I woke up to a soft blue glow. It took me a moment to place where I was. I was inside the tower to the East of Heaven where the Astrologer was trapped on the 49th Floor. I had escaped the Divine Empress by fleeing into the tower, but she had managed to vaporize my hand before the doors shut.

Now I had to climb the tower with only my right hand, a pack of supplies, and a bomb waiting to explode in my gut. I raised up the stump of my left hand and let out a sigh. I had been an idiot trying to kill the Divine Empress and had paid the price.

It hurt and I was a mess. I had no shirt, bloody shorts, and a pair of boots and socks. The soft blue lights emanating from the edges of the room and the hallways at least provided some light to see by. While my Perception stat helped me see in the dark, this place had been unnaturally dark before when the doors had been open.

My guess was that the stats did less in higher energy zones, or at least the ones that interacted with the environment. This held true for the Sense stat. The energy in the tower was thick. Very thick.

I let out a sigh and pulled out some fruit. I went to peel it with my left hand and then realized, I didn’t have a left hand anymore. I just ate it, peel and all. I couldn’t afford to waste anything on this climb. While I had enough food and water to last me, it was better to be as cautious as possible.

I had a feeling this was going to be a very long and tortuous climb to get to the 49th floor. Hopefully there weren’t stairs. Those were the only things more evil than the Divine Empress. I put my food pack on my back and my oil pack on my front.

I then had to make a decision. Left tunnel, middle tunnel, or right tunnel. Middle tunnel appeared to just end in a dead end. But it made me question if it was really a dead end. The other two tunnels went until a dead end but had a path branching off to the left and right respectively.

The worst part was that this place looked like a maze. With random dead ends and paths. I had only purchased food and water in my haste. No pen and paper. That meant I would need to memorize the paths. If there were hidden doors or rooms like Zelda, it would be a nightmare.

The Almighty System did not design things in a user-friendly manner that made them easily accessible. It was straight into hell difficulty in nightmare mode right at the start. Normally games would slowly scale up and teach a player their puzzles, but the Almighty System wouldn’t do that.

It was more like, go on and find out, if you live good, if you die then onto the next person. At least that was my impression. This meant that I shouldn’t expect any handouts or slow guidance. I needed to assume every part was a death trap.

Well, the first tunnel was going to be the middle tunnel. I should maybe call them hallways since they were cubed shaped. Which was another weird thing. Why was the entrance into the city circular, but the towers square?

I paused the first thing I did was check the strips of blue light in the entrance chamber. It was a finger length wide and stopped the corners from being super sharp. The texture was like the gray stone that made up the tower, but it was slightly smoother.

My energy Sense stat didn’t pick up anything. There was nothing more to learn about them. I stood up. I needed to take each part of the tower methodically. No rushing, no being stupid. Check everything, even the walls.

I entered the middle tunnel and kept my right hand on the right wall while taking one step forward at a time while scanning everything with both my visual, auditory, and energy senses. Was this really a dead end?

There had been dead ends with nothing in them in the lower level dungeons. I had seen plenty while getting skill points. Dead ends were bad design since they meant people had to backtrack, but I wanted to be sure the same held true for the tower. I could not assume anything other than it was very deadly.

I suddenly paused. The energy was slightly off in the section of the tunnel. I had gone about two thirds the length from the entry room to the end. There were striations in the energy. They were hard to make out but they were there.

I didn’t even have any crystals to summon a monster with to test this section out. Another issue from having rushed to the tower without proper preparation. I looked at those striations and they were on the wall, ceiling, and floor in this section of the tunnel.

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It smelled like a trap of some kind. But the question was, what was the activation mechanism? Acid Shot. Long curved blades shot out of the wall, turning this portion of the tunnel into a blender for a second. Acid Shot. I used the skill again as the blades retracted.

I kept using the skill every couple of seconds and then was forced to slow down as my energy was getting low. The blades then triggered again. Why the delay?

I waited a period of time and tested the section of the hallway a couple more times. It was a timer based on either motion or energy. After the trap triggered there was a reset time of 100 seconds. I triggered the trap again and walked through afterwards. I was ready to use Air Burst at a moment’s notice if anything happened, but nothing did.

There was no visual indicator when the trap reset either, which was annoying. I made it to the end of the hallway, checking for more traps constantly. There were no more traps. I checked the wall at the back and nothing. It was a solid wall and not fake.

I made my way back keep my hand on the opposite wall this time. I triggered the blade trap again looking at the opening points carefully this time. They were sliding through the stone. I moved my finger near one of the places where the blades came out. It was fake.

The openings were covered up by an illusion. Which was why there were striations so the blades could pop out. I made my way past the trap and back to the entry room. That had been incredibly tense, but I felt better now that I had spotted a trap. I just needed to keep my eyes peeled in the future and remember exactly where the traps were and their triggers.

Now I had to pick between the right and left tunnel. I picked the left tunnel. Once I reached the path that went to the left, I needed to figure out how I was going to explore these floors. I hated mazes. They gave me a headache.

And this tower looked like it was one big maze. I decided to stick to the right hand wall and discount any dead ends that I could see to limit back tracking. If I was out of luck or missed a secret passage then I would do a much more through check on that floor and the following floors.

But since dead ends appeared to be something that the Almighty System enjoyed making, I wasn’t going to pointlessly walk down everyone hoping to find something. At least the lighting made it clear where the tunnels turned off.

I was probably calling them tunnels since this place felt like it was underground with how gloomy and dark it was. The blue lighting was very poor. Well, I wasn’t going to waste my lantern fuel unless I needed it.

Looking into the new tunnel that branched off to the left it ended in a dead end with another tunnel to the left. I carefully made my way forward, looking and listening for monsters, while checking everything for traps.

The new tunnel to my left had two more tunnels to the left and then one to the right at the end. I advanced and checked the side tunnels. They just went a short distance and then stopped before going back to the entry room and the tunnel I taken from there. I checked the walls carefully. Just pointless dead ends to confuse me.

I reached the end of the current tunnel and turned right. There were two passages to my right and it ended in a dead end. Kill me. This was like a corn maze but designed by a serial killer on meth. I went into the first right hand tunnel and it had two more branches which just ended in dead ends and side tunnels that had immediate dead ends.

I back tracked and kept making my way forward, wondering where all the monsters were? I wasn’t going to complain. I began exploring this entire branch and eventually ran into another blade trap which I carefully bypassed after confirming the trigger mechanism and the timing were the same as the previous blade trap.

No assumptions. I would check each trap first and make sure to confirm the resting period before triggering it a second time to get passed it. Unfortunately, there were just more dead ends passed the blade trap. No chests, no monsters, just dead ends.

I made my way back to the entry room, passing the blade trap again. The blades didn’t melt from my Acid Shot just like the tower itself resisted everything. I wish I had my other hand so I could use annihilation blasts. I could tunnel through this nonsense possibly.

Making my way to the entry room, there were no golems there or other monsters which was nice. Well that just left the last tunnel, the right hand tunnel. I entered the tunnel and made a right turn. Oh, kill me twice over.

There were eight passages. Four to the left, four to the right. I very slowly advanced forward checking both my flanks constantly. The first tunnel to my left was a quick dead end. The tunnel to my right went for a ways and then turned left. Well, I was going to check all the these side tunnels first, before making a decision.

Once I came to the third intersection I quickly froze. There was a soft yellow light coming from the passage to my left. The passage to the right ended in a dead end, so at least I didn’t have to worry about being ambushed from behind.

I didn’t get close to the corner, since something could be hiding against the wall. I slowly moved towards the center of the intersection. That was when I saw something I knew was an obvious trap.

There was a small square pedestal in the center of the room with a golden rod sitting on said pedestal. Obvious bait is obvious bait. Whatever that rod was, it was probably very useful or even needed. But it was also clear that the large room it was located in was a death trap.

Also, that yellow light could be a trigger or a beacon for something. There were just too many unknowns. I really wanted some minions or test subjects to send on ahead. I considered the rod very carefully and the room it was in at a distance.

I let out a small sigh. I couldn’t just turn away from the first important thing I had found. I would need to go in there and get that rod no matter how much it felt in my gut like a very bad idea.