—oor. You know what? I’m starting to get annoyed at always having my internal monologue interrupted by a sudden scene shift. Can’t whoever coordinates this teleportation thing be a bit more respectful? As their obedient, humble servant, I should at least be afforded an inch of dignity in th—

your inventory has been sold

for 12 points.>

Hey! You did that one on purpose, you damn—

109 094 points.>

Oh. Oh, okay. I see how it is here. You’re mocking me! How dare you? Here I am, serving your every need, fulfilling your stupid clear requirements, and you go and do this!

I am, quite frankly, appalled. There is no justification for this blatant disregard of my—

Ah. Aha. Right. Okay.

Whoever sent that message will die by my hand.

I pull it up.

congrats on beating floor 13! I always

knew you could do it. I’m not surprised

that the gods have taken notice of you, friend.

That aside, since you’re always so busy, I thought

I might as well tell you personally that, apparently,

there’s another grand conference in the works.

I didn’t get this information personally,

but I hear that it will actually take place on

day 365, meaning that it will be on new years eve!

Isn’t that so fun? I don’t mean to spoil,

but I’ve been in contact with a few other members

of the leadership, and we’re going to hold a huge

party to celebrate! I haven’t taken it by Bach yet,

she’s gotten kind of weird lately, though I’m certain she’ll

love it, too. There’ll be music, food, drinks, etc.

But I’m sure you only had to hear “food” to be invested, haha.

I hope I’ll see you there, and good luck with the next floor!>

I stare at the message, and then I stare at an imaginary camera to pull off a dead-pan expression. Um. Okay, just to be clear, that was a joke.

Glancing back at the message, my vision automatically zooms in on the word food. Damn. Moleman knows me too well. On the other hand…

The word drinks shines like a spotlight on an empty stage. Yeah. Alcohol… is good. People who tell you that drinking brings out the worst in you are dumb hickies, because if anything, it does the opposite. A new year’s party… My last one was pretty crap, so this will be a nice, refreshing take. If I drink enough, maybe this one will even erase my memories of all previous new year’s eves, effectively giving me a clean slate? There’s only one way to find out!

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Though, of course, that will have to wait. I’ve got a room to paint, and a floor to beat.

<03:03:10

Day 331>

29:20:57:50>

23:57:50>

Day 331, eh? In that case, I’ve got just a little over one attempt left until the grand conference. I’d better get to it.

Do I even need to say anything else? You know the gist by now. Paint room, mutilate myself, zone out, wonder about life and death and the universe, decide to pick up yoga, eat raw skin, break a few bones trying to do yoga, decide to drop yoga, check if pillars are edible, panic because my saliva removed the paint, go into a state of mania, bash open my brains on the floor, taste my own cerebellum… You know, the standard.

Do you want to enter?>

As is also standard, this question also only has one answer. I press the yes button.

The world around me shifts and the first thing I feel is my feet plunging into something soft and burning, like feathers with the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Approximately, at least. At the same time, a sweltering heat takes hold of my body, making every inch of exposed skin I have start to blossom into RED rashes. Ah, the sun. I kind of missed seeing it, actually. Though, technically, this isn’t actually the sun, but rather the sun of some fantasy world, meaning that it is a yet-to-be-named star. I could name it whatever I want. Hmm… Alright, for simplicity’s sake, let’s just call it The Sun 2: Electric Boogaloo, or the sun for short.

I stare up at the sun. I hate the colour of it, but I still give it a cheeky wink.

Now, what are we dealing with?

Well, firstly, I am not standing in fiery feathers as I had assumed, but am rather ankle-deep in what appears to be soot. As a matter of fact, soot is just about everything I can see. It’s like I’m in the middle of a huge desert, but instead of sand, it’s just soot. In the distance, I can see various cliff-like structures, sticking out of the soot-covered ground. Hm.

Just to check for certain, I crouch down and dig around a little bit in the soot. It gets my arms completely black, but it’s fine. Oh, not to mention the fact that the soot is hot enough where, if it wasn’t soot, it would probably burst into flames again. Just touching it is enough to give me burns of the umpteenth degree, but I don’t need my arms to work to be able to dig a little.

Ah, just as I expected. A few inches below the soot is nothing less than the common sand. It’s greyish and sooty, but if I dig for a few minutes, in the process peeling off all the skin of my arms, I’m able to expose a deeper layer of sand, which is just the standard yellow. Interesting.

Standing back up, I look across the desert again. It’s all black. In the distance, I can see a huge, circular mound, only partially black. I wonder what that’s all about?

Hell Difficulty Fourteenth Floor:

The Sand Waste>

<[Clear Condition]

Reach the round mountain.>

Uhuh. Okay, so that’s my goal, then? Oh, let me guess, there’s some guy living inside the weird mountain that I have to kill? Is that it?

Before all of this, I used to hate escort missions and fetch quests more than anything else. But now, I’m starting to get really irate with all of these go-over-there missions. I wonder if there’s anything stopping me from just going wherever I want? Oh, yeah, the attempt thing. If I was the conspiratorial type, I might say that this was specifically put in place to keep challengers from exploring the whole of purgatory before they actually got to that part of the tutorial. But only a nerd would try to figure stuff out.

So, instead, I’m just going to blindly do what I’m asked to, because what else would I do?

Round mountain. If that’s where I’m supposed to go, then that is where I will go.

First up, though, I need to get stylish. See, I don’t know if I said it before, but it’s hot. It’s really, really, really, really hot. The sun burns, the sand burns, the soot burns… It’s like I’m standing inside an oven set to max. Or like I’m a banana and someone is trying out that supposed trick where you can make bananas go ripe for banana bread by putting them in the oven. Either that, or I’m an uncooked banana bread, sitting in an oven that’s a bit too hot, so my top will get dry and burnt while my insides will still be too goopy. Whichever parable you prefer, the situation is still the same. Me hot, me no likey.

Heat Resistance Lv.8>

Burn Resistance Lv.5>

Dehydration Resistance Lv.10>

Dehydration Protection Lv.1>

See what I’m talking about? I usually choose to mentally sift out most of these since they’re starting to get irritating with how often they pop up, but yeah, this is how bad it is. I’m normally pretty cool with situations that let me increase my resistances, but this sweltering heat is just too much. So, for once, I’m going to wear clothes properly. Specifically, I’m going to make use of my lovely chimaera hide, assuming that the mane doesn’t instantly burst into flames.

Humming to myself, I remove the chimaera hide from my inventory, only to discover something truly horrific.

W—what happened to my chimaera hide? This is just a stupid goblin hide! When the heck did this happen!?

…Okay, now that I look more closely, I think this might actually be that goblin princess from before, but, to be fair, the regal status of the skin doesn’t make it any better. I almost want to throw it away because of how sucky this situation is, but that’s just a waste.

Damn it. Fine, I guess I’ll just keep wearing this harpy hide or a wh—

Wait a minute. M—my harpy hides! They’ve all turned into goblin hides, too! Argh, this is horrible! What did I do to deserve this fate? No chimaera skin, no harpy hides… It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

After some time of totally tearless mourning, I put the goblin skins back into my inventory and pull out my snake skin, since it’s good for wrapping myself in completely. Alright. Even though it hurts, I must now continue. I’m sure this place will have plenty of fun hides to collect.

I’m sure…