Clearing the 5th floor changed a lot of things.
The most noticeable change for me was the upgrade of the General Store to level 2.
The items, which were previously only of the lowest grade, have now improved to low-grade, and in line with unlocking the blacksmith, equipment crafting materials have been added to the sales list.
In other words, the growth barrier to rank 3 has finally been lifted!
Wow!
Ultimate skills!
Skill cutscenes!
But are there even cutscenes?
Moreover, I can now comfortably pour low-grade growth potions into my experience bar, which barely budged with the lowest-grade ones.
But the lowest-grade potions still had their uses.
Of course, they were needed as ingredients for making cocktails, and also…
“Ugh, she’s slacking off again. Keep drinking.”
“Hwaaaah!”
“No whining. It’s good for you, so drink up.”
Our party’s new 5-star.
Nokkyubus-nim, who fills our lacking magic damage.
Tina was drinking diligently.
Originally, it would’ve taken about three weeks?
I was planning to patiently gather fragments to exchange for a complete summon, but luckily, the extremely rare complete summon ticket dropped for me.
The energy of the universe was gathering around me!
“Arurururu…!”
“Hieeeek…!”
“Hey, Rumi. You can’t act like that. We’re friends now, okay?”
I patted Rumi’s head, who still hadn’t let her guard down around Tina.
Ari ran off as soon as she saw Tina’s potion absorption show, claiming she had something urgent to do, and Johanna still hadn’t returned from the sanctuary.
It was a leisurely day.
“Haaam.”
Yawning, I started thinking about how to complete the final piece of our party.
The current lineup is:
If rated by stars, it’s 4555.
Not bad.
In terms of elements, it’s Wind-Earth-Holy-Dark.
Just a random mess.
In terms of positions, it’s Tank-DPS-Healer-Mage.
Pretty standard.
If I could spend money, I might’ve been able to unify the elements, but since package deals weren’t available yet, I gave up on that.
I’d need to recruit a tank soon.
Harong could technically be considered a tank, but she doesn’t want to fight, and honestly, her performance isn’t great.
People have their rightful places.
Harong will remain our head blacksmith.
“Woof! Drink up, woof! Rumi drank a lot too, woof!”
“Hwaaah…! Master, the dog keeps bullying me…!”
“Only Rumi can call you Master, woof!”
Moreover, after promoting Ari recently, I’m short on 3-star summon tickets, so I can’t upgrade 3-stars to 4-stars.
And the 4-star summon tickets I got were all dudes!
A healer without healing skills.
No joke.
She literally has none.
They say the best healing is killing the enemy quickly.
Then why even have the healer position?
A DPS whose skills are all single-target.
Unless it’s a boss raid, it’s pretty meaningless in the tower meta focused on clearing mobs.
And then, a backline melee DPS.
…………… Backline but melee.
She carries a gun but fights with bayonet skills.
And she’s squishy.
At this point, I want to dissect the developer’s brain.
Also, 3-stars can be upgraded to 5-stars using universal summon tickets, but 4-stars need to be obtained three times to reach 5-stars.
Maybe I’ll be fine with it later, but for now, it’s a bit much.
I’m about to hit the ceiling.
A tank.
A tank will come through, right…?
“Eeeek…! Just a big-chested bitch…!”
“That’s bad language, woof!”
“Kyaaah! Did you just hit me? You hit me!”
“Both of you, quiet.”
“Hwaaah…”
“Gyaaah…”
This is really driving me crazy.
“Rumi, don’t be too harsh on Tina. We talked about this earlier.”
“Woof! Tina tried to sneak up on Master last night, woof!”
What?
What what what?
What happened while I was asleep?
“…Tell me in detail, Rumi.”
“In the early morning, Tina suddenly got up and went to Master’s bed, woof! She stared at you for a while, giggling, and then started touching your hand, woof! Suspicious, woof!”
“Eek, how did you…!”
“…..?”
What really happened?
…………I have a rough idea, but.
“ELF?”
1. Pick up Tina.
5. Put her down.
After my relentless interrogation, Tina finally confessed.
“T-Tina just wanted to give you good dreams…! Because you’re my Master…! I just wanted you to have a nice dream…! Hii…”
“Rumi, you heard her? She didn’t have bad intentions, so stop bullying her.”
“Woof! But Master, what kind of dream was it, woof?”
I can’t say.
I absolutely can’t say that I was swept away by a wave of 108 Rumi dogs in bikinis and had a blissful time.
Even though it wasn’t a dirty dream, it’s not something I can say in front of her.
Anyway.
“Tina? Stop crying first. It was a good dream, but… don’t do that again. You should sleep when it’s time to sleep.”
If I keep having dreams like that, I might die from frustration.
It’s already tough enough with the guild house being full of women.
Especially Johanna’s pajama skin… it was something else…
“Kyahaha! Tina is a high-ranking demon! Unlike weak humans, I don’t need sleep to live!”
Tina, who had stopped crying and was now puffing herself up, flapped her fake wings.
They used to be real, but after switching sides, they became decorative, and even one of her horns disappeared.
A classic case of the “enemy turned ally (weaker)” trope.
But she’s still quite useful.
“Hmm, so you don’t sleep.”
That means.
You can work 24 hours a day, right?
Oops.
I should’ve checked something first.
“Tina, how old are you?”
“Demons don’t count age! Hmm, in human terms, maybe around 100 years? But in the demon world, it’s just a blink!”
She’s legal.
I tightly held Tina’s small hand.
“Tina, I’m counting on you from now on.”
No issues with the Child Welfare Act.
No problems with the Labor Standards Act’s child labor provisions either.
From now on.
You’re our night shift part-timer.
I might not even need to pay her.
Hehehe…
Hahaha…
She’s not just a free 5-star.
She’s a treasure.
A complete treasure.
***
The tower that suddenly rose in the center of the continent.
To escape the declining demon world and secure new territory, the last remaining divine artifact, the Holy Grail, was used to create it.
But powerful forces are always bound by causality.
Though it connected the demon and human worlds, the demon world’s power was strictly limited on each floor.
As if the will of the goddess who created the Holy Grail was strongly intervening.
So, for efficient management, the demon world appointed tower administrators to hinder the progress of the heralds and heroes.
And then.
“…Tina was defeated? No, not just defeated, but she betrayed us and surrendered?”
Ellis, the 10th-floor administrator, felt her head spin upon hearing the news.
Of course, she had also hidden a so-called “defection contract” in her panties, just in case of the worst-case scenario.
But isn’t this too fast?
Why did she surrender so quickly?
As an administrator, Ellis could check the progress across countless parallel dimensions.
Not only was the breakthrough speed clearly abnormal, but the fact that the arrogant brat was subdued in just three days filled her with an inexplicable sense of dread.
Of course, things wouldn’t be so easy from the 6th floor onward.
The greatest intellect of the demons!
The master of traps and deception!
The deceitful demon, Ellis.
…Though she was stuck in the lower floors due to her lack of pure combat power.
And she had almost no points to spend on setting traps…
But still.
It wouldn’t be as easy as Tina.
Bring it on, heralds and heroes!
You’ll just struggle and die in my traps anyway!
“Nehahahaha!”
On the 10th floor of the tower.
Ellis’s frivolous laughter echoed.
***
“Sniff sniff, there’s another trap there! So~ lame! Such a~ lame idea!”
After finishing Tina’s setup, I decided to test her by diving into the 6th floor.
Well.
Since the rewards change in this section, even if I don’t clear it, I can farm the first area 10 times to drain my stamina.
But Tina.
She’s really something.
She detects the magic of traps I don’t even remember and reports them one by one.
This month’s outstanding traitor, betrayer, Tina.
Why don’t you act a bit more like Carr?
It’s not like I’m the one who was betrayed.
“Good job, Tina.”
“Arrr…!”
“I’ll pet Rumi too.”
Though Rumi growled jealousy as I doted on Tina, she soon relaxed when I placed my hand on her head.
“Haam.”
There aren’t many monsters, and Tina finds all the traps.
This is a complete breeze.
“Let’s just farm the first area today.”
Let’s not push ourselves too hard.
Even though we’ve broken through to rank 3 and the party’s overall firepower has increased, we’re still in the middle of crafting equipment, and we’re short on experience potions, so not everyone has reached level 40 yet.
Of course, kids grow through fighting, but.
Seeing our heroes get hurt…
Honestly, I don’t want to see it.
When they were just data fragments?
Even if one of them fell, as long as one survived and we barely cleared with one star, that was enough.
We could always go for a 3-star clear later.
But now.
“Heal!”
“You’re tiny, woof!”
The only melee DPS with taunt.
Rumi takes most of the hits.
Even if one heal fully restores her, seeing scratches on her soft skin still bothers me.
What if it wasn’t just a scratch?
What if her arm was cut off?
What if she suffered a serious injury right in front of me?
Even though Johanna said heroes are automatically ejected from the tower and fully healed at the sanctuary if they suffer fatal injuries, it’s still unsettling.
[6th Floor of the Tower of Wishes – Ruined Village Area 1 Cleared!]
“Good work, everyone. Three more runs to go? Let’s push a little harder.”
As safely as possible.
As cleanly as possible.
As perfectly as possible.
Let’s go like that.