Chapter 15: Nightmare Floor 2 (3)

Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

The moment I passed through the door, what spread before me was a staircase.

There’s still more?

I scrambled up the stairs at full speed.

The overflowing lava came gurgling up the staircase behind me.

I was faster.

I climbed without any danger of the lava catching up and burning me alive.

As I ran, I noticed the staircase was tracing a wide spiral.

Only then did I realize I was inside an enormously tall tower.

I kept climbing.

Shouldn’t this be ending soon? I’d been running for a while now.

Roughly once per loop around, a window appeared, and outside it was nighttime with the moon hanging in the sky.

…I kept climbing.

“Hah, hah.”

Something was off.

A creeping sense of wrongness began to settle in.

The stairs wouldn’t end.

Was the tower just impossibly tall?

Exhaustion was catching up, so I slowed from my all-out sprint.

Rumble…

I’d been running well ahead of the lava for a long time, so there should have been plenty of distance between us. But the moment I slowed down, the lava peeked out from behind me.

What the fuck?

I settled into a pace just barely fast enough to stay ahead.

It felt like my senses were being toyed with.

Something was wrong. Definitely, unmistakably wrong.

Another window came into view.

I punched the wall beside it as I ran past. The brick crumbled, leaving a mark.

I kept running, and another window appeared.

The crumbled mark on the wall… was there.

I was climbing upward, but the situation was physically impossible.

Only then could I be certain of what was happening.

I was going in circles, over and over, in the same spot.

Infinite staircase? Möbius loop? What even is this?

At this rate, I’d just burn through all my stamina for nothing.

I stopped time.

I needed to find a way out of this endlessly repeating space.

‘How?’

I thought about it for a long time, but nothing came to mind.

Lava behind me, and ahead, nothing but more stairs.

I looked up at the ceiling. Sealed off, obviously.

There was no hidden path anywhere.

Could I be under some kind of hallucination?

Maybe this was some dreamlike space?

Maybe it wasn’t the world that was wrong, but me. That was plausible enough.

I released time and started running again, slapping myself hard across both cheeks.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them, and remembering something called an RC check I’d heard about somewhere, I tried bending my fingers back.

But nothing changed.

I came full circle back to the window with the crumbled mark.

I stopped time.

…What do I do?

I think I’m screwed. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?

Cold sweat trickled down my skin.

This was an entirely different kind of pressure from anything I’d faced before.

If I couldn’t get out, I’d eventually run until I collapsed from exhaustion, then the lava would catch up and burn me to death.

Calm down and think. Stay calm.

This kind of infinite loop cliché shows up all the time in movies and comics, doesn’t it?

How did the protagonists escape in those?

No idea. I couldn’t recall a single one.

Should’ve kept up with more entertainment…

‘There’s no way this is just meant to kill me with no way out.’

There had to be an escape route.

Surely the solution wasn’t something like “run for ten hours straight without resting.”

Another way out… another way?

That was when something at the edge of my vision caught my eye. The window.

Wait.

‘…That’s the outside, isn’t it?’

Don’t tell me I’m supposed to go out the window?

It seemed almost too simple, absurdly so, but that was exactly what made it plausible.

I couldn’t be sure it was the right answer, but I had no other options.

I released time and vaulted up onto the windowsill.

The lava surged in, leaving no room to hesitate.

I frantically squeezed my body through to the outside, planted my feet on the sill, and jumped.

I grabbed the wall above the window and hauled myself up with my arms.

The instant after, the window vomited lava.

A blazing red waterfall of fire pours down toward the dizzying depths below.

I caught my breath, staring down at the sight for a moment, then climbed a little higher.

…Did it work? Did I actually make it?

I turned my head and took in the scenery.

The tower I was clinging to was, as expected, staggeringly tall and massive.

And down below, a forest spread across the ground.

How to describe it… the atmosphere was eerie.

It reminded me of something like Count Dracula’s castle, standing alone in the middle of a remote forest.

I looked back up.

Continuing upward was the right call, right?

I began scaling the wall like a rock climber.

The surface was rough and uneven, with plenty of handholds.

With my current strength, this was barely any effort at all.

The higher I climbed, the closer the top of the tower visibly became.

Thankfully, it seemed I’d broken free of the infinite loop.

“Phew.”

Was this really the end?

Was something else going to pop up the moment I reached the top?

At this point, I’d decided to just stop expecting anything.

I was gradually learning the proper mindset for dealing with Nightmare difficulty.

I arrived at the top of the tower.

“Ngh.”

I dragged my exhausted body over the parapet wall.

The rooftop… I wasn’t sure “rooftop” was the right word, but whatever.

The space at the very top of the tower was fucking enormous.

Far off in the dead center, a lone structure jutted out, with a door set into it.

I walked for a while until I drew close to the door.

It was a massive double gate, the kind that swings open on both sides, just like before.

And for some reason, weapons were scattered all over the ground around it. Swords, spears, maces…

Weapons, handed out all of a sudden.

It could only mean one thing: a fight was coming.

I picked up a sword and approached the door.

Remembering how carelessly touching the last door had set off the lava, I held back and just studied it carefully for a moment.

Thud, thud, thud, thud…!

Wh, what?

I didn’t even touch it yet.

A sudden vibration began rumbling, growing closer and closer.

Something was coming up.

Sensing danger, I backed well away from the door.

CRASH!

The door shattered as something enormous burst through.

In the dim moonlight, the silhouette had the head of a bull.

A bull-headed, massive, muscular beast.

“…Minotaur?”

I murmured the word that immediately sprang to mind.

So the finale is a boss fight again?

Hissss…

The sound of rough, steaming breath blasting from its nostrils.

The Minotaur charged straight at me without a moment’s pause.

Meet force with force.

I fired off Flame Strike immediately.

The enhanced one-plus-one fireballs shot side by side toward the monstrous bull.

KABOOM!

The explosion knocked the Minotaur backward. It didn’t go flying, though.

That alone was astonishing.

A direct hit, and it tanked that kind of blast?

MOOOOOOO……!

Its body wreathed in flames, the Minotaur bellowed in agony.

It wasn’t in good shape, though.

Its front was carved open, bone visible beneath the torn flesh.

The creature thrashed in place, then locked onto me again and charged.

It was nothing but a simple straight-line rush, so I threw myself sideways to dodge.

Having lost its target, the thing stumbled and toppled over. Well, well.

Looked like one good hit had already scrambled its brain.

The Minotaur repeated its drunken charges as if it were hammered.

I dodged this way and that like a matador and waited out the thirty seconds.

Why risk getting in close to fight it?

Once the skill cooldown’s up, I’ll finish cooking it well-done.

I leapt high into the air to dodge its final charge.

Flame Strike, cast mid-air with time frozen.

The fireballs hammered down onto the Minotaur below.

I landed, and the Minotaur, its body blown apart, didn’t move again.

Wasn’t worth a damn, that one.

The boss fight really was the easiest part? Seriously?

Then again, normally it probably wouldn’t have gone down this easily.

Being able to instant-cast a powerful attack spell mid-combat was undeniably a broken advantage.

Déjà vu.

Remembering the Floor 1 boss fight, I quickly scanned my surroundings.

Nothing else was in sight.

But the stage clear message still hadn’t appeared.

That bastard Nightmare can’t be trusted to the very end.

No telling where the next ambush would come from.

I stopped time, fired off Flame Strike repeatedly to fully restore my depleted Willpower, then released it.

“…”

Not falling for it. Come on out already.

The message hasn’t popped up yet.

RRRRMBLE…

A sudden vibration rumbled up from beneath my feet.

If the tremor from the Minotaur’s entrance had been a one, this was a ten.

“Wha…”

Panic hit me, and instinct took over. I sprinted toward the parapet.

CRUMBLE!

Seconds later, the floor began collapsing.

I barely managed to use Leap just in time to jump.

The floor caved in all at once.

Below was a roiling sea of lava.

“AAAHH…!”

Flailing my arms through the air, I ran out of momentum and started to fall, then stopped time.

The wall looked just barely within Teleportation range.

I completed Mental Concentration, released time, and teleported. I clung to the wall surface.

Rumble…

I, I almost died…

Heat surged up from below, and I scurried up the wall like a lizard.

The outer rim of the parapet had held its shape without collapsing.

I pulled myself up over the ledge.

Like the crater of a volcano, the lava that had filled the tower’s interior was swallowing every last piece of debris from the collapsed floor.

I could see the Minotaur’s corpse down there too, burning as it sank.

Poor thing. Forget well-done; it ended up charcoal.

I caught my breath while entertaining that pointless thought.

[You have successfully cleared Nightmare Floor 2.]

A message appeared before my eyes.

It was finally over.

A surprise event prepared right down to the very last second.

I’d felt it on Floor 1 too, but the malice behind the design was almost palpable.

Completely and thoroughly sick of it, I muttered.

“Brutal… absolutely brutal…”

But so what?

I survived again. Ha ha ha.

Relief, terror, exhilaration, all of it swirling together. I let out a loud laugh for no reason at all.

It was a laugh of mockery, aimed at the Nightmare difficulty that had thrown every disaster in the book at me and still failed to kill me.

With this, the world had bought itself another year.

I should thank Mr. Bilon Must, too.

The Leap skill he’d gone out of his way to send had been a tremendous help.

[Absorbing the Power of the Floor.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

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[Your level has increased.]

[You are the first to successfully clear Nightmare Floor 2.]

[Floor 2 Hidden Route has been unlocked.]

[Transferring to the Reward Room.]