The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 82

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#082. Key of the Dead

 

The 85th Floor of the Tokyo Dungeon.

 

-BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!-

 

With continuous explosive sounds, the atmosphere of the 85th Floor rippled like waves.

 

It was the sound of hundreds of ‘suicide bombers’ that had been charging toward the front of the attack team after being hit by Sung-jun’s summoned magic, chain-exploding before they could even reach their allies.

 

The allied forces of the Four Major Clans following behind Sung-jun could only click their tongues at that overwhelming power.

 

“He’s not even allowing them to get close anymore.”

 

“There was a rumor that he alone displays combat power equivalent to all the adventurers in Japan, and I thought it was a joke, but now I’m starting to think it might actually be true.”

 

The adventurers felt awe as they watched Sung-jun’s back, but Sung-jun’s expression was coldly hardened.

 

The monster offensive that began from the 85th Floor was on a completely different level than before.

 

Even Shindo Ayaka, who had advised them to conserve their strength for later, had to request Sung-jun to participate in combat and block the enemies, as their resistance became increasingly fierce with each floor they descended.

 

The massive attack force of nearly 3,000 people was an elite unit composed of the top rankers from the Four Major Raid Clans, excluding the Black Spear Clan isolated in the Osaka Dungeon, but a considerable number of personnel were retiring with each floor they broke through.

 

Moreover, the enemies weren’t simply getting stronger.

 

Suicide bombers that sprayed acid when they died, Shadow Stalkers hiding in shadows to attempt assassinations, illusionist-type monsters using mental magic.

 

Sometimes two or three types of monsters would launch coordinated attacks as if they were a set, and sometimes single entities powerful enough to overwhelm regular attack teams of hundreds would appear.

 

They were like weapons created to thoroughly analyze Sung-jun’s party’s weaknesses and counter them.

 

‘How blatant.’

 

Sung-jun thought as he swung his staff to blow off the head of a charging Shadow Stalker.

 

And in that fierce battlefield, Sung-jun discovered another rule the dungeon was hiding.

 

-Ching!-

 

As the fallen Shadow Stalker’s corpse turned into black smoke and disappeared, a dagger emitting brilliant light dropped in its place.

 

Mythic-grade weapon artifact ‘Shadow Dagger’.

 

It was a top-grade weapon with abilities so powerful that tens of billions would feel light if put up for auction.

 

“Wooow! It’s mythic grade! Jackpot!”

 

The adventurers cheered.

 

As the enemy’s momentum grew stronger, their allies’ casualties were also increasing, but the grade of dropped items was also rising exponentially.

 

It was such a natural reward system for a game world that no one thought anything strange about the phenomenon.

 

But Sung-jun’s eyes watching the dagger on the ground were coldly sinking.

 

The ‘common sense’ that drop item levels increase when enemy levels rise was a natural formula in game worlds, but this place where he stood was not a game but the real world.

 

Realistically speaking, if the opponent’s only purpose was to block Sung-jun’s party’s advance, there was no reason to give out such good rewards.

 

Rather, it would be much more efficient to give stingy rewards while only strengthening monsters.

 

But the opponent didn’t do that.

 

No, they ‘couldn’t’ do that.

 

‘When powerful monsters with new abilities appear, high-grade items that match them are always dropped…’

 

A hypothesis formed in Sung-jun’s mind.

 

What if there was a ‘reason’ that required dropping powerful reward items in order to summon strong monsters?

 

What if the Dungeon Master controlling the dungeon’s rules was also a type of player moving under the absolute rule called ‘system’?

 

Sung-jun thought there must be a ‘cost’ required for summoning monsters as well.

 

If infinite monster summoning was possible without cost, they should have been annihilated long ago.

 

‘Let me think in reverse.’

 

In dungeons, reward items proportional to enemy strength are dropped almost without exception.

 

What if summoning monsters requires a ‘cost’ and the way to pay that cost is precisely ‘dropping reward items’?

 

A faint smile spread across Sung-jun’s lips.

 

If this hypothesis was true, the current situation was an incomparable opportunity for Sung-jun.

 

The faster his advance speed, the more the enemy would have to forcibly bring out stronger monsters.

 

That meant the highest-grade artifacts the enemy possessed might be forced onto the drop table at a timing faster than he expected.

 

Among the relics in Pandora’s Box, the most valuable and powerful items.

 

Sung-jun thought.

 

The strongest and most expensive card among those the enemy held.

 

The pinnacle of necromancy left by his master, Minastrias.

 

The ‘Key of the Dead’ might reveal itself soon.

 

***

 

Necromancy.

 

Even for Sung-jun, who had theoretically learned almost all schools of magic, necromancy was forbidden magic that he could only learn in theory but couldn’t cross into the realm of practice, as he couldn’t properly handle it.

 

The reason was simple.

 

Necromancy absolutely requires ‘corpses’ as a medium.

 

Just as you can’t catch fish where there’s no water, you couldn’t perform necromancy where there were no corpses.

 

But Sung-jun wasn’t leisurely enough to raise human corpses just to practice magic and hunt monsters.

 

Moreover, even raising freshly dead corpses from battlefields had terrible efficiency.

 

While they could inherit the physical abilities and mana circuits from when they were alive, the fact that they died in the first place meant they had suffered fatal injuries, so most revived corpses could only possess combat power at the level of meat shields.

 

In an era when everyone undervalued necromancy, the great mage Erablat, called the 9th Demon King and founder of necromancy, completely overturned the very concept of dominating necromantic spells.

 

Instead of reviving injured and dead corpses to fight on the spot, he created perfectly tuned ‘enhanced corpses’ in advance.

 

Combat weapons that had their muscles and bones strengthened with all kinds of elixirs and artificially implanted mana circuits to display much more powerful strength than when alive.

 

Erablat sealed a tremendous number of enhanced corpses he created this way in subspace and created an ‘access key’ as a magical relic that could connect to that subspace.

 

And that was the true identity of the ‘Key of the Dead’.

 

‘Overwhelming military power that enables an individual mage to single-handedly fight against nation-level forces.’

 

Literally a One Man Army.

 

The reason Sung-jun had so desperately tried to recover the Key of the Dead was to utilize that overwhelming quantity.

 

If he had possessed the Key of the Dead from the beginning, there would have been no need to work hard conquering dungeons with the help of Japanese adventurers like now.

 

‘It’s just speculation, but it’s worth gambling on. Let me raise the intensity of the offensive a bit more.’

 

Sung-jun began randomly pouring out powerful spells he hadn’t used before with momentum that seemed to destroy the terrain itself.

 

As if strongly appealing to ‘someone’ who might be watching him from somewhere that he was targeting their neck.

 

His eyes were gleaming not with greed, but like those of a predator targeting prey.

 

***

 

At the same time.

 

The deepest part of Tokyo Dungeon, the Master Room of the 100th Floor.

 

In a dark room, in a cramped space where only the dim light from an old monitor flickered, a man was nervously tearing at his hair.

 

“Damn it! Those forces got wiped out in 5 minutes? Doesn’t that bastard ever get tired?”

 

The man gritted his teeth while watching the endlessly scrolling combat logs on the monitor screen.

 

The new monsters he had deployed to the 85th Floor were one of his treasured trump cards.

 

Tactics to break enemy formations and eat them from the inside through infection.

 

But Sung-jun was crushing all of that with sheer force.

 

Infection? Burn it away with purification magic.

 

Self-destruction? Annihilate them before they can explode.

 

To the man, Sung-jun was literally an existence beyond specifications.

 

“Points… I don’t have enough points!”

 

The man typed on the keyboard with trembling hands.

 

The screen showed a list of numerous magical relics taken from ‘Pandora’s Box’ and the ‘summoning points’ that could be obtained by offering those relics to the drop table.

 

To slow Sung-jun’s advance speed, he needed monsters that were stronger and greater in number than now.

 

However, he had woefully insufficient points to summon that level of forces.

 

Dungeon Masters operate dungeons using negative emotions like fear, despair, and anger felt by adventurers as their energy source.

 

That’s why he had deliberately made dungeon structures inconvenient and driven adventurers to extreme situations like the Osaka Dungeon incident to exploit their emotions.

 

But Sung-jun’s appearance had thrown all plans into disarray.

 

The Osaka Dungeon instantly transformed into a positive atmosphere thanks to Seoa’s supplies, and adventurers in Tokyo Dungeon were screaming with joy while looking at increased rewards under Sung-jun’s overwhelming fire support.

 

A situation where energy supply decreased while expenditure increased exponentially.

 

It was literally on the verge of bankruptcy.

 

‘At this rate, breaking through to the 100th Floor is just a matter of time. I have to stop it. I have to tie down that bastard’s feet by any means necessary.’

 

The man’s bloodshot eyes flickered.

 

The fastest and surest method was to put ‘mythic grade’ items that provided massive points on the drop table, but that was like a double-edged sword.

 

It would be great if he could summon strong monsters to annihilate the adventurers, but what if the enemy who killed those monsters obtained mythic weapons and became even stronger?

 

It was no different from handing a sharp sword to an enemy charging to cut off one’s own neck.

 

‘Efficiency… I need something cost-effective. Something that can produce the maximum quantity with the fewest points.’

 

The man’s gaze swept down through the item list.

 

And finally, it stopped at one name.

 

[Key of the Dead]

 

Grade: Myth

 

Ability: Summon undead legion and grant control authority.

 

‘This is it.’

 

The man swallowed dry saliva.

 

The Key of the Dead.

 

He was well aware of its abilities.

 

An item with the fraudulent ability to command tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of undead legions with just a single item.

 

Above all, the most fraudulent aspect of the Key of the Dead was that summoning through the item’s ability required no additional points.

 

However, even knowing this fact, he had been unable to use this item carelessly until now.

 

Because this item wasn’t a simple accessory.

 

A diamond-shaped cube puzzle with a string that could be worn around the neck.

 

The Key of the Dead was a special item where the grade and number of undead that could be summoned varied depending on the stage of puzzle completion.

 

‘And I invested 5 months of time only to barely enter the first stage.’

 

When the man clicked on the text that read ‘Key of the Dead’, the Key of the Dead was summoned from the empty air and fell onto the man’s palm.

 

Geometric metal pieces that seemed like they could be completed quickly but weren’t properly assembled.

 

What could be summoned with the first-stage seal release were only the lowest-grade skeleton and ghoul legions.

 

Of course, the skeletons sealed in the Key of the Dead were enhanced skeleton legions that had undergone magical processing to gain metal-level hardness, unlike the rotten bone fragments raised from graves, but to summon high-ranking undead like Death Knights or Bone Dragons, it was necessary to break at least second-stage or higher seals.

 

So he had been treating this item as useless and keeping it sealed away.

 

But now wasn’t the time to be picky about food.

 

Even if they were skeleton soldiers, as long as they possessed combat power far superior to ordinary adventurers, their characteristic numbers alone would be sufficient to hold back the enemy.

 

‘Wait, thinking about it, I’m not the only one who can’t solve this puzzle, am I?’

 

A lightning-like thought flashed through the man’s mind.

 

Even if this item fell into Sung-jun’s hands, would that bastard be able to solve this complex puzzle?

 

It took him 5 months just to solve the first stage.

 

Solving the puzzle of an item acquired during battle on the spot to use second-stage, third-stage power?

 

Impossible.

 

No matter how great a mage he was, intelligence for solving puzzles was a separate matter.

 

‘Right. The risk is manageable. While that bastard is solving the puzzle, my forces will devour them.’

 

Having finished his calculations, the man made his decision.

 

He threw the Key of the Dead in his palm into the air to make it disappear, then sat in front of the computer and clicked on the Key of the Dead once more.

 

-Tick. Tick. Tick.-

 

This time, the Key of the Dead was summoned not in the air but onto the table behind the man.

 

Not in its original size like before, but in a small size that could be worn around the neck of the countless figurines lined up on the table.

 

He moved to the table, picked up the toy-like Key of the Dead, then examined the numerous figurines on the table.

 

Then he hung the Key of the Dead around the neck of an elaborate figurine in the form of a Lich wearing a skull mask.

 

“The master of the dungeon commands, answer the call.”

 

When the man muttered like casting a spell and placed his hand on the figurine’s head, the figurine that had looked like a gray plastic mass was colored and began moving on its own.

 

The palm-sized moving skull-shaped figurine knelt on the desk and bowed its head toward the man.

 

[Great Creator. This humble creation receives your command.]

 

A dry, cracked voice flowed from the figurine’s mouth.

 

The man smiled with satisfaction and commanded.

 

“I command you, lead your subordinates and defend the 90th Floor. For this purpose, I bestow upon you a mythical relic, its name is the ‘Key of the Dead’.”

 

-Whooom!-

 

A dark red light burst forth from the cube hanging around the Lich’s neck.

 

At that moment, the Lich instinctively realized.

 

What power its ‘Creator’ had granted it.

 

And how to wield this power to drop the invaders into hell.

 

[I shall obey your command. Death to the invaders who have defiled the Holy Land!]

 

Instantly, an invisible ripple spread around the skull-shaped figurine, and hundreds of figurines scattered on the desk began regaining color all at once.

 

They clashed their small swords and shields while repeating the Lich’s oath.

 

[Death to the invaders! Glory to the Creator!]

 

Though it was a chorus of small figurines, their momentum was truly eerie.

 

The man looking down at the figurine legion with a satisfied expression opened his mouth.

 

“No, not yet. Since I’ve granted you a relic and you’ve gained tremendous additional power, I’ll create additional subordinates to protect you.”

 

“Creator. The power you have already given me should be sufficient to drive away those insignificant mortals.”

 

“No, that alone is not enough. The 90th Floor, we must settle this decisively on the 90th Floor.”

 

When the man waved his hand, numerous forms of monsters he had conjured in his mind became figurines and poured onto the table.

 

Each one was a figurine with an appearance so powerful it could be called a Layer Boss.

 

“Go. Go and show them.”

 

The man spread both hands left and right and burst into maniacal laughter.

 

“Who the true master of this dungeon space is!”

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