His ears began to pick up movements in the scattered foliage around him, the highly advanced fused energy constructs detecting sounds far more effectively than anything of flesh and blood. A flash of motion appeared in the corner of his eye, and he smiled. Something had fallen for the bait.

Suddenly, the forest came alive, hundreds of hooting, gesticulating monkeys erupted from the trees, somehow having concealed their bulk to the point of near invisibility. None of that mattered though. Sam raised his hammer, and brought it down, channeling pure mana and elemental energy into the weapon. The power bent around him, creating an eye of calm in the center of the storm. Then it erupted outwards, blasting through the monkeys.

Sam smiled as the ground beneath him melted, leaving him standing on a nub of earth, the only point of reference for many miles. The titanic trees had been turned to charcoal, and the monkeys that had been prepared to kill him were no more. Almost half of his energy had vanished into that one attack, but it was already regenerating. Considering the fact that the Tower was made for E Rankers, the devastation caused by his Primal ranked skill was immense. Back on Earth, it would have caused even more damage.

Sam had taken a step into the realm of impossibility, at least for Earth’s legends. Most of the myths hadn’t considered anything beyond a certain level of destruction, at least commonly, as the Earth had been thought to be the entirety of mortal existence.

As the dust settled, he forced his mind away from the useless thoughts. He had a floor to clear. Judging by his estimates, which were quite accurate given his rank, he had taken out about half of the floor’s worth of monsters in a single strike. However, the rest of them would likely be more wary. He leaped off the pillar of earth and teleported to the side of the smoking crater. Without looking back, he continued off into the forest, leaving the product of his immense strength behind forever.

The forest quickly swallowed up the crater, and by the time a minute had passed, it was out of sight and out of mind. In the darkness of the shadows, he could hear tiny shifts as the monkeys watching him failed to contain their fear. Unlike normal animals, there was no other sign of their presence. While a monkey from Earth would have been hooting in fear at this point, these ones were a lot smarter than that.

Sam found himself playing a little game with himself, pinpointing the position of the monkeys, and counting them. His E Rank mind helped with this, and he soon had a rough estimate of where all of the beasts were. When they struck, they were in for a surprise.

Eventually, he found the source of the monkeys, a village roughly hewn from fallen trees, abodes that were little more than caves built into the side of the wood. It was hardly sophisticated, but it was a sign of intelligence beyond what most monsters had exhibited so far in the Tower.

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He made his way into the village, watching as the monsters nearby exploded out of the bushes, unwilling to let the intruder threaten their abode. Sam smiled. It was time to finish this. His hammer rose, filling with elemental energy and the power of his Dao, creating a sphere of power around it. The monkeys recoiled at the sight of the attack, but it was too late. Sam brought it down, and the village was erased, turning the massive trees into sticks of charcoal, and then into clouds of choking ash. With a single blow, every last one of the monkeys died, turning into charred corpses.

Essence entered Sam, drifting in from the monkeys. As the floor began to fade away, he idly looked at his wrist, searching for a watch that was no longer there. It seemed that nothing would be interesting until he reached the 25th floor, where he would be able to meet the other challengers.

The next floor was more of the same, except the monkeys were even larger, and armed with what looked like greatswords made from the same black rock that studded the clubs of the monkeys from the first floor of the section.

Sam crushed it in a matter of hours, the intelligence of the monsters actually helping him this time, as they rushed him in unison, thinking to overwhelm him with their might. Unfortunately for them, nothing came of that save for their deaths.

The jungle had grown ever larger, and even greener, a subtle undercurrent of what felt like concentrated Life elemental energy coursing through the air. Sam could feel it drifting in through his skin, making him feel healthier, more vital. It was a strange effect for what should have been a hostile environment, but he supposed it made the monkeys stronger as well.

Every time the floor increased, the village grew larger and more sophisticated, going from hollows carved into the wood of fallen trees to actual dwellings made from more rigorously hewn logs.

The third floor contained a mix of warriors and spellcasters. The rigid restrictions of the System were beginning to wane, prompted by the increasing intelligence of the floor inhabitants. Eventually, he would be facing more than a few types of monsters. Rather, he would be fighting entire civilizations.

By the time he stood on the fourth floor of the Jade Jungles, he was facing off against a small cabal of spellcasters, who controlled the wood and plants, creating massive arboreal golems that threw spears of sharpened wood towards Sam at many times the speed of sound. Some of them were hard to dodge, but those that did manage to hit him rarely managed to inflict more than a few flesh wounds, which healed over quickly enough.

The golems died as soon as their creators were slain, a fact that Sam used to his advantage. That was, until the monkeys began to craft their golems around their own bodies, getting rid of that weakness. Their village stood behind them, made out of bulbous growths of wood that seemed to emerge from the ground.

They still turned to ash quickly enough before his Primal Skill. As the village, and the last monkeys, were obliterated, the floor faded away. Sam began to smile. It was finally time for him to meet the other competitors. He was closing in on another level, and whatever was to come would likely push him over the edge.