Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 201

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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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Chapter 201. The Tower – The Cursed Treasure of Immortality (3)

“Gahhhhh! The mist! The mist!”
The fish monsters exhaled mist with all their might, desperately trying to block out the sunlight.
Though the mist dispersed as quickly as they exhaled it, dozens of them releasing it simultaneously created a thin veil that succeeded in dimming the sun’s rays.
Had it been genuine sunlight, even this gossamer fog would have been useless—it would have turned the fish monsters not merely to jerky, but to ash. Yet this sun that hung in the cavern was only a 4th-Class Magic spell.
The fish monsters burned and writhed in agony, their desiccated skin blistered, and hurled themselves toward us.
Half their number focused on generating mist, so only half as many as yesterday attacked us.
Unlike yesterday, when we’d stumbled in ignorant of what awaited, this time we came prepared.
Rachel clung close to Lee Su-young, reinforcing Su-young’s slime barrier defense—a magical shield formed from dozens of cards—with her own Magic.
Protected by the reinforced barrier, Lee Su-young and Rachel secured their safety, freeing Diana and me to advance on the statue while dispatching the incoming fish monsters.
The fish monsters charged at us, desperate to prevent Diana and me from reaching the statue.
But thanks to Lee Su-young and Rachel providing covering fire from behind their secure position, we reached the statue without difficulty.
“No!”
The lead fish monster, even as its body burned in the sunlight, threw itself at us to block our way—only to have its entire frame engulfed in flames from Lee Su-young’s fireball.
I pressed the magical sigils I’d prepared—inscribed on silver thread—against the statue to activate the Sealing Magic.
“Grrrraahhhhh!”
As if sensing the Sealing Magic’s approach, the statue glared at me with eyes that radiated dread, unleashing a wave of eerie magical power that drove me back forcefully even as it cast enchantment and curse upon me.
My left hand, gripping the Magical Formation woven from silver thread, twisted from my fingertips as fish-like scales began sprouting across my skin.
“Not so fast!”
Diana pressed down on the statue with her silver Holy Power.
Breaking through the crushing force, I successfully affixed the silver thread Magical Formation to the grotesquely shaped statue.
In that instant, the statue’s eyes blazed with a sickly light as it began its final death throes.
Crack-crack-CRACK!
“Ahhh!”
The earth shook as though an earthquake had struck.
“The cave is collapsing!”
Fissures split the cavern walls as the tremor intensified.
“Everyone out!”
We bolted from the cave.
At that moment, a massive fish monster erupted from the ground that had been supporting the statue.
Rachel spoke even as she startled back.
“Is it a failure?”
Given how much we’d invested, hearing “failure” would indeed be the worst outcome.
But the current situation was far removed from her concerns.
“No, it’s not what I anticipated, but actually this is quite favorable.”
The cavern collapsed, and a colossal fish monster burst forth from within it.
“Did the sorcerer who set this seal really anticipate events down to this detail?”
And in that moment, the cave’s seal began binding the statue and the massive fish monster, even as a woman materialized beside us.
“Indeed I did, hero of the future.”
An albino woman with snow-white hair and skin, her eyes a striking crimson, stood before us with her body bare save for crimson blood-symbols inscribed across various points of her flesh.
Sunlight surely couldn’t be good for an albino like this.
No—her body was slightly translucent. She was a Spirit Body, a phantom or an avatar.
The moment I reached that conclusion, the woman traced a hand seal with her six-fingered hands.
“I am the Priestess of Banoff Island, Ulgalop. Time permits only a brief explanation. You are likely attempting to apply an additional seal to that statue even now.”
When I nodded, Ulgalop smiled faintly.
“That wicked statue, whenever it senses true danger, unleashes a final death throes. What you see now is precisely that. I died to those throes. But that is ancient history, a matter of no importance. If you wish to know the full account, I’ve left a memoir in Red Beard’s Treasure Vault—consult that. Before the statue consumed me entirely, I severed my own Spirit and completed the seal. All to protect the future hero who will end this accursed thing, and to finish the statue. How fortunate that the sun hangs so high in the sky—the situation is better than I hoped. Under any other circumstances, I would speak at leisure, but time allows no such luxury. Please, I beg you—end that wicked statue.”
So she’d left a memoir as well.
With a smile, having made her final request, the sorcerer Ulgalop expended her Spirit Body, strengthening the binding force that held the statue and fish monster, before she faded away.
The fish monster attempted to exhale mist, but the sorcerer’s seal prevented it, and it thrashed in agony under the sunlight.
With eyes burning with malice, the fish monster swung its thick, webbed fists to kill us—or rather, to devour us.
No, it wasn’t trying to kill us—it meant to consume us.
That statue’s colossal fish monster would die even if it simply remained still.
So the only way for the statue to survive was to seize one of our bodies and shield itself from the sunlight somehow.
“Come to think of it, no matter how I consider it, this is no monster for the 30th-floor range.”
The fish’s desiccated skin cracked like parched earth, splitting open bit by bit.
I drew my sword from my waist, leaped high into the air, and evaded the fish monster’s punch.

Using the Light Body Technique, I vaulted onto the massive fish creature’s arm.
Diana infused my blade with Holy Power while suppressing the statue, and Su-young and Rachel fell back, unleashing a barrage of flame projectiles at the enormous monster.
With such a massive target, even careless throws found their mark.
I sprinted across the creature’s arm toward its head.
At full power, I channeled the Lightning Thunder Demon God Technique, wreathing my entire body in Thunder Energy infused with the essence of Demon Breaking.
Wherever my feet touched, that negating, shattering force left its mark, collapsing the fish creature’s skin.
My Heart Technique had no corresponding sword form, but rebuilt as it was on the foundation of my family’s martial arts, it harmonized well enough with our clan’s blade techniques.

Thunder Lightning Sword, Seventh Form: Flashing End Strike.

My perfected Sword Aura left the blade and cleaved the creature’s neck.
Despite being as thick as a human shoulder, the fish creature’s neck was only half severed.
But the Demon Breaking Thunder Energy embedded in the Sword Aura spread through the creature like a virulent poison, accelerating the collapse of flesh already withering in the sunlight.
While the giant fish creature froze, trying to resist this disintegration, Diana swung her Mace wreathed in Holy Power against the creature’s leg.
Crack!
Diana’s blow shattered the creature’s leg completely, sending it crashing to the ground. Su-young’s Slime unleashed a towering column of flame that scorched the falling monster’s head, and Rachel pierced its heart with a Flame Spear she’d prepared—a weapon nearly at the fifth Class level.
And so the giant fish creature, unable to regenerate under the sun’s light, crumbled to ash and scattered away.
I drifted slowly through the air and recovered the bizarre statue as it fell, using Magic Chain, then completed the sealing work.
The Magical Formation wrapped in Silver Thread absorbed my power and shone brightly, binding the statue. The statue resisted until the very end, spewing curses at me.
“I shall grant you eternal life and tremendous power. Follow me. Believe in me. Desire me.”
“This wretched thing. Stay despicable to the end, why don’t you.”
I reinforced the seal by affixing an additional Magical Formation woven from Silver Thread, and the dog-like voice that had been ringing in my head fell silent.
Yet the curse remained, attempting to corrode my flesh.
I had no choice—I severed my fingers as they began transforming fishlike from the tips, then burned them.
“Tch. At least I’ve got the knack for this now.”
Regeneration seemed omnipotent, but as I’d learned on Floor 28 and Floor 33, there were cases where it simply didn’t work—like against curses.
Poison and disease would likely prove just as useless. And instant death, leaving no time to regenerate, was no different.
I flexed my regenerated fingers, checking their condition, then placed the sealed statue in my Inventory. A Crystal appeared right before me, leading to the next floor.
So the quest wanted me to bring my find to the Tower Common Staircase, then.
Everyone else had poured everything into that battle; they all collapsed to the ground like sacks of grain.
Then we looked at each other and smiled.

* * *

After resting, we surveyed the cavern wreckage where the giant fish creature had emerged and torn everything apart.
Fortunately, this wasn’t some mountain cave—it was an Underground Stalactite Cave, so gold and jewels gleamed between the collapsed rubble.
Clearing the debris covering the treasure was simple enough with basic Magic; it wasn’t particularly difficult.
As we all worked together to clear the wreckage, Diana discovered a Memoir among the rubble and piles of treasure—the writings of the sorcerer who had sealed the statue in this cave.
I approached Diana and asked.
“What does it say?”
Diana and I studied the Memoir intently, while Su-young and Rachel complained that we should look at that later and just help clear the debris.
Well, I suppose it’s irritating when someone slacks off while others are working.
Diana apologized and carried stones diligently, but I cleared the rubble with Magic while reading the Memoir aloud so Diana could hear it too.
Su-young and Rachel gave me exasperated looks as I sat reading, but since I was clearing more debris than all three of them combined, they simply worked harder.
According to the Memoir left by the sorcerer who sealed the statue, the statue was a fragment of an External God from another world that had, over countless ages, attempted to cover the world in ocean.
In ancient times, it had summoned tidal waves and storms, even built a massive deep-sea kingdom to attack the surface, but each time it was repelled when the ancient heroes and Tower Climbers joined forces.
As ages passed and the statue faded into legend, the world grew peaceful and humanity flourished, yet the lurking threat of the statue continued unabated.
Then came a day when Ulgalop, the sorcerer, lived as merely a keeper of this legend, passing it down to future generations.
The retired predecessor sorcerer prophesied that the statue would break its long silence and resume full activity. Making his own life the price, he completed a Sealing Sorcery artifact and died.
It was then that Climbers arrived before Ulgalop, tasked with collecting the statue, and together with them, the sorcerer set out on a journey to seal it.
Yet though they succeeded in locating the statue, dismantling its forces, and weakening its power, they failed at the actual sealing. More than half of the Climbers fell to the statue’s wrath, and the survivors abandoned the mission as lost.
Left alone, the sorcerer judged that the statue could not be sealed by a single person. Thus he resolved to use the notorious pirate—the legendary sea captain Red Beard, rumored to be the reincarnation of an ancient hero.
By spreading rumors of the Treasure of Immortality, the sorcerer lured Red Beard into his snare. Through counsel and deception regarding the statue’s sealing, he succeeded in binding the statue within Red Beard’s Treasure Vault.
Red Beard, having witnessed the ugly truth and suffered terrible experience, raged at the sorcerer—but by then the sorcerer was as good as dead from the sealing ritual.
The great pirate Red Beard begged the sorcerer to teach him how to erase these horrific memories, and the sorcerer readily complied.
Erasing memories was the best solution to resolve the statue’s mental contamination, so the means had already been prepared.
Though the sorcerer probably never imagined that Red Beard would devise a plan to betray his betrayer using the statue itself, before losing his memories.
Come to think of it, if not for that scheme of vengeance, the Floor 33 quest could have ended far more smoothly.
In any case, after Red Beard departed, the sorcerer prepared to strengthen the seal further for the sake of future Tower Climbers who would retrieve the statue, brought the Memoir to a close in this sealed cave, and died.
Su-young, moving boulders with her Slime, marveled at the tale.
“A hero who saved the world, indeed.”
Rachel, too, had begun listening intently to the memoir I was reading aloud, and she nodded in agreement.
“Quite an extraordinary person.”
As I continued reading from the memoir, we gradually cleared away most of the debris, and the pirate Red Beard’s treasures began to reveal themselves.
At the sight of gold and silver, Rachel’s smile turned smug with satisfaction at her investment’s returns.
“At this rate, we won’t need to squabble over how to divide things—we can each take a full share and still have plenty left over.”
At Rachel’s words, the rest of us exchanged glances.
“What’s wrong?”
Rachel seemed puzzled by our reaction.
Come to think of it, Rachel had never seen my Subspace Cube before.

(To be continued)

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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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