The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 81

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

#081. House Robbery

The situation in Osaka Dungeon was immediately reversed due to the massive supply of materials.

Forces that had only been depleted until now could return to the front lines shortly after being wounded, and the combat power of adventurers who could get proper nutrition and rest was also greatly improved.

Trials that do not kill humans make humans stronger.

The adventurers of Osaka Dungeon, who had desperately fought for survival even as their comrades fell one by one, had exchanged their stamina for the precious resource called ‘experience’, and as soon as their stamina returned with the support of Seoa dispatched by Sung-jun, they began to explosively unleash their potential with terrifying momentum.

And at the same time, on the 84th floor of Tokyo Dungeon, an army of human adventurers was advancing toward the front at a terrifying speed.

At the very front, a single robed mage was leading the group like a leader, flying ahead at the forefront.

-Kwaaaaang!!!-

The massive group of monsters that had somehow tried to block the man’s path vanished like dust the moment the man waved his hand.

Behind him, the elite forces of Japan’s four major raid clans, excluding the Black Spear, were following while panting heavily.

“Huff… Huff!!! Wait!! Rest!!! No matter how urgent the situation is, this is too fast!”

“In my opinion, we’re late.”

Replying coldly, Sung-jun drew up his mana once again.

His gaze was piercing beyond the 90th floor, somewhere deep in that abyss.

‘The situation that occurred in Osaka Dungeon was clearly aimed at buying time. So I’ll attack the main base at maximum speed to not give the enemy any time to prepare.’

Sung-jun had established several hypotheses by combining the information he had gathered since arriving in Japan.

The first was that the enemy had the ability to arbitrarily adjust the state of portals leading to each floor.

This hypothesis was formed because the portal blockade incident in Osaka Dungeon occurred in a form too advantageous to the enemies to have happened ‘by chance’.

The second was that while the enemy could manipulate portals going ‘up’ floors, they couldn’t change the rules for portals going ‘down’.

This was a hypothesis deduced from information about previous dungeon conquests, formed when Sung-jun saw hastily improvised boss monsters appear when he was conquering floors at very high speed.

If they could freely control the number of people using portals going down to lower floors, they could have slowed the dungeon conquest speed just by controlling the number of people going down, without using such troublesome methods.

The last hypothesis Sung-jun established was that the Dungeon Master could adjust the number of monsters within limited resources, like pouring resources to produce units in a strategy game.

If infinite monster generation was possible according to the Dungeon Master’s will without any constraints, it would have been possible to annihilate all adventurers who entered the dungeon simply by increasing the number and strength of monsters.

But what was important to Sung-jun was not the ‘hypothesis’ he had established by combining the information he had gathered.

‘Why did it have to be that way?’

The reason why they had to deliberately lure Awakened into the dungeon while leaving other civilians alone, instead of using the method of summoning large-scale monsters to sweep away humans on the surface like the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entities that appeared in other countries.

Sung-jun had deduced that reason through Japan’s dungeon system, which was structured like a game.

“The ruler of the dungeon that appeared in Japan is probably using negative emotions generated by adventurers who entered the dungeon as resources to summon monsters. The reason we haven’t encountered particularly powerful enemies in this conquest, unlike our previous conquest, is probably due to that reason.”

Shindo Ayaka, who was running alongside Sung-jun, heard his words and asked a question.

“Do you mean the monsters in Tokyo Dungeon were weakened because monsters had to be deployed to Osaka Dungeon?”

“That’s what I’m predicting. The timing when sudden changes began to occur in dungeons that had shown no particular changes for 6 months was right after I started moving to install base camps in the five major dungeons. That means the existence of base camps became threatening enough to the enemy that they had to hastily change the form of dungeons they had been operating. Ms. Shindo. What do you think changed the most through the base camps?”

Shindo Ayaka, who had been lost in thought for a moment, spoke to Sung-jun.

“Overall, it became a state where adventurers could operate more comfortably. Being able to bathe, eat, and get proper rest inside the dungeon, even if paying relatively expensive costs, is bound to bring tremendous changes to adventurers’ psychological state.”

“I think so too. And I thought about it. Why don’t portals that go directly to the surface from intermediate floors exist in Japan’s dungeons, and why do harvest sites that produce food ingredients exist while places that can supply drinking water don’t exist.”

“…Are you saying it’s deliberately designed as a structure that causes stress?”

“There’s a high possibility of that. And I think there’s a high possibility that enemies are using negative energy collected from dungeons that way to generate monsters inside dungeons. The portal incident in Osaka Dungeon is also likely a means to maximize negative energy by driving adventurers into isolated situations.”

Sung-jun wanted to force the enemy into a situation of binary choice.

If they strengthened the power of monsters deployed to Tokyo Dungeon to block his advance, the number of monsters attacking personnel isolated in Osaka Dungeon would relatively decrease, and conversely, if they strengthened monsters in Osaka Dungeon, the breakthrough speed in Tokyo Dungeon would increase even more.

And as Sung-jun expected, to block Sung-jun’s breakthrough that was faster than expected, the Dungeon Master summoned monsters in numbers of a completely different dimension than before on the 85th floor of Tokyo Dungeon.

-Kwaaaaang!!-

The belly part of a monster resembling a giant spider swelled greatly, then with a loud explosion, fluorescent acidic bodily fluid scattered in all directions.

The adventurers who had gathered in one place to attack the spider-type monster collapsed to the floor as a handful of blood with terrible screams.

Clearly a new pattern of monster that hadn’t existed on previous floors.

That creature wasn’t the only monster newly appearing on the 85th floor.

“Aaaaah!! My stomach!!! My stomaaaach!!!!!”

At the sight of the terrible monster bursting through the abdomen like a scene from the movie Alien, adventurers began vomiting on the floor.

Then adventurers corresponding to leaders of each group grabbed the necks of their collapsed comrades and roughly pulled them back.

“Don’t panic! Be wary of the needles the enemy shoots!”

The adventurer who had died moments ago had been hit in the arm by a needle shot by an insect-type magical beast with an appearance mixing mosquitoes and flies.

At the time, it didn’t seem like a particularly serious injury so they left it alone, but the needle shot by that magical beast wasn’t a poison sting but something closer to a type of spore.

A terrible form of magical beast that burrows into the attacked target’s body and hatches inside organs through blood vessels.

The most terrible characteristic this magical beast possessed was that despite having the trait of growing by eating internal organs, the host felt no pain at all until just before hatching.

Due to that terrible characteristic, most of the attack force hit by the flying magical insects didn’t notice the abnormality in their bodies and left their wounds untreated, and as the infected magical insects hatched simultaneously, a large hole was created in the attack force’s power.

“Damn, if only we had known a little earlier…”

Self-destruction and infection weren’t the only problems.

Another monster that began appearing from the 85th floor was using a peculiar ability to forcibly absorb the blood of living beings within a certain range around itself.

A peculiar attack that made blood fountains burst through skin and spray like mist, making it look like red fog was rising.

The technique itself that turned attacked targets into withered mummies was a terrifying technique, but what was even more horrible was that the opponent who absorbed the blood fog generated that way instantly recovered from all wounds they had suffered so far.

Over 100 people were sacrificed in an instant and the entire attack force fell into panic, but Sung-jun was actually smiling.

Because at least the worst-case scenario he was thinking of hadn’t occurred.

‘That guy is definitely here.’

If the location where the Dungeon Master was wasn’t the deepest part of Tokyo Dungeon, naturally they should have used the strategy of abandoning Tokyo Dungeon’s defense and concentrating all power on Osaka Dungeon.

But now, the enemies were pouring incomparable power compared to before into the 85th floor.

As if they would block the advance of the attack force including Sung-jun at any cost.

When Sung-jun waved his hand gladly, dozens of magic circles appeared around Sung-jun and began to brilliantly sweep away all enemies that had been charging toward the front.

Then Shindo Ayaka, who had run to Sung-jun’s side, shouted toward Sung-jun.

“Sung-jun! I understand Sung-jun’s abilities well, but now you must preserve your strength! This is only the 85th floor! Since we don’t know how many floors lie ahead, please don’t recklessly take the lead!”

As soon as her words ended, clan members of the Goddess’s Guidance clan charged past Sung-jun to the front with fierce momentum.

As if to show the enemy who the true master of this dungeon was.

Watching the formation that had been disrupted by the enemies’ bizarre attacks being instantly reorganized, Sung-jun thought in his head.

Would it be possible to break through Tokyo Dungeon to the 100th floor with the current forces?

He couldn’t be certain.

In Sung-jun’s view, the level of monsters newly appearing on the 85th floor was similar to the level of the Corrosion Entity group he had encountered in China before.

That meant monsters appearing in the remaining 15 floors might be stronger than the Corrosion Entities he had faced in China.

Perhaps the monster he would encounter on the 100th floor might have power rivaling Yeojiggwi.

However, for Sung-jun, whether it was possible to clear Tokyo Dungeon with the current personnel wasn’t a particularly important issue.

Just like when facing Yeojiggwi, there was no guarantee of victory, all the actions Sung-jun was taking now were things he did not because he ‘could do them’ but because he ‘had to do them’.

Sung-jun was already feeling pressure in his heart about the fact that the time spent in Japan had been excessively long.

‘Only 1 so far. Even including the Silermantis that Teacher sealed, only 2 apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity problems have been solved. Considering the remaining 5 that are probably still active outside Japan, I need to eliminate Japan’s apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity as quickly as possible and move to Europe or the United States.’

If Sung-jun’s goal had simply been to save Japan, Sung-jun would have tried to conquer Tokyo Dungeon with leisure.

However, since the duty Sung-jun was shouldering was not the salvation of the Japanese archipelago but ‘humanity’s salvation’, Sung-jun needed to eliminate the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity that appeared in Japan by the fastest method possible.

Teacher’s legacy that the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity that appeared in Japan on D-day was presumed to have taken away.

To recover ‘Pandora’s Box’.

The reason Sung-jun tried to eliminate the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity that appeared in Japan as his second conquest target was precisely for that reason.

‘If I could have recovered that first, conquering Tokyo Dungeon alone would have been possible…’

Sung-jun had inherited all magic accumulated by previous Demon Lords over dozens of generations from his teacher, but he couldn’t use all that magic freely.

Like when he used the seven daggers ‘Seven Veins’ obtained by eliminating the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity that appeared in China to implement a grand magic circle with the entire Earth as its range, special artifacts were needed to use magic of certain sects.

The artifact Sung-jun was trying to recover this time was also one of the artifacts absolutely necessary to use magic of a specific lineage.

The supreme treasure left by the previous Demon Lord who was the founder of necromancy and a master of necromantic magic, the ‘Key of the Dead’.

It was a legacy of the previous generation with an enormous number of undead legions sealed within, created for a single mage to independently face national-level enemies.

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