The dark red-light walls disappeared or dropped so quickly it didn’t make a difference. Acid Shot. Acid Shot. I was already moving as my attacks were aimed at the floating sphere. About the size of a beach ball. It was a silvery color just like all the other golems and monsters that came from the tower.

The acid attack was stopped in mid-air and fell to the ground. I could see a sphere of energy around the boss. Not so much energy as just the complete repulsion of energy in the air. Like a three dimensional vortex.

The sphere monster remained floating there in the center of the room even as I kept moving it did nothing. I slowed down, still no reaction. I slowed down some more. A thin metal needle with a lot of energy inside of it was launched at me.

I cleared that space and there was an explosion where the needle impacted. The sound echoing in the enclosed room and the force made me stumble slightly but I kept moving. The monster didn’t attack again. It was clearly content to let me slow down before attacking.

That was the really annoying part about these higher-level monsters, their unique attack patterns and behaviors. An explosive needle, that was simple. But waiting until I slowed down wasn’t simple at all. It just floated there in the center of the room. I had been watching it when it launched the needle, and its shield hadn’t even flickered.

Acid Shot. Acid Shot. I began spacing my attacks out one after another. But the shield stopped every single one. After five attacks and the shield not flickering in the slightest, I quickly moved towards the monster. Air Burst. I quickly gained height.

A wall of energy appeared in front of me. I slammed into it and came to a halt mid-air as my forward movement was canceled out. An explosive needle was fired. Air Burst. I quickly moved out of the way and away from the monster. The needle exploded.

Alright, you wanted to play hardball, let’s play hard ball. I moved in on the monster again. Acid Shot. Acid Shot. Air Burst. The force wall appeared in front me, but I moved to the side as the Acid Shots hit the monster’s shield. I used another Air Burst to move back towards the monster.

Acid Shot x2. Force Wave. My skills only formed so far in front of me, which was why I needed to get close for this attack to work. Air Burst. My energy was incredibly low as quickly retreated from the monster. There were some small divots on the sphere, but they quickly repaired. The shield also snapped back into place instantly.

I kept running. “You couldn’t have been easy? Could you?” I muttered. What a nightmare of a monster. Its attack was fairly weak, but it more than made up for it in the defense category. It had zero openings. It was a sphere. There was no head, or rear, or legs, or any other weak point.

It had a shield, that could be breached by an annihilation type attack, but the damage it took was minimal. I kept running around the monster as it was content to wait for me to exhaust myself and slow down.

I could get in three annihilation attacks with full energy. I would need to keep running for about an hour and a half before I got all my energy back. This was incredibly annoying, but I didn’t dare let my guard down for a second.

The biggest issue was my annihilation attack. Aqua Sphere had been easy to match up with Force Wave, so the energy impacted each other perfectly for an annihilation attack. Using Acid Shot was really sub-optimal with how the energy impacted each other.

I didn’t have the upgrades to make the energy impact each other perfectly. Dammit, this missing hand was really hindering me right now. While Aqua Sphere only needed a quick supporting gesture from my second hand and could be maintained by my first, it was enough to completely block me.

While losing a foot would have been worse, a hand was probably the least bad outcome for a limb loss. As I raced around the monster that was content to wait, I was kicking myself over and over for not pulling it back fast enough from when the Divine Empress had vaporized it.

I shouldn’t have even tried to kill her after the previous two attempts had failed. She wasn’t an idiot and I had been overconfident. My only hope was that whatever damage I had done to her really was permanent.

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Her raspy voice gave me hope that she had suffered long term damage despite the regenerations she had gotten. They clearly hadn’t fixed everything. An annihilation attack was a type of curse damage, erasing a person’s energy.

So even if she had some way to replace her energy or heal curse damage, there were probably errors that crept in. Minor errors, but it would hopefully lead to health complications or a blood clot. That would be hilarious in a way. The Divine Empress dying to a blood clot, after fighting through everything else.

I kept an eye on the monster as I raced around the room at a constant but easy to maintain speed. It was clearly content to wait as well. This was the first time I had encountered a high-level monster like this. It was very passive in the face of a threat.

But its defenses were very good. If I didn’t have the annihilation combination, it would have been very hard to defeat it. Even a melee attack would be difficult with the way it could push me away mid-air. I considered how else I might go about defeating it.

Not easily with the stats I currently had. Level 5 monsters were clearly a lot stronger than their level 4 counterparts. On the this floor, it was made clear with the level 4 spider golems compared to the level 5 boss on the first floor.

It was nice to be able to quantify the difference in terms of combat ability and resistance to my attacks. I couldn’t easily kill level 5 monsters with a single attack. And they were much quicker on the dodging and defending than their level 4 counterparts.

That was the advantage of leveling up my skills, they moved more quickly. But the difference wasn’t that massive. I might even be able to beat a level 6 monster if its abilities didn’t line up with mine. But a bad level 5 monster would be tricky.

It was hard to say what monster would be my nemesis, but anything like this sphere that had a shield, was something that was sure to piss me off. If I had 50 floors of this kind of nonsense to get through, there had better me a big fat meta-point waiting for me at the top.

Alright, my energy was finally back. Time to make a second attempt. Air Burst. Acid Shot. I unleashed a single attack to rest on its shield in case that did something to alter its behavior. I didn’t want to change things from the previous attempt. But I had already calculated out my energy usage precisely in the hour and a half of running. I couldn’t afford to waste anything.

I ran right for the monster, dodging around the force wall on the ground rather than in the air. I leapt up, right at it while I was almost under the monster. Acid Shot x2. Force Wave. I repeated that two more times along with a parting Acid Shot. Air Burst! I quickly moved to the side and away in case it unleashed a follow up attack and kept moving.

The bottom of the sphere was gone and the rest of it was pitted. I kept running as I watched it. With my Sense stat I could tell the shield had instantly snapped back into place preventing any kind of follow up attack. I could the acid dripping off the sphere, but it wasn’t doing enough.

I kept running and the monster didn’t die. In fact, it was slowly healing. “That is unfair!” I yelled out. It didn’t care. As I ran I kept an eye on the speed of its regeneration. It was very slow on the portion that had been taken out by the annihilation attacks.

After a couple of minutes, I let out a sigh of relief. It was regenerating slower than I could damage it. The battle wasn’t hopeless, but it was clearly going to be dragged out. I kept running around the monster until my energy came back and attacked it again.

I did more damage, but not enough to kill it. I went back to running. All the time I had saved on the second floor was now burning away. After a third attack, the monster finally turned to dust. The door opened and I made my way to the elevator. I paused and then went back for my packs. I had almost forgotten them, that would have been bad.

It was just like the elevator from the first floor. I rested my tired head and my right hand on the pillar. I chose to go up. The elevator rose and I entered another safe room. I tossed my backs to the side and collapsed on one of the benches, sitting in the corner.

That had been an incredibly tedious and annoying fight. There was no threat, but the constant pressure to try and kill the monster was stressful. At least I could damage it. If there was a level 6 monster like that, I was finished. There would be no way to breach its defenses.

As I sat there, I felt annoyed and relieved. I could make it through the tower. It was hard. I couldn’t let myself be complacent for a single moment, but it was doable as the last two boss battles had shown. When I got out of here, I was going to fix my skills no matter what. It was too critical to allow them to just wait around and not get cost upgrades, up to level 4 and then the silent and gestureless upgrades at that level to keep the cost down.

Being able to spam my attacks was a great equalizer and not being able to do that, left me with limited options once my energy ran out. While I felt confident in how I used and combined my skills, they were just too expensive.

Acid Shot was definitely getting that treatment no matter what. I didn’t care if the Divine Empress was still running around. Being able to spam against her would be too powerful, especially with any kind of annihilation effect.

It was a hard earned lesson, but a very important one that I was taking to heart after the last tedious battle. I drifted off to sleep thinking about shooting balls of energy at the Divine Empress and making her run from me in terror.

It put a pleasant smile on face.