The Tower will prey on any weakness it can find, including your emotions. Having control of your emotions will protect you from manipulation.

Davies - Head of Climber Academy

If I wouldn't instantly fail the floor I would murder the prince myself.

When I first read the goals of the floor I naturally assumed the prince would be a self absorbed annoying brat that didn't consider anything besides himself worthwhile. Prince Edward was nothing like what I had imagined. He was kind, considerate, and thoughtful. He asked multiple questions about myself and was surprised to hear that I had become a hero by entering the Tower. He was happy to recount multiple stories that he knew of about the Tower in this world.

He didn't even complain about the rations that we were eating, even though I'm sure he was accustomed to much finer food. Naturally to test out his lack of complaining, I gave him some of the leftover crappy jerky. While he made a face that told me he did not enjoy it, he never once complained. He didn't even question when I brought out much better rations later.

No, the reason that the prince annoyed me was his constant insistence that we move onto the newly found secret area of the dungeon. I was fully confident I could easily defeat waves of any of the monsters I had come across so far. Even if the challenge was more difficult due to the prince being present, I doubted I would ever be in trouble. The problem was that even though he had leveled going through the beginner dungeon, he was still only level 8 and woefully underprepared for any challenge.

Nevertheless the prince continued to try getting us to move on to the hidden dungeon and gave me multiple well thought out reasons why we should do it. When I responded with various excuses not to complete it, such as the danger to himself or him being under leveled he would come up with a thoughtful response. He was under leveled so naturally he and I should wander the beginner dungeon so he could level and become prepared for the hidden dungeon.

Of course roaming the beginner dungeon didn't make sense since we were hiding from the men who planned to murder him. Indeed that is why we chose this defendable location. Then he would argue that there was always a monster just around a turn or two. We could easily go up to an intersection, let him kill a few monsters and return to our current location without exposing us to any increased risk of ambush. Repeating the process would let him level further. Even by his own reckoning to move from level 8 the level 10 would take less than 1,000 experience. Hunting the same monsters over and over would be boring but with the huge experience gains in this dungeon he would easily be able to gain those levels. He also reason that the danger of assassination may have greatly decreased as the attacker may have been looking for his group and all its carriages and missed the two of us as we quickly headed to the dungeon. When I pointed out that they may be utilizing tracking magic, he revealed a talisman he always wore that blocks tracking magic as well as the fact that dungeons naturally block most tracking spells. As I said he was annoying.

But the thing that really irritated me the most about the prince was that he is a wonderful conversationalist. That may seem like a blessing after having spent so long on my own and in the dungeon on the last floor, but the pacing and thoughtful questions forced me to fully engage. That'd be great if we are at a dinner party or any other social gathering, but all I really wanted to do was cultivate. I could pass the time quickly when cultivating and potentially make some cultivation gains. I even explained some of the basics of cultivation to him hoping he would try to cultivate himself and give me peace and quiet. But he was concerned that learning to cultivate would interact negatively with his future plans of leveling as a royal.

The whole principle of leveling as a royal threw me for a loop. The prince revealed that there were several professions that also allowed you to gain experience without fighting. In fact most professions did, although they were extremely limited in the experience they gave out. A blacksmith who had never lifted a weapon in his own defense would be able to easily gain experience to level 10. After that point not only did the experience required to go up each level greatly increase but the routine actions that previously gained him experience would grant less and less until the point where he made no new experience. For example, smithing a fine sword would cause someone to gain 15 experience points, but crafting a similar sword another time only gave 10 experience. This decrease would continue until the same action granted no experience. In order to gain more experience points the blacksmith would have to push his craft, do more difficult challenges, and get better results before he would once more gain experience. This meant that most aged craftsmen were only level 11 or 12 with the rare masters being level 15. The same was true for many other professions including alchemist, wizards, and even farmers.

I had a sneaking suspicion that doing these professions was separate and different from cultivating. Cultivation eased the body's ability to use experience but there was no point in trying to convince the Prince.

I would sit and cultivate for a couple hours and then the prince would once more bring up a question, concern, or suggestion of how he could enter the secret dungeon.

“Sir Hero,” started the prince once more disrupting my cultivation.

“Prince Edward, I told you just to call me Miki.”

“I understand, Sir Miki. I increased to level nine today. Don't you think that would be enough to attempt this dungeon?”

“Do you understand how the dungeon difficulty ratings system works?” I asked. I hope he had an idea because I had no idea how it actually worked. If he didn’t I would make up something to try to further dissuade him.

“The higher the star difficulty the greater the challenge and rewards. A one-star dungeon like this often provides no rewards except for the additional experience gained from defeating enemies. Starting at three-stars, the dungeon often provides additional rewards based on challenges. No one truly knows how high the difficulty goes but I have heard rumors of an eight dungeon.”

“And as the star difficulty increases, are the monsters more challenging to beat?”

“Naturally. One-star dungeons like this may have monsters up to level five, a two-star dungeon up to level 10.”

“So by your own measure a six-star dungeon could have monsters up to level 30?”

“I guess that would be true, but I anticipate that a monster horde will likely have lower level monsters in greater quantities. For example, in this one-star dungeon the highest record is level three with the vast majority being level one or level two.”

“Dungeons remind me of what I know of the Tower. While a one or two-star dungeon is likely easy, as the star rating increases, no doubt the difficulty grows exponentially. What I was taught is that the higher you climb in the Tower, not only do the level of the monsters increase but also how much the Tower challenges you in other ways. If the dungeons are similar I would anticipate a six-star dungeon to not only contain more powerful beasts but they may be purposely designed to target your weaknesses.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“As I mentioned before, I'm not entirely convinced the Tower and the dungeon are formed by the same entity.”

This had been a source of debate over the past several days since I first told him about the Tower. Of course he was convinced he was real and there was nothing that I could say that would change his mind. He also argued that everybody else I encountered in the Tower was real. He didn't have a good explanation for the repeating the orc quest or how Seth the smuggler had regained his head. Instead he latched on to the fact that both the rogue wizard and his father had summoned me.

It was his belief that the Tower was transporting me to different worlds and the summoning ritual was used to easily select worlds that had a challenge for me to complete. He theorized that the medium and easy difficulties of the Tower transported people into dungeons instead of outside my world. The dungeons would naturally have a set challenge and known difficulty and therefore would be easier than real experiences such as defeating an army of orcs or helping a wizard escape.

He chose to ignore the fact that I had repeated several challenges. In turn he said I chose to ignore the fact that my interactions were with real people.

The biggest debate was on my interactions with the rogue wizard. He ignored the fact that in this world the rogue wizard was not able to summon someone and was easily captured after a siege of several months. Admittedly, it did not help my case that I wasn't willing to tell him that I had defeated Sir Gregor, his fellow knights, and the small army he had camped outside the wizards when I was summoned. Instead I explained that I had found a way to complete the challenge and escape from the keep. It was his belief that the mana swapping ritual simply wasn't effective and the wizard wasn't aware. He made it seem like I had managed to escape the keep and the knights while the wizard remained in the keep without me. When I pointed out that I had been alone in the wizard’s keep for over a month, he thought I was mistaken and that the Tower was affecting my understanding of time. In the end we agreed to disagree.

“In the end it doesn't matter if the dungeon and the Tower have some higher rules,” I said. “What does matter is that I doubt you could complete the three-star dungeon I told you about. The slimes would have easily overwhelmed you.”

“Do I even need to bring up the fact that you admitted you should have just ran through the hall containing the slimes. As I am not meant to be a warrior or hero such as yourself, I would have quickly raced through the hall and made it to the other side instead of being overwhelmed.”

The Prince was clearly an asshat. His ability to use my words against me was only getting more irritating. I took a few breaths to calm myself before I decided to argue with him. But before I had a chance a man turned around the corner and walked towards us. I guess I should have been keeping an eye on the map.

“Oh I'm surprised to see other adventurers here,'' he said. He did indeed look surprised. That look of surprise didn't disappear from his face when my dagger pierced through his leather armor and into his chest. He let out a sharp exhale and collapsed to the ground.

Enemy defeated. 500 exp awarded.

“Did you have to kill that man?” asked the prince in alarm.

“I have a skill that allows me to easily identify enemies. He was marked as an enemy.”

This was true as the man was marked on my map with an enemy indicator. I didn't see the point of trying to negotiate or interrogate him for information. If there was somebody marked as an enemy in the dungeon, it meant the prince's assassins were here.

“Do you really?” Asked the prince, no longer sounding upset. “How exactly does that skill work? Does it automatically identify enemies for you or do you have to know ahead of time their intentions?”

“No idea. He appeared as an enemy on my mapping skill.”

“It makes sense. He is in the dungeon which should be reserved for my use and went to a section that is a known dead end. It only makes sense that he was searching for us instead of looking for monsters. Based on that you did the right thing.”

God I wanted to stab the prince in the face. He was always so thoughtful and logical.

Over the past several days the prince and I had debated what to do if we had been found in the maze. While we never reached a consensus on the best action, after being isolated with the Prince I knew I could not sit and wait for the enemies to come to me. I just didn't have the patience for it anymore.

Instead I told the prince we would go with his plan which was fairly straightforward. We would travel through the maze quickly with the prince remaining behind me. When I encountered an enemy I would defeat them and move on. Using my map skill I would be able to easily see if someone was ahead of me as long as they were within range of the skill. Once we were convinced the maze was empty we would move to the entrance and he would stay behind me while I defeated anyone camped out in front of the dungeon entrance.

This was honestly a terrible plan. The men searching for us likely wouldn't stay still in the maze and I would have to loop through the maze several times to likely catch all the individuals. The greatest advantage I have was that I was able to run through the entire main structure in less than half an hour where most people would take hours to investigate it. The prince liked the plan as he felt like he was contributing by following me instead of just waiting in a corner while I defeated those who came at us.

I ended up finding and defeating 45 different men throughout the maze over the next several hours. Once I was convinced that I had gotten all of them I had the prince wait at the dead end section once more as I rapidly ran through the entire maze without finding another attacker. I then returned to the prince and we quickly made our way to the entrance.

To keep the prince safe, I had him stay back in the dungeon around a corner while I left the dungeon. Exiting the dungeon I was surprised at the first person to greet me. It was the guard that I had taken off his horse in order to prove I was a hero. As soon as he saw me he shouted out in alarm.

“This is the hero! Attack!”

I heard the thrum of dozens of bow strings and quickly dodged out of the way. The next five minutes were a bloody fight against all the attackers outside the entrance. Well it was bloody for them not me, I was able to easily defeat them without getting any blood on myself.

While the men in the dungeon had all been rough mercenary looking types, the ones who attacked me now were dressed as royal guards or like the priestess who tried to seduce me at the castle. They all fought with the reckless abandon of zealots. To my great relief there weren’t wizards among their numbers and I was able to quickly defeat the 30 of them.

Once I dispatched them, a cursory examination of the area found what remained of the prince’s initial traveling party. They had all been led to the dungeon enterance and killed. I was willing to guess from the guards’ betrayal, no one had notified Sir Gregor. Instead they had made their way here and waited for the mercenaries to meet with them. This smelled like politics and while I was many things I was not a politician.

I quickly returned to the prince and decided to give him an update, while remaining out of sight of the dungeon entrance.

“Surely you jest Sir Hero? I would hate to think that it's my own country men who have decided to harm me. Why would they? My father is a just ruler and everyone in our service has greatly benefited over the past several decades.”

“I don't know, but the fact remains some of them wish to do you harm.”

“Are you saying there are others in the palace who will attempt to attack me or my father?”

“I don't know about that. However there is at least one attacker remaining in the area.”

“And how have you ascertained that?”

“The quest I was given has not been completed. The Tower notifies me as soon as a goal is completed.”

“Ah, that does make it rather simple,” said the prince.

I stood there thinking of how to find the remaining traitors and defeat them. In a perfect world the traitors would return for another attempt and I could quickly finish the goal. For several minutes I tried to come up with a plan until I heard a familiar voice

“Your Highness, are you in there? We are coming to save you.”

It was Gregor. When I checked my map I saw two friendly markers alongside an enemy coming down the tunnel towards us.

The prince must have recognized Gregor's voice as he smiled and moved to greet the knights turning the corner. Before the prince could take a full step forward I threw a knife at the group. The knife flew past the knights and sunk into the chest of the man bound and being dragged behind Gregor.

Floor cleared! Proceed through the portal for rewards!