Disaster-Level Player Is Too Good at Broadcasting-Chapter 49: « Kang Min Of The Mercenary Corp. [3] »
"Fuck this mountain. Seriously, fuck every jagged, sulfur-breathing inch of it."
Kang Min’s boot slipped on a patch of loose, black obsidian, and he barely caught himself, his fingers digging into the scorched rock until his knuckles turned white.
The air at this altitude was less oxygen and more a cocktail of ash and ancient malice.
He spat a mouthful of grey grit onto the slope, his chest heaving.
His mercenary leather was caked in a layer of fine soot, and the heat radiating from the mountain’s crust was starting to melt the soles of his boots.
"I forgot how much of a bastard the climb to Eternal Cinder is without a flight-type relic."
He wheezed, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a shaking hand.
"Old World me would have been at the top in ten minutes.
Current me looks like he’s about to have a heart attack before the boss even spawns."」
He hauled himself over the final ridge, his muscles screaming in a discordant choir of agony.
As he stood, the ground beneath him vibrated.
A deep, tectonic thrum that rattled his teeth.
Ahead of him, embedded into the very throat of the volcano, was a massive gate.
It was fashioned from a single slab of igneous rock, carved with runes.
『TRIAL COMMENCING: THE BURDEN OF THE PROTECTOR.』
『CONDITION: BEAR THE WEIGHT OF THOSE WHO CANNOT STAND.』
The heavy gates ground open with a sound like a continent breaking in half.
Kang Min didn’t hesitate.
He stepped into the darkness, his hand hovering over the hilt of his blade.
The interior was a vast, circular arena suspended over a lake of boiling, cobalt-blue magma.
The heat was instantaneous, a physical wall that tried to push him back.
Across the arena, dozens of humanoid shapes began to rise from the molten pools.
They were hulking monstrosities made of jagged volcanic rock, their joints leaking the same glowing blue lava.
"Magma Golems."
Min muttered, his eyes narrowing.
"And they look hungry."
The first golem roared a sound of grinding stone and lunged.
It was surprisingly fast for its size.
Kang Min drew his sword, the dull steel reflecting the blue inferno below.
He dived between the creature’s legs, his blade whistling through the air as he sliced at the back of its knee.
The steel sparked against the rock, barely leaving a scratch.
’Too weak. My physical strength is still a joke compared to the narrative I’m trying to challenge.’
Three more golems closed in, their fists glowing with concentrated heat.
One swung a massive, hammer-like arm down toward Min’s head.
[Skill: Exchange is in use!]
In a flash of distorted air, Kang Min wasn’t there.
He had swapped positions with a loose boulder on the other side of the arena.
The golem’s fist shattered the rock where Min had stood a millisecond before.
Min didn’t waste the opening.
He sprinted back toward the group, his movements a blur of desperate efficiency.
He needed to land a hit, but the rock was too thick.
He engaged the [Exchange] skill again, but this time he didn’t swap himself.
As a golem threw a glob of molten blue magma at him, Min reached out his hand toward a nearby stalactite hanging from the ceiling.
[ Exchange!]
The glob of lava and the massive stone spike traded places.
The stalactite dropped like a guillotine, burying itself deep into the shoulder of a golem, while the magma glob exploded against the ceiling.
Min landed a flurry of strikes on the pinned golem, his blade vibrating with the effort.
He was moving with the choreography of a man who had fought these things a thousand times, his body twisting and pivoting in a lethal dance.
He used the golems’ own weight against them, luring them into colliding with one another, then swapping their positions at the last second to cause maximum structural damage.
But as the minutes dragged on, the strain began to show.
His mana was draining fast, and his lungs felt like they were filled with hot needles.
He took a glancing blow to the shoulder from a stray rocky fist, and the force sent him tumbling across the uneven floor.
"Dammit... I’m still too far away."
He hissed, pushing himself up, his left arm hanging limp for a moment before the feeling returned.
"In the Old World, I could have cleared this floor with a flick of my wrist.
Now, I’m struggling against sub-bosses."
He looked at the remaining five golems.
They were converging, forming a wall of heat and stone.
The trial’s weight was manifesting...the gravity in the room was increasing, making every step feel like he was wading through molasses.
This was the metaphorical weight of protection.
If he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t protect.
’Wait. I remember this...’
A memory flickered in the back of his mind.
A glitch he had discovered during a speedrun in the 48th floor.
The blue magma in this specific trial didn’t react to physical force but reacted to intent.
"The ’exploit’ of the Cinder."
Kang Min whispered, a predatory smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Instead of raising his sword, he sheathed it.
He stood perfectly still, closing his eyes.
He let the gravity pull him down, let the heat sear his skin.
He stopped fighting the weight and instead accepted it.
The golems paused, their primitive AI confused by the lack of resistance.
Min focused all his mana into his feet, not for a jump, but for a localized burst of [Exchange].
He didn’t swap with an object and instead swapped the heat of his own body with the cold of the air at the mountain’s base.
The sudden thermal shock caused the air around him to condense into a freezing mist.
The blue magma in the golems, sensitive to the sudden drop in temperature, began to crystallize.
"Got you."
Kang Min said, his eyes snapping open.
He lunged forward.
Because the magma had hardened into brittle glass, his dull sword shattered the golems like porcelain.
He tore through them in a whirlwind of strikes, the blue shards flying through the air like frozen rain.
One by one, the monsters crumbled into heaps of inert rubble.
『TRIAL COMPLETE.』
『ACHIEVEMENT: THE UNBENDING PROTECTOR.』
The arena dissolved into white light.
Kang Min blinked, his vision adjusting to a sterile, blindingly white room.
It was a stark contrast to the fire and brimstone of the volcano.
In the center of the room, floating within a glass-and-gold pedestal casing, was the glove.
He walked toward it, his boots echoing on the invisible floor.
"Is the design like this because it’s a simulation?"
He mused, reaching out a hand.
"I remembered the room being different... more like a tomb, less like a showroom."
He shattered the casing with a light tap.
The glove was beautiful in a terrifying way.
It was matte black, textured like volcanic rock, but it had veins of flowing blue magma etched into the leather.
The liquid light moved and pulsed, as if the glove itself was breathing.
As he touched it, the heat was manageable.
He didn’t put it on yet; he could feel that his current body wasn’t ready to handle the full output of the [Left Hand of Ruin].
He willed the item into his inventory.
The glove dissolved into a shower of blue pixels, vanishing from the pedestal.
『ITEM ACQUIRED: THE LEFT HAND OF VARKAS (SEALED).』
The white room faded, and Kang Min found himself back on the physical peak of the Mount of Eternal Cinder.
The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised violet and gold.
He walked to the very edge of the mountain, where the cliff dropped off into a sheer vertical fall.
He sat down, his legs hanging over the abyss, swinging idly over the clouds.
"It’s good I didn’t get to face the Calamity King today."
He admitted to himself, leaning back on his elbows.
"He would have eaten me alive. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
The simulation skipped the boss fight because I exploited the trial mechanics... the system recognized my ’knowledge’ as a form of power."
He opened his inventory window, looking at the icon of the glove.
The blue magma on the digital sprite was still flowing, a tiny, trapped river of fire.
"How many days has it been outside?"
He wondered aloud.
He had been in this simulation for a full day.
He could feel the phantom ache in his muscles, the dry sting of the ash in his throat.
It was too realistic.
Every breath, every spark of the blade felt more real than the world he had left behind.
’All of this... just from an exclusive skill...’
He thought, looking at the [Floor 600 All Master] icon.
