There is a single settlement on this floor to your west.
There is only a single floor boss across this floor. Once killed, the floor boss takes two days to respawn.
To clear the floor:
- You must defeat the floor boss, or at least be a contributor in defeating the boss.
- Sacrifice 300 litres of magically treated blood at the altar after defeating the floor boss.
Adrian gets rid of the messages and looks at the view in front of him. Or perhaps the lack of one.
There are trees everywhere he can look. A horizon choke full of brown thick trees which extends up into the sky where it completely hides almost all sunlight passing through, leaving only a bare minimum of yellow light to pass through.
He could hear the noise of crickets and the chirping of a few birds echoing across the area. The temperature is not high, moderate at best, but just standing there makes him sweat from all the humidity.
He looks at his missing avatars.
Do I have to feed it extra blood for every avatar, or is it just not possible?
“C’mon let’s go! The longer we stand here, the more we’ll sweat. We should quickly get to the settlement. I’ve heard it's much better there. Also keep your eyes up,” Michael says, hurrying the others to follow him as he leaps across the various shrubs and bushes in his way.
They quickly follow, tightening their hold on their items in hand. If this floor is famous for anything apart from its trees and humidity, then it's the existence of small stealing spiders.
They will wrap their threads around your weapon as you stand still, and when you suddenly accelerate, they yank it out of your hands before you even know what happened. Very notorious and annoying, but thankfully they can’t steal anything too heavy. Only light things.
And the last thing which this floor is famous for are…
“Dropbears!” Leah shouts and pushes Buren away. At the exact same instant, a large koala-like creature suddenly falls and digs its head under the soft soil.
“Fuck! What is up with these head-butting creatures always tackling me first? Do they think I’m a safe target?” Buren complains as he stabs the dropbear a few times until it stops struggling and dies.
“Got me till level 6 at least, so that’s nice!” He says with a smile, wiping his blade back into the sheath. Matthew hits him in the head lightly and says, “Put your channels, idiot. You should have seen it coming,”
Buren doesn’t complain about that, only muttering something under his breath about forgetting it as he places a hand on the tree and puts a channel on it. Then a few more strings of his mana flare out of him and moves ahead in a bid to add more and more channels as they walk further.
“Can you put an infinite amount of channels? And how do you even have the mana for it?” Adrian asks.
“The number scales with my Mind and each channel only costs 1 mana point, so it’s affordable. My past channels automatically get removed as I place more. I’m focusing on keeping at least two in the front and one at the back.” Buren replies.
Hmm, it’s convenient.
After that small interlude, nothing much happens. Buren does find some things that they could have fought, but at this moment, no one is really feeling the hunger of battle. Only sweat dripping down their bodies, and a hunger for some food and fresh cold water, yet no one wants to stop and actually take it out of their bags.
All of it once they reach the settlement.
Ten minutes of being tired later, Adrian calls for his avatars to actually pick him up and take him with them. Buren complains, being the next one with the least Body so Adrian reluctantly helps him too.
Twenty minutes later, his avatars too collapse from exhaustion, so he cancels them defeatedly. The others too look exhausted by now.
“How much further?” Buren asks.
“We should be close. Maybe. Hopefully. I don’t know! I’ve never been here either! I just know that -that they made the settlement at the centre of the floor, so that everyone will travel the same amount of dist-distance to it,” Michael explained in between huffs.
“Less talk. More running.” Matthew says, gasping like a dog, being weighed down by his armor and shield.
It is only twenty minutes later, when everyone is almost dead and ready to collapse, does hope come in the form of a treehouse in the trees. Someone hollers at them, shouting “Incoming newbies!” and then more such hollers roll through the trees.
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Tree houses they had not noticed earlier suddenly become visible, all the noise and hooting leading them down a single path, and as they reach the area, Adrian couldn’t help but be enamored by the sight.
The settlement is built on the ground of a massive clearing, as well as on the trunks of massive trees. It’s a congregation of three giant thick trees, on which most of the houses and inns are built, all of them connected by branches which serve as bridges.
Below the giant trees is a huge clearing, spanning a radius of at least a few kilometers, where the market is set up, and also where the most traffic is. He could see people, climbers, move around in shorts and beach shirts. Women moving in tank tops and crop tops, or just sport bras, as they mingle and shop around where the really loud climbers are selling their wares.
This is actually mind-blowing. People did this?
“Finallllyy…” Buren says, falling backwards into the soft grass.
“C’mon, you should meet my party too. We decided to congregate in the Leaf Drop Inn. I’m a day or two late, but they should still be there. You know them, they’ll love to meet you! Let’s go!” Michael says excitedly, not waiting for Adrian as he jumps ahead.
Adrian follows him. He perhaps hears Leah calling out to him, but he ignores them for now.
They move through the market area, and scale up the tree using the footholds present at regular intervals–no wonder they said to wait until above lvl 5 to ascend. You won’t be able to experience this at all if you have a low Kinesthetics–and finally reach the Leaf Drop Inn.
Adrian enters behind Michael, a small ring announcing their presence as they enter.
The inn has a fresh environment, much different than the humidity outside. There is a bar where a man stands cleaning dirty glasses, while chairs and tables are arranged across the floor for people to sit on. A single corridor leads upwards into the living quarters.
As soon as they enter, Adrian hears a very familiar voice, “You’re late!”
Adrian turns to look at the guy with spikes for hair who sits on a stool by the bar. Their eyes meet, his eyes expand, and he yells, “Ad! You are here too!”
He gets up and hugs him tightly. Seriously, how is it that I have less Body than him? I thought he was going to be a utility type. What happened!?
“It’s good to see you. Now only if you can put me down,” He gets the words out, tapping Ritsu on his back to let him go.
“You are awfully weak,” He says. “What kind of Sacrifices did you take? I thought you were going for a combat oriented class. Oh, is it long range focused?”
“Okay,” Adrian smiles and says, refusing to elaborate further.
“Ugh, fine. Let’s go meet the others. You too, late guy,” Ritsu takes the lead into the upper floors.
Adrian follows him with Michael. The inn is apparently two stories tall, and they have a room on the second floor. Two rooms, as he explained.
He knocks them both, people come out, and then once again Adrian is handled here to there in a mess of celebration and exciting noises. He is happy that he did not just puke over someone from all this noise. He’s not really the kind of person to enjoy such social functions.
I should’ve thought more about it before coming here.
Finally after ten or so minutes, they all gathered in the bigger room. Him, Michael, Ritsu, his sister Himari and Finneas.
“Have you guys met anyone else?” Adrian asks.
“Do you have a specific person in mind?” Finneas wiggles his eyebrows at him as he asks the question. Why is he still wearing that stupid beanie in this weather?
Adrian sighs and looks at someone else to save him. It is Himari in the end who comes as his saviour, “We met Ji-a when we came here. I think she’s been here for longer than us. She said that she had some work to do, and we haven’t seen her since.
“Finneas met one of the two girls who survived in the end, but they didn’t talk much. Ritsu says he has heard rumors about John in the form of a ‘fearsome rookie’ and we’re still looking for Mark.”
“Hmm hmm” Adrian nods. Very expected reasons. He didn’t know that John would make such a big splash, but perhaps he has underestimated the man.
“Do you have a party or are you going solo?” Himari asks.
“Oh. I have a party. They are looking for an inn. I’ll check on them in a while. So, what are you guys planning on doing from here on?” He asks.
Perhaps the change of topic came a little bit too sudden, because Himari looked at him strangely for an extra second before Michael starts talking.
“Obviously level up and go to the next floor! We can’t stay here forever!”
“Nooo you idiot!” Ritsu chops him on the head and says, “Remember what we said about staying on the second floor for a while? There’s precious research material out here man! Also if you wanna train, then they have training centres. You can train some in the meanwhile, apart from increasing your stats!”
“Fooo. Fine! I’ll stay still for a bit,” Michael says.
“Don’t worry about being bored, I’ve found the perfect counter to boredom! We are going bounty hunting!” Finneas exclaims.
“There’s a bounty here!? Is it a Tower issued, or a climber issued?” Michael asks excitedly, his tone betraying his excitement that he’d pick it either way.
“Tower issued! Apparently there is a group who are kidnapping climbers and corrupting them into hating the Tower,” Adrian flinches a little at that, “so the Tower had to intervene.”
“Why would someone do that,” Michael sighs and shakes his head in regret. Himari too, who’s usually more calm, reacts strongly to it.
Only Adrian sits there in silent contemplation, only nodding his head when asked about something.
“We need to get this bounty! What’s the reward, by the way?”
“10 free levels, or one Upgrade option.” Finneas smirks.
“Good stuff!”
“I’ve also heard that some High Rankers might be descending to this floor to deal with them if things get too bad. There’s already a lot of news about their movements seen on the 4th and 5th floors. No one really knows what’s their deal, but people talk, and this seems like the most probable scenario.”
Adrian flinches again. High Rankers, here? He has heard about their movements even outside the Tower, but why are they all way down here?
Why am I getting a bad feeling?
#