Chapter 45: Nightmare, 4th Floor (1)

A type of strategy game in which towers are placed along a fixed route to stop waves of approaching enemies.

It was a familiar genre—one almost everyone had played at least once on a phone.

The theme of the fourth floor was more or less the same.

Not the part about building towers, of course.

Only the part where enemies advanced along a predetermined path and had to be stopped before they reached the end.

[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 4.]

The moment I entered, I stopped time.

I took in every scrap of visual information within sight.

The vast open space brought words like workshop, factory, and machinery to mind.

A winding path ran through the center.

It blended naturally into the surroundings, resembling a factory conveyor belt designed to carry products from one end of the facility to the other.

At one end stood a large square entrance that looked like a loading bay.

From there, the path stretched forward, bent into a U-turn, and repeated the same pattern four times before finally reaching the exit.

In other words, it resembled two zigzags stacked on top of each other.

I was currently standing on one of the walls that filled the gaps between the parallel sections of the path.

The top of the wall was roughly five meters above the route below.

Environmental assessment complete.

The location and overall layout did not appear any different from those reported on the other difficulties.

‘Hah.’

So I really had entered with a penalty after all.

I did not regret my decision.

If anything, my mind felt clearer now.

Then again, perhaps I would regret it when the Clear fell apart and I found myself on the verge of death...

I shook off the pointless thought.

[1. Physical Ability Reduced by 50%]

I had chosen the first penalty.

The reason was simple.

I had decided to preserve my skill-based combat strength at the expense of my physical ability.

Option three, which sealed three random skills, was too much of a gamble.

And option five, which prohibited items, would have forced me to give up Plligas.

That was something I could not accept.

In terms of raw physical power, Plligas was stronger than I was.

And as long as her HP did not run out, I could keep her summoned indefinitely.

It seemed better to sacrifice half my own physical ability while keeping Plligas available.

Still...

Since I had no idea what the fourth floor would throw at me, the decision had ultimately been based more on instinct than certainty.

Whether it had been the correct choice remained to be seen.

I had judged the options as carefully as I could based on the floor’s theme, but Nightmare was the sort of difficulty that ignored every expectation and did whatever it pleased.

Still, I might as well try to look on the bright side.

Perhaps the fourth floor would be easier than I expected.

Perhaps the Tower had imposed a penalty precisely because it believed I would otherwise clear it too easily.

Hahaha.

...I sincerely hoped that was the case.

I released the time stop.

Just as the penalty description implied, strength drained from my body all at once.

A moment later, a mechanical voice distorted by static echoed through the workshop.

—Attention. The golems within the workshop are currently malfunctioning and running berserk. All personnel are requested to dispose of them immediately upon sightinggggg...

I turned toward the entrance at the beginning of the path.

The indicator light above it glowed blue.

Once it turned red, the golems would begin emerging.

According to the information available on Hard difficulty, the floor consisted of three stages, containing three, six, and ten golems respectively.

The golems possessed fairly high defense, had no specific weak points, and were not designed for combat.

In other words, all they did was move.

They emerged from the entrance, followed the path, and headed toward the exit.

That was the entirety of their behavior.

But as in any defense game, allowing even one of them to reach the exit meant failure.

Apparently, if a golem made it through, the mechanical announcement would declare a “Grand Incineration” throughout the workshop and begin a ten-second countdown.

Incineration presumably meant being burned alive, though no one had ever witnessed the result firsthand.

Anyone who had would already be dead.

At any rate, if even one golem reached the exit, the Clear would fail.

And I would most likely be burned to death along with the rest of the workshop.

My task was therefore simple.

Destroy every golem that emerged and prevent all of them from escaping.

In this tower-defense game, I was the tower.

The only difference was that this tower could move freely.

Based on the more detailed information gathered from Hard difficulty, the golems spawned at intervals of roughly five meters.

They took approximately one hundred and fifty seconds to travel from the entrance to the exit.

That worked out to around thirty seconds for each straight section of the path.

There was also a one-minute break between stages.

That information was useful only as a reference.

On Nightmare, there could be more golems.

They could move faster.

They could attack.

Special variants might appear.

Some bizarre gimmick might completely alter the Clear conditions.

Or all of those possibilities could occur at once.

I moved along the top of the wall toward the beginning of the path, where the golems would emerge.

For what it was worth, every structure in the area other than the golems was supposedly indestructible.

That meant I would not be able to alter the terrain or damage the path itself.

I summoned Plligas immediately.

“A lot is riding on you, Plli. Understood?”

Plligas leaped lightly down onto the path.

I remained on top of the wall.

She would engage the golems directly below, while I supported her from above using magic.

My body had already been weakened by the penalty.

If I fought beside her on the path, I would only interfere with her ability to move freely and use her full strength.

Truthfully, this division of roles had been one of the reasons I selected penalty number one.

Ding.

Right on cue, the indicator light turned red with a clear chime.

The entrance opened.

All right.

Come on out.

I watched the opening, my body tensing slightly.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Heavy footsteps echoed from within.

The first golem emerged.

It was bipedal and slightly larger than Plligas.

Its body appeared to be made of white stone, and a blue core was embedded in the center of its chest.

Rraaaaahhh!

The instant the golem stepped outside, Plligas pounced.

She struck its head with one forepaw.

The golem collapsed into a pile of fragments.

One down for now...

Hm?

I had been preparing to cast a skill, but I tilted my head.

The golems continued emerging from the entrance one after another.

And every single one shattered beneath a single blow from Plligas.

One came out.

Plligas smashed it.

Another came out.

She smashed that one too.

There was no need for me to use a skill, so I simply watched.

‘...Is it only this easy because it’s the first stage?’

Plligas was powerful, of course.

Her physical ability was roughly equivalent to level fifty.

Ding.

A total of five golems emerged.

The indicator light turned blue, and the entrance closed.

The first stage was over.

So Nightmare began with five.

Would the next stage contain ten?

Nothing remained on the path except the broken fragments of the golems Plligas had pulverized and the cores that had fallen from their chests.

Based on the known rules, the second stage would begin after one minute.

I used the break to move around and inspect the surroundings.

Something already felt slightly wrong.

The worst thing about Nightmare was that it relied on traps no one could possibly identify on a first attempt.

The crossbow goblins on the first floor.

The phantom platforms on the second.

The underground chamber on the third.

Rather than saying they were impossible to detect, it would be more accurate to say that by the time they revealed themselves, it was already too late.

The fourth floor had to contain something similar.

But so far, nothing stood out.

Did the stage need to progress further before the trap appeared?

Or was it already present, and I simply had not noticed it?

Ugh.

The third floor had left me with genuine trauma.

Ding.

The indicator turned red.

As the second stage began, the fragments of the destroyed golems crumbled into dust and disappeared.

I returned my attention to the entrance at the beginning of the path.

The same white golems from the first stage poured out.

One blow per golem.

Plligas tore through them as though they were made of styrofoam.

As expected, the second stage contained ten in total.

Every one of them was destroyed almost immediately after spawning, before they could take more than a few steps.

Once again, I did not need to use a single skill.

Hard difficulty had used three, six, and ten golems.

Perhaps the next stage on Nightmare would contain a little more than fifteen.

But at this level of weakness, the number hardly mattered.

If the floor ended after the third stage, as it did on the lower difficulties, I was already two-thirds of the way through the Clear.

No.

There was no chance it would be that simple.

It would have been more believable to claim the Earth was flat.

I could not relax for even a moment.

I continued shifting my body from side to side to maintain the effects of Exaltation while waiting for the next stage.

Ding.

The red light appeared.

Stage three began.

The debris scattered across the path disappeared.

The entrance opened.

More white golems emerged.

There were twenty in total.

Once again, Plligas pulverized every one of them without breaking a sweat.

The third stage ended almost immediately.

Was it possible that I had simply grown stronger than I realized?

Clinging to that faint hope, I waited to see whether a Clear-completion message would appear.

Naturally, nothing did.

Instead, the mechanical announcement echoed through the workshop again.

—Attention. Not only our standard golems, but even the special golems into which our workshop has poured its heart and soul have escaped our control and begun malfunctioninggggg... Dispose of them all. Dispose of them alllll...

—Blue Golems ignore ninety-nine percent of physical damage, almost perfectlyyyy... Please respond with cautionnnn...

What?

The indicator turned red.

The entrance opened.

A blue golem emerged.

Its color was the only visible difference.

Its shape was identical to the previous golems, and it possessed the same core embedded in the center of its chest.

Plligas charged immediately and struck its head with her forepaw.

Crack!

The golem fell, but it did not shatter.

As it attempted to rise and continue forward, Plligas grabbed it and bit into its body.

Even so, her attacks appeared to cause no meaningful damage.

All right.

So there was finally some variation.

“Plli, back away.”

Plligas, who had been gnawing on the golem like a chew toy, sprang aside.

I launched Flame Strike at the fallen golem and the one emerging behind it.

BOOOOOOM!

Five fireballs detonated in a massive explosion.

Both golems shattered.

Blue Golems ignored ninety-nine percent of physical damage.

Plligas’s attacks were nearly useless against them.

But viewed from the opposite perspective, that meant my magic worked perfectly well.

Three more golems emerged from the entrance.

There was no need to waste firepower, so I ordered Plligas to block the path.

Because the golems did not attack, once she grabbed hold of the one in front, the others became trapped behind it and could no longer advance properly.

I waited for Flame Strike’s thirty-second cooldown to end.

Then I pulled Plligas away and launched the skill into the clustered golems.

BOOOOOOM!

Every one of them was destroyed.

The light turned blue.

The entrance closed.

So the fourth stage contained five blue golems.

The fifth would probably contain ten.

At this pace, even twenty should not be especially difficult.

If I gathered them all along a single straight section, I could probably erase the entire group with one Destruction Ray.

Not yet, though.

Destruction Ray had a three-minute cooldown, so I needed to preserve it.

The wreckage on the path disappeared.

Stage five began.

As expected, ten blue golems emerged.

I had Plligas block the path again.

Once the golems gathered into a tight group, I destroyed them with a concentrated volley of skills.

The twenty golems of stage six were handled in exactly the same way.

There were no serious complications.

Before stage seven began, the announcement voice echoed again.

—Red Golems ignore ninety-nine percent of magic damage, almost perfectlyyyy... Please respond with cautionnnn...

Magic resistance this time?

The debris vanished.

The entrance opened.

Red golems poured out.

As with the blue variants, only their color had changed.

Their bodies were otherwise identical, and each had a core embedded in its chest.

This time, it was Plligas’s turn to run wild again.

She attacked the red golems the moment they emerged.

In addition to their magic resistance, the red golems appeared to possess stronger base attributes than the white ones.

They endured Plligas’s blows more effectively and forced their way forward with greater strength.

Even so, they eventually broke.

Plligas destroyed all five before they reached the end of the first straight section.

Stage eight began.

The ten golems in that wave proved somewhat more difficult.

Still, Plligas destroyed all of them before they passed the midpoint of the second section.

During the final wave—stage nine—I joined the battle myself.

I dropped down onto the path and struck one of the red golems several times.

My attacks, weakened by the fifty-percent physical-ability penalty, barely affected it.

BOOOOOM!

Instead, I used my skills to disrupt their advance.

The golems might have been almost immune to magic damage, but they were not immune to impact.

Skills such as Blade Storm still sent them flying backward.

While I stalled them, Plligas destroyed them one by one.

We stopped all twenty golems from the ninth stage before they passed the second section of the route.

The wave ended without any serious difficulty.

“...”

Something was wrong.

I could feel it.

It was not Sixth Sense warning me.

It was only instinct.

‘This isn’t how Nightmare operates.’

The golems were gradually becoming stronger.

The difficulty was steadily increasing.

But this was not a gimmick.

It was not a trap.

It was simply a test of raw strength.

The first, second, and third floors had all been vicious.

Even so, once their solutions were known, they were physically possible for other Nightmare Clearers to overcome.

Could a Climber around level thirty truly handle this?

Most Climbers could barely use Magic Type skills properly.

For them, the physically immune Blue Golems would be nothing short of catastrophic.

And the golems’ continuously increasing attributes were beginning to push even Plligas toward her limits.

I scanned the workshop again.

During every break, I had searched for some hidden mechanism or concealed space like the underground chamber on the third floor.

I had found nothing.

The only passages in the entire area were the entrance from which the golems emerged and the exit at the end of the path.

And the exit was impossible to investigate.

Not only golems, but anything that passed through it would trigger the Grand Incineration countdown.

As for the entrance, I had approached it earlier while it was open during a stage.

The moment I drew near, Sixth Sense had begun screaming a warning.

So that route was impossible as well.

There was no way to tell.

Nightmare was always like this.

‘But how many stages does this floor even have?’

Just as the feeling of unease grew stronger, the mechanical announcement echoed through the workshop once more.