The Systemic Lands
Chapter 413: 12th Floor – Speeding Up The Climb

The twelfth floor was one I needed to mentally prepare myself for. The fact of the matter was that, there were several pits and I couldn’t afford to waste the energy. What if those pit traps kept going and going?

I couldn’t afford to waste my energy on getting over each and every one. Air Burst cost me 800 energy per use and I only had 10,000 energy. That meant 12 uses of the skill. While it was a fair amount, if there was a gap of five or six pits, that would use up my energy.

At least I was already had a plan as I left the safe room. I noticed 8 extra monster spawners and the golden rod in the Northwest corner of the room. I raced around the safe room to the West wall, only having to get over a single pit and then I followed the wall to the North as the level 4 monster cats raced towards me.

I slowed down a pit checking the spots in front of me, but still managed to stay ahead of the monster cats since they had to rush around the various pit traps. That was when I found a pit trap in front of me next to the tower’s West edge. I immediately turned East and raced along the edge of the pit traps as the monsters moved to intercept me.

Acid Shot x3. The cat monsters scattered backwards as they launched firewalls, but it was enough time to let me keep checking for the path. I came to the end of the pit traps and then turned North. That was when I found a way back West through the row of pit traps.

I kept checking the spots in front of me to make sure there were no traps I would fall into while the monsters raced behind me. The path turned North right before the West wall and I quickly followed it. It then went back East, then North, and then back to the original pattern in had on floor five. Also the golden rod was close enough that I could recover if there were issues, but I wanted to find the path out now on this floor.

If each floor was a harder version of the previous floors, then working on the path and location of these pit traps on the lower floors would be a lot easier than trying to do it later on, when I couldn’t just skip past everything. Better to get experiencing bypassing the traps while I had energy in reserve to make up for any mistakes I might make.

Racing through the path I paused right before the golden rod. There were striations in the walls and floors energy. Acid Shot. A blade trap activated. How predictable. You could only put so many traps in before it became repetitive and expected.

I grabbed the golden key rod and waited. The monster cats reached the blade trap and rushed at me. The 100 second timer had run out. I just smiled and used Air Burst three times to get back to an earlier section of the path to the South, putting the group of monsters behind me once again.

If they had stayed back and spread out more, then they would have been threats, but the fact they raced together as one big group, meant that I could treat them as one big group. I quickly raced back through the path I knew was safe, getting some distance on the monster cats and then began racing for the boss room door while carefully checking the floor sections to see if there were more pit traps.

It was a bit tedious, but I had gotten my pace down quite well to measure things in terms of tunnel units. That was why practice was important. While it was hard to change my movement speed without changing my Body stat, I could change how fast I reacted and tested various floor sections to check if they were real.

There were more pit traps around the boss room door. I had not doubt that by the last version of this floor, the entire thing would be a maze of pit traps. Learning the layout ahead of time was useful. I would still check the floor sections just in case, but it gave me a strong idea on which way to go which was very important for staying ahead of the monsters.

Getting stuck at dead end of pit traps on this floor, while not a disaster could end badly. The cat monsters actually dodged and could attack from range which was incredibly annoying to deal with. I couldn’t win in a stand off fight with them.

The boss room was upgraded as well. There were energy traps in the corners of the room from what I could tell. This would get annoying for sure. It was the Human Hammer Golem boss monster. Well it was another one I could easily alpha strike to death at least.

I entered the boss room, putting my packs to the side like I always did and went to the boss spawner that had the red light walls up. I had been looking at these spawners occasionally and the boss one specifically.

The red-light wall blocked all energy sensing. There was just something about making monsters that the Almighty System didn’t want people to see which made me very curious about the process. Was it liked seeing a person naked kind of embarrassing or was it some kind of super-secret?

Perhaps there was a portal that the crystals came through, the monsters formed around them, and that portal led back to the Almighty System itself? I had been speculating and even considering standing inside a spawner of a monster I had killed, but that seemed like too much of a risk.

While the Almighty System didn’t go out of its way to make things dangerous except the monsters and traps, it wasn’t human either. A lot of workplaces had redundant safety precautions. Like fire alarms, sprinklers, and a fire department. We had railings, hard hats, and other safety procedures.

What if the red-light wall was the version of a warning, or a safety railing and I went inside? I might get vaporized or combined with the monster that was being formed. Both things that sounded like a bad idea. Those were the kinds of things that minions were sent to test, not myself.

The red light wall disappeared and I moved. Air Burst. Air Burst. I closed in on the monster and darted around the side. Acid Shot x10. Force Wave. I used more acid than I needed for the annihilation effect, messing up the back of the monster. The annihilation attack, took out one of its legs. Acid Shot x10.

That was it. The fight was done. Far easier than my previous battle with this type of boss monster. It really was easier the second time. I was not looking forward to the next floor. Floor thirteen was a good number for what I was about to face.

I rested up in the safe room with a headache slowly forming. Well at least I should know the floor layout. The main problem was the boss, the Invisible Centipede Golem, otherwise known as the Donkey. The most annoying possible boss in existence.

Once I recovered my energy and set out for the Northeast corner of the floor, I focused on the task at hand. I would have to see the boss room to get a better idea. The null skill area was a bit bigger around the golden key rod, but other than that, no hassle. I just made sure to activate the energy trap before racing forward.

Then it was off to the boss room in the Southwest. The level 4 monsters were too slow. The one thing I managed to catch in time was another blade trap on my way to the Southeast corner. While it wasn’t easy to spot, I hadn’t been moving at my maxed speed.

The level 4 monsters were all melee types, not like the fireball shooting cats. That made it much easier to stay ahead of them as I raced around the floor without too much headache. I reached the boss room and put the golden key rod in. The room was partially same, four energy traps, but the null skill area of the room had expanded.

Well, it didn’t matter. I tossed my packs in the corner and advanced towards the boss spawner. I didn’t even try an alpha strike as the boss scurried away. I had been paying close attention to where it had spawned, and the boss had moved to the far side of the spawning area before the red light walls went away.

So, it could sense me somehow, which was annoying. That meant I couldn’t alpha strike the boss monster on the later floors. Still, I would just use my strategy from the previous floor. I lay down in the center of the room and waited.

It was great for getting my thoughts in order as I rested and waited. Honestly these floors were becoming less and less of a challenge. If I could pass the next puzzle floor, then I wasn’t worried until the last seven floors to be honest.

Well, I was a bit worried, but it was more the headache of the boss rooms getting upgraded to some degree. But as long as this boss monster didn’t get minions, it was fine. The rest of them I could alpha strike hard enough to take out before it became a drawn out fight.

The problem with the Invisible Centipede Golem was that it was small, cowardly, invisible, and very skittish. Honestly, it was kind of funny. This kind of monster wouldn’t do much in a zone, or would it? It depended on how far the monster would chase me and if there was a horde.

That could actually be bad. Monsters trailing me back from a level 5 zone. I shuddered at that. It would be incredibly insidious, they would follow me back, wait until I was asleep and then attack. Would they chase me back to a city? sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ N0ᴠᴇFɪre.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

When I went hunting for level 5 monsters, I would need an airship for security. I would hide out in it and having walls would make it much harder for anything trying to assassinate me. The fact that the monsters all stopped moving and went dormant when the boss room opened and the floor was cleared was a huge boon in my mind.

It meant that there was no nightmare following me up the tower or a horde of invisible monsters waiting to pounce on me. Accumulating a massive ball of monsters like that would have been incredibly annoying.

Air Burst! Acid Shot x10. Acid Shot x10. I didn’t hesitate and flooded the monster with my attacks. It had nowhere to dodge and quickly perished. That was floor thirteen, a headache to be sure, but nothing I hadn’t been prepared to handle.

Collecting my packs I made my way to the elevator, not looking forward to the puzzle floor. I cheesed the puzzles the last time, hopefully this time I could do the same thing. I really didn’t want to have to figure out complicated puzzles in depth. The pain in my stomach was a constant reminder I needed to keep making progress as quickly as possible up the tower to the Astrologer before the bomb in my gut went off.

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