I'm the Only Wizard Climbing the Tower - Chapter 48
Chapter 48
TL: DDTL
Morning.
I got ready for the Floor 19 Climb.
Which is to say, I poked around HunterGal for a while.
I searched HunterGal for ‘Floor 19’.
[Floor 19 strategy guide.]
[the mountain floor is kinda brutal ngl…]
[what do you actually need to bring for floor 19?]
[cliff route’s the easy way on the mountain floor, everywhere else has way too many orcs]
A few posts that turned up.
I muttered under my breath.
“Yeah, once it gets to around Floor 19, there’s barely anything on HunterGal.”
There were far too few Floor 19 posts on HunterGal.
Which made sense, of course.
This was the tail end of the early Mid Floors.
Not many Hunters had made it this far to begin with.
And around the time Hunters were climbing Floor 19 in earnest,
Hunter Net had just launched, and they’d started migrating over one by one.
There was bound to be little information on Floor 19.
There weren’t many days left of getting my info from HunterGal.
Past Floor 20, it looked like I’d have to dig up information on Hunter Net instead of HunterGal.
Anyway…
Click.
I read through the Floor 19 strategy post.
[Post Title : Floor 19 Strategy Guide]
floor 19 is the mountain floor.
theres gonna be a fucking huge mountain right in front of you, thats the one youre climbing.
exit portals at the summit.
goal is to climb the mountain and reach the exit portal at the top.
what you gotta watch out for is the orcs stationed all over the mountain.
theres over a thousand of em total, plus about thirty orc shamans scattered around,
so make even a little noise and the orc bastards come swarming
so its important to avoid fights as much as possible and get to the summit fast.
my recommended route is the cliff side.
theres one sheer cliff section on the east side of the mountain, climb up there and you only gotta kill a few dozen orcs before you can take the exit portal.
pack rope, hooks and carabiners and go rock climbing, lets go
surprisingly theres plenty of handholds and spots to set hooks so its honestly not that hard to get up.
still, you fall you die, so be careful.
oh right.
seems like HunterGals been loud lately.
tune it out and lets just keep climbing.
gotta hurry up and push those floor numbers higher.
good luck everyone.
…
It was a perfectly normal strategy post.
The comments were another story.
Scrrrrroll.
I scrolled down and checked the comments.
A dumpster fire.
└why climb at all? is there any need to risk your life going up the tower? just park on floor 4 nice and comfy, pull a nine-figure salary and chill, tsk tsk. throwing your life away over money of all things, what an idiot.
└└hey rice-eater, dont come to a strategy post and shit on other people’s climbing.
└└am i wrong though? you guys are just dopamine addicts and slaughter addicts arent you? why the hell risk your lives climbing? lolololol
└└dont feed the idiot
└is there really any need to risk the tower… third world countries sell Points cheap anyway.
└we can buy Points overseas for 1,000 won apiece, so why do we gotta pamper our own Hunters at 10,000 won a Point?
└cut the Point price and go back to a market economy lolol no reason to buy domestic Points way above the international rate.
└arent our taxes just fattening up already rich Hunters? tell those bastards to sell at the international rate too
└└and how long do you think third world countries are gonna keep dumping Points cheap?
└└china india south america the middle east southeast asia africa are all selling Points dirt fucking cheap, you think theyre gonna stop?
└└theres tons of countries with way lower gdp per capita than us. loads of people scraping by on a dollar or two a day. theyre out there risking their lives for Points and selling em cheap, so why the hell do we have to pay premium to source Points, come on lol
└└fr stop wasting taxes and just import the Points
└these crazy rice-eater fucks are throwing tantrums in strategy posts now, fuck. can you not go make your own gallery and eat your damn rice over there? why shit up this one, quit your bullshit
└└youre the ones who should leave lol most Hunters are Low Floor rice-eaters? if anything youre the foreign object here
└└ugh this pisses me off, what are the mods doing, ban the trolls already
└wow, creepy, arent Hunters basically murderers-in-waiting? they should be dragged into the military by force, fuck. one of the candidates in this presidential election is running on mandatory Hunter conscription, im voting for him.
└└no political bait
└└no seriously think about it, doesnt it creep you out? people who kill dozens or hundreds of monsters a month, are they normal members of society?
└└you know about that crazy Hunter who went on a stabbing spree recently and killed dozens of civilians? no telling when it happens again. we need to handle Hunters strictly, like china and russia do. put them under military control.
└└the fuck do you mean military, its been 10 years since i got discharged, why the hell would i go back to that shithole
└└lock up every last one of these crazy potential murderer bastards
…
The comment section was a dumpster fire.
Comments from Easy-origin rice-eater Hunters envying Normal users.
And comments from ordinary people griping that the taxes going to Hunters were a waste, or that Hunters were dangerous.
Plus comments from climbing Hunters pushing back against all of it…
They were all at each other’s throats.
It was a scene that would have made no sense whatsoever now.
Climbing Hunters, who deserved to be called patriots.
Being insulted by rice-eaters and civilians?
But this was only a few months after the Tower appeared.
A time when not one nation had fallen yet, when the world was still turning normally.
While people were only just adapting to the post-Tower world,
it was also a time when they admired Hunters and feared and envied them at once.
Absurd things like this happened all the time.
‘Nobody could have imagined it back then. That this country would be driven to the brink of collapse.’
The Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, African, and South American nations that had sold Points cheap all collapsed.
Countries that were both underdeveloped and powerful, China and Russia among them, halted Point exports.
Hundreds of Mid Floor Normal-origin Hunters, the backbone of the Climbers, emigrated abroad.
The result was the present.
The nation of South Korea came to suffer a Point shortage,
barely holding on by selling off every asset it had,
until it was finally driven to the very brink of collapse.
I clicked my tongue.
“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. This is exactly what that saying’s for.”
Then again.
Back then, a sergeant’s monthly pay in this country was still 400,000 won.
This was Korea, a place that took individual sacrifice for granted under the noble banner of the nation.
And meanwhile, Low Floor Hunters were pulling in hundreds of millions of won a year.
Mid Floor Hunters, billions. How galling must that have looked?
What?
Just get ‘lucky’ enough to become a Hunter and clear hundreds of millions a year, easy?
Do well and it’s billions?
And a massive boost to physical ability on top of it?
…Who the hell are you people to live it up like that?
Don’t give those bastards special treatment!
Tax the hell out of them!
They’re living large either way!
Points? Just buy them cheap off some third world country!
Why should we pamper bastards who are already rolling in it!
And so the will of the people consolidated.
A few incidents even occurred,
until politicians were toying with a mandatory Hunter conscription bill.
Capable Hunters emigrated; incapable ones settled into the Low Floors.
Later, once the political world woke up to the crisis, it tried to change course, however belatedly.
But it was far, far too late.
Nations vanishing one by one.
An emergency unification with a collapsed North Korea.
War between China and India.
Russia’s invasion of Eastern Europe.
Countless corporate bankruptcies, and more.
With every kind of problem erupting all at once, at home and abroad,
there was no keeping up.
The Tower Chaos Era arrived, and government and civilians alike were thrown into severe disorder.
That was how the South Korea on the verge of collapse was made.
A nation that scraped by selling off what it owned, piece by piece, until it finally hit its limit.
National power had withered, the finest human resources had fled, and the country’s coffers were scraping bottom.
Anyway.
Enough poring over records of the past.
“This time, I’m practicing defensive magic.”
Lately I’d been building and testing all kinds of magic.
On Floor 17 I tested wide-area attack magic.
On Floor 18 I handled anti-personnel attack and suppression magic.
On Floor 19, I planned to test defensive magic.
“I’ve been leaning way too hard on offense… about time I got myself a proper defensive spell.”
Until now, the only defensive magic I had was Earth Manipulation.
But Earth Manipulation was less a dedicated defensive spell than a utility skill with a wide range of uses.
I was starting to want a real, honest-to-goodness defensive spell.
A Peak-stage master was supposed to walk around draped in a Protective Aura!
For this one, an Extreme Lunatic Hell Peak-stage master,
to go about without a single defensive art, where was the swagger in that!
I pictured it.
Countless attacks bearing down on me.
And me, standing there in lofty disdain, turning every last one of them aside!
And then a single smirk, as if to say how laughable…!
“Ohhh!”
That right there was a Peak-stage master.
The attacks of pathetic commoners could not so much as touch a hair on this one’s head.
“It’s Protective Aura time!”
And so I waited for my EX-rank Porter and the Fairy.
[Entering Tower Floor 19.]
The Floor 19 run had begun.
* * *
Fwash-!
The bright halo of light faded,
and I looked around.
The first thing in sight was the towering mountain straight ahead.
An absolutely enormous mountain.
A great, majestic peak with perpetual snow piled near the summit, rocky zones scattered across its slopes.
I’d heard it was about the size of Japan’s Mount Fuji.
Sure enough, it was grand enough to be worth looking at.
Reaching the Exit Portal at that mountain’s summit was the Clear condition for Floor 19.
As I stood there taking in the mountain,
“Ji-ho. You’re not planning to ride Iing-iing straight to the Exit Portal, are you?”
Hye-ji, beside me, asked that while stroking Iing-iing.
I agreed easily.
“Of course not. There are a thousand Orcs on this mountain, how could I leave them behind?”
With the Fairy Iing-iing’s Telekinesis flight, clearing this was easy.
It was just a matter of floating up with Telekinesis and heading straight for the summit, and that was that.
But who was I?
An Extreme Lunatic Hell-tier wizard, Peak-stage master, Hunter!
Rising star of the Goblin Sect and nightmare of the Orc Sect!
I had no intention of leaving even one Orc alive.
“Got it. Then I’ll get us ready to fly.”
At my words, Hye-ji moved to prepare for flight right away.
But I shook my head.
“No. I’m planning to avoid flying as much as possible on this floor.”
“Why? You’re going to walk up that mountain? Isn’t that a pain? It’d be so much easier to fly around and fight like usual.”
“I want to test defensive magic.”
I was going to use Protective Aura.
Even with a defensive spell running, I had to actually get hit to feel out how well it worked.
So I intended to travel on foot.
If I was flying around up there, the Orcs couldn’t land a punch on me.
“Hmm… all right. Then Iing-iing and I will follow behind you and collect the Loot. So you’re practicing defensive magic, right?”
“Yes. I don’t like getting hurt, so I’m going all in on defensive magic!”
“Ji-ho, you’re already hurting in the head.”
-Iing-iing.
I set off with steady strides,
and Hye-ji and Iing-iing followed behind.
And so we began to climb the mountain.
The mountain path was fairly rugged.
Steep slopes, endless brush and trees.
Visibility was poor, and there was no proper trail, just rough ground to push through,
which made the hike a hard one.
But neither I nor Hye-ji had any real trouble walking it.
“Hye-ji. The path isn’t too rough on you, is it?”
“No. I guess I really have grown a lot. Back in the day I wouldn’t have dared walk a trail this rough…”
“All thanks to me carrying you. Be forever grateful. Human.”
“I really am grateful…!”
For this one, an Extreme Lunatic Hell Hunter, it went without saying.
And Hye-ji had made it all the way to Floor 19 by now and gained considerable physical ability of her own.
A hike like this felt no different from strolling across flat ground.
We pushed on along the mountain path for a while,
-Grrrk! Gwoaaaaar!
-Woaaaargh!
and ran into a band of Orcs.
A group made up of one Orc Fighter and ten regular Orcs.
The same old, familiar Orc hunting party.
My eyes lit up as I ran the spell.
“Protective Aura!”
I deployed the Protective Aura.
In truth it was just a wall of air compressed to the extreme, wrapped around my body,
but that alone was enough.
-Clang! Ka-lang! Clang!
The shower of axes from the charging Orcs
failed to pierce my wall of air and simply bounced off.
-Wuh?!
-Grk!
The things hacked away with their axes, bewilderment all over their faces.
But pathetic axe swings like theirs
could never hope to breach this one’s Protective Aura!
And the Protective Aura was fundamentally a defensive technique and a counterattack in one.
‘Spin this wall of compressed air, and it doubles as a counter.’
I set the air flowing at once.
I began spinning the wall of air coiled around me at high speed.
I shouted before I could stop myself.
“Spin-! Cyclone-!”
“Huh? Isn’t that a Shorts sound effect?”
Letting Hye-ji’s know-it-all remark slide right past me, I spun the compressed air faster.
And then.
-Krrgggggggk!!!
The Orcs pressed up against my air wall were ground apart.
First the arms they’d thrust out were shredded to ribbons, then their torsos were ripped away in chunks.
Like they’d been dropped in a giant blender and switched on.
They came apart entirely, spraying a mist of blood!
“Kyaaaaaah!”
Hye-ji let out a scream of pure horror.
It was that revolting a sight.
Even I hadn’t expected the scene to turn out this brutal.
They turned into red slurry in an instant, like tomatoes tossed in a blender and pureed into juice…
It was a deeply violent sight.
-Spatttttter.
All eleven Orcs that had come at me were reduced to blood and scattered in a heartbeat.
It must have been fairly powerful, since even their iron axe blades and armor had taken some damage.
To get this much attack power out of ‘gas’, the physically weakest of the elements…
If I used water instead of air,
I’d literally become a human blender.
“Ugh… that’s disgusting.”
“You’ve seen way grosser than this, quit whining. Let’s grab the Loot quick and keep moving!”
“Okay. Iing-iing? If you would.”
-Iing-iing.
Hye-ji had the Fairy collect the Loot,
and we continued up the mountain path.
And along the way we ran into countless Orc packs.
-Woah? Woaaargh!
-Uwoaaaaaaargh!
Orc bastards charging the second they laid eyes on us.
“Heh heh. Come ‘ere!”
-Krrgggggggk!
I ground them up with the Air Mixer.
Every time, a pool of blood formed and soaked into the ground.
Whether I ran into dozens of Orc bastards or more, nothing was a match for my Air Mixer.
Now and then I ran into Orc Shamans too.
-Woah! Uwoaaargh!
“Orc Sect Leader! To meet you again in a place like this! Well met!”
-Woaaaargh!
KRAAA-KOOOM!
The thing had been busily preparing its spell, and it fired lightning at me.
But its lightning could not pierce my Protective Aura.
Krzzzzt!
All it did was turn part of the wall of air into plasma.
It couldn’t touch a hair on my head!
-Wuh?!
“Heh heh… is that all you’ve got, Sect Leader? Well then, my turn.”
-Uwoaaaaargh!
I spun the wall of air and walked toward the Orc Shaman with slow, deliberate steps,
Krrgggggggk!
and the Orc Shaman was shredded to ribbons in an instant and broke down into blood.
It stirred something in me.
‘And to think the Orc Shaman was once a formidable foe…!’
Now, without even drawing out Sword energy,
I’d finished one off in a heartbeat with nothing but my Protective Aura!
At this rate, hadn’t I reached the late Peak stage, with the Transcendent stage right in front of me?
My realm was climbing higher with every passing day.
I felt proud.
“Ugh… Ji-ho, could you stop with the grinding thing? It’s really gross…”
“Grinding up Orcs like this takes me right back to my army days.”
“Where did that come from?”
“I ran a brush cutter a ridiculous number of times in the army. I don’t know why the grass grew so damn much… sweating buckets all summer, working that cutter half to death. This is starting to look just like it.”
“…?”
“You know, Orcs have green skin. So when I keep shredding green Orcs, it’s like… it feels the same as mowing down grass with a brush cutter in the army, you know?”
“Crazy…”
Hye-ji apparently couldn’t relate.
Because she was a woman and had never served, no doubt.
Anyone who’d served and worked a brush cutter half to death in the army would have understood me completely…!
Anyway.
After that, I kept running various defensive spells using different elements.
-Krshhggggggk!
“Hmm. Making a cyclone with the water element eats way too much Mana. Good against a strong opponent, but not something I can throw around.”
Defensive magic using water.
Excellent in both defense and offense, but heavy on Mana.
-KRAAA-KOOOM! Fwoooosh!
“Eek! Ji-ho! Fire, there’s a fire!”
“Oops. I’ll put it out.”
Lightning and fire.
Powerful on offense, but relatively poor at defending.
On top of that, the surroundings caught fire constantly, which made them hard to use comfortably.
-Rummmmble…!
“Ugh. Slow as hell.”
Earth-type magic had the best defensive capability,
but it was far too slow to bring out in a hurry.
Each element had its own particular drawback, and most of them weren’t suited to a Protective Aura.
For defensive purposes, the compressed-air Protective Aura and Air Mixer seemed the most efficient.
‘Water-type defensive magic against strong enemies, wind-type for everything else. That’ll do it.’
Water-type defensive magic, poor on Mana efficiency but boasting an extremely strong fusion of offense and defense.
Wind-type defensive magic, catching both efficiency and performance.
Those two would be the core of my defense.
“Looks like I’ve got the defensive magic down, so I’ll clean up the rest of them fast.”
“Okay. Iing-iing? Let’s go up.”
-Iing!
Once the defensive magic demonstration was over, I went back to the usual Orc massacre.
Which is to say, I sprayed Fireballs and Air Bullets from the air.
And so we roamed all over the mountain, grinding up every Orc bastard we spotted,
and after a certain amount of time had passed.
[Baek Ji-ho (South Korea : Floor 19)]
[Tower Floor 19 complete.]
[You have slain 1024 Orc (10).]
[You have slain 101 Orc Fighter (100).]
[You have slain 29 Orc Shaman (300).]
[Points are being settled.]
[Tower Floor 20 has been unlocked.]
[Returning.]
I wiped out every Orc on Floor 19 and took the Exit Portal.
Floor 20 was right around the corner.
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