Chapter 29: Nightmare Floor 3 (1)

There was a game called Vampire Surrounded.

It was a simple game whose entire premise was to flee from enemies swarming in from every direction while cutting them down.

Its straightforward gameplay and controls made it such a massive hit that the market was soon flooded with imitations, giving rise to an entire genre known as “Vampire Survivors-likes.”

Naturally, I had played it too.

The thing was insanely addictive. When I first tried it, I spent days glued to the screen.

The theme of the third floor felt remarkably similar to that game.

The Clear Condition for Floor 3 was survival.

All you had to do was stay alive on a vast, wall-less plain while fending off waves of undead until sunrise.

Naturally, the strength of the undead varied depending on the difficulty.

On Hard, the undead were supposedly “fairly” strong and attacked in “fairly” dense waves.

More specifically, their combat ability was said to be around Level 3 or 4.

They possessed no special abilities beyond attacking with their rotting bodies.

But that was Hard.

As for Nightmare, I was about to find out for myself.

Knowing Nightmare, mere survival might not even be the true Clear Condition.

The general theme might remain the same across difficulties, but Nightmare always twisted it into some spectacularly deranged, batshit-crazy variation that existed on an entirely different plane from every other tier.

[You have entered Nightmare difficulty, Floor 3.]

As always, I stopped time the instant I entered and surveyed my surroundings.

An endless plain stretched away in every direction, dotted here and there with trees and rocks.

Directly in front of me, an assortment of weapons had been driven upright into the ground.

And scattered across the field were countless undead.

Just as expected, they were crawling everywhere.

But then again, the sight was not quite as overwhelming as I had anticipated.

It was not the kind of scene that made me think, Oh, for fuck’s sake. Here we go again, the moment I laid eyes on it.

Something already felt wrong.

There was no way Nightmare was only this bad.

‘Are these undead absurdly strong or something?’

Either that, or there was definitely something else going on.

Well, whatever.

I would find out soon enough.

The sky was dark, but a faint glow lingered beneath the horizon, like the first hint of dawn.

I had heard that on Easy, Normal, and Hard, the sun rose after roughly ten minutes.

Perhaps sunrise simply took much longer on this difficulty.

After steeling myself, I released Time Stop.

The moment time resumed, undead surged toward me from every direction.

I immediately cast Flame Strike.

Three fireballs shot out in separate directions, forming a triangle before exploding.

BOOM!

Dozens of undead were blown apart, chunks of rotting flesh scattering through the air.

I selected a mace from the weapons planted in the ground and pulled it free.

Then I quickly moved toward an area where the undead were less densely packed.

The undead’s weak point was the head.

Though calling it a weak point was not entirely accurate. Crushing the head was simply the only way to kill them for good. Otherwise, they kept moving.

I swung the mace at the undead clawing their way toward me.

Thwack! Crack!

Their skulls burst apart with ease.

They were not particularly durable.

After crushing a few more, I had a rough sense of their strength.

‘Their combat power isn’t that high.’

Judging from what I could tell, their physical abilities were roughly equivalent to Level 10.

Their durability was even lower, probably because their bodies were so badly decayed.

They were nowhere near strong enough to stop me.

Individually, none of them posed any real threat.

Graaaagh...

The problem was the sheer number of them.

If I stopped moving for even a moment, I would be surrounded on all sides in no time.

I crushed undead skulls with the mace while simultaneously firing Fairy Light Bullets.

Ba-ba-ba-bang!

Five light projectiles curved through the air and tore through the heads of the undead in their path.

I continued advancing toward the thinner sections of the horde, carving open a path as I went.

Crush them with the mace.

Fire light bullets.

Blast Flame Strike into the densest clusters.

God, the stench, though.

With corpses surrounding me on every side, the smell was absolutely unbearable.

The fact that I still had enough mental room to complain about it meant I was not under too much pressure yet.

Once my Willpower ran out, I stopped time and waited for it to recover.

Having more Magic Type skills certainly burned through Willpower quickly.

Then again, those skills also allowed me to clear out the undead far more efficiently.

My spells were blowing them apart faster than they could close in.

And as far as I was concerned, I could simply keep replenishing my Willpower and spam magic for as long as necessary.

The undead were also far stupider than I had expected.

They would come groaning after me, but the moment I ducked behind a rock and broke their line of sight, they stopped dead in their tracks.

It seemed they responded purely to visual stimuli and nothing else.

Unfortunately, with undead converging from every direction, hiding was not a viable strategy.

I restored my Willpower to full and set off again.

Crash! Ka-boom!

I pressed onward without pause, smashing apart the undead with magic and mace alike.

Before long, an efficient combat pattern naturally began to take shape.

Cast Flame Strike into the densest cluster.

Move into the area it had cleared, then use light bullets to thin out the second wave.

Any stragglers that managed to get close had their heads caved in with the mace.

Then, whenever my Willpower ran dry, I replenished it.

I did not even need Blade Storm.

Things were going perfectly well as they were, so there was no reason to deliberately wait for the undead to pile up around me just so I could use it.

As I continued plowing through the undead, I stepped across a patch of bare earth where, unlike the surrounding terrain, not a single blade of grass grew.

“...?”

Something about the sensation beneath my feet felt subtly wrong, and I tilted my head as I passed over it.

Anyway, was this really all there was?

Even with so many undead, the floor did not feel particularly grueling.

‘This is... surprisingly manageable.’

The instant the thought crossed my mind, I flinched.

No, you idiot.

Never let your guard down.

On Nightmare, thinking, Oh shit, I’m screwed, was supposed to be normal.

Thinking, This is manageable, simply was not possible.

If it felt manageable, then it was a vicious trap.

There had to be more to it.

Definitely.

With that thought in mind, I continued quietly clearing away the undead.

Yet no matter how carefully I surveyed my surroundings, I saw no sign of anything unusual.

Was the goal really just to survive until sunrise?

That could not be right.

Paranoia began creeping in, and my thoughts started spiraling.

I crushed the skull of an undead that had latched onto me and was about to move on.

That was when Sixth Sense set off every alarm it had.

“...!”

Don’t hit it.

But the realization came a fraction too late.

The mace had already caved in the undead’s skull.

The headless corpse suddenly began to swell, glowing a violent red.

I stopped time immediately.

Mental Concentration.

Teleportation, as far away as possible.

BOOOOOM!

A massive explosion tore through the air.

It was even larger than a Flame Strike.

Having barely escaped with Teleportation, I pressed a hand to my chest and let out a ragged breath.

“What the hell?”

An undead that exploded when touched?

What was this, a Creeper?

I knew it.

I knew there had to be something else.

Now that I knew about the Explosion Undead, I sharpened my focus and honed my senses to a razor’s edge.

I had only triggered the first one because my attention had wandered.

As long as I remained focused, Sixth Sense should be able to distinguish them from the others.

I was about to crush another undead’s head when Sixth Sense warned me again.

I stopped.

‘Ah. These ones have redder eyes.’

Looking more closely, I realized that the Explosion Undead had a much stronger red glow in their eyes than the ordinary ones.

I put some distance between us, then struck it with a light bullet.

The creature had been charging after me, but it detonated spectacularly in mid-stride, taking several ordinary undead with it.

Explosion Undead began appearing among the regular ones like hidden landmines, but they were not a major problem.

The frightening part had been not knowing they existed.

Now that I knew what to look for, what was there to fear?

I systematically picked them off from a distance with light bullets, never allowing a single one to approach.

That problem was under control, but something else had begun bothering me.

‘...Are there more of them now?’

The Explosion Undead were not the only thing that had changed.

The overall number of undead swarming toward me was increasing at a rate I could clearly feel.

I began using magic more aggressively and replenishing my Willpower more often.

That was when I finally started using Blade Storm as well.

KRAASH!

I launched myself into the air with Leap, then dropped into the middle of a tightly packed cluster of undead while activating Blade Storm.

The undead were shredded and hurled away in all directions, knocking down even those behind them.

The knockback on this skill was no joke.

If only the cooldown were shorter.

‘Now this is starting to feel like Nightmare difficulty.’

Things were finally becoming intense.

In a strange way, that almost came as a relief.

Until now, the floor had been so easy that it had made me nervous.

I continued cutting through the ever-growing tide of undead, forcing open an escape route.

Ruff! Ruff!

And what the hell were those?

Beast-type undead had begun appearing as well.

I crushed the skull of a Wolf Undead lunging at my face with Swing.

Then I picked off the nutria-like undead following behind it with individual light bullets.

These creatures were far faster and stronger than the ordinary humanoid undead.

The difficulty had just increased by another twenty percent or so.

...Yeah, fuck.

This was the sort of thing that made Nightmare what it was.

I had expected at least this much.

But it was not going to get any harder than this, was it?

I was already beginning to approach my limits.

Swing.

Kill.

Blast.

Push forward.

Locked in a solitary war against the dead, I glanced up at the sky.

‘When is the sun coming up...?’

...Huh?

Only then did I realize something was wrong.

The sky had looked almost like predawn darkness from the moment I arrived.

But now that I paid closer attention, it was not getting brighter.

It was growing darker.

Even the faint glow beneath the horizon had dimmed since I first entered.

Ah...

What the fuck?

Wait.

Was the sun not rising?

Had it been setting this entire time?

‘Then what the hell does that mean?’

On the other difficulties, all you had to do was hold out until dawn.

If this floor worked in reverse, then that meant...

Graaaagh...

There was no time to stand there in shock.

The undead continued attacking, and I had to keep fighting.

Grimacing, I moved without rest, driving both my body and my magic without pause.

In real time, barely five minutes had passed since I entered.

Yet I had already replenished my Willpower more than ten times.

Subjectively, the battle felt as though it had been raging forever.

Before long, the sky was swallowed by complete darkness.

At that same moment, Sixth Sense began screaming warnings as though it had gone insane.

The danger was everywhere.

Nightmare.

Right.

This was Nightmare.

This much was... only to be expected...

“...”

Nightmare, you absolute lunatic.

Black dots appeared along the horizon in every direction.

As they drew closer, they merged into what looked like an enormous black tidal wave.

Every single one of them was undead.

Without exaggeration, tens of thousands of undead were converging on me from every direction.

I stopped time.

No.

No, wait.

Hold on...

This did not make any sense.

They had to give me something that was at least physically possible to survive.

How was anyone supposed to live through this?

‘Fuck. Seriously?’

Right.

This was exactly what Nightmare was.

At last, I felt completely and utterly screwed.

Even as the crushing weight of despair bore down on me, I desperately racked my brain for a way to survive.

Was I... overlooking something?

There was no way the Clear Condition was simply to survive against that locust swarm of undead bearing down on me.

No matter how I looked at it, that could not be right.

Even the sun had turned against me, moving in the opposite direction from the other difficulties.

It was disorienting, but in a sense, that reversal itself was proof that merely holding out was not how this floor was meant to be cleared.

The memory of the iron ball rolling toward me on Floor 1 flashed through my mind.

Back then, I had been equally certain that I was going to die.

But there had still been a way out.

‘...!’

What flashed through my mind at that moment was the patch of bare ground that had looked so conspicuously out of place against the surrounding terrain.

The spot where the earth had felt strange beneath my feet when I stepped across it earlier.

It had resonated as though there were a hollow space underneath.

‘Where was it?’

I released time and quickly scanned the area.

I was fairly certain it had been somewhere over there...

Found it!

I sprinted toward the abnormal patch of ground.

Magic flew in every direction as I blasted apart the undead blocking my path.

The massive wave of undead was closing in rapidly, and urgency clawed at my chest.

At last, I reached the strange patch of earth.

The instant I saw it, I launched a Flame Strike.

BOOM!

The surface shattered apart.

When the dust and flames cleared, a large opening had appeared in the ground.

Just as I had suspected.

It was a passage.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I threw myself into the opening, leaving the swarming undead behind.