“Oh, it’s SS-rank again.”
“!!!!!”
“Again... SS-rank...”
“Th-this is insane...”
“This is... i-impossible...”
“......”
“Clan Leader, is your class perhaps SSS-rank Lucky Gambler...?”
“Ha... No, seriously, how can this even happen...?”
While the enhanced androids were tearing through the monsters, Suho and the team roamed the ancient castle zone and came across Tower Random Boxes every now and then.
Yet, astonishingly, every time Suho put etherium into the exchange slot, either an SS-rank item or an S-rank item came out of the box.
It was supposed to be a dud factory that spat out C- or D-rank items at best, so when this Random Box produced an S-rank item for the first time, everyone’s eyes nearly popped out of their heads.
In truth, every time he placed etherium on the exchange slot, Suho stood so his body blocked the view and kept putting in EX-rank etherium,
but the team members, who had no idea and assumed he was using S-rank etherium at most, could only be shocked each and every time.
To them, the odds were simply unbelievable.
“Aw... This time it’s only S-rank.”
From another Random Box he found, Suho pulled out an S-rank dagger.
Already, they had five SS-rank items and four S-rank items.
“C-Clan Leader... Could I maybe... take a look at those SS-rank items...?”
“Later, when we rest in the evening. I’ll show you all of them at once then. Come on, let’s go find more Random Boxes.”
“Y-yes, sir!!”
Their souls half-gone from the flood of S-rank and SS-rank items, the team members no longer cared how the enhanced androids were hunting or how far the tower raid had progressed. With fire in their eyes, they searched everywhere for Tower Random Boxes.
At this rate, an era of S-rank item flooding was about to begin.
Until now, as an EX-rank Crafter, Suho had been putting the failures he made while crafting items—the S-rank ones—up on the Ontower Auction House whenever he needed to dispose of them,
but now there was no need to make S-rank items at all. He could just pick them up for free.
Well, it did consume EX-rank etherium, but he had a mere one billion tons of that EX-rank etherium sitting in storage.
A magical converter that turned practically free etherium stones into useful items!
It was all thanks to the lucky lotto boxes scattered everywhere.
Over the next twelve days, the raid team reached the 70th floor, a miraculous record of arriving there in just forty-two days in total.
Once they left the ancient castle zone, the appearance rate of Tower Random Boxes dropped sharply, and the items Suho picked up stopped at forty-two SS-rank items and twenty-nine S-rank items.
One might wonder, “How much would all this sell for?” but in truth, the profits from selling items were not something Suho cared about at all.
After all, the main customers who would buy equipment above S-rank were only high-rank Admittees, and the wealth they possessed had its limits.
So even if he priced rare SS-rank items at tens or hundreds of trillions, there would be no one who could buy them.
At most, they could probably pay hundreds of billions, maybe a few trillion won.
Even if they were items he had picked up for free, rather than scattering them for such pocket change, he thought it would be better to arm the clan members of Ultimate Line even more solidly.
And if there were still leftovers after that, he could also equip some of the Sanarae Clan members who were working hard as his bodyguards.
Was there any law saying B-rank and A-rank Admittees couldn’t use S-rank equipment? If they used good gear, they would become that much stronger, and that was good in more ways than one.
That was what Suho decided.
* * *
Exactly forty-nine days after entering the tower,
Suho and the Ultimate Line Clan’s raid team reached the 76th floor.
That day as well, they rested and held a meat party, celebrating and commemorating their arrival at the highest section in the shortest time.
Ordinarily, more than half of the total tower raid period is spent on the top 20 percent of floors.
That is because the higher one climbs, the more difficult the raid becomes, and naturally, the more time it takes.
So for a 96-floor tower with a total raid period of 288 days, if about half of that—roughly 144 days—is spent clearing the lower 80 percent of floors, that is, up to the 76th floor, it is considered a respectable pace.
But Suho’s team had now shortened that time to almost one-third.
And this was despite eating, resting, and playing along the way.
If he had deployed all ten super-enhanced androids, and if Suho in his powered armor and the rest of Ultimate Line’s clan members had participated in every battle from the beginning, the time would probably have been shortened much further.
They likely would have finished in under thirty days.
No, without a doubt, they would have finished in far less time than that.
The raid continued.
Entering the top 20 percent was merely a checkpoint of sorts; the finish line was still far away, so the raid team’s climb did not stop.
The enhanced androids never needed rest in the first place, and the raid team members were only following along while resting sufficiently, so their climbing speed accelerated even more in the uppermost floors.
And so they reached the 80th floor without stopping.
Once again, the tower’s environment changed completely.
“Hoo... It’s hot...”
“Huh... Is this the Great Conflagration Zone...?”
“No, it’s an active volcanic zone, the place ruled by Ignis Plaga!”
“Ignis!?”
As was the case with most fields in units of ten floors, the burning volcanic zone of the 80th floor had no small fry monsters, only a boss standing firm in place.
A gigantic flame spirit stood atop a volcano that constantly spewed lava.
“Clan Leader, the enhanced androids can’t defeat this one. Everyone, prepare for battle!!”
At Danbi’s shout,
all the clan members of the raid team began taking out and equipping attribute items.
The tanks, the damage dealers, even the healers.
At their urgent movements, Suho’s tension rose as well, and he lowered the visor of his powered armor.
But a question followed. Why were the enhanced androids insufficient?
“But... why is that...?”
At Suho’s question, Danbi answered with a hardened expression.
“The boss of this floor, Ignis Plaga, is a mass of elements. It has no physical body.”
“Ah...”
“Since it has no proper flesh, the enhanced androids will have a hard time dealing effective damage. What’s more troublesome than that is...”
“Unnie, we don’t have a cold-attribute mage among us...”
“Of all things... the cold-attribute users are on Teams 1 and 3...”
“Stack as much fire resistance as you can!”
It was exactly as Danbi said.
In the distance, the enhanced androids were drawing the aggro of Ignis Plaga, the master of the 80th floor, but they were unable to land any effective blows.
Meanwhile, the androids were continuously exposed to tremendous heat, so if this standoff dragged on, there was a risk that the parts vulnerable to heat would melt and cause malfunctions.
Watching the raid team move in urgent haste, Suho asked,
“Th-then what kind of attacks does this Ignis use?!”
“Mostly fire attacks. Its main skills are Inferno, which raises a wall of flame; Breath of Blazing Heat, which spews a breath attack; and Brand of Crimson Flame, which engraves a brand of fire on the target and deals continuous fire damage! Because of the brand in particular, it’s dangerous to get closer than a certain distance!”
“Th-then what’s that thing’s weakness!?”
“Cold-attribute magic is best... but if that isn’t possible, water-attribute attacks should work well too! Water is its natural counter!”
“Ugh... Where are we supposed to get water here...?”
“Damn it... Look at its size... It’s still growing.”
Ignis Plaga was burning and devouring its surroundings, swelling larger and larger.
It looked like a mass of hydrogen and helium burning endlessly like the sun. On top of that, it was not humanoid in shape, so it was impossible to tell where its head or body was, or where its weak point might be.
Suho’s eyes darted quickly as he found a method.
“Water attribute... Water attribute, huh... Okay! I have an idea! Don’t go yet, come back!!”
Suho shouted and called back the raid team, who had been about to charge at Ignis with maximum fire-resistance doping and weapons drawn.
The team members returned without understanding what was going on.
On the ground where scorching heat was rising, Suho took out and materialized something streamlined.
“Wh-what is this?”
“Everyone, get in!!”
“N-no, why on earth would you bring this out...?!”
Absurdly enough, what Suho brought out was a submarine.
A reinforced submarine with ultra-high-pressure resistance and impact protection, capable of easily withstanding tremendous shocks and external pressure.
It was a model he had acquired after visiting Everest, thinking he might someday travel to a place like the Mariana Trench.
“Hurry!”
Because Suho shouted and urged them on, everyone scrambled into the submarine.
“Eighteen people, all eighteen of you are aboard, right?!”
“Yes! Th-that’s right! What about you, Clan Leader!?”
Hiss—
Without answering, Suho closed the submarine’s hatch.
Then, wearing his powered armor and Tempestbane Wings, he flew in one burst to the active volcanic zone where Ignis Plaga and the enhanced androids were facing off.
Even though he was nearly a kilometer away, the heat reaching him was tremendous.
Looking at the external environment information displayed on his visor, even here, at a considerable distance, the surrounding air had exceeded 400 degrees.
When he scanned the central area where Ignis was with infrared cameras and the like, it measured a seething heat of over 5,000 degrees.
At this temperature, even super-enhanced androids would have a hard time enduring.
Armor parts like magrite might be able to withstand such absurd temperatures, but there was no way every other part could be that resistant to extreme heat.
If the heat-vulnerable parts melted, their functions would inevitably develop problems.
Suho stored all twenty enhanced androids facing off against Ignis into his subspace storage.
Ignis was bewildered for a moment.
Then, after looking around, it soon spotted Suho floating in the air and spewed its Breath of Blazing Heat.
But Suho had already vanished into the subspace storage.
The thousands-degree inferno cut through empty air for nothing.
“Rabi! Rabi!”
“Oh, something big has happened again, I see.”
“You know what we’re doing right now, right?”
“Well... I was reading a book. Was there something I needed to know?”
“Argh, you stare so diligently when it’s useless... Anyway, I need to materialize an item!”
“Take it slowly. Slowly. You haven’t forgotten the ten-million-to-one time ratio, have you?”
“Ah, right...”
Only then did Suho, who had been breathing hard, calm himself and look over the situation.
Right. From the moment things first became urgent, he should have come here right away to organize a plan. The thought occurred to him belatedly.
“What item do you need?”
“Water... I need water. Among the things I received before, there was some kind of water, wasn’t there?”
“Of course. You received ten septillion (10²⁵) liters of clean deep ocean water. Besides that, potions and elixirs are also liquids, if you want to call them that.”
“Not potions... Right, yes. There was deep ocean water. Take some of that out. Open a portal window.”
In the window Rabi opened, Ignis could be seen standing as if time had stopped against the backdrop of the blazing volcanic zone.
“Take the deep ocean water out over there. I’d like to fill an area about two kilometers wide, two kilometers long, and two kilometers high. For that much... how much water would I need...?”
“If you filled a cube two kilometers wide, two kilometers long, and two kilometers high with water, it would hold eight trillion liters.”
“Oh, fast. Good. Eight trillion... That should be fine, right...? Well, it’s inside the tower, so at most, only one floor will fill up. Okay! Pour that much water over there!”
“Understood. Materializing eight trillion liters of water.”
At that instant, heaven and earth were overturned.
Rumble-rumble-rumble, kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa...
With overwhelming force, eight trillion liters of water suddenly began pouring down from the sky.
It was such an enormous amount that it felt as though the entire sky had turned into water and was falling.
The water crashed down like a gigantic waterfall, as if it would shatter the earth itself, and in an instant, the volcanoes, lava, and burning land were swept away.
The earth that had been emitting extreme heat was submerged in cold water in the blink of an eye, and before even the cooling steam could surge into the sky, the next surge of water, and then an even greater volume of water, covered the land.
“Holy......”
Suho sucked in a breath as he watched the overwhelming sight.
The sound of the falling water was like unending thunder.
In only a few minutes, the land that had once been covered in ash and flame became a lake, and the field boss vanished without a trace.
Fortunately, even amid the tremendous current, the toy-like submarine swimming this way and that seemed intact.
After a long while, the water surface finally grew calm.
The submarine floated up onto it, and Suho flew over, opening the hatch.
“Everyone! Are you all safe—”
“Bleeuuugh!”
“Gueeek! Cough... Kek, kek!”
“Haa... Somebody save me...”
Everyone was vomiting here and there with expressions that said they could not hold it in any longer, and the inside of the submarine was already filled with vomit.
“Haha... Ugh... Disgusting...”
Suho’s face crumpled completely as he decided he would have to throw this submarine away.
After a long while, the calmed raid team members moved over to a yacht, washed up, and sprawled across the deck and in the bedrooms.
“Wh-what happened to Ignis?”
They staggered over to Suho and asked.
They were quick to ask, all right.
“I think it died.”
Suho answered calmly and pointed in a certain direction. When they looked, the portal leading to the 81st floor had activated.
Perhaps, for a flame spirit like it, cold water itself had been damage; it had vanished before anyone could tell when or how it died.
It might well have been the first incident of a monster being killed with deep ocean water.
Since it was a boss monster, it must have dropped etherium or other spoils, but there was no way to find the corpse.
When were they supposed to search this entire lake?
And even if they found it, there probably would not be anything special anyway.
The yacht glided across the surface of the water, heading toward the portal to the 81st floor.