Chapter 470: Ninety-Seventh Floor, The Wraiths (2)

Chapter 470: Ninety-Seventh Floor, The Wraiths (2)

[Release the wraiths. Time remaining: 17 hours 32 minutes.]

A considerable amount of time passed. Fighting the horde hadn’t been particularly taxing, so this floor felt less like a trial and more like live combat practice.

Well, that isn’t entirely accurate, either.

The strongest enemies I had encountered only matched the strength I had possessed on the eightieth floor, allowing me to completely overpower them. Any wraith struck by my lightning collapsed and dissolved into wisps of black smoke that drifted into the air. I continued carving through the battlefield, remaining ahead of the steadily expanding firestorm behind me.

As I cut down one wraith after another, a lingering question surfaced, the same one that had been on my mind since the beginning. Why did their strengths vary so much?

From ordinary humans to a challenger on the eightieth floor.

At some point, it occurred to me that these wraiths could be climbers who had perished while ascending the tower. If someone had fallen on the first floor, their wraith would understandably possess the strength of an average human.

Adding to my theory, since I had killed a fifth-class god not long after the eightieth floor, climbers who had died closer to the hundredth would roughly match that level of strength.

If I were right, the massive number of wraiths would also make sense.

After all, Kalain is the only other challenger to make it this far in the tower.

A span of four thousand years lay between Kalain and me. Based on my experiences, the Tower of Ordeal had taken a million climbers from each of the four worlds containing sentient species for a single climb of the tower.

Who knew how many worlds had undergone the Tower of Ordeal’s trials throughout those four millennia? Even an underestimation meant such an astronomical number of dead was plausible.

Moreover, if Kalain hadn’t challenged this trial, then these wraiths could include climbers from bygone eras. Still, the tower’s directive to “release” them felt oddly symbolic.

Is it asking me to lay the spirits of the fallen to rest? To grant peace to the countless wraiths that emerged from the failed climbs? Is that needed to conquer the tower?

Of course, I couldn’t be sure. It was nothing more than a likely assumption. If I wanted to confirm it, there was a simple way. Most climbers wore climbing suits. Even those clad in armor or robes typically wore them underneath. The climbing suits were practical as they were light, breathable, and comfortable for long battles.

Despite their commonality, it would be difficult to distinguish them by appearance alone.

Many of the wraiths wore armor that was so corroded and blackened that their features were unrecognizable, but that didn’t matter. I could simply cut them down and see for myself.

As long as they had climbed a few floors, any target would do. Most climbers began wearing the suit after reaching the fifth floor anyway. An easy way to tell would be to avoid any wraith as strong as an ordinary human.

I swung Soulbound toward the nearest wraith with unerring precision. The axe gleamed from the crackling lightning running along its cold and sharp edge. As it sliced cleanly through the wraith’s armor, an arc of energy extended about twenty centimeters to each side, revealing what lay beneath the shattered metal.

Was I wrong?

Contrary to my expectation, the inside didn’t reveal a climbing suit but instead a ragged cotton garment. Regardless, it was too soon to draw conclusions. Even among the Earthling climbers, not everyone had worn the suit.

Also, there was no guarantee that climbing suits had existed continuously over the past four thousand years. Perhaps the tower released them at a later point.

I should check a few more before deciding.

After cutting down roughly twenty more wraiths, I finally caught sight of the distinctive texture of a climbing suit beneath the broken armor. It was designed slightly differently, likely due to its era of origin, but the color and material were unmistakably similar to my own.

One out of twenty... that is hardly anything.

It could have been due to generational differences, but still, the ratio was too low. Perhaps not all wraiths were climbers, and this floor included any species that had perished within the tower’s trials as well.

Trials in worlds overseen by gods would be an exception, of course. However, in worlds overseen by the tower, or the labyrinthine domains the tower had created, where the system held absolute authority, their souls could have remained bound.

That isn’t even including those who were kidnapped to another location, like the factory.

If those beings’ souls had nowhere else to go, remaining tethered to the tower wasn’t impossible. On second thought, perhaps it made little difference, but either way, any existence bound to the tower seemed doomed to become a wraith.

Despite all the conclusions I had reached, it didn’t help me figure out what the tower wanted me to do to “release” them. Whether or not they were climbers or beings summoned from other worlds, I couldn’t use that information.

For now, there was only one way to set them free—death.

Whooooom.

The firestorm behind me roared louder, its swirling heat spreading across the blackened landscape. Every flame fanning from the storm dyed the blackened world in shades of crimson. The dark wraiths rushing toward it from that shadowed world looked like figures caught in the final scene of an apocalypse.

“

Haaa,

” I exhaled softly.

A quarter of the allotted time had already passed, but their numbers still defied comprehension. I needed to move faster.

My mana reserves were holding strong.

I increased the rate at which the firestorm expanded, fired a bolt of lightning, and kicked off the ground. Dust rose from under me, although it was instantly consumed by the storm’s flames.

***

[Release the wraiths. Time remaining: 11 hours 14 minutes.]

More long and grueling hours of endless fighting passed. I noticed progress, however. The wraiths, whose horde had seemingly numbered in the tens of millions, were gradually thinning.

The horizon remained filled with them, but one difference stuck out to me. At first, they had entirely hidden the ground with their mass, but patches of open space had begun to appear. Despite my relentless pace, I still hadn’t found any other way to release them.

Tch.

I hadn’t just stuck to one location, either. I had searched through multiple areas, yet nothing had stood out. Poong-Lyeong observed everything within the storm’s reach, so I couldn’t have missed something.

It was becoming increasingly likely that I was supposed to “release” the wraiths by killing them. So, I continued doing just that.

Whooooom.

Out of nowhere, a deep, reverberating hum had filled the air, and an eerie wave rippled through the battlefield. Countless strands of black smoke began to materialize from the empty sky. Considering that slaying wraiths caused them to dissolve into the same substance, the already slain souls appeared to be converging.

That wasn’t all, though. The many wraiths converging on my location suddenly turned into black mist.

What is happening?

Even the ones trapped within the firestorm were the same. Instead of disappearing under the power of erasure, they remained completely unaffected as they transformed into smoke and rose.

At that moment, I realized what was happening. The ninety-seventh floor was finally revealing its true nature. Something immense was about to appear.

Of course. This is the ninety-seventh floor.

Despite having spent twelve hours fighting, it had all felt far too easy. The trial had lacked the weight the fourth-to-last floor should carry.

The black smoke began to swirl and compress, drawing together into a single massive form. Well, I wasn’t about to stand there and watch—I wasn’t an idiot.

When the chance presented itself, I acted. Lightning ripped through the air as I struck at the condensing smoke, but it gathered faster than my attack could disperse it. A portion of the smoke struck by lightning disintegrated instantly, but the lightning diffused as well.

So it sacrificed part of itself to defend.

I activated Flash Strike and kicked off the ground, aiming to strike directly with Soulbound. The black mass shot upward at an incredible speed, and I followed close behind.

When I attacked again, it ended the same. A fragment of the thickening smoke detached and blocked the blow.

Hmm.

Perhaps it was because millions of wraiths had gathered in one place from the beginning, but for now, it didn’t seem to hold any real significance. Then again, something on the ninety-seventh floor wouldn’t do something so meaningless. If the wraiths were acting like that right before my eyes, there had to be a reason.

I stopped pursuing them.

Instead, I recalled the firestorm and steadied my breath. Though I had been fighting for hours on end, I wasn’t physically tired in the slightest. I hadn’t faced any truly formidable opponents, and my equipment continued to sustain my vitality. Of course, fighting for so long was mentally fatiguing, but not to the point that it impacted my combat strength.

I rolled my neck from side to side and shrugged my shoulders, easing the stiffness that had settled into my muscles.

Meanwhile, the black smoke began to take form. It grew into a figure roughly three meters tall, with its most distinctive feature being its six arms. Four were attached to its torso, and two sprouted from its back.

The undulating smoke then hardened into weapons. Four hands grasped a spear, a sword, a shield, and a staff, while the remaining two clutched a bow.

The wraith fixed its hollow gaze on me. Its eyes were pitch black, starkly contrasting the bone white pupils. The moment our gazes met, I knew I was right—the wraiths were fallen climbers from failed climbs.

A new notification window appeared before me.

[Trial Wraith]

- A transcendent being born from the resentment and hatred of climbers who perished within the Tower of Ordeal.

- Their minds have been consumed by loneliness and despair, leaving them devoid of reason.

The tower had declared that any world that reached the hundredth floor and conquered the tower would have all of its climbers revived. No one and nothing had ever shared what would become of those who failed, however.

Whether the tower collected their souls elsewhere or not, the being before me was clearly the embodiment of those lingering negative emotions.

The wraith’s mouth opened slightly, and in a rasping voice, it declared, “You will not ascend.”

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

I didn’t bother replying. The creature was long past reason. True to its classification as a transcendent entity, it emanated an uncanny power. Poong-Lyeong’s words from the previous floor surfaced in my mind, about how the Primordial God hadn’t existed since the beginning, but was born from the faith of intelligent life.

Perhaps it was due to the tower’s causality, but this wraith was a similar existence. It was an incarnation born from the fury, grief, and despair of the climbers who had fallen along the way.

Well. This won’t be easy.

Even if each one was weak, hundreds of millions of wraiths combined to create something incomprehensible. It looked formidable. Moreover, the five weapons it held represented every role a climber could assume after awakening their talent.

Fuck.

I hadn’t needed to fight the sources of the mysterious powers the Flame of Aspiration had led me to, so if I considered the ninety-sixth and ninety-seventh floors as a single trial, it worked to my advantage.

Given that the Trial Wraith had reached its completed form, I saw no reason to wait any longer. I raised Soulbound in challenge. Just as I prepared to move, a fleeting thought crossed my mind. The weapon in my hand and the situation before me suited each other perfectly. Soulbound had reached perfection by consoling the souls of the dead. Moreover, I had chosen its name because it resonated with the act of accepting the spirits contained within the soulsteel. Now, a similar meaning would apply.

What stood before me was an accumulation of pain. Of those who had died on the lower floors without even understanding why. Those who had fallen in the middle would have suffered in despair. Finally, anyone who had survived those stages yet failed at the last hurdle had known what awaited their worlds and had succumbed to hopelessness.

Liberator.

The word suddenly surfaced in my mind. The orc I had met on the second floor and the others I had rescued from the factory had once called me that. I hadn’t heard it in a long time. I wasn’t sure where the name had come from, but perhaps they had simply called me that because of the circumstances.

Regardless, the reason didn’t matter. The word fit the moment.

Even if it wasn’t intentional, I wasn’t all that different from before. The thought came to me unexpectedly, but it didn’t feel unpleasant. I would soothe these spirits and set them free, for the climbers who came before me. Though I wanted to test Soulbound against a powerful foe, this wasn’t the time for that.

I kicked off the ground.

At that exact moment, the Trial Wraith moved as well. Arrows and spells hurtled toward me in unison, cutting sharply through the air.