Climbing the Mythic Tower as a Cheating Administrator - Chapter 21

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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 Cheating Administrator Climbing the Mythic-rank Tower (21)
The humanoid figure was seamless and polished, rendered entirely in silvery gray.
With no facial features—just an egg-shaped head—it would be fair to call it an egg-spirit.
‘A carved wooden puppet, yes—exactly that feeling. So far, it matches the report.’
The material was clearly not wood, a distinct difference, yet the overall form matched what he’d seen in the Korea One-Way Group’s Southeast Asia report.
Right. There was no room for error.
So then, most likely……
A twitch.
The Guardian’s pinky finger moved—barely, infinitesimally.
“Hrrgh!”
Cwwwwwwwwwww—!
Mu Saeng hurled his entire body backward.
In that same instant, the wooden wall of the cottage exploded in a shower of splinters.
Sheer lightning-fast speed and devastating force!
He hadn’t been unprepared.
Still, this was only the 5th Floor—no matter how hidden the condition, it shouldn’t be this intense.
Could it really possess its original power intact?!
“It really does?!”
It really did.
Had it not been for Strong Bone doubling all his stats……
Had his Agility been twenty instead of forty-six, he wouldn’t have reacted in time.
With the First Kill strike, it would have ended with that single, opening blow.
[Crack. Consider yourself lucky there’s only one of them.]
“That’s not the time for jokes—”
[Then I’m counting on you, Mu Saeng!]
Wash, too, was hurling quips, but tension vibrated through every word.
He pushed his black-framed glasses up, his eyes and lenses flashing bright and sharp.
“Entity confirmed. No data.”
Once the dust settled in a whisper, the mechanical voice came through.
How strange—no eyes, no nose, no ears—yet he could feel the presence of a face turned toward him.
“As per the creator’s request, I will eliminate the intruder.”
“Hey, shouldn’t you have said that before swinging? What if I were on Maia’s side—oooagh?!”
Mu Saeng twisted with every ounce of strength he had.
The moment he twisted, his vision filled with the Guardian’s forearm.
As the Guardian drove forward with a punch, the shockwave—whoooosh—sent Mu Saeng flying backward with ease.
Being knocked sprawling was almost something to be grateful for.
Because the instant he tried to plant his feet to halt that explosive momentum, the wooden floorboards shattered, sending fragments scattering everywhere.
Life hung by a thread—measured in fractions of a second.
“Wash! One more time—you’re saying we can’t shut down the system, right?!”
Mu Saeng shouted as he bolted out of the half-destroyed cottage.
Wash had been clear about the hidden condition of this 5th Floor.
The Guardian’s immobilization.
The simplest way was to damage its core and bring it to a halt.
But there was something even simpler.
Never activate the core in the first place.
In other words, turn off the core’s power.
Using Wash’s ability.
[I told you, that violates Administrator Authority! The ones at the top will notice immediately.]
Yet Wash had already provided an answer.
Over the past twenty hours, while he’d been grinding stats on Stone Golems, the first idea had already been rejected.
Still, there was a clear reason Mu Saeng asked.
“The other thing still works, doesn’t it?!”
What wouldn’t work still wouldn’t work.
But what he’d said would work—was that still an option?
Now that he’d actually faced the Guardian, had circumstances changed at all?
[Quack!]
The cry of a yellow rubber duck rang out forcefully.
“Eliminating intruder. Eliminating intruder.”
Shwooooosh—
The Guardian pursued Mu Saeng beyond the cottage threshold, relentless.
The Guardian surged forward in pursuit.
“Good, that’s enough!”
Mu Saeng turned to face the Guardian head-on.
It was approaching at a staggering speed.
But it wasn’t coming at him in a single bounding stride. Of course not.
It was driving forward with tremendous speed and force, kicking off the ground in great leaps.
And Mu Saeng knew this already.
That the Guardian would emerge from that structure.
That he’d have to fight even after leaving the house.
So then?
Metallic crunch—————……!
Of course he’d prepared defenses around the house.
Hidden beneath gravel and sand, powerful and heavy enough to crush the Guardian’s ankles.
The most efficient hunting method humanity ever devised—a trap!
“Ambulatory obstruction detected. Removing obstruction.”
The Guardian’s movement lurched to a halt.
Without a sound, those mechanical words and motions were eerie to witness, but Mu Saeng wasn’t the type to sit idle.
“A trap that even the boss of the 25th Dungeon couldn’t escape! It won’t be that easy!”
Setting traps and luring prey into them.
As a Dungeon Sherpa who’d lived by this trade, it was second nature—nothing remarkable.
The problem was what came after.
The trap might have held the 25th Dungeon’s boss, but for a Guardian from the 55th Floor, it would be no real obstacle.
At most ten seconds. Perhaps five.
What could he accomplish in that window?
He couldn’t disable it completely.
Even driving Slaiken’s Fangs deep into its body wouldn’t change that.
Poison had no effect on this flesh.
Striking the Core directly might work, but…….
“Hm!”
Screee—!
The fangs skidded away with a sharp, grinding sound.
They merely scraped across the surface, leaving shallow gouges.
Piercing deeply was difficult.
In that sense, fangs, no matter how sharp, could never be sharper than a blade.
‘If the fangs are limited like this, then a sword…….’
[Mu Saeng!]
Wash called out to him sharply while he was testing.
“Got it! Now—.”
Mu Saeng refocused on the Guardian.
He’d run his tests, and he was satisfied with what he’d learned.
Now it was time to finish this.
“Obstruction removal interference detected. Blocking interference.”
The Guardian reached out to grab Mu Saeng as it approached; he barely dodged.
With its ankle caught, its turning was sluggish—he circled to its blind spot and reached out his hand.
What he held wasn’t a weapon.
He pressed something else into the Guardian’s joints with quick adhesive.
“Starting now! Wash!”
A small pouch suddenly appeared in Mu Saeng’s hand.
One he’d taken from Park Do Hyun and his gang from the Korea One-Way Group.
The Anything Pouch (A).
A pouch for reducing the volume of objects before storage. Note: mass remains largely unchanged. Not four-dimensional storage. Designed by METAL RHINE.
A pouch.
Mu Saeng opened its mouth and swung it violently through the air toward the Guardian’s face.
Everything he’d stuffed inside came pouring out in a torrential stream.
Between Mu Saeng and the Guardian, an overwhelming cloud of dust rose up, briefly blocking their lines of sight.
“……Visual obstruction detected. Analyzing obstruction source—dust……stone powder. Rock fragments—.”
Stone powder.
Not ordinary stone dust.
“—Identified as component matter of creator’s other creation.”
Powder from the stone that made up the Stone Golem.
The stone that Mu Saeng had crushed and ground for a full twenty hours!
The Guardian had spared barely two seconds’ attention to the Stone Golem’s fragments.
Once the stone dust settled, it would no longer obstruct its vision.
The trap it had been destroying with one hand was likewise on the verge of cracking apart.
In roughly three seconds, Mu Saeng would have to fight for his life against a Guardian restored to full working order.
“Wash!”
Or rather, he nearly would have.
If he hadn’t prepared a contingency.
Wash’s black-rimmed glasses gleamed.
It was risky. But it might just work.
Because over the past twenty hours, Kim Mu Saeng had proven that when your life is on the line, efficiency means nothing.
[Mage Maia access ID confirmed. Stone Golem’s Core interface established.]
Wash was about to prove something too.
[Rebooting!]
Whiiiiiing──────……!
Not through Administrator Authority.
A workaround route using only Maia’s authority.
Not shutting down the Guardian’s Core.
But reactivating the Stone Golem’s Core instead.
Mu Saeng had been focused on this from the start.
Not killing the Guardian.
But rendering the Guardian inoperative—freezing it in place.
Into that jointed, puppet-like form,
if he shoved a Golem’s Core into each of its major joints and reactivated them——?
Whoooooosh──────…….
With the rush of air, stone dust began clinging to the Guardian.
Creak, creeeeak…….
“Foreign matter intrusion. Foreign matter intrusion. Construct of creator’s secondary creation. Removing—.”
As long as the Golem’s Core was active, it repaired its form.
And now, the substance it was drawing in to restore that form was entirely powder.
Nearly impossible to shake off.
And the Golem’s Core was affixed by Mu Saeng to the crevices of those joints.
“That won’t do. Stop!”
The adhesive wasn’t the only thing at work.
The Dungeon Sherpa Quick-Drying Adhesive seeped into the gaps of the Guardian’s fingers, neck, and every other joint it couldn’t fix as the creature slowed, its movements clogged with stone dust packed into its articulations.
“Foreign matter intrusion. Foreign matter removal impossible.”
Its neck hardening. Its head no longer turning.
The enormous mass of stone dust converging around the Golem’s Core didn’t just seal the attachment points.
It was burrowing into the gaps between the shoulders and thighs, the elbows, knees, ankles, and even the joints between its fingers…….
Crunch, crunch-crunch……!
The Guardian could no longer move.
The silver-gray spherical puppet, robbed of so much as a twitch, muttered one last time.
“……No operational methods available. Entering standby mode to optimize energy efficiency—.”
“You can’t! Not yet!”
In the instant the Core tried to shut down,
Mu Saeng rushed forward gripping the B-rank artifact short sword he’d scraped together his entire savings to acquire—the very blade that had run through Slaiken—and bore down on the Guardian.
He knew the Core’s location from the Korea One-Way Group’s files.
He’d even marked it with Slaiken’s Fangs so there’d be no mistake.
So now.
With the short sword, sharper than those fangs…….
Shhhhrriiiiip!
He carved open the Guardian’s body.
Wash’s eyes went wide.
* * *
Mu Saeng walked toward the place where he’d gathered the Stone Golem’s Cores.
The satisfied smile on his face came not only from the success of an idea he’d wracked his brain over for the past twenty hours.
[How did you manage that, Kim Mu Saeng?]
“What?”
[How did you extract the Guardian’s Core so precisely?]
Thanks to the perfect, unblemished Guardian’s Core he was holding in his hand!
It was a flawless technique—so clean that even Wash had felt compelled to ask about it—and the fact that Mu Saeng could apply it in actual combat filled him with quiet satisfaction.
“It’s just a variation of something I do. Slicing sashimi.”
[……Sashimi?]
An explanation that made no sense whatsoever, no matter how Wash approached it.
Watching Wash’s bewildered expression, Mu Saeng elaborated.
“Yeah. The 13th Dungeon has plenty of fresh meat suitable for it. Once you’ve done all the prep work—bleeding it out and everything—you get good at it.”
[…….]
Wash simply kept his mouth shut.
Asking more questions wouldn’t help; he’d never understand anyway.
‘……That absurd kind of knowledge and experience. And he applied it in a situation where his life was on the line. This man.’
The real issue was that Mu Saeng had actually done it. Done it in that moment.
The Guardian was supposed to stop functioning, but there had been danger—real danger.
If you destroyed the Core, you destroyed it. Why would you carve it out while keeping its functions intact?
“Anyway, that B-rank Short Sword really paid for itself. Feels like I got my money’s worth.”
[Stop talking nonsense. Why were you trying to keep that thing, Mu Saeng?]
Wash asked, watching Mu Saeng grin from ear to ear.
Mu Saeng tilted his head, as if the question made no sense to him.
“You said it yourself. Up to around the 10th Floor, something from a lower floor becomes the foundation for clearing an upper one. So what if—or even if that’s not exactly it—wouldn’t there be some use to bringing up the 55th Floor Guardian’s Core in perfect condition?”
[……You, you really are something. Mu Saeng. You really are-.]
Wash trailed off.
Mu Saeng simply grinned and didn’t wait to hear the rest.
He absorbed every Stone Golem’s Core he’d collected.
[All Golem Cores have been fully collected.]
[Cores collected: 38/5]
[Time remaining: 00:33:37]
[Congratulations!]
[Clear Condition achieved.]
[Ability Stat Points +6]
The conquest of the 5th Floor—twenty-three hours and twenty-seven minutes in the making—was complete.
Now came the time to reap the rewards.

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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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