The Tower of Emnu

Aaron dreamed of scorpions, of water and of escaping a hidden foe, a beast made out of shadows and claws, its mouth howling for his death in bestial growls and all his attempts to escape or to fight the beast proved futile. He felt the beasts stinger go for his chest and woke up. He rolled left as the scorpion followed up his ambush with his pincers. Half asleep and still thinking he was fighting his dreams he activated wind steps. He tore himself to the side and woke up in an instant. His mind racing, his heart thumping quickly in his chest. How the hell had he fallen asleep?

He dodged a pincer, ducked between a leg as he moved around the creature before burying his enchanted knife in the crook of the scorpions leg, easily tearing the joint apart. The beast screeched and skittered backwards, while limping. Without a stable platform for its stinger the fight was over quickly. He took out its eyes next, before he delivered the coup the grace by plunging the enchanted dagger between its carapace plates in between its second segment and its head and severing its spine and nervous system. He wasn’t sure if beasts of this size had a brain, but it was clearly enough to kill it that way.

The lines between segments were clearly weak spots, but still Aaron did not feel great about his victory, his heart was still hammering in his chest and he felt slightly dizzy. He had a slight headache and he was so, so thirsty. He checked his water supply with a frown, but could not help himself and drank five mouthfuls of delicious water while he calmed down from his close encounter with death. But his thirst did not abate, it still burned and although his throat was not dry anymore, he still felt like he was still dying of thirst. Which was odd. He had guzzled down a few cups worth of water at least, which should have been more than a liter of water. He should not feel thirsty at all after that. At least not for a little while.

Aaron frowned at his waterskin and then up at the sun still above him and he noticed that the shadow of the dune he had slept in had not moved an inch. He bowed down and touched the sand just in the shadow and felt how much cooler it was compared to the sand right next to it which was exposed to the sun. The sun had not moved, that was the only explanation to all of this. He had slept for hours he was sure, but the sun had not moved an inch. What if there was no night in this desert? And the thirst he felt had even started to eclipse his hunger. It felt unnatural and weird and a shiver ran down Aarons spine. This level of the tower wasn’t as simple as it looked.

He frowned deeply, made sure his cloth had sat correctly on his head and started to jog out into the sun. There was nothing else to do. The scorpions were much more frequent the further away he got from the wall and into the desert. So if he stayed relatively close to the wall he would be perfectly fine. He nibbled on some travel rations and kept on running.

If there was truly no night here and he could not find any solution to his water problem, then there was no other choice but to keep on bearing the sun. Half an hour later he spotted something new besides the occasional scorpion and the crimson dunes baking in the sunlight. There was another platform at the wall and he could see a giant gateway there. Curiously, but carefully he moved closer, ducking behind dunes and trying not to make any noise. The closer he got, the clearer he could see that this was not like the stairway he had come up, but a giant closed marble gate.

He checked the perimeter once and only after he was sure nobody was hiding close by he walked up to the door.

Up close he could see that the door was an intricately carved out piece of pristine marble with different motives carved into it. The left side had dunes and a giant scorpion engraved on it, while the right one had trees, lianas, undergrowth and a giant snake wrapped around the picture, its head poised to bite.

Curiously Aaron studied the door and he could see two symbols in the center of each half of the door. They looked vaguely Japanese, or Chinese because it was a sort of pictogram. Aaron had never seen the symbols before in his life, but he could still read them. The one in the center of the scorpions back was the sign for Desert/Thirst/Deprivation and the one in the mouth of the snake was Jungle/Poison, although the poison could also mean Disease, Malady, Evil.

Getting such varied and intricate knowledge from reading symbols he should not be able to read made the hair on Aaron’s neck stand and he could not help himself and looked around. This was the same kind of pictogram that he had found on the potions and if he had to guess it was probably the language of the tower. He paused. Everyone had spoken English so far. Everyone coming after him, the mayor during his speech, everyone including the Cultivators. How was that possible? The Cultivators should not know English at all if they came from different dimensions and planets. It made no sense at all.

This question, how he could read the towers language, went right on top of the list of burning questions he had once he was back in the prison. But for now he focused back on the door.

There had not been such a door at the stairways he had come up or he had passed by, so that meant this was most likely the door to the third level. Aaron gently pressed against the door, but the heavy stone door did not budge. He increased his strength until he was pushing with all his might against the door, his feet scraping on the tiles underneath his boots. Aaron grunted and gave up. It was obvious there were some sort of keys required or something like that to open this door. If he had to guess it had something to do with the pictograms. The material the symbols were made out of looked eerily similar to the stone the symbols that had hung above the 12 openings in front of the Summoning Chamber and the Hall of Illusions had been made out of.

It was a half transparent stone that was growing a darker shade of gray, almost metallic, towards its center. On a closer look it did look just like the giant symbol after the lights had been extinguished, just a lot smaller. So if this was made out of the same material, then it was likely that if he brought the right things, like a keystone or something like it, the stone would light up and the door would open. But it was entirely possible this was a wrong assumption to make. There was no reason to assume that just because the material looked the same, that it was the same material. Not in a tower made out of magic with an artificial sun.

But for now it would not hurt to look for these symbols and to have options.

Aaron studied the right side of the door with interest. If these half doors represented different biomes, like the desert and the scorpion would suggest, then it was likely that there was a jungle on this floor. A jungle with giant snakes and possibly disease, but a jungle that would have water and food and cover.

There were few biomes he could imagine more suitable for him than a jungle. Aaron did not know if it was good to hope, but he really did. He gave the door another once over and then continued to run parallel to the wall. If his hypothesis was correct then he would be able to escape this desert and if the jungle was filled with snakes? Well then he would eat snakes for dinner. He was not afraid of either, but somehow snake seemed much more appetizing than giant scorpion. It took Aaron hours of running until he finally spotted something that had changed in the distance. It looked like a splotch of green on the horizon that slowly grew bigger while the red of the sand retreated.

It felt cathartic to see the landscape change, to see something else but red dunes and black scorpions. The closer he got the more impressive and tall the jungle looked. Its trees stretched high into the sky and soon he could see a verdant green sea of leaves and a darker, shady undergrowth underneath that looked from a distance more like a speck of paint on a painters palette. But soon it got more and more distinct as the sea of leaves retreated and it became clear how tall the trees had to be. They reached more than a hundred meters into the air.

The jungle started suddenly without any warning. The red desert just stopped and it looked like an invisible wall was in between both biomes. Aaron slowed as he approached the jungle and it was strange to see giant trees and still feel the dry heat of the desert and the blistering sun on his back, feel its heat reflected by the sand under his feet. He looked up into the crown of a giant tree and was amazed by the sudden change in scenery. He carefully walked closer to the tree and a few dozen steps away from where the jungle started in earnest, he could feel the air change.

It felt like walking through a liquid bubble, because suddenly the dry air was gone, replaced by a sweltering humid heat. The air had gone from 0% humidity to around 80% in an instant and it felt like Aaron was suddenly wading through thick humid fog. If he had sweated before, now he was instantly bathed in sweat and perspiration. The humidity was insane and as he walked out of the sun into the shade it still barely felt any cooler than in the open desert. It felt actually hotter and Aaron took a good look around, while he breathed in the musky slightly damp and rotting air of the jungle that smelled so different than the desert.

Behind him the red desert stretched out for what seemed like forever, the bright light and red sand felt like he had flashlights in his back. In front of him was a dusky, twilight of a jungle, just as hot, just as uninviting, but in a different way. Where there had been absence there was now abundance of life. Insects and all sorts of animals crawled, flew or buzzed through the jungle. Strange animal calls echoed and the thick undergrowth he could see, looked more like a solid wall of green than an entrance into the jungle.

It was a pleasure to see some color after the dark gray and whites of the first floor and the ever red sand of the desert on the second floor. Aaron hacked himself a path through the vegetation, his enchanted dagger making short work of the lianas, thick bushes and short trees vying for sunlight. The deeper he got into the jungle the darker it seemed. The light from the sun and the desert was swallowed up by the leaves and thick vegetation until Aaron stood in almost complete darkness. Deep shadows turned the jungle into a dangerous labyrinth of unknowns and in the dusk only few beams of sunlight found their way this far down forming patches of bright light in the darkness.

Aaron’s eyes slowly acclimated themselves to the lower light conditions and suddenly he could see thick roots crisscrossed before him adorned with glowing blue and yellow mushrooms lighting up the darkness. Mosses and a thick rotting layer of leaves and earth was under his feet and he could smell the musky thick aroma of the jungle. Insects were everywhere, their buzzing, crawling and chittering a constant companion.

And there were snakes.

Hanging from the trees, slithering through the undergrowth, peeking their heads and forked tongues out of the earth.

Aaron watched them wearily, but most of them were small and they hunted smaller prey than humans. Insects mostly and small rodents. He looked up towards the tree canopy and up there, where there was more light more plants and beautiful flowers bloomed. Aaron even spotted a few monkeys up there. If he had been a normal human this terrain would have been challenging, might have been impossible to traverse even. But he was a cultivator with an amazing movement technique and this jungle posed no obstacle to him whatsoever.

He activated Wind Steps and jumped up a nearby tree towards the canopy layer. His boots found enough solid branches and footholds in the rough bark to simply jump up the tree instead of climbing. Aaron soared through the jungle dozens of meters up in the air in no time.

The upper layers of the jungle were beautiful.

Up here were there was enough light, all kinds of flowers and symbiotic plants lived in harmony with the giant trees that spanned most of the jungle. Fruits and nuts beckoned, their shapes and colors as alien as Aaron had expected. Purple nuts, long fire red pumpkin looking gourds and all kinds of fruits he barely was able to describe or understand, beckoned his grumbling stomach.

In his previous life Aaron had usually been a bit hesitant to try new foods, but that had changed since he knew what hunger really meant. What it felt like to have a hole in your stomach and quite honestly he was too hungry, thirsty and curious to stop himself. He plucked some of the fruits and broke them open. In the red gourd he found a watery milk like substance like coconut milk, but it was slightly green and not white at all. With little hesitation he slurped on the fruit juice and was blown away. The juice was so sweet and sugary that it reminded him more of grape or pineapple sodas than fruit.

The purple nuts on the other hand tasted meaty and savory with an almost mushroom like consistency. The different flavors and textures were weird, come to think of it, this whole jungle was strange, so many plants and animals looked like they had come from earth. Like most insects, hell even the giant scorpions had looked kind of the same as their counterparts on earth, well besides their size. But there were also plenty of new things that seemed to come from somewhere else entirely. None of the fruits were what he had expected, as were many of the animals. Some of the snakes he encountered looked kind of similar to ones he had seen in the zoo before, but they also came in strange colors and patterns he did not think were normal. Their heads had strange square or pointed shapes that he did not recognize. But then again, Aaron was not a Biologist and he might be wrong about all of that.

Who knew maybe most of these species were native to earth, Aaron just had not heard or read or seen any of them. Jungles were not exactly a hobby of his after all.

But the taste at least was there, strange alien fruit or not. Aaron gorged himself on one exotic fruit after another as he jumped from tree to tree. The broad branches and wide spread canopies of the trees offered plenty of footholds for him to skip across and not even the monkeys were able to match his speed and grace if he wanted to. But most of the time he just used his physical strength and control over his body to jump to the next tree.

The deeper he got into the jungle, the safer and more comfortable he felt. Nobody would ever find him up here and even if they did by some miracle, nobody would ever be able to catch him here in this jungle. But that was unlikely, a single tree would be almost impossible to search and there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of trees in this jungle.

But Aaron tried his best not to get carried away. His enemies surely had plans of their own and if it was not to pursue him, then they had another scheme planned, he was sure of that. It was not all good news anyway. He was still unnaturally thirsty and the fruit barely slaked his thirst, although he felt much better in the shade already. The pounding headache, that had started to follow him through the desert, had vanished and the fruits at least put a dent into his hunger for now. Still he had to secure water and food sources before he could truly feel comfortable in this new environment. He kept his eyes and especially his ears out for any sign of flowing water. Any source of water was welcome really, for hunting and as a direct water source. The humidity meant that there was probably a lot of rain in the jungle and hopefully rivers as well. Animals would gather there and he was already planning of eating some of the jungles denizens. So far giant snake was on top of his list, but he would take a capibara or a monkey as well.

In the back of his mind he still was aware of the Disease part of the pictogram he had seen in the mouth of the snake. It was possible the snakes were not the only vectors of disease and the insects, hell even the water might be as well.

So he planned accordingly. While he explored the jungle, picked and ate fruits of all kinds, he collected big leaves he could turn into a sort of water collector for rain water. With them he could refill his waterskins and that would have to be enough precautions for water.

The insects were actually not a problem at all. Aaron had stopped to pick some more of the red gourd like coconuts when he watched one of the many mosquitos land on his arm, try to sting and suck his blood, only to be incapable of even penetrating his skin. The insects walked around, tried again and again until Aaron flicked the thing away, leaving only a red smear. None of the insects had been able to feed on him so far and that was good news. Although their buzzing was annoying and he did not want to test his body against parasites and things like that. Still that was one less issue he had to deal with at least.

Aaron wandered through the jungle canopy for hours on end and he noticed that the snakes got more and more aggressive the further he got. At the outskirts of the jungle the snakes had been lazy. Were hanging around in trees and the like, only moving when they were hungry. But here further away from the wall and closer to the center of the jungle the snakes were searching and attacking pray at all times.

He was attacked by a small snake biting into his boots first, which he crushed under his heels. Then an anaconda like snake tried to kill him. It had some sort of camouflage ability because it was literally invisible until Aaron walked by it and it dropped on top of him like a trap, trying to constrict and bite him. Aaron was surprised and did not shrug the snake off, before it had its coils tightened around him. But Aaron did not panic, he simply got one hand around the snake’s body and squeezed. He could feel muscles burst and bones break as his fingers dug into scales and then into raw bloody flesh. The snake writhed and tightened its grip first, but Aaron soon had it under control, struggled free and cut the things head off.

Breathing hard he studied the monster of the snake that had attacked him. The snake was a few meters long and its scales were slightly opaque. But in the sunlight he could see a myriad of colors reflected in the dull scale. It would be remarkable on earth for its size alone but the strange chameleon ability was truly what marked it as abnormal, alien. But the deeper he got into the jungle the less remarkable the snake seemed, because here it was one of the smaller ones he could see.

The snakes got bigger and bigger and they roamed the jungle at all heights looking for anything to kill. Few animals besides snakes lived here and the awesome biodiversity seemed to have shrunk entirely to a frankly absurd number of different snakes that populated the jungle. Aaron was sure this was someones nightmare, but it was certainly not his. He still backed off and retreated to the less snake infested part of the jungle for now. But he was sure this was part of the solution to the door to the third level.

The thing was, did he even want to go to the third level after finding this jungle? If he was careful he would be able to hide and cultivate here forever. Why should he risk fighting whatever was waiting for him in the center of the jungle? At this point it was a good bet that it was a truly gigantic snake, just as it was likely that there was a truly gigantic scorpion waiting in the center of the desert. But Aaron did not really want to go up to the third floor. There was no point if he could stay here and it would only make his way down more difficult and dangerous. No, here on the second floor he had all the time in the world to get to his goals. Which was to cultivate in peace until he had filled up his dantian entirely. Only then he would look for a way down again. He had earned himself a little break.

Since he had come to the tower he had been under constant assault. From the Hall of Illusions to the siege against him, his enemies did not let him rest and Aaron was tired of it honestly. There was no benefit in fighting other Aspirants besides robbing them and for now he had more resources than he needed, at least when it came to mana stones.

He was not so well set up with food and drink though and it was time to address that.

Aaron kept moving around the curvature of the tower, staying more or less the same distance from the wall while jumping from tree to tree. He gathered and ate more fruit and for once his appetite was only matched by the sheer quantity of different things he could eat. He had left the snake with the chameleon scales behind because really there was no shortage of snakes to hunt. They were everywhere. Other animals were relatively rare besides insects. There was a small colony of monkeys that sat high in the canopy of a tree and moved on together as a group. That was how they survived, some of the apes were on guard duty and killed the snakes that came too close, while the rest of the apes ate the tree clean.

Aaron did not approach them, he had no reason to. For now the fruits he found were sufficient and while he kept moving he was still looking for a good spot for a temporary base. He found it after hours of jumping in between trees. At first he thought it was a figment of his imagination, more wishful thinking than reality, but he really heard running water. He jumped down into the guts of the jungle and soon found himself on one side of a broad slow flowing river the color of milk coffee.

The water did not look very appetizing, but the amount of animals close to the river was truly astounding. He saw a group of capibaras, another group of monkeys and a strange group of green deer whose dark and green fur was a natural camouflage. And of course there were snakes. In the water, at the edge of the water, laying in wait, slithering everywhere and anywhere. But Aaron also noticed some long shadows in the water and thought at first it was driftwood or something until one of the logs fully surfaced and Aaron recognized the crocodile for what it was. Or were they alligators? Aaron could never tell, someone had told him the difference once, but it had not stuck. And that was the case even though he had disposed of some bodies by feeding them to the alligators more than once. Waste not want not and all of that.

All in all this river was perfect. Aaron selected a tree one or two rows behind the actual river and looked for a big branch he could set up shop. He wanted to stay up here if at all possible, because the jungle floor did not seem appealing to him at all. Eventually he found a good spot, where two big branches had grown together and built a sort of platform just underneath the leaves.

Aaron sat down and unpacked a few things, he would make fire on the ground, not up here, but he would sleep here and so he unrolled his sleeping roll and took stock of his supplies. He had three knives, 2 normal ones, one enchanted, a bow with 8 arrows left, half of which were made out of steel and oversized. Aaron had not even tried to shoot those bastards. Instead he took them and rammed them into the tree as corner posts for his tent, which smelled of smoke and meat. The waterproof fabric would be very useful and Aaron draped it in such a way that water would pool at one end without running out, before he was satisfied with his work.

Up here there were less animals, but he still had to kill 3 or 4 small snakes before his tent was secure. He would have to close it up or risk getting nibbled on by some poisonous snakes in his sleep. Not a prospect he welcomed.

Then he went and tried to build a water collector with the leaves he had found and some sticks he broke off the tree. It kinda looked like it would work, although it looked pitiful and wobbly. He hung his empty waterskin underneath the collector and drank a few gulps out of his remaining waterskin. Finally he settled down and started to cultivate. Nobody would bother him here and the thirst he had felt was vanishing. This jungle would feed even someone as hungry as him and for the first time since he had come to the Tower he felt somewhat optimistic about the future.

He cultivated for three hours, absorbing a full manastone while doing so, before he switched to stretches and the Rejuvenating Fist kata. After he was finally done he laid on his back, panting on the rough bark, his feet dangling over the edge. The sun was still up and shining, but Aaron was almost certain by now that there was no night on this floor. That would seriously fuck with his internal clock and so he decided to go to sleep. He was tired and the sudden relief of a bit of safety was enough to halfway knock him out.

He slipped into his tent, stuffed the gaps as well as he could with cloth and his rucksack before he laid down on top of his sleeping roll. His hand rested on his sheathed enchanted dagger as he closed his eyes. He was asleep before he knew it, exhausted as he was.