Chapter 240 – Tutorial 56th Floor (5)

It was troublesome to put out the fire on the monster’s body, so I roughly shoved it back in my inventory. I could smother out the flames at a later time.

I opened the window to let the smoke out of the room and leaned on the wall as I waited for the room to get ventilated.

The <Infringement of Control> is a force that I’ve previously used; however, I wasn’t sure how to use it properly. At the very least, I seemed to know the origins of this power.

[Degree of Faith: 361]

The figure rose little by little every day, and as a result, my power became more powerful by the day. The power I’d felt when the degree of faith was 100, and when it was 200, were vastly different from each other. I felt that the higher the degree of faith was, the more comfortable I felt with handling the power.

It was the divine power of the gods. It was essenrial to take note of the fact that the essence of the divine power originated from the gods, and not in the wielder himself. Essentially, the wielder borrowed the god’s strength.

In comparison to the divine power, the blinding magic Ahbooboo used the other day was considered primitive. The blinding magic worked by flashing a blinding light in someone’s vision. Alternatively, you could also block light from entering their eyes. If the magic was further developed, it could begin to target the pupil. This would lead to blinding magic changing from area-type magic to target-designated magic.

However, the divine power was different. It directly tampered with an organism’s nervous system, which made blinding extraordinarily easy. It wasn’t as if the nervous system was being destroyed. That couldn’t be further from the truth; the nervous system was only being manipulated. But what if you can influence something besides vision?

Take the medulla, for example, the brain’s control center of a human’s involuntary life-sustaining functions. Breathing, swallowing, and heart rate; they’re all controlled by the medulla. If you could block neural signals from this portion of the brain, the target would be helpless.

Healing magic was a sub-magic of divine power. It functioned by treating wounds and diseases by interfering with other people’s pain signaling and the immune system.

To summarize, the divine power was a dangerously powerful force. It was hard to believe that I could gain this power by increasing my degree of faith.

Suddenly, I thought of the power I had absorbed from a stone on the 35th floor. It had been given by the King Goblin. After advancing through the stages, I found that it was the same stone that came from the body of monsters. And unlike the stones I got from other stages, where I didn’t feel any power, there was actually power in it, a power that I absorbed.

The Spirit King, who I met on the 40th floor, asked how the force absorbed from the stone was related to God, and whether I’d be willing to give it to him. From his attitude, I learned that this power was much more significant than I initially thought.

It wasn’t just the Spirit King who was interested in the power, but the gods as well. I’ve heard that the primary reason why gods make tutorials and summon challengers is to select a new apostle and that the apostle’s foremost duty was to collect the magic stones.

It was possible that the divine power and people’s faith were proportional to one another. If so, it wasn’t strange that I gained such power through a sect with a few believers.

Slowly, my thoughts began to unravel; however, I was still swamped with questions.

First of all, it was weird that I never encountered the link between faith and divine power. I recalled the time I had faced the apostles on the tournament stage. If I hadn’t used this power, I might have died on the spot.

On the 35th floor, the power of the source was present, but there wasn’t any faith. It’s on this floor that I learned about and recognized the power of faith.

I had other questions, as well. Why had the power appeared at that time? Was it because I was experiencing a near-death crisis? I would have used the power a long time ago if I realized it had been there. And why hadn’t I been able to use the power to its full extent just now?

Was it because the targets were different? Apostles and monsters differed in many ways, and the amount of power needed to defeat an apostle was much larger than the amount needed for a monster. Questions and hypotheticals came to mind, but I became frustrated at my inability to find a clear answer.

Normally, I’d ask Kirikiri, but this time it was different. Even she would not be able to answer such questions.

Above all, I was currently stuck with the dragon instead of Kirikiri until I cleared the 59th floor. I didn’t think that the cheap lizard would do anything to ease my doubts.

[Warrior.] Ahbooboo called.

I was currently pretending to be a statue with the frog. When we weren’t moving and communicating with people, we were attempting to be religious statues.

When I asked Ahbooboo why we had to do something so stupid, he’d said that it made people feel more secure. How? I’ll never know. The only part of Ahbooboo’s explanation I understood were his last words. “It’s easier to pray in front of you if you just stay still.”

“Yes?”

[An ornament in the center of the first floor shattered, and a mural appeared in its place. It seems to be showing a field outside of the tower.]

“Maybe a new area was unsealed.”

[Possibly, but it’s a bit scary to see it on the wall. Come down and see for yourself.]

Wordlessly, I migrated down to the first floor, where the situation seemed to be quite serious. People nervously stared at me, then back at the queer wall. Usually, when people saw me, they’d be instantly relieved. However, even after seeing me, the anxiety in their eyes did not vanish.

“Don’t do something carelessly,” Ahbooboo warned.

A massive mural of a field covered the wall. The field was many times larger than a soccer stadium, and in the center of it, was a single blooming bud; I recognized it immediately. The plant was far from normal. The leaves of the tightly wound bud were the flesh of a monster, and instead of swaying delicately in the wind, it rhythmically pulsed like a beating heart. Its intestines fluttered in the wind in a disgustingly bloody manner. The mural frightened everyone on the first floor.

The mural on the wall displayed a scene outside the tower. In essence, it was similar to a live broadcast on TV. Hence, in order to encounter the monster in the mural, one would have to leave the tower to go and look for it.

Where had I seen this monster before? Was it the 47th floor?

[Hey, that’s the thing that explodes, isn’t it?]

“Yes, I think that’s right. It was half-buried under the ground back then as well.”

Monsters came in all different shapes and sizes. In comparison to this flower, the other tiny, weak monsters didn’t deserve to be called monsters.

This flower right here was particularly unusual. It stored energy underground, and would eventually explode. The explosion would release tiny spores that would be propagated by the air. It was like a pimple that got popped and released pus.

On the 47th floor, the mission had been to direct people towards the dimension gate before the monster exploded. I didn’t know what would happen if the monster exploded and spread its spores, but I assumed it was something terrible.

“What should I do?” I groaned

It was a monster that I had already encountered, but I was still clueless on how to attack it. The goal on the 47th floor was to guide people away from the monster, not confront it.

[Didn’t you say you couldn’t kill him?]

In addition, there was also the fact that once touched, the monster could explode. Before entering the 47th floor, Kirikiri had advised “You aren’t going to pick a fight with the bomb. Instead of killing that monster, you have to lead people away from it.”

When I was on the 47th floor, I avoided the flowering monster in fear of an explosion. I’d thought about attacking it from a distance, but there was also the chance that the radius of the explosion could encompass the whole planet. Typically, it wouldn’t be difficult to dismantle a bomb, but this bomb was one that couldn’t be dismantled without accidentally detonating it.

“How much time did I have back then?”

[6 days, maybe.]

After the monster has enough stored energy, there would be approximately six days until it exploded. There was still time.

I had to gain faith even with this monster present. Other towers would be able to see the monster from afar, and it occurred to me that this may be a political arena. However, instead of politicians campaigning on TV, people would see seven apostles trying to defeat the monster in the field in order to gain faith. The apostle who achieves 500 believers wins.

I told Ahbooboo about my hypothesis.

[Will the apostles of other towers try to collect their faith competitively like you? Do they have the same target?] Ahbooboo questioned.

“Maybe.”

Unless absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t try to compete with the other apostles over faith; it’d just be too much trouble.

[Well… I guess I’ll have to think about something that would appeal to those who’ll be watching.]

“No, thanks.”

[What?]

“Let’s just kill that monster.”

[What if it explodes?]

I would just have to kill it in a fashion that didn’t allow it to explode. Of course, there was still a high chance of it exploding, regardless of how I tried to kill it.

“Even if it explodes, wouldn’t the people watching from here think that the monster died?”

I thought that would easily allow my degree of faith to reach 500.

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