Floor sixteen was thankfully quite different from fifteen.
We stepped through the doorway and into an aisle of a library. The floor was tiled with large stones, pale yellow in color. The shelves themselves were a well-maintained darkly colored wood. The books were in various styles and separated on each shelf by their different style. I wondered if it was then organized by author name or year then author name.
A ding and a banner appeared.
Only thing we could do was to head down the aisle and start looking.
Exiting the aisle, was like exiting a tunnel, and the outside world just being more library. It was quite large, and we seemed to currently be on a balcony level. I looked down over the edge and saw countless floors below us.
Each floor must have been a genre? And then each side of each floor was a different country, and each aisle was a different time period. And then separated by book style and author.
That was how I would do it. It would make things look nicer too. If it was just by the author, then there would be sections of plain paper scrolls next to hardcovers and next to more ornate scrolls. Information aside, that would’ve probably annoyed me more than anything, if things just looked off.
Why I apparently had a preference for how the library was organized I really had no idea, but it was almost instinct.
Mezu tugged on my shirt and pouted.
“I know. I’m not a big fan of libraries either. Have some fingers. I don't want to make a big mess and piss off the librarian.”
I held out a cloth under Mezu’s chin, as I offered him my fingers. I was able to not let blood drop anywhere before wrapping my hand up tightly and letting him climb onto my shoulders.
We walked following the balcony till we made it to one of the bridges that crossed to the other side of it. Set in the middle of the bridge was a staircase that went downwards. I was really hoping the floors didn’t go down forever. If it did, how were we meant to find the librarian?
After going down a couple floors I spotted what looked like an information desk and went over to it. It was empty and there wasn’t even a little bell to get someone’s attention. I realized Alcoroth was oddly quiet and looked around to see that he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Then again, with him seeming like a nerd I guess this would be considered his paradise.
I sighed and waited a little bit at the desk. There were two things I knew about libraries and librarians; they liked quiet and patience. I didn’t really have the second quality, but as long as Alcoroth wasn’t here to be argued with, I could be pretty quiet. Mezu probably had even less patience than I did because it wasn’t long before he was rocking himself on my shoulders.
I repositioned him a little bit and looked around the desk. Everything was neatly in place as if someone had just left, but there was still a layer of dust on everything. This couldn’t be the librarian’s desk; it clearly wasn’t ever used. I went back to the balcony edge and looked down. For whatever reason at the top, I couldn’t see the bottom floor, but it seems as if I could now, so I took us back to the stairwell and headed down.
This floor was much larger and had higher ceilings than the previous floors. There weren’t as many aisles on this floor, and for whatever reason, I felt as if walking down this somewhat empty aisle to my right was the correct choice.
About halfway down I could see that the back wasn’t just a darkly colored wall, it was a large darkly colored wooden door. When we exited the end of the aisle, I could see that within the large door there was a smaller one. I walked us over to it and knocked.
I heard some heavy shuffling on the other side of the door before a deep voice sounded out, “Enter.”
I opened the door and inside was a much more cluttered space, and occupying a wooden perch much too large for its body was an owl with deep orange eyes. Its wings were a dark brown color, and its chest was a slightly lighter brown and was spotted with slightly darker feathers.
“Hello there.”
“You’re more respectful than the other’s I’ve met.”
“Well, even if I don’t like books, the organization of them is really nice to look at.”
The owl laughed heartily. Their voice was much deeper and louder than I’d expected from such a small body, and I suspected they had shrunk in size for whatever reason.
“Yes, well I’m supposed to give you a task, but I usually give it depending on how annoying the person visiting my library is. And considering the two of you seem to have no interest in the books here I see no problem in just making your task simple.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Yes, it would be a waste of time to have you work if I’d get no compensation for it. Now to think of a task.”
I stood across from them in silence as they thought, unmoving. Then their head turned to the left. They took off, flew to a bookshelf, and came back with a vial, placing it on the small desk in front of me.
“Drink this potion.”
“Huh?”
“Your appearance bothers me. This should fix it so drink this and be on your way.”
I tilted my head, confused. My hair color bothered them, and they really just happened to have a vial to fix it. It was as if the monarch was trying to change my hair color so badly that they now found a way to make me do it by making it a requirement to clear the floor.
I sighed and took the vial from their hand downing it without questioning its contents.
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I didn’t really feel any effect or change. But the owl hummed slightly.
“Much better. Though not completely fixed.”
Their head gestured to a wall. And I turned to see a mirror and walked closer to it as I heard a ding.
In the mirror, the originally blotchy brown mess I had dyed over the years was now an evenly dark brown almost black color. The roots of my hair that I hadn’t touched were a silvery grey color. He was right, it was much neater but it wasn’t exactly completely fixed. I felt like a muddled mess disguised me more, but whatever, my hair was long neater and still covered my ears decently.
“Well, go on then.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Good manners should be equally returned.”
I bowed my head slightly for some reason before stepping through the doorway that appeared in the room.
Once inside Alcoroth reappeared next to us.
“That didn’t take you very long.”
“Why didn’t you come with us?”
“It wasn’t a difficult floor, and I needed a break from you. I wish it would’ve been longer though.”
Something in my brain told me there was something about that to be confused about, but I wasn’t too interested in it. I also wanted a break from him. At the end of the day, as long as it was a challenge that I could do without him, there was no need to be curious about it. It didn’t change anything.
I shook my head to stop myself from thinking unnecessarily and started to stretch in order to do my daily quest before the next floor.
Floor seventeen would have been the easiest challenge yet if the library thing hadn’t been so easy. All it was, was a very long obstacle race through six different terrain types. The difficulty of the terrain varied, and I was only racing against about twenty other people. The banner stated that if you didn’t finish within the top ten, you would have to redo it until you did. Each person was given a mask for whatever reason, this time Mezu wasn’t with me.
Alcoroth had said something about me finishing it faster without him. But seeing how there are other challengers here, I assumed that he didn’t want Mezu to be seen.
I wondered if the space between floors was the same. Otherwise, how could they just stay there to wait for me? Maybe it was just a perk of Alcoroth having some authority over whatever system controlled the tower.
Well, the race itself was quite a bore. I got through the first terrain section easily leaving most of my competition behind. So, I finished alone and went through the door.
The rewards for this floor were new equipment. A new cloak, which was in much better condition than my current one, and the hood was larger. I got a nicely sized bag and a new pair of gauntlets.
“These are much better than the last pair.”
Alcoroth took them from my hands inspecting them.
“It's still useless if I lose them during a fight.”
“Well, you could always work on not losing them, or at least just go back to find them.”
“It's such a hassle.”
I shoved them into the new bag. The ones that I had gotten on the first floor were now useless. Mainly because I lost one in the labyrinth to a trap, and the other got ruined. It would be a waste to ruin these if I didn’t even have a backup.
“I’ll use them if I get another pair.”
“We need to find someone to make you multiple so that you always have spares. It would’ve just been easier if you had any ability to use magic; you could make your own.”
“You could just not bring it up. I’m a half high elf. I don't know why I can’t use magic. Plus, it could be that my other half is just inherently incompetent with mana. I don’t even know what that other half is, and the info page didn’t say either.”
Again, it looked like he pulled something up in the system, so I just waited as he kept sliding through things, staring intently at it.
“It looks like there’s a lot of missing information in your profile. The formatting is all over the place, even with the updated information. If you learn aura, we might be able to see a bit more. But I couldn’t teach you that, so unless you just idiot your way into learning it on your own we’ll still need someone to explain the basics to you.”
“I mean isn’t aura just like a physical manifestation of your will to fight?”
“It certainly can be that for muscle heads, but it isn’t that simple of an explanation. What you know about aura is probably incorrect, and it isn’t worth it to go into an explanation with you since I doubt, you’d understand. If we knew your second race, that would help narrow the methods down, but since we don’t know, it looks like it won’t be that simple.”
“Maybe if we thought of this earlier, we could’ve found a book or something in the library. Not that my reading skills are too great, but I’m sure a nerd like you would’ve been able to read it to me.”
“You’re reading skills aren’t great? It’s not that you’re illiterate, you seem to be able to read the banners.”
“Well, I can read but only in dwarvish. Wo… I can speak common and since there aren’t a lot of books in dwarvish in Azmar, I had to learn to read in common I hadn’t really made too much progress in that since I didn’t really care about anything but the food menus. And he was teaching me…. anyway, since the task and system information seems to all be in dwarvish I’m not having any issues. I thought you would’ve noticed by now?”
“Your info says nothing about your language competence.”
He started swiping more and cursing in a language I couldn’t understand, but it seemed similar to elvish. I mean I assume it was cursing. If he was mad at me, he’d curse in a way I’d understand, but it sounded similar even if I didn’t know what he was saying exactly.
“It’s completely blank, it’s utterly useless. What about elvish, you seem to be able to speak it well enough.”
“My uncle taught me to speak but not to read. Why would the Dwarves have books in Elvish?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes before waving his hand in the air.
“You continue to astound me. No reason to stay in here, let’s move onto the next floor.”
Floor eighteen was a game called capture the flag. Again, I was alone for this, and for some reason the other climbers seemed familiar with the game. I must have missed it since I didn’t play much as a kid, mostly because… because I didn’t have friends… I think.
After that and doing my daily quest since the game took an annoying amount of time, we were onto the 19th floor. I had a feeling that like the last two, it would be a joint challenge, and Alcoroth and Mezu wouldn’t join me, but they stepped through the doors with me.
The area we stepped out into was a clearing in a dense forest at night. In the center of the clearing, there was a small campfire.
A ding and a banner appeared.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome to the 19th floor.
This challenge is a co-op challenge with fellow climbers. Together you must fight off five monster waves and survive the night.
Adventurers present: 1/5
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But then everything around us froze.
The fire stopped flickering and had lost its color completely. The already dark environment seemed to get even darker as it lost all of its color. The banner itself seemed to have a hard time maintaining the lettering.
“Again?”
I looked to Alcoroth, but he didn’t respond.
The last time that the Monarch interfered it wasn’t this sloppy.
There was another ding.
A different banner appeared over the other one. It was a dark green one this time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Administrative interference, wait time too long, challenge clearance override.
Monarch (unclear lettering) has requested you to put extra effort in providing good entertainment on the 20th floor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The green banner disappeared, and the world returned to normal.
“If they can just skip through a floor, why can’t they just push us all the way to the top? Is it ‘cause they want to be entertained by me struggling?”
There was a ding, the congratulations message appeared, and a door formed itself to my right.
“Wow you catch on so fast. Be sure to give a good show, and let's be clear, my master is not as easily entertained as the young master.”
I took Mezu’s hand and headed for the door.
“Well as long as I climb the tower, I’m sure it's more entertainment than no one actually trying to climb it.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”