The Systemic Lands

Chapter 414: 14th Floor – Is This Possible?

Chapter 414: 14th Floor – Is This Possible?

I peaked out of the one way barrier from the safe room on the fourteenth floor. I paled. It was not good. I could basically see the entire floor and the elevator at the far corner in the distance. There was no keyhole on the room for the elevator.

There were no puzzle rooms. Instead, it was a big open area. In the center of the floor there were two sets of nine regular spawners and two boss spawners. It was a double boss battle with eighteen smaller monsters getting added into the fight.

I had no idea what the boss monsters would be. The seventh floor had puzzles, not multiple boss monsters. I considered how I would handle this. I let out a sigh. There would be a lot of running. How in the name of the Almighty System did the Astrologer think I would clear this tower before?

Had the difficulty increased since I had entered it by myself with my stats? I took a seat on a stone bench in the safe room, in a corner, leaning against the wall as I thought over this issue. Was the tower getting harder because I had cheesed sections?

I was a bit miffed the Astrologer’s proxy had not told me anything about his tower climb. Perhaps he was afraid it would be made more difficult then. That could be a reasonable explanation. Then the next tower I climbed would be trapped every step of the way with hordes of monsters.

At least the level of the monsters were limited. That was nice. While the tower was completely unfair and broken in some ways, it was too easy in other ways that made it possible to cheese and rush through. It was hard to say if it was a poor or brilliant design.

Brilliant, since the tower increased in difficulty. If I entered a floor that was a nightmare without knowledge of the traps, layout, monsters and general dimensions of a floor, then it would be that much harder. But now that I had that knowledge from the earlier floors, I had been breezing through the later floors.

There were no instructions either, but it was clear that a person was meant to climb and the boss rooms were similar to the boss rooms of the pit dungeons, door included. There were enough commonalities that I wasn’t completely lost figuring it out.

What was unfair, was the monster spawners and the boss monsters. I get they were level 5, but two at once plus minions, was going to be rough. But then I considered that the tower might be meant to be taken on by a team and it made more sense if the difficulty wasn’t adjusted.

The Astrologer might think, I would bring helpers, or not be handicapped, literally. Or he might have a hard time judging my overall combat potential. Finally, his proxy, might have given me more concrete information later on if it had survived. He could have even suspected that I would probably struggle on the climb up the tower.

But now that I was experiencing the difficulty firsthand it was clear why no one had cleared a tower yet. It honestly was a complete and utter death trap. No easy way to escape, hordes of monsters, and now a double boss battle.

I would have preferred more puzzles honestly. I had been dreading the puzzles, but now the puzzles looked a lot nicer compared to trying to fight two level 5 bosses and sixteen level 4 monsters. Well, the battle wasn’t going to fight itself and there was a lot of room to maneuver.

Thinking about a group, the boss rooms closed behind me. While a group could hide in the safe room until the boss room was unlocked, they would all be forced into the boss room to fight, if they didn’t want to get trapped.

I had no idea about the respawn mechanics of a tower and they would not be easy to test either. The elevators didn’t go back down, forming another one-way barrier. Only the seventh floor without any monsters would have allowed people to catch back up possibly, if the elevator and boss rooms reset.

It just wasn’t worth the hassle or risk to find out in my mind and the benefits were small. If I ever went into another tower with other people, it would be best to move as a singular group. No splitting up either. Explore the bottom floors thoroughly and map them out to some extent, before moving up to the higher floors. Also taking time to fight the boss monsters to gain an understanding of their weaknesses and abilities.

After getting mentally prepared, I tossed my two packs to the side after exiting the one-way gate and raced for the monster spawners in the center of the floor as quickly as possible. No matter what happened I had to take down one boss instantly and then drag the fight out with the second boss.

Rushing for closet boss spawner, I wasn’t going to be in time. Even after using Air Burst three times, it was just too much distance to cover in too short a time. At least there were no traps that I ran into or saw.

I had no doubt the higher floors would be worse, but it was nice that it was starting at the bare minimum. Once the red light walls for the monster spawners went away, I let out a sigh of relief. There were two very large Cube Golems and not two different boss monsters.

They also had a lot of the little cube golems that had been on the first and eighth floor. That was when both boss monsters began to unleash metallic bullets at me from small openings on their surface. They were bad at tracking, but much better than their smaller counterparts.

I rushed North to interpose one boss monster between the other and myself. I rushed in. The smaller cubic level 4 golems leapt up into my path. Acid Shot x3. Acid Shot x3. Air Burst. As metal poles shot at me, I managed to take out three of them, but I had been forced back. The three lesser monsters turned to dust and I saw three of the spawners reactivate.

I let out a loud sigh in frustration even as I kept moving so, I didn’t get hit by any of the cubic golems ranged attacks. That was exasperating. I retreated to the Southeast portion of the floor. The two boss monsters came together, side by side, while the lesser sixteen cubic golems lined up in two rows of eight in front of them.

“That’s cheating!” I yelled out and pointed. They responded by advancing towards me after getting into formation. It really was cheating in my mind for the golems to be like this. Using teamwork and the power of friendship against me.

I kept my distance as they unleashed the occasional ranged attack, content to pursue me slowly, forcing me to keep moving. I didn’t like any of my options. The problem was the lesser monsters would protect the larger and stronger monsters and had effectively infinite lives.

The boss monsters wouldn’t be taken down easily either. They were content to grind me down like the Super Cat and the Invisible Centipede Golem bosses. Neither of them were strong enough to tank my attacks, so they dodged. But these monsters were like tanks, with disposable side armor panels and regeneration.

All of this meant that I needed to figure out a way to get in close, deal a lot of damage to the two boss monsters, and retreat. The problem was the sheer number of monsters I had to contend with. This was the kind of situation, having a person or two just running around, just to distract the monsters and force them to reorient, would be extremely helpful.

There would also be a lot of attacks to dodge and the level 4 golems were willing to intercept my attacks. Each of them required two uses of Acid Shot. So that made 16 attacks or 5,120 energy to get rid of the smaller monsters for a brief period of time.

I would need 2 uses of Air Burst to get in close and 3 uses to get away. That was 4,000 energy. That left me almost nothing in the tank afterwards. That was 2 uses of Acid Shot, not counting any energy regeneration. There just wasn’t enough energy for a follow up attack that was useful.

That meant I had to bypass the smaller monsters while getting close enough to the boss monsters to hit them with my skill without interference. It would be a challenge for sure and as I ran slowly around the entire floor, I kept thinking about how I would go about implementing such a plan while I waited for my energy to fully recover.

Once one boss as blocking the other and I lured them some distance from the center of the room, I raced towards them. Ranged bullets and rods came at me. Air Burst. I zigged. Air Burst. I zagged. I leapt into the air while continuing to move forward. Four golems leapt up to block my path.

I had flipped in mid-air and my feet touched the ceiling. While the ceilings of the floors were quite high, it was only a single story. A large story, but only a single story. Easy enough to reach. The low level golems clearly weren’t acquainted with such a move since there was a long moment of hesitation as I kicked off the ceiling, going between the group that had been trying to intercept me mid-air and the group on the ground.

Acid Shot x2. Two sections, on the same side of the boss golem detached, intercepting my attack and flying towards me. Air Burst. I dodged and moved int close. Acid Shot x5. Acid Shot x 5. Acid Shot x5. The boss golem jumped into the air.

BONG!

A very loud ringing sound echoed out from the impact it had with the ceiling of the tower. The other boss golem, unleashed a barrage of silver bullets at me. Air Burst. Air Burst. I quickly retreated back, as the first boss slammed back into the ground. The tower didn’t even shake from that move and wasn’t damaged in the slightest.

I went back to running circles around the group of monsters while the lesser monsters were respawned. Twice I had failed, and I was out of good ideas. If it had just been the one boss, I would have stayed and fight, but the monsters clearly had some basic level of cooperation going on between them including the boss monsters.

It was a problem of numbers. I couldn’t win with the numbers the monsters had on their side, but they were content to slowly chase me and wear me down. I hated this type of strategy when I wasn’t the one doing it. I was tempting to say that I wanted monsters that fled from me, but after the Donkey, they were obviously much, much worse than this monster horde.

“Alright, you want to play hardball, it we will play hardball,” I muttered to myself as I kept jogging and waiting for my energy to recover. There was only one real option left at this point. I couldn’t let the fight drag on, otherwise I would lose. I needed to start making progress in my next attack.

The last two attacks had given me a sense of their range, speed, general danger areas and possible warning signs when checking their energy to figure out the best way to fight them and maneuver around their attacks.

While I had lost my last two attacks, I wasn’t about to lose my third without progress. It was time that I took some risks to win this fight. I couldn’t play it safely if I wanted to win.