The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 70

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

#070. Blockade

 

It took Sung-jun’s group approximately 50 days to conquer the Yokohama Dungeon up to the 71st Floor.

 

Since it was originally a dungeon that had only been conquered up to the 40th floor, and they had to install base camps every 5 floors while continuously having about 50 people from the existing personnel leave the attack team to guard the base camps.

 

As increasingly powerful Layer Bosses appeared the deeper they went, while the number of attackers kept decreasing, it was natural that the conquest time became longer with each descending floor.

 

Moreover, true to the name “Unbreakable Shield,” the attack team’s characteristic of focusing on defense rather than short decisive battles was also one of the reasons for the delayed conquest.

 

Nevertheless, the condition of the attack team that arrived at the 71st Floor was not too bad.

 

This was because after Sung-jun intervened on the 41st and 42nd floors and broke the Wealthy Bidders’ collusion, an overwhelming level of credits had been released as conquest rewards through on-site auctions.

 

The Wealthy Bidders, who had originally planned to win as many auction items as possible with minimal credits through collusion, threw themselves into the auction prepared to consume all the credits they had brought for this raid once the collusion was broken.

 

And in that process, the Wealthy Bidders who had consumed all their prepared credits agreed to return to the surface together with the Awakened who remained as security personnel at the base camps Sung-jun had established.

 

Thanks to this, despite still having 10 Layer Bosses remaining, all Awakened who participated in this conquest were promised conquest rewards of several million credits per person, and naturally the morale of the entire attack team was maintained at a very high level.

 

Moreover, since they had installed another base camp on the 70th Floor and the entire attack team had taken sufficient rest in the cozy indoor space, the Unbreakable Shield Clan members challenging the 71st Floor conquest could approach the next floor conquest in far better condition than when they first entered the dungeon.

 

That is, until they realized that the structure of the 71st Floor they had entered was completely different from the typical dungeon structure they had been familiar with.

 

‘Something’s different.’

 

Sung-jun, who had entered the 71st Floor, began to feel a strange sense of unease immediately after moving through the portal.

 

This was because a distinctly different sense of pressure from the Tokyo or Osaka Dungeons he had visited, and the previous floors of the Yokohama Dungeon he was currently conquering, was heavily weighing down the entire vast dungeon.

 

‘I’ll find out what’s different if I go deeper.’

 

Sung-jun turned dozens of Corrosion Entities rushing toward him into chunks of meat with a single gesture.

 

However, behind them, even more monsters were competitively baring their fangs as if they had been waiting for the empty space to open up.

 

Completely surrounded by endlessly pouring monsters, Sung-jun looked at his clan members with coldly sunken eyes.

 

“Don’t retreat!”

 

“Wounded personnel retreat to the center of the formation!!”

 

“Damn it! Where the hell are they endlessly swarming from?”

 

The defensive formation that Unbreakable Shield prided itself on struggled to block the wave-like assault of monsters.

 

The problem was the numbers.

 

Even after blocking the enemies in front, the monsters waiting behind leaped over the formation like waves overflowing a breakwater, trampling on their comrades’ bodies.

 

The monsters that broke through into the defensive line immediately began revealing their sharp claws in search of easy prey before their eyes.

 

“Block them!”

 

“Standby defense teams form a second defensive line!”

 

“Aaaah! My arm! My arm!!”

 

“These damn cockroach-like bastards!!”

 

It was understandable that the attack team of a raid clan, which could be called the elite among elites of adventurers, was panicking like a ragtag group.

 

After all, attack team strategies were originally created for multiple attackers to assault a single strong enemy.

 

Of course, there were some Layer Bosses that summoned dozens of subordinates during battle, but a situation like this, fighting thousands or tens of thousands of enemies, was not factored in at all.

 

‘Could it be that instead of a Layer Boss, they created regular monsters?’

 

If there was indeed an authority to manipulate the dungeon’s internal systems at will as he suspected, this would be entirely possible.

 

Both placing large quantities of monsters instead of the Layer Boss that appeared on each floor, and having those monsters pour fierce assaults toward intruders like a legion receiving someone’s commands.

 

Watching the seemingly endless wave of murderous spirits, Sung-jun raised his hand.

 

‘If there are many enemies, this method should work.’

 

What emerged from the magic circle Sung-jun summoned was a large spherical metal mass.

 

The sphere, which appeared to be made of thousands of small needles bundled together in a circular formation, flew like a shell the moment it left Sung-jun’s hand, penetrating deep above the heads of enemies swarming like waves.

 

The moment Sung-jun confirmed the sphere had flown to an appropriate distance where allies wouldn’t be harmed and clenched his extended fingers into a fist, thousands of steel needles penetrated into the monsters’ tough hide with a tremendous explosion.

 

-Kwaaaang!-

 

Hearing the explosion echoing through the cave like an echo, Amano Jugo raised his head to look at the area where the explosion occurred.

 

However, unlike the loud noise, the metal sphere Sung-jun detonated didn’t inflict as much damage as expected.

 

The small metal needles that burst from the sphere couldn’t be considered a very effective means to bring down the 71st Floor monsters that could even deflect anti-tank shells.

 

But it didn’t matter.

 

What Sung-jun needed wasn’t the destructive power of the metal needles, but the conductivity characteristic of metal.

 

Sung-jun immediately drove an incredibly powerful lightning bolt into the heart of the enemy formation.

 

-Kururung! Kwaaang!!-

 

“Queeeeeek!!!”

 

A single lightning bolt extending from the air split into thousands of branches, striking down into the metal spikes embedded in the monsters’ bodies.

 

***

 

“This is almost cheat-level.”

 

In the Master Room located in the deepest part of the Tokyo Dungeon, a man watching the monitor muttered as if sighing.

 

Since he displayed such overwhelmingly powerful prowess against single entities, he had pushed large quantities of monsters into the 71st Floor instead of a Layer Boss.

 

It was a strategy born from the calculation that since the party composition called an ‘attack team’ was originally a group specialized in combat where many suppress few, they would be helpless against attacks pushed through sheer numbers.

 

“But he’s also good at area attacks, you know? And that too in a space called a dungeon.”

 

The fact that mages were a class specialized in area attacks was common knowledge for any gamer.

 

Nevertheless, the reason the man engaged in group combat against the attack team including Sung-jun was due to the special characteristics of the enclosed space called a dungeon.

 

Fire-type magic cannot be used because it’s not a space where air circulation occurs properly.

 

Magic like Meteor cannot be used because it’s a space with a ceiling.

 

Water-flow type magic also cannot be used because there’s no separate water source and there’s a floor where water doesn’t drain.

 

The man’s judgment was that there wouldn’t be much a mage could do in a situation where a considerable number of area attack spells were sealed.

 

However, the mage named Sung-jun overcame the special characteristics of the dungeon space by combining multiple spells in combat, as if mocking the man’s thoughts.

 

“I didn’t think he’d use metal spikes as lightning rods to deploy electric magic…”

 

The fairy flying around the man while watching the monitor said to him.

 

“Is the situation pretty bad?”

 

“No, it’s not that bad. Rather, looking at the overall results, I’d say it’s on the good side. Although the monsters were annihilated, there was also damage to the enemies.”

 

Due to this assault, some of the conquest team members retired from injuries.

 

If they continued to force this war of attrition, they could shave off a considerable amount of additional strength.

 

While checking the list of monsters deployed on the 72nd floor, the man bit his lips.

 

“I would have gone bankrupt if there wasn’t negative energy coming up from the Osaka Dungeon.”

 

“How’s the battle situation over there?”

 

When the man typed on the keyboard, the monitor screen switched.

 

On the battle log screen, still displayed in the form of a classic text game, red text expressing negative sensations generated from adventurers was filling the entire screen.

 

「Adventurer Masashiro feels despair in the face of mortal crisis.」

 

「Adventurer Kei fails to find an escape route and screams.」

 

…

 

「Adventurer Kotaro feels hunger.」

 

「Adventurer Tomoyuki wails before his comrade’s death.」

 

Watching the endless wave of red messages no matter how much he scrolled down, the man smiled.

 

Although they were simple messages expressed in a single line of text, the simple messages that stimulated imagination were chillingly conveying the despair and fear contained within them.

 

“Exactly 198,423 people.”

 

The man said.

 

“All 198,423 people who entered the Osaka Dungeon will die within two weeks.”

 

***

 

“Is there still no report from the search team?”

 

While wiping off the blood clots covering his entire body, Kurosaki Ryusei spoke.

 

Kurosaki Ryusei, the clan master of the Osaka Dungeon’s raid clan ‘Black Spear,’ was currently engaged in a struggle for survival with his clan members on the 70th Floor of the Osaka Dungeon.

 

Not a raid for floor breakthrough, but a subjugation battle conducted for treasure chest exploration and magic stone procurement.

 

The information that a mythic-grade artifact had emerged from a treasure chest on the 70th Floor moved even Black Spear, one of Japan’s leading raid clans.

 

Moreover, since the source was the Osaka Dungeon under their jurisdiction, it was natural for the clan master to personally lead clan members to control the hunting ground.

 

Of course, it was nearly impossible for the roughly 300 Black Spear Clan members to completely control all the numerous adventurers who had gathered after hearing rumors that spread faster than light, but they couldn’t just sit back and watch with their fingers in their mouths.

 

They had rushed to the 70th Floor so hastily that they even abandoned the supplies they would normally have brought, receiving supply materials stocked at base camps deployed along the way, but Kurosaki Ryusei thought this wouldn’t be a big problem.

 

The amount of supply materials that Sung-jun had transferred when installing the base camp on the 70th Floor was quite generous, and even if problems arose, they could just bring supply materials from the base camp on the 65th Floor, the camp directly above.

 

However, Ryusei’s judgment that there would be plenty of supply materials crumbled instantly upon arriving at the 70th Floor.

 

Instead of the supply materials that should have been piled up like mountains in the huge warehouse, mountains of magic stones were sitting there forlornly.

 

When Ryusei immediately called the administrator and angrily demanded to know why the remaining supply materials were only that amount, the clan member in charge of camp management answered with a trembling voice.

 

“There were so many adventurers using the base camp… They all wanted to pay with magic stones as compensation, and since credit values have been skyrocketing lately, we judged it advantageous to secure magic stones.”

 

It wasn’t wrong.

 

The value of magic stones that could be submitted to the Adventurer’s Guild for credits was also skyrocketing rapidly alongside the soaring value of credits.

 

“But don’t worry. I already requested supplies to be sent down to the base camp on the 65th Floor last week, so additional supplies should arrive around tomorrow.”

 

Considering the soaring value of credits, the camp manager’s judgment could be said to be correct.

 

However, the problem was that the amount of supplies that would arrive was also woefully insufficient compared to the number of adventurers active on the 70th Floor.

 

Unless all the security personnel at the 65th Floor camp had resolved to starve to death, there was a limit to the amount of supplies that could be sent down.

 

“From this moment on, we’re stopping all removal of supplies from the warehouse. Stop operating the restaurant inside the base camp as well, and raise the selling price of drinking water by 10 times. Payment will only be accepted in magic stones.”

 

“What? The adventurers will strongly oppose this, won’t they?”

 

“We’re not going to starve them completely. There are harvest sites on the 70th Floor too, right? If they bring crops from the harvest sites, we’ll exchange them for food. Set the exchange rate at 1:3. We need to secure as much food as possible.”

 

Suddenly, the meeting room door burst open as if it would break.

 

Kurosaki Ryusei then spoke to the clan member who had interrupted the important meeting.

 

“Can’t you see we’re in a meeting right now?”

 

“Th… This is terrible!!”

 

“There’s nothing more serious than this agenda. If we handle this wrong, over 4,000 adventurers might starve to death inside the dungeon.”

 

No matter how big the issue the clan member who interrupted the meeting had brought, it would be a trivial matter compared to the contents of the report he was currently holding.

 

However, the moment the next words came out of the clan member’s mouth, the only thing that came to Kurosaki Ryusei’s mind was a single crude phrase: ‘We’re screwed.’

 

“The Gate leading up to the 69th Floor has disappeared!”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————