Chapter 96 – Floor 14. Descending

Hot!

As I descended to Floor 14, deeper underground, the air became suffocatingly hot due to the rocks heated by geothermal energy.

I wiped away a trickle of sweat running down my cheek, feeling as if I’d entered a sauna.

“Fuck this… it’s boiling. Would I turn into boiled meat if I stayed here for just an hour?”

Without something to cool me down, I’d have no complaints if I got steamed to death at this rate. I wondered how Albert and Blue Tongue, who had descended to Floor 14 before me, were managing to endure.

‘Surely they haven’t already died from the heat.’

While Albert is human, Blue Tongue is a poikilothermic animal, so I wasn’t sure if such an environment would be dangerous for him.

It looked no different from the upper floors at first glance, so I wondered why my body temperature kept rising—I didn’t expect it to be this hot.

I continued to move forward while internally cursing this insane temperature, gathering courage to press on.

So the saying that humans are strong because of hatred and loathing is true?

Even while making such anthropological observations, I couldn’t help but worry about Floor 15.

‘There’s no way I can rest in this environment. Should I just kill the heretic leader as quickly as possible and run right away?’

Though I needed to defeat the mini-boss to resupply consumables and prepare for what comes after, I wondered if I should skip Naude’s alcohol quest.

Unless I could clear it in one go like Floor 12, resting on this floor would be suicidal.

Even now, as I walked forward toward the entrance to Floor 15, my skin felt increasingly hot and like it was about to burn.

‘Fortunately, the map size itself came out as small.’

Splash!

Looking at the map after dousing myself with water from my canteen, nearly 10% had been revealed despite walking for only about 10 minutes.

At this pace, I could explore all of Floor 14 in about 2 hours.

‘That’s somewhat fortunate, but…’

Sizzle…

The water that had momentarily cooled my body evaporated instantly with a sizzling sound as it dripped to the floor.

Even the water I’d splashed on myself quickly heated up, making me feel hotter.

“Fucking hell…”

I definitely can’t use Alraune here.

That Chikorita-like girl [Pokémon reference].

As I progressed, I saw corpses of heretics that had been decomposing for some time—rotten but without insects due to the high temperature.

The cause of death appeared to be instantaneous death from having their hearts pierced in a single strike.

Quite skillful spearmanship.

“Blue Tongue?”

Even I was starting to get a headache. How was he handling the heat?

Click.

“Hm?”

As I stepped forward, the floor slowly sank beneath my foot.

An ominous sign.

And an alarm bell of crisis ringing in my intuition.

“Oh shit..!”

KUGUGUGUGUNG─!!!

The walls slowly split open, and from the gaps, sticky, red-glowing liquid that emitted terrifying heat began to flow out.

Simultaneously, white steam rose from the disguised stone floor panel I had stepped on, cooking my legs. My skin bubbled and burned, being consumed in an instant.

Distant pain.

“Nnnghh─!!”

But my muscles and nerves hadn’t burned away yet. I could still move.

With my face contorted in pain, I focused on every single muscle fiber in my legs and shot forward.

What I had stepped on was a “Lava Trap.”

A gimmick trap that only appears in the special environment of Floor 14, it inflicts a burn status effect and high damage every turn when stepped on, requiring you to escape from that corridor or room as quickly as possible.

If you stubbornly try to endure by drinking healing potions or doing anything other than moving, the flowing lava will submerge your feet and melt them in an instant.

Knowing this, I ignored the pain in my legs and ran.

Limp- limp- However, one leg had been so badly burned in that brief moment that it kept limping no matter how I tried to step properly.

“Kugh, AAAARGH!!!”

I screamed in pain. They say burn pain is the most excruciating pain a human can feel.

Indeed, the heat that seemed to melt bones, penetrating deep into my body, was a pain beyond comparison to being pierced or cut, truly beyond words.

But I was moving. That was enough.

Without stopping, I charged through the corridor and finally slid across the stone floor, escaping the passageway just before it was completely covered by the magma flowing out, entering a skillfully carved, spacious cavern.

Sizzle-

My hand against the floor made the sound and smell of cooking meat, but I couldn’t stand up right away.

“Huff… huff…”

It was because of a foot firmly stepping on my hand.

Looking down at me as I lay sprawled on the floor were eyes filled with malice and hatred, with pupils forming bizarre shapes.

The skin, full of fine wrinkles, had turned black as if covered with scabs, and something could be seen wriggling beneath the skin—it was the leader of the heretics.

“…My hand wouldn’t taste good even if you tried to grill it on a stone plate, you know?”

“I’ve been waiting, inferior and ignorant creature!”

“I see you’re deeply upset because I broke your old man’s toy. Senile bastard.”

Tug-

Despite my injuries, I wouldn’t be overpowered by such a dying old man. I roughly pulled my hand away and grabbed his ankle with my burning palm.

Wobble- The heretic leader lost his balance and his body tilted.

At the same time, I grabbed his knee with my other hand.

“But if you step on someone’s hand, shouldn’t you at least apologize?!”

Crack─!

“UAAAAAARGH?!!!”

As his knee twisted, the heretic’s joint couldn’t resist the force and broke, exceeding its range of motion.

His leg folded back 180 degrees.

I pulled down his robe to lower his upper body and delivered an uppercut to his chin.

Thwack-

With that satisfying sound, white fragments and dark drops of blood sprayed from the heretic’s mouth.

Followed by a barrage of blows to his face.

With each punch, his jaw crumbled, his cheekbones collapsed, and his eye sockets shattered.

All this in just 2 seconds.

If anything could be described as instantaneous, it was this.

“So annoying…”

I wiped the back of my hand on the robe of the guy who was now a bloody mess, then tossed him to the floor.

I spat once at the heretic leader who had gone limp and couldn’t move after just those hits, then stood up to assess my condition.

“Damn, this hurts! Stepping on a trap at a time like this… my luck is terrible.”

The “Lava Trap” isn’t that dangerous if you know the countermeasure of doing nothing but running when it activates, but it inevitably causes some damage.

In D.D., a burn is just a status effect that causes minor continuous damage without significantly hindering actions, but it was quite troublesome now.

It even hindered my running, and my hand, which I’d placed on the floor, was in so much pain I couldn’t grip anything.

Above all, what was most annoying was that it wasn’t even a mandatory trap like in D.D. where you have to step on it when passing through a one-tile corridor—I just happened to find and step on it by chance.

“Cough! Cough!”

“Oh, you’re still alive.”

While continuously pouring water from my canteen onto my reddened palm to cool it, I noticed the heretic leader trying to get up, coughing up blood and staggering.

“Infidel… infi, delllll!!!”

“I already know everything, so hurry up and summon your god.”

The mini-boss of Floor 14 isn’t actually the heretic leader. If he truly were the mini-boss, I wouldn’t have just broken his leg and fractured his bones—I would have killed him for sure.

What I’m about to face now is like an avatar of the tentacle-eyed entity waiting for me on Floor 30.

Even if the collective intelligence of DunGal scraped together all the text in the dungeon, the conclusion would probably be vague like “maybe that’s it?”

But one thing is certain: what the heretic leader is summoning is the god he believes in.

He looked on the verge of death.

Even in a situation where he would clearly bleed to death in a few minutes, the heretic leader was deeply contemplating while holding that book in his bosom.

“Still haven’t made up your mind? Fine. I’ll wait until you’re ready. But it’s quite hot here, so I’d appreciate if you hurried.”

“…”

To be honest, it might be a bit challenging.

I probably could catch him if I went all out, but considering I’d have to descend to Floor 15 without rest afterward, I needed to pace myself.

‘I wish Mateo was here too.’

Mateo joins the battle on Floor 15 as a reward for killing the heretic leader.

While wishing he was here to fight alongside me now, I massaged my throbbing leg as I watched the heretic leader agonizing over his life’s decision from a distance.

‘If you’re going to agonize like that, you shouldn’t have become a cultist in the first place. Fake cultist bastard.’

“…O great Faceless One.”

Finally having made his decision, the heretic leader, with his increasingly pale face, raised high that disgusting book that looked like it was made of human skin.

The human face skin stretched with a creaking sound, and light leaked out from the empty eye sockets.

“O god of blood-soaked baths, who bathes in the blood of all beasts.”

I had felt it once before in the underground sewers.

The dynamic of bizarre magic power similar to the brilliant irregular polyhedron that had awakened the Bell of the End, which had been inactive during my submersion.

That power flowed from the necromantic grimoire, shaking the entire mine.

KUGUGUGUGUNG──

A clearly wrong sight for anyone to behold.

Crack─ Crack─

At the same time, raw magical power erupted from below, angered by the invasion of its territory.

“…This doesn’t seem like something a human can handle.”

I felt the floor cracking and gradually melting as the heat that heated the cavern surpassed anything I’d experienced before.

If earlier I thought it was hot enough to burn when touched, now it was hot enough to incinerate upon contact. That kind of difference in intensity.

With the unpleasant smell of my boots burning away, I clicked my tongue.

“Just because that thing was brought here, you’re trying to burn me to death? That’s a bit much, isn’t it..!”

Sudden environmental change.

Faced with a phenomenon that didn’t exist in D.D., I immediately ran toward the connecting passage.

‘If I can’t even put down the mimic, it’s right to give up.’

Most of my combat power comes from the onaholes inside the mimic.

It’s based on the synergy of the mimic, which can automatically store them, and Unicellia’s blessing, which allows me to instantly summon and recall them.

However, if I set the mimic down in this environment, it would instantly burn up and be recalled.

“Descend, N̴̡̧̧̖̻͈̱͖̱͍̳̦͊̂̅͘y̷̢͉̞͙̘̖̙̮̎̈́́̃̅̎̽̆̇̇̃͌͛̕̕a̷̢̩̫̓̌͐̎̔̇̕͝͝͝ͅȓ̵̪̠̃́l̴̳͍̤͎̩̩̋̌̓̿͊̔̆̑̈̂̆̐̋ą̷͇̳̹̽͌͛̀̓̿͊͘͝ẗ̴̯̗̬̫̫͍̤̺̙̂̋́̉͒̀̀̀͒̉͌̂̚͝h̵͕̾͆̿̄͆̂̂̇̌̓͂̕͝͝͠o̵̜̊t̸̡̡̢̧̖̗̹̗͉̟̟̪̫́͗́͋̅̌̐̾͑̕͝ę̴̧̢̧͍͔̖̮̆͒̑͘͜͝͝p̴̢̢͔̬͉̤̺̯̹̦̦͐̈̀͌͒̊͊͑̇̅͌͝ͅ”

The floor stones laughed.

My blackened shoes cried.

The flowing lava greeted me.

“Haha.”

[You have been engulfed by madness.]