After resting up and getting mentally ready, I exited the safe room onto the forty fourth floor. I had no doubt it was going to be hell and I let out a sigh. Only this first section of passageway wasn’t a null skill passageway, the rest showed the lighted dots in the floor, walls, and ceiling which meant not being able to use skills.

I really hoped there were no pit traps. I advanced forward at my usual pace, checking over the portions of the floor as I advanced, checking for traps and other issues. At the first branching turn to the South, which was to my left, I saw that there was a wall where there wasn’t supposed to be one.

In the saferoom, I had thought about the layout of this floor carefully and what I needed to and block off points. I was up in the Northeast and I had to get to the South East where the golden key rod was. Normally this was a short run away, with only a pit of hassle.

Now with the main route blocked off I needed another way around. I backed up and began checking the other dead ends nearby for any illusion walls, making sure to poke the walls on either side of me as I advanced, doing a zig zag pattern.

After clearing out the dead ends, I ran into 4 level 4 spider monsters. Of course. Couldn’t make this easy or simple, but I had long gotten used to dodging them. Even without skills, I had more than enough Body stat to evade level 4 monsters whose attack pattern I knew by heart.

I went to the main intersection and turned South, seeing another wall blocked off. Great, just great, but I needed to check everything to the South, so I went down passage, activating saw trap after saw trap. It turned to the West and at the end there was an illusion wall.

Checking with my stub arm, I heard the thud of a crush trapped and checked behind it. A dead end with a crush trap behind an illusion wall. “Clever, very clever, but too obvious,” I muttered. It was the most obvious kind of combination trap there was.

Going back up the passage, I avoid the level 4 spiders once again and made my way West to the spawner room. There was a crush trap at the entrance from an earlier floor, which I activated and then went passed. Another crush trap at the exit.

I ignored the passage to the East, since it couldn’t connect to another useful passage and went further South to another passage to the East. One South of the passage with the crush trap at the dead end. While it was overly confusing, the trick I was using was simply ruling out passages that couldn’t connect to anything useful.

While different portions of each floor fit together in weird ways, the biggest trick I had, which I had figured out at the start of my climb, was ruling sections out. If a section connected to another section I had already explored or was in a non-useful direction, then there was no need to explore it.

Sure that meant there could be an invisible wall way out of the way, and I would have to loop around from one very far dead end to another, but this place didn’t have portals or various one way doors which made things a lot easier since I already knew the basic floor layout and the direction I needed to go in.

It kind of reminded me of a Zelda game, but a lot more headache inducing. It was like someone had made a map, which was just meant to be as aggravating as possible. The Almighty System should have put me in charge or a proper game designer in charge of designing these floors, they would have been much better.

I briefly considered that the Avatar might be doing something, but that seemed too paranoid and over the top. How would she even convince the Almighty System to let her make changes? Even if she could make changes, they were poor changes to make. Even if each floor was headache inducing and long, they weren’t difficult with my stats for the most part.

The best design would have probably been a different maze each floor, no monsters, just lots of invisible walls. Then a boss monster and traps in the boss room. That way I wasn’t able to get used to things outside of the boss room ahead of time.

Sometimes throwing everything one can at a person wasn’t the best option, since you would use up all your tricks. Just maze floors every floor and then a super trap floor, mega boss battle. I guess the Almighty System was fair in its own way, even if it still felt like it was trying to aggravate me to death with these illusioned walls.

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I bypassed more level 4 monsters and found an illusioned wall. Going through it I made my way towards the golden key rod room. I almost missed it, hot damn. I saw the way to the far South was blocked off, but there was an illusioned wall to my right inside the monster spawning room.

I checked it first and then went through. The monster spiders right behind me. I then got held up at several crush traps, but I finally made it to the long South connecting passage of this floor. After that it was a short distance to get the golden key rod room.

Finally, no null skill floor. I carefully maneuvered between the energy traps and got the golden key rod. Sixteen level 4 monster spiders poured into the room as well. Acid Shot. Acid Shot. I began to disable them all, one by one. It took 20 Acid Shots in total, since I missed a couple, but it was worth it in my mind.

I didn’t want them rushing behind me into the boss room. Or I could see them getting in through some kind of small one way passage or some nonsense like that. The monster spawners on this floor had never increased beyond 16, which was nice. But the next boss was the Shielded Core. I did not want to face that with a lot of little annoying level 4 spiders harassing me.

Smiling, I casually walked the rest of the way to the boss room without being harassed. “Oh, hello saw trap. Having a good day sawing?” I gleefully asked as I triggered the trap on my path. There was no response, but I didn’t care.

The biggest danger was the unknown. Besides the headache of moving some walls around, there was very little unknown as long as I took my time. I was also taking my time to regenerate my energy after disabling all those monsters.

No need to rush and then wait, when I could be safe as I triggered each trap in my path before moving forward. I looked at the boss door and waited. The level 4 spider monsters would be down for over an hour and even with my slow pace, I wanted to get all my energy back before going in.

In the previous floors there had been saw traps on the outside of the boss room and then a ring of pit traps. My best option once the golden key rod was in was to use Air Burst to get by the initial saw trap, and then go right for the boss at the center of the room.

Five Air Bursts or 4,000 energy would do it. Then I could unleash an annihilation attack for another 4,000 energy, which should damage the monster. That would leave me another 2,000 in the tank or so to spare in case anything came up or possibly a follow up attack if I thought it was warranted.

If I could land one good blow on the monster, then I would be set. That was the key thing in fights like these. The last floor, I had let things get drawn out. This time, I was going to get in my alpha strike and end things right away.

I made sure both my packs were secure. While I could probably survive without any more food or water, I wanted to have some just in case. “Dammit!” I cursed as my massive gut sent a wave of throbbing main through me. I went down to one knee breathing heavily.

If there wasn’t a risk of bleeding out, I would have cut my gut open to remove this bomb myself. It was seriously hindering me and unbalancing me. Calm, I needed to be calm. I focused on my breathing and the pain went back to more manageable levels.

I put the golden key rod into the boss door and it opened. I didn’t hesitate in the slightest by kicking off the ground, right through the middle of the saw trap in front of me. Air Burst. I soared forward. Air Burst. I kept using the skill over and over again.

The red light wall around the boss spawner went away right as I reached it, perfect timing. Acid Shot x5. Force Wave. Acid Shot x5. A good chunk of the floating sphere was taken out, but the boss didn’t die. I was dropping to the floor where the boss spawner was getting mentally ready for its next move.

My foot went through the floor and my eyes went wide. I quickly began to pull up my legs. Air Burst! I went up into the air, halting my descent. But I was out of energy. The boss spawner below me was an illusion, it was all a pit trap.

My mind raced to find a solution. The edges of the room all had saw traps. The only place safe was the place near where I had come in, but that was too far away to get to. Then section of the floor below me was a pit trap, which meant that all four sections in the middle of the boss room were probably pit traps as well.

That left a 3 wide ring that I might be able to land on, but from the previous floors, the middle portion of that ring was composed entirely of pit traps, while the outer ring was too far too reach. I reached the apex height of Air Burst and I knew I needed to come up with something right now, or I was going to fall and die.

There was no change of surviving a pit trap with how closely the spinning saws inside were near each other. Even if I landed perfectly, there was no chance of my foot fitting between two saws. In addition, the pits weren’t that deep, about half my height.

I called them pits when they were really depressions. There was no long fall I could use to brace myself into a corner. That was why I had pulled my legs up so quickly once my feet began to go through the illusioned floor. There was barely any room in order to react of maneuver before I would be torn into shreds.

Dammit! I had been too hasty to get my alpha strike in on the boss. While it was dying, the pit traps wouldn’t stop with the bosses death. That meant I had to figure something else out right now. As my hand constantly moved at my side to give myself the maximum possible time to think.