Chapter 057
Han Sang-ah looked like she was about to flop flat on her back at any moment.
"Are you planning to spread out and sleep here if you can?"
— There's no blanket.
Hearing her answer, I pulled her up to her feet. What, you're already wiped out from just this much?
Did you think when we entered the Erosion Grounds, a bunch of handsome guys and beautiful girls would welcome us with popping champagne?
Somehow, we'd managed to adapt to this crappy gimmick. We'd even gained the confidence that we could overcome it no matter how our roles changed next.
"Zero five seven. There's a button over there. Doesn't look like a trap."
At my words, Han Sang-ah made a dubious expression.
— Not a trap, no monster, and suddenly there's a button? That's suspicious as hell.
"Agreed."
I had no idea what the button was for, but it was hard to believe it would be beneficial to us. Still, this massive space showed no change at all, as if it had nothing left prepared for us.
In the end, it seemed we had no choice but to press it.
The moment Han Sang-ah pressed the button, I felt my body get yanked somewhere again, and I arrived at a different location.
"…What is this now?"
I quickly scanned the surroundings. I saw five huge stone slabs, each a different color.
— Ah, can you hear me?
It was Han Sang-ah's voice. Looking closer, I saw something like a small walkie-talkie lying on a table at waist height. I grabbed it and spoke.
"Can you hear me?"
— I can. I'm facing off against slimes right now.
No sooner had she finished speaking than a loud clattering sound rang out. A huge hole opened in the ceiling, and slimes plopped down onto the floor. More than ten slimes fell, each one colored in one of five different hues.
Gripping my spear, I ignited the Paradoxical Flame.
"Tell me what's going on over there."
— There are five stone slabs. Each one has a symbol carved into it. And… there's some weird-looking equipment. Thick pipes seem to be connected to a machine or something. I have no idea what it is.
While dodging the slimes' attacks, I looked around. Was the big pipe connected to that machine the same pipe I was seeing here?
Below the pipe was a device that looked like it could hold something.
And a bit farther away, there were empty tanks and faucet-like fixtures. There were five faucets, and each had a symbol carved above it.
My head started to spin. What the hell are they trying to make us do now?
"I've got tanks and faucets on my side. Something's filling up in the tanks right now."
— My attacks aren't working on the slimes. I can defend, but every attack I make is completely negated.
Figures. It felt similar to the gimmicks we'd experienced on Daemado. But this time, it didn't look like some simple dice-guessing game.
I started thinking fast. The slimes' colors. The colors of the stone slabs on my side. And the symbols on the slabs in Han Sang-ah's space.
"Fuuuck."
How could I not curse? Dealing with slimes was already a headache.
"You said there are five stone slabs with symbols, right? Tell me the symbol on the leftmost one."
At my words, Han Sang-ah made an "uh, um" sound before answering.
— A heart.
At that, I checked the color of the leftmost slab on my side. Blue.
I examined the slabs standing in my space. One of them had a heart symbol carved into it.
Grabbing a large tank, I placed it beneath the pipe marked with the heart symbol and turned the valve. A sticky liquid began to fill the tank.
— Um, could you maybe tell me what you're doing right now?
"Handling business. Just hang on a bit!"
Once the tank was full of liquid, I immediately connected it to the pipe. With a gurgling sound, the pipe began to suck up the liquid from the tank.
— Oh, the equipment on my side just lit up. There's a button here—should I press it?
"Yeah. Hurry."
Right after that, Han Sang-ah sent me more information.
— The machine's running. There's a gauge here, and it's divided into five colors. When the machine runs, the needle on the gauge moves.
Yeah, that's how it works. I shouted right away.
"When the needle points to blue, stop the machine!"
— Got it.
Now I fully understood what was going on. I had to supply the correct fuel—matching the symbols in Han Sang-ah's room—to the machine in her space.
Then, after the fuel was supplied, Han Sang-ah had to run the machine and watch the gauge, stopping it when it matched the color of the stone slab in my room.
Only by successfully doing all of that would we finally—
"Die, you shitty squishy bastards!"
—be able to deal effective damage to the slimes of that color.
— Uh, when I turn the machine off, the gauge needle drops back down.
"Of course it does."
To keep the needle fixed on a specific color, Han Sang-ah had to keep turning the machine on and off.
— I'm almost out of fuel!
And I had to periodically replenish the fuel the machine consumed. This was driving me insane.
"They weren't kidding when they said first-class is on a whole different level."
I never imagined the gimmicks would be this damn awful.
Then, assuming one more worst-case scenario, I spoke to Han Sang-ah.
"This thing might periodically change the symbols and colors."
If the symbols and colors didn't match exactly, we wouldn't be able to deal effective damage to the slimes. Which meant that if the slabs' symbols and colors changed periodically…
We'd have to scramble to communicate and recalibrate everything all over again. And sure enough, not long after, the slabs began to glow faintly, and their symbols swapped around.
"Why is it that my worst thoughts…"
"…are never wrong?"
This was truly the worst.
"Tell me what changed."
— Got it. Hang on, I need to check too.
Han Sang-ah and I kept talking nonstop over the radio, rapidly exchanging information about what had changed. If we didn't, we couldn't do anything at all.
— Fuel's below 20%.
"Damn it, wait a bit. I'll refill it again in a second."
A tentacle of extreme cold whipped past, grazing just above my head. While checking the periodically changing colors of the stone slabs, I kept relaying the updates to Han Sang-ah.
"What the—did the color change?"
— Sorry, I was a little late. I'll be able to attack again soon.
How many times had we repeated this—me loading fuel according to the symbols, Han Sang-ah adjusting the gauge? The slimes that kept dropping from the sky showed no sign of decreasing in number.
"How long are they planning to keep pouring in?"
— Fuel, clover—
Following Han Sang-ah's call, I forced the fuel into the pipe, dodged the tentacle of a charging slime, and drove my spear in. The Paradoxical Flame engulfed its body, growing larger as it burned.
"You okay? You sound tired."
— I'm still fine.
Still. That word bothered me a little. Obviously, if either Han Sang-ah or I died here, it would all be over. This was a gimmick that absolutely couldn't be cleared with only one person left.
That was exactly why this damn Erosion Grounds allowed no more and no less than two people to enter.
"Ha… finally…."
After fighting for hours, we managed to finish off the last slime. Unable to maintain its form, it melted and flowed away like water, marking the end of the battle.
"So what's next?"
With a creaking sound, a door formed in a wall where there had been nothing before.
— Before we go… can we rest a little?
"Yeah. That'd be better. That thing looks sketchy as hell."
Beyond the door, pure white frost was steadily spilling out. The amount of mana leaking through was no joke either.
"I thought a first-class Erosion Grounds would be bigger."
Hunters said that the internal scale of a first-class Erosion Grounds was on a completely different level from second-class ones.
— But only two people can enter the Bratsk Refrigerator. Does it really need to be big?
True. There was no need to make it unnecessarily large—what we'd just gone through was already miserable enough. I'd bet that if two hunters who were just "good at fighting" had come in laughing and joking, they'd have been beaten to death in no time.
"Feels like that's the last one."
I had that feeling. The mana oozing out from beyond the door was on a completely different level from the slimes we'd fought so far.
'Low estimate, a wyvern. High estimate, a baron-class demon.'
Something that would earn that kind of evaluation in the other world was waiting on the other side.
At my current level, this was going to be a brutal fight. After resting a bit and finishing my conversation with Han Sang-ah, I headed through the open door.
"…Looks like they still don't plan on letting us reunite."
Han Sang-ah wasn't here. Instead, there was a single woman.
Seated atop a delicately sculpted throne of ice on a set of stairs was a woman with snow-white skin. She wore a crystal-carved crown over her silver hair and a blue dress, her eyes closed.
A doll sitting on a throne, hands folded, eyes shut.
— I don't know about your side, but over here there's a massive slime over 30 meters tall. It's boiling and bubbling, and human faces keep forming and disappearing in the slime, all screaming.
Well, at least I wasn't being visually assaulted like that.
"A guest shows up and you don't even say hello."
No sooner had I finished speaking than the doll-like woman opened her eyes. At the same time her blue gaze fixed on me, white frost surged around me, stealing away my body heat.
"What is this?"
A small thermometer appeared above my head.
The red liquid inside it was slowly dropping. What the hell did this mean?
— The big slime is shitting out smaller slimes.
"Wow, what a lovely choice of words."
Either way, that wasn't the important part… I needed to figure out what this thing above my head actually did.
"My gut says it's body temperature."
Do I have to kill that thing before it drops all the way? Judging by the speed, the thermometer would hit bottom in less than three minutes.
"Fuck."
As the value on the thermometer started to fall steadily, I immediately understood what it was.
"It's my body temperature."
When it hits zero, I'll probably die. The moment I realized that, the woman on the throne extended one hand to the side.
Countless ice fragments bloomed in midair like snowflakes, rapidly taking the shape of spears.
"Han Sang-ah, looks like you need to do something over there."
I ignited the Paradoxical Flame and spoke into the radio connecting me to her.
— Again?
"My body temperature's dropping constantly. If it hits zero, I'm dead."
It didn't seem like I had any way to raise my own temperature. Which meant, naturally, that Han Sang-ah had the means to raise it.
"Seriously, this is driving me insane!"
The spear in my hand rampaged, leaving arcs in the air. Along those lingering trajectories, I struck down and dodged the ice spears flying in from all directions. And yet, not a single drop of sweat formed.
Instead, my body grew colder and colder.
Proof that my body temperature was being completely controlled by that thermometer. At that moment, the temperature above my head rose slightly.
"How'd you do that?"
— I killed one of the small slimes the big slime pooped out.
This time, it sounded relatively simple. So all Han Sang-ah had to do was deal with the slimes while I fought this insane monster?
Yeah. No way it was that easy.
"Control how many you kill."
— What do you mean?
The thermometer that first appeared above my head hadn't been at its maximum. It had been right in the middle. A human body starts acting strange if its temperature shifts by even a single degree.
— You mean I need to adjust the rate at which I kill the slimes, keeping your body temperature at just the right level?
"Exactly."