Kang attacked again, focusing on the same spot and pushing the guardian back with his onslaught. I almost felt useless in the battle, but then it happened, and the shield dropped to 5,000. The guardian let out a bellow that disoriented us and then swiped his spear across the bridge. The weapon was too large to swing about the way it did, but I didn’t care, as it was much less effective than jabbing it at us.
I looked up at the notification and then cursed under my breath.
Damage Notification:
You have received Anguish debuff from Gate Guardian.
All stats -20% for 60 seconds.
Movement speed -20% for 60 seconds.
“Kang, pull back!” I ordered as I put up my sword and used it as a shield. Mark had already caught up and hid behind his own shield growth, but the spear flashed across the guard and sent him flying.
I swung my blade as it pulled back the spear, catching it on the shaft and slamming it down against the ground. Kang darted in again and stabbed at its spear arm. The guardian let out a cry as he used another skill to pierce right through the remaining shield and attack the arm directly.
I charged up focus and stood there, glaring at the damn bastard as my weapon charged. It hummed and vibrated with the same anger I felt. Mark threw his lance at it, probably using a skill, as the weapon glowed red, and hit into the neck area once more, cracking the shield.
My blade swung upward, crashing into the collarbone and sliding upwards, decapitating the guardian where it stood.
Notification:
How to kill a Boss? (Level 2)
Killed 5/15 Boss-rank monsters for Level 3.
REWARD: +100 Physical Attack, +40 Defense
Achievement Unlocked: Anyone Home?
Kill the Gate Guardian 1/1
REWARDS:
1. Level Up +4
2. Random Skill Scroll
3. Tower Warp Scroll
NOTE: The Tower Warp Scroll allows the user to set up a warp point from inside a rift that allows anyone the user designates as a friend to warp directly to the tower from their territory.
The rewards didn’t disappoint, that was a given. I went up four levels and was now at eleven. My stats had risen quite a bit, so I glanced over them briefly and wasn’t disappointed. Nothing much changed but the stats that I’d gotten from the levels. The two other things I got, though, were new skills. One was pure utility, and I had to say I loved it, while the second was something I’d check on later when I had the time.
I knelt next to the guardian, but when I tried to use Butcher, it wasn’t working. So killing monsters out in Sylmar didn’t net you ingredients. Alright, it was just a single large monster, and I’d gotten more than enough, truth be told.
“What are you doing?” Kade asked as the two groups rushed over to me.
I glanced over my shoulder and frowned. “Why the hell are you blocking my wife?” I hissed and put up my sword threateningly. All fifteen of their heads turned around slowly, as if not able to believe the blunder they’d just made.
“I’m sorry, Viktor,” Kade said immediately and slapped one of the soldiers on the back of his head. “Make way! Make way, you imbeciles!”
Pelos’s group snapped to attention as well and let Melina through. It was something I maybe shouldn’t have done and quite over the top, but I couldn’t have anyone disrespecting me or my wife. That was a big no-no.
“Everyone has to stay outside until I’ve checked the place out. That includes all of you. Mark, you can come in a minute after we do.”
I turned my back on them and strode toward the portal that had appeared out of nowhere. It covered the whole gate area and had no edges, just a big-ass swirl that led deep into the tower. Somewhere anyway.
Melina tugged at my arm just before we stepped inside. “Wait. You step inside first if there’s a reward to be gained, alright?”
“I don’t mind sharing it with you, you know that, right?”
“I know, but the stronger you are, the safer I’ll be. Alright?”
I sighed and shrugged. “Sure, I’ll step in first, and then you step in right behind me. Deal?”
She flashed me a smile and hugged me. A commotion from behind drew my attention. Two Apocalypse members rushed past the group and threw several grenades at Pelos’s and Kade’s groups. They dashed right at us, holding a sword in each hand.
Melina frowned and pulled out her fan, pulled her arm back, and waved the fan once in a horizontal and slightly diagonal direction. The wave of Enma sliced right through them and crashed into the bridge, sending pieces of debris flying in all directions just as the grenades detonated. I grabbed her from behind and pulled her back as I put my back between her and the explosion. The blast wave struck me from behind and sent us flying into the whirl, with Melina going in first.
All sense of pain evaporated as I hung there in a sort of limbo between Sylmar and the tower’s insides. I saw myself floating for some odd reason, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move, at least not for several long seconds. All the whiteness drained and was replaced by an empty floor. The first floor of the damned Sylmar tower.
The first things I noticed were the thick stone beams that held the next floor up and all the granite, marble, and… whatever the other types of stone were. Rows of benches and tables stood there on one side with numerous vendor machines arrayed along the wall. I couldn’t exactly see what they were selling, but it looked like food. Instant food packages.
Movement on my left drew my attention, and I quickly turned around. It was Melina. She stood at a counter and was talking with… a something. It wasn’t human, but it wasn’t quite alien as well. It was a bipedal creature that looked roughly the same as we did, but with tufts of hair on the neck, the shoulders, and the arms. I didn’t know how it looked underneath, but that was all I saw.
I hurried over to her and stopped there, staring at the… person as Melina nodded her head several times. She finally seemed to notice me and turned around with a broad smile on her face.
“Hey, you’re here!” Melina chuckled. “See, I’ve been talking to this Fryg creature for a while now, and yes, they’re called Fryg as a race, not a name. He goes by the name of Operator.”
“Operator?” I asked as I stepped in closer and offered it my hand. The creature stepped back and slapped my hand with something that looked like a lanyard.
“Don’t touch me, human,” it hissed and threw the thing my way. I looked down at the item and found my eyebrows rising steadily. It had my image, name, the last floor I cleared, and the number of earned points.
Tower Stats:
NAME: Viktor
CLEARED FLOOR: 1
EARNED POINTS: 0
Luckily, it was a small stat window. I was truly starting to get annoyed by all the pop-ups and whatnot during battle, but they were a necessity. A necessity I would rather keep up with than get rid of.
“I’m sorry,” I replied after I looked back up at the Frygan. “What is this place?”
“This is the reception floor of the tower. Every single tower is connected to this place, which means hundreds, no, thousands of towers that dropped on your planet lead to this very floor. Isn’t that interesting?”
I frowned and nodded. “It sure is,” I replied drily. “But where are the others? Don’t tell me we were the first.”
“Oh, but you were. See, you’re a bit special, and I’m sure you know that already. You are also a cheater in a way, and I’m sure you know that as well, don’t you?”
I frowned again, but this time I bared my teeth slightly. “What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t been cheating in any way since I was reborn!”
“Oh, but that’s the cheat! You were reborn!”
I let out a sigh and waved him off, not interested in following that line of thinking and questioning. I had been reborn because the Gods offered it to me. How was that cheating?
“Just tell me what you can and want to, alright? I need to go back to my rift.”
“Pfft!” the Frygan pouted and blew a raspberry. “Alright, alright. See, whenever you enter this place, there will be a counter. You’ll have twenty-four hours of tower raiding available. Melina, you, and three more people who enter this place next will be given this privilege.”
“So we get to hunt much longer than the others?”
“You do, and do you see that stall over there?”
“What stall?” I asked curiously. “I’m sure there weren’t any—stalls when we got here,” I muttered.
“Yeah, sorry. I just made them appear.” The Frygan laughed and shook his head. “See, whenever someone enters the first floor, they’ll be offered a pop-up that gives them the chance to browse the things people are selling on this floor. And the first booths appear first whenever someone opens something, thus giving you a higher chance to sell your goods before the others can.”
“And I hold the first booth?” Melina asked.
“Exactly. Viktor holds the second, and then… yes, he just walked in as well. Mark, your friend. He holds the third and so on.”
I looked around, searching for the guy. “Where is he?”
“In limbo. He won’t be here for a while. His body needs to adjust first before it can accept the forces this place dishes out on every visitor.”
I let out a sigh and looked around again. “What else? Is there anything you can do for us?”
“Oh, but I can. See, I’m the Operator. I deal in information, special skills, items, weapons, traps—you name it, I got it. But only after you hit certain floors.”
“So the higher we get, the better goods you’ll sell to us?” Melina asked as she pursed her lips.
The Operator nodded slowly. “There’s nothing of interest for you up until the twentieth floor. Your gear is great. Your weapon is even better. Cheater.”
I scowled and slammed my fist against the counter. “I’m not a cheater!” Damn bastard hit a nerve. “Anything else we need to know?”
“The portal will take you to the next floor. You can only move up to the next floor once you’ve finished the quest that you get on every floor. It starts off easy and then becomes harder.”
“Thanks, Operator. You said we won’t really get anything useful until the twentieth floor?”
He nodded slowly. “More or less. You can get random drops from floor one and upward, but the chance goes up with each floor. Why not try it out for a while? The time here passes twenty-four times slower than in the outside world. A full day in here is an hour outside. At least for the first five to enter this place, but for everyone else, it’s six times slower.”
“Which is still good. And thanks, Operator. Thank you for telling us all of this.”
“Oh, you’re welcome. See, I was already getting bored in here ever since they dropped the tower on top of your… well, towers. Not tower since all of them are linked, right?”
I nodded knowingly. “So we can proceed to clear quests for the next twenty-four hours? At that portal?”
“You can, but after your twenty-four hours are up, you need to wait for twenty-four hours in the outside world until you can go in again.” He stopped and fumbled with something on the counter, then pointed at the portal. “It’s active now, but keep in mind, you need to create separate parties when inside the tower. Your outside party will show, but if you want to do quests together, you’ll need to create a second party.”
“Got it. One last thing, though. So this place will only be available to those who cleared the quests in the first week?”
“When you hit the twenty-fifth floor, the tower will open for the rest. Every floor you clear after that first milestone will start opening up new floors to the public. So when the twenty-fifth floor is cleared, everyone else can farm on the first monster floor. Once you clear the twenty-sixth floor, they’ll be able to farm the second floor. Quite easy, isn’t it?”
“Luckily for us dumb humans, it is,” I muttered and looked over at Melina. “How about we start clearing the floors?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
We created our parties and spent most of the day clearing the first ten floors. They were mostly a disappointment where every quest was basically the same. Kill X number of creatures, loot XY number of quest items, kill XYZ boss on the fifth floor, then at the tenth.
To my surprise, we didn’t get a single piece of loot, only the quest items. Sure, most monsters died with a single hit, and even the bosses were laughably weak, but it bothered the hell out of me. Wasting time doing the killing and then getting nothing in return didn’t sit well with me. I was used to being rewarded for my hard work, no matter how, but today, well, everything we did was for other people. The only thing that did rise was the number of earned points.
Every kill gave 1 point, every finished quest gave 50 points, and every killed boss gave 200 points, so by the first real break at the nineteenth floor, I pulled up my points sheet.
Tower Stats:
NAME: Viktor
CLEARED FLOOR: 19
EARNED POINTS: 2,129
I remembered not asking the Operator about points and their use. Would 2,000 points be worth anything at all? I sure hoped so, even if it was just something that would make life a little bit easier. If not, then whatever. Once the weaker people started flooding the tower, things ought to drop and be available on the market.
“How many points do you have?” I asked as Melina stood there hitting one of the kobold-like creatures.
Every damn floor was filled with kobolds, but all of them were slightly different in either size, color, or the weapons they were using. None of them had been dangerous so far, nothing but the ones from this current floor. Most of them needed two attacks, but we’d see what the next floor would bring. It even made me slightly anxious.
“I need a few more until I hit 3,000 points. Give me a minute, alright?”
I nodded and relaxed. She would have to make her own kills if she wanted to earn points. Everyone would, but the question remained of what we’d be getting from them. If I found out that after all the hours spent in here, we’d be getting shit, I wouldn’t bother returning here anymore.
“Yeah, you’re right. We have no idea how strong the next boss is going to be.”
Melina flashed her fan across the crowd and released a wave of Enma, slicing into the kobolds. They dropped dead and reappeared seconds later inside the spawn point.
“Done! Shit, I have no idea what these points will give us, but I’m so excited to see what I can buy you!”
“Buy me? You need to start investing in yourself.”
“I am. See, I don’t like fighting monsters and would prefer you do it for me.”
I let out a sigh and motioned for her to sit next to me, but instead of that, she straddled my lap and hugged me before planting her lips on mine.
“Do you think this is the place to be doing this?” I whispered.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Vik. I’m just resting.”
I let out a sigh and leaned back against the stone wall. She pressed her cheek against my shoulder and nestled in. Her breathing was slightly labored and her heartbeat quicker than what I was used to.
“Tired?”
“A little bit. See, I’m still not used to this kind of thing.”
“You can rest while I’m killing the boss. Come on, little lamb.”
I picked her up and stood. She protested and slapped my chest but then hugged me tightly when she saw I wasn’t letting go of her.
“Don’t do that without warning me! I almost fell!”
“I’ll never drop you, love. Just watch me fight for you.”
“Aww, that’s so cute!”
“Cute is my middle name.” I laughed as I strode toward the next floor’s portal.
“Really? Aren’t you mixing some things up right now? Shouldn’t I be the cute one?”
I tapped the portal before answering and found myself standing on the next floor with Melina still in my arms.
“Sh
it, now that is cute,” I muttered as my eyes roamed over a creature that could only be described as a white furball. Two large yellow eyes were set in the center and staring right at me. I put Melina down and took a step closer.
“Hey, if something’s too good to be true, it probably is,” she hissed. “There’s no way a damn fluffball will be an easy target!”
Even before I could give her a reply, the ball of white fur grew taller, and two pairs of legs and arms appeared beneath and from the sides. The head remained almost as large as it had been moments before as the mouth opened, revealing a row of incredibly long and sharp teeth. No, those things weren’t teeth, they were damn knives!
“I think we just got our answer, Mel. Are you sure you don’t want to join me?”
“Hell no! You just killed my damn childhood, Vik! I used to love little rabbits, and all I’m gonna see now are killer monsters!”
I let out a deep sigh as I pulled out my blade and walked toward the dome. Every boss floor was the same, at least up until now, where a dome held the boss inside so it wouldn’t attack people on entry. It was a smart thing to do, as people weren’t always ready when moving between floors.
“Let me refresh your buffs first,” Melina called out just before I set foot into the place. I stopped and stepped back. Sure, I still had time before I needed a refresh, but it wouldn’t do any harm to renew them just in case.
The familiar wave of pleasure of the buffs hitting me exploded in my guts and made me grin. I was looking forward to killing the rabbit monster now, maybe even make a cloak out of its white fur for Melina. I just hoped there weren’t any organizations out there that made sure monsters had rights to be treated… humanely?
Crafting Death: A LitRPG Cultivation Series (Towers & Rifts Book 2) Page 27
