Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability - Chapter 100
Chapter 100: Boss Supervision (1)
TL: DDTL
As promised, I was going to give the Demon King two hours of free time each day.
Once the limit test was done, the Demon King moved to Floor 5.
While he occupied my body, the Demon King could also use skills, enter and exit the Tower, and otherwise make use of the Tower’s systems.
‘Don’t show yourself to anyone else.’
The Demon King had no interest whatsoever in the climbers of Floor 5.
He rose into the sky and flew off toward Zone 4. Concealed, of course.
For the record, even with my body handed over, I could still communicate with Diul.
Diul clearly hated the Demon King taking over my body, but in the end, whenever I asked, he lent his power anyway.
‘Now that I think about it, you cast magic without any Mental Concentration at all.’
That was how it looked whenever the Demon King used his power.
Was the Mental Concentration window just another restriction the Tower had slapped on?
“You think such low-grade magic requires casting?”
Apparently not, then.
So to use higher-grade magic, even the Demon King had to focus his concentration.
Though if all of this counted as low-grade magic, I had no idea what high-grade was supposed to look like.
Whoooosh,
We arrived in Zone 4, where the blizzard raged.
The Demon King kept flying across Zone 4 before alighting atop a great mountain peak.
‘What are you planning to do?’
I asked out of curiosity.
What was he trying to do up here?
The Demon King looked around and said,
“First, I shall raise myself a palace.”
‘Excuse me?’
The Demon King raised a hand.
Rrrrumble,
The cold gathered together, and an enormous block of ice began to rise up out of the ground.
Watching the sight, I realized what the Demon King meant to do.
No… is he saying he’s going to build a palace out of ice right now?
The ice was taking the shape of a structure from the bottom up.
Whatever the size of the palace he intended to make, the scale of it was no small thing.
‘…Hold on. I think you ought to keep it reasonable?’
I said hurriedly.
Use too much power and the body collapses.
This was Floor 5, so even if the body took on strain, there was no way to clear a floor and recover.
The Demon King snorted.
“Quit your fussing. I know what I am about.”
And so the Demon King set about building an enormous ice palace atop the snowy peak.
‘What exactly are you going to do with a palace up here?’
When I asked, baffled,
“I am a king. A king must have a palace. Why ask something so obvious?”
The Demon King answered with utter nonsense.
For my part I went along with it, stopping time now and then whenever my Willpower ran low to top it back up.
When it was outwardly no more than five percent complete, the Demon King stopped using his power.
The strain was just beginning to come on.
“Tch. This body of yours, always.”
The Demon King grumbled in displeasure.
It seemed he intended to finish the castle here a little at a time, every time the body recovered.
I wondered what the point of any of this was, but…
In any case, the deal was that he got free time as long as he kept the conditions.
If he wanted to amuse himself quietly building a castle, well, fine.
The strain on the body subsided, and the Demon King once again began to build the castle bit by bit, carefully measuring out his power.
*
A secret military facility in the state of Virginia.
Hssssh…
Taylor stopped what she was doing and caught her breath.
Various pieces of military equipment were arranged around her, some of them damaged in the course of the test she had just run.
“Excellent work, Taylor.”
The staff came out of the observation room and approached her.
Military researchers and general officers were in attendance, along with the Director of the Climbing Bureau.
The purpose of the test conducted here, under the auspices of the Department of Defense, was simple.
To extract deep, multifaceted data on a climber, and not just any climber, but one at the highest level currently in existence.
Of course, the fact that “highest level currently in existence” carried the implicit caveat of “excluding Person123” went without saying.
“Remarkable, as expected… to think every metric exceeded our projections.”
Raymond, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Liam, Director of the Climbing Bureau, nodded along to the man’s admiring words while privately swallowing his distaste.
When Taylor had cleared Nightmare Floor 6 and reached Level 60, the ones most thrilled, in truth, had been the Pentagon.
The military was the institution most wary of the power of these superhumans called climbers, and the one thing they always lacked was data.
And in the midst of all that, Taylor had neither abandoned nor failed her Nightmare climb, but had pushed all the way up to Level 60.
There were a few American climbers in a similar level range, Alex among them, but strictly speaking they belonged to the association rather than the government, and were not especially cooperative with it.
Taylor had originally been a soldier and an intelligence agency agent, and her patriotism ran deep. She cooperated actively with the military’s requests.
Which was precisely why Liam, watching, did not feel entirely good about it.
Climbers fell under the Climbing Bureau’s jurisdiction by rights, and the very fact that the military was hauling climbers in for experiments and dictating do this, do that, sat poorly with him.
Of course, the intensity of the tests had been set with Taylor’s safety as the top priority. She was a national treasure of the United States.
And he understood that the military had its own position, too.
This was the Era of Upheaval. Even now, quite a few countries in Africa were thrown into chaos because of climbers, the result of a nation’s deterrent power being unable to handle the strength of climbers.
It might well be a miniature of a future that would unfold across the entire globe.
It simply hadn’t drawn notice yet; even now the balance of power was tilting toward an ever more precarious point.
So they prepared. To analyze a climber’s combat capacity further, and to advance the technology and countermeasures needed to respond to them.
“What do you say? With our current military strength, up to what level of climber could we handle?”
To Liam’s question, Director Raymond replied.
“Looking at the rate at which a climber’s physical durability scales with level, even past Level 100 it wouldn’t be impossible to kill one with conventional forces. It would mean accepting catastrophic damage, so it’s rather meaningless, but still.”
The U.S. military had experience fighting Stage 5 Fallen during the Fallen crisis.
Based on that data, if one imagined a Level 100 climber, a monster far stronger and more intelligent than even a Stage 5 Fallen, with the added variable of skills on top of that, running wild in a city center…
That truly would be a catastrophe. No different from war.
Subduing it would be difficult short of resolving to blow away an entire city.
“It might honestly cause less damage just to detonate a nuke.”
Raymond laughed.
It sounded like a dry joke, but the Pentagon had surely already run every simulation on using nuclear weapons too.
“All the more reason to make every effort that no such catastrophe occurs in the first place.”
If the Department of Defense’s role was to prepare for war against climbers,
then the Climbing Bureau’s role was to take in more climbers, to win them over and bring them into the fold on terms favorable to the nation.
Raymond shook his head and said,
“I wonder. Personally, I think it’s an inevitable future. The human desire to unleash the power one holds is bound to erupt in the end.”
“Perhaps so.”
Liam ended the rather unwelcome conversation and went over to Taylor.
“Excellent work, Taylor.”
Taylor seemed to be checking the Communication Channel. She said,
“I need to step into Floor 5 for a bit. Alex is calling for me.”
Liam nodded.
Between granting the military’s requests and going in and out of the Tower, Taylor was busy enough to need several bodies.
What was more, Liam was well aware that she had been hunting in secret over in Floor 5’s Zone 5.
Taylor’s will was firm enough that there was no way to stop her anyway, and so the Climbing Bureau, fretting that they might only ruffle her temper, was leaving it be.
“Is this about the Zone 3 boss?”
“Yes.”
A more important event than that was right around the corner. The Zone 3 boss.
Since Person123 had previously taken down the Zone 3 boss single-handedly, no other climber had yet obtained a Normal Reward.
After nearly two years, the gauge was almost full and the opportunity had come back around. Part of why it had taken so long was that the opening of Zone 4 had dispersed the hunting.
Taylor would take part in the boss battle too, of course. She needed the reward.
Liam silently prayed that this boss battle would end without incident.
*
[Cheetah99: Zone 3 boss is gonna pop up soon]
[Prohid: How’s it gonna go. Have the Security Corps and the Black Star Society said where they stand?]
[Arrow: Looks like everyone’s in a cooperative mood this time around]
There had been something of an anticlimax to it, with Person123 having soloed the first clears of both the Zone 3 and Zone 4 bosses.
But a boss battle was originally a colossal event for climbers.
This Zone 3 boss battle, now come back around, was nothing less than an all-star game where the highest-level climbers would all gather to fight.
[Zone 3 (99.0%)]
With the Zone 3 Boss Gauge sitting one percent short, the Security Corps and the Black Star Society held a final summit at Drake’s Restaurant on Floor 5.
The terms had all been worked out in advance. No squaring off against each other, no interference; they would cooperate to bring the boss down.
With many onlookers watching, Security Corps Chief Alex and Black Star Society President Li Zeyan shook hands.
After the Black Star Society’s climbers had left, the Security Corps members talked among themselves.
“Can we trust the Black Star Society bastards?”
Even after a good deal of time had passed, those involved still remembered the Wang Kai Incident.
Sure, the Black Star Society’s stance had changed completely of late, but the unease was impossible to shake.
Alex said,
“We’ll need to stay on guard, but there’s no need to worry too much. The Black Star Society has no reason to act rashly.”
The first-clear reward had gone to Person123 anyway, and as for the Normal Reward, one only had to meet the Contribution threshold.
So this boss battle was not a competition. There was no reason for the two sides to fight.
More than that, Alex was thinking about Ye Tianwei.
The real hidden head holding China and the Black Star Society in his grip.
For this summit too, they had put forward Li Zeyan, who was nothing but a figurehead, but Ye Tianwei needed a reward as well, so he had no choice but to take part in the boss battle himself.
Alex personally had a great deal of curiosity about the man.
Well, before any of that, he supposed he ought to worry about whether they could even take the boss down safely…
Alex let out a sigh.
“…Will Person123 help us?”
“Still no reply?”
The Security Corps had sent Person123 a Whisper asking for help with this boss battle.
True, the climbers’ combat strength had risen since two years ago, but even so, the Zone 3 boss was at least in the Level 60 range.
And the only information they had was that it was a flying-type monster and that it used an attack spewing fire from its mouth.
Because Person123 had taken it out with a One-Shot Kill.
Even if it was a bit embarrassing, if only they could get Person123’s help, and by help they didn’t mean asking him to take part in the fight directly, but to keep watch over it.
The way the Security Corps cadres supervised the boss battles when low-level climbers took on the Zone 1 and Zone 2 bosses.
If Person123 would just watch over this Zone 3 boss battle and step in only when things got dangerous, their worries would be greatly eased.
“He’ll help us, I’m sure of it.”
Shin Su-jin said it as if certain.
The Person123 she knew was not someone who would turn down a request like this. Perhaps he was already planning to help.
“But is Person123 really that strong?”
One of the Security Corps members asked with a curious grin.
Vince, who had recently joined the Security Corps.
A Level 48 climber on Hard Floor 13, young but recognized for his skill, a rookie who had quickly been given a cadre’s post in the Security Corps.
Vice Commander Justin said,
“Strong doesn’t even begin to cover it. The man’s just on another level entirely.”
“I’ve only ever heard people talk about him; I’ve never seen him for myself. But he’s the same kind of human as the rest of us. Aren’t you all exaggerating a little?”
Justin shook his head. No point trying to explain.
“More to the point, Vince, you watch yourself. Don’t go getting worked up and running wild on your own again. This isn’t just a hunt, it’s a boss battle. One slip and you’re dead.”
“Come on, I know that, Vice Commander. I’ll be careful.”
Watching Vince answer in that offhand way, Justin clicked his tongue.
His talent and skill were outstanding, but maybe because he was still young, he was immature. Even in ordinary hunts, he tended to break off from his position a lot.
In any case, the day of the decisive battle was the day after tomorrow.
When tomorrow came, in line with the agreed plan, the Security Corps and the Black Star Society would all set out to hunt in Zone 3 and fill the gauge to 99.9 percent.
The following day, after filling the remaining 0.1 percent, the two sides would immediately join forces and launch the boss battle.
Alex prayed that every Security Corps member taking part in the boss battle would return alive.
****
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