Day 18, 9:10 PM

I stare down the stairs leading to the thirty-second floor. The thirty-first was tougher than floors twenty-five through thirty put together, but the Guide rewarded me for the first time. I got an attribute point I invested into strength. With the one I got from leveling up battle maniac, my strength has reached twenty-one.

The class, however, is horrible, and dangerous, and really something only maniacs should take. My skill choices were Initial Frenzy and Initial Disregard Wounds. The former seemed like a weaker version of my Rage. Losing your mind while fighting for a minor increase in physical prowess is a losing proposal, especially when it comes with an Initial tag.

Initial Disregard Wounds is just as bad. Not feeling minor injuries during battle could be a fast track to the grave. Since I’m redoing this, battle maniac has become a forbidden class, one I must never take. At least it’s easy to avoid. Just don’t start a mindless carnage without caring for your own safety or something firmly tethering you to your current class.

I glance at my dagger, and I think I’ve gotten enough feel of how to use it to recover the initial grade proficiency. With a fluid move, it goes behind my belt while I draw my staff with the other hand.

The night has started outside. Two weeks ago, I’m resting, half-asleep, a tree drinking up the rain above my head. Even if Edna is monitoring me, a man twitching in his sleep just after arriving in an alien world should attract no scrutiny.

With one final, unwilling breath, I head down the stairs.

I don’t run. The thirty-first floor’s denizens beat that bad habit out of me. Phasmatodea are terrifying in this world. A hip-high bush covered in finger-long thorns jumped me, the flurry of its whirling spines catching me by surprise.

The wounds I suffered were minor, my staff stopping most of the blows, dragging my arms along with it. However, the experience was a wake-up call.

I step off the stairs and into the thirty-second floor’s clearing. The clearings have been shrinking steadily ever since the twenty-fifth floor, and this one is just a handful of yards. I scan the edge of the forest, a briar bush catching my attention.

My staff screams through the air and bashes the bush, breaking several branches. It was just a common bush, unlike anything I’ve seen above the surface, and even my herbalism skill fails to identify it.

I remain still for five breaths, waiting for an attack. There’s none. The coast is clear, or more likely, I’m surrounded by ambush predators. My staff moves constantly, seeking invisible death-strands, which could sever my libs or head at the barest moment of carelessness.

A thread catches my staff, and I retreat a step, my boot landing exactly onto my old footprint. Every other path could be compromised.

I look up, searching for the spider. Striking its web will certainly summon it from wherever it’s hiding. The leaves don’t rustle, and unlike the spiders before the twenty-fifth floor, this one doesn’t zip through the air, making convenient warning sounds. Instead, these move with insidious slowness.

My staff moves around me, making dull whirling sounds as it wards off any webs I may have missed. I missed none, but I keep my stance. I have one obvious weakness, my legs are defenseless, completely exposed. An invitation I’m certain an apex predator would notice at a glance. I would have preferred an opening at chest height, but that’s nearly impossible to achieve if I’m protecting everything else.

My heart beats faster. Blood throbs through my neck. I force my breath to calm, my pupils probably cover the entirety of my eyes, despite the good illumination. It’s an illusion, I know, but I have a feeling I have three-sixty vision, searching for death.

I’m uncertain what gave it away, but I whirl around just as the abomination jumps at my legs. Its two sets of foremost limbs each hold a razor-sharp thread. The twelve-legged orb-weaver-thing is two feet across, free of fangs, with those weird blade tentacles near its maw.

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It’s too fast. The thread severs my pant leg and bites into my flesh before my staff swats the spider aside, destroying its body.

I watch the blood ooze out of the wound. It’s a slight cut, so thin the bleeding stops almost immediately.

Bloody BSD and bloody skills! I feel nothing. Without sensing pain, I could’ve lost the whole foot, not knowing something was amiss until I toppled over, probably beheading myself on another thread.

I wave my staff in the direction I guess I should have fallen, and sure enough, there’s a thread there. Spiders are eerily smart critters, and these mutated things can probably rival human intellect.

Maybe I should push my physique further, rather than strength. Having better eyesight seems orders of magnitude more important than being stronger, at least on these upper floors.

I should aim for all physical stats at twenty-five. That would make this body considerably stronger, more agile and durable than my old one. One-point-six times, to be more exact, and four-point-two times better than an average human body.

Unfortunately, my senses aren’t there yet, and the rest of the thirty-second floor is quiet. The battle lasted only a moment, a single dull thud in which I smeared the spider; it’s entirely possible nothing heard it.

I doubt it. I keep my eyes peeled, my ears striving to evolve into those of a bat, and my uncanny nostrils flaring. Nothing. No motion, no change of light or play of shadows, no sound, save for the faint rustle of leaves in the unnatural breeze, which serves no other purpose than to confuse the senses.

I hate this place.

I take a step, then another, snapping the dead spider’s threads with my staff. Seven snap before I leave its domain. Two steps later, I see a cross between a thornbush and a sea urchin. I smash it before it gets the chance to strike; another false alarm. It was just a regular plant, now with a handful of broken branches.

I don’t feel stupid one bit for attacking bushes and air. Any of those bushes might be out to stab me with its spines and feast on my flesh while every cubic foot of air might be concealing an invisible guillotine.

While I technically am aiming to die within the next ten to twelve hours, I’m in no rush. Death is always at most one strike away. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve brained myself over the centuries.

My grim thoughts don’t distract me. My arms, legs, and eyes are doing their job with hardly any need for my brain to get involved. Skulking on autopilot, I reach the next stairway. I head down without hesitation.

My goal isn’t to clear the floors, nor is it to survive. What I want is to see how scary things become on the lower floors. If I’m already wasting my life, that information seems more valuable for the future me than the layout of a floor I can already beat.

As expected, the clearing of the thirty-third floor is even more cramped. Hardly enough space to maneuver. I carefully head towards the stairway leading to the next floor. Against all hope, luck is on my side, and the path is clear. I still take the better part of an hour to cover several dozen feet, looking out for traps and ambushes.

Thirty-fourth floor seems to be the last one with any clearing. I press my lips together and head for the next stairway. The plan is to reach floor forty-five, preferably fifty. Each of these will take a day to clear, so Redo will reset.

I almost slap myself.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Blunt speaks my terrified thoughts aloud, and I clamp my mouth shut.

I turn left and right, rustling is rushing towards me from three directions.

Fucking great.

I’ve learned on the thirty-first floor that the monsters rushing towards you are just the beginning. The noise will attract more, and then that noise will attract more.

“I hope I survive.” Blunt does it again, and I can’t even feel angry with the BSD. I’m about to survive thanks to that skill.

A rhino beetle’s bigger meaner cousin scuttles at me, its forked, barbed horn aimed at my chest, its savage, dagger-filled maw snapping at my legs. Its horn and carapace are as tough as old wood. My staff is tougher, my muscles tougher still. I dodge the brutal stab, smashing my staff at the triceratops like armor protecting its head.

The jaw snaps shut, teeth shattering. The motion dulled the blow slightly, but slightly is the key word. A split second later, the carapace bursts, orange ichor spraying everywhere.

I curse under my breath. The blow echoes through the forest like a freaking gong, almost certainly drawing dozens of angry bugs towards me.

I wish my level up condition was to fight for two hours without stopping. The situation looks like it would devolve into something like that. Unfortunately, to level up, I have to fight even after one of my limbs becomes useless. What kind of sadist came up with that? How many people have met the condition?

I bet more than the weapon masters who switched three weapons during a single fight.

Whatever.

A centipede the size of a pony, its back covered in a headdress of thin, sharp spikes is upon me, and my staff sends its broken body flying towards another rustling bush. It pierces a bear-sized lobster, which hisses and snaps its claws to sever the body into pieces.

This is floor thirty-one all over again.