Chapter 31: The Butcher’s Oasis

As expected of creatures living in the Tower, they were several times larger than Earth’s scorpions or snakes.

Furthermore, the scorpions and snakes seemed extremely agitated, spitting venom every time they moved.

The sight of the surrounding sand melting away was a chilling reminder that a single bite would mean instant death.

If there had only been a few, he might have tried to fight back, but the way they swarmed like a carpet of ants forced him to run toward the pillar of light.

Perhaps because of his high speed, Min-hyuk managed to stay a few steps ahead by the time they lunged from the sand.

As long as he didn’t run out of stamina, it seemed he could reach the pillar of light without much trouble.

The problem was that the Tower knew that, too.

“Puuuu~”

Min-hyuk’s expression crumpled at the sound of a cry he might have heard as a child.

“…This is a bit much.”

A unit of desert elephants was charging from the front, shaking the very foundations of the earth.

They were naturally large animals, but the Tower’s elephants seemed several times larger than those on Earth.

They were massive beasts that looked exactly like what a mammoth would look like if it were still alive.

The only saving grace was that their movements seemed sluggish due to their size, but the creatures knew their weakness well and used a secret weapon to cover it.

“Ugh!”

The moment a powerful wave of Battle Spirit, felt even from a distance, surged toward him like a tide, Min-hyuk reflexively swung his Greatsword.

He compressed his own Battle Spirit and sent a slash forward, momentarily splitting the oncoming wave.

‘If I stop for even a second, it’s over.’

The elephant unit was a type of obstacle.

By leaving intentional gaps between the massive but slow elephants and the waves of Battle Spirit, a path to survival was left open for those who remained calm.

However, there was one thing he absolutely could not do.

‘I can think, but I can’t let my feet stop.’

As he pushed forward, even parting the waves of Battle Spirit, another disturber appeared.

A herd of camels was galloping like madmen, trampling over the scorpions and snakes.

‘Their eyes have rolled back!’

Seeing the eyes of the crazed camels charging at full speed, Min-hyuk gulped and funneled more mana into his legs.

The sight of the camels charging with half-turned pupils and drooling like rabid dogs evoked an instinctive fear just by looking at them.

It wasn’t that he feared the combat.

It was the fear that he might lose his mind just like them if he were hit by the spit flying from their mouths.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

The elephants, seemingly annoyed by how Min-hyuk dodged left and right, kicked the ground hard enough to make the earth tremble.

It seemed they infused their kicks with Battle Spirit, for every stomp created a powerful shockwave intended to stiffen his body.

If he failed to counter with his own Battle Spirit in time, his body would seize up, and if that happened a few times, those mad camels would catch him.

If he hesitated further, the scorpions and snakes would try to tear him apart, and even if he survived that crisis with a campfire, a sandstorm was waiting.

In short, a single moment of error led straight to the underworld.

“Aaaaagh!”

As the stomping continued, Min-hyuk let out a shout to endure the accumulating Battle Spirit of the elephants and forced himself to run straight ahead.

Like a racer, he dodged the descending feet by a hair’s breadth.

The moment he vaulted over the thick wall of elephants, Min-hyuk burst into laughter.

It was just when he thought it was all over.

“Wow… you persistent bastards.”

He felt like an adventurer who faced yet another trap immediately after clearing the first one as he stared straight ahead.

Beyond the massive elephant unit, giant cacti were waiting.

They were bizarre creatures that even moved their roots out of the sand.

However, it didn’t seem like this was all they had.

“Don’t tell me…”

The moment he looked at the cacti with a look of disbelief, their bodies crinkled as if mocking him, and the corners of their mouths—or what looked like them—upturned.

At that moment, the densely packed needles began to fire toward Min-hyuk all at once.

“Puuu! Puuuuuuu!”

Needles must have struck the elephants waddling behind Min-hyuk, as they began to scream and thrash about in a frenzy.

And Min-hyuk, who was in front of them?

Instead of his Greatsword, he held two swords, looking like a Sword Saint possessed as he frantically swung his blades.

‘A single hit will be fatal.’

The monsters here seemed to have poison as a passive trait; he could see the sand turning black wherever a needle struck.

In other words, even a scratch from a needle could mean death.

T-t-t-t-tang!

Min-hyuk desperately parried the needles flying at him relentlessly.

Even so, he didn’t forget the objective the Tower had set for the 8th floor.

‘Do not stop your feet.’

He faithfully followed this rule set by the Tower.

To the naked eye, there seemed to be no place to hide, but the cacti’s needles could be avoided if he just used his head.

If he could bait the cacti into concentrating their attacks on his initial position, things would become easier after that.

Perhaps they were unintelligent, for when Min-hyuk moved laterally, they simply followed him while firing needles in rapid succession like machine guns.

There wasn’t a single cactus smart enough to fire at a predicted location.

Furthermore, because they could hit the cacti in front of them, he could find space to advance by weaving into spots where the cacti in the rear couldn’t fire.

It seemed the strategy for the 8th floor was to find a path through the onslaught, much like a maze.

A shield to withstand the cactus needles.

Armor that would save his life once or twice if he made a mistake.

If he had those two things, he could have cleared this much more comfortably, but unfortunately, Min-hyuk had to break through with his bare body.

Still, it wasn’t all bad; perhaps because he was swinging his swords so frantically for the first time in a while, his Butcher’s senses were tingling.

Consequently, Min-hyuk eventually reached the area where the cacti were clustered and began the slaughter.

“Huff… huff…”

Gasping for breath with an exhausted body, Min-hyuk looked back.

He saw the cacti all cut in half, along with several camels and elephants that had followed him, now lying dead like pincushions.

Because the cacti fired needles regardless of friend or foe, even the swarming monsters had retreated, leaving only the sandstorm to threaten Min-hyuk.

“Whew… there’s still a long way to go.”

Even though he felt he had run quite a distance, he frowned at the sight of the still-distant pillar of light.

He wanted to rest, but the approaching sandstorm made even that difficult.

Putting strength into his trembling legs, he climbed over the cactus corpses and up a hill, only for his movements to come to a dead stop.

“Ah…”

A vast plain stretched out below the hill.

At the entrance of a mountain range visible at the end of that plain, a pillar of light existed.

He thought that perhaps that pillar of light symbolized the 10th floor.

If so, the plain spread out before his eyes…

“Is it the 9th floor?”

Min-hyuk muttered to himself unconsciously and took a step toward the plain.

Immediately, a strong wind blew, pushing him back.

At the same time, system windows began to pop up.

[You have achieved a Perfect Clear of the 8th floor.]

[The sandstorm will disappear in 5 minutes. If you do not intend to leave immediately, do not move from your current position.]

[For 24 hours after clearing, points of interest to explore will be marked with pillars of light. Please follow the pillars of light so you do not get lost~]

At the system’s warning, Min-hyuk sat down on the spot like a well-behaved child and started a campfire.

He wanted to cross over to the plain, but judging by the strong wind, it didn’t seem like the Tower would just let him pass.

As if to prove it, once the system windows appeared, a strong wind began to blow on the side of the plain, blocking his vision.

Strangely, the wind was blowing gently at the boundary where Min-hyuk stood.

He cleanly gave up on the natural phenomenon that would be impossible on Earth and took out some meat.

“I probably… can’t eat those.”

Min-hyuk looked at the 8th-floor monster corpses with a dubious expression.

Snakes and scorpions that seemed to be filled with poison.

Camels that looked like they’d make you go crazy if you ate them.

The elephant meat seemed like it might be okay, but seeing how it continued to affect its surroundings with the strong mana it held even after death, it didn’t seem like it would be easy to age.

The cacti went without saying.

“Nothing worth taking.”

It was just as he was grumbling and pulling out some aged rabbit meat.

[Butcher’s Meat Processing has detected an additional processing method.]

A system window appeared, and an arrow pointed toward the sand.

Min-hyuk stared blankly back and forth between the rabbit meat and the sand.

“Don’t tell me I’m supposed to age it in the sand?”

Min-hyuk looked on, dumbfounded.

The sand on the 8th floor looked like fine sand at a glance, but it contained immense mana.

Much like the Middle East on Earth, where oil comes out if you dig into the ground, the sand here seemed like nothing more than grains of mana itself.

Then, why couldn’t people from Earth turn this into a resource?

If they just scooped up the sand and processed it, it would have been possible to create artificial mana stones.

‘Poison.’

The mad camels, the elephants agitated like berserkers, the scorpions, snakes, and cacti filled with venom.

Why did they become like this?

Because the environment itself was configured this way, they had evolved to match it.

“Ah! The campfire.”

A campfire with a safe zone setting had a purification function in itself.

As if to prove it, when Min-hyuk took the rabbit meat outside the campfire’s range, the arrow changed back to point toward the campfire.

“Wait… then can those things be processed too?”

With this thought, he hurried over and cut off small pieces of cactus, elephant meat, and camel meat.

[Battle-Crazed Elephant Meat — Long-term aging required]

[Mad Camel Meat — Long-term aging required]

It was possible, but the window indicated it would take an absurdly long time.

It seemed that because they had lived here for so long, they had accumulated a lot of poison, requiring a significant amount of time to purify.

Still, thinking he might as well try, he began the aging process.

At the same time, he took out all the aged meat he had and buried it in the sand around the campfire.

Seeing system windows reading [Aging…] pop up everywhere, Min-hyuk smiled with satisfaction.

He ate some small pieces of meat and drank a potion while waiting for the sandstorm to disappear.

“So those are the spots.”

As soon as the storm vanished, Min-hyuk looked at the pillars of light that had shot up with a satisfied expression.

The fortunate thing was that a pillar of light was also rising from his clear point.

That meant he could leave without dismantling the campfire.

He moved immediately, thinking that by the time he got back from exploring the 8th floor, the meat would be aged just right.

In the process, he also discovered an unexpected gain.

He could actually milk the crazed camels!

Furthermore, unlike the beginning, they were no longer swarming, so he just had to knock them out and milk them.

In the case of the snakes and scorpions, they seemed completely inedible, but he packed them away anyway, thinking they might be useful for something.

The cacti were the same.

Surprisingly, they had a unique slime-like mucus, and he had a strong feeling it might be a reinforcement material for potions.

Even if it took a long time, if he could just purify it?

Surely something decent would come out.

While gathering these small gains, he finally arrived at the first target location.

“Whoa…”

A stone statue stood in the middle of the sandy desert.

The amazing thing was that a necklace was hanging around the statue’s neck, practically screaming, ‘I’m an item!’

“Wait, do all those pillars of light mark areas with treasure?”

The desert crossing was tedious, so Min-hyuk grinned widely at the system’s consideration in placing treasures everywhere and immediately took the necklace from the statue.

[Necklace of Vitality]

[※ Brings a slight amount of vitality to the body.]

[※ Has a minor health recovery effect.]

[※ No decrease in clear rate for floors 1–9.]

It didn’t have a particularly amazing effect.

It was an option that probably wouldn’t even sell at an auction house.

But for low-floor hunters who were desperate to increase their clear rates?

The story would be different.

“This was a treasure warehouse all along.”

For some reason, this desert that had been filled with nothing but sand now looked like a treasure trove to Min-hyuk. He began to move his feet to discover more treasure.