The ninth-floor layout was the same as the second-floor layout. I traps I had missed on the second floor were silent saw blades that popped out instead of just regular cutting blades. There were more traps, but I didn’t spot any extra monsters or monster spawners.
What was concerning was that the null skill portions of the floor, were spreading out into the passages themselves. Once I reached floor forty four, it would be all saw traps and null skill flooring, perhaps both at once, which would be a nightmare.
There were also crush traps at both entrances into the golden rod room. I barely avoided being crushed on the first one but managed to activate Air Burst in time. I tested the other entrance to the room and triggered the trap first, before rushing through.
The increase in difficulty wasn’t that bad. Even with the increased number of traps, my Body stat more than made up for any issues. The one tricky portion was right before the boss room, where the entire passage, a total of seven units, was trapped.
That had been incredibly annoying, but I had managed to trigger them and then make my way through, activating the boss room door. Looking inside, I let out a sigh of relief, no monster spawners, but the edges of the room were trapped, except for the two doorways.
Like my previous fight, I waited right next to the boss spawner and initiated an alpha strike immediately as the red light wall went away. I was too close to the Shielded Core boss for it to put up a defensive barrier to push me back and waste energy on Air Burst.
The tower was teaching me the power of alpha strikes at the very least. The fact that I felt confident on what monsters I would be facing helped out a lot. If I had been facing unknown monsters, it would have been a lot harder to commit to these kind of alpha strikes to take down the floor bosses with the single minded determination that I needed.
If I had double my current stats, then this tower would have been near completely trivial. But even with the increase in difficulty, the main danger came from the unknown and complacency at the moment. Since the floors were repeating, the unknown wasn’t as big of a factor anymore.
I dreaded to think what the puzzle floors would be like each iteration. I didn’t want to have to deal with them in the slightest. I liked puzzles, and preferred more intellectual challenges than fighting, but the soreness in my gut and the flash of stabbing pain, kept reminding me that I was on a time limit.
It was aggravating that restorations from the store wouldn’t have helped, just reset the timer. If I had gone with my initial plan of just grabbing onto a store pillar and constantly healing myself after the bomb exploded, it would keep exploding as it was brought back, over and over until I ran out of points. That would have been a horrible way to go.
I had been wrong about so much, but the only thing I could do was admit I was wrong and keep moving forward. But that was also why I didn’t like the puzzle traps. The Astrologer, or his proxy, had claimed that he understood the Almighty System. The fact I had gotten a meta-point made me feel like I was missing something and lent credibility to his words.
That was why I didn’t like the puzzles. I didn’t understand them or their purpose. I kept coming back to them mentally. Why have puzzles? What was the Almighty System trying to tell me? How would they get worse? Why was it so hard to communicate properly with its expectations?
I felt like a child again, disappointing my father in some way, but not understanding why. If you don’t tell me to do something, I can’t read your mind, so just expecting me to do what you wanted is unreasonable. But that was the Almighty System summed up, unreasonable.
Would it have been that hard to provide a guide in the store, just saying things like, ‘Hey, the tower is dangerous. Don’t go there until you have 40,000 stat points.’ Even if it didn’t want to explain other things, it was just too easy to make a mistake and die, while not understanding what the Almighty System wanted.
Well, I was getting to the top, get a meta-point, get this bomb out of me, and then kill the Divine Empress. The first two parts were interchangeable depending on how things went at the top of the tower.
The 10th floor had more crush traps, but I was ready. Air Burst, was ready to got at a hair trigger. I raced through the floor, got the golden key rod and unlocked the boss door. At least my progress was picking up quite a bit now that I knew what to expect and where to go.
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At least the tower wasn’t a three-dimensional maze, with spatial expansions and spatial portals. I would have cried tears of blood if that were the case. Mazes were fun when you weren’t the rat searching for the piece of cheese. I remembered the maze books I had loved as a kid, but now as an adult, racing through a death maze, I was a lot less amused about the entire thing.
The boss room of the tenth floor didn’t look different. I knew that was some nonsense and tested it out by sending in some Acid Shots. My hunch was confirmed by the pit trap that formed a box offset from the wall. There was an outer ring and an inner area to the boss room. That was annoying, but it wasn’t a huge issue.
I just engaged my alpha strike tactics to dust the Power Prism boss that had shown up again. While it appeared that the floors would be made more challenging, the levels of the monsters didn’t change. That was a key thing about the tower that was very important.
Dodging past the level 4 monsters wasn’t that hard except for the fire breathing cats. They were too quick and agile, combined with their ranged attacks would make it problematic to dodge around them or bypass them easily.
At least the floor they were on was wide open except for the pit traps. Those would be annoying. The other nice part about my current strategy, was that I wasn’t too exhausted clearing the rooms. The main constraint was my energy, but with my Regeneration stat, I never had to wait more than an hour and a half before I was good to go.
Still, that was something that was on my immediate to do list. Solving my energy issues once I got out of this tower. Either by fixing my skills or by getting more stats. Skills first, then after the Divine Empress was dealt with, stats, lots of stats.
The eleventh floor was just like I remembered. I took the passage to the Northeast and spotted the illusioned wall. I went through it ready to grab and rush for the boss door. There was no pillar with a golden rod. Striations! Danger! Air Burst!
I retreated as blades swung out, trying to skewer me. That had been way too close. This floor was clearly about finding the hidden area part, but there were also bladed traps behind illusion walls now. That was a horrible combination. Just one mistake and I could easily get myself skewered to death. Since the golden key rod was not here, I began to search.
There were also sixteen spawners instead of the initial ten in the center part of this floor. At least I could still dodge around the small horde of monsters that kept trying to cut me off. I checked passage after passage and found that the way to the boss room had been changed. Instead of the middle path from the central room to the South, it was now the West most path. The illusioned wall had changed.
I was working my way counterclockwise through these various long and meandering passages. Every time I had to backtrack, I felt annoyed, but there was no other option but to do so. I almost missed the illusion wall hiding the key. In the passage to the Southwest the wall wasn’t up to the edge of the East side of the tower like the previous floor.
Just checking the two passages to the East, showed that one was a shorter length. I found the golden key rod hidden behind an illusion wall near the start of the shorter passage. With the golden key rod found, I made my way to the boss door and unlocked it.
This time my heart sank, I noted four monster spawners and no traps, even after sending in Acid Shot just to check. It was time for plan alpha strike once again. I entered the boss room and set my backs to the side.
Once the boss spawned, I was all over it. The Super Cat tried to leap away, but I stayed right on it using a couple of Air Bursts to close the necessary distance. Acid Shot x20. I left it no room for escape. While that used up a lot of my energy, it was more than enough to ensure the boss monster was it.
The minions didn’t have time to interfere in the fight thankfully. Ending the fight as quickly as possible was key. Monsters had unlimited energy for their skills, and they didn’t need to sleep. That was why I didn’t want to change these fights into a contest of endurance.
I had been too afraid earlier to not commit to a full blow rush and attack right off the bat. It had been a mistake and a blessing on my part. A mistake, since ending fights quickly was preferable before my enemy had time to attack me in turn. A blessing, since it gave me the confidence I need to do this kind of thing now that the floors were looping and having a very good understanding what was needed to kill off each boss and their movement patterns, so they couldn’t escape easily.
All of this meant, was that when I attacked the Super Cat, I knew which way it would dodge and pursue it easily. It was the same monster after all. Just the room was harder, not the boss itself. The only boss I wasn’t sure about killing right away was the Donkey, otherwise known as the Invisible Centipede Golem.
It was too quick and nimble, content to run away for me to kill it with an alpha strike. If there were monster spawners in the room, I had no idea what I would or how I would lure it, if it got scared away. That was probably one of the fights I was least looking forward too.
The next floor was the cat floor with the pits. There were already a lot more pits and I could easily see the floor turning into a maze of pits. That would be a massive headache, if that was the case. But I had no doubt that when I reached the final iteration of the floor, it would be something like that.
Regardless, as long as the floor concept was the same, I wasn’t about to panic. It was more a hassle than anything else. Also the combat floors were much easier than the puzzle floor in my opinion. Since I knew what I had to do for the combat floors.
Waiting in the safe room on the twelfth floor regenerating my energy, I smiled at my progress. I was 22% done, since I counted each floor as 2%. One percent for the floor and one percent for the boss of said floor. Over a fifth of the way to the top.