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Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 123

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Nightmare Floor 9 (1)

The punishment of Sisyphus.

A famous story from Greek and Roman mythology.

Sisyphus, condemned to eternal punishment for deceiving the gods, forced to push a heavy boulder up a mountain forever.

Floor 9's theme brought that story to mind.

Simple enough.

The clear condition for Floor 9 was moving a given boulder to the mountaintop.

Of course, the boulder's size and the mountain's slope and height differed by difficulty.

Nightmare difficulty was...

[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 9.]

The moment I entered, I stopped time.

And checked the information coming into view.

A gloomy sky with a faint mist hanging over everything.

What lay ahead was a towering, impossibly high rock mountain.

And scattered across the surrounding flatland were countless boulders.

'...?'

For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing things.

Why wasn't there just one boulder?

Don't tell me I had to move all of these to the summit...

I released time.

First, I walked around and took a closer look.

Massive round boulders, each roughly 4 to 5 meters in diameter.

No matter which direction I looked across the flatland, boulders stretched out endlessly.

Not as a figure of speech. Literally endless. What was this?

I came back to the base of the mountain and thought for a moment.

Well... I guess I'd have to try it and see.

I picked one of the nearby boulders.

Then put some strength into it and tried moving it.

The boulder was huge, but with my physical strength, moving it was easy enough.

The problem wasn't moving it across flat ground, though. It had to go all the way up to the summit.

I looked up at the mountain.

The slope was pretty steep.

Close to 30 degrees, maybe.

And the summit was impossibly far up.

They'd said the other difficulties got something like a neighborhood hill. This was an actual mountain.

A thought crossed my mind, so I asked the Demon King.

"Demon King-nim, could you freeze this and carry it up to the summit?"

With the Demon King's power, it would be simple.

Not that the Demon King could use telekinesis exactly.

But covering the boulder in ice and then controlling that ice amounted to the same thing.

- I could.

"Hm..."

Still, I should probably carry it myself first, right?

The Demon King's strength needed to be conserved, even a little.

And with this many boulders scattered around, it didn't look like moving just one would be the end of it...

Thud!

I started rolling the boulder up the mountain.

With every step, the stone ground crumbled and dented under my feet.

It was more manageable than I expected.

Well, the boulder itself was probably something any Nightmare climber could move.

At my level, there was obviously no way I couldn't.

Rolling the boulder up the slope like the Sisyphus of myth...

'Ah.'

Wait a second.

I could just have Pli do it, couldn't I?

I summoned Pli.

Pli, made stronger than before by the effect of the Ring of Rebilus.

"Push this along, Pli. That's it, good boy."

Pli started shoving the boulder with its head, rolling it forward without any trouble.

This one had endless stamina, so it wouldn't tire out either.

'Sweet.'

I left the boulder to Pli and walked alongside it.

With the extra ease, I kept an even sharper watch on my surroundings.

Nothing had even started yet.

I'd heard that on the other difficulties, monsters popped out while climbing the mountain.

On Nightmare, something could jump out even without being a monster.

There were flat stretches here and there along the slope, but I didn't bother resting and just kept rolling the boulder.

We climbed quite a way up.

"..."

But why wasn't anything happening?

We were halfway up the mountain and not even a monster had shown itself, let alone anything else.

Of course, I didn't let my guard down for a second.

What was this vicious thing planning, being this quiet...

Maybe I was doing something wrong? That was possible too.

But since I'd come this far, I had to at least try getting the boulder to the summit. There wasn't much else to try.

Nothing happened even as we neared the top.

No, more than that...

'What is that.'

Now that I looked closer, the terrain at the summit was strange.

The flat part at the mountain's peak was so narrow you could barely plant one foot on it.

"Stop right there, Pli."

I halted the boulder just short of the top.

On the other difficulties, moving the boulder to the summit meant a clear.

I stopped the boulder and waited.

I waited a good while, but nothing happened.

I frowned and looked up at the narrow peak.

...Don't tell me I had to stand this huge boulder up on that.

Seemed like I'd have to try it.

"Go around to the other side and brace it, Pli."

I sent Pli to the opposite side and moved the boulder myself again.

Bit by bit, carefully lifting it onto the ledge at the top.

"...!"

The boulder tipped, leaning toward Pli.

As ordered, Pli braced it with its body, so it didn't roll off, but...

"Just a little push, Pli. Just a little! No, don't push! Stop!"

Balancing it was a real pain.

Damn it, was this even possible?

I struggled for a good while, still unable to find the balance point.

...Maybe I should chip the base a little and try setting it up that way?

But I had no idea whether I was even allowed to break the boulder.

I stopped time and thought it over, then decided to try something else.

'Demon King-nim, help.'

Freezing the base solid to fix it in place would be simple.

Just a little strength, please.

At my request, the Demon King froze the point where the boulder met the peak.

Getting my body back, I let go of the boulder and stepped away.

The boulder no longer wobbled. It was fixed in place, perfectly.

Was that it now?

Of course, Nightmare wasn't going to end just like that.

I waited a moment, hoping something would progress, and then...

Crack!

The boulder suddenly split down the middle.

I stepped further back, avoiding the debris.

A monster burst out of the broken boulder.

'...A monkey?'

A monster shaped like a monkey, silver-furred, the same massive size as the boulder.

Screech-

The monkey looked around, then spotted me.

And charged straight at me with a savage momentum.

I answered in kind.

Crack-!

Hit by the Thunder Strike skill, its body burst apart and it died instantly.

I looked at the corpse, then back at the broken boulder.

"..."

So... what was I supposed to do here?

There was no way that had been the boss.

I waited a good while longer, but nothing happened.

I poked around the summit, looking for anything else.

But I couldn't find anything special.

Eventually I climbed back down to the base of the mountain.

"Hmm..."

What was I even supposed to do here.

Information gathered so far.

Successfully moving a boulder to the summit made a monster burst out of it. That was it.

I looked around at the boulders scattered everywhere.

Was I really supposed to move all of them?

And kill every monster hidden inside... was that it?

'That doesn't make sense.'

That was just mindless labor.

It didn't feel like Nightmare at all.

There were countless boulders visible even from here, to begin with.

There had to be some other gimmick...

I tried moving another boulder up to the summit.

Crack!

The same monkey monster burst out of it, just like before.

This time, instead of finishing it off right away, I watched it.

The monkey monster was fairly quick and strong.

Felt like it was around level 60, maybe?

Of course, it was something I could handle easily.

I dodged the monkey's attacks and circled the summit, but again, nothing special turned up.

I killed it with a Flame Barrage and climbed back down.

I repeated that three more times, and each time came up empty.

Then I tried something different: destroying the boulder at the base instead of carrying it up.

Screech-! Shriek-!

Apparently it didn't have to reach the summit at all, because a monkey burst out of the broken boulder anyway.

What was this, seriously...

After killing the monkey, I just started firing spells in every direction.

Boom! Booooom!

Monkeys burst apart cleanly along with their boulders.

I only stopped after killing dozens of them.

Even so, nothing seemed to be progressing.

"Hah..."

I had no idea.

Well, it wouldn't be Nightmare if it were easy.

I stopped time and sank into thought.

'Demon King-nim, any ideas?'

- None.

The Demon King seemed to be telling me it was too much trouble, and that I should figure it out myself.

...This guy hated using his head this much, and yet somehow cleared over 20 floors?

- The lowly creature harbors impure thoughts.

Either way, I needed some kind of idea.

It was obvious by now that just rolling and smashing boulders wasn't the answer.

'...Is there some special boulder?'

I released time and looked over the boulders again.

They were all the same size and shape.

Maybe I should check from up in the sky.

Boom!

I used my leap skill and jumped high into the air.

Then kept ascending steadily using my newly acquired Air Step.

I climbed far higher than the mountain's summit.

After climbing a good while, I looked down at the dizzying drop below.

I'd probably gone up over a kilometer.

And yet the mounds of boulders spread across the ground below still stretched further than my eyes could take in.

I walked through the air, surveying the whole landscape, and then...

"...?"

I noticed something odd.

The boulders were spaced apart from each other, generally at even intervals.

But there was a spot where the spacing subtly narrowed.

Narrowing my eyes and focusing on it...

Along that spot, one large shape seemed to be faintly outlined, barely visible.

'...A swastika?'

The thought struck me, following that shape.

Boulders... monkey... mountain... Mount Huaguo? Journey to the West?

Wasn't Journey to the West closely tied to Buddhism too?

Thinking about it that way, it really did seem to match the Buddhist swastika shape.

Right in the center of the swastika-shaped pattern where the boulders' spacing narrowed.

One boulder sat apart, set off at a distance from the others.

"..."

I headed down toward that boulder.

On the outside, it looked no different from any of the others.

But somehow, I had a feeling. This was it.

I had Pli move the boulder toward the mountain.

We started rolling it up toward the summit again.

We'd made it about a third of the way up when...

Rumble, rumble-

The ground suddenly shook.

Looking up, I saw dust and rocks tumbling down in a rush.

A landslide.

...Nothing had happened while moving the other boulders, and now suddenly this?

'This is it, then.'

Even better.

Seeing the trouble kick off, I must have picked the right one after all.

"Keep pushing, Pli."

I had Pli keep rolling the boulder without stopping.

And I stepped in front of it.

I fired spells at the tumbling rocks.

Booooom!

I alternated between Flame Barrage, Thunder Strike, and Blade Whirlwind, blocking anything from reaching the boulder.

The smaller debris, I just took with my body, wrapped in Skin Hardening.

Nothing much to it.

If I'd been moving the boulder myself, dealing with this would have been a real pain, but thanks to Pli, my body was free to move.

I fended off the interference without much trouble and kept the boulder rolling smoothly.

The landslide kept going and only stopped once we'd nearly reached the summit.

Would sticking this one at the top finish it off?

With that thought, I got right up to the peak, and then...

Thump!

The ground suddenly shot upward, and Pli and the boulder went flying into the sky together with tremendous force.

I stared blankly at the sight, then clapped and muttered.

"Wow. Home run."

This son of a...

Even at the very end, this crap.

It reminded me of that trap back on Floor 2.

But my Sixth Sense hadn't triggered when I passed through here myself earlier.

Was it the kind of trap that only triggered when the boulder itself got caught in it?

"Demon King-nim."

I de-summoned Pli and, with no other choice, handed my body over to the Demon King.

There was no telling what would happen if the boulder fell like that and broke apart.

Whoosh!

The Demon King, sent flying into the sky, froze the boulder's surface midair and caught hold of it. The boulder stopped moving.

If it was going to end up like this, all that effort pushing it up here had been for nothing.

The Demon King carried the boulder straight back down to the summit.

After freezing it in place at the peak.

I got my body back.

Alright. Done.

Now what would happen?

I stepped back a little, keeping some distance, and watched the boulder.

Before long, cracks spread across it and it split apart.

Flash!

A brilliant golden light burst out from within.

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