A black and brown sea covered the bright golden sand.
The desert was overrun with [Terrentia Malerachnis].
Or, as contestants typically called them, spider monsters.
Other than Otto himself, Mikelo was the final remaining contestant.
The one who should have long been dead, his body fully digested in the spiders' bellies.
Otto watched him die painfully, wake up, run away from the spiders, then die all over again after they turned their attention to him once more.
Otto had to give it to Mikelo, though.
This Throskart was one tough cookie!
Having to die over and over in an extremely painful manner would break most ordinary minds after a single round.
Mikelo had now done it almost fifty times, by Otto's count, but while his expression was locked into a grimace, he still showed no sign of giving up.
Otto now had the un-enviable task of killing this person once and for all.
And his time was running out.
Thankfully, he had already gleaned a few clues.
The key was...time.
The token Mikelo carried seemed to revive him irrespective of circumstances, but Otto's keen eye was still able to catch a few details.
Whatever the token's precise function was, Otto quickly determined that the time in between revival was growing.
At first, it had taken barely a quarter second in between the death of his body and Mikelo's return.
But now, it was pushing just over double that.
Moreover, while Greer's body had been stitched together directly, Mikelo's body simply disappeared.
Then it returned, whole, in the exact same place, after another half second or so had elapsed.
Now, Otto believed that these two half seconds were the fulcrum of his idea.
If he was correct, making sure Mikelo's body died faster than it could be revived would either make reviving him 'impossible' according to his tool, or it would 'overload' the tool, causing it to fail its all-important task.
If his hunch was right…
Otto revealed a small smirk.
He already had an idea of how to make it happen.
His legs burst into action.
Otto sprinted through the sand, barely half a minute later reaching the tide of spiders.
Then, he jumped straight up to land right on top of the horde.
The spiders were packed so tightly together that Otto was able to walk on them as if he was walking on normal ground.
Slightly hairy ground, perhaps, that gave a little too much, but 'ground' nonetheless.
Screeches and clicking noises echoed behind Otto as he dashed towards his destination.
A few spiders tried to reach their heads and catch his boots with their fangs.
Of course, by that point, Otto would always be long gone.
He didn't head straight towards Mikelo.
His plan was a little different.
Over a minute later, he reached the other side of the tide of spiders and spent a minute using a [Magic Eye] to spy closely on Mikelo's figure.
He checked for the approximate distance and made some calculations in his head to determine Mikelo's approximate trajectory.
'Damn.'
He was still a few hundred kilometers off. Even with his speed, it would take him a few minutes to cross the distance.
A few minutes that would mess up his already tight timeline.
Otto thought for an instant, then cast one of his infrequently used earth element spells for rapid movement called [Ground Shrink].
[Ground Shrink]
Earth Element
Level 10
Shrinks the ground in front of the caster to allow for rapid transportation to and from a position.
Mana Cost: 255
Duration: 10 seconds
Cast Time: Instant
No Cooldown
A small distortion appeared in the sand. Otto walked directly on top of it.
He bounded forward even at his normal walking speed as the ground seemed to move him from place to place.
To an onlooker, it would seem that each one of Otto's steps took him a dozen kilometers forward.
Ten seconds later, he arrived to the approximate spot hundreds of kilometers away.
A small smile crept up on his face.
Otto felt exhilarated!
Truthfully, he couldn't even confirm if this plan was going to work.
Sand was an unpredictable variable.
Otto spent another thirty seconds to sprint towards his precise destination.
In his mind's eye, an enormous circle appeared on the desert floor.
Otto took a few extra seconds to complete another set of calculations to make sure the timing was precise.
His hole needed to be ready before the horde of spiders arrived.
He planned to bury Mikelo alive!
It was the only feasible plan Otto could think of to make sure Mikelo died within hundredths of a second, before the tool he used even had time to fully revive him.
Otto also would have preferred to know exactly how the tool was reviving Mikelo.
But for now, a determination like this was impossible.
Even if he wanted to [Analyze] the tool from afar, there was no way his mana tendrils could ignore Mikelo's body in the process.
The term 'Cannot be blocked' in the spell's description didn't mean he could analyze anything without obstruction.
It just meant that spells or skills designed to interrupt such 'identifying' mana would be ineffective on [Analyze]...
After completing the remaining calculations, Otto wasted no time in casting [Tunnel: Unlimited].
First, he dug a large, downward diagonal sloping hole in the sand.
It looked similar to a trash chute in the sand.
Thankfully, his spell kept the small tunnel from immediately collapsing.
When his 'trash chute' was finished, Otto quickly drew an array on top.
It was a similar type of stabilization array to what he'd used on the first floor when digging his swamps underground.
In other words, the sand on top would be firm…until suddenly, it wasn't.
Whoever stood on top of this sand when the array collapsed would immediately fall down the diagonal hole.
Otto dug and dug the tunnel.
For the removed sand, instead of displacing it elsewhere, Otto packed it tightly into the walls of the tunnel.
Then, he used the other part of his mind to cast [Condense Earth: Unlimited].
Fortunately, sand was still considered 'of the earth element' and the process was unhindered.
Under Otto's continual input of mana, it only took a few seconds for the sand to condense and bind into a light stone.
This allowed the walls both to stand on their own, not collapsing for quite a while, and also reduced some friction, making it easier to fall down.
Another few minutes passed.
Otto scrutinized his handiwork.
The 'trash chute' was completed; this was where Mikelo would hopefully fall through.
Since there was no spell similar to [Grease], though, as far as Otto knew, he would be forced to apply [Reduce Friction: Unlimited] to Mikelo's body when he fell down the tunnel.
The next part was the tough part.
First, Otto drew an array on top of his prospective hole that would capture the sand displaced by his spell [Tunnel: Unlimited].
Actually, because mana was involved, [Tunnel: Unlimited] could literally destroy all the displaced sand as long as Otto willed it.
But that wasn't the goal here.
He needed the pressure from an enormous amount of sand weight to crush Mikelo to bits in an instant.
In order to do that, all the displaced sand from the hole he dug was necessary.
Falling down in a hole would not be enough to kill Mikelo again and again.
It was the pressure from the sand on top of his body that Otto was truly after.
Otto began to dig once more, as fast as he could.
He pushed the spell [Tunnel: Unlimited] to its limits as he slowly hollowed out an enormous hole beneath the small diagonal chute.
The displaced sand was also captured and condensed by various arrays he made on the way.
One problem, however, was still bugging Otto.
How in the world would he kill Mikelo without being 'directly' involved?
So far, he had thought about burying Mikelo under many tons of sand, focused in a very small space to add additional pressure to Mikelo's body.
But Otto could not trigger the array with his mana, or else he would be the one who unquestionably and directly 'killed' Mikelo, and would thus fail his [Titled I] difficulty mission from the tower.
He sunk into thought with one part of his brain while he channeled [Tunnel: Unlimited] and continued to draw arrays with the other.
He needed to build an array that would trigger when Mikelo fell to the bottom of the hole he dug...
It only took another minute or so before Otto's eyes lit up once more.
Duh!
Funnel him directly on top of a pressure sensitive array where he himself would trigger the release of the displaced sand.
Otto barely held his chuckle back.
It was perfect solution, as in this case, Mikelo himself would be the trigger to his own doom.
Plus, even if Otto built the array, he wouldn't be considered the direct cause of death.
It was like if Otto left a banana peel on the ground.
Then, someone slipped on it and died.
Was it Otto's fault that person had died?
Maybe.
Was Otto culpable in that person's death?
Perhaps a little.
Did Otto kill that person?
Definitely not.
Well in this case, it was more akin to Otto secretly telling someone to push that person onto the banana peel…
Otto started to change the method of drawing his arrays, adding a few components to make sure they would be linked together.
In other words, the pressure triggered array would activate, then in turn trigger the other arrays that held all the sand to drop it all at once…
Mikelo didn't even have a chance.
Otto smirked and dug even faster.
His whole body was submerged in an almost invisible mist of mana as he pushed [Tunnel: Unlimited] to dig quick and wide.
Enormous amounts of mana ran through Otto's circuits, invisibly strengthening them.
Otto didn't have any spare concentration to pay attention, though, busy increasing his speed and drawing arrays throughout the walls of the hole over and over again.
It took almost a full two hours before he reached the bottom.
He looked up.
It was a full six and a half kilometers deep.
Deeper, even, than much of the ocean back on Earth.
It was only due to his extreme perception that Otto was able to detect the tiny pinprick of light that marked the top of this hole.
Perfect.
His eyes sparkled.
Bright blue runic patterns lined the sides of the hole. They lit up with blue.
Otto hadn't even bothered to make them invisible.
This should be enough pressure to kill anyone.
Suddenly, a rumbling sound was heard from afar.
Even in the sand, so many spiders inevitably made some noise.
Otto tensed slightly.
The horde was faster than expected, and there was no doubt they'd brought Mikelo along with them!
Otto immediately got to work drawing the array.
He was running out of time…
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