I Became the 1st Floor Boss of the Tower

Chapter 5: The Village on the Lowest Floor

The Anti-Mana Bomb was an item that froze the mana of all living things within a hundred-meter radius for five seconds. Lee Shin felt all the mana inside him freeze instantaneously. Challengers threw swords and spears toward him.

Crunch—

Lee Shin clenched his teeth and threw himself to the ground, frowning. Lee Shin had to wait for just five seconds until the Anti-Mana returned to normal. However, those short five seconds felt like five hours to him.

Just as he was about to re-activate his mana, Lee Shin’s body turned stiff due to the rebound from the freezing effect. He was not sure if the challengers had intended this. It could have been a coincidence, but this was the worst case possible for him.

Swoosh— Swoosh—

Lee Shin flinched and broke out in cold sweat as he watched a spear pass by his neck and a sword make a slight cut on his side. He was able to move quickly and avoid them as he had heightened his senses right from the start. Otherwise, he could have been skewered by that spear.

‘Damn it!’?In his blurred vision, Lee Shin could see an arrowhead approaching his nose.

Before firing the arrows, the challengers had accurately predicted the direction where Lee Shin would turn in order to avoid their attack.

Kwak—

“Ugh!” Lee Shin gritted his teeth as he tried to hold his groan.

If he had not blocked the arrow by raising his arms using his superhuman reflexes, it would have been stuck in his heart.

‘How many seconds have passed? Two seconds? Three seconds?’ Lee Shin was worried.

He rolled again during the time that felt like an eternity. The enemy’s attack was not over yet. It was unbelievable how thoroughly the challengers had prepared. Another arrow flew toward Lee Shin, and the weapons of those who had just failed to hit him came charging toward him again. The joy of victory began to appear on the challengers’ faces as they thought they could finally defeat Lee Shin.

However, at the same time, Lee Shin sneered at them.

While Lee Shin was rolling over to avoid their attacks, he bumped into a stone pagoda. As he crashed into it, making it collapse, a cylindrical light formed around it, inside which an intangible film emerged.

Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang!

All of the arrows, swords and spears were blocked in the air and fell to the ground.

“What? What’s happening?”

“I thought his mana was frozen.”

“What just blocked them?”

“Don’t stop! Don’t give up yet!” Park Hye-Won shouted.

The challengers hesitated to move forward when they saw the sudden outburst of mana. The challengers tried to continue with their attack after hearing Hye-Won’s cry, but soon realized that their plan would not work out.

Lee Shin’s sensation of mana was slowly returning back to normal. His mana had been frozen for only five seconds, but the sense of freedom he was feeling now was indescribable. The mana that was sleeping at his fingertips was released recklessly as if it was enjoying its freedom too.

[Air Bomb]

Boom! Boosh Boosh Bam!

The compressed air burst out. The challengers who had come close to Lee Shin to attack were flung backward back, vomiting blood.

Crack!

Lee Shin broke the arrow stuck in his arm with his mana and stared at the challengers with a relaxed smile.

“Is this all you’ve prepared?” Lee Shin sneered.

***

Several streaks of light fell onto the waiting area on the first floor.

“Oh, fuck!”

“We failed again! Our plan was perfect though!”

“How are we supposed to defeat the boss if he gets stronger each time?”

“I thought we would be able to defeat him for the first time…”

“Hey, we’ve been hit so many times that my HP has already increased by 300 points. Guess how much my stats have increased?” Baek Hyun laughed.

After returning to the waiting room, the challengers sat on the floor with looks of devastation.

“Who cares if the stats go up and the health points and mana points increase… Ha…” Kim Kang-Chun sighed with frustration.

Two days ago, ten more challengers had arrived, and with fifty challengers now, they thought they would be able to defeat the boss. They had been so ready to defeat him, but now they were hopeless again. The challengers who had arrived first persuaded the newcomers to gather their points to purchase a [Anti-Mana Bomb]. Although they were taking a big risk, they thought that they had a good chance of defeating the boss with this item.

‘Was he hiding his power the whole time?’ Kim Kang-Chun shook his head.

It did not make sense that the boss had been hiding his power, because his aura was completely different from before. It seemed like the boss had upgraded to another level mid-battle.

‘Can the boss also level up?’?Kang-Chun pondered. It was unbelievable.

“Has he been going easy on us until now?”

“It felt like the boss got stronger. Can the boss also level up as he defeats the challengers or something?”

“But then, why wouldn’t he kill us?”

“How did he get so strong? Why is he using elemental mana all of a sudden?”

“Wait, but that makes no sense. How… how was he able to use mana if we froze everything? Isn’t that crazy?”

“Ha… I don’t know man. I’m gonna get some rest.” Baek Hyun shook his head and walked towards the tree house at a distance.

They had already built their homes because they were close to giving up. They needed personal spaces to live in while staying at the waiting area on the first floor anyway.

“It’s going to be chaotic to recover all the points that we’ve put into this attack…”

“Ha… I know, right?”

Park Hye-Won, Kang Ji-Hoon and several others went back to the portal after their cooldown time had passed. Others trudged to their homes to get some rest. Toeing had created a portal to go up to the first floor, because more challengers showed up and there were repeated requests to move between floors.

“Ha… It was too tiring,” complained Toeing, who was lying on a flat stone.

“Then what do you do now?” Baek Hyun asked, because he thought Toeing’s statement was ridiculous.

“I take care of this place,” Toeing replied.

“Can you be more specific?” Baek Hyun asked.

“Um… oops! I think I forgot to turn off the gas. I’ll have to get going. Call me when you need me!” Toeing replied and quickly left the place.

“What kind of rabbit uses gas?” Baek Hyun muttered as he looked around.

A small village was built on the vast land.

***

“Ha… Ha…” Lee Shin sighed.

Cough Cough—

Blood came up from inside his body and spilled out of his mouth.

“What a great group of challengers…” Lee Shin muttered.

His head throbbed and his whole body was a mess. The fifty challengers who had just come up had a new strategy prepared with the arrival of a large number of new challengers.

‘I never thought I would have to face this kind of attack this early.’?Lee Shin thought about the new item the challengers had used.

Anti-Mana Bomb was an item that required 50,000 points. Since each challenger received 1,000 points when they first entered the tower, fifty people had to combine all of their points to purchase it.

It would not have been easy for those who had just entered the tower for the first time to use their 1,000 points on someone whom they were meeting for the first time, to purchase a single-use item. Moreover, it was not easy to earn points on the first floor. If they did it and failed to clear this floor, all of their efforts would be meaningless.

‘I thought it would take at least a hundred people to use an item like that.’?

Lee Shin thought that he could have died if he had not prepared a mana circle in advance.

His mana was barely enough to work on the high-purity mana manipulation that increased his intelligence stat, much less to create a mana circle.

Yet, having a safety device as a backup plan had really helped him out in the last battle. Besides, it was lucky that a portion of his body’s seal had been lifted and that he had been building up his body during this time. He could have died if he didn’t have any of these three factors.

“Whoa…” Lee Shin sighed.

He needed time to focus on recovering his body from the injuries sustained from this battle, as there was no potion nor medicine available for him in the boss room. Time was tight. Even a month or two was insufficient for him to devise another strategy to deal with the challengers while working on his recovery.

***

The challengers had never made any attempts to challenge the boss since the last try. While Lee Shin was going through Gene’s research data as usual, he noticed a small crack on the wall.

“A barrier?” Lee Shin was surprised.

If it were a simple barrier, Lee Shin would have noticed it earlier. He slowly added mana to explore the composition of this barrier.

“Hmm… This is…” Lee Shin muttered.

The level of the barrier?was too high for Lee Shin to analyze at the moment. It looked complex because several types of mana of different compositions were combined. Lee Shin knew that there was a barrier, but yet another spell seemed to be covering it.

“So… A double barrier…?” Lee Shin wrestled with this for a long time, and he finally figured out what it was.

Lee Shin found it difficult to figure out the principles of the mana circle, but he could tell that someone had made a barrier and put it into the subspace so that it could not be easily found. It was clear that the mana circle was a work by Gene Ebrium.

Lee Shin poked through the cracks using his mana and he could feel that the barrier inside the crack and his mana mingled well. All magi had their distinct magical characteristics. Just like how each person had unique fingerprints, each magus had different characteristics to their mana. And this mana circle was designed to respond to Gene’s mana pattern only.

As Lee Shin continued to inject mana into the crack, he could easily break the double spell on the barrier.

Rumble—

The space inside the crack appeared as the stone wall crackled.

“Wow…” Lee Shin had never thought that there would be a place like this.

On one side, there were huge shelves and tightly packed books. Also, there was a chair that looked quite comfortable, a spacious desk, and a nicely organized study. The desk was clean and dust-free.

‘Hmm… There is a semi-permanent preservation spell on this.’?Lee Shin noticed the powerful mana that connected everything in this space.

This mana proved how talented Gene Ebrium was, because it was very challenging to preserve this kind of mana semi-permanently by connecting it to different types of mana. Lee Shin was aware that he could not have done this in his previous life.

As he opened another door on the other side and went in, he saw various magical experimental apparatus and other related materials. There were several piles of books that were also dust-free.

Unfortunately, there were barely any ingredients left. Lee Shin thought that Gene had burnt them because he found traces of something burnt. However, Lee Shin was not too sure.

On the bright side, the experimental apparatuses were fine. Thankfully, he could conduct research to treat his crippled body. All he had done so far was to prevent the deterioration of his mana blood and restore it a bit. He needed a special way to cure his mana blood.

“This is…” Lee Shin mumbled as he saw another door inside the room.

He tried to open it, but there was another barrier over it. He thought that it would open naturally if he injected Gene’s mana power, but instead, there was an instantaneous repulsion when the mana reached the barrier. It seemed to have been designed to open only when a specific type of mana was injected.

‘What did he hide in there…? I can’t force it to open…’ Lee Shin knew that he could not do anything about it.

He left that room and picked up a book that was on the desk. It was a diary of Gene Ebrium.

-I was defeated. Gene Ebrium, necromancer and Great Dark Wizard, no longer exists.

This was the first page of his diary. Even though there was ample space, Gene Ebrium had not written anything else on the first page. It seemed as if his hand had been shaking when he wrote this. There were tear marks on the page as well.

Lee Shin closed the diary without reading it entirely. It could have been because the original owner of his body was Gene. Reading just one line from Gene’s diary was enough to make Lee Shin feel overwhelmed.

[A challenger has appeared.]

[A challenger has appeared.]

[A challenger has appeared.]

.

.

.

Suddenly, a series of system messages appeared in the air. Lee Shin had to leave the room, and he did, with a frown. Normally, Lee Shin did not care when the challengers came in to challenge him. However, now that he wanted to spend more time in the study and the laboratory, he did not want these distractions.

‘It would be nice if I had an agent for myself,’?thought Lee Shin.

He soon realized that there were no materials left in the laboratory for him to even consider what he wanted. He needed intermediate-level materials at least, to be able to create a useful guy, and above all, a medium to inject a personality into it.

He thought of a possibility, but while he was still thinking, the challengers who had entered the first floor arrived in the boss’ room. It was Kim Kang-Chun and the four others in his group.

Lee Shin frowned. He looked annoyed because he was constantly being interrupted while he was trying to think. Lee Shin’s annoyed look surprised the five challengers, and they stood frozen to the spot.

“W…why do you look so angry today…?” Kang Ji-Hoon asked in a nervous voice.

“You came as a group of five to defeat me? You really want to die, don’t you?” Lee Shin said with an unpleasant look.

“You never kill us, anyways…” Baek Hyun muttered.

“Oh my gosh. I’m so s-sorry. He didn’t mean that. Are you crazy? What are you saying?” Hye-Won quickly stopped Baek Hyun.

“Why? What’s wrong with what I said?” Baek Hyun complained.

“You need to shut up!” Kang Ji-Hoon clamped his hand over Baek Hyun’s mouth.

“Eupp!” Baek Hyun gasped.

“We are here to talk.” Kim Kang-Chun stepped forward.

“Do you really think we are in the kind of relationship that allows for casual conversation?” Lee Shin replied with a question, but he seemed intrigued by Kang-Chun’s words.

The five challengers were hopeful when they saw Lee Shin’s facial expression. The challengers had never tried this before, but they were glad to be able to have a proper conversation with Lee Shin.

Gulping, Kim Kang-Chun knelt in front of Lee Shin and looked at him earnestly. The others knelt behind Kim Kang-Chun.

“We must climb the tower, so please help us!” Kim Kang-Chun begged Lee Shin.

“Are you telling me to die?” Lee Shin asked.

“No, we’re not saying that. There should be another way to climb the tower. We thought you would know the answer,” Kim Kang-Chun replied.

Lee Shin was briefly lost in his thoughts after hearing Kim Kang-Chun’s words, but he soon smiled. He had thought that it was time to develop their relationship in a more constructive way.

“...Of course, there’s a way.” Lee Shin lied, because he thought some lies could be good occasionally.

“For real?”

“Oh my gosh! It was real! There was another way!”

That was not true. There were no alternatives.

“What do we have to do?” The five challengers looked at Lee Shin with expectant eyes and asked.

“Actually… There’s a secret boss. If you manage to kill him, then you get to go up.” Lee Shin lied again.

“That makes sense! I didn’t think the difficulty level of the first floor would be this high.”

“Hey, you were right!”

“See? I told you so!”

It was quite touching to see how they hugged each other in excitement, but in fact, there was no such boss.

“Where is he?” Kim Kang-Chun asked.

“It’s too early for you guys to deal with him. If you want to kill him, you have to be stronger.” Lee Shin replied.

“Wait, what? How?”

Their faces fell in an instant when they were told that they had to be stronger.

“But, don’t worry. I’ll teach you how to get stronger. But… there is a condition.” Lee Shin said.

“What? Really? Are you really going to teach us?”

“What’s the condition?”

They seemed very nervous, but in fact, the conditions were not that difficult.

“You guys will have to give me points in return. If you bring me the things that I ask you to buy, then I’ll make you guys stronger than anyone else.” Lee Shin suggested.

The five challengers engaged in a serious discussion. They were whispering to one another in a corner, but Lee Shin could hear everything. It was pointless.

“Okay, we will do that. But can you tell us where the boss is? We want to see him…” They accepted Lee Shin’s conditions.

“Not yet. I’ll tell you when I think you can defeat him.” Lee Shin replied.

They were a bit skeptical at Lee Shin’s words, but they could not show any dissatisfaction when such a strong boss was about to be their master. They also knew that there were no other ways to climb the tower. In fact, they had stopped thinking about defeating Lee Shin altogether.

“Okay.” The five challengers replied in disappointment.

Lee Shin nodded in satisfaction.

“Then, can we call you our teacher?” Park Hye-Won asked.

“No, just call me master.” Lee Shin replied.

“Okay, master!”

“Nice to meet you!”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome, idi…juniors.” Lee Shin sneered in satisfaction as he watched the children bow down and thank him profusely.