The Systemic Lands

Chapter 423: 45th Floor – The Road Upwards

Chapter 423: 45th Floor – The Road Upwards

I woke up in pain and groggy. I got out a flask of water and drank some and rinsed out my mouth. With only so many more floors to go, hanging onto supplies was not a big a deal anymore. Better to use them up and have less weight to carry.

My left foot hurt, my left stub hurt, and my gut was killing me. All that combined to a headache that was throbbing. I could manage, before, but now it was literally hell. “I refuse to give up,” I muttered.

Getting my packs on and stretching a bit helped slightly but not much. I stood up and hopped on my right foot. Alright, time to clear as many floors as possible before I took a long nap again. Hopefully at least three.

I kicked off the ground with my right foot, sailing through the one way barrier. There was a null skill zone on the outer edge of the floor, but it wasn’t a big deal. I turned South and made my way to the first room even as the level 4 monsters began to spawn.

From my experience on the earlier floors, the golden key rod could be in any of the three small rooms on this floor surrounded by monster spawners. The key to was to just check them all out in order. Even with the pillar layout, I wasn’t worried about getting lost. This floor wasn’t a maze.

I stayed in the South East corner of the floor for a minute to draw the monsters towards me and then I raced past them where there was no null skill floor to get to the room. A pit trap, Air Burst. Air Burst. I recovered and activated the crush trap before rushing into the small, enclosed room.

It seemed that this floor was favoring me today since I found the golden key rod right away instead of having to check the other two small rooms. With the first step completed, I rushed North and slightly East to get to the boss room, making sure to check for traps along the way.

I ran across two pit traps and a crush trap. The pit traps were a new variation on this floor, but thankfully the gaps were only one tunnel unit wide. That meant I could leap over them without having to spend energy.

Reaching the boss door, I didn’t hesitate and put the golden key rod in. Blade traps around the edge, then a pit trap, then a null skill area, with only the very middle area of the boss room possibly solid. I activated the blade trap before rushing in.

There was no good way to get by it like the saw trap. The blades extended too far outwards and getting caught meant a death sentence. The Power Prism boss spawned as I confirmed there were no pit traps in the center of the room and that the null skill area was actually solid flooring.

After the last floor, there would be no rushing bosses like I had done previously. With my checks of the flooring done, it was a simple boss battle. I had fought this boss before, and a good annihilation attack up close wiped it out. Honestly it was a bit anti-climatic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Any fight that I barely scraped through was already a failure. That was something I had learned long ago. I didn’t want fights close, or interesting. Having them boring, predictable, and easy was much better for my long-term survival.

I took the time to rest after the boss fight to get back my energy. The next boss would be a lot harder since it was the Super Cat. The forty sixth floor should be the long dead ends. It would be annoying to check everything, but I would do it no matter what.

Still, it would be long and tedious. The last floor there had been 20 level 4 monster spawners in the center of the floor and lots of traps, which slowed me down. Thankfully the level 4 version of the previous boss wasn’t that fast or quick, but 20 monsters could form a wall.

That was the biggest threat on the next floor, getting trapped behind a wall of monsters. I would have to be careful about that. The boss, was another challenge. There were spawners inside the room and energy traps around the outside on the previous version of this floor. I would have to act quickly. The Super Cat was one of the greatest threats out there in terms of combat ability.

It could attack at range and would dodge easily enough. I let out a sigh as I considered the floor as whole. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was doable. The hardest part would be all the dead ends I would have to backtrack to check every portion of the floor for the golden key rod.

Getting ready again, I mentally prepared myself to be racing around this floor. I looked out the one way exit from the safe room and let out a sigh. Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. I was stuck in a box. Well not stuck per se’, but it was clear that each of the long winding passages would have illusion walls and then a trap.

One after the other. It would be slow going to clear all the traps and transverse the dead ends with the monsters chasing me, giving me very little room to maneuver. Well there would be room, but I would need to be mindful of the timer on the traps if I chose to fight. I left the safe room and went West first.

I would work my way clockwise. It was a strategy I had come up with for this floor on the earlier levels. Otherwise, it would be way too headache inducing. My guess was correct. Illusion wall, trap, illusion wall trap, over and over.

Nothing I wasn’t ready for, just incredibly tedious. Where the last floor was a breeze, this floor wanted to drag things out as long as possible and make me want to scream. With the way it was laid out, I needed to check the entire length of each passage to ensure the golden key rod was not hidden at the end behind an illusion wall. I also checked the side walls as I went just in case, I couldn’t spot the hiding spot with my Sense stat. If any floor would pull off that trick it was this one.

I took time my passage after passage. The monsters were a concern when I came across them, but the nice thing about running into them on the back track, was that the traps reset. I would wipe out groups of them at a time and then make my way past the remainder.

One of the other things I did was mentally keep track of what was in each tunnel unit. That was how I realized where the golden key rod was hiding in one of the South passages near the boss room. Honestly this would have been a lot harder if I didn’t have any visualization skills.

But I had been practicing each and every floor making sure I knew the layout and the spacing as I transversed it. Working out the width and the length of each floor was crucial for understanding how to climb the tower. The traps and monsters just slowed me down. There were only so many combinations one could do before something new needed to be added in or the difficultly increased.

Finding the way to the boss room wasn’t that hard either. Another illusion wall into the passage outside of it and I found the door. I chose to wait before I put the golden key rod in. If there was a monster passage for the level 4 monsters, into the boss room, then I wanted to wipe them out first.

While it would only give me a couple minutes or so, I would take it. I hadn’t wasted energy on the traps, so I had some hope of attempting an alpha strike or something close enough to such an attack that I didn’t want to let go of the possibility.

The floating prisms came and I activated the blade trap, slicing them apart. Honestly the monsters were so stupid sometimes and this would make a great place to grind up points. Just sit here all day and night, activate the trap, collect points. While there was a bit of dodging involved as the monsters got close, it honestly wasn’t that much.

Pick a trap closer to the spawners and the grind would be incredible. I would be looking at 20 level 4 monsters per quarter of minute, or close enough. That meant 80 level 4 monsters per minute, or 4,800 monsters per hour. Since each point crystal was worth 3,600 points, that was a total of 17,280,000 points per hour. In 16 hours a person could grind up over a quarter of a billion points.

It was honestly an insane amount, but the problem was getting it all out of the tower. As I learned from the heist, after a certain point, it was the sheer volume of point crystals that became an issue. One would need carts and carts. Even then one would have to enter the boss rooms with said carts to bring the point crystals out.

By the time a person got strong enough to just one shot the bosses and have an entourage pulling carts, it just wasn’t worthwhile. If I had a way to cash in points anywhere, then it would be an insane grind. Get a team of four people, and then dodge and activate the trap on this floor, over and over. Cash in the points on the spot and become insanely rich.

I hadn’t found any limit on the spawners, but I hadn’t really tested them. I would just move on rather than fighting the monsters pointlessly or disable them. Still, it was a possible way to grind up the points at an insane rate of speed if I had a way to carry or cash in all the points.

While my stats were good, they weren’t good enough in my mind. I needed more to easily be able to clear these towers. Once I cleared this one, I would clear the others and rake in the meta-points. Even if they were limited in some way, I didn’t mind. Once I got the first one, I would be quite happy.

With the monsters dead from the trap, I put the golden key rod into the doorway for the boss room. It swung open and I noted the four spawners, the energy traps around the outside, and the null skill flooring in the middle portions. I maneuvered quickly through the energy trap by the doorway and by the time I cleared it, the Super Cat had spawned along with four lesser cat monsters.

Air Burst. I used the skill to quickly move in on the monster and it leapt back onto the large area of null skill flooring. Annoying, but not unexpected. The monsters didn’t use skills while on this type of floor either, so I could close the distance without worrying about getting burned up.

The Super Cat dodged to the center of the room launched fire at me, I dodged out of the way and pursued it. The problem was I couldn’t get close to the boss and use my skills at the same time. This was going to be another hard fight.