The spear-point of my grappling line spun out, a sheen of purple fire running along the length of it. The metallic rope attached to the spear looped in a great arc and angle; the enchanted item was half-guided by my intent and half by what little sway gravity held on it.

A tearing, crunching noise and a series of angry hollerings lashed out as the copper colored spear pierced through the metallic, silvered skin of an airborne and winged monkey golem.

"Holy... FUCK!" I screamed with my heart pounding in primal, unending adrenaline as my body crashed through unmoored air, me being as high as I'd ever been before, with my entire weight being dragged along by the deceptively powerful contraption mounted on my left forearm.

If I didn't trust the grappling line's capability, and considering that my feet were now far from being able to reach anything resembling solid ground, I would've been horrified by how shockingly elevated I was.

I flared the mana in my limbs, slowing my mind and allowing the mystical energies to loosen and coordinate my muscles.

The thud-thud in my chest wasn't from my magic, though; evolving my agility-based perks into [Arcane Fencer] had fixed that issue, as it was much less straining on my body than [Accelerate Adrenaline] had been before the spell's nature had been integrated into the aforementioned perk.

Okay, maybe I was a little scared.

After all, I hadn't started out doing crazy, webslinging-esque maneuvers mid-air or anything. It wasn't like I'd just jump off a floating, metallic platform to follow a flying monkey without practicing first. I'd built up to it!

Gwen and I were now working on clearing the middle-most ring that hovered, bobbing ominously like a boat upon a pond, around the Ringed Citadel. We'd worked our way through enemy after enemy as we'd climbed towards the tower's top; the powerups from my perks' evolution and skills hitting apprentice tier had proved pretty valuable in making it this far.

Though I had to admit the process of getting said powers had just given me more questions and worries. Gwen had some too, now. Ultimately though, neither of us really knew what had happened to me. As always, we'd decided all we could do was move forward.

The monkey golem I'd slammed my line's speartip into lurched down against my weight. Ugh, I wasn't that heavy.

I yanked my arm against my grappling line, willing it to guide me to my target more quickly. The bracer that housed the hook's line vibrated violently on my arm as it attempted to obey, pulling me through the death-defying heights even more rapidly.

It was fine, I relaxed my body into the unnatural feeling of almost-flight, I could process all of this thanks to my magic.

Now if I could just hit my mark.

As if sensing my murderous intent, the golem raised a clawed hand; the light of day flashed angrily against the metallic, naturally inspired weapons.

If I kept on my current course it'd hit me before I hit it.

Well, that was a no from me.

I sent the mental signal to the grappling line to reverse its pull and, with a lurch, it slackened.

With the copper-hued cable connecting me to the monkey no longer taunt and pulling, I was sent lurching downward in a dropping arc beneath the thing.

I funneled more mana into my mind-body connection, trying to sharpen it so I could get the timing of my next move just right.

And, a half-second later, as the power of my inner flame pulsed along my synapses, I jerked my left arm downward.

The monkey was in a downflap of its wings, just as I'd planned, catching it when the immediate lift keeping it airborne was momentarily dissipating.

The creature bobbed against my weight once more, perhaps surprised at my sudden change in trajectory. It really wasn't enough to make it fall from the air or anything, but, of course, I wasn't done.

As I pulled down, I immediately reversed the direction of my grappling line's pull once more. The cable of the device whirred as it began to pull my weight against the monkey and towards it all over again.

A moment later and I was flying right up in front of the angry, disoriented creature.

The monkey shrieked at me with fury, just as my grappling line's speartip ripped out of its midsection.

The thing raised its clawed hand angrily to swipe at me, but I was already readying my attack.

"Hey there, buddy," I said with a smile as I summoned a runic grenade into my palm.

The monkey screeched.

I sucked my teeth. "Rude."

I poured mana into my eyes and right hand, slowing time and syncing my coordination with my new flow of perception.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

My hand jerked forward and the small, rune-emblazoned pebble I'd taken from my inventory flew straight into the hole my grappling line had left in the monkey.

By the time the odd golem's eyes were growing wide in shock, I was already redirecting, once again firing, and being pulled away by my grappling line.

My eyes flashed with a purple flame as I was yanked towards the massive silvered ring that was still relatively close by.

I blew out a breath of awe and a bit of trepidation as I gazed at the massive lake far, far below as the explosion within the monkey golem echoed out from behind me.

I hit the silvered ring with a roll, a few points of my health dropping off, as my grappling line's spearpoint guided me onto the platform.

A crash of lightning thundered down beside me, catching my attention, just as I began to stand up.

"Last one?" the panther asked.

"Yep," I said, as the System granted me the kill notification for my enemy. "For this ring anyway."

The speartip beneath me tugged itself out from the shining metal between my legs and pulled back into its housing on my forearm.

The purple fire, derived from the [Blazing Weapon] spell I'd created from the soul shard of one of the gatekeepers in order to be able to pierce the silver metal of the tower and golems, faded quickly from the speartip as it settled into its place.

The floating rings surrounding the tower were actually pretty far apart from one another, far enough to be well out of the range of my grappling line and [Fire-Flicker] spell. As far as we could tell, the guardians we'd faced on each ring were only designed to protect that ring and to keep you from reaching the next platform.

We'd cleared at least... six rings at this point? None of the enemies had been as strong as the Gatekeepers we'd face at the entrance, not by a long shot even.

This ring was different than the others had been though. There was no stairway connecting it to the next highest ring. There was just a singular, hovering platform sitting just beyond what we figured should've been the exit archway of the ring.

"I'm guessing it's like an elevator, or something," I said aloud when we approached said archway in question. "Don't know why they wouldn't just turn it off if they didn't want us to go higher though."

"Maybe they can't?" Gwen offered.

"They have guards but they can't turn off the lifts? Just weird to me," I said as I gazed up to the many flying monkeys still circling on the higher rings.

I squinted as I noticed something odd in the golems' flight patterns.

"Hey, Gwen. Is it just me or are they flying up towards the top now?" I asked. "Like, away from us?"

I felt curiosity flow through the panther's mind as she shifted her eyes to look up to what I was seeing.

"I think," the panther squinted, "I think you're right."

The winged automatons definitely seemed to be abandoning the higher rings; I hadn't even noticed before that many of them already had and that they were now circling the top of the tower proper.

"Why would they abandon the rings for the top? They trying to make some sort of final stand up there or something?" I further wondered aloud.

Then the rumbling started.

The ring below our feet began to shake, throwing itself out of its pattern of gently bobbing, to violently began to rise upwards.

"What the hell," I said as the ring began to even more rapidly climb in elevation. "Hold on!"

----------------------------------------

The tower ring climbed higher and higher, completely leaving behind any chance for me and Gwen to use the hovering platform beyond its arch.

Both me and the panther were forced to drop into a crouch just to steady ourselves, though Gwen was admittedly naturally almost always in a sort of crouch.

And, as we got over the initial shock, we both began to realize that all of the smaller rings that had been above us began to trail up under us as we passed them.

"Well, at least the elevator works after all!" I shouted to Gwen. "We just got it mixed up on what was actually the elevator is all!"

"Not funny!" Gwen growled as the ring that we were on accelerated up higher and higher.

Finally, as we crested over the tower's tip, the ring we were on lurched to a stop.

And what a grand sight we were greeted with when we made it all the way up, at least once our eyes stopped spinning a bit.

The remaining, smaller rings that had followed up after us settled below us, overtop the tower, one by one.

The floating platform outside the ring's archway, that we had thought to be an elevator of sorts, instead proved to fill the gap between our ring and the one right below us. Each ring below us, in turn, had its own similar platform that linked further down to the next ring, all the way down to the bottom where the rings drew within a step's distance from the citadel's crown.

We hadn't been able to see the top of the truly massive tower from the rings below it as it had reached above the sky's cloud cover.

Now I realized that it was grander and more alien than anything I could've thought it'd be.

The entirety of the tower's top was covered in what almost appeared to be a garden of sorts, but a mystical one.

Gorgeous, almost translucent pink-white flowers and scattered trees resembling pink dogwoods covered the breadth of the tower top's surface and a great, pillar of divinely shining light barreled from the heavens into the tower's center.

From this pillar of shining, pure mana--I realized--there flowed what appeared to be streams of equally as glowing and blinding water to all four corners of the garden. These bright streams connected at the tower's edges and created a great, trailing flow around it.

But that wasn't the end of it. Chunks of silvered, earth-like islands hovered everywhere above the tower-top, creating mini-gardens themselves. Some of these islands housed benches, some displayed statues of regal yet half-animalistic subjects, and yet others bore more of the unnamed tree species atop them.

And, at the centermost island, which hovered directly around the great pillar of sky-drawn light, I saw him.

It was another golem, another monkey even, but where as the others had been base and almost cartoonish, this one held all the authority and grandeur of their monarch.

The automaton in question was more human in its proportions than the others, much more finely crafted than all before had been. Golden bracers, beads, and bangles decorated its perfectly emulated, carved and downy silvered fur.

The golem, looking both more powerful and nimble than any of its brethren I'd yet encountered, was set, legs crossed, upon its particularly craggy island. A glowing tree, delicate flowers occasionally swept into the breeze, hung above it.

I could also not discount the sight of the massive, wolf-like canine golem that laid beside the humanoid monkey; the wolf's fluffy looking head rested upon its seeming master's meditation-set thigh.

The monkey had what appeared to be a silvered glaive leaned peacefully and scenically against the tree it meditated in front of. And two of its very intelligent looking eyes, though it had three it seemed and one remained closed upon its forehead, were boring into me and Gwen.

"Why do you further violate this fallen temple, child?" the thing's voice echoed out, strong and confident, as it stroked the head of its canine companion. "There was never anything for your kind here and now there is even less."

The opened eyes of the monkey narrowed and pulsed as it continued its rebuke: "Only an end to stories is to be found atop this citadel, as it is in all corners of this wilting world."