Chương 239: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Nine

Shit. Hercal had gone up three floors in one turn. It was possible he could take down a Voidspawn with his speed build, although it wasn't a guarantee he would even encounter one, though the challenge was sure to be immense. But with such a massive early lead, Adam immediately regretted having gone for the secret door, even though he was astounded to be back in the real world. No, this can't be the real world.

As Adam looked around at the other people, none of whom were moving or saying anything, he saw that their eyes were wide open and their mouths were left agape as they stared into nothingness. < < Floor 0 Challenge > > < Obtain the Mask of Mirrors > Immediately those open eyes and mouths filled with black smoke, just like the magic possessed by the cubes. Then they all turned to look at him, the smoke spilling out of them like a physical thing.

Adam didn't stick around to find out what would happen, tossing his spear through the large façade window and jumping out onto the street in front of Jameson's Bakery. Cars had been parked in the middle of the road and the occupants within were crawling out through smashed windshields and side windows like they were possessed, staring at Adam with their smoke-filled eyes and mouths.

He sprinted towards the parking lot where he'd left his car, but the moment he left the area near the bakery, all the details became washed-out and bland, the colours melting into grey and the buildings turning into simple blocks. Everything not visible from within the bakery was the same featureless grey, as though Adam's cube had taken a 360-degree screenshot from within and knew nothing of the rest of his world. Even the light of the morning sun did not touch the area beyond.

Adam turned left from the street into the parking lot, which was still there, even though it lay outside the detailed part of the floor, but his shitty old truck was just a rectangular brick. All the other cars and bikes were the same. He fumbled for Captain Fallow's compass, but when he asked it to show him the way to the mask, it just spun in circles. It's called the 'Mask of Mirrors', so maybe I need to find a mirror or reflection somewhere?

Adam ran back to the street to return to the bakery, since there might be a mirror hidden somewhere within the detailed part of the floor. He drew to an abrupt halt when he saw the two dozen people shambling and crawling towards him, while arms formed of smoke leeched out from their eye sockets and mouths, grasping at nothing.

"What are those things?" he asked his cube. His cube didn't respond. Because it wasn't there. Adam hefted his spear and then threw it at the nearest one, a crawling woman with her head twisted the wrong way around and one of the three black smoke hands protruding from her body clawing at the asphalt. Her body exploded like a balloon when his spear and its four clones struck simultaneously, but that only released the black smoke from within her.

The other shambling and crawling people paused when they saw the explosion, but then they started to bulge and inflate, before all of them popped as well, releasing the black smoke that lived inside them. Shit. Adam threw another spear at the first half-formed smoke creature that had emerged from the woman, but when his weapon struck, it simply bounced off. He fired his explosive crossbow bolt from his bracer, and though it lit up its body, this too was shrugged off.

Instead of trying to fight back against them, Adam ran towards the bakery they crowded in front of, using his spring boots as he drew near to leap above them all. When he landed by the broken window, he quickly picked up a shard of glass to find his reflection, but all of the shards and the intact part of the window were locked into the reflections of what they'd shown on the day Adam and everyone else was abducted by the cubes, showing no reflection of what they actually saw now.

Adam abandoned the window and went over to one of the cars, wrenching on the side mirror, but this too showed only a reflection of the past. He turned back towards the smoke creatures, and realised they'd been busy combining into one, becoming a centipede-like monstrosity of black smoke, their hundreds of arms grasping at the ground, the air, and each other. Adam used his scattershot skill and lucky charm to hit the centipede with forty-one obsidian darts.

All of them bounced off, but he only cared about their ability to power up his following attack. When he threw his spear, it flew with seven times its original speed and inflicted ten times the damage, but the smoke centipede only staggered back, clearly taking no damage. Is it a Voidspawn?

Adam had only encountered one, but they could take endless shapes, and the one before him was surely absurd enough to match, although it wasn't fast nor intelligent, traits that Voidspawn were supposed to have, on top of their freakish hivemind ability to learn and counter any attack they saw. They also weren't meant to be impervious to damage, though harming them was supposed to be difficult, mainly because of how quick they were.

Maybe I'm not meant to defeat it, he considered, hopping up onto the car he stood next to. Adam looked around, trying to figure out if there was some other trick to the floor. He looked back down at the car he was standing on. Before the shambling smoke centipede could figure out how to properly use its body, Adam slipped through the broken windshield and into the driver seat. The key was still in the ignition and when he turned it, the engine roared to life. It works! There was only one place he could think to go.

Home. Adam sped up, swerving around the other cars that had been abandoned on the road, quickly leaving the detailed part of the floor behind. Unlike floor one, this one seemed to just go on and on, although it was hard to be completely sure about where exactly he was. Even the compass couldn't tell him, since even the simplest commands didn't work. Still, he managed to find his bearings when he saw a tall rectangular block that reached above the nearby buildings.

In the real world, it would have been the city's iconic water tower. He aimed his car for it, avoiding the blocks on the road that were substitutions for cars and bikes. When he rounded an intersection, he spared a glance back the way he'd come, looking out the smashed side window. The smoke centipede had grown in his absence, and now it reached above the one- and two-storey buildings around it. Bet that's my floor timer.

It still wasn't fast when it moved, but with its arms now five times as long as before, the slow movements covered a lot more ground. If it kept growing, he wouldn't be able to outrun it, even with a car. Adam pressed the pedal to the floor, shooting the car down the road to his apartment, and only narrowly avoiding the other 'cars' as he flew past. Once he reached his apartment block, he swung the car into the parking lot and jumped out, running towards the building.

He was glad to see that his guess had been right about where to go, because unlike all the other grey blocks, there was actually a door right where it would have been in the real world. Adam didn't waste any time and pulled it open, running up the stairs and barging through the door to his apartment on the third floor. Inside, everything was turned into blocks, which looked bizarre, but he ignored it and went into the bathroom.

The mirror there was unlike the others he'd seen in the detailed part of the stage, because this one actually reflected him. What was more, in his reflection he was wearing a mask that bounced back the light strangely. Adam reached up to his own face, but couldn't feel it. So, he reached for the mirror instead. Just then, enormous black smoke-formed hands grasped the building and shook it, before peeling off the roof and ceiling.

Adam was knocked back into the stack of blocks that had once been the toilet, but he quickly lunged for the mirror and grabbed the mask of his reflection. < < Secret Relic Obtained > > < Mirror Mask (Legendary) — Copy and perform any Skill or Spell you have seen. 1-day cooldown > Adam immediately equipped it, just as the gigantic smoke centipede reached its many enormous arms down to grab him within the bathroom.

The smoke creature exploded, vanishing from existence, and Adam blinked, only to find himself returned to the apple tree on floor one, his hand on its bark. He reached up to touch his face, feeling the cold glass of the mask. This might be the most powerful relic I've come across so far. Its possibilities are literally endless. [Please select a door to continue your climb up the tower.] This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Adam turned around and saw that the three doors were still there. I actually got the trump card I need to deal with Hercal, but I need to take risks to catch up. He went through the golden door, and with an upwards pull of his body, he found himself standing at the bottom of the Elphin Sanctuary's ritual site. < < Tower Overview > > < Player Adam has reached Floor 4 > < Player Hercal of the Abyss has reached Floor 7 > He moved up three floors again!?

If he hadn't already fought a Voidspawn, Hercal was all but guaranteed to run into one now. Adam couldn't worry too much about it. He needed to beat his own floor first. < < Floor 4 Challenge > > < Defeat the Forlorn Aristocrat > Adam used his spring boots to jump out of the hole in the ground. Belamouranthe, her mother the queen, and all of the Elphin fighters were missing. It was just him against the boss, and he didn't have to search long to find him.

Striding down the main thoroughfare of the forest city was the aristocrat, but as he walked, his body elongated and glitched weirdly, as though unsure if his legs should be one or four metres long, and at the same time, his body was turning reflective like an oil slick, with mouths appearing randomly all over his body. The mouths opened to hum, yell, sing, talk, scream, and babble. What the fuck.

< < Floor 4 Challenge Updated > > < Defeat the Voidspawn > Adam clenched his spear and immediately activated his lucky charm and barrage coat, then he lifted the spear to aim its scattershot skill. In the same moment, the twisted and glitchy aristocrat Voidspawn threw itself forward, both legs and one arm used to run across the moss and stone ground in an unsettlingly unnatural way. It doesn't know how to use a human body, Adam realised as he fired the over 700 obsidian darts of his scattershot barrage.

The Voidspawn stopped suddenly to pirouette on the arm being used as a leg, while its actual legs and other arm spun around. Adam concentrated to make sure the darts all struck, even though the absurd movements of the boss made it hard to keep his focus. The moment the darts were all about a metre from hitting, the aristocrat leapt skywards on an arced trajectory towards Adam, pushing its body to such a sudden acceleration that audible cracks could be heard.

Fortunately, the lucky charm was not so easily countered, and all of the darts hunted the Voidspawn up into the air, striking it mostly in the back and providing Adam with the power-up he needed. With a backwards leap of his spring boots, Adam flew back towards the ritual site's hole, though he would easily clear it. The Voidspawn landed where he'd stood while Adam took aim with his spear mid-air.

It pulled its rapier from the belt on its twisted body, but before it could figure out how to use the weapon, Adam threw his spear. Using this move against an actual foe was glorious. The air screamed as the spear left his hand, crossing the short distance between himself and the Voidspawn like a mach-13 missile and releasing a sonic boom so potent it made the stone towers of the city sway like trees in the wind. A loud high-pitch whine filled his head.

The backlash from just being near the powerful attack was no joke. Something passed by Adam's right ear as he was falling back down, ruffling his hair but missing him. However, his eyes were locked on what was left of the Voidspawn.

The spear had hit it centre mass, but instead of exploding on impact from the sheer force and damage, the aftermath made it obvious that the Voidspawn's body was highly elastic, because it had been dragged across the ground before being torn apart, its smeared remains measuring at least ten metres in length. The rest of its body had simply ceased to exist. Adam landed from his leap in a tumble, quickly getting to his feet and running over to the remains of the Voidspawn. [You have cleared the floor 4 challenge. Please select a door to continue your climb up the tower.] The three doors appeared atop of the Voidspawn's smeared remains. In the spot where it had stood was a tiny black stone. Adam stooped to pick it up. < < Voidspawn Core Obtained > > Another currency? Beck hadn't mentioned it, so he likely hadn't obtained one himself, and Emelia had made it clear she avoided the Voidspawn as much as she could. Adam wondered if he would find yet another special vendor for this when he returned to Interim Island.

He looked over at the doors. Which one should I pick? Going for another golden door is tempting fate, and if Hercal beats floor seven, I'll get hit with a punishment of some kind, regardless of what door I go for. It was doubtful that Hercal would keep picking the golden gate himself every time. If he survived, he would likely stick to the silver doors since he had such a massive lead.

As Adam thought about what he'd pick, he recalled how something had flown past his ear and turned around to look if he could see it. That was when he noticed the enormous tree that stood behind the ritual site. It was split in half down the middle, as though a giant axe had chopped most of the way through it. The two collapsed halves had utterly destroyed the parts of the city and its walls they had landed atop.

He'd completely failed to notice it, and the sound it must've made had been deafened by the tinnitus whine in his ears. Is that…? He remembered how the Voidspawn had pulled the rapier from its belt. Don't tell me it managed to throw its own weapon when I killed it… He couldn't believe just how much power must've been behind the throw to destroy the enormous tree like that. Voidspawn are fucking scary… Yeah, I'm definitely not picking the golden door.

However, before Adam could select the silver door, an announcement rolled in, locking Adam in place as all of his joints seized up. < < Linked Tower Verdict > > < Player Hercal of the Abyss has made a Verdict affecting your Tower > Ah shit, here we go. [Hercal of the Abyss has chosen that you will ascend 3 floors,] Adam's cube announced. Does that mean what I think it means?

Adam managed to wonder, just before he felt a pull on his stomach and found himself standing atop the deck of the cloud ship he'd used in stage seven. < < Tower Overview > > < Player Adam has reached Floor 7 > < Player Hercal of the Abyss has reached Floor 9 > Ahead of him was a deeply familiar island. It crumbled away as the slug dragon atop it bucked and writhed, rapidly transforming into a gigantic kraken monstrosity. < < Floor 7 Challenge > > < Defeat the Feral Cloud Leviathan > Adam froze.

He and Lasse had feared this exact thing, and knowing that it was possible to force another player through a golden door with floor seven's 'verdict' made Adam certain that Nwetrou had carefully planned for Hercal to set up this entire scenario. But the Flayed Lady must've helped. She wants me to die so I can go back to the start and worship her in the altar again, as though I'm a puppy that'll return to its abusive owner. Adam ran forward and hopped onto the railing at the bow of the Hippogriff.

He needed to wait for his cooldowns to wear off, but since he wasn't facing another Voidspawn and had encountered this enemy before, he already had an idea of what to do. And with the power of the mirror mask, I have the perfect skill to deal with this. Beck had told him that the way turns worked in the Tower of Mirrors was kind of odd, because everyone always finished their turns at the same time.

Floors would get progressively harder the more time spent within, to the point where at the twenty-minute mark, any floor would have been made so difficult that no player could hope to beat them, let alone survive. The actual time that each turn took all depended on who finished last, so it was possible to sandbag and drag out the turns by being slow, in an effort to sabotage everyone else, but Beck assured him only Nwetrou and the Flayed Lady had followers with such a lack of self-preservation to actually do that.

Which doesn't help us in the slightest, since we're both up against them. He hurried to the stern of the ship and grabbed the wheel, steering it away from the collision course with the leviathan.

"Tell me when my scattershot and barrage coat are off cooldown," he told his cube. [Understood.] After spinning the ship all the way around, Adam ensured that the Hippogriff continued in the opposite direction of the boss, before getting back onto the railing and beginning his barrage of projectiles.

He started off with his crossbow bracer, firing five explosive bolts at the leviathan, which in turn boosted Adam's throwing speed, penetration, and accuracy by 50%, and his damage by 125%, aiding him in landing his spears next, doubling the boost. The strategy worked to keep his sets of five spears always hitting the leviathan, even as his airship pulled away, because every successful hit meant his projectile's speed and effective range went up.

Of course, the Cloud Leviathan did not lay dormant for long, and soon it swam through the air to chase him down, its countless black tentacles pulling and tearing at nearby islands, while its body grew with everything it digested. But it was different from when he and Lasse had actually faced it, because it was growing at an accelerated rate. Adam kept piling on the hits until his scattershot was ready, then he used that along with his lucky charm to get nine hits in.

The scattershot skill was on a ten-minute cooldown, but his crossbow bracer and lucky charm were both on a two-minute cooldown, which allowed him to use them liberally. The barrage master's coat had a thirty-minute cooldown, but it was down to twenty minutes left since he'd used it on the Voidspawn. It'll be a close thing.

The Hippogriff was fast, much faster than other airships in the Floating Sea, and it was fortunate that the Tower of Mirrors had chosen to mimic his encounter with the leviathan with as much accuracy as possible, because otherwise the boss would already have caught up to him. Still, he couldn't outpace it forever, and it was growing so fast that soon it was the only thing he saw when he looked behind his airship.

Adam knew he couldn't outpace it by continuing to go in a straight line, so he let up his barrage and dove the Hippogriff down towards the bottom of the Floating Sea, navigating around floating islands so they'd be obstacles in the way of the pursuing leviathan. After twenty minutes of nonstop attacks, he had managed over 450 strikes, which would make his boost to projectile speed nearly seventy times faster, and the damage over a hundred times more.

Certainly, each spear was flying so fast he might as well have been using the blink ring, while the hits exploded arms off of the leviathan's body, though they did nothing to slow it down and new arms grew to replace every single one he destroyed. Still, he had prepared as well as he could. Now he just needed to hold out until the barrage coat was ready again. If only the relic renewal stone worked on epic rarity, then I wouldn't have to tempt fate this much.

As the bottom of the sea came up to meet him, he saw that the parasites were gone, leaving behind an eerily smooth surface below the clouds. The Feral Cloud Leviathan took up the entire sky above him, and he was tempted to use his mask prematurely, but then the cube announced that the barrage master's coat was ready. Adam stared defiantly up against the darkness of the tainted leviathan that blotted out the world above. He activated his barrage coat, followed by his lucky charm and his scattershot skill.

As 757 darts filled the air, flying with absurd speed, Adam reacted faster than he'd thought himself possible, triggering his mirror mask as he threw a spear. The skill he copied and performed was one he'd seen Heiner use in the last stage. First against the Capgras Demon and then against the forlorn soldiers outside the old church. The over seven-hundred darts were pulled back into the crackling ' God Spear' as it flew from the bottom of the world and up to the all-encompassing leviathan.

He felt like Zeus fighting back against the titans. The lightning bolt spear made deceptively little sound as it zipped up through the clouds and struck the leviathan. Unlike when Heiner had used the skill, this time it was truly made to shine. Lightning shot outward from the impact, which itself caused a massive explosion that deleted a chunk of the leviathan's body bigger than even the largest islands that floated in the sea of gold. Then came the sound.

It shook Adam and made his cloud ship quaver and flicker, as though the vibrations alone could destroy it. It was like the entire world above him exploded all at once, while smaller thunderclaps continued non-stop even long after the lightning had dissipated. Island-sized chunks of dark flesh and torn limbs fell down towards the bottom of the world as Adam watched the magnificence of his destructive power. Then those chunks and limbs sprouted wings, themselves turning into feral dragons.

Adam let out a deep and withering laugh.

"The Trials are truly unfair," he muttered. His airship was crushed under the weight of hundreds of spontaneously-formed feral slug dragons, each carrying the affliction aura of the dragon they had originated from. Adam blasted apart as many of the monsters as he could, while the obsidian rot emanating from them turned his skin to dry paper that broke off with the barest of movements.

As his entire left side crumbled away and he fell onto his back, four of the enormous dragons landed on him, crushing the remnants of his body into ash.