I Became a 6★ Gacha Character

TL/Editor: raei

Schedule: 5/week

Illustrations: Posted in discord

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We saw the palace garden and corridors and ran in that direction, but we made a slight mistake of running into the opposite hall instead of where the Harpy Empress was.

It wasn't a big problem though.

Without a roof but also no doors, and in a place we'd never set foot before, the pitch-black minimap meant the chances were below 50%.

Even with 50-50 odds you can fail a guess, let alone trying to navigate by map. Of course, the viewers mocking Han Se-ah didn't care about such details.

-Building up all that atmosphere and then oh Hanna strikes again lolololol

-Anyway, she went to the wider area but there was no one there, no need to exaggerate

-Did the stone dwarves just build a sick-ass palace and the harpies yoinked it?

Thanks to Katie's protection, never doubting that Han Se-ah was a genius mage, we just lit up the map and moved on.

As if to show we'd finally found the right path, the number of creatures was increasing.

"I didn't expect to fight underground monsters instead of harpies after coming all this way!"

"Judging by how easily they're cut by my aura, huff, these guys seem weak to cold!"

Even so, they were just regular monsters, not elites. Occasionally there'd be one that used magic, but they were helpless before Katie freely wielding her ice-attribute aura.

Unable to swing her sword to her heart's content against the flying harpies, she vented all her pent-up frustration on these squirming, disgusting creatures. As her beautiful sky-blue aura traced the air, the slowed squishy creatures would be sliced apart before they could even lash out their tentacles in counterattack.

Thanks to the type advantage, we were able to charge through the palace without using Han Se-ah's magic or even Graces' alchemy arrows. However, our smooth advance didn't last long. As the quantity and level of squishy creatures blocking our path gradually increased, our breakthrough speed inevitably slowed.

"Whoa, what the-?!"

"What the, these earthworm slug things are building barricades!"

-How is this the strategy of a monster lolololol

-There's a reason the harpies' palace got taken over lol

-Roadblocks, AoE attacks, and ranged projectiles? Are these monsters playing a defense game against Roland?

-Yeah, but we're still gonna throw Roland at them. What can you do if he just tanks everything and busts through?

-Seeing this, I can really feel how screwed you'd be without a mage and archer in the party;

As the two-pronged tentacles gradually multiplied until they were disgustingly bristling like anemones, their magic became impossible to ignore.

Whether they sensed our killing intent instinctively or realized their kind were dying, they wriggled their tentacles to block our path.

Some built walls with leftover dirt and debris, others fired pointed rocks like magic arrows, while others coated the corridor with slimy liquid from their soft bodies to create makeshift swamps... Their interference tactics were certainly enough to make the stone dwarves hate them.

I could block the pointed rock arrows and gravel shotgun blasts with my shield, and shoulder-charging the flimsily built barricades was enough to collapse them. But the malicious sticky traps coating the corridors in slime forced Han Se-ah to use Earth Control to make a path, inevitably slowing us down.

"Ah, seriously! These weaklings are such a pain in the ass!"

"Earth-attribute magic? It's too precise to be purely instinctual. Still crude compared to Hanna though."

"Huh? Um, thanks...?"

"Man, this palace sure is huge, as expected."

Han Se-ah paves an earthen path through the corridor using the walls built by the squishy creatures, while Katie praises her. In this awkward yet warm atmosphere, Grace gauges the distance while sensing for monster presences and mutters.

It really is incredibly vast, befitting a palace.

The length of the corridors we've passed through since the hall is no joke, and it feels even longer as we twist and turn relying on the minimap. It's not like a palace would be designed in straight lines to begin with.

"Why don't we just smash through all the walls?"

"We don't know exactly where the Harpy Empress is, so we might end up bursting out of the palace instead."

"Ah, good point."

Maybe that's why Grace seems to want to push me forward like a bulldozer, but I couldn't do that.

The surface reason was the complex palace structure that made it impossible to get our bearings, but deep down, I had a tiny hope that this palace might hold a clue to my awakening. Even if some unknown transcendent being helped me once, I can't blindly rush in believing it'll happen again.

Even in games, you don't mindlessly zerg rush the next mission just because you got lucky and survived once. How could I do that in a game where my life's on the line?

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Raei Translations

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Could this be just before the 50th floor's boss room?

"They keep getting bigger, but this is ridiculous!"

"Those mana stones it's wrapping its tentacles around, aren't they from harpies?"

"Looks like all the harpies in the palace got eaten by these things."

As if just using magic wasn't enough, the squishy creatures that kept growing larger now filled entire corners of the corridors. It felt like looking at a kid's jelly toy clogging up a sink.

Thanks to that, we could occasionally see tentacles as thick as a human torso squeezing harpies in silk clothes to death, then turning them into mana stones and slowly dissolving them to eat.

These things that grew by eating naturally occurring rare minerals containing mana were now eating mana stones - mana condensed and hardened like ore. No wonder they grew so large. Even so, their patterns didn't diversify, only their firepower increased.

"What...!"

"Ugh, they're even more disgusting now that they're bigger..."

The problem was that while their increased firepower couldn't deal significant damage to us, it turned wider areas into muck and collapsed more of the corridor, gradually getting on our nerves.

Now it was beyond just creating mud puddles in the beautiful palace corridors - you'd believe it if someone said there were just pillars standing in a muddy field, that's how much those bastards had trashed the place.

Being so huge, they filled the entire corridor just by oozing slime as they squirmed around.

"Humans? P-please save me!"

"A survivor... a harpy?"

After deflecting the rock shotgun from a massive squishy blocking the way with my shield, turning it into a mana stone, and pressing forward, we suddenly heard a scream.

Rounding a bent corridor revealed a large hall filled with squishy creatures, and a single harpy slashing at them with her talons.

With no ceiling in the palace, she could probably save her life by flying away... but she seemed to be guarding an altar in the center of the hall, circling around it like a mother bird protecting her nest. Judging by her silk clothes and jingling accessories she wasn't a soldier, but her movements were quite nimble, allowing her to stay alive.

But there's a limit to what one can fend off alone. The harpy's agile movements seemed to irritate them, as widely spread tentacles began firing gravel shotgun blasts to cover an area rather than a point. Her clothes started tearing and wounds multiplied on her fair skin.

"Hanna? Roland? What should we do?"

"For now, I want to kill all those monsters, save the harpy, and get an explanation about that altar. It looks suspicious, don't you think?"

"Roland's right. An altar in the middle of a palace, not even a temple... anyone would find it suspicious, right?"

-The placement is practically begging to be investigated lololol

-This is the first harpy babe we've met in the palace, let's save her as a milestone?

-Let's save her (future magic tower prisoner)

-Tsk tsk, I hear the harpy ladies who went to the magic tower are living happily (bubble bubble)

-Are we gonna end up teaming up with the Harpy Empress and start hunting tentacles at this rate? How's this gonna play out?

"Alright then, let's go!"

I glanced back at my companions to see them nodding with eyes full of trust. It's only natural to be curious when something so obviously suspicious is being guarded by a seemingly high-ranking harpy at the cost of her life.

Thinking that, I charged into the hall - not really caring about the harpy, just intent on protecting the altar - only for a thick tentacle to come flying at me immediately.

Was that harpy not the only one guarding the hall's altar? This one must have eaten quite a few mana stones.

A rather hefty tentacle slams into my shield with a loud CLANG! It wasn't its soft fleshy mass, but a tentacle made of the rocks it had devoured, creating a shockwave like striking a bell with an iron hammer. The squishy creatures started to focus on me.

"Yes, help me! I promise you citizenship and great rewards- ack!"

"Shut up and just focus on dodging!"

"How rude... No, never mind! I understand, so please deal with those creatures!"

The squishy creatures had turned all the harpies into mana stones and eaten them, and now they were slowly extending their tentacles towards the altar since they couldn't catch the last one. Seeing me approach, her face lit up.

She nearly got wrapped in tentacles and turned to a mana stone for letting her guard down briefly, but when I crudely threw myself in to block the tentacles, she cried out as if deeply moved. Seems she doesn't realize we're adventurers invading the 50th floor, and thinks we're loyal 3rd-class citizens sacrificing our lives.

It didn't seem like a particularly disadvantageous misunderstanding for us, so I silently infused mana into my warhammer.

With that, they completely lost interest in the altar and harpy, focusing solely on me.

As they charged at me, ignoring Han Se-ah, Katie, and Grace entirely, a thought suddenly struck me.

My indestructible magic armor and warhammer... whatever metal they're made of, wouldn't they look like the most precious elixir in the world to these creatures?