WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 149: Nightmare on the 11th Floor (3)

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I returned to the third passage.

The bowl on the altar and the last remaining treasure chest.

I looked down at the bowl and thought it over.

The mechanism required me to fill a bowl nearly as large as my body with blood.

"This is too much."

Was there really no other way?

I'd already confirmed that any water I poured in burned away immediately.

...What about the blood of another living creature?

There wasn't anything in this dungeon that could be called another living creature, though.

The bats had disappeared when the white bat died, the golem knight wasn't a living creature, and the Mimics didn't bleed. They only spewed something like acid.

It probably wouldn't work, but I brought over a dead Mimic and let its acid drip into the bowl.

Whoosh!

Flames surged up.

I tossed the Mimic's corpse aside and sighed.

...I had no choice.

It wasn't impossible if I really wanted to do it.

I had a semi-immortal body, after all.

As long as my head was intact, I wouldn't die from blood loss.

Even if I drained every drop of blood from my body, I probably wouldn't die.

Not that I'd ever tested it... but probably?

Besides, I was over level 120 now, and with the Frozen Hydra's abilities and the Slime King's abilities added on top, my body's regenerative power was incredible.

Fuck it, let's do this~.

I extended my hand into the bowl.

Then I slashed my wrist with the Sword of Heaven's Gatekeeper.

Slash!

Blood burst out along with a sharp sting.

The skin on my wrist regenerated within seconds, stopping the bleeding.

So I kept cutting my wrist and draining blood.

Since I couldn't die anyway, the fastest method would be to stab all the major arteries in my body and drain myself dry...

But I didn't want to go that far.

If I lost a huge amount of blood at once, more than my regeneration could keep up with, I'd pass out from a lack of blood reaching my brain.

Estimating the bowl's volume...

It was shaped like a hemisphere a little over one meter in diameter.

Even factoring in its thickness, it looked like it could hold at least 300 liters.

And if my body contained around five liters of blood...

That meant I had to drain all the blood from my body at least sixty times!

"Amazing."

A hollow laugh escaped me.

Ultimately, it was a matter of willpower and time.

I could endure the pain, but I had no idea how long this would take.

I continued cutting my wrist and letting blood flow.

The bowl's bottom had only been covered by a thin layer.

And so began the insane blood-draining challenge.

As I kept at it, though, I realized that bleeding from my wrist was far too slow...

Stab!

Partway through, I switched to my abdomen.

Fuck, that hurt.

When I stabbed the area around my abdominal aorta, blood poured out. My body quickly began to feel cold.

I draped myself over the bowl and groaned.

The more blood I drained, the more dizzy I became.

My body's regeneration couldn't keep up with the blood loss.

Whenever that happened, I stopped draining blood and rested. Passing out would be a problem.

Drain blood, rest, drain blood, rest.

It was an endless cycle.

Normally, the blood in the bowl should have clotted quickly, but it didn't.

It wasn't particularly strange. I figured it was the bowl's power.

Anyway, filling the bowl would take far more time than I'd expected.

It was one thing to say hundreds of liters, but filling all of that with human blood was an absurd amount.

I'd brought enough food to last several days, but I ate as little as possible.

My body dried out so quickly that drinking water was a bigger problem than food.

I solved that using the Demon King's magic. I just melted ice and drank it.

"Ugh..."

It wasn't comparable to the pain of having my entire body burned on the fourth floor.

Still, constantly stabbing myself and spending twenty-four hours in an anemic state while draining blood without pause was mentally exhausting.

In any case, I did it.

After more than three days, I completely filled the huge bowl with my blood.

If this had been a blood donation, I should've received at least a thousand movie tickets.

Then...

Rumble!

The blood in the bowl suddenly swirled and drained away like water going down a sink.

I panicked at first, then relaxed.

Once all the blood had disappeared, a key appeared at the bottom of the bowl.

That was rough, you bastard of a Tower.

I used the key to open the treasure chest.

Surely the last chest wouldn't be empty too.

It was Nightmare difficulty, so it was entirely possible...

Click.

"Oh."

This time, it finally wasn't a Mimic.

A large golden key lay inside the chest.

It looked like the key that could open the stone door at the original location.

Before heading over, I rested until my body had fully recovered.

Once I was done resting, I returned to the original location.

With my guard raised as high as possible, I approached the stone door.

I'd made it here fairly smoothly.

Of course, that blood-draining mission had been a massive pain in the ass...

Was it because my abilities and overall skill set had improved so much?

For Nightmare difficulty, none of the five passages had been particularly difficult to solve.

Of course, I didn't let my guard down for a second. I had to be even more cautious.

The raid wasn't over yet.

I inserted the key into the stone door's keyhole and turned it.

Rumble...

The stone door slowly opened.

The passage beyond was made entirely of golden crystal walls.

I followed the passage...

Before long, the path ended, revealing a vast space.

Countless treasure chests were scattered across a golden cavern.

And in the middle of the cavern, a key rested on a small table.

Hmm... What was this?

I stopped time for a moment and looked around.

It seemed like I was supposed to use that key to open the surrounding chests.

Even by a rough count, there were hundreds of chests.

Was there one correct chest among them?

There was no other information to go on.

I resumed time and approached the key.

I picked it up from the table. Then...

Boom!

At the sudden roar, I turned around.

The stone door I'd entered through had closed.

Then...

Rumble!

A green liquid suddenly began filling the cavern from the floor up.

"...!"

It was like the acid the Mimics produced.

It was rising at a terrifying speed.

I used Air Step to rise into the air.

Then I stopped time again.

'A time attack?'

It had started the moment I touched the key.

Was it trying to trap me here and kill me with acid?

Was I supposed to find the correct chest before I melted to death?

Sixth Sense didn't react. That was because it only reacted to dangers that directly threatened me.

But anyway...

'This doesn't seem dangerous at all.'

The Mimics' acid was poison in the end.

From what Sixth Sense told me, its toxicity was about the same as the highly toxic lake in the second passage.

Even if my entire body was exposed to the acid, it would only threaten my hair at most. Not that I had any.

Even if the cavern completely filled with acid, I had the Sea Dragon's Ruyi Pearl, so breathing wouldn't be a problem.

For now, I should open the chests.

I resumed time.

I went back down and started opening chests.

Screech!

A Mimic.

I killed it, then quickly opened the second and third chests.

They were Mimics too.

By the time I opened around ten chests, the acid had already risen to my waist.

...It wasn't hurting me, but wasn't this way too fast?

I kept opening chests and killing Mimics.

No matter how quickly I moved, there was a limit to my speed.

Like the chests in the other passages, these were all impossible to destroy from the outside, so I had to open each one individually with the key.

After opening over a hundred...

The acid finally filled the cavern all the way to the ceiling.

Completely submerged, I held the Sea Dragon's Ruyi Pearl in one hand and continued opening chests.

My clothes and bag had already melted away, along with the items with low durability.

The only things left intact were my sturdy body, the key, and the chests.

The destroyed items would all be restored once I cleared the floor anyway, so that didn't matter...

The real problem was something else.

Only around ten chests remained.

Yet the correct chest still hadn't appeared. Every single one had been a Mimic.

A bad feeling slowly crept over me.

When I finally opened the last remaining chest...

'What the fuck?'

This one was a Mimic too.

After killing the final Mimic, I looked around in confusion.

There were no chests left.

Something had gone wrong... like it always did in Nightmare difficulty.

I followed the passage back to the entrance.

Of course, the tightly sealed stone door didn't open. There wasn't even a keyhole on this side.

I stopped time.

'What did I miss?'

There was nothing left in the cavern now.

Could opening the stone door and coming in here have been the trap from the start?

As I continued thinking it over, a thought suddenly struck me.

'...The acid.'

Come to think of it...

The acid filling this cavern was exactly the same as what the Mimics spewed out. Its color and toxicity were identical.

An absurd idea came to mind.

What if this entire cavern was... inside a Mimic?

I activated Weak Point Insight.

I looked all the way from the passage to the cavern, piercing through the murky view around me.

Then I found it.

A red haze flickering on one side of the wall, something that wouldn't appear if this were just an ordinary cavern.

The corner of my mouth curled up.

'Bingo.'

Opening the chests had been a trick from the beginning, completely unrelated to clearing the floor.

This was the real thing.

The boss of the eleventh floor was...

I approached the red haze and stabbed it with the Sword of Heaven's Gatekeeper, wrapped in Heavenly Aura.

...Kuuuuuuuu!!

A violent current suddenly swept through the cavern.

Massive pressure shoved me toward the entrance as though I were being sucked in.

The tightly sealed stone door opened, and my body was thrown outside.

I regained my senses, used Air Step, and escaped the acid tsunami.

Then the sight before me was...

"Whoa."

A giant Mimic.

As the entire dungeon collapsed from the vibrations, an enormous Mimic twisted its body as if it had gone mad.

I'd just come out of its mouth.

This was the boss of the eleventh floor.

Boom! Boom!

Rubble rained down from above.

I activated Skin Hardening, ignored it, and examined the boss Mimic.

There were no weak points visible on its outer body through Weak Point Insight.

Like the other Mimics, I would have to attack it from the inside.

Just as I was thinking of entering its mouth again and striking its weak point...

Screeeech!

The boss Mimic spat out a mass of Mimics as if it were giving birth.

They bounced across the waves of acid and leaped at me.

I stabbed the Mimics to death, swatted some away, and used Finger-Flick Art to kill more as I approached the boss.

Then I launched myself back into its mouth.

Mimics were swarming inside the boss's mouth too.

Overflowing acid, falling rubble, and Mimics turned the place into complete chaos, but it wasn't a problem.

Their poison didn't affect me at all.

I pushed through the obstacles without hesitation and returned to where the boss's weak point had been.

Stab!

Once again, I drove the Sword of Heaven's Gatekeeper deep into the weak point and tore through it wildly.

Screeeech!

The boss Mimic seemed to be loving every second of it.

Its pained screams echoed through the cavern.

As I continued attacking the weak point, the red haze spread wider and wider as if cracks were forming.

Using Heavenly Aura, I relentlessly cut away and carved out the entire weak point.

Then, finally...

"...!"

The entire wall twisted and tilted toward me.

I used Air Step repeatedly and landed safely on the ground.

As I caught my breath, a message appeared.

[You have successfully cleared the 11th floor of Nightmare difficulty.]

"Phew."

I laughed.

The eleventh floor.

It had taken a while, but I cleared it easily.

[Absorbing the power of the floor.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

.

.

.

[Your level has increased.]

[You are the first to successfully clear the 11th floor of Nightmare difficulty.]

[You are being moved to the reward room.]

Footnotes:

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