Chapter 323
Chapter 323 . With Your Own Power (3)
I also replied with a grin .
“Don’t speak nonsense, Lin . ”
“Are you ignoring me, you little bastard?”
“I can tell . This thing is definitely tied to me, but it’s not purely my power . Not for now, at least . ”
“Hmph, well, you’re not wrong . It can’t be that easy to become a god . ”
“Right? A god is something more…”
I stopped in the middle of my sentence . I didn’t want to say something I had to clear idea about . Instead, I scratched my head, or rather, my armor . Lin then laughed and spoke .
“So what are you going to call it? Since you said it wasn’t a part of you, shouldn’t you need a name to call it?”
“You’re right . Hmm, I don’t know what metal it’s made of, so I’ll just call it something basic . Like Steel . ”
“As I thought, you have no naming-sense . ”
“It’s better than Pure Black Desire!”
I stuck my tongue out at Lin, but ended up licking Steel’s metal . Because of how comfortable it was, I kept forgetting that I was wearing it .
“Did you find out anything else? Like its weakness . ”
“Oh, like the increased chance of receiving a critical hit that Pure Black Desire had?”
“Yes . ”
“Penalties like those all disappeared . The only problem is Pure Black Desire’s properties completely disappeared . As you can probably feel it, its stat boost is gone completely . Mana and demonic energy broke through their limit and condensed into a what’s almost a semi-organism . Don’t expect anything other than Extort . ”
“So Extort is all I have to remember?”
“Yep . To be honest, all ancient artifacts are like that . Items related to the dungeon have all sorts of random effects, but lack a unique authority . Do you know the concept of Ambience?”
“Like aura?”
Lin frowned, so I quickly shook my head .
“I’m kidding, I know . I’m just surprised Lin knows Earth’s artistic theory . ”
“Hmph, who says other worlds are different from Earth? Ambience is an unseen distinctive atmosphere or quality . An object with Ambience is the kind of thing that presents victory to a seemingly disadvantaged side . ”
“Lin has something like that?”
“You’ve seen it before . ”
With that, Lin gestured at his empty back . I immediately knew what he meant . His sniper rifle . The gun that killed the leader of the Book Walkers, a world’s enemy in one blow . As I thought, it wasn’t a normal weapon .
“Ancient artifacts… Right, they had a rather pure flavor . A blacksmith’s ability is important, but they were mostly created from miracles . The product of coincidences, an Original . Items of the latter generation were naturally compared to items of certain elements or types that were created before, so their League and Ambience fell . Item ranks like Rare, Unique, Epic, Legend, or God are dependent on how much Ambience an item has . ”
“This is the first time I’m hearing about this . ”
“Of course it is . It’s just a speculation I made from how Lord assigns ranks to items . ”
I laughed . Lin pointed at Steel and continued .
“That’s the first Original I’ve seen in a long time, one that surpasses many of the others . Just thinking about how much I helped in its creation gives me joy . Of course, it was also helped by your ability as its user and a miraculous background . Like I said, rather than the ability of blacksmiths, artifacts…”
“— are the products of coincidences born from miracles . I got it . I’ll take good care of it . ”
“Show it to Eleine too . She must be curious . ”
“I will . I’ll be off then . Take care of Leon . ”
“Yeah, don’t come back . ’
Lin retorted half-jokingly and I gave him a glare before leaving Fairy Garden . As I couldn’t ignore Lin’s words, I visited Eleine too . She must have realized Steel’s value at a glance as she immediately offered gold for it . I gave her a refreshing smile and left Loft Valley’s guild area .
In the last venture, not only did I gather an overflowing amount of death energy, I also grew stronger and evolved my armor . Now, it was time to return to the dungeon .
When I entered the 87th floor, a bullet shot toward me without a moment of delay . It aimed straight for the middle of my forehead! I considered dodging it, but decided to receive it to test Steel’s defense .
I reached out with my hand . When the fast-traveling bullet struck the center of my palm, it changed direction and flew back the way it came from in the same speed . I stared at the bullet in a daze . A moment later, I realized that Extort could pretty much reflect all attacks .
BOOM! An explosion rang out in the far distance .
[… You destroyed 1% of the Eliminator’s main body . ]
Then, Sherafina’s seemingly shocked message rang out .
“As I thought, the super long range attack was coming from the main body!”
Though Sherafina didn’t reply, I knew I was right . On the 86th floor, I had to face two types of attacks . One was constant snipes from an unknown distance away, and the other was an army of robots with all sorts of fire weapons .
At first, I thought there were robots with sniper rifles, but even after getting used to the robots’ mana, I couldn’t detect any hints of the sniper shots . As expected, they were coming from the main body rather than robots .
The only mystery now was how it was pinpointing me from such a distance, and also how it was damaged when Steel reflected it .
“… What happens if I kill the Eliminator now using this method?”
Obviously, this was one of the first things that crossed my mind! Sherafina didn’t answer me for a while, but she soon came with an answer .
[That won’t happen . ]
Oh? I grinned and charged forward .
At first, I planned to use death energy to corrupt the robots, then use Dortu’s power to take control of them . However, now that I had Steel, it was a different story . To be frank, an enemy of a lower League could no longer do anything against me .
When I reached this conclusion, I grew a bit afraid of myself . With my Evil Eyes and Dortu’s power, I could petrify all SSS rank monsters, but now, I could even reflect all of their attacks . Even I didn’t want to fight with myself .
Of course, this attack reflection had other limitations other than the enemy’s League . It was that it used my mana whenever the ability activated . But with Peruta Circuit and Absolute Soul, I could suck in mana from anything around me .
In other words, if an enemy of a lower League wanted to penetrate Steel’s reflection, the only option was to barrage me with highly destructive attacks and drain my mana to zero .
In this way, the surest way to defeat me was the Eliminator’s army of robots . Even now, they were shooting a seemingly endless amount of bullets! Although it would take a long time, they should be able to injure me . The main body’s super long range snipes should help too .
Unfortunately for them, Steel wasn’t the only tool at my disposal .
[I am Dortu . Another day of arduous work ahead . ]
“Can you stop talking like that, Dortu?”
Previously, Dortu needed a long time to take control of a single robot . But the robots on the 87th floor weren’t too different compared to the robots on the 86th floor . With the experience he had, it only took him one hour to control a robot that fell to the floor after being hit by its own bullet .
[I am Dortu . Dortu’s getting the hang of doing arduous work . ]
“Now you’re doing that on purpose . ”
On the other hand, I was slowly getting used to reading the trajectories of the robots’ bullets . While Dortu did his thing, I constantly moved around and tried to read the trajectories of the thousands of bullets and cannon shells, which was now possible with my mana detection being incomparably stronger than before .
[You destroyed 5% of the Eliminator’s main body . ]
Even while I dodged most of the attacks, I made sure to receive the snipes that flew at me occasionally . Although I could only detect this bullet when it came close, it was still possible for me to dodge it .
But why would I? I could destroy the enemy I’d meet on the 90th floor beforehand! Sherafina’s messages telling me of my progress was sounding more and more bitter too .
Clearing the 87th floor only took half the time of the 86th floor . While passing through the 87th floor, I considered testing Extort other than its passive attack reflection aspect .
But this ability wasn’t something that would increase in power with more use . Since it would grow naturally with my League, I decided to save it for now . A trump card had to used only when necessary .
Of course, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t use Extort’s power at all . I was already using it to reflect attacks, and if I needed to, I would use it to full effect .
I jumped into Beyond’s 37th floor without resting for even a bit and faced further strengthened Vampire Lords . They poured powerful attacks the moment they met me and retired from life immediately after . As I only had to watch my mana running out, I felt a bit bad passing through Beyond like this .
“Come to think of it, this isn’t that useful for training . ”
That said, I would have Steel for the rest of my life, so I wouldn’t need to get experienced in fighting enemies who couldn’t break through Steel’s reflection . Still, the dungeon had to have monsters that were capable of doing so! Not these fake Vampire Lords, but the real Floor Master!
Just like that, I cleared Beyond’s 37th floor quicker than the First Dungeon’s 87th floor . Immediately afterwards, I went up to the 88th floor .
As I felt many things while defeating the demons’ duke, I wanted to increase my League as quickly as possible .
On the 88th floor, on top of the robots from the previous floors, there were robots attacking me from close range with swords made with aura-like mana essence .
These robots were quicker than the robots armed with guns or cannons, but they still weren’t able to overcome Extort . To clear the 88th floor as quickly as possible, I charged forward .
Until Suddenly…
A giant missile fell down from the middle of the sky .
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