Antagonist Protection Service-Chapter 178 - The Augury Tower (5)
178: The Augury Tower (5)
178: The Augury Tower (5)
Moving to the Fifth Floor, I found myself in a room of cracked, mossy stone bricks.
[Objective: Return the ancient relic to its rightful place]
‘Ancient relic…?’
From the objective description, I didn’t think it sounded too hard.
It was even to the point that it made me wonder how on earth it took people so long to clear it until relatively recently.
But then, another notification appeared.
[Time Limit: 10 Days]
“…Well, it’s still a generous amount of time.
I doubt it’ll take that long.”
Even if it took the rest of the world over a year to clear this one Floor alone, I was confident I wouldn’t follow the same pattern.
After all, although it might’ve been a bit narcissistic of me to say…
‘I’m not like any of the people who challenged this Floor before me.’
And that was just the truth.
Anyway. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
“Hm…
Where’s that relic at, then…”
Examining the surroundings, I found a whole lot of nothing.
At least, in this chamber I spawned in, there was just a simple altar at the back, sitting atop a small staircase, as well as some moss-covered, eerie statues embedded into the walls.
Opposite that, there was a staircase leading up―seeing nowhere else to go, I ascended the stairs, finding more of the same dilapidated and empty stone brick rooms, with more statues scattered about the place.
After exploring for a while, climbing some more staircases and being careful to watch out for traps or monsters, I reached an exit to what I guess must have been an ancient temple.
And, what I saw when I entered the glaring sunlight―
“…No.”
―Was a dense, vibrant jungle that stretched all around me.
“You’ve got to be kidding…”
Inwardly, I felt betrayed.
Not because of anything in particular, but just because I felt the Objective left out a part that was quite important.
‘You said to return the relic, not that I had to find it first…’
Somehow, even though I honestly couldn’t claim to know her that well, it indeed felt like a trick that Leinth would play, and considering it was her voice that read the Objective out to me when I arrived on the Floor, I felt I was well within my right to blame her.
Of course, more than the deceit, the more important thing was that I had to find an ‘ancient relic’ in this jungle, which who knows how vast it was, and not only that, but I presumably had to return it to this temple’s altar, and all within ten days.
Even just surviving ten days in the jungle would alone be a challenge, and yet this unnecessary stipulation was added onto it…
To make matters worse, I didn’t even know what this ancient relic was, what it looked like, or anything like that.
“Haaa, seriously…”
Sighing deeply, I took steps forward, climbing down from the top of the temple and approaching the gigantic jungle trees before me.
‘The faster I get started, the faster it’ll be over, I guess…’
More than anything else, I felt that this time would require a whole ton of luck, as well as a lot of hard work coming from my enhanced instincts to help me out.
❖─────★★★★☆─────❖
Shortly after entering the jungle, I tried climbing to the top of one of the giant trees to get a bird’s eye view of the place, or at the very least, some faint idea of if there was any structure to gain some insight into.
If there was something along those lines, I may have been able to obtain some kind of hint as to where the ancient relic was hidden, but alas, there was nothing of the sort.
The canopy was too thick to see anything from up above, and even if I sat just below it, the jungle trees themselves were too fat and densely-populated to be able to see more than a certain distance in front of my location.
Initially, I was being very wary of travelling along the jungle floor, thinking there might be monsters similar to the hybrids from the previous floor that’ll jump out at me, or otherwise venomous insects that could bite and sting me.
Honestly, those were what I was expecting more of, considering the Anti-toxin Elixir I received just before, but somehow, I wound up not encountering any, leading me back to thinking about the theory I had before about these starting Floors being nerfed to suit their difficulty more towards beginners.
‘I guess she needed to be lenient when creating the Tower to make sure it actually had a chance of being cleared in order to guarantee that it could maintain a role as the Antagonist.
At least, I’m pretty sure I remember her saying something like that.’
Thinking back to my conversation with Leinth, I’m sure my assumption was mostly accurate.
At the end of the day, an Antagonist’s role was to be beaten, after all.
In order for the Tower to fit the role of a pseudo-Antagonist, even if it was only that much, I couldn’t imagine it would be suitable for the role if it couldn’t even be cleared.
It was only a temporary measure, anyway―something built to last just until a proper Antagonist appears, so that the balance of World Stability doesn’t tip too far one way.
‘Anyway, where the hell is this damn relic…?’
After wandering around the jungle for a while, I decided to summon my smartphone to try and make a digital map of where I’d been.
Of course, I immediately realised it didn’t work, remembering the fact that modern technology didn’t work inside the Tower for whatever reason, putting it right back into Storage.
I would have liked to swap to a paper map, but unfortunately, I didn’t have anything I could write it with, even if I did have tanned leather taken from the Beast Tamer Protagonist party’s waterskins that I could have used to write on.
“…Wait.
Could I…?”
Summoning the Villainous Blade, I activated its Form Change to turn it back into its knife-form, then, by ripping apart the waterskin and holding the tanned leather flat against a tree, tried carving something out.
“Oh, wow.
Am I a genius?”
Somehow, it worked almost flawlessly.
Spending some time carving out where I had been like that, I successfully made a basic map of the jungle, with the starting temple at the centre.
I knew there was an orientation method to determine what direction you were facing by calculating something with the Sun, but as someone who never thought I’d be in a situation where I would need that information, I never bothered learning the technique properly.
Still, I could make do on my own.
‘If I just mark the direction I first headed in as north, then so long as I can identify where I am in relation to the temple, I can orient myself that way.
The entrance only faced one side, so I’ll just call that side north.’
Of course, it wasn’t a perfect method, and I didn’t know how big the jungle was in the first place, so I was bound to get lost at some point, but gathering such information was important, and I could always attempt the Floor again if I failed.
If that happened, I’d be starting from the beginning, but I’d already have a whole ten days worth of exploring, map-making and information-gathering that I could use.
“Alright.
That’s that done, so I guess I should start–”
In the middle of muttering to myself, I suddenly paused.
My instincts sensing something dangerous, I abruptly spun my head around and, dismissing the map and Villainous Blade to the inventory, summoned the Holy Sword.
At that moment, I caught a blur.
Shiiingg– tk-!
Cutting something down in the air, I shot a glance where it fell, finding a small dart.
‘Shit…’
Narrowing my eyes, I glared in the direction the projectile was fired from.
