We quickly made our way out of the city. A couple other teams followed suit, but most stayed behind, for an orientation session of sorts. Only well-to-do challengers would have come into the 8th Floor with knowledge of its workings in advance, so most needed that class so that they knew what they were doing, particularly with people still fleeing for Area 2 as best they could.
Curious, that. Four of the Sanctuaries had been restored now, but the mass exodus of rich and poor alike had continued seemingly totally unabated. Perhaps the Syndicate had exerted its influence in ways more subtle. Probably they didn't need to in many places. Plenty of people, once they got it into their heads that a better, safer life could be had higher in the Tower, weren't inclined to let it go even with the progress we'd made. After all, the status quo hadn't been great for many either.
We weren't out of the city long before Arvallei, who'd scouted ahead, reported that we were in luck; he'd spotted a Stronghold dungeon some ten miles from the Landing City, and confirmed it was currently active. That close to a Landing, people made a point of regularly clearing out the more challenging dungeons to prevent monster surges from occurring. However, this one hadn't been the focus of any concerted efforts recently.
This would make a great start. There was even a chance that a map to a Monster City, that contained a Palace dungeon, would be found directly on the boss. That boss wouldn't be an "official" BOSS monster, only the Trial dungeons held those, but it would be tougher and smarter than its fellows.
In other words, not at all a problem for us, as long as we stayed professional. It also saved us from having to clear several smaller dungeons, which would most likely have taken longer to find. And even if we didn’t directly loot a Monster City map, we’d earn more than enough Deepcoins here to buy one.
The place turned out to be above-average troublesome though. The most common enemy type was small, lithe, and vaguely human shaped though I wouldn’t describe them as humanoid. The purple skin was a first, too. They were agile as heck, jumping around all over the place and even clinging to walls, genuinely taxing my Auto Aim cheat. Well, what used to be that, anyway—I was good enough at spell control by now that I didn’t even need Power of Imagination to make hairpin aim adjustments.
On the plus side, we grabbed stashes of Deepcoins that were way above average for Stronghold dungeons—not much of a plus, considering we’d brought a large amount of supplies with us and thus didn’t need to rely on in-floor commerce, and were planning to put off resupplying within the Floor for as long as possible.
However, right as we were going to leave the innermost chamber of the Stronghold, I had a sudden vision of a hidden wall panel. Ever since that first time it had triggered all the way back on the 1st Floor, Sense Opportunities had mostly activated in more low-key ways, and quite seldomly. This time though, it paid big dividends, as I opened a hidden alcove with a chest containing a weathered-looking rolled up paper right on top of another pile of Deepcoins.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The weathering was fake—these, like almost all the lootable items, were factory made. This was the map of a Monster City. The item provided the area’s coordinates, but the real purpose was for it to show the route to the Palace that was the “5th tier” dungeon proper. Monster Cities were labyrinthine without exception, and even if a team made it to a Palace entrance without one, it wouldn’t open to them if they didn’t hold the correct map anyway, and jailer-tech force fields prevented anyone from smashing their way into a dungeon.
“Looks like it’s the Trial of Illusion first for us,” I said, showing the others the map before handing it over to Arvallei, “the map leads to a Shining Palace.”
“I’ll be playing my most major part early on, then,” said Lee, “good.”
We didn’t ignore the extra coins in the chest along with it, either. There wasn’t that much we’d need to buy during the mission, but this floor represented an excellent opportunity to use the Currency Conversion Tokens we’d gotten from the 6th Floor. When used on a Floor, all the money in the possession of the user would be converted to official Tower currency, an effect that otherwise required an achievement award by the Tower to produce. Our plan was for one of us to take all the money we’d collected, use their token just before the final boss of the Tower of Freedom, and split the result after the mission.
We had also used Ri’legh’s Cash Enhancement Card when we were still in the Landing. Between both measures, we were all hoping to come out of this floor obscenely rich. And yes, thanks to the improbable Tower First I’d gotten in the Fire Sanctuary, I already was even more obscenely rich than that, but I’d hardly needed Bruzigan’s advice to decide to consider the 500 Crystals as off-limits for practical purposes. After all, there wasn’t much that Area 1 offered that I couldn’t buy even without that bonus, since my account was valued at more than a Gamma-1 Coin even though I was down one of those, compared to everyone on the team but Mewi, from the run-in with Rilzian. The cash gained from Floor mission rewards, on the other hand, I could be more open about possessing, and even with the Fall’s turmoil, having lots of money was essential to being respected, at least in the sort of circles I’d be running in after the Sanctuary Restorations had finally concluded.
Although, actually getting money achievements wasn’t so uncommon on this Floor anyway. Too, if you weren’t already a rich challenger, there was a plethora of Tower-recognized equip and consumable items that could be bought. Such would be kept once bought, meaning challengers could potentially upgrade their entire loadout without even relying on a high grade mission reward. Bruzigan had even advised me that I ought to pick out some articles to fill the several armor slots in my own loadout that currently still had nothing in them. I had looked into doing so in Area 1, of course, but if I wanted to order articles that were both of high enough quality in their bonuses and synergized well with my class and existing equipment, they would need to be custom-made, which would have taken years. On the 8th Floor, challengers could simply buy items even of that quality, though they required hundreds of thousands of Deepcoins at least.
Overall, the 8th Floor was a major difficulty spike even in its Basic missions, but for challenger teams able to cope, it represented an increase in opportunities to match.