Chapter 114: Nightmare, 8th Floor (2)

‘...Wait. Is that it?’

It felt like a stretch, but...

In this endlessly sprawling desert, there was only one thing that could truly be called a different space.

The pits the Sandworms burst out of.

Those things crawled underground before emerging onto the surface, after all...

Which meant there had to be some kind of underground space down there.

Nothing else came to mind anyway.

It was worth trying.

I should go down into one of the pits.

‘But how...’

How was I supposed to get inside?

The Sandworm had died with only part of its body aboveground, leaving the rest wedged tightly in the pit.

If I wanted to enter, I first had to do something about the corpse.

Should I just wait for another Sandworm to emerge and use a different pit?

...No.

That would waste too much time.

I still had no idea what it meant for the compass number to double every two minutes, but whatever it was, it felt like I should keep that number from rising any higher than necessary.

After thinking it over for a moment, I let time flow again.

KABOOOM!

I started with Flame Strike.

Concentrating the flames on a single point, I blasted apart the section of the Sandworm’s torso blocking the pit entrance.

The surrounding sand collapsed inward, widening the opening.

Now the only problem was the rest of the corpse still lodged inside.

I jumped into the air, then froze time.

After completing Mental Concentration, I fired a fully charged Destruction Ray straight down into the pit.

Pssssss...

Once I had erased as much of the Sandworm corpse clogging the tunnel as possible, I tried entering.

I advanced with Skin Hardening active.

Dark Vision took care of the darkness.

‘Ugh, disgusting.’

A revolting stench stabbed into my nose.

Before long, I came face-to-face with the remaining chunk of corpse.

This clearly wasn’t going to work.

I called out to the Demon King.

‘Demon King, put up a barrier and push straight through, please.’

Sandworm bodily fluids were toxic.

Skin Hardening protected against physical attacks, not chemical damage.

My Sixth Sense wasn’t giving me much of a danger warning, so I probably could have forced my way through with my bare skin exposed...

But my clothes would melt too.

Better to leave this to the Demon King.

‘And keep the energy consumption as low as possible, please.’

─ I know. Stop nagging me over every little thing.

The Demon King took control of my body.

Frost Barrier wrapped around me from head to toe like a suit of armor.

CRA-KRA-KRA-KRASH!

Protected by the barrier, the Demon King tore straight through the Sandworm’s corpse and flew deeper into the tunnel.

But seriously...

How long was this thing’s body?

We had to push much farther than I expected before finally breaking free of the corpse altogether.

“Phew.”

I took my body back and continued through the now-unobstructed underground passage.

The tunnel was steep at first, but gradually leveled out.

‘...Is this really the right way?’

It had better be.

With no small amount of unease weighing on me, I kept moving forward.

Then...

The tunnel split.

I froze time and considered which path to take.

At a glance, both passages looked identical.

Then there was nothing to do but guess.

I chose the right path.

Not long after continuing down the tunnel, I entered a hollow, chamber-like space.

A dead end.

There was nowhere else to go.

Hmm...

Did I choose wrong?

The instant I turned around—

My Sixth Sense screamed a warning.

I hurled myself toward the chamber entrance.

SPLAAASH!

Green liquid poured down from the ceiling.

The section of floor where I had been standing a second earlier melted away.

Some kind of poison?

Something similar to Sandworm fluid?

Judging by the intensity of my Sixth Sense’s reaction, this stuff was far more toxic.

‘A trap...’

Oddly enough, that felt like good news.

A trap, of all things?

If there were traps down here, that was proof enough that this underground passage actually mattered.

So I had been right.

The underground really was the answer.

I returned to the fork.

This time, I took the left passage.

I continued straight ahead.

Before long, another fork appeared.

‘...What?’

Don’t tell me they expect me to run through an entire maze.

[2,048]

I took the right path.

It didn’t take long before I reached another dead end.

I clicked my tongue.

Without stepping into the chamber, I turned around and returned to the fork.

Then I took the left path.

Continuing onward, I reached a third fork.

Surely the right path had to be correct this time.

I chose it again, but...

Another dead end.

‘...Seriously.’

It really felt as though luck had never once been on my side during any of these Nightmare clears.

I went back and took the left path at the third fork as well.

But seriously, was this entire place going to be nothing but branching tunnels?

The traps were dull.

Hardly worthy of Nightmare difficulty.

I was starting to wonder whether I was making any progress at all.

And just as that thought crossed my mind—

“Oh.”

This time, instead of another fork, I emerged into a wide chamber.

And there was something inside.

‘...A puzzle?’

At the center of the chamber floor stood a large square frame.

Inside it were puzzle-shaped grooves, while enormous stone pieces resembling puzzle pieces lay scattered beside it.

And besides the passage I had entered through, countless other tunnels opened into the chamber from every direction.

I walked closer.

The stone pieces had images painted on them.

So it really was a puzzle.

But...

‘They seriously want me to solve this?’

A puzzle appearing out of nowhere seemed absurd.

...Then again, Floor 3 had thrown a cube at me.

So maybe this wasn’t particularly absurd after all.

Either way, there was no point wasting time.

I immediately prepared to solve it.

I froze time and counted the pieces.

One hundred in total.

Then I released time and began examining them.

Each individual piece was almost as large as my entire body.

Rrrumble...!

A tremor ran through the chamber.

A Sandworm suddenly burst out from one of the tunnels.

‘...Now what?’

KABOOOM!

Before it could pull the rest of its body through, I blasted its head apart.

Once it was dealt with, I turned back to the puzzle.

Let’s see.

First, I moved the pieces one by one.

I laid them all out across the floor so I could see every piece at once.

That would be much faster than blindly trying to fit them together one at a time.

‘Corners first.’

I froze time again and picked out the corner pieces.

Then I began fitting them into their grooves.

Rrrumble...

Another tremor.

Another Sandworm burst from a different passage.

Again?

I blew its head apart too and went back to the puzzle.

But only a short while later, another tremor came.

Then another.

At brief intervals, Sandworms kept emerging one after another.

‘Goddammit...’

What was this supposed to be?

Were they just going to keep appearing to interfere with me?

At this rate, concentrating on the puzzle properly would be a pain.

Fine.

Time to play the Demon King card again.

‘Demon King, freeze all the passages shut for me, please. As solidly as possible.’

Shhhhhhh-!

Demon-emon froze every single passage exactly as I had asked.

(TL: Punning on Doraemon)

With the Sandworms no longer a concern, I focused entirely on the puzzle.

Thunk.

One by one, I lifted the enormous pieces and fitted them into their grooves.

The puzzle itself wasn’t difficult.

But with a hundred pieces this large, it inevitably took time.

Unlike Floor 3, there didn’t seem to be a strict time limit.

Even so, I felt increasingly pressured.

Because...

[131,072]

The number on the compass ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) was climbing exponentially.

By repeatedly freezing and releasing time, I shaved off every second I possibly could.

Once enough pieces were in place for the picture to become recognizable...

‘An antlion?’

The image depicted a monster shaped like an antlion.

Whatever that meant, I kept fitting the pieces together.

And after what felt like far too long...

‘...Done!’

I finally completed the puzzle.

The instant I fitted the last piece into place—

Flash!

The puzzle emitted a faint glow.

A moment later, the light faded.

I stared down at the finished image.

An antlion.

And over its body were strange, maze-like lines.

‘What is this supposed to be?’

[33,554,432]

The compass number had already surpassed thirty million.

Even though I had assembled the puzzle as quickly as possible, more than twenty minutes had passed.

With the number doubling each time, it had exploded upward before I knew it.

What the hell was this...

Unable to understand what the number meant, I only felt more uneasy.

I looked around.

‘...So what am I supposed to do now?’

Completing the puzzle hadn’t triggered anything except that brief flash of light.

The only thing that stood out was the maze drawn over the antlion’s body.

Was that important?

The maze began at the antlion’s mouth.

At the endpoint was a symbol shaped like a heart.

I couldn’t tell what it meant.

For now, I froze time and traced the maze.

Just in case, I memorized the entire route.

It felt like it took several hours.

Then I released time.

I was just about to head back outside when—

Rrrumble-rumble-rumble-

The entire chamber began to shake.

Not like before.

This tremor was on a completely different scale from the ones caused by the Sandworms.

“...!”

My Sixth Sense rang out.

Below.

Whatever was coming—

it was directly beneath me.

‘Demon King!’

I immediately switched control over to him.

Just like before, the Demon King enveloped my entire body in a barrier.

And a moment later—

Rrrumble-rumble-rumble!

The ground surged upward.

My body was violently hurled into the air.

The barrier protected me from damage, but I kept getting forced higher.

Something enormous was rising from beneath the ground.

That much was obvious.

“Tch.”

KABOOOM!

The Demon King wrapped my body in a violent swirl of bitter cold and blasted upward.

We tore through the earth and burst all the way back onto the surface.

Flying high into the sky, I looked down.

‘...You’ve got to be kidding me.’

What the hell was that?

The desert itself was churning.

All the sand was being drawn toward a single point.

Just like an antlion pit.

GROOOOOAR-

Then the creature finally emerged from beneath the sand.

A giant antlion.

No.

Calling it “giant” didn’t even come close.

It was an absurdly, incomprehensibly colossal beast.

The Sandworm corpses scattered across the desert were being sucked into its enormous maw.

Compared with that thing, even Sandworms the size of buildings looked like ants.

I understood immediately.

That was the Floor 8 boss.

‘No, seriously...’

Wasn’t this a little excessive?

The largest monster I had encountered so far was the Frozen Hydra in Zone 4.

This thing was at least ten times bigger.

Its sheer size was ridiculous.

‘Demon King, give me my body back.’

I reclaimed control.

Then I froze time and fired a fully charged Destruction Ray straight downward.

I aimed directly at the antlion’s head.

...GROOOOOAR!

The monster released an eardrum-shattering shriek.

Bodily fluid poured like a waterfall from the hole Destruction Ray had bored into it.

The attack worked.

It definitely worked.

But...

The creature was so unbelievably massive that even Destruction Ray felt like little more than a pinprick.

Trying to kill it this way would take forever.

I froze time once again.

‘This doesn’t make sense...’

A monster this absurdly huge as the Floor 8 boss?

Sure, I could at least imagine spending hours whittling it down.

But that was only because it was me.

Any other Nightmare challenger would have absolutely no chance of fighting something like this head-on.

No.

They probably wouldn’t even make it back to the surface.

They would simply get eaten—

‘...Wait.’

A thought flashed through my mind.

‘The maze.’

Don’t tell me...

Was that maze drawing...

a map of the inside of the antlion’s body?

And was the heart drawn at the end supposed to represent its weak point?

If so, everything made sense.

The objective wasn’t to defeat this thing through brute force.

You were supposed to enter its body, navigate through it, find the weak point, and destroy it from within.

‘So I was supposed to get eaten.’

In that case, I could simply enter the antlion’s mouth right now.

But...

How long would that take?

The compass number weighed heavily on my mind.

I had memorized the entire maze, but there was no way to know how long it would take to reach the weak point.

‘...Demon King.’

I asked him.

‘How long do you think it would take you to bring that thing down?’

The boss had appeared.

That meant I had to be close to the end.

Wouldn’t it be better to simply destroy it as quickly as possible using the Demon King’s power?

Assuming that was possible at all.

─ Does it matter if I overdo it a little?

‘As long as it doesn’t trigger Overload...’

─ Then hand it over.

I immediately surrendered control of my body.

The Demon King looked down at the antlion and brought both hands together.

Then—

Shhhhhhhhhh-!

An immense amount of freezing energy began to gather between his hands.

It compressed further.

And further.

Again and again.

Until eventually, all that power had been compressed into something that looked no larger than a single droplet of water.

My Willpower emptied in an instant.

“Recharge.”

At the Demon King’s command, I froze time and restored my Willpower.

Every time I refilled it, he compressed even more energy into the droplet.

An amount of power vast enough to send chills down my spine merely from watching was being packed into something smaller than the tip of my finger.

After I had replenished my Willpower several times...

The Demon King stopped just before the strain became dangerous.

Then he swept one hand downward.

The droplet of bitter cold fell toward the antlion.

Crack.

The instant it touched—

ice began spreading from the point of impact.

At terrifying speed.

Less than ten seconds later, the antlion’s entire colossal body had frozen solid.

Rrrumble-rumble.

A moment later—

the frozen antlion shattered apart.

‘Wow...’

A complete one-shot kill.

After the Demon King finished off the boss just like that, I descended and took control of my body again.

Hahhhh...

White breath escaped my lips as I looked down at the remains.

One entire section of the desert had collapsed inward.

I had defeated the boss.

And yet...

No clear message appeared.

I checked the compass.

[134,217,728]

More than a hundred million.

Then something changed.

[0/134,217,728km]

“...?”

Beside the number on the compass—

the unit “km” had appeared.

‘What does that mean?’

I stared at the compass, unable to make sense of it.

Nothing else changed.

Even after two minutes passed, the number no longer increased.

I lifted my head, frowning.

“...”

I followed the direction indicated by the compass.

The oasis was still there.

So in the end...

Did I actually have to reach it for the floor to count as cleared?

Wondering whether something had changed after defeating the boss, I started moving toward the oasis.

After traveling a short distance—

[1/134,217,728km]

The compass display changed.

I stopped.

Then stared hard at it.

“...Wait.”

Don’t tell me...

Was 134 million kilometers...

the actual remaining distance to the oasis?

I started moving toward it again.

[2/134,217,728km]

After traveling a little farther, the numerator increased to 2.

There was no mistake.

It meant exactly what I thought it did.

‘This is insane...’

They wanted me to travel more than a hundred million kilometers?

Completely dumbfounded, I began calculating.

All right.

At least I had the Warp Device.

If I used it every ten minutes...

I could cover 60,000 kilometers per hour.

Add the distance I could travel under my own power, and it would be slightly more than that.

So if I estimated roughly 1.5 million kilometers per day...

It would take about ninety days to reach the oasis.

“...”

Ninety days?

Seriously?

...When there were only twenty days left on the Nightmare Time Limit?

[Nightmare]

Population: 476,805

Time Limit: 19 days 22 hours 52 minutes 1 second

Reached Floor: Floor 8

Cold sweat ran down my back.

Only one thought kept circling through my mind.

Yeah.

I’m screwed.