Chapter 125: Nightmare, 9th Floor (3)

I looked down at the million-strong army of monkeys.

Then I stopped time.

‘Insane...’

There were so many that even calling the sight overwhelming didn’t quite capture it.

Now I had to figure out what came next.

Originally, earning the Golden Headband’s recognition must have been the intended way to clear the floor... but the headband was gone now, shattered to pieces.

Was it even possible to clear the floor anymore?

If there was still another way...

the only thing that came to mind was killing all one million monkeys.

Just like I had on the Floor 3 hidden stage.

Except back then, I’d had that absurdly, insanely overpowered tactical-nuke cannon with a zero-second cooldown.

This time, I had nothing of the sort.

If I wanted to pull this off, I’d have to rely entirely on my own strength.

And it wasn’t a few thousand.

It was a fucking million...

It didn’t seem remotely possible.

But I had no choice except to try.

At the moment, Radiant Incarnation was still active.

I could move at the speed of light, and I was completely invulnerable.

It was time to see what Radiant Incarnation could really do in combat.

I released time.

And moved.

The world slowed to a crawl as the space around me seemed to distort.

As long as I could move at the speed of light, distance meant practically nothing.

In less than 0.001 seconds, I swept around the entire battlefield once.

The monkey horde had looked endless from above, but of course, even it had a boundary.

Could I attack them directly while in this state?

I tried slamming into the monkeys on the ground at light speed.

But my body merely rippled apart, scattered, then reformed.

My flesh itself had become light, so physical attacks were impossible.

‘Then what about skills?’

Next, I tried using one.

I stopped time and began Mental Concentration to cast Destruction Ray.

‘It works.’

Mental Concentration proceeded normally.

So other skills could still be used.

I canceled the concentration and tried Aura Blade instead.

‘This one doesn’t.’

Physical Type skills that directly affected my body, such as Aura Blade and Skin Hardening, didn’t function.

But aside from Physical Type skills, Magic Type skills worked just fine.

My enemies had no way to hurt me.

And I had every means of hurting them.

Which made what came next simple.

Whoosh!

Moving through the monkey horde at light speed, I unleashed magic in every direction.

Destruction Ray, Hellfire Eruption, Scorching Zone, Frost Mist, Flame Strike, Lightning Strike, Blade Storm, Fairy Light Bullet...

My cognition had accelerated to match my movement, so controlling everything wasn’t a problem.

I was moving so fast that even Destruction Ray and Lightning Strike seemed to crawl through the air like worms after I cast them.

Hundreds of monkeys exploded one after another.

I aimed every spell at the densest concentrations of them.

After burning through one complete skill rotation in what amounted to less than an instant in real time,

I stopped time again, restored my Willpower, and thought.

‘...There really are too many.’

Killing the monkeys themselves was easier than breathing.

They were practically scarecrows.

The problem was that there were a million of those scarecrows.

Then an idea struck me.

What would happen if I used the Demon King’s power while Radiant Incarnation was active?

As long as Radiant Incarnation remained active, I couldn’t take damage of any kind.

Then what about the strain the Demon King’s power placed on my body...?

Wouldn’t that be nullified too?

‘Demon King.’

Without deactivating Radiant Incarnation, I switched places with him.

– What a peculiar ability.

Now in control of my body, the Demon King chuckled with obvious amusement.

He normally dismissed skills as crude imitations, hardly worthy of being called true magic, but apparently a legendary-grade skill was enough to pique even his curiosity.

Soon, the Demon King began casting magic.

He unleashed shards of ice in every direction, tearing through monkeys left and right.

I stopped time myself whenever necessary and restored Willpower at exactly the right moments.

He was already using enough power that my body should have begun freezing from the inside out...

yet I felt no strain whatsoever.

The moment I confirmed my guess had been correct, a thrill ran through me.

While Radiant Incarnation was active, the Demon King’s power could be used without restriction as well!

– Heh heh.

The Demon King seemed to realize the same thing.

And then he truly began to rampage.

Unlike skills, the Demon King’s magic had no Cooldown.

An enormous wave of cold erupted outward.

Blades of ice swept through the battlefield like a raging storm.

The monkeys were quite literally swept away.

More than a thousand seemed to die in less than a second.

Radiant Incarnation could last for ten minutes.

Let’s see...

If we could conservatively wipe out two thousand monkeys every second at this pace...

then eliminating all of them within ten minutes might actually be possible.

Rmmmmmble-

A tremor suddenly rolled through the ground.

Shit.

What now?

The rocky mountain began splitting apart.

And from within emerged a black-furred monkey as enormous as the mountain itself.

It looked even larger than the Antlion boss from Floor 8.

The boss of Floor 9.

GRAAAAAAH-!

The moment the giant monkey roared, heaven and earth trembled.

As if responding to its call, all the other monkeys howled in unison, and a dark crimson haze shimmered around their bodies.

Did it just cast some kind of buff?

The Demon King stopped weaving through the monkey horde and rose into the sky.

The boss turned its gaze toward us and opened its mouth wide.

Crackle-crack-crack-!

Dark crimson sparks gathered together, forming a sphere.

Then a massive beam erupted from it, almost exactly like my Destruction Ray.

We ignored it.

There wasn’t even any reason to dodge.

The destructive beam struck us head-on.

My body scattered for an instant like diffused light, then immediately returned to normal.

But what was the Demon King planning, flying so high into the sky?

Shhhhhh-

The Demon King began gathering cold.

It reminded me of when he had annihilated the Antlion boss and the Isolation Zone boss with a single blow...

Except this time,

the accumulation didn’t stop.

With the limitation of Overload removed, the Demon King drew in more and more power without restraint.

‘What the...’

I had to keep stopping time over and over again just to replenish the Willpower he was consuming.

I must have restored several hundred thousand Willpower in total.

Without Radiant Incarnation, my °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° body would have collapsed dozens of times over from that much power.

An unimaginably vast mass of energy condensed above the Demon King’s head.

– Behold.

The Demon King declared.

– This is true magic.

Then he released the accumulated cold.

The world turned white.

Hwoooooooo-

A blizzard swallowed everything.

The monkeys froze solid.

The boss monkey.

The smaller monkeys.

Even the rocky mountain, already split in two.

Everything within sight shattered into grains of ice and scattered away.

It was as though the entire world had frozen over and reached its end.

And just like that,

the million-strong army of Stone Monkeys was silently annihilated.

‘...’

I stared blankly down at the frozen devastation.

I had no words.

Was this the Demon King’s true power?

– Do not misunderstand. Even this is a weakened form.

‘...This is weakened?’

– I am not wielding the mana of my true body. It seems there are limits after all.

So what?

At full power, could he freeze an entire planet?

The distinction was meaningless to me either way, so I simply accepted what he said.

More importantly...

the boss was dead.

And there didn’t seem to be a single monkey left alive.

For a long moment, no message appeared.

Did clearing the floor this way not count?

Or...

A familiar sense of déjà vu washed over me.

The same feeling I’d had on Floor 3.

As though the Tower itself had fallen silent.

[Magnificent Clear.]

Then the message appeared.

[You have successfully cleared Nightmare difficulty Floor 9.]

[Absorbing the power of the floor.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

.

.

.

[Your level has increased.]

[You are the first to successfully clear Nightmare difficulty Floor 9.]

[Reward tier will be significantly upgraded.]

[Moving to the Reward Room.]

[Floor 9 has been cleared on all difficulties.]

[The Tower summons new climbers.]

I was transported to the Reward Room.

Only then did I take control of my body again and deactivate Radiant Incarnation.

A Magnificent Clear.

The second one since the Floor 3 hidden stage.

So it could appear even when the clear itself wasn’t hidden?

On Floor 3, I’d had the cannon to thank for it.

This time, I’d practically cheated my way through with the Demon King’s power.

Either way, I wasn’t complaining.

I checked the upgraded reward.

Part of me had hoped a legendary-grade Skill Stone might appear...

But instead of a Skill Stone, there was an item.

An hourglass filled with powder that shimmered in every color of the rainbow.

I picked it up and checked its information.

[Special Item: Hourglass of Acceleration]

Select one of the following effects to apply permanently. Once selected, the effect cannot be changed.

Reduce the Cooldown of all owned skills by 70%Fix the Cooldown of one random skill at 0 secondsI stared at the description in disbelief.

...An item that reduced skill cooldowns?

All my skills?

By seventy percent?

That effect was insane.

A seventy-percent reduction meant I could cycle through my skills more than three times as fast.

Which also meant that, at least on paper, my combat power would more than triple.

And the second effect...

fixing the Cooldown of one random skill at zero seconds.

‘...This one’s completely broken too, though?’

If I chose the second option,

then even the one major restriction still holding me back—Cooldown—would disappear entirely.

For one skill, at least.

What if Destruction Ray ended up with a zero-second cooldown?

That would mean literally infinite Destruction Ray spam.

The problem was the word random.

If it landed on some useless skill...

say, a Normal-grade skill like Swing...

then I might as well throw the hourglass straight into the garbage.

And even if it landed on a sustained skill such as Scorching Zone or Frost Mist, the benefit would be negligible.

How many skills did I have right now...?

Counting every minor junk skill as well, there were well over thirty.

The odds of hitting exactly the skill I wanted weren’t good.

And whenever probability was involved, there was always that nagging suspicion that the Tower might manipulate the result.

If I wanted to play it safe, choosing effect number 1 was obviously the correct decision.

But...

“...”

Radiant Incarnation.

What if this absurdly broken skill ended up with a zero-second Cooldown?

I would become, without exaggeration, invincible.

And I had just confirmed that while Radiant Incarnation was active, even the Demon King’s power could be used without restriction.

If I could maintain Radiant Incarnation indefinitely...

there was no telling how high my power ceiling would soar.

Probably somewhere beyond Andromeda.

With that possibility stuck in my head, choosing option 1 immediately felt like far too much of a waste.

...There was no reason I had to decide right now.

I stored the hourglass in Subspace.

[Difficulty: Nightmare]

[Floor: 9]

[Level: 117]

[Willpower: 7,440/7,440]

[Skills: Radiant Incarnation (Legendary+), Destruction Ray (Epic+), Hellfire Eruption (Epic) (+1), Subspace (Epic), Air Walk (Epic)...]

[Nightmare]

Climbers: 773,619

Time Limit: 2 years 3 days 10 hours 29 minutes 56 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 10

“Whew.”

Anyway, Floor 9 was cleared.

I’d only cleared Floor 8 a short while ago, and before long I’d have to challenge Floor 10 as well...

so there wasn’t much sense of accomplishment.

Not that I was in any position to sit around savoring it anyway.

[Would you like to exit the Tower?]

I left immediately.

It was time to deliver the good news to my worried family.

***

After Person123 posted his Floor 8 information thread,

people naturally began discussing when he would attempt Floor 9.

[Caroli: he almost got wrecked once, so won’t he take on Floor 9 with more than 20 days to spare this time?]

[Gold: nothing says another gimmick like Floor 8 won’t show up again]

[Weed: my bet is he’ll announce soon that he’s giving himself like 100 days before the next attempt, yeah]

Even on Floor 8, the twenty-day Time Limit had almost run out.

So the prevailing theory was that Person123 would begin challenging future floors much earlier, specifically to avoid another situation like that.

Of course...

[Floor 9 has been cleared on all difficulties.]

[The Tower summons new climbers.]

[Crow: ?]

[Kimbak: ??]

[Christopher: Pardon?]

No one could have imagined it.

That Floor 9 would be cleared only a few days after Floor 8.

The world was turned upside down.