The Systemic Lands
Chapter 132: Day 277 – Middle Finger of the Systemic Lands

Acid Shot. I then leapt to the side as a woosh of air swept through my previous position. Those force walls were incredibly annoying. But with a little effort I had gotten the timing down. It was good training to be on the alert for any counter attacks and blocks.

The cold of the frostlands was biting into me. I couldn’t tell if it was my stats helping or the lack of the dark blue rats emitting ice energy. Regardless, I wouldn’t complain at having to deal with super cold, instead of soul freezing cold.

My grind speed was slow, one monster every 10 minutes. I had a Regeneration stat of 200, which meant 1 energy every half a minute and 20 energy to use Acid Shot. For the 16 hours of daylight grinding I was aiming for, that would put me at 96 level 3 crystals. At 450 points each, that was 43,200 points per day.

If I managed 20 days of grinding, I would hit 864,000 points. I would spend about 535,000 on my next 100 stat upgrades and save the remaining 330,000 points just in case. I was never going to let myself be short on points for a regeneration ever again. I was going to divert at least a third to my health insurance plan.

It really was like health insurance. Invest points into a plan, that could one day pay out if I was critically injured. Now I just needed the airship package, for emergency pick and evacuation. Just send out a call and woosh, immediate rescue. That was never going to happen, but it was nice to think about. Perhaps I could offer that service one day for insane amounts of points.

Now that I thought about it, the healthcare issue was a real issue. Perhaps I could find Elizabeth when I got back and have her set up a health insurance company. Hmm, no it wouldn’t work. The main issue was having large crystal reserves.

After two thefts, keeping large amounts of crystals on hand was a bad idea. That was not even getting into the issue of that Death monster.

It was almost mid-day when I would loop back towards where we had set up our camp in the adjacent zone, when I saw something. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing in front of me on this frozen hellscape.

I couldn’t see the base, but beyond a couple of ridge lines, there was a tower. To call it a tower was to call a skyscraper tall. I actually had to tilt my neck to take in the entire height. It was such a shock, since there was an obfuscation effect at long distances.

Most of the time this wasn’t noticeable since there was nothing that tall and the landscape rolled a bit along with the distance obfuscation effect. The clearest examples were the city walls, since the cities were on a hill and the walls were tall. Also new types of landscapes.

The tower was much more in my face. I paused and made sure no monster was coming at me and looked at it. It was gray like the city buildings. There were no windows, balconies, or doors I could see. It was more a giant obelisk, than a tower.

Key location found. I began to kill monsters in the direction of the obelisk. The closer I got the more massive it obviously was. I could make out the shape and it was a square, based on the one corner I could see and the two equal length sides. I wasn’t discounting weird spatial effects or a weird shape just yet.

The top was hard to make out, but I couldn’t see anything special about the top and the structure didn’t taper up. It was straight up and down.

I crested another ridge, and finally looked out at the base of the structure. The base of the tower was even more massive, extending at least a mile in every direction. The base of the tower consisted of overly large steps, each about the height of a table. There were no ramps or smaller sets of stairs. Just giant steps in a large depression, leading up to the tower. The giant steps were in a square layout as well.

There were no designs, markings, or anything descriptive. Just gray stone, similar to the buildings in the city and the city walls.

I scanned the top of the base where the base of the tower rested and saw two large doors facing North. I changed locations to get a better view and confirmed there were also doors facing East. This wasn’t a city that was for sure. I looked up at the structure. It was a tower since it had doors.

It was in a level 3 area. It could be a level 3 dungeon. The first one I had found. It was just the scale was massive compared to level 1 and level 2 dungeons. If this was a level 3 dungeon, the increase in size was massive, or there was a massive boss behind those doors.

I tried to estimate the footprint of the tower itself. It was around a quarter to half a mile, or around half a kilometer for one side. The ledge for each step was massive. It made me think that whoever used this building was a lot bigger than a regular person.

That made no sense since the buildings in the cities were built to human size. Even the wolf ruin dungeon was human size. Why would this tower be gigantic? Should I get closer?

The answer was a clear and resounding, hell no. This was the kind of thing you brought someone else along to poke first and die a horrible death. I didn’t want to risk triggering an event of some kind. With my track record a horde of Deaths would come pouring out.

I made my way back to the cart, grinding out blue gargoyles as I went. Aahan was there and he had prepared a plate of salted cucumbers and sliced carrots. I was moving up in the world. Naran came back shortly after I had gotten back.

It took me a minute to think about what I wanted to say. I waited until Naran was taking a sip of water. “I found the Systemic Land’s middle finger.” He didn’t do a spit take unfortunately.

“What?”

“There is a massive tower out near the center of the level 3 zone.” I began to describe it in detail.

“Maybe a dungeon?”

“If that is a dungeon, then it is a massive dungeon. The dungeons so far have seemed simple, but I could be wrong. It is like going from 1 to 3 to 100. Such a large increase just feels off and it is built like the cities buildings and walls are built. One solid gray stone.”

“You didn’t see any monsters and just the doors?”

“No monsters and just the doors,” I replied. Naran thought it over for a while.

“Dangerous. If you can’t beat a level 4 monster for sure, I wouldn’t go near it. What happens if it is a dungeon and a level 4 monster is right past the entrance, like a sub-boss. Also, the only other doors have been to boss chambers.”

“True.”

“Middle finger though, really?”

“It sounded funnier in my head. Also, it feels like the Systemic Lands are giving me the middle finger. Like, look at this important structure you can’t check out, but is super important.” I let out a sigh. “At least the grinding went okay. I have the timing on the force wall down.”

“That is good. Centipedes on my end weren’t a problem.” We ate in silence. I wanted to focus on what my stats would be going to, but my mind kept going back to the tower. What was at the top? Would there be answers? A super boss? A level 5 monster? Ultimate skill or item?

It was all pointless speculation. Just one of those things I would get an answer to, when I felt confident in my survival. That point would probably be when I could transverse level 4 zones without worry and checked out a couple other level 3 dungeons to compare the scope of that monstrosity.

The height was massive. It was over 30 stories tall for sure, but it was hard to tell after that, since there were no markings. If I had to guess I would say somewhere between 40 and 60 stories, probably 50 stories tall.

As a person who used to be fat, I shuddered at finally coming face to face with my arch enemy. My eternal foe. More deranged and cruel than Death. More uncaring than the Systemic Lands. The one true enemy, stairs. It wasn’t just the super large stairs at the base of the tower but climbing up that thing that made me shudder.

Even if there was a choice between an elevator and stairs, I would have to pick the stairs. Elevators were death traps in a structure like that, guaranteed death trap. People would have to ride the elevator up and down at least a thousand times before I would even poke it. So, stairs. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

The fact I didn’t spot any monsters made me more suspicious of the entire structure. That place screamed look at me, death trap, don’t worry come on in, and then die horribly. Someone else could test the waters if they were crazy enough.

I thought about passing the information onto the Union to have other people check out the obvious death trap. But sabotaging my allies was not a good idea. Everyone needed to be focused on the Ritualist. If only I could trick him into entering what was clearly a Systemic Lands murder machine.

I needed a summoner on my team. Scout out areas, let me know the monsters and attacks ahead of time. That was the strongest use of such an ability. Dammit, why did he have to be so difficult. If he had just spoken up, taken the points, and even shared what he could have done, I would have gotten him on my team to be sure.

We would have cleared zone after zone, racking up the crystals. Now we were in a life and death fight. Where did I go wrong? Was there anything I could have done? Chopped off and then melted the idiot’s head in my presence for sure. I was still kicking myself over that. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ ɴøvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

I needed to focus on grinding up points and what stats I would pick. Right now, the main thing was grind speed, which meant Regeneration. If I got another 100 Regeneration I would go from 864,000 points over 20 days to around 1,296,000 points.

Well, I wouldn’t let our crystal count get anywhere close to one million. We would be swinging by Neo Brasilia to cash in at the ten day mark no matter what. It was just too risky to have that many points at any given point.

I hated being scared, but until I could kill level 4 monsters with ease, it wasn’t worth taking the chance. That was another regret, Death’s sword turned to dust. So annoying. Why would its sword turn to dust? I wanted an instant kill sword. No loot just a small number of points compared to the injury I sustained as frustrating.

The Systemic Lands were terrible.

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