Chapter 323: With Your Own Power (3)

I also replied with a grin.

"Don't speak nonsense, Lin."

"Are you ignoring me, you little bastard?"

"I can tell. This thing is definitely tied to me, but it's not purely my power. Not for now, at least."

"Hmph, well, you're not wrong. It can't be that easy to become a god."

"Right? A god is something more..."

I stopped in the middle of my sentence. I didn't want to say something I had to clear idea about. Instead, I scratched my head, or rather, my armor. Lin then laughed and spoke.

"So what are you going to call it? Since you said it wasn't a part of you, shouldn't you need a name to call it?"

"You're right. Hmm, I don't know what metal it's made of, so I'll just call it something basic. Like Steel."

"As I thought, you have no naming-sense."

"It's better than Pure Black Desire!"

I stuck my tongue out at Lin, but ended up licking Steel's metal. Because of how comfortable it was, I kept forgetting that I was wearing it.

"Did you find out anything else? Like its weakness."

"Oh, like the increased chance of receiving a critical hit that Pure Black Desire had?"

"Yes."

"Penalties like those all disappeared. The only problem is Pure Black Desire's properties completely disappeared. As you can probably feel it, its stat boost is gone completely. Mana and demonic energy broke through their limit and condensed into a what's almost a semi-organism. Don't expect anything other than Extort."

"So Extort is all I have to remember?"

"Yep. To be honest, all ancient artifacts are like that. Items related to the dungeon have all sorts of random effects, but lack a unique authority. Do you know the concept of Ambience?"

"Like aura?"

Lin frowned, so I quickly shook my head.

"I'm kidding, I know. I'm just surprised Lin knows Earth's artistic theory."

"Hmph, who says other worlds are different from Earth? Ambience is an unseen distinctive atmosphere or quality. An object with Ambience is the kind of thing that presents victory to a seemingly disadvantaged side."

"Lin has something like that?"

"You've seen it before."

With that, Lin gestured at his empty back. I immediately knew what he meant. His sniper rifle. The gun that killed the leader of the Book Walkers, a world's enemy in one blow. As I thought, it wasn't a normal weapon.

"Ancient artifacts... Right, they had a rather pure flavor. A blacksmith's ability is important, but they were mostly created from miracles. The product of coincidences, an Original. Items of the latter generation were naturally compared to items of certain elements or types that were created before, so their League and Ambience fell. Item ranks like Rare, Unique, Epic, Legend, or God are dependent on how much Ambience an item has."

"This is the first time I'm hearing about this."

"Of course it is. It's just a speculation I made from how Lord assigns ranks to items."

I laughed. Lin pointed at Steel and continued.

"That's the first Original I've seen in a long time, one that surpasses many of the others. Just thinking about how much I helped in its creation gives me joy. Of course, it was also helped by your ability as its user and a miraculous background. Like I said, rather than the ability of blacksmiths, artifacts..."

"— are the products of coincidences born from miracles. I got it. I'll take good care of it."

"Show it to Eleine too. She must be curious."

"I will. I'll be off then. Take care of Leon."

"Yeah, don't come back.'

Lin retorted half-jokingly and I gave him a glare before leaving Fairy Garden. As I couldn't ignore Lin's words, I visited Eleine too. She must have realized Steel's value at a glance as she immediately offered gold for it. I gave her a refreshing smile and left Loft Valley's guild area.

In the last venture, not only did I gather an overflowing amount of death energy, I also grew stronger and evolved my armor. Now, it was time to return to the dungeon.

When I entered the 87th floor, a bullet shot toward me without a moment of delay. It aimed straight for the middle of my forehead! I considered dodging it, but decided to receive it to test Steel's defense.

I reached out with my hand. When the fast-traveling bullet struck the center of my palm, it changed direction and flew back the way it came from in the same speed. I stared at the bullet in a daze. A moment later, I realized that Extort could pretty much reflect all attacks.

BOOM! An explosion rang out in the far distance.

[... You destroyed 1% of the Eliminator's main body.]

Then, Sherafina's seemingly shocked message rang out.

"As I thought, the super long range attack was coming from the main body!"

Though Sherafina didn't reply, I knew I was right. On the 86th floor, I had to face two types of attacks. One was constant snipes from an unknown distance away, and the other was an army of robots with all sorts of fire weapons.

At first, I thought there were robots with sniper rifles, but even after getting used to the robots' mana, I couldn't detect any hints of the sniper shots. As expected, they were coming from the main body rather than robots.

The only mystery now was how it was pinpointing me from such a distance, and also how it was damaged when Steel reflected it.

"... What happens if I kill the Eliminator now using this method?"

Obviously, this was one of the first things that crossed my mind! Sherafina didn't answer me for a while, but she soon came with an answer.

[That won't happen.]

Oh? I grinned and charged forward.

At first, I planned to use death energy to corrupt the robots, then use Dortu's power to take control of them. However, now that I had Steel, it was a different story. To be frank, an enemy of a lower League could no longer do anything against me.

When I reached this conclusion, I grew a bit afraid of myself. With my Evil Eyes and Dortu's power, I could petrify all SSS rank monsters, but now, I could even reflect all of their attacks. Even I didn't want to fight with myself.

Of course, this attack reflection had other limitations other than the enemy's League. It was that it used my mana whenever the ability activated. But with Peruta Circuit and Absolute Soul, I could suck in mana from anything around me.

In other words, if an enemy of a lower League wanted to penetrate Steel's reflection, the only option was to barrage me with highly destructive attacks and drain my mana to zero.

In this way, the surest way to defeat me was the Eliminator's army of robots. Even now, they were shooting a seemingly endless amount of bullets! Although it would take a long time, they should be able to injure me. The main body's super long range snipes should help too.

Unfortunately for them, Steel wasn't the only tool at my disposal.

[I am Dortu. Another day of arduous work ahead.]

"Can you stop talking like that, Dortu?"

Previously, Dortu needed a long time to take control of a single robot. But the robots on the 87th floor weren't too different compared to the robots on the 86th floor. With the experience he had, it only took him one hour to control a robot that fell to the floor after being hit by its own bullet.

[I am Dortu. Dortu's getting the hang of doing arduous work.]

"Now you're doing that on purpose."

On the other hand, I was slowly getting used to reading the trajectories of the robots' bullets. While Dortu did his thing, I constantly moved around and tried to read the trajectories of the thousands of bullets and cannon shells, which was now possible with my mana detection being incomparably stronger than before.

[You destroyed 5% of the Eliminator's main body.]

Even while I dodged most of the attacks, I made sure to receive the snipes that flew at me occasionally. Although I could only detect this bullet when it came close, it was still possible for me to dodge it.

But why would I? I could destroy the enemy I'd meet on the 90th floor beforehand! Sherafina's messages telling me of my progress was sounding more and more bitter too.

Clearing the 87th floor only took half the time of the 86th floor. While passing through the 87th floor, I considered testing Extort other than its passive attack reflection aspect.

But this ability wasn't something that would increase in power with more use. Since it would grow naturally with my League, I decided to save it for now. A trump card had to used only when necessary.

Of course, that didn't mean I wouldn't use Extort's power at all. I was already using it to reflect attacks, and if I needed to, I would use it to full effect.

I jumped into Beyond's 37th floor without resting for even a bit and faced further strengthened Vampire Lords. They poured powerful attacks the moment they met me and retired from life immediately after. As I only had to watch my mana running out, I felt a bit bad passing through Beyond like this.

"Come to think of it, this isn't that useful for training."

That said, I would have Steel for the rest of my life, so I wouldn't need to get experienced in fighting enemies who couldn't break through Steel's reflection. Still, the dungeon had to have monsters that were capable of doing so! Not these fake Vampire Lords, but the real Floor Master!

Just like that, I cleared Beyond's 37th floor quicker than the First Dungeon's 87th floor. Immediately afterwards, I went up to the 88th floor.

As I felt many things while defeating the demons' duke, I wanted to increase my League as quickly as possible.

On the 88th floor, on top of the robots from the previous floors, there were robots attacking me from close range with swords made with aura-like mana essence.

These robots were quicker than the robots armed with guns or cannons, but they still weren't able to overcome Extort. To clear the 88th floor as quickly as possible, I charged forward.

Until Suddenly...

A giant missile fell down from the middle of the sky.