I Conquered the Tower with the EX-Class Character That I Raised - Chapter 93
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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 93
Crack. Thud, crackle.
Mudan 2 crumbled into ash, scattering into the wind.
Watching the ash slip through my fingers, I clicked my tongue softly.
‘You did well, Mudan 2.’
The power of an Outer God.
An overwhelming mass and virulent toxin obtained by sacrificing thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of lives.
No matter how flawlessly I had woven my sword energy around it, an ordinary branch could not withstand such corrosion entirely.
“Ahahaha! It’s breaking! Your weapon is breaking!”
Iransu stood inches from my face, his laughter wild with madness, face flushed with exertion.
Watching the brat who believed he had finally cornered me, I turned my gaze to the side.
Beep beep!
[Agent! Nopi’s battery is being rapidly depleted due to the high-concentration toxic mana in the surrounding area!]
[B:12%]
In the corner of my vision, Nopi’s battery steadily dwindled.
In the brief moment I glanced away, the battery had already dropped from 12% to 11%.
The virulent mud Iransu had spread throughout was corroding the very flow of mana within the Fortress, consuming the battery needed to maintain synchronization at twice the normal rate.
“Ha!”
I drew up mana and unleashed a fierce torrent of sword energy, pushing back Iransu’s mud.
Rather than resist my force, Iransu simply retreated, creating distance between us.
With that final strike, Mudan 2’s blade completely crumbled to ash and dispersed.
“Well then. What will you do now?”
Iransu grinned widely.
From the moment Mudan 2 began to shatter, he had been regarding me like a cornered rat.
‘He’s convinced of his victory.’
Looking at that pathetic expression…
The face of that creature who once looked down at me from the Tower with a smug smile overlapped with his.
How strange.
Ten years have passed since the Tower appeared—since that day when the Tower was cleared and every climber, including myself, completed it.
Yet Iransu remained unchanged.
Still bearing the appearance of an underdeveloped child from back then.
He hadn’t changed even slightly.
As if someone had frozen only Iransu’s biological clock.
“You really haven’t changed at all.”
You’ve managed to evade the passage of time quite well.
“…Haven’t changed?”
Displeased by my words, Iransu’s eyebrows twitched.
“I…”
“Ah, no. I was wrong. You have changed.”
At my words, hope flickered across Iransu’s face.
“…Heh.”
If others had witnessed it, they would have thought it was still an unpleasant smile, but I knew better.
When someone wants to receive ‘praise’ from me, their ears perk up ever so slightly.
As if they’re eager to hear more.
‘You’ve grown stronger, how impressive. So you’re desperate to hear words like that, are you?’
“Your manners have deteriorated.”
“…What?”
A crack appeared in Iransu’s smiling face.
“Where do you get off speaking casually to me, you disrespectful brat.”
“…Y-you…!”
Iransu’s face contorted, and a sharp fury surged across his flushed visage.
If only.
…If he hadn’t become an Apostle of an Outer God.
If the power that created this situation where he now ‘cornered’ me had been born from his own strength…
I might have offered praise to my first disciple in ten years.
Well done, you’ve worked hard, how remarkable.
Those warm and pleasant words, you know.
But he became an Apostle of an Outer God.
One who boasts of strength obtained by grinding countless humans into sacrificial offerings…
An Apostle of an Outer God so devastatingly powerful and repugnant that I’ve never seen its like even in the 90th Floor range.
So now, Iransu is no longer my disciple.
He’s a minion of the Outer God that must be killed on sight.
“Kuk, kuk kuk.”
As if driven mad by rage, Iransu suddenly laughed like a melodramatic teenager.
“I wasn’t going to kill you. I was going to cut off your limbs and ask you to serve Father alongside me.”
“You dare?”
“Shut up and listen!”
Boom!
As Iransu stamped the ground with fury, the entire Fortress shook with a deafening roar.
“What gives you such confidence? The moment a swordsman loses his blade, that’s your defeat. Did you spend ten years honing hand techniques? Even so, could they match your swordsmanship?”
“Haha.”
I laughed dryly.
Ever since earlier, really…
What nonsense is he spouting?
“Little fool.”
Why do you think I brought Mudan 2, something that could shatter at any moment, all the way here?
“You haven’t learned a thing.”
That vicious habit of yours—growing careless after victory, toying with your prey.
It’s always been your weakness.
“What?”
Even in this brief moment of wasting words, the battery drained another 1%.
‘There’s no time.’
My reunion with a disciple who had become less than human…
Let it end here.
‘Do you see the disciple who became a worm?’
Mudan 2 had only its base remaining.
I stretched the hand holding it into empty space.
And I focused my mind.
Uuuung—
A world created by intense concentration.
…Time slows to an extreme.
In this desperate situation where the battery gnaws away at me.
I instead let my senses sink into endless tranquility.
Standing upon the clear waters of a mirror-like surface…
I contemplate enlightenment anew.
—What is a blade?
A fundamental question…!
My answer is already determined.
A hunk of metal for cutting and piercing.
A physical shell to contain my inner force and give form to my killing intent.
Yes.
—A blade is merely a tool.
Then, just because this mere shell has rotted and crumbled…
Must I lose the ‘true blade’ honed within me as well?
‘That cannot be.’
As I pierced through the 90th Floor from the very bottom of the Tower, countless pieces of metal passed through my hands—breaking, rusting, melting away.
But has the lethal ‘trajectory’ and ‘will’ I swung toward my enemy’s throat ever shattered?
Unequivocally, no.
I have always despised the Tower.
I despised every enemy that obstructed my path to the 100th Floor.
I even hated my own ‘humanity’ that clung to my feet at every moment of conquest.
Cut them all down.
That alone was the reason my blade existed.
Form is merely a vessel to hold purpose.
If the vessel shatters, then manifest the purpose itself into the world.
‘Hone the intent.’
Uuuung-!
Mana surges fiercely through every blood vessel in my body, gathering at my fingertips.
‘Temper the will.’
A blade is a tool for ‘cutting down.’
With that intent and will, I forge a new blade from the base of Mudan 2.
‘I manifest the sword within me.’
Shhring—!
Though no physical friction occurred, a crystalline sword cry—as if an ancient legendary blade were being drawn from its scabbard—struck my soul and resonated through the air.
Where Mudan 2’s body had turned to ash and vanished.
There, blue mana that had been shimmering like heat haze began to compress and condense at increasingly extreme density, gradually taking on a distinct ‘form’.
Neither the weight of steel nor the durability limits of wood exist here.
A blade of pure intention, cast free from the shackles of physical form, shaped by nothing but the singular purpose to cut.
A mere fragment of the heart-sword, where will itself becomes the blade.
The threshold of the formless sword, where a blade exists without existing.
I name it.
—’Light Blade’.
Fwaaaaaaaaash—!!!
‘Sing, Light Saber!’
The Force is with me, you bastard.
[B:8%]
Raw, unrefined killing intent stormed through the Fortress interior like a tempest.
“…What?”
The smile vanished from Iransu’s face, replaced by shock.
‘Are you afraid?’
You should be.
This is the concentrated embodiment of murderous intent itself.
[B:6%]
“Let’s finish this quickly.”
Like this.
Because I have ‘my sword’ that I can draw anytime.
I don’t need other ‘tools’ like blades anymore.
You fool.
Boom!
The steel floor exploded outward as my body shot through the air like a bullet.
“Uaaaah!!!”
As the distance closed in an instant, Iransu desperately unleashed a violent torrent of mud to block my path.
But.
Whiing—!
A cutting power on an entirely different level from when I blocked with Mudan 2!
Each time the Light Blade in my hand slashed through the air, the mud torrent Iransu spewed never reached me—instead, it evaporated like steam with a sizzling sound.
“This, insane…! Block it! Block it all!!!”
Iransu tore up all the steel from the Fortress floor, merged it with mud, and erected a massive wall.
An iron fortress several meters thick, with deadly poison coagulating like veins between the steel framework—but.
It was nowhere near enough to block my path.
I didn’t even break stride, slashing the light sword horizontally across the barrier.
Shhhhreeeeek—!!!
The solid barrier split as smoothly as tofu under a blade.
No—the steel and mud around the cut couldn’t withstand the force and melted away, evaporating entirely.
Dozens of spear-like projectiles following in succession turned to ash and vanished within the light sword’s trajectory.
I pierced through the scattered remnants of the barrier in one breath and burrowed straight toward Iransu’s chin.
“This… this can’t be…! You never had this kind of power before!!!”
“Humans have a way of improving, you see.”
The blue trajectory of my light sword reflected sharply in Iransu’s wide, horrified eyes.
“Unlike a degraded insect like you.”
“Aaaahhh!!”
Iransu, growing desperate, instinctively crossed both arms and scraped together the mud he’d spread throughout the Fortress as a defensive barrier.
But.
I aimed the tip of the light sword at his heart…
Thunk.
And thrust lightly.
Iransu’s arms.
The mud.
All pierced through.
“That won’t stop me.”
“Ugh… ah…”
Iransu’s pupils dilated as if they might tear.
Blue light erupted from his heart, beginning to incinerate his entire body.
Shhhhreeeek!
Without giving him a moment to struggle, I slashed upward diagonally with the light sword still embedded in his heart, bisecting Iransu’s body perfectly.
Thud. Splatter.
His upper and lower halves collapsed helplessly to the ground.
Crunch, squelch—
A sickening sound that shouldn’t have been heard.
His upper half, split in two and rolling on the ground, twisted its neck unnaturally to look at me, grinning grotesquely.
“Heh… heheheh…”
…Not a single drop of blood flowed from the severed surface.
No organs or bones visible—just a hollow interior.
Only black smoke rising from the mud shell.
Whoooosh—!
From the center of the hollow shell, a single black sphere—as if condensed with dense malice—suddenly emerged.
Crack…! Boom!
Space tore savagely open with a sound like someone forcibly twisting and ripping the fabric of reality.
The Dimensional Rift revealed through the fissure greedily tried to swallow the sphere.
[Indeed, you are The Master.]
Beyond the dimensional rift, a low and languid voice echoed through the air.
[I’ll admit that the current ‘vessel’ has its limits. But next time… it will be different.]
Familiar yet strange—a tone I felt I’d heard somewhere before.
It wasn’t the voice of the ‘underdeveloped’ Iransu.
It was the voice of a mature adult—the voice he would have had if that brat had grown up.
Crack—!
With those words, the torn void sealed shut as the dimensional rift closed.
At the same moment, the crushing pressure that had weighed down the entire Fortress vanished without a trace.
Having witnessed everything unfold before me, I…
reached out and slowly unfurled the ‘spoils’ he had left behind.
“I’m not sure what it is, but…”
A ‘sphere’ that had burst free from within Iransu’s mud shell was quietly emanating light.
“I don’t let drop items slip away from me.”
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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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