“Hmm.”
As I entered through the door, I found myself atop a massive tower.
Above the sky was filled with a blinding white light of clones, which didn’t sit well with me, so I lowered my head again.
If Aisha was right, this must be the top of the tower, and now I need to descend to the first floor.
Ding!
[World – Struggle Road (Hidden)]
Objective – Reach the entrance of the True Altar of the Impossible.
Reward – Large amounts of Experience Points, Title – ‘The One Who Faced the Impossible (Legend)’ acquired.
A quest popped up just in time.
“The rewards are quite modest.”
[So it is!]
[Whoa!]
[LOL]
[Can’t we just jump down?]
[Can’t get out?]
[Let’s break the tower!]
All I’m getting is experience points and a title, huh?
Even considering this dungeon’s initial rewards have already disappeared, the amount is ridiculously low.
I came here to gain experience, so it doesn’t matter much to me.
“Out? Should we try going out?”
I lightly wrapped myself in holy energy and flew towards the tower’s edge.
Currently, I was at the top of the tower, and my destination was the entrance below.
If the goal was to get to the entrance, it’d be faster to just go down outside rather than deal with the tower’s traps or demon beasts.
The top of the tower was quite spacious, but I quickly gained speed and reached the very edge.
I glanced down.
Thud…
[Whoa!]
[Holy crap!]
[That’s high!]
The tower boasted a dizzying height that made the bottom invisible.
So high that it was vast enough not to be captured in my field of vision.
‘Blocked, huh.’
Of course, it wasn’t just the height; there were numerous overlapping spaces, just like before.
I reached out with my hand, but the Power of Clone resembling holy and magic energy blocked me.
A powerful force that seemed to express a strong will not to let me out of here.
For a moment, I thought of using the Spear’s Roar like when crossing a path, but I turned my head away.
While I could use quite a strong power here, I was ultimately being blocked, wasn’t I?
Even if it takes a little longer, there was no need to resort to tricks and expend all my energy to tackle this.
‘Actually, I’m not in a hurry.’
I didn’t intend to meet unnecessary quotas; I wasn’t pressed for time.
“It’s blocked. Seems like it won’t be easily broken, so let’s go back.”
[No way!]
[Yeah!]
[Okay.]
[Let’s go!]
[Just break it already!]
[Let’s just give it one hit and go!]
[Can’t we break it?]
“…It’s more like we can’t break it.”
Hoo.
I took out the White Guardian, transformed it into a hammer shape, and struck the air hard.
Boom…!
Then, the transparent veil in the air momentarily distorted, revealing its form.
But it merely ‘distorted’ and nothing more.
The place I struck with the hammer started flickering with a light close to gray, then quickly regenerated the hit part and returned to being transparent.
The tower turned transparent.
“As you can see, my defense and regeneration are quite significant. Besides, it doesn’t seem like there’s just one barrier at the 100th Floor.
If I break the barrier on the 100th Floor, it means I have to break the one on the 99th Floor right below it.
Naturally, if I break through the 99th Floor, I’ll have to smash through the barriers of the 98th, 97th, 96th… all the way down.
At this rate, it might actually be easier to just descend through the floors properly.
Saying this, I left behind the disappointed chat window and headed for the stairs leading to the 99th Floor.
Inside the stairs, a small square sign was stuck up with some writing on it.
The phrase was quite neat yet felt out of place.
[“Are you deceiving yourself?”]
“…?”
Deceiving? What am I deceiving?
I furrowed my brow and glared at the sign.
It seemed like a phrase written by the Master of the Tower, but I had no idea what it meant.
“What am I deceiving?”
Tsuzzhhhh… The letters on the sign changed.
[“I see.”]
And that was it.
The sign did not change any further even after I asked my question, and even after I pulled out the sign and poured my holy power onto it, there was no response.
Yelling into thin air yielded the same result.
With a sense of discomfort, I held the sign as I descended further down.
[?]
[What are you deceiving?]
[Why are you holding the sign, Lily?]
[LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL]
[Why are you bringing that?]
The 99th Floor was decorated like a shrine with pure white light.
Everywhere in the shrine were signs of destruction, with most of the holy power being seen, but there were also many traces of counterfeit magic.
While I was admiring the floor for a moment, someone suddenly appeared behind a pillar with a rustling sound.
“…A doll?”
Girreuk…! Girreuk…!
Dolls making strange sounds.
The doll was a being with torn wings and black-and-white hair, and two different powers could be felt at the same time—authentic holy power and counterfeit magic.
However, it didn’t feel as if the two powers were merged; it seemed more like they had attached ‘two’ physical forms that suited each power to make it appear as one.
In fact, the seams connecting the dolls were constantly trying to tear apart due to the discord between the powers.
Because of that, even though they had the quite beautiful face characteristic of the ethnic magic, their appearance was rather hideous.
[Ugh]
[Ugh]
[LOL?]
[Gross]
[So creepy looking]
[Whoa]
[Let’s kill it]
[What’s with the weird thing popping out ;;]
“…I don’t remember hearing about anything like this coming out.”
What Aisha faced were the strange monsters of black and white.
I had never heard that such ‘dolls’ would emerge.
I moved closer to check the identity of the doll.
Girreuk…?!
Identify! At that moment, about five dolls simultaneously unleashed counterfeit holy power and charged at me.
It lunged at me, spewing fake holiness.
Its strength was at the level of a field boss, around level 80 to 90, just as Aisha said.
But perhaps because of the fake holiness dwelling within, its ferocity rivaled that of a level 110 boss.
I casually gripped the signboard in my hand and tossed it lightly.
‘Spear’s Roar.’
Kwaaaang!!
A storm engulfed the dolls.
As if it had been waiting, the seams connecting the two bodies were torn apart first, and soon, due to the storm’s aftermath, the dolls themselves were shattered into pieces.
[Wow]
[Did you just do that with a signboard?]
[No way!]
[One-shot LOL]
[The roar of the signboard?]
[What kind of technique is that with a signboard?]
“Huh… not a bad feeling.”
I said casually, resting the signboard on my shoulder like a hammer.
Using a signboard for a technique was partly because the dolls weren’t too strong, but also because this signboard itself bore the will of the Master of the Altar.
Since it was influenced by the existence of a higher being, the signboard was nearly equivalent to a legendary weapon.
Of course, given that it wasn’t even a weapon, it was only natural that using it as a spear would be more efficient.
‘Anyway, that’s not the important part.’
Sure, having a weapon is nice, but what matters is the identity of these dolls.
I lifted a piece of the shredded doll with holy magic.
It had a texture and a form reminiscent of skin, but it was definitely not a body.
If I had to express it, it was a ‘mannequin.’
A remarkably well-crafted mannequin, at that.
But the question here was that the master of this place was an existence with higher power.
If they were a higher being, an angel or a demon, it wouldn’t be strange for them to just produce a physical body instead of a mannequin.
With the power of a higher being, even a single piece of flesh could create artificial bodies that were more real than thousands or tens of thousands of real ones.
In other words, these dolls were made to look like ‘mannequins’ on purpose.
‘…On purpose.’
I recalled the original form of the dolls.
Fake holiness and fake magic. Two bodies with respective powers had been struggling to separate from each other.
They were barely being held together through their seams like dolls, but were in a fragile state, easily torn apart by even a small shock.
“It must be part of an experiment.”
[What?]
[Huh?]
[What’s going on?]
“These dolls. They were obviously made by someone, right?”
These dolls were not merely in a state of anxiety.
‘This must have been the best option.’
For the being wielding both holiness and magic, these dolls were the result of an endeavor to create a new existence.
Indeed, many angels and demons conducted countless experiments to imitate the ‘God of Swords,’ and one of those was the ‘Impossible Being Gemelynus.’
Gemelynus was a somewhat successful subject of the experiment, but it ultimately couldn’t replicate the ‘real thing.’
Here there was also a statue of Gemelynus, and it wouldn’t have been strange for such experimental subjects to exist since the very name of this place was ‘Altar of the Impossible.’
“I guess we’ll be seeing more of these in the future.”
“It seems like it’ll keep coming steadily.”
I knew the experiments of the ‘Impossible Being’ had been carried out countless times over a long period.
Not just the demon race, but even the celestial race had been involved in these experiments.
Holding the signboard, I headed to the 98th floor.
“By the way… I broke a few labs back in the day.”
I wonder if those creatures will show up again?
■
As I went down the floors, countless dolls attacked me.
All of them were in an unstable state, and while there were field boss-level strong ones ranging from 110 to as many as 150 or 160, they were no match for me.
Sure, it helps that I’m strong, but the key point is that they were just too unstable.
Imitations of something like holy power or magic couldn’t touch my holy power, and they were easily sliced apart with a single strike from the signboard.
Swoosh!
“They’re evolving incrementally.”
[Seriously]
[LOL]
[Maybe they’ll be ‘possible’ now, haha]
[?]
As I descended, the completion of the dolls improved.
At first, they looked like they would fall apart at any moment, but now they were showing a somewhat sturdy appearance.
They still resembled mannequins, but this was their most optimized state for harnessing power, and I doubt that will change.
Holy power and magic have quite a deep influence on the body.
It must have taken about an hour or so.
“10th floor!”
Finally, I arrived at the 10th floor of the tower.
Just nine more floors to go.
Before heading down, I glanced at the signboard.
The signboard remained silent.
“Surely this isn’t the end, right?”
I had seen things like this a few times in the labs of the past, but at least they had had more convincing ones.
But the dolls I saw in the tower were all mere replicas.
Not to mention, they were just dolls that couldn’t even use their own strength.
[“……”]
“If not…”
I stepped into the floor without hesitation.
In the place where the Temple of Light was split in half.
In the center of the half that was tainted by darkness stood a swordsman doll, and as soon as I saw it, an uneasy feeling washed over me, prompting me to infuse holy power into the signboard instinctively.
Swoosh.
As the swordsman doll turned to face me, I saw the letters on the signboard change.
“!”
[“Thousands of years have passed.”]
[“It won’t be as easy as before. Impossible Being.”]
The tip of the doll’s sword moved.
With the illusion that holy power and magic were moving simultaneously, the sword’s aura swept past me.
Screech.
The signboard split in two.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.
