Chapter 188 – Tutorial 35th Floor (7)
First, ignoring what it was that was absorbed into my right arm, I needed to handle of the current situation.
As soon as I obtained the energy, two rounds of votes took place; as a result I was forced onto the 5th floor stage.
I didn’t have a way of knowing the topic of the votes, but I speculated it was because they no longer wanted me on
the 4th floor stage in order to prevent me from learning something I wasn’t meant to.
And that “something” is closely related to the energy absorbed into my right arm.
Regardless of what the energy is, it’s certainly of importance.
If I thought of it that way, I felt I benefited from the ordeal.
But I was more offended that I was moved at the whim of the gods.
This unpleasantness gave me renewed conviction for my goal.
It happened before as well.
When I cleared the 4th floor and when I was abducted into the tutorial.
That’s not all.
Even now, my actions are being controlled by them.
I couldn’t stay in the waiting room beyond a certain amount of time, and once the time passes, I’m banished from
the room.
And once I’m on the stage, I need to squirm and struggle my way through clearing each of the floor’s missions.
It was something that I accepted previously.
I even thanked them a bit for changing my life.
But once I took a disliking to it, it was something I could no longer bear.
“Hoooo.”
I quickened my breathed to calm down.
Although it’s hard, I need to restrain myself.
I’ll have to suppress it for quite a while anyway.
Let’s ask Kiri Kiri about this event.
Though, it’ll be difficult to get a proper answer.
Next, this energy.
The energy absorbed into my right arm is moving according to my guidance just like mana.
It didn’t seem to go crazy or have any negative effects on my body either.
Just that I wasn’t able to accurately feel or recognize its existence, and that it’s radiating the same sort of holy
energy found in God’s Authorities.
It could be a condensed form of Holy energy.
It’s possible if the stone I received from the goblin king was a god’s holy relic, or a token of an Apostle.
Anyhow, a sleeping energy in my right hand…
As if it were a sleeping black dragon in my right hand.
I was nervous that my 8th grade syndrome would flare up
again.
I moved the energy to another spot.
There was a spot in a corner of my chest.
I was curious about this particular spot from polishing my mana circuit for the last 2 years.
In the circuit that connects the whole body, there was a dead space.
It wasn’t like the cells died, or I caught a disease.
But just like dead space in an interior design, I had an empty space in my chest.
The space doesn’t have any effect on any of the circuits, but it was still connected to all of the important circuits
running through all of the limbs.
I stored the energy there.
If it’s here, I won’t have a problem of it colliding with mana that I would be utilizing.
After I stored it, it felt as I finally completed something.
Almost like this space was made to store this kind of energy.
My ignorance on the subject of the mana circuit hurt me deeply.
I didn’t have a chance to learn from anyone about the mana circuit.
The very few chances I’ve had were with Idy and the Knight on the 16th floor.
They weren’t that proficient in their own, and I needed to self-study to research the circuit pathways and application
methods.
I couldn’t ask other challengers.
They don’t have any information on the mana circuit in the first place.
I was the first one to find the mana circuit, and the one to inform the The Order of Vigilance and the challengers in
the community of its existence.
Moreover, most of the challengers didn’t know how to use it even when I’ve given the instructions and methods of
applying the mana circuit.
The most that they’ve done was to attain Lvl. 1 or 2 mana circuit skills through the information I gave them, and
vacantly wait for the skill to level up passively as part of their level up reward.
As a result, I also had much to learn about the mana circuit.
I didn’t even have names for the circuit’s structure or channels, and there was no way of finding new applications if
I didn’t know or couldn’t think of in the first place.
I needed an opportunity to study it properly.
But I couldn’t ask Kiri Kiri about the mana circuit in depth, and I wouldn’t find any books on it through the Shop.
Neither Seregia nor the holy sword had information at the level I needed.
Ways to learn were limited.
I needed to learn from someone or grasp it during a fight.
Or learn through outcomes.
There were two that came to my mind
The Juji on the 13th floor.
And the godmother on the 19th floor.
Out of them, I thought about the head monk, who I would encounter first.
Back then, his skills were better than mine, and he excelled at managing mana.
Some of the ways I manipulate my mana were from emulating and learning from how he managed his mana.
In addition, he has a similar body structure to humans and is also an Apostle.
Lastly, he didn’t have any qualms about teaching the challengers.
A perfect environment.
I’ll need to make meeting Juji on the 13th floor my primary goal for now.
It wasn’t an easy task.
The path to reach the 13th floor Juji goes beyond the requirements of just clearing the 13th floor.
I needed to meet Juji within the 13 hour time limit, and rush in order to learn something from him.
Let’s speed up my growth before then.
[Round 24, Day 2. 9h30m]
Normally, I was going to be moved onto this 5th floor stage at 10, but my plans were changed.
I was probably moved 30 to 35 minutes too early.
Then, would I be moved from the 5th floor stage to the 6th floor stage at 15 sharp or near 1430?
I couldn’t be sure.
Let’s just move for now.
I jammed my spear through the lizardman’s jaw.
The spearhead pierced the jaw and came out through his head.
I left the spear in the corpse remorselessly and turned my back.
The enemy wasn’t just one lizardman.
The tail attacks toward my torso.
I couldn’t slip past the thick tails.
The tail’s reach was too long for me to just back off safely.
Instead of backing off too much, I took a large step forward.
Since the tail is swung from the body as a pivot, the force dealt is weaker the closer I am to the center.
I wrapped mana around my left arm and shielded my body.
Kang!
The intense blow triggered a throbbing pain from my left arm and shoulder.
The pain surged down my chest and into my waist.
If the waist shakes, the center of balance shakes and destabilizes the lower body.
I forcibly quashed the pain and moved.
The lizardman was also affected by the blow’s impact
As much as the tail attack was done with the full strength of his whole body, he couldn’t be free from the recoil
damage.
The largest weakness of tail attacks is that one has to turn their back to attack.
I attacked the lizardman’s back as he was hurriedly trying to twist his body.
As I shoved my right fist into him, I heard the ribs shatter.
“Kehek!”
I wasn’t satisfied with just that and buried my fist in him again.
Precisely onto his spine.
That incapacitated the last of the lizardmen.
I picked up one of the spears strewn on the ground.
I finished off a lizardman who was foaming and writhing on the ground.
“Hua…”
My arm was tingling from blocking the strike just now.
Not just the arm, but my body was lined with small and large cuts, pangs and aches.
The lizardmen were hostile.
They didn’t turn away from battle.
They threw their whole body at me in hopes of succeeding in one attack.
In their minds, they probably didn’t have the phrase “high-risk, high-return.”
Probably just “high-return.”
It wasn’t possible be uninjured while fighting those that didn’t care about how strong the opponent was, or how
many of their peers died beside them.
Unlike the past, where I surpassed them in physical capability, I was lacking in physical strength. Even if my skills
far surpassed them, I couldn’t help but take damage here and there.
And this is just an assumption, but the lizardmen seemed to rush at me with ferocity unlike before.
From what I’ve heard from Lee Hyungjin who cleared this 5th floor like I had done before, the 5th floor wasn’t
supposed to be this difficult.
I haven’t felt this before since I was far past the level of 5th floor standards, but the 5th floor is much more difficult
compared to the 4th floor.
So, I formulated a hypothesis.
Based on the fact that half of the lizardmen on the 5th floor… or rather lizardwomen, it made all the more likely that
my hypothesis is correct.
My hypothesis became conviction when I heard their dying words.
My head was filled with a familiar face while fight them.
Idy.
Or Idaltar.
My heart was heavy from just thinking about her, who would be waiting for me in the 5th floor boss room.
There was a lot that came to mind, a lot that I was curious about, and even much more in what I would say to her
when I come face to face with her.
I wasn’t sure how to face her when it came to be.
I agonized over the meeting with her as soon as I saw the message that I’ll be challenging the floors again from the
1st floor.
But even as the meeting neared, I wasn’t able to formulate a clear answer.
And now, I chose to postpone the answer.
To think about it after I meet her.
After walking away from the lizardmen, who were the most erratic opponents up until now, I reached the Spring of
Recovery.
This is the last Spring of Recovery.
From the 6th floor onwards, there is no Spring of Recovery.
It could appear again in the higher floors that I have yet to reach, but from what I know, the Spring of Recovery on
the 5th floor is the last.
So, this was the last chance.
I went and laid down in the spring.
Sudden expansion of the mana circuit places extreme stress on the body.
Because I won’t be able to enter the waiting room on the 35th floor stage, I needed to expand my mana circuit as
much as I could in the Spring of Recovery here.
As I manipulated a larger volume of more highly concentrated mana than before, I felt the pain shoot through my
body.
I brutally forced open the congested areas where the circuit slowed down.
Of the paths that were blocked, I rammed through with all my strength.
The walls didn’t break down on the first try.
As they were walls that required time to melt away the blockades, it wasn’t easy
Every time I attacked the wall, I heard a ‘kwangkwang’ sound in my head and my body convulsed, but I repeatedly
slammed at the wall.
As I repeated that multiple times, I could feel the walls weaken.
After preparing myself, I readied myself to attack multiple walls in one go.
The impact of breaking down one wall, and having the mana flow through is immense.
It’s possible I would lose my mind and faint from just that.
But I didn’t have much time.
I couldn’t faint multiple times before trying again.
So, I chose to break down the weakened walls in one go.
Even if it was probably extremely dangerous.
No, it was extremely dangerous.
But it was something I could attempt because of the Spring of Recovery.
Kwang!
Along with the impact, the walls broke down and my mana in my body started to go wild.
The side effect of leaping over multiple stages and shedding the limits was larger than I thought it would be.
My head felt as though it would explode from just trying to make the berserk mana circulate along the path.
It wasn’t something I could control if I hadn’t had the experience up until now in my head, even if my body was not
reset.
[Acquired Mana Circuit Lv. 20]
But because of that, I was able to reach Mana Circuit Lv.20 in one attempt.
If I thought about the suffering, I had to go through to raise my Mana Circuit skill level to 20, it was quite a feat.
Once I tamed the mana that was about to explode, the pain came flooding in.
The pain was as if a thousand hands were wringing my body dry as if it were laundry.
My muscles were frozen stiff from the pain, and because of that I couldn’t even scream.
[Acquired Pain Tolerance Lv. 4]
[Acquired Pain Tolerance Lv. 5]
[Acquired Pain Tolerance Lv. 6]
It’s been a while.
I’ve been through pain countless times and have suffered through it. But this level of pain wasn’t common.
Moreover, my pain tolerance level was low, and my body didn’t have the strength to handle this sort of impact.
With my consciousness fading out, I could only hope that my body and mind would safely make it through this
agony.
< Tutorial 35th floor (7) > End
Gandara
Though the story explicitly states that
the energy is in his arm, the author writes “hand” in reference to the character Togashi Yuuta from the anime
Chūnibyō Demo Koi ga Shitai!. If you’re a League of Legends fan, this was also written during the time when SKT
Bengi was meme’d for having one in his right hand.
