I Inherited the Basement of the Tower - Chapter 64

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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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Inherited the Basement 1 of the Tower – Episode 64

Park Seong-cheol gasped for breath as he adjusted his grip on the spear.
Beneath his feet lay Li Wei’s corpse, utterly lifeless from the strike of Set’s Spear.
Yet there was no time to catch his breath.

Flap, flap—!

“Li Wei…!”

Lin Xiao-wei emerged from the darkness.
She had never held Li Wei dear, but within this dungeon, he was her only ally.
Seeing him dead, her eyes burned crimson with fury.
It was less a thirst for vengeance than irritation at how the situation had complicated.

“Damn it. When it rains, it pours. The two of you were always together. I thought you had something special. Are you a Chinese Hunter too?”

Park Seong-cheol raised his spear again, but he had already exhausted all his remaining mana and stamina fighting Li Wei.

“Die, you bastard!”

Crash, crash, crash, crash—!

Park Seong-cheol’s body was helplessly driven backward by the sharp winds and feather attacks Lin Xiao-wei unleashed.

“Ugh…!”

At the moment his knees buckled from reaching his limit.

“What? I thought it was Seong U-jae and Jinhyeok. So it was you?”

From the darkness came a voice—far too familiar and arrogant.
It was Kang Ha-jin.
He walked forward with ease, his gaze alternating between the blood-soaked Park Seong-cheol and Lin Xiao-wei.

“…Kang Ha-jin.”

Park Seong-cheol swallowed hard.
The expression I’d seen moments ago flashed before his eyes, and without thinking, he gripped the shaft of his spear tightly.
Of course, he had no intention of attacking right now, but it was a survival instinct to defend himself if necessary.
Now that I thought about it, Park Eun-ji was visible behind Kang Ha-jin.
No, there were other team members too, but his gaze was drawn specifically to her.

“…Is that girl alright?”

When Park Seong-cheol asked, Kang Ha-jin let out a soft laugh and turned his gaze away.

“Mind yourself. You’re about to die anyway.”

Then he immediately shifted his attention toward Lin Xiao-wei.
Her complexion had turned deathly pale.

“You, you are….”

From the faint shadow behind Kang Ha-jin, someone slowly emerged into view.

“Hello?”

Park Do-hyeon from the Nameless Guild.
He grinned wickedly and waved the dagger in his hand.
The wound where the dagger had struck throbbed painfully.
Kang Ha-jin in front, Park Do-hyeon behind.
Determining that she was completely surrounded, Lin Xiao-wei unhesitatingly unfurled the wings on her back and shot upward into the air.

Flap—!

‘The dagger won’t reach me up here.’

I’ll escape like this.
As long as I can set foot on Chinese soil, I’ll survive.
Unlike Li Wei, a mere foot soldier, I had quite a powerful backer behind me.

But in that moment, Kang Ha-jin’s eyes gleamed coldly.

“You’re only worried about Park Do-hyeon. How disappointing. What, am I not scary enough?”

Clang—

The eerie sound of a jet-black longsword being drawn echoed through the air.

“Yahwi Style, Third Form.”

Slash—!

A single swing.
A wave of darkness cleaved through the void, rising up to sever one of Lin Xiao-wei’s massive wings in an instant.

“Kyaaaah!”

She screamed, losing her balance and writhing in the air.
She barely managed to stay aloft.
Unfortunately, Kang Ha-jin’s assault was far from over.

“Black Armor.”

Kang Ha-jin murmured.

Whoosh.

Wings resembling Lin Xiao-wei’s own sprouted from his back.
With jet-black wings now adorning him, Kang Ha-jin propelled himself along the sword path carved into the void.

Burst—!

Defying gravity, he shot forward and reached Lin Xiao-wei in an instant.

“…!”

Her eyes widened in shock, but only for a moment.
Kang Ha-jin gathered the acceleration of falling gravity at his blade’s tip and drove it straight down toward her heart.

Crack—!

“Ugh… gasp….”

It was instant death.
Lin Xiao-wei’s body crashed into the ground, sending up a thick cloud of dust.
A gruesome murder scene unfolded in mere seconds.
All the team members who arrived too late couldn’t hide their shock.
They knew nothing of the Chinese hunter’s existence.
Therefore, it would appear that Kang Ha-jin had killed a team member he’d trained and coordinated with in the Training Ground all this time.
As everyone stood frozen in confusion.
Kang Ha-jin opened his mouth with a cold, sunken voice.

“I grant no rest.”

Ding!
【Thanatos’s Mark activates.】

* * *

Sizzle—

Dense darkness erupted near my left shoulder, and a searing pain flared up.
At the same time, black energy began seeping into the corpses of Lin Xiao-wei and Li Wei scattered across the ground.
Soon, with an eerie sound of bones, the two bodies twisted and rose to their feet.
Li Wei’s pale skin was covered with black serpent scales, and his two eyes had become vertical slits like a snake’s.
Lin Xiao-wei’s wing that had been severed earlier was replaced by dense darkness, precariously attached behind her back.
Both were now Undead themselves—beings that could hardly be called human anymore.
As if unfamiliar with being alive again, they stared down at their own hands with hollow eyes.

I gestured toward them and commanded.

“Tell me the truth about your plans and your secrets.”

They were low-ranking Undead dominated by Thanatos’s authority.
Without even attempting resistance, they began spilling the truth in horrifying voices.
That they were hunters from China, had infiltrated under false identities, and deliberately attempted to sabotage the conquest of this Special Dungeon Layer.
And that they had intended to kill every elite member of Korea’s conquest team if the opportunity arose.

“….”

As I listened to their confessions, the team members’ expressions grew cold and rigid.
Park Eun-ji, as if struck by shock, covered her mouth with both hands.

“How could this be….”

The team members I’d considered family were actually foreign spies trying to kill us.
A silence filled with betrayal and fear hung in the air.
Once I’d confirmed the truth, I spoke in a cold voice.

“Now that you know the truth, there’s no reason to keep you alive. You’re not even that strong, and you’re ugly to look at.”

I snapped my fingers lightly.

“Return to rest now.”

The light faded from Li Wei and Lin Xiao-wei’s eyes.

Thud—.

They collapsed to the ground in unison, becoming nothing but corpses.

Crackle—!

I opened a pocket dimension and unceremoniously shoved the two bodies inside.
The fact that I’d killed fellow humans and disposed of their corpses didn’t sit entirely well with me.
But I had no intention of accepting their attacks simply because my conscience felt uneasy.
They targeted our lives first, and they paid the price for their failure.

“Let’s find the rest. It’s time we left.”

At my words, the team members nodded, setting aside their conflicted emotions.
Park Do-hyeon retrieved Yang Sang-jin from where he’d been hidden away beforehand.
Finding the remaining members, Seong U-jae and Jinhyeok, took
about half a day, and we discovered them in a massive cave at the edge of the field.

* * *

“…Ugh, sniff! Captain, sniff! I thought we were going to die like this!”

The moment we entered the cave, Seong U-jae came running toward me with tears and snot streaming down his face, embracing me.

“…Huh?”

I froze in utter bewilderment. His older brother?
A rough-looking man with a scraggly beard and thick eyebrows was calling me his older brother and weeping profusely.
It turned out that Seong U-jae’s actual age was merely twenty years old.
He was a youthful young man with only a one-year age difference from Park Eun-ji.

‘This is absolutely ridiculous.’

When he was young, he had accidentally consumed a spiritual elixir he found in the Tower, causing a reverse transformation that left him with this aged appearance.
Even in the Vigilante Guild, notorious for its ruthlessness, he was the youngest member who monopolized everyone’s affection.
He maintained a stern demeanor because it made criminals fear him more.
Besides, those around him found his true personality inconvenient.

“…Twenty years old?”

Yang Sang-jin, who had been cowering before him in terror, muttered in a deflated voice.
Of course, knowing the truth didn’t erase Seong U-jae’s overwhelming presence and menacing appearance.
So he still couldn’t bring himself to treat him carelessly.

“Hey, Captain! We’ve handled the Special Dungeon Layer clear just fine—where exactly have you been all this time?”

Just then, Jinhyeok, who had been sitting on a barrier stone inside the cave, glared with bloodshot eyes and voiced his frustration.
Behind him, an enormous treasure vault stood open.
Inside the cave, mountains of high-purity mana stones, various skill books, and rare items were stacked in towering piles.
Jinhyeok and Seong U-jae had discovered this cave by chance, and they firmly believed that the vast wealth in this vault was the ‘true clear reward of the Special Dungeon Layer.’

‘This vault is probably just a hidden cache where a general-ranked Solar Knight stashed plundered goods before Thanatos arrived.’

As the Tower was decommissioned, the contents of this vault became the reward offered to climbers instead.
The true core reward of the Special Dungeon Layer was Thanatos’s mark and the authority of necromancy.
But I saw no reason to reveal the truth to them.
Such a reward was more than sufficient compensation for the team members’ life-or-death efforts.
Above all, I needed this excellent ‘false reward’ to report to the journalists and the Association.

“So, how are we going to divide this?”

Just then, Yang Sang-jin licked his lips while gazing at the mana stones in the vault.
Mana stones of overwhelming purity never before discovered on the Surface.
His mental calculator was already working overtime, computing the enormous profits he would gain from selling them on the market.

‘Money and fame—those are the only motivations driving that bastard,’ I thought.

In a way, his blatant materialism was refreshing.
The other members had been curious about their rewards too, exchanging cautious glances among themselves.

“Dividing everything equally would be ideal, but there are clear differences in how much each of us contributed to reaching this point.”

I decided to give Seong U-jae and Jinhyeok first pick since they had discovered the treasure.
Jinhyeok claimed the most expensive-looking rare gems.
Seong U-jae selected a defense-related skill book suited to his position.
What remained was a mountain of mana stones and miscellaneous items.

“Now it’s my turn.”

Since I had already obtained Thanatos’s mark, I intended to be modest and step back, but I stopped when I spotted two particularly eye-catching items tucked in a corner.
I stopped in my tracks when I spotted two items that stood out distinctly in the corner.

“…I’m just taking this. You all figure out how to divide the rest.”

Taking only two worn parchments, I watched everyone’s faces light up with delight.
For them, the mana stones before their eyes held far more value than those old parchments.
The distribution of items proceeded peacefully after that.
Yang Sang-jin, who had been lying around like dead weight after being defeated by Lin Xiao-wei at the start, received the final reward as the lowest contributor.
Yang Sangjin, who had been lying around like baggage throughout the match after being overwhelmed by Lin Xiaoyu from the start, ended up receiving the lowest reward with the poorest contribution score.

“Damn it! Why do I have to get stuck with such a crappy totem!”

But when I checked it with my night vision, that totem was actually a magical artifact of considerable power, infused with a deep blue radiance.
But that totem, which I had briefly confirmed with my night vision, was a fairly powerful magical artifact imbued with a deep blue light.

“Keep that safe. It seems to mean more than just a souvenir.”

Grumbling, he carefully tucked the totem into his pocket with great care.
I chuckled at his materialistic behavior.
Soon, my gaze shifted to the two parchments I had just obtained.
Soon I also shifted my gaze to the two pieces of parchment I had just obtained.

Ding!
【You have obtained ‘Clearance Time Reset Ticket’.】
【You have obtained ‘Floor Skip Ticket’.】

A satisfied smile spread across my face.
The Special Dungeon Layer.
It had taken an agonizingly long time, but this was more than enough to satisfy 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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