The Systemic Lands

Chapter 406: 3rd Floor – Crushing

Chapter 406: 3rd Floor – Crushing

I woke up. I had no idea what day or time it was. I had lost all sense of that and my brain couldn’t afford the mental space to try and keep track of the time. Keeping track of the layout of the floors and what floor I was on, was more than enough headache.

Stretching out, I then had a piece of fruit afterwards. Time to get floor three done and keep up my ascent. I couldn’t afford to sit around. After the first two floors and both those bosses, I wasn’t too worried.

I put on both my packs and left through the one way barrier into the hallway that went West. With where the previous boss room was and the elevator, the intersection in front of me was probably along the West wall of the tower, I hoped.

Honestly, the similar looking passages made it easy to spot things, but it also made it hard to remember where things were exactly and my exact position in relation to the space inside the tower itself. I left through the one way barrier and quickly made my way to the intersection.

The soft blue lighting turned to a dark ominous red color. I turned to my right. “North,” I said and my eyes went wide. There was a side passage to my right every other tunnel unit. I raced North glancing down the passages. This floor was clearly laid out with a column structure in mind.

I could see to the other side of the tower down some of the passages. Also this North South passage I was in, was the entire length of the tower as well. I noted that some areas were walled off. Either rooms or barriers. But the vast majority of the floor was a grid pattern, with tunnels and pillars alternating.

Turning to my right, I began glancing North and South to try and find the location of the golden rod, or boss room key. That was when I noticed a cluster of three floating sphere golems floating towards me. They were level 4 based on their smaller size and the trend set by the previous two floors. I quickly picked another root, since they were at head height.

If I had tried to race past them, they would clearly try to slow me down and then attack me. I couldn’t be bother with them right now. Better to not fight the monsters and keep moving as quickly as possible. The monsters were a distraction on these floors.

I spotted a monster spawner and quickly made my way in that direction, since the area had a room. I made sure to keep calling out my cardinal direction each and every turn. I raced around a walled off area which was three by three.

The South portion was open and there was a pillar with the golden rod behind it. There were sphere monsters closing in slowly, but they didn’t move that fast. Acid Shot. I used the skill since the floor was clearly making me go through a narrow space to get a the golden key rod.

While I didn’t see any trap, this would have been the perfect place to put one.

BOOM! A blast of wind hit me. The floor, ceiling, and walls and just come together and crushed my skill. In under a second. I blinked once as the walls slowly retracted over the next couple of seconds. I used Acid Shot once they had fully retracted. No reaction. I rushed through the space, grabbed the golden key rod.

Acid Shot. The crushing trap didn’t activate again. I rushed through and the monsters weren’t that close yet, so I went back and checked the trapped area again. Acid Shot. The trap triggered. It had a reset time of around 100 seconds like the previous blade traps.

There was a very small seam in the walls, but no change in the energy. How devious. That honestly was incredibly scary. I rushed away from the trap and began looking for the boss room. If I hadn’t just hesitated for a moment to use a skill to check, I would have been paste.

I found the boss room, unlocked it, and then went back to look at the trap. The monsters were deactivated, so I was in no rush. Acid Shot. The trap activated again. So, the monsters were off, but the traps weren’t once the boss room opened. That was very good to know.

I took my time looking over the appearance of the crush trap. It was honestly hard to spot, since the gap was the width of a hair and in the gloom it wasn’t obvious. It was be too easy to be rushing along, and then splat, crushed.

Pacing back and forth in front of the trap, I considered how to handle it on future floors. It wasn’t simple since it wasn’t obvious like the traps on the first or second floor. While I hadn’t seen the traps on the second floor, there’re were energy striations like the first floor in the golden key rod room.

Acid Shot. I tested exactly when it would activate. It would only activate once something, either energy or movement reached the center of the crush area. That meant, that I would have to be ready to activate Air Burst at a moment’s notice, at the slightest indication there was a crush trap.

I paced back and forth in front of the trap some more while I thought over it. I needed to test it out now, rather than later. To make sure I could escape and understand the margin of error. I felt confident, but I wanted to be sure and get one round of practice in first.

Rushing forward I entered the trapped tunnel unit. Air Burst. I zipped through as the trap slammed shut behind me. I turned around and made my way back out of the tiny room, looking at the trap sections retract.

The walls to the side pushed out a longer rectangle, meeting in the center. While the ceiling and the floor pushed out wider rectangles, forming a complete wall. A weird design and inefficient in my mind, since they weren’t triangles, but it allowed the sections to conceal themselves where triangles wouldn’t be able to.

The crush trap was also the first trap, I was taking seriously, which made me concerned. It was a mechanical trap. I could clearly spot illusioned walls, that hid blades, but something like a crush trap wasn’t able to be sensed. As I waited for my energy to recover, I stood there and looked at the trap space, hoping to spot something, anything.

I had no such luck unfortunately. Whatever the trap was using to operate, it was clearly beyond my Sense stat, which was incredibly frustrating. If I was rushing about in a maze and not an open grid pattern like this floor, I wouldn’t have time to spot the hair line cracks that represented this crush trap.

As I made my way to the boss room, I realized it was probably to stop or hinder my rush strategy. That was very annoying, but I could see it. I tried to think what floor 4 would be like and the possible future traps, but I wasn’t sure. Better not to assume anything and be ready to react.

I made my way into the boss room and put my packs to the side. The boss door closed and the boss spawner activated. Hopefully it was nowhere as annoying as the Shielded Core boss had been. Acid Shot. Acid Shot. I went with my tried and true opening strategy as I immediately began moving the moment the dark red light walls disappeared.

The boss was a floating triangular pyramid with a triangular base, so that probably made it a prism. My attacks landed on the boss monster, but they were pulled inside of it. It had some minor damage which was quickly being repaired. That was cheating! A beam of liquid-melt type energy was shot at me from one of the vertices of the golem. I easily dodged the attack and rushed in.

The boss monster quickly floated away from me to keep distance between us. Air Burst. I chased after it. It launched a metal rod at me. Air Burst. I twisted around the attack and kept moving forward. Air Burst. I dodged another metal rod and closed in.

That was the problem with these kind of boss rooms. While I didn’t have room to run away, the boss monster didn’t have room to run away either. Acid Shot x2. Force Wall. Acid Shot x5. While it could absorb energy attacks, I had noticed it had taken damage the previous time. So, it could be overwhelmed.

My annihilation attack vaporized more than half the boss monster and my Acid Shots began to work on the rest. I kept hitting with Acid Shot over and over so it didn’t have a chance to respond while easily side stepping the half melted metal poles it launched in my direction.

The boss monster soon turned to ash. I picked up its point crystal, just like I had with the previous two bosses. They were my trophies for defeating these headache monsters. I picked up my packs and made my way to the elevator and went up to the fourth floor.

I thought over the most recent battle and how much easier it had been. Clearly the boss was meant to handle a lot of low level attacks. The Shielded Core would have probably been overwhelmed from multiple low level attacks from various directions. This boss countered that weakness and absorbed low level attacks to counter attack with them.

With four vertices, or points on a prism, it probably could absorb four types of energy. My annihilation attack probably messed that up. It really was the universal cheat skill and an overpowered combination to use. I was quite pleased I had worked it out and that my skills complimented each other in that regard.

It was proof at least that my time learning about energy interactions and the mechanics of the Systemic Lands had not been a waste of time. Finding and being able to use something like an annihilation attack was incredibly powerful way to just cut through the nonsense of higher level monsters.

You had a shield, just blast my way through. You have a super durable body that regenerates, too bad. Curse damage on your body will make it too slow to heal up. It was the single best method of just cutting through defenses. While the Divine Empress proved that with high enough stats you could survive along with these level 5 monsters, that was more of an issue with the amount of energy going into the annihilation reaction, rather than the reaction itself.

I had no doubt that a more directed skill specific to annihilation attacks would do much better than combining skills. But I was not about to complain. In the future, any beam mages would need to get two opposing beam attacks for defense of my capital city.

That would be the way to go. Combine two beam attacks at a distance and just vaporize everything long range. I might be tempted to look into such a combination later on. If there was a Force Beam and a Melt Beam or Acid Beam it would be perfect.

In fact, I could alter skills when they leveled up slightly. I had been ignoring this option, since I didn’t want to mess with my skills that were working already. But if I was going to upgrade them all over again, which meant starting from the bottom, it might be worthwhile to consider such an option.

It would certainly be quite a useful way to attack monsters at a distance. I was just unsure if there would be power loss. From what I could tell, certain skills at the same level did better than others. There was probably a mechanic behind this. But even if beam skills were half as powerful as shot skills, it would still be a worthwhile trade.

Then there was the charging time to consider as well. I didn’t want to get stuck charging an attack when I wanted to be able to use it instantly. So maybe beam type skills were off the table. Something I would have to think on once I got out of this tower.