NOVEL WEB Chapter 154: Faster!
Although she rarely felt fear, a deep-rooted emotion sparked inside her.
What if the enemy turned out to be one of her disciples again? Or someone she was close with? She was afraid of the memories it would spark inside her.. Or the truth they might accidentally reveal. Like with Noel, where she lacked the awareness to care about him.
She thought that she did good, that she didn't do anything to deserve being betrayed like that. But what if behind her back, while she was focused on chasing this mirage illusion called Unity, she actually became blinded to the Unity that was by her side, the Unity she was supposed to share with her people as their collective leader?
Not just anyone could be a leader, although one could be put in the position. This made her wonder how much mistakes she made. How much more would be revealed as she went through this silly tutorial scheme made by the Tower. Like a player inside a game waiting to discover more about the storyline as they progressed.
With a depressed sigh, she entered a comfortable position, sleeping on the Training Ground's floor and opening the key to the Tower. She wanted to fight in order to ease her mind a little bit, so that she could act more freely and not have to be restrained by this fiendish thoughts that had surfaced out of nowhere.
It was Floor 11, so the monsters should be matched with the maximum power of her Level 11. She was way overpowered from the normal mediums, and she was aware of this. Naturally, her confidence was high in taking in the levels before it entered the thirties.
Along with this, she also wondered. She was now approaching Level 40, and there was supposed to be a total of one hundred floors in the Tower. Did that mean that a <Player>'s level capped at one hundred? If one reached the cap, then what would happen? If the <Players> all survived until the end, was that allowed?
From what she could tell, the System seemed to be breeding a bit of rivalry within the many <Players>, as it manifested rankings and such. As if they were being told to spur their growth if they didn't want to be left behind and possibly disposed of. Like a ticking timer that was constantly against them.
With all these thoughts in her head, Aria stormed through Floor 11. It hosted a swarm of demonic rats that she stopped using Dianthe, then started mincing up like soft meat using her sword.
Then came Floor 12, which led her to a forest like structure, where there was several poisonous lizards waiting for her to fall into her death by stepping or touching the wrong thing. With the help of Igna, she burned the poisonous substances up and hunted the lizards down. The difficulty was still reasonable.
The only thing that made her consider her choices was her stamina, which was slowly depleting as time went by. The dragon took much more effort than she thought it would, although the victory still ended up perfectly landing on her palms. It garnered her happiness, but even now, she could still feel a faint bit of tremor as she held her sword because of how tough it was trying to cut the dragon down even with maximum charm and enchantments.
Even so, she continued forward, wanting to get ahead as much as possible. She was fired up by her adrenaline and the fleeting thoughts of wanting to find out more and more about the world. Although nobody forced her to fight, she willingly wanted to do this violent research.
Floor 13 was filled with ghastly spirits that luckily, could be fought back using her spirits since they hosted magical abilities. The spirits were not able to be dealt with using physical attacks as they were immune to them, but magical spells worked and wrecked them in an instant.
Floor 17 was one of the hardest that she encountered in the range, because in this round, she didn't have to fight any particular monster but rather had to run around and connect sixteen pillars, lighting it up at the same time. Lighting it required her to touch the places within ten seconds, and they were strewn around the place quite far from each other.
Only after she borrowed the touch of her three spirits, which turned out to count for the meter, and enhanced herself to be able to boost at her fastest speed was she able to dash all over the place and finish the race against time. It was very exhausting, and she even harbored thoughts to stop here so that she could go back and come here when she was fully rested. It seemed a bit dangerous if she was locked inside the Tower due to fatigue.
Although, she too hadn't known yet if she would truly die if she died inside the Tower. Perhaps, due to the Tower's nature being sponsored by the System, her consciousness could just be a mirror of what happened in real life and not the true image of hers.
However, she didn't dare to try the theory around. Instead, she ran around the Tower one more time as she scaled Floor 18, and then 19.
Floor 19 was also troublesome. It hosted a total of five sabertooth tigers, one of them being the Boss that she needed to defeat in order to enter the next floor. These creatures had blue blazing stripes across their skin, and their teeth were jutting out of their mouth. These prominent weapons emitted a blue lightning that seemed extremely potent.
Due to the nature of lightning and Dianthe's magic being not strong enough to overpower it just yet, Aria had to store her away and let her rest for the time being. She called Rallaka and Igna out, and had to assassinate the tigers one by oneby distracting and sucker punching them from the back while they were not aware. When she tried to fight them head front, the tigers would cooperate with each other extremely well, supporting the assaults and attacking their enemies using all their arsenals at the same time.
This made Aria be forced to try and kill them one by one, which she ended up doing. However, she came back with a few presents in form of injuries and scathing marks.
The collaborative fights truly made progress for her experience as well as bonding with her spirits. Dianthe was originally quite slow at her reaction speed, but after fighting again and again, she was getting better with her shots and managing her power until it reached max efficiency. Igna was a litle bit more troublesome as he was a 'gift' from the System, so she had no bond with him whatsoever except for a master to worker contract.
This led to him being practically a stationary subject until Aria ordered him to do a specific task, to which he would obey unconditionally.
Rallaka was the most interesting part for her. This Great Earth spirit proved himself to be true to his nickname, he was truly a great addition to the team and progressed with each fight. This anomaly of a contracted summon continued to surprise her with each new move he made possible due to his unstoppable advancement.
Not to mention, recently, as he grew stronger, he also started to try and absorb energy from the Tower. He originally failed, but he didn't stop trying as he was aware that the energy in the Tower was genuine and not fabricated- thus making it absorbable in theory.
After a few tries and brainstorming, trying to find a way on how to turn the energy into something he could consume, he succeeded with flying colors as he finally managed to extract the energy from the floor after they were done with the fights.
Rallaka was extremely hungry for more energy as it served to enhance his abilities more and more. This monstrous spirit was truly a maniac for power.
This was a good thing for her since he was under a submissive contract, so she did not bother much about it and continued advancing while celebrating along with Rallaka's rejoice.
Aria concocted a speedrun against the floors, and now rested once she finished Floor 19. Although she originally said that she was only going to do a few floors, where did those words take her to?
To the final floor before Floor 20. The duplicates of ten, the checkpoint mark.
She gulped a mouthful of saliva. Her heartbeat started to increase as she held the key to the next floor.
Somehow, not fighting and instead going through such a story where she was painfully unable to do anything as she watched someone she regarded as a close individual suffer and go crazy.. Was much more scarier than having to fight five sabertooth tigers attacking her at the same time.
Because her mind would also be affected, not just her body. Bodily injuries could be fixed with a touch or two, but what about the memories and emotions that lingered inside her head, not leaving no matter how hard she wanted it to?