Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 91

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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 91. Public Dungeon Battle (6)

With fur bristling, Gung-gi charged at me first.
Because I had been holding the stone earlier, traces of mana lingered around me, so it seemed to think I still possessed the stone.
Lee Su-young hurled a water orb at Gung-gi as it rushed toward me.
The water orb struck Gung-gi, causing it to flinch slightly, but that was all.
At least the Aul Bear had taken damage, but this creature showed no such signs.
However, water rapidly evaporated from Gung-gi’s body where the water orb had struck.
I ignored the water orb and dodged Gung-gi’s claws as it lunged at me, shouting out.
“Frost orb!”
At my cry, Lee Su-young put on the ring obtained from Floor 16 and hurled a frost orb. It was a magical artifact that the Vampire had been storing.
“Kyaaaowww!”
The frost orb struck Gung-gi, and it seemed to take damage, retreating slightly. Diana and I seized the opening and swung our sword and mace.
“Tsk, it’s tough.”
Even with considerable force behind the strikes, I barely managed to cut through the outer layer of skin and muscle.
Because the skin and muscle were so tough, the mace was actually more effective than the blade.
Gung-gi, now slightly wounded, grew even more enraged and swung its front paw at me.
I used lightness technique to evade the paw.
From the sound of the wind being cut, a single hit would be enough to finish me off.
Fortunately, the environment favored us.
Because of its massive size, Gung-gi’s movements were equally large, and every time it swung its front paw, it struck the cave wall, preventing it from executing full swings.
Meanwhile, our smaller frames allowed us to wield our sword and mace freely.
Diana continued to target Gung-gi’s head, swinging her mace relentlessly.
After taking a hit from the mace once before, Gung-gi seemed to judge that head strikes were particularly dangerous, so it twisted its head to dodge.
In such a confined space, its evasion options were limited and obvious.
I timed my sword thrust to match Gung-gi’s dodging motion.
“Grrrrr!”
As my blade left a trail of shallow wounds and blood flowed, Gung-gi released a murderous aura and pursued me relentlessly.
If not for Lee Su-young’s frost orbs repeatedly striking Gung-gi and slowing it down, I might have taken a hit from its paw.
“Brother! The frost orbs aren’t unlimited!”
Unlike the slime that fired water orbs or flame orbs endlessly, the frost orb was a magical artifact with a limited number of daily uses.
With ten shots per artifact, Lee Su-young could fire a total of twenty frost orbs.
“The water orbs work fine too, so mix them in!”
Following my instruction, Lee Su-young began alternating between water orbs and frost orbs.
While each water orb’s damage wasn’t significant, the continuous soaking and heat loss gradually seemed to dull Gung-gi’s movements.
However, steam began to fill the cave from the water that Gung-gi was evaporating.
I could fight using qi sensing instead of sight, but the two of them relied heavily on vision.
Diana, unable to land proper hits on Gung-gi, focused on restraining it while casting some kind of buff on me.
“It’s a new ability I gained after ascending to the 20th Floor!”
Thanks to it, I felt invigorated and my body moved faster.
Glancing at my status window, I saw that my strength, agility, and stamina had all surpassed 20 with the aid of Holy Blessing.
A sudden surge in physical capability could be difficult to adapt to, but I had wielded far stronger bodies before, so adjustment came naturally.
With enhanced physical prowess, the power of my martial techniques increased noticeably as well.
My blade, which had only grazed leather and muscle before, now carved deeper through flesh.
Deeper wounds meant greater blood loss.
Normally, bleeding would slow the body, but for Gung-gi, the loss of heat from hemorrhaging seemed to be what truly impeded his movements.
At this rate, I could aim for exsanguination.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, Lee Su-young cried out.
“I’ve used up all the Frost Orbs!”
Without the Frost Orbs raining down anymore, Gung-gi seemed to seize the advantage, unleashing an intense wave of heat.
“Ugh!”
“What is this, a living furnace?”
Diana and I, standing close by, recoiled from the scorching air.
Gung-gi wrapped flames around his foreleg and lunged at me.
Was he really that upset about me stealing that stone?
He was relentlessly fixated on attacking me.
Drenched in sweat despite the inferno, I dodged Gung-gi’s foreleg strikes.
His persistent assault sent walls of fire erupting in all directions.
Even Gung-gi seemed to be straining, his breathing growing ragged.
But I too was growing exhausted from the onslaught.
The scorching heat and flames made breathing agonizing, and merely being near Gung-gi caused my flesh to sear—blisters forming across my exposed skin.
Diana seemed capable of enduring it, but Gung-gi remained fixated on me, sensing the stone’s mana within me.
I swung my blade while bracing against the heat, while Diana abandoned her focus on his head and battered his entire body.
Gung-gi could no longer ignore Diana’s assault and lashed his tail at her, sending her crashing against the cave wall.
“Sister!”
Lee Su-young fired Water Orbs relentlessly at Gung-gi, but he evaded them with ease.
It seemed even the heat loss from the Water Orbs was becoming too much for him to bear.
“ROOOAAARRR—!!”
Gung-gi roared and swung his foreleg, then opened his jaws wide, aiming for my throat.
Before his fangs could close around my neck, I drove my left fist into his mouth and struck his uvula.
“Gack!”
Tears streaming from his eyes at the sudden blow to his throat, Gung-gi clamped down on my left arm and spewed fire.
“Argh!”
I shielded my left arm with inner energy as much as possible, enduring the searing pain.
All the while, I drove my blade repeatedly into Gung-gi’s neck.
Cut after cut, the wounds grew deeper.
As his injuries worsened, the flames he exhaled rapidly diminished.
I unleashed Frost Orbs in rapid succession into his open mouth.
“Die! You damned Goblin bastard!”
Lee Su-young wasn’t the only one carrying Frost Grenades.
Lee Su-young had two, and I had one.
As Gung-gi’s belly filled with ice, he convulsed in agony and hurled me from his jaws.
Slammed against the wall, my left arm throbbed far worse than the impact itself.
My left arm was charred black, with patches of frostbite crystallizing across the scorched flesh.
I drew a deep breath and regenerated my left arm using my healing ability.
“Tsk, fractures and lacerations mend instantly, but burns and frostbite regenerate so slowly.”
It must be because my Regeneration skill was still at a low level.
If my skin peeled away entirely, regeneration might accelerate, but the agony was too unbearable to deliberately strip it.
Gung-gi, his mind consumed by pain and fury, charged at me blindly.
That’s when Diana surged upward with all her strength and brought her mace crashing down onto Gung-gi’s crown.
Crack!
Robbed of reason and fixated solely on me, Gung-gi reeled from the devastating blow and slammed into the cave wall instead of me.
The impact had fractured his skull and dealt a severe concussion.
Yet that was all.
Despite the blood and the concussion that should have felled him, Gung-gi—even as a subspecies—rose again, driven by one final obsession to drag me to the underworld as his companion.
The distance was too close to evade. I poured everything into my blade, resolved to surrender my life.
Slash!
My sword severed Gung-gi’s claw and half-severed his neck.
I had already torn that neck deeply when he bit my left arm, so even this surprised me—the claw had been cleanly bisected.
Looking closer, my blade was wreathed in a faint bluish aura, forming a razor-thin edge along the steel.
“Oh, Sword Aura.”
The instant I recognized it, the inner force draining from my dantian overwhelmed me, and I collapsed to the ground with a dizzy groan.
“Uhhh~.”
Damn, does Sword Aura consume this much inner force?
No, wait—I’d been fighting hard and regenerating my arm, so my inner force was nearly depleted when I conjured the Aura.
I nearly died from exhaustion due to depleted inner force, not from the battle itself.
“Ji-woo!”
“Ji-woo, big brother!”
Both of them rushed to my side and checked my condition urgently.
Diana restored my incompletely healed left arm with her holy power while checking my pupil reflexes.
“Stay with me! Ji-woo!”
With trembling hands, I tried to purchase a Mana Recovery Potion from the Shop window.
“Big brother! Snap out of it!”
Lee Su-young gripped my hand tightly, her voice thick with worry.
No! Don’t interrupt me while I’m buying the potion!
“B…uy…!”
“Oh! Sorry!”
Hearing my words spoken with every ounce of effort, Lee Su-young and Diana stepped back from me.
I barely managed to purchase a potion.
But I lacked the strength to drink it.
My mind spun dizzily.
Ah, so I wasn’t nearly dying from exhaustion—I was actually dying from it.
When true exhaustion set in, I couldn’t even think, let alone breathe properly.
The moment I realized this, Diana uncapped the potion and slowly poured it into my mouth.
I endured the sensation of choking and somehow managed to drink the potion.
As my inner energy began to accumulate in my core, I circulated it to gradually escape the exhausted state.
As vitality slowly returned to me, Diana cried out in relief.
“You’re alive!”
It wasn’t Gung-gi that nearly killed me—it was that fleeting moment of enlightenment that created sword energy, that sudden perception that almost took my life.
In truth, even if Gung-gi had bitten me, as long as it wasn’t instant death, Diana’s holy power could heal me, and I had potions, so I would have survived.
Gung-gi’s attack was essentially nothing more than a final desperate gambit.
Meeting it head-on was clearly a misjudgment.
No, thinking about it again, was it really?
If I had dodged, I wouldn’t have lost my life, but serious injuries would have been unavoidable.
But if I had met the dying Gung-gi head-on, I wouldn’t have suffered such grave wounds.
Since I wasn’t alone—Diana and Lee Su-young were with me—if I had just bought time, they would have attacked and completely cut off its breath.
I nearly died not because of Gung-gi, but because of acute exhaustion from breaking through to the first-rate realm, something that could have happened at any moment.
“Hah… let’s rest for a moment.”
My breathing was labored and I couldn’t judge properly, but as I recovered slightly, I realized I could have simply reabsorbed my clone and created it anew.
Since I hadn’t recreated my clone for years, my judgment had dulled and mistakes occurred.
After resting sufficiently, I picked up my dagger to process Gung-gi.
The front legs, chest, and neck were slashed badly, which would lower the hide’s value, but there were still more intact sections than damaged ones.
In fact, the minor wounds I would create while skinning it would probably lower the price more than the battle damage.
Well, if it didn’t sell, I could commission it to be made into leather armor instead.
Since I would wear pseudo-silkworm synthetic fiber combat gear, Lee Su-young or Diana would wear it.
“Oh?!”
As I skinned and processed it, I discovered a large mana stone and an ability stone in its chest.
“Wow! An ability stone! Does this mean I’ve paid back one ability stone?”
Our distribution ratio was simple—if it didn’t seem like I had hunted alone, we split it equally.
Lee Su-young had depleted one ability stone’s worth between the monster wolf, the Vampire, and Gung-gi.
“Do I owe two-thirds?”
“No, let’s say Diana has also paid back one. The Vampire’s share was significant, and you provided great help when we hunted the red Goblin.”
Diana readily accepted my goodwill.
“When we return to the City, you promised to teach me the martial art of wielding a mace. What was its name again?”
“It’s called the Staff Method.”
“Yes, the Staff Method. I want to learn it.”
Diana seemed bothered by the fact that her attacks hadn’t landed properly.
The power Diana’s attacks possessed was threatening even to Gung-gi.
However, that attack had only truly landed once—when Gung-gi’s eyes had rolled back in murderous intent to kill me.
“Yes. I’ll teach you.”
As I clumsily performed the butchering, I discovered something else within Gung-gi’s body.

(To be continued in the next chapter)

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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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