Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 104

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Manager Using Cheats Climbing a Mythic Tower (104)
Kim Moo-saeng had already been planning to induce paralysis through Blue Lightning.
He’d simply stumbled upon a chance to acquire one elemental magic during all this, and had chosen the skill that would work most efficiently with the various Artifacts he possessed—something far better than simple offensive magic.
Especially if, on Floor 28 that he’d soon have to cross, he could paralyze the zombies without killing them.
If he could leverage the cascading electrical current that spread in a chain-like manner as a kind of area-of-effect technique.
Given the tower’s nature—where the Clear condition would be satisfied the moment he met the set quota—his reasoning was that minimizing Kill Count while achieving Additional Conditions would prove invaluable.
“Guuuhhhhhhh…….”
“Grrruk, grurruru.”
And Kim Moo-saeng found himself recognizing it once more.
“Right, theory and practice really are different. Back at the entrance they were all bunched together—that was perfect.”
That things didn’t always work out according to plan.
Paralysis?
True enough, when touched by Blue Lightning, the zombies’ bodies stiffened and they toppled over.
Click.
Crackle-crackle-crackle────────!
“Kack-.”
“Gruuuh…….”
“Gruu, kyukyukyukyukyu…….”
Yet only one of them was falling now.
The other two merely flinched for a moment before resuming their approach toward Kim Moo-saeng.
Kim Moo-saeng found himself clicking his tongue in frustration.
“No, if the ground were soaked with water, it should—hm? It should spread instantly like Chain Lightning, shouldn’t it? But when the water’s too pure, that’s the problem.”
The zombies were wet. The ground was wet.
Yet the current from Blue Lightning couldn’t pass through the zombies-ground-zombies-ground-zombies in one continuous arc—that was the issue.
When the ground was wet, conductivity certainly improved, but as distance increased, the electrical energy likewise weakened.
Moreover, the water from Water Hose with its high purity actually ranked among the lower end for conductivity, so some of the zombies were hardy enough to endure it.
[Gwahahaha! So even your clever scheme has reached its end, Kim Moo-saeng? In that case, wasn’t learning Water Hose actually a waste? It can’t be undone—doesn’t that put you in quite the bind, Kim Moo-saeng!?]
Wash clicked his beak together with eyes gleaming with intrigue.
Kim Moo-saeng laughed softly at the sight of him.
A bind?
Well, it is troublesome.
“Though not entirely, really. If they’re bunched up, the effect is excellent, so……. There’s one advantage—it’s far more efficient than striking them one by one with Blue Lightning.”
It was more a matter of getting 99 points when he could’ve scored 120, if he was being honest about the disappointment.
That the current spreads through the ground with some inefficiency was true, but if the zombies clustered together, it would still be sufficiently effective.
Creating that cluster in the first place—he could easily manipulate that through his own movements.
Like now, letting them think they were encircling him…….
“Whssh.”
Tap-. Tap-. Tap……!
Three uses of Void Step—a leap, a dash, a pivot.
Then Water Hose.
Shuuuuuuuaaaaack──────!
And then?
Landing, Blue Lightning extended.
Click.
“Kack-.”
“Kyui!”
“Bubut, bubububu…….”
In one fluid sequence of continuous motion, thirty-one zombies collapsed, paralyzed.
Wash’s beak, which had been held high with an intrigued expression, dropped sharply.
[St-still! Gwahahaha! As you venture toward the city center, the zombies will only grow more numerous. Even your Void Step will barely suffice for escape, won’t it? It’ll be difficult to employ it this way, no?]
It was perhaps the only thing Wash could think of—that they were still in the city’s outer districts.
Toward the center, zombies would multiply, and with Kim Moo-saeng’s limited Void Step without Rampage, even this tactic would become impractical, he’d implied.
“You seem awfully eager for me to struggle, you know that?”
Kim Moo-saeng furrowed his brow lightly as he spoke.
[It’s not that I’m eager for you to struggle-.]
Watching Wash offer an embarrassed defense, Kim Moo-saeng laughed.
Wash wasn’t entirely wrong, either.
“Still, fair point. Can’t keep doing this forever, so……. I’m holding back for now, I haven’t brought much of it.”
[-Gwahak? You’re holding back? What exactly did you bring, Kim Moo-saeng?]
But what if, from the start, he hadn’t learned Water Hose?
You’re planning to paralyze them one by one with Blue Lightning?
Of course that wouldn’t be Kim Moo-saeng’s style!
The ground trembled across the city, and countless silhouettes emerged from the fog, slipping through every alley and corner.
By rough count, over a hundred zombies!
“Oh, quite a few this time. Looks like I’ll need to use something special.”
Moo-saeng rummaged quickly through his pack.
He wasn’t thinking of using Water Hose.
He was aiming for chain electrocution through the ground.
[Use what? What are you talking about?]
For that purpose, Moo-saeng had come prepared.
[White powder?]
Through Water Hose, he sprayed the white powder in all directions in an instant, scattering it across the surroundings.
Watching it dissolve the moment it touched water, Wash tilted his head quizzically.
Zombies drenched and soaked, the ground scattered everywhere with enough of the white powder.
Moo-saeng held up Blue Lightning and explained it to him.
A medium to sufficiently raise conductivity.
A means to elevate a ninety-nine-point plan to one hundred and twenty points, perhaps even higher.
“Right. Salt.”
Click.
Crackle-crackle-crackle-crackle———————……!
All one hundred and thirty-seven zombies were paralyzed and collapsed.
Not even densely packed—only through ground-based chain electrocution.
“Come on, hurry. The Central Temple should be…… Anyway, compasses don’t work here, which is annoying. Thank goodness I’ve memorized the map.”
Moo-saeng took off without hesitation.
Wash had to hover in place for a moment.
“Hurry up! What are you doing?”
Moo-saeng’s voice echoed through the fog.
Wash adjusted his black-rimmed goggles.
[……That’s absurd. Kekeke!]
But only for a moment.
Wash too couldn’t help the laughter leaking from his beak.
[Damn brat! Anyway—. Anyway, you, Kim Moo-saeng! So barbaric, and yet!]
Wash’s form vanished into the fog.
[Time Remaining: 37:12:55]
Moo-saeng had progressed roughly seventy percent toward the heart of the fog-shrouded city on Floor 28.
* * *
“So this place is an Outskirts City of Kayaku Empire…… and with the intention of weakening the empire’s power, a priest from the Barisi Church caused this. That’s the story, right?”
Moo-saeng asked, kicking a zombie aside.
So far, the main topic of conversation between him and Wash had been only about the Additional Conditions or Hidden Reward Conditions of each floor.
They’d rarely discussed what the floor specifically consisted of in concrete terms.
The first reason was that there hadn’t been many floors like that until now.
Basically, it had mostly been a matter of defeating monsters or reaching a certain point within the time limit.
It couldn’t be otherwise.
[I don’t know.]
“Hm? You don’t know? And you’re an administrator?”
The second reason was that Wash was an administrator.
[Squawk! How dumb can you be! I only designed the structure and conditions of the stage! Should I care about such primitive fiction? Whether it’s an empire, a kingdom, whatever—there were people assigned specifically to that design work!]
“I see.”
He couldn’t grasp specialized terminology, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t understand the structure.
‘So the work is divided well. Wash is, so to speak, the program side of things. World-building and all that—there’s a different administrator for that……. Right, even thinking of it as a company, it’d be the same.’
But Moo-saeng still felt a small pang of regret.
There was the case of Mage Maia.
That floor too had been straightforward—defeat the golems and collect their cores, then done.
‘But what came after that……. In other words, it was thanks to that I got this too.’
Click.
Through Mage Maia’s Goggles, the original city without “a trace of fog” shone through.
You might call it an automatic function that corrected away the fog from the view.
The reason he’d been able to obtain such overwhelmingly powerful Artifact was precisely because he hadn’t just defeated the golems and called it done.
He’d verified the Hidden Reward Condition, trusted that there was definitely a story connected to that condition, and was confident he could somehow exploit it—that conviction of Moo-saeng’s was why he’d obtained it.
Then?
“The Barisi Church…. They’ve got their fingers in plenty of pies, that’s for sure.”
He could assume that other information might be obtainable from this place as well.
It was one of the premium pieces of intelligence that climbers of Floors 40–50, unable to endure the tedium, had painstakingly unearthed from the lower levels.
The fact that this was an Outskirts City of Kayaku Empire.
Yet even they had said nothing about who was present in the Central Temple of the City.
‘They probably cleared out all the zombies as they went…. If commotion broke out, they’d just flee immediately. That kind of approach.’
In other words, information about the priest’s existence in the Central Temple—something that couldn’t be learned through such methods—was what Wash had known: top-tier intelligence.
Because that priest was an ‘Additional Condition,’ even if no one knew exactly what he did.
Connect these two things, and what do you get?
The Kayaku Empire, located on the continent where the Rosal Kingdom existed.
And the Barisi Church—a monotheistic faith—was the entity wielding the most religious influence across the entire continent, not merely the Rosal Kingdom.
[Kya-kya-kack, an interesting composition indeed. If miracles genuinely exist in this world, how would primitive mankind behave? Would they act blindly? Or could they somehow champion atheism despite it all? There was one obsessive bastard who fixated on research into the patterns of such behavior.]
“Huh? No, I’m not interested in complicated philosophy like that. What matters is—”
Rephrased: this incident involved those holding Divine Authority—an entity of immense spiritual influence across the continent—
and those holding Human Authority, who possessed the most expansive territory and the mightiest military forces.
“—the underhanded struggle. That’s what’s important.”
Perhaps something had begun right here, right now, from this very place. That was Kim Moo-saeng’s conjecture,
“and from what I know, there aren’t any quests on Floors 40 or 50 featuring direct conflicts between the Kayaku Empire and the Barisi Church…. Wait?!”
At least one thing was certain.
Tap-tap-tap-tap────────!
He leaped forward swiftly, dodging; four small arrows embedded themselves in the spot where Moo-saeng had been standing moments before.
Not zombies.
The priest who’d caused the zombie outbreak….
“Thinking about it logically, of course. The priest wouldn’t come alone. It’s not like he’s a field laborer.”
People dispatched ostensibly to protect that priest.
Through the fog, Moo-saeng saw them clearly.
Through Mage Maia’s Goggles, the count was four people total.
They all had their noses and mouths hidden behind hoods, but identifying their true nature wasn’t particularly difficult.
[Ordo]
―Race: Human
―Age: 31
―Affiliation: Barisi Inquisition
―Occupation: Inquisitor
Names and ages might differ, but their affiliations and occupations were all identical.
“Inquisitors, I presume?”
Moo-saeng spoke.
All four inquisitors flinched simultaneously, though only for a moment.
They didn’t exchange words.
Yet in the next instant, four silhouettes shot outward in different directions.
[Kim Moo-saeng! Enemy—.]
“Yeah, I know.”
A coordinated encirclement. Elimination.
Moo-saeng dodged another volley of small arrows with ease, muttering to himself.
“Conversation’s nice and all, but really….”
If they were going to come at him like this, there was no need for civility.
Moo-saeng drew out the Poison Dagger
“This is much better.”
and smiled.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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