Daemonium was quite proud of the insane trickery he had just pulled off. In fact, he called it his greatest plan of all time.They weren't even halfway up the stairs to the second floor and they were already getting massive headaches from Daemonium's bragging. What makes it worse was that it only took ten seconds to climb the stairs in the first place.
Daemonium had set a new record for how annoying he could possibly be, and it didn't seem like one could stop him. But it actually turns out you can stop him. All they had to do was open the door to the second floor and let Daemonium look in shock.
It was like the room they were just in before but with two major differences. The first is that the key is actually inside the room this time. It is on the ceiling that everyone nearly bangs their heads on, probably attached by glue or something, but it's at least there this time. The second major difference is all of the skeletons littered around the room.
Human, demon, elf, dog, skeletons of many species laid here. One thing was clear from looking at these skeletons however, and that was that they couldn't make it past this room. At that moment, Daemonium finally started to realize what it meant if he couldn't make it to the top. He would starve here, die here, and be a skeleton just like them.
And so Daemonium sat in the corner with tears in his eyes, chanting "I've killed us, I've killed us," over and over like a scared child.
While Fake Daemonium went to cheer him up like an emotional support fox, Dead Daemonium wanted to get out as fast as possible. So they leapt up to the ceiling, grabbed the key, and ripped it off before going to the next room.
At least, that was the plan.
What happened instead was Dead Daemonium dangling off the ceiling as they held onto the key. They pulled as hard as they could, but whatever glue stuck it on must've been incredibly strong since the key never budged.
Dead Daemonium kicked off the ceiling, bit the key with their teeth, tried prying it off by using Green Daemonium as a lever (which it didn't consent to), but nothing got if off. Ignoring Green Daemonium's clear anger at them, Dead Daemonium sat to think about it. What could pry off something glued that strongly? Maybe they needed something sharper...
At the moment, Fake Daemonium was patting a crying Daemonium on the head and consoling him. With the illusion on it looked almost exactly like Daemonium consoling a perfect replica of himself, but the other Daemoniums had seen the illusion long enough to tell who was who by now. If you closely inspected it, one could see that the skin on Fake Daemonium's illusion was slightly paler than that of the original Daemonium's. It wasn't by too much though, so one would have to pay close attention in order to not get them mixed up.
Dead Daemonium grabbed the large fox's arm, removing the illusion, before dragging this fox over to the key. Pointing to the key and this fox's claws, they signalled Fake Daemonium to help them get the key. Fake Daemonium obliged, helping them get the key, while Green Daemonium acted as an emotional support slime in that fox's absence.
It was difficult, but eventually the key was pried off. They dragged Daemonium to the door and opened up the stairs to the next room, which had the same basic format as the previous rooms. Whoever designed this tower doesn't seem to be much of a creative person. Now asides from being the third floor there were only a few differences from the previous floor. The main difference was, and this will be shocking to some, that the key was in a different place! This time it was inside a clear ball, made of some unknown glass or crystaline material.
Fake Daemonium tried to scratch it, but the ball ended up breaking this fox's claw. Upon hearing the snap of this fox's favorite claw getting chipped, this fox put on the fox's favorite Daemonium illusion back on and huddled to the same corner Daemonium was sitting in to cry.
Dead Daemonium facepalmed, ready to do this all by themself, but a hand landed on their shoulder with reassurance. Green Daemonium smiled at them, with a look in its eye saying that its got this. Wanting to believe in it, Dead Daemonium stepped aside and let the Green take the lead.
Green Daemonium cracked its knuckles, or at least made it look like that since its all just slime anyways, before staring at the ball with a wicked grin. All fired up and ready to go, Green Daemonium made a fist before winding up it arm as fast as it could. Thanks to its elastic body the arm stretched out longer and longer as it was winding up, which amazed Dead Daemonium. They thought that maybe it was going to help it boost its striking power.
It did not.
The green arm simply latched itself around a confused Dead Daemonium before hurling them straight at the ball. What they thought was an unknown substance turned out to just be glass after all as Dead Daemonium body easily turned it into many shards and destroyed it.
And so they were able to get the key and go to the next floor. If they had to be honest, the hardest part of the challenge was everything that came after getting the key. Maneuvering around the broken glass and separtating the fighting Daemoniums while carrying the original Daemonium of this fox's back was certainly the hardest challenge of all if you asked Fake Daemonium. But luckily they were able to make it, and they climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
You know how it is by now. The room is completely empty except for the doors and the key. But this time, the king had wings. Maybe the key drank red bull or it was going to heaven, but there was no doubt that there was a winged key flying inside the tower.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Dead Daemonium tried to catch it, but the winged key was far too swift. It easily evaded the cusp of their hands, causing Dead Daemonium to hit their head on that deadly ceiling even more. Dead Daemonium, enraged, chased the key with as much speed as they could muster, but the key was just a bit faster every time.
As Dead Daemonium exhausted themselves, Fake Daemonium got an idea. The fox slowly but carefully made an illusion that perfectly replicated the key, from the shape to the size to the shine on its side. The only difference made was giving it a red bow, because this illusion key was a girl. And if you don't have a bow, are you really a girl?
But now for the test. Fake Daemonium released the illusion key into the sky, and once it met the real key it was love at first sight. The two keys started dating for a little bit before professing their love for each other, getting married, buying a house, and even having illusory key babies who grew up to become the best keys they would ever know.
But happiness didn't last forever, and so the illusory key was lying on her death bed. She was starting to fade out, destined to simply be air forever more.
"Thank you," the real key said to her in key language, whatever key language sounds like. "I can't thank you enough for giving my meaningless life a purpose."
The illusory key just smiled, whatever keys smiling looked like.
"If there's anything youwant before you go, please tell me. I couldn't bear losing you knowing that you had a final wish."
The illusory key weakly lifted her wing and pointed at the four Daemoniums, staring at them in shock.
"I understand." The key wiped his tears, wherever they came from. "If that is your wish, I will fulfill it!"
The illusory key smiled before turning into golden sparkles, neverto be seen again. Solemnly, the key floated down to the hand of Fake Daemonium, ready to be used.
Fake Daemonium didn't know what part of this was stranger: the fact that all of this happened in the first place, or the fact that all of this happened in less than five minutes.
Now to the fifth floor. There was actually a difference with this room that wasn't just where the key was located! It seemed impossible, but it actually came true. This time, instead of a plain and boring tile floor, the floor was covered completely in large and pointy metal spikes. Dead Daemonium put their finger on it and was able to confirm that those spikes could definitely kill them.
As such, it was game over. None of them were able to fly, walk on walls, or any of the sort, so they all simply sat there, starved, and died.
Just kidding. Not only did it not really harm Green Daemonium much considering it was a slime, it was also quite hungry. And so, with a bit of guidance, Green Daemonium was able to clear a path to both the key and the door.
Despite the danger, it was cleared in just two paragraphs. Let's see if any other floor could beat that record.
Now for the sixth floor. The four opened the door, excited to see what awaits on the other side, only to get flooded back down the stairs through a rush of golden water. Swimming back up for air, each Daemonium slowly noticed that this wasn't water, but instead it was lots and lots of golden keys; so much one could swim in it. Some of them noticed it sooner than others, the original Daemonium was still in shock from the corpses he saw and Green Daemonium was just slow, but they all noticed eventually.
Dead Daemonium smiled. This was too easy in their opinion. They grabbed a key and ran atop of the key ocean, running straight into the flooded room. The door was completely submerged, so they dived down and swam straight to the door, putting the key right inside.
The keyhole glowed red, before exploding. A tidal wave of keys completely sumbmerged the other Daemoniums, and the door simply wasn't opened.
After hitting their head on the ceiling again, Dead Daemonium fell back to the sea of the keys. It was clear that only one of these keys was going to work, but was there even a way to tell them apart? Picking up two keys and examining them, that did not seem to be the case. So it seemed like the only way to go through was to find the right key.
As Dead Daemonium groaned at the work they had to do, Green Daemonium cheered at all the keys it could eat, Fake Daemonium was still confused about what sort of species a flying key was meant to be, and the original Daemonium was still traumatized somehow. This was going to take a while.
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Over and over again, the assassin continued to punch the metal door that he and the Daemoniums used to enter the tower earlier. He wasn't the type of person to give up on his target, so he was going to get to them no matter what.
"There's no need to chase after him!" Sanguisa stoodthere and shivered, trying to find any way to get him to give up. "Maybe you can wait for him outside. After all, he is going to come out eventually."
The assassin shook his head, a bit suspicious of this proposition. He had never been to this tower after all, so he had to wonder if this was a trick of sorts. She was trying to stop him this entire time after all, what's to say she didn't know something about this tower?
Sanguisa actually didn't know anything about this tower, she just wanted to get out.
With just a few more punches the assassin finally busted through the door. He put his arm through the hole and grabbed the key, the hole sadly being too small for Sanguisa to escape. And so he went to the door, ready to follow the Daemoniums to the top.
"Wait for me!" Sanguisa ran to the assassin, grabbing him as he climbed up the stairs. "You wouldn't leave a pretty lady like me behind, would you?"
The assassin turned back around and left anyways. He didn't find her pretty.
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General Info Stats Name: Green Daemonium STR 5 Species: 50% Slime + 50% Mimic SPE 6 Age: 82days INT 6 HP: 71/71 DUR 5 Level: 2 Exp: 1/4 Spells Known: 0