“Fine!” I shouted and rushed forward. Sticky white goo was shot at me from the spiders and the boss spider was constantly moving away and staying in the edges of the room where there were null skill areas.

That was cheating. Acid Shot. Acid Shot. I began to close in on the level 4 monsters and disable them. One at a time while I kept dodging. Thankfully the white goo they shot turned to dust after 100 seconds or so. That meant they couldn’t completely cover the boss room.

Once I began to disable the minions the fight became a lot easier. But the boss kept hiding in the null skill areas on the edge of the boss room. My Acid Shot would just collapse the moment it entered that area of the floor. The boss leapt out to attack occasionally at range, but was content to scurry away.

“Stop running away you Donkey!” I shouted out. Unfortunately, my taunt didn’t work or make it change its behavior. I moved to the center of the boss room and dodged while regenerating energy. The boss was content to take pot shots at me while staying back at a distance.

This was like the Invisible Centipede Golem but a lot more annoying, since it had range attacks and it wouldn’t approach me. Even when I retreated to the opposite point of the floor, the boss kept to the null skill areas, hugging them closely as it circled around the edge of the room to get to me.

I had thought that this kind of fight might come up, but the answer had always been just alpha strike the hell out of the boss monster before it could get to this point. I looked at the boss room door and it had shut after I had entered.

As I dodged and regenerated my energy, my guess was that the boss wouldn’t leave the room. Instead, the minions would just race out after me. On the later floors, luring the minions out and then having the door shut would be a powerful tactic I could use.

Right now, it didn’t help me, but I was struggling to come up with any good ideas on how to get myself out of this situation. My ability in physical combat sucked against level 4 monsters. I was not Divine Empress to get up close and start punching things.

The boss was content to take pot shots at me and remain in an area I couldn’t use skills. The boss could also keep going forever and ever, which would make things far more difficult. I needed to force it to leave the null skill portions of the room and move towards the center. But the boss didn’t want to do that at all, content to battle me from range shooting goo and spikes at me.

I kept dodging as I thought over this problem and it wasn’t simple in the slightest. I could only kill the monster with my skills, but I couldn’t use my skills where it was located. Out of all the things in the tower, the null skill areas were officially the most annoying.

Once I got back my energy and I was sure none of the small monsters would recover soon, I acted. Just being passive and dodging wasn’t going to do anything. I rushed at the level 5 Spider Golem. It moved away and I pursued it.

A chase began around the edge of the room. I had to avoid the blade and pit traps in the corners, but that wasn’t that hard since I knew where they were. That was when I realized what I needed to do. I quickly kicked off the ground as the boss monster raced into the corner. I flanked it to some degree.

Acid Shot x5. The blade trap in the null skill area triggered even as my skills were disrupted. The blades cut into the boss monster. That was why stuffing too many things into a room or floor was a bad idea. It just gave me more options to work with.

If the boss room just had a null skill wall around the outside and no traps and no spawners, then this fight would have been a lot harder to figure out. But the blade trap and pit trap were what delayed me from reaching the boss spawner in time to alpha strike it.

Regardless, the monsters not setting off the traps had played to my advantage. The blades cut into the boss spider, and it lost two legs. I raced towards it, and it was at the edge of the null skill zone. Acid Shot x5. Force Wall. Acid Shot x5. The annihilation attack went into the null skill zone and carried a short distance, dealing heavy damage to the boss. Another little thing I had tested climbing up the tower.

The boss Spider Golem tried to drag itself away, but I raced around to the wall. I stayed between the monster and the wall and it began to retreat to the center of the boss room while trying to hit me. The attacks were close, but I had long picked up on its attack patterns since they were similar to the level 4 version of the monster.

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Acid Shot x4. Once it was clear of the null skill area, I melted it without hesitation. The coloring of the lights changed and the elevator door opened up. I let out a sigh of relief. That had been a fight for sure. I carefully made my way over to the elevator and took it up to the next floor. I tossed my packs off and sat down to rest.

While I could keep going, I needed to mentally recover myself a bit. Also getting all my energy back would be prudent before the next floor. The last floor had been long, very long. All that back tracking and then the immediate boss fight had not helped matters.

At least I had won. This tower was insane. At least that was that floor done and I would never have to see it again unless it was repeated on the fiftieth floor, which I highly doubted. That floor was sure to be some mega boss fight of some kind.

I smiled to myself. “I beat you. You stupid tower. Traps, monsters, unfairness, none of that mattered in the end. Just my brains, stats, and skills,” I said out loud. That was when my gut cramped severely and made me gasp for breath.

I was used to pain and distractions, but this was honestly reaching the point where it might act up at a critical moment, causing a serious issue. I focused on my breathing so I wouldn’t be too enraged at the Astrologer for what he had done. Just breathe Michael, just breathe. I kept repeating that mantra to myself.

Getting angry, rushing, and cursing about the situation wouldn’t help. I needed to think clearly and be calm. If I had been smarter in that boss battle, I would have used the blade trap right way in the corner to take out the boss. It had been foolish of me to take so long to realize what I needed to do.

That was the problem with thinking while trying to fight. It was just really, really hard to come up with good ideas in the spur of the moment. Better to take my time and dissect the fight afterwards. I had succeeded, but I hadn’t taken the entire terrain into account.

I had been using the traps occasionally to take out monsters and using monsters to spot pit traps, but it wasn’t the same as using one to deal with a difficult boss. I just hadn’t put two and two together. It was annoying to realize how stupid I had been. Still, it was another lesson and this tower was giving me a lot of those as I climbed up it.

Every floor I was feeling more and more capable of handling a level 6 monster no matter the conditions on the top floor. That promised meta-point kept me motivated. While I would climb regardless, I had been fantasizing more and more about what I would pick once I reached the top.

It was a bad habit, but I didn’t want to waste this opportunity if I could help it. I glanced at my bulging gut again and mentally cursed the Astrologer for putting me in the position of having to use a meta-point to counter the bomb he had placed in me.

My mind began to turn to the next floor and I winced. It was going to be annoying since the level 4 spider golems could move on walls and I wouldn’t be able to use them to find long stretches of pit traps. There was also a lot of null skill sections on the floor as well. Which meant that if there was a pit trap I would have to go around it if I couldn’t move diagonally.

Without Air Burst it would be foolish to try and cross a pit trap in a null skill area. If there was a second one behind it, I would be shredded by the hidden saw blades spinning underneath the illusioned floor. That was a good way to die horribly.

It was also annoying that I couldn’t spot the illusioned floors either. I had spent a lot of time on that, but they weren’t like the illusioned walls. There was a difference. And with the illusions not breaking, it seemed that the difference was arbitrary. Still I wouldn’t be complaining about being able to spot the illusioned walls.

If I couldn’t spot them, then things would get a lot more troublesome. While they wouldn’t be impossible, they would be a lot harder. That might happen in a future floor, so I would have to watch out for that in the future. I couldn’t blindly assume anything.

All that backtracking on the last floor had been quite annoying. There was probably going to be a lot of back tracking on the next floor as well. With all manner of traps and illusioned walls thrown in to make things as difficult as possible. At least the level 4 spider golems got close to attack and didn’t remain at a far distance like the boss had.

That meant I could disable them. That seemed like the best option for handling the floors and giving me space to work with. If I hadn’t figured that out, there was no way I would be able to clear the tower. The constant barrage of respawning level 4 monsters was a nightmare.

If there was a way to cash in the point crystals, then this place would have been amazing for grinding. I would have just sat on the forty second floor and just piled up the level 4 crystals from all the spawners. Just stay in the tower and grind safely forever.

Perhaps a portable store would be useful as an item from a meta-point if that were possible. That would allow me to separate from the cities for a long period of time. I shook my head at that, since grinding was no longer the best source of income. Having an empire was. Fighting was for combat experience, not grinding.

Still, the idea sounded quite intriguing as a possibility. If for some reason, I got healed up, but couldn’t kill the Divine Empress, got away again, and got another meta-point, then a portable store might be a good option so I could just hide in a remote corner of the Systemic Lands without any worry.

If it was a year or two ago, I would have probably done that in a heartbeat. But now I knew the immense grinding power of an Empire, so there was no way that was going to happen if I could help it. I wanted all those points to be flowing to me.