Study—and then put it into practice.
Learning something was only the first step. Using what he had learned in real combat always led to new insights.
The process of walking the path of a mage truly brought a wealth of gains.
Kanzaki Rei fought his way upward through the tower, constantly experimenting along the way, testing every idea that crossed his mind and turning theory into action.
Perhaps this, too, was a method of pursuing the root of magic.
The fifteen King-tier monsters had already been eliminated. Rei stood there with both hands tucked casually into his pockets, his staff already stored away.
By now, he possessed quite a few lethal techniques.
One of his most commonly used methods was to cast Flash White, piercing directly through an enemy's body. The instant it passed through, he would convert the spell into another, more destructive form, detonating it inside the opponent.
It was the technique he used most often—and the one that worked best.
Extremely difficult to defend against.
The only real concern was shields.
But shields were no longer a serious issue. He now had ways to break them.
Beyond that, there was the Root Magic he had stolen from Xu Zhou—Void Reversal Devour, a spell that combined offense and defense. It could inflict damage while simultaneously devouring enemy abilities, turning them into defensive protection.
There were also death spells, capable of attacking an enemy's soul and mind directly.
And with Sacrifice, he was no longer short on souls either.
At the same time, he possessed summons from the Void—an endless army of fourth-tier Nation-Destroyer class creatures fighting on his behalf.
Even Rei himself no longer knew where the limits of his strength truly lay.
But he had a feeling that even if he faced Level 5 adventurers, he wouldn't necessarily be at a disadvantage anymore.
In fact, he might even be capable of taking on an entire Level 5 adventuring party.
He was catching up to Iz and the others far faster than he had expected.
Rei still remembered the first time he met Iz—they had already been Level 5 at the time.
Now, Rei himself could defeat fifth-tier monsters. His strength had likely already surpassed that of ordinary Level 5 class-changed adventurers.
Reaching this level of power made Rei begin to understand their mindset.
No wonder they had dared to challenge a seventh-tier dungeon.
If he himself reached Level 5, he might also have the confidence to challenge such a dungeon.
In fact…
He was starting to feel a little arrogant.
Right now, he felt like he could challenge it alone, whereas Iz's group still needed to push their limits during battle.
…No.
That kind of thinking wasn't right either.
After all, it was said that the higher the tier, the greater the gap between each rank.
He continued forward.
Floor 92.
The enemies were still fifth-tier King-class monsters, but the difference this time was both their numbers and their individual strength, which were noticeably higher than those on the ninety-first floor.
Still, they were ultimately no match for him.
…
If he hadn't had summons, things might have been troublesome. Facing twenty King-tier monsters simultaneously would have been difficult—he wasn't entirely sure whether his shields could withstand that kind of pressure.
But with summons present, those monsters all rushed to fight them instead.
That allowed Rei to remain in the background, calmly outputting damage.
It felt extremely comfortable.
Sure enough, fighting alone and fighting with an army were completely different concepts.
The only downside was the size of his summons.
They were simply too massive.
If he tried sending them into smaller dungeons, the cramped spaces might actually restrict their movement.
Floor 92.
Floor 93.
Floor 94.
…
From Floor 90 onward, his climbing speed had indeed slowed down.
After all, these King-tier monsters were truly tough to kill.
And each possessed its own unique traits.
Floor 97 — Cleared.
…
"Floor ninety-seven already!"
"Do you think he might actually clear Floor 100?"
"It's definitely possible. Judging by his speed, he seems completely relaxed even in the nineties."
"If that's the case… he might become the second person after Luluvi to clear the hundredth floor."
"A mage who comprehended the Root… no wonder he's different."
"I heard some rumors—his talent might even surpass Iz Parult. Back when he was in Rein Town, even Iz supposedly lost to him."
"Seriously? That Iz?"
"Yeah. I also heard that this kid named Lu—"
The speaker paused briefly before correcting himself.
"—that this kid named Rei has registered for this year's War God Cup."
"The War God Cup? Isn't this year's competition the Level 4 division? He's entering too?"
The passerby glanced toward the towering War God Tower.
The current floor clearly showed he was still challenging the Level 3 tower.
"Is he planning to advance to Level 4 Mage that soon? I heard Root Mages usually need a long time to prepare for advancement."
"Of course they do! People aiming for perfect advancement can't just do it casually like us!"
"But he's definitely going to compete in the War God Cup. You might not know this—but I heard Rei once declared that even Luluvi wouldn't be a problem for him. He said he'd defeat her across levels."
Hearing this conversation, a young girl carrying a bow twitched her slightly pointed ears.
Her gaze shifted toward the towering spire that pierced the clouds.
Her fists clenched unconsciously.
"Tch. Defeat Luluvi across levels?"
"So he thinks I'm someone easy to look down on."
She had fought five thousand battles.
Across countless races.
And she had never lost once.
Yet today, a mere Level 3 kid was saying he would defeat her.
Looks like he really needed to be taught what it meant to have a sky beyond the sky.
"But seriously," someone else said nearby, "why are there suddenly so many ridiculous powerhouses appearing in our Loren Kingdom?"
"Could it be… Loren is about to dominate the world?"
"Dominate what? Those people are just traveling or training. They come for a bit and leave. Do you think they'll stay here forever like they're settling down?"
"Still… it's strange. People like Iz are famous across the Secret Sea, yet they all came to Loren. Could there be some treasure here they're after?"
"Who knows. When big figures gather like that, it usually means something major is about to happen. Let's just hope it doesn't affect ordinary civilians like us."
…
War God Tower — Floor 100
The moment Rei stepped onto the hundredth floor, he casually scattered a large number of corpses across the ground.
Each corpse had been sealed inside the bodies of Ice Bees, which he shot in every direction.
Within his storage space alone, there were roughly seventy to eighty thousand monster corpses.
Corpses littered the entire area, allowing him to freely cast:
Death Exchange (Second Tier) (LV: 301)
This was the evolved version of Death Substitute.
Unlike its predecessor, Death Exchange didn't swap bodies before damage was taken.
Instead, at the exact moment of impact, a corpse would be swapped in—transferring the damage onto the corpse itself.
The tolerance for mistakes had increased dramatically.
The trigger radius, number of consecutive uses, and even the minimum corpse size requirement had all improved.
But beyond those improvements, there was an even more precious qualitative change.
At last—
He no longer had to use corpses he personally killed.
Now any corpse could be used.
Of course, the cost had increased accordingly.
Death Substitute required only one soul with at least equal spirituality to his own.
But activating Death Exchange required three souls.
On Floor 99, the strongest enemies had still been fifth-tier King-class monsters.
But by the ninety-ninth floor, their numbers had reached one hundred.
The sheer quantity completely overwhelmed his summons.
Rei had no choice but to use Source · All Spells to summon eighty stronger Void creatures, combining them with his existing twenty to match the enemy's numbers.
Then they divided the battlefield and eliminated the enemies one by one.
The battle had been brutal.
More than a dozen Void summons had been killed.
But almost the moment each one died, Rei simply summoned a new replacement.
Endless.
If a nation were to face an assault like this…
The despair would be unimaginable.
You could kill one.
But there were still ninety-nine left.
And the moment you killed one, another would appear immediately.
Source · Awakening the Void didn't require mana upkeep.
Once the summoning was completed, it no longer consumed mana afterward.
Unlike the original Awaken the Void spell, which required constant mana maintenance.
That was the perpetual characteristic of his Root Magic.
Although honestly…
Rei didn't care much about that small amount of mana anyway.
"I wonder what a real summoner is capable of…"
The Summoner class didn't rely solely on magic.
They could use rituals, contracts, and various other methods to call creatures, granting their summons far more enhancements.
…
Despite the overwhelming numbers on Floor 99, the stage had ultimately posed no real danger.
Rei had cleared it with relative ease.
And now—
He had finally reached Floor 100.
The final floor.
"…Is this a Fifth-Tier Nation-Destroyer monster?"
The battlefield of the hundredth floor was no longer a vast wilderness or forest suited for prolonged combat.
Rei stood upon a cliff.
Looking down—
Below him lay a living city.
Flesh wriggled.
Blood flowed like rivers.
Veins and nerves stretched across the entire structure, while countless masses of meat extended outward like tentacles, spreading across the earth.
A fifth-tier Nation-Destroyer monster.
But calling it "nation-destroying" almost felt inaccurate.
Because—
It was a city.
Even from his vantage point atop the cliff overlooking the plains, the flesh-city stretched beyond the horizon.
Compared to it, the massive Nation-Destroyer creatures Rei summoned appeared tiny.
If his Void summons were comparable to the Oriental Pearl Tower—towering giants—
Then the monster before him was an entire Shanghai.
A colossal metropolis.
The difference in scale couldn't even be described as a mere disparity.
Now he finally understood why the classification changed after fourth-tier Nation-Destroyer.
This…
Was the difference.
Yet he had heard that the fifth tier didn't even stop here.
Above Nation-Destroyer, there existed another classification:
Continent-Sinking.
Just as the name suggested—
Creatures capable of sinking an entire continent.
It seemed that with every tier, monsters gained an even higher classification.
However, after the sixth tier, the monster encyclopedia contained no records whatsoever regarding further levels.
Whether that meant no stronger monsters existed…
Or that no one had ever witnessed them—
No one knew.
"…Am I supposed to destroy something this big?"
Rei gestured with his hand from the cliff edge.
It was enormous.
Was it as large as the City of the Circle?
Even if it wasn't quite that size, it couldn't be far off.
There had to be vital points—something like a heart.
Flesh-type monsters usually possessed regeneration and recovery abilities. Simply cutting away chunks of flesh probably wouldn't accomplish much.
Rei began analyzing the situation.
Humans won through strategy, not just raw stats. That was the difference between humans and monsters.
This month was aligned with War and Fire.
Fire spells were far stronger than usual.
Perhaps he could burn the entire area with a sea of flames…
Souls: 320,460,000
With that many souls, it might even be possible to destroy the entire creature outright.
But that would be the last resort.
Even though souls were easy for him to obtain now, Rei had no intention of spending them all at once.
"Let's try this first…"
Rei raised his staff toward the distant flesh-city.
This staff dramatically increased his casting range—far beyond the old five-gold staff he once used.
Distant Gaze of the Stars
Quality: Excellent
Elemental Spell Amplification: +100%
Special: Moderately increases maximum spell casting distance (Level 1 Mage Activation)Special II: Greatly increases maximum spell casting distance (Level 2 Mage Activation)Special III: Massively increases maximum spell casting distance (Level 3 Mage Activation)
Special Enchantment: Extremely increased spell coverage
…
This staff extended his casting range to 15 kilometers.
Soul Rending (Fourth Tier)
A direct attack on the soul.
If the opponent was primarily a flesh creature, then perhaps its soul would be its weakness.
Powerful body.
Fragile spirit.
"Ugh—!"
However, when the spell struck, Rei saw pale white light flicker across the entire city.
But no soul was pulled free.
Instead—
A horrifying scream echoed from within the city.
The next instant—
WHOOSH!
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!
The flesh throughout the city compressed like massive cannons, launching enormous chunks outward like erupting volcanoes—directly toward Rei.
"Tch."
"Did that make you angry?"
Rei immediately flew away from the cliff at top speed.
Barely two seconds after he left—
BOOM!
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Chunks of flesh the size of small mountains slammed into the cliff.
When those masses burst apart, bone-flesh monsters spilled out from within.
"So it can summon too?"
SWISH!
Arrows shot toward him.
CLANG!
They struck his outer shield but were instantly blocked by his Water Shield.
Arcane Magic: Arcane Control Hand (Fourth Tier) (LV: 301)
This spell evolved from the third-tier Mage Hand, an arcane spell.
Essentially, it manifested an extra pair of magical hands, extremely dexterous though not meant for direct combat.
The difficulty of casting it had always been high.
Spell tier didn't always correlate with destructive power—sometimes it simply reflected complexity.
After evolution, the hand had become far stronger, more flexible, and capable of extending up to one kilometer.
Rei used the Arcane Hand to grab one of the arrows mid-air.
Then he used two appraisal scrolls.
A bone arrow.
Coated with blood poison.
If infected, it caused blood rot, requiring a blood-purification antidote to cure.
"This monster has quite a few tricks…"
The distance between them was rapidly closing.
Rei placed a pair of glasses over his eyes.
Observer Lens
A masterpiece created by Mechanists and Enchanters.
Price: 20,000 gold.
It could identify potential weaknesses in monsters, partially replicating the abilities of an Observer class.
Of course, it wasn't as comprehensive as the real thing.
It required constant mana infusion and overheated with prolonged use.
Expensive.
Full of limitations.
But the ability to reveal weak points alone made it invaluable.
The moment Rei scanned the city, multiple analysis frames appeared across the lenses.
Mechanist technology truly felt advanced.
In a world of swords and magic, this kind of technology was surprisingly refined.
Yet mechanists were extremely rare on the Rylan Continent.
Few people valued technology here.
Rei himself had barely seen any.
Perhaps the continent simply lacked the environment necessary for mechanists to advance.
SWISH!
While he was flying, thousands of blood-red tendrils lashed toward him.
His Buzzing Hunters flew ahead, blades whirring as they cut a path through the air.
Two blades flashed.
In an instant, the intestinelike blood whips were severed.
But—
The severed tendrils regenerated in midair.
One whip wrapped around a Buzzing Hunter, suddenly expanding and binding it completely.
The flesh tightened.
CRUNCH!
The Buzzing Hunter was crushed to death instantly.
"…Not to be underestimated."
He had assumed the attack was merely a probing strike.
Yet it had concealed a lethal trap.
A fifth-tier Nation-Destroyer monster truly couldn't be taken lightly.
Rei had already activated all of his shields.
Meanwhile, as he flew, he continued scattering corpses behind him.
Wherever they landed, they stayed.
No matter how the monster reacted to them.
Preparation first.
"Weakness…"
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Inside the city, Rei saw several massive hearts pulsating violently.
They certainly looked like weaknesses.
But the lens did not label them as such.
Decoys?
If he attacked them, what would happen?
Rei considered the possibility.
But ultimately decided against it.
Anything that looked like a deliberately exposed weakness was probably better left alone.
His gaze swept across the city again.
Finally—
He spotted an inconspicuous blood vessel, running like a pipeline deep into the city alongside countless others.
The lens highlighted it.
Weak Point — Aorta
Found it.
Rei raised his staff.
The vessel wasn't going anywhere.
Even if it was a weakness, its defenses would likely be formidable. The surrounding flesh was incredibly tough.
Flash White alone might not penetrate it.
At the tip of his staff, the multicolored Source energy gathered.
WHOOSH!
In an instant, Flash White shot forward, reaching the blood vessel.
The moment it struck the outer wall—
The spell transformed.
Source · Piercing Ice Crystal (Third Tier) (LV: 301)
CRACK—
Frost exploded across the vessel's outer membrane.
A spear of ice pierced through the surface and penetrated deep inside.
This spell specialized in penetration.
It bypassed tough outer layers, forming ice directly inside the target.
But it had one requirement.
The interior could not be solid.
There had to be liquid or air inside.
Otherwise the ice crystal couldn't form internally.
The crystal pierced through.
And the instant it entered the interior—
The spell transformed again.
Source · Convergent Detonation (Second Tier) (LV: 301)Sacrifice: 200,000 Souls