After my short break and getting back my energy, I put on my two packs and left the room. The barrier was just like the barrier for the City Shield. One way. I was in the Northeast corner of the tower and the tunnel turned to the West. It was long, about two thirds of the tower if I had to guess with several branching paths.

I began to walk down it, and after only a couple of tunnel units, the lights switched from blue to red. “Oh come on!” I complained. It appeared the first floor really was the nice floor. Almighty System, couldn’t you just repeat things to make the climb easy?

There was no response. If it had been easy, then someone would have completed a climb already. I checked the first intersection which had a path to the South. There were more branching paths down that way. The first level had the entry rooms and the tunnels extending from them along with the center room.

It had made it easy to divide up the floor into four sections and check each of those. But since the elevator had been in the Northeast corner of the floor, that meant there was probably not a standard layout. I raced past that first intersection and came to the second which had another tunnel going North and South with multiple branching paths.

The tower truly was a maze. I heard a noise and four smaller spider golems appeared from around a corner at the end of this long initial passage. From their energy they were level 4. I made my way towards them. The golden rod room had four spawners, so this would make sense.

Acid Shot x4. I easily took them out and ignored their point crystals as advanced. My heart plummeted as I saw a null skill room. There were two spawners in the opposite corners and probably two to my left and right inside the room.

I saw another passage to the South. I quickly raced over there as four more level 4 spider golems were spawned. “South,” I said aloud to help keep me oriented. I checked a tunnel to my left. A dead end. A four way intersection. The tunnel to the East had several branching tunnels to the North. That was pointless, since the initial passage had been a long stretch from East to West and then had an intersection that went North to South.

I needed to find the key room and the boss room. The passage to the West had a ‘T’ intersection at the end. That was probably the West edge of the tower, if my mental measurements were right. I heard the spider golems approaching from behind me and I kept moving South.

Three dead ends. Acid Shot x4. I killed the spider golems. An quickly went to the passage near the West edge of the floor. I checked South, dead end, then a side passage, another dead end, and a third with a dead end.

I killed another four spider golems and raced North. I ended up looping around the null skill room where the spider golems were spawning in. No traps so far, which was concerning. I raced back to the intersection that went North and South and four spider golems appeared from the South.

Melting them, I quickly turned South and almost ran into another four which I melted. These were two new groups of golems. But now I was out of energy. Running into a corner would be death. There was no place to hide. The golems were using some kind of Sense stat or were linked up to hunt me down.

Hiding was a losing strategy. I had to push through and dodge the monsters with my Body stat. I couldn’t just keep killing them. I was already kicking myself for not conserving my energy better, but I hadn’t thought it would be this bad and had panicked a bit.

Rushing down a passage, I checked a side one to the right. A long passage to the South with a null skill room along the way. Four spider golems were already rushing at me. I kicked off the ground hard and zig zagged my way through the tunnel.

White sticky shots tried to hit me and then the spider golems leapt at me. I managed to get by them, but that was close. I crossed the null skill room and saw four more spider golems coming around the corner of a side passage. I knew where to check next.

They wouldn’t be coming from dead ends, which is what I wanted to avoid. I leapt up and kicked off the right wall, I then launched myself into the tunnel the spiders had come from while pulling the spiders in the other direction to leave a clear path. “East,” I said.

No traps, but I was keeping my eyes peeled for anything that might be a threat. I came to a North South intersection. I glanced both ways and saw something I wanted to the South. I turned in that direction as I heard the spider golems behind me as I raced forward. “South,” I made sure to say that.

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I couldn’t afford to get turned around. It was incredibly hard to keep everything straight in my head while being chased by monsters. I entered the room and the golden rod was sitting on a pedestal in front of me.

I noted that there were striations around the edge of the room. It was trapped, but there was no time to test things. I grabbed the golden rod and ran for the South exit from the room. The only place the boss room could be was in the Southwest somewhere.

Exiting the golden rod room, there was another ‘T’ intersection, probably the South edge of the tower, if I had to guess. I quickly turned to my right. “West,” I said. There were four spider golems racing at me from the end of the passage, which had a turn to the North.

It made a sick kind of sense why everyone else had failed before. If you came here with a group of ten people, you would struggle to move quickly under the constant assault and get turned around. The constant attacks would wear you down and eventually the waves of monsters would make it impossible to continue.

You needed a high enough Body stat to move quickly, or a lot of energy. I could see a group making progress if they rotated people and had very good energy management, but it would be tough. If there were two or more of me this would be cake.

If the Astrologer was the same combat level as the Divine Empress, he probably just powered his way through without too much of a problem. Just blasting anything in his path. And he had his Valkyries as well, which would make it much easier if their stats were close to his.

If he was a caster, then they would probably have high Body stats to defend him. Valkyrie was the title of a warrior woman. They could fight for him while he easily kept track of which direction to go. The real danger was getting to the second level and not being prepared for this kind of pressure.

I could see a lot of groups patting themselves on the back after the first floor and then getting crushed on the second floor under the constant assault by the monsters. It also hadn’t escaped my notice, that the spawned monsters were a lower level than the previous boss monster.

That confirmed to me that the Almighty System knew nothing about proper game design, if it wasn’t already clear from all the dead ends it had put in. A game would normally have lesser versions of the boss show up ahead of time to train a player on what to expect. Here, it was just straight into the deep end.

At least there wasn’t something that was triggered when I took the golden rod this time. That had been a concern, but I had no time to test things out carefully. I needed to keep moving no matter what. The moment I slowed down, the monsters would eventually swarm me.

As I rushed past the next group of spider golems and the null room, I kept moving North. I had been checking side passages and their length. With the spiders spawning, what would have been a lengthy and annoying search of the floor was turning into a quick race, where they were providing clues on what direction I needed to go.

That was a bit of a surprise to me. Where something that was a massive headache turned into a boon of some kind. I checked a passage to my right and found a golden door. Thank you spiders for not making me check all the pointless dead ends on this floor.

If I had to guess, this had taken about twenty minutes since I had left the safe room, instead of the rest of the day. I might even get another floor completed today after another rest. I put the golden rod key into the slot. The lighting changed to gold and the door opened.

I back tracked a bit and the spiders chasing me had come to a stop and were unmoving. That was nice. I really didn’t want to face a boss with lots of little monsters rushing in. I winced at that thought. That was going to happen, wasn’t it?

Letting out a sigh, I leaned against a wall outside the boss room and just waited for my energy to fully come back. There was no way I was rushing a level 5 fight without full energy. The last boss room had bene too close for comfort.

I wondered what kind of monster would show up this time? A snake golem? A scorpion? Or some kind of geometric shape? It was hard to say.

What was really annoying me was the lack of treasure or loot. If I got to the top and there was no meta-point, I would be pissed. I had the hope I could bypass the Astrologer, and get a meta-point, then deal with him.

My gut wasn’t hurting, but I knew it was only a matter of time. At the rate I had found and unlocked the boss room on this floor, I wasn’t that worried about making it to the top in time anymore. The biggest thing would be to manage my energy more carefully and only leave the safe room when I was ready.

Also keeping a mental map while running about was incredibly helpful. I could quickly rule out large swaths of the tower, based on the location of the edges, tunnels, and rooms. There was only so much space to hide a room.

While the tunnels could be windy and tricky, I wasn’t that worried about them to be honest. I was coming to like them a bit. They were very rigid in terms of design and there didn’t appear to be any huge issues in finding my way with the method I was using.

There would be a massive headache if there were hidden walls though, since I didn’t go down the dead ends to check and my Sense stat could only help me see so far through all the energy inside the tower. I probably had about three or four tunnel units of sensing range, before things got really blurry.

Well my energy was fully recovered. I stood up from the wall. These floors and monsters weren’t going to clear themselves. I walked into the boss room and tossed both my packs to the side as the boss spawner had red walls that appeared around the center of the room.

Whatever it was, I was confident, that I could beat it, no matter what. After the last level 5, I had been a bit on the backfoot, but now I was ready for whatever might appear.