The Tower of Emnu

A sudden crash and noise woke Aaron up with a start and he panted, his enchanted dagger drawn as he stared at the inside of his tent. He was alone, but the world was full of noise. The roar of a rainstorm was all encompassing, heavy raindrops impacted the tent and he could see the back of the tent bulge, the water pooling there.

Aaron opened the tent and stepped into a tropical rainfall of epic proportions. The leaves above him barely stopped the onslaught of water that came from above. It felt like a river was upended on top of Aaron and he had tried to stand under a tree for cover. He was soaked in an instant and he looked around for what had made the noise that had woken him up. He spotted it quickly. His improvised water collector made out of sticks and broad leaves had collapsed under the sheer weight of water and had fallen on top of his waterskin. Aaron saved it before it could get swept away and he almost slipped on the wet wood underneath his feet. He had to activate Wind steps to make a secure recovery and then he stood there in the rain, looking up into a dark overcast sky as he saw lightning arc to the ground and heard the rumble of thunder.

Laughter bubbled up in Aaron’s chest, his eyes closed he opened his mouth and drank a bit of rainwater with gusto. He spread out his arms, feeling the rain pelting him, washing away his worries. He stood in the storm, impervious to it, enjoying it. It felt so good to just stand in the rain, to feel free and secure, he could not help but laugh. He stood in the middle of a rain forest, a snake infested jungle where most things were trying to kill or eat him and Aaron felt right at home. He could barely even remember the last time he had felt this way. When he was a child maybe? In his parents house, sitting on the patio, looking out over his mothers little garden and up some tall birch trees. That had been the last time he had felt this way.

Aaron liked the rain, had always liked the rain, its soft noise was a pleasure and he loved the smell after a storm, all clean and fresh, like nature had given the world a fresh start. Of course later in life he had liked the rain because it hid the sounds of footsteps, because it masked traces and made people want to be cooped up in their homes, easy to find, easy to extract, easy to kill. But this felt different, purer somehow. It was a pure, childlike joy to stand in the rain and not being bothered by it, enjoying it as it fell on the top of his head and his shoulders, soaking him. It was an unusual feeling for him, happiness that is and part of him was suspicious. Was this another thing his body was responsible for or was that really him, enjoying himself?

He had no answer to that question and he really did not want to think about it now either. His joy vanished slowly at those thoughts, at his doubts and when he felt nothing more than wet he let out a deep sigh. He could really not have anything nice, could he? He always had to check if what made him happy had no ulterior motives. Aaron shook his head and tried to focus, to get back on track. He went over to his tent and his second improvised water collector. To his pleasant surprise this one had worked just like he had imagined it. He did not know what, whoever had made this tent, had done with the simple cloth but it acted almost entirely like a plastic sheet not one made out of what felt like cotton under his fingers. The water had pooled in the back of the tent like he had intended it to and Aaron filled his waterskins in the shallow puddle. He took some deep pulls from his freshly filled waterskin and he found he liked the taste of the fresh rainwater.

His thirst had almost entirely vanished by now, but it had taken far too long for it to be a natural reaction. One did not stay thirsty after drinking a few liters of water, right? No, he suspected something else was at play here and Aaron did not like it. He drank his fill either way and then went to do his morning routine. The rain stopped after his 7th repetition of the Rejuvenating Fist and he guessed it had rained for almost 30 minutes, before the rain stopped as suddenly as it had began.

He looked up and saw the dark clouds fly quickly over the distant sky and vanish into nothingness, leaving only blue sky behind. That was not natural either.

Aaron sneezed and was incredulous about the sudden change in temperature. The rain had been nice and cool, but now the jungle heated up again, the humidity ten times as bad. He would sweat through his clothes before he was done with his martial arts training, he was sure.

Like always when he did the Rejuvenating Fist Kata it felt amazing, the different steps, the punches, the way his body moved to a hidden ever changing rhythm they all came together as he flowed through the exercise.

It was easier to do now, felt like it had more or less been assimilated into his muscle memory, each and every step was the natural continuation of the sequence and the effect was like always, pure relaxation. After he was done he stretched again, getting rid of any discomfort in his body and then settled down to cultivate. It was difficult to measure time without a day and night cycle. Everything felt like a blur to him since he had come to the second floor. But if he had to guess then it had been a day or two since he had come up here. But how long could he stay awake without getting tired, especially when hunted. He did not know.

But for now at least her was safe. He had eaten almost half of his rations and was in dire need of some more food. The fruits he could gather would do nicely, but Aaron honestly craved some meat.

Cultivating felt easy again, his body absorbed the mana at a steady pace while he filled his dantian. He did not stop using manastones. It would be folly to slow down and he had more than enough, for now. Aaron did a quick count and ended up with 30 manastones after he finished this one, 29 shards, the two blue manastones that were of a higher grade and 11 beast cores in total in a different pouch. They were a mixed bag of small marbles and only a few of them were a decent size. Overall he could cultivate for days using these resources alone and that was exactly his plan for now. It was time to fill his dantian to the brink and then think of a way to get back down to the great master. Which would be a challenging endeavor he suspected. But at least he would have time to plan, to prepare.

He finished his cultivation session after his body had built up a significant resistance to the mana from the manastones. His body felt saturated, full and it would take some time for his body to acclimate and absorb more mana into Qi. His dantian had been almost empty after his very liberal use of it during his escape. Now it started to fill again.

Aaron tried to conserve Qi as he roamed the jungle and picked and ate all sorts of fruit. Most of the fruit he tried were delicious but in the end he craved meat. So he got closer to the river, looking down at the gathering animals and discarded snake for now. He could always find snakes in this jungle. The capibaras and deer he had seen earlier were enticing, but he did not spot any of them right now. He doubted he could find tracks in this jungle reliably. The animals must have ways through the underbrush but he did not. Sure he could go above it, but then it would be difficult to follow any tracks from that distance. No, he would sit here and wait for prey to come to him. He still had arrows enough and his bow had survived the siege as well. So he waited. He sat down and just observed the jungle.

He saw birds in the trees, strangely multi colored not like a parrot or anything like it. Their wings were almost transparent, their bodies in different shades of green and brown and they flew past quietly. Their avian heads looking for all kinds of insects to devour. But they had to be careful, snakes kept snapping at them from the strangest angles and Aaron guessed the transparent wings were a sort of defense mechanism to make them less visible. All kinds of animals fought, died and devoured each other in front of his eyes. An Alligator ate a few snakes in the river, some snakes found a nest of rodents not far from him and of course most of the insects and snakes kept attacking Aaron.

Most he dispatched by throwing them off the tree he sat on, but some few who actually looked dangerous he had to kill. His enchanted dagger proved its worth as it effortlessly cut through scales and bones. In the end Aaron had three mid sized snakes without heads gathered just from waiting here and with a sigh he decided not to waste the meat. He would find more palatable meat later. He moved back through the trees until he was almost back to his base and then he jumped down, well climbed down more than he jumped. It was dangerously high and he did not want to use wind steps if he did not have to. It took him almost 15 minutes to climb down the giant tree and once he was on the ground floor he had to search for dry deadwood to fuel his fire.

Which was not an easy task. Most of the dead wood was still soaked from the rain earlier and so he took a long time to gather enough material for a fire. Only then, when he had started the fire and it was burning nicely he butchered the snakes. He skinned them, removed their organs and then skewered them lengthwise on long pieces of wood he had sharpened like arrows. They were not straight enough to become arrows though, but they would suffice for this task.

Aaron roasted the snake meat over the fire and got a nice char on them, making sure it was nicely done and in no way or shape raw. Then he dug in.

It tasted like chicken, unsurprisingly. But there was a hint of the exotic that hinted at its true origin. The meat was also not as tender as chicken would have been, it had a slightly chewy texture that made it feel a bit more like jerky than freshly seared meat. It was still a great meal and once Aaron had finished all three snakes he went back up into his tree and continued to cultivate.

For 3 days he kept up this pattern. Wake up, do his morning routine, cultivate until he felt his body resist the mana influx from the manastone he was using and then cultivate some more until he was tired of it. Then he would hunt and forage for food, prepare and eat it until he felt it was time again to cultivate, stretch and do the rejuvenating fist kata. His dantian filled steadily and the morning of the third day he had finally filled his dantian to more than half capacity. The nebulous Qi that swirled around in his dantian had settled and the thick energetic mist slowly rotated around its center that rotated faster and faster the closer to the center it came. It reminded Aaron vaguely of pictures scientists had made about the birth of stars. How huge nebulae grew denser and denser around what would become a star in the future. Aaron had the feeling at some point this highly energetic glowing center of his dantian would ignite and turn into a sun. But he was not sure if that was a good thing or not, or if would happen at all. For now he had enough space to fill and as long as that did not change, he would not try to make any changes.

Because quite frankly he did not know what he was doing and it was better to learn and get some answers than fuck around with powers he had no concept of, not really. He understood as much about how Qi worked, how it gave such powers to him, as he had understood quantum mechanics in his old life. For all he knew Qi could be explained by quantum mechanics. He doubted it though. No scientist on earth had ever gotten the chance to study this form of energy, to classify it and he was sure that the mere existence of such an energy would overthrow and change physics entirely. Not that he had any plans to return to Earth.

Aaron sighed and stretched, before he fell into a sudden coughing fit and spat out thick mucus. With disgust he cleared his throat and he frowned. He felt a bit weak, almost dizzy and when he put a hand to his forehead it felt hot, extremely hot. He probably had a fever and besides the coughing there were other symptoms. Diarrhea for one, which was not a pleasant thing to have in the best of cases, but without access to bathrooms and toilet paper it was very, very uncomfortable. At first Aaron had just thought it was the snakes, or the fruit, or the insects, but more and more he came to the conclusion that this was not the case. This felt not like a normal disease. He did not get better, he got worse over time. Slowly, but steadily. His body, bolstered by his cultivation and the Fiend-god art was far more resilient than his previous body, a fact he assumed would also mean increases resilience against illnesses. Fact was he could endure the symptoms with relative ease. Still it was an annoyance and the fact that it got progressively worse was worrying.

It wasn’t like any sickness he had ever had before. It did not just get worse and then stayed there or got better, it kept getting worse almost unnaturally over time and there was no end in sight. The symbol in the mouth of the snake came back to his mind and he paused mid step.

What if his thirst and this disease, these symptoms he was enduring, were part of the Second Floors mechanism? Part of a trial. He had not seen anyone since coming to this floor, which was strange. The floor should be perfectly livable. The jungle was a wellspring of wood, ingredients, meats and the like. The desert less so, but he had no doubt giant scorpion venom could be used for something, if not just as a weapon.

So why was nobody here? Had he simply missed any settlements? Truth be told he had not seen that much of the second floor. Or the first one now that he thought about it.

But what if there was a curse on this floor? What if staying here meant slowly dying of disease or thirst?

It would explain the pictograms for one, it would explain why there were no people here and if this was sort of challenge, or trial to overcome, then it would make sense for certain parts of the second floor to be different. The closer he had gotten to the center of the desert, the more scorpions had attacked, the same with snakes and the center of the jungle.

So it was reasonable to assume there was something hidden there if all of his assumptions were correct. Which meant if he went there he could probably find the keys to the door to the third floor. But really if he was right that would not help him, it put him into a terrible position actually. His disease would just keep getting worse until he would be unable to move, unable to do anything. He had thought this was a good spot to hide, to recuperate, but if this sickness was a curse then he had a time limit.

Aaron did not know if he wanted to go up to the third floor yet. His plan for now was just to fill his dantian and then return to the Great Master to rank up, to learn more techniques from the cultivators in prison. A ranged attack and a stealth art of some sort were really high on his list of priorities. It would make him into an even worse enemy that could attack and ambush his foes with ease, guerrilla style. Which was, as far as Aaron knew, the only proven way to defeat a superior enemy with more power and more forces over time.

So what could he do about it right now? First he could investigate the center of the jungle or the desert or second find himself a way down to the first floor and try his luck that way. So either go up, or down. If he was right about the curses then he could not stay here, as much as he felt at home in this jungle. He was not about to die to a curse or a disease if he could help it.

But first he had to test his hypothesis. When he had left the desert, the thirst had slowly vanished until it had gone entirely. If the thirst was supernatural then it should come back and his sickness should go away if it was supernatural as well. At least that was Aaron’s guess from his observations and it was time to put it to the test.