Chapter 137 (1/2)
11th Floor → 25th Floor
The next day, 11th floor. Through the hunter that began there, the [Orb of Immortality] was charged for the first time. It had been proven that the kill count didn’t go up with microorganisms or plants.
Wobble! Wobble!
A group of slimes approached from the front, their bodies jiggling. Instead of wiping out many with a sword energy screen, I deliberately aimed for only one. The monster’s name was Hundred-Eyed Slime. It was a monster that’s big as a house. More than a hundred eyes had densely covered over the opaque apricot-colored mucous membrane.
Shhhhhh!
The sword was stuck in the mucous membrane wall. I released the sword energy in that state. A purple ray of light penetrated the enemy. The mouthless monster fluttered without screaming. Then, as its last struggle, it stared at me, rolling its packed eyes all at once. A system message popped up.
[Petrification Resistance (Rank: SSS) skill resists the enemy’s status effect attack!] [Decay Resistance (Rank: SSS) skill resists the enemy’s status effect attack!] [Poison Resistance (Rank: SSS) skill resists the enemy’s status effect attack!] [Cold Resistance (Rank: SSS) skill resists the enemy’s status effect attack!] . . .
It was a monster that randomly caused abnormal status effects wherever its eyes landed on. However, each effect was only A-Rank level. Naturally, it didn’t work against our group, as we had been plastered with various resistance skills before the battle began.
Whoong!
The blade’s mental wave rang in my head.
‘Damn it, are you fighting them slowly on purpose right now?’
The devil’s sword, stuck in the mucus, mumbled. Instead of answering back, I gradually amplified the energy on it while it was still in the monster. The slime had already been fatally wounded, and although they would die if I left it alone, the system message hadn’t appeared just yet.
‘There’s no point in further observation. Is it not counted if I just led it to death? Would it only count the kill once I’ve actually ended its life?’
I released sword energy to finish it off.
Swoosh!
The slime shattered into pieces. The fragments of mucus splashed all over my face. Only then did it pop out.
– The [Orb of Immortality] has absorbed spiritual power. – Current Spiritual Power Charged: 0.001%
‘I see, so that’s how the kill count goes up.’
Shaking off what’s on the sword, I pondered around my thoughts.
‘0.001% for one? That means if I kill 100,000 slimes of that level, the Orb will be charged right away, right?’
But in the end, that prediction was wrong. Even when I killed another slime…
-The [Orb of Immortality] has absorbed spiritual power. – Current Spiritual Power Charged: 0.001%
When the message that the spiritual energy was charged appeared, but the figure was barely rising. It seemed to be slowly filling in units below the indicated decimal point. As I devoted myself to the hunt, I could tell from the figure slightly fluctuating again that…
‘Eventually, I’ll have to slay a lot more than 100,000 living beings to fill it up to 100%.’
My experiment continued even after clearing the 11th floor.
12th floor.
“Squeal!”
A swarm of hydras, a type of monster that had numerous heads mounted on a snake’s body, awaited us.
“Let’s make some changes here.”
Instead of stepping up myself, I gave Nate an order.
“Nate, kill them all!” “Okay.”
Yesterday, I checked that only the monsters I killed were counted. But then, I became curious as to what would happen if I explicitly commanded others to do the killing for me.
Rarrrgh!
Following my instructions, the undead troops were summoned from the shadow and charged forth. There were some individuals whose bones were could be seen all over their bodies due to the progressed decomposition among the zombies, but they were more potent in the meantime. Their combat capability was comparable to that of A-Class or higher hunters.
“Squeal!” “Rargh… Uhhh!”
I observed the message that popped up.
‘Indeed, this is different from yesterday. The kill count still goes up, but it’s much slower than when I killed them myself.’
It was a result of the comparison from killing the same kinds of hydra myself. I also noticed something else.
‘Oh? The count’s stopped even though Nate’s still hunting.’
With ‘explicit instructions’ in effect, the count did not go up when the agent moving for me got too far away. On the other hand, in the case of a direct remote attack from me, the count went up no matter how far the distance was. And-
“Squeaaal!”
With the zombies almost dead, When I cut off their breath with a knife, the count went up very slowly.
“I’m getting the rough gist of it. Then, let’s check one last thing.”
13th floor.
The enemy that appeared in the graveyard-like dreary field were undead monsters such as zombies and skeletons. They were the down-graded versions of Nate’s subordinates, and their battle power was incomparable to them. I stood in front of them and prepared for the attack.
Whoong!
The purple tide amplified by the devil’s sword vibrated, waiting to be unleashed. I waited for the gap to show, then I let it explode all at once.
Kwaaaaaaa!
The undead monsters got sliced and minced up. Black blood poured, and rotten flesh rolled around on the soil floor where negative energy lingered. However, there was no change in the system message.
‘The undead is not counted as a life form. That at least only needed common sense.’
I spoke as I nodded.
“I’ve got the results. That’s it for the experiment.”
In the end, the principle of charging the Orb was as follows: If I killed the target myself, the count would go up at the fastest rate, and there were no restrictions to it. If I commanded someone else to kill on behalf of me, it would go up slower, and it was limited in terms of distance. What qualified as a life form to the Orb were monsters of a specific size or larger, excluding plants and microorganisms. In a universal sense, the stronger the opponent was, the more spiritual power it filled. Also, noticing that the slime was counted, the murdered entity’s intelligence didn’t seem to factor in the amount of spiritual power the item was charged with. I wanted to conduct additional experiments, but there were some cases where conditions couldn’t be met.
‘What if I killed it, but I didn’t put any effort into it? For example… What if I press the launch button of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and it directly hits the ‘Lost Land’ and kills a monster?’
At the moment, there was no way to prove it, so I had to give up. Regardless, there was only one reason why I needed to figure out the ways that it could be charged.
“I have to give this up.”
There was no trick to reducing the Orb’s charging speed. If I continued hunting at the same pace as I did at the time, I expected the Orb to be fully charged within a few months or a year at the longest. The devil’s sword agreed.
‘After all, you’ll have no choice but to be careful not to trigger it the moment you fill it all the way to 100%.’
And then it clicked its tongue.
‘I can’t believe you did the experiments ever so meticulously. You’re indeed a terrible guy.’ “I wanted to avoid it if there was a way to avoid it. But I can’t see any other way.”
Since I decided that further experiments were meaningless, we broke through the Tower at full speed as we did before. As a result, we reached the 25th floor after taking almost the same duration it took us to climb from the first floor to the 10th floor.
*
“It’s strange… How can we go through it faster than the lower floors?”
The moment we entered the 25th floor… Hibiki murmured as if she also couldn’t believe it, even if she had contributed to such a feat.
“Yeah… that’s really weird. The difficulty level of the Tower that I heard of was far from this.”
Euclid was deeply lost in thought with a haunted face.
“I mean, the lower floors were just the beginning, so it’s pretty understandable that we went through them quickly… but why is our pace increasing?”
Nate scratched his head, too.
“I only walked when told to walk… fought when told to fight… and rested when told to rest.”
They probably didn’t have to get their heads running busily. It’s because I had prepared all the orders and methods in advance and commanded them based on past information.
“Has there been any… particularly dangerous moments until now? Except for the altar on the 10th floor.” “… There weren’t any.”
I murmured as if it was nothing.
“What’s wrong with it? It’s better if it’s faster, right?”