably something like a flamethrower.

‘An unlimited flamethrower is pretty tempting, not gonna lie.’

For someone like me, who practically never needed to worry about running out of Willpower, it seemed more than worthwhile.

The only problem was that I already possessed an offensive skill.

[Skill: Shadow Swamp (Rare+)]

Spreads a Shadow Swamp across the area to bind and damage enemies. Requires 3 minutes of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 200

Cooldown: 10 minutes

I had already witnessed this skill firsthand.

It was probably the same spell the old wizard had used.

Being able to cast an area-of-effect skill like that instantly?

Yeah. This one looked extremely useful too.

Its cooldown was a little long, though.

[Skill: Teleportation (Rare+)]

Teleports within a range of 10 meters. Requires 30 seconds of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 150

Cooldown: 1 minute

And finally, Teleportation.

This one... was simply good.

Of course, if I took the description at face value, it was absolute garbage.

Thirty seconds of casting just to teleport a measly ten meters?

What kind of spell was that?

‘I could crawl ten meters in less than thirty seconds.’

But Mental Concentration time meant nothing to me.

Which meant that I would be able to teleport instantly and freely, even in the middle of combat.

It would be especially useful in situations like the one before, when an arrow had already been flying toward me by the time I stopped time, leaving me trapped before an unavoidable attack.

With Teleportation, I would be able to dodge.

In other words, I would gain an incredibly useful means of evasion.

After thinking it over, I made my decision.

[You have acquired ‘Skill: Teleportation (Rare+)’.]

The instant I selected the skill, the wizard’s body crumbled away and vanished.

All five choices had their merits, but Teleportation was undoubtedly the right decision.

There was one more reason for choosing it—and that reason mattered more than anything else.

Regardless of difficulty, every floor of the Tower shared a common theme.

Nightmare Floor 1 had been absurdly more difficult than the other versions, but its objective had ultimately remained the same: fighting Goblins.

And Floor 2’s theme was the Jump Map.

If I remembered correctly, Climbers had to leap between platforms and ascend while lava steadily rose from below.

With Floor 2 waiting ahead of me, Teleportation was clearly the best choice.

After all, I needed to choose the skill that would help me most on the very next floor.

I immediately decided to test Teleportation.

Pop.

After thirty seconds of Mental Concentration, my body vanished and reappeared elsewhere.

“Oh.”

I turned around and checked the distance I had traveled.

It was pretty incredible.

Having completed the first teleportation of my life, I moved on to inspect the remaining rewards.

[Rare Skill Enhancement Stone]

Enhances one skill of rare grade.

A Skill Enhancement Stone had dropped.

I had heard that these were even rarer than ordinary Skill Stones.

The only rare-grade skill I currently possessed was Flame Strike.

Should I use it on Flame Strike right away?

I didn’t spend long agonizing over the decision.

‘Sit on it for too long, and it’ll only go to waste.’

There was no possibility of receiving another skill as a reward unless I entered Floor 2.

And if I was going to enter Floor 2, it would be foolishly overconfident of me to do so without using every available resource first.

[Would you like to use ‘Rare Skill Enhancement Stone’? (Available skill: Flame Strike)]

[‘Rare Skill Enhancement Stone’ has been used on ‘Skill: Flame Strike (Rare)’.]

[‘Skill: Flame Strike (Rare)’ has been enhanced; the number of flame projectiles increases.]

[Skill: Flame Strike (Rare) (+1)]

Launches two concentrated flames that explode on impact. Requires 20 seconds of Mental Concentration to cast.

Classification: Magic-type

Willpower cost: 100

Cooldown: 30 seconds

A +1 had appeared beside the skill’s name.

The number of flame projectiles had increased.

Did that mean I could now fire two at once?

I considered testing Flame Strike in an empty area but ultimately decided against it.

Using Teleportation once had already depleted all my Willpower.

I couldn’t be bothered to wait for it to recover, so I would test the skill later.

The final reward left to inspect was... a Magic Stone.

[Supreme Magic Stone]

A Magic Stone of supreme quality.

It appeared slightly larger than the one I had received as my previous reward.

‘Still useless to me, though.’

Selling Magic Stones required registering as a Climber and obtaining the proper qualifications to become a seller.

Since I was an unregistered, illegal Climber who had never filed a single piece of paperwork, there was nowhere I could legally sell it.

Well, it wasn’t as though I had ever entered the Tower to make money in the first place.

The sole reason I kept entering and leaving a Tower I had intended never to set foot in for the rest of my life was the preservation of world peace.

Ha...

Had there ever been a more tear-jerking act of self-sacrifice?

If I died doing this, perhaps someone would build a statue of me.

‘Still, something feels strange.’

Weren’t the rewards a little too generous?

Even after accounting for the First Clear Reward and the Hidden Route bonuses, this seemed excessive.

From Floor 1 alone, I had already acquired one rare skill, one Rare+ skill, and a +1 enhancement for a rare skill.

On top of that, I had already reached level 15.

...What kind of godforsaken trial was waiting for me on Floor 2 that the Tower felt the need to hand out rewards like these?

That was what truly unsettled me.

“Can’t someone else just clear Floor 2 for me...?”

I desperately hoped that someone—anyone other than me—would make it all the way through Floor 2 before the Time Limit expired.

Of course, before that could even become a possibility, at least one other person would first need to clear Floor 1.

I wondered how the Nightmare clearing project in America was progressing.

The spirit of noble self-sacrifice I had been boasting about in my head mere moments ago had already evaporated.

In truth, it had never existed in the first place.

I really don’t want to do this either.

I already cleared Floor 1, okay?

Huh?

From Floor 2 onward, can’t someone else do it for me?

If that happened, I was confident I would cheer more enthusiastically than anyone.

[Would you like to exit the Tower?]

I left the Tower.

I’m hungry.

Time to heat up the leftover braised short ribs and eat them with rice.

***

After clearing the Hidden Route on Floor 1, time passed quickly.

Whenever I had spare time, I would enter Floor 1 and perform Repeat Clearings.

Perhaps because I had already cleared the Hidden Route, the old wizard no longer appeared whenever I descended into the Underground Passage.

I had no need for additional Magic Stones.

The reason I continued doing Repeat Clearings was simply to keep my skills sharp.

I couldn’t exactly sit around doing nothing while waiting for Floor 2.

[Rhino: Thank you as always. Have a good day, sir.]

From time to time, I also exchanged Whispers with Rhino.

He continued to seek me out for advice on a regular basis.

All I did was describe my own experiences in as much detail as possible, so calling it “advice” felt like a bit of a stretch.

Still, if even that was helping him, then I was glad to be of use.

My conversations with Rhino also helped me add further details to my information posts.

For example, I clarified whether the next trio of Goblins appeared after a fixed interval or only after the previous three had been defeated.

I recorded exactly how long it took for the stone gate to close, the precise moment when the Crossbow Goblin appeared, and other details of that nature.

Even seemingly minor pieces of information could prove critically important.

Rhino had been the first, but he was far from the last.

After him, numerous other people contacted me through Whispers to ask for advice about Nightmare Floor 1.

Among them was even someone from Korea’s Tower Climbing Special Agency.

I wasn’t entirely certain what was happening behind the scenes, but apparently Korea was doing its best in its own way as well.

Regardless of their country or nationality, I helped everyone who approached me for advice about Floor 1 as much as I could.

Any messages concerning unrelated matters, however, I ignored outright.

I simply wanted someone—anyone—to succeed in clearing the floor and give me even the faintest glimmer of hope.

And perhaps, at long last, my wish had finally reached someone.

[Nightmare (2)]

“...Oh!”

One day, I opened the Communication Channel and froze when I noticed that the number had changed. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Approximately three months had passed since I cleared Floor 1.

At long last, a new Nightmare Floor 1 clearer had appeared.