Chương 231: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-One

Adam's mind was pulled towards the centre of Interim Island, where the night dissolved into day and the large glass tower pierced into the sky above, the top vanishing within the clouds. Once more it was like he viewed the world from the perspective of a drone. It pushed through the glass doorway that had formed in the side of the tower, and suddenly the surroundings were like those of stage one. A circular arena with an apple tree in the middle.

It was impossible to see what exactly he'd encounter on the first floor, but the air was hazy with potential energy. Anything can happen, basically, Adam thought. The energy dissipated and left behind were three doors. Bronze, silver, and gold. Each had a number written in numerals, denoting how many floors they'd move the player up the tower. Unsaid of course was that they also denoted the difficulty of what awaited at the other end.

Adam was suddenly turned around to where a door was barely visible in the side of the large apple tree. A secret passage? I wonder where it leads. I didn't think there were any secrets in the tower though. The perspective moved up through the next floor, which was a replica of the goblin village. Once more the air was hazy with energy. He continued up through the floors of the tower, each of which mirrored the stages he'd already traversed in their themes.

When he reached the fifth floor, the area was filled with narrow tunnels, and hidden down one of the paths behind a false wall, which was opened by pressing on a statue's eye, was a chest. The Tome Keeper said to avoid the chests, but he wasn't allowed to say why, Adam recalled from his past conversation with the Absolute. On the seventh floor the setting was like the deck of a large airship and after the hazy energy vanished, there was a pedestal with a hovering blank slate above it.

Adam knew that normally something would be written on it and that this was how players could determine the fate of the linked tower, so long as the linked player hadn't beaten the seventh floor before them. He continued up again until coming to the tenth floor, where every surface was a mirror, giving a trippy and disorienting view. Hidden within the space was a chest also made of mirrors. I guess there will be a chest on every fifth floor. I won't go out of my way to grab them though.

Given that each floor reflected past challenges and themes of previous stages, Adam was already considering which to avoid. Although it was technically the safest choice to take one stage at a time, it meant more overall challenges and more chances to encounter troubling foes, even if the difficulty level was lower. It also put the player at the mercy of whoever was linked to their tower. Maybe I should move up two floors at a time. Although I do want to see what happens with the door in the apple tree.

The floors past ten all showed unfamiliar themes and Adam had no idea what the challenges would be there, but he guessed that most players who survived would realise that the Tower of Mirrors also reflected future stages. If everyone came together to share what they'd seen past the tenth floor, then they'd have a good idea of what to expect in the future. I'll need to skip the eleventh floor, Adam decided, since it was entirely underwater.

The twelfth floor showed a dense jungle, the thirteenth was an ice-covered lake with distant snow-capped mountains, and the fourteenth was a medieval sewer tunnel. Once the energy vanished from the sewer tunnel, another pedestal appeared. This was the threshold where the player's linked tower would lose the bottom seven floors, but there was apparently another voting mechanic if they survived, or so Adam assumed. The fifteenth floor was a gothic Victorian-era city covered in darkness.

In one of the shadowy alleyways of the dark floor was a black chest that blended in completely. There was also a hidden doorway of shadow revealed once the hazy energy dispersed and the three doors appeared. Maybe it's similar to the apple tree door? It may be possible to go down floors, but if I go down below the first floor, where would I end up? Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Adam could see some sense in going down one floor in order to set up better forward skips, if someone wanted to avoid specific floors without needing to skip three floors at a time, but going to 'floor zero' seemed like it would travel outside the bounds of the stages. Floor sixteen was a rotten forest filled with enormous mushrooms and rust-orange hills of decayed matter. The following floor reflected the stage of Avaricia, which Beck had called a paranoia-inducing nightmare.

It was almost entirely made of gold and seemed to be a city of greed. The eighteenth floor showed a quaint village where everything was made of wood, even the earth, stones, and grass. This is the place with the puppets that are part of the Keening's choir, Adam realised, recalling Beck's past comment. He'd said they were scarier than the Voidspawn, which didn't bode well. Floor nineteen was a disturbing place where everything was made of living tissue and the walls had mouths and eyes.

Emelia had called the stage the ' Flesh Prison', which sounded like something cooked up by the Tome Keeper and Flayed Lady, though she hadn't really said much other than to do whatever he could to reach the end. The twentieth floor was an obsidian space where the black volcanic glass reflected galaxies that all seemed to be blinking like eyes. Like with floor five, ten, and fifteen, there was a hidden chest in here, but there wasn't a hidden door like with floor one and fifteen.

Maybe the door on floor fifteen is something else then? The last floor came next, and everything here was made of organically-shaped bone that seemed to be vibrating. Once the hazy energy within dissipated, a single door remained, glowing an angry red colour. Adam's perspective moved through the door and came out to a platform made of glass that was suspended within the clouds themselves at the very top of the tower.

Just like every floor below, he couldn't actually see what the enemy was, but he knew from Beck and Emelia that it was the same boss every time. A bizarre chimera of many different animals and which actively changed shape as it fought. As the vision of stage ten drew to a close, Adam saw a quick flash of three other players.

A pale and vampire-like woman with blonde hair, glowing red eyes, and a diadem of blood on her head; a bald man with gills, sickly-blue skin, and a piscine appearance; and Sarah Ayala, who he'd been grouped with in stage six. < < Orb of Insight Deactivated > >"I'm fucked," Adam said as he emerged from the vision of the orb.

"It didn't feel very enlightening," Kat remarked with a frown.

"I never saw any chests last time I went through," Beck muttered.

"And I wonder what those hidden doorways do. Do you think we can go to floor zero?"

"If so, what would it be?" Adam replied.

"Perhaps it is a stage set before the Trials?" Kat guessed. Beck's eyes gleamed.

"I wonder what reward there would be for beating such a floor." Adam frowned.

"It could be a trap."

"Indeed," his friend agreed.

"I think the doors are distractions, same with the chests. We only have a set amount of turns to reach floor twenty-one, so wasting time is going to get you killed. Anyway, like I mentioned during my amazing lecture in the tavern earlier, you should find a mix of one- and two-floor skips that suits you, jumping over floors that mirror stages you had trouble with. And no matter what, you've gotta skip floor nineteen, seventeen too if possible."

"Why?" Kat pressed.

"You did not explain the reason earlier, and from the visions of the orb, they just seemed like the rest of the floors." Beck sighed.

"Seventeen is filled with mimics. As in, everything is a goddamn mimic. Nineteen is…" The silence stretched for a few seconds before Beck took a deep breath and said, "Stage nineteen, lovingly named 'Flesh Prison', is a psychedelic shitshow that forces you to kill literally everything you see, because if you trust anyone except yourself, you will die. I can't explain it better than that, but I will just say that it's the main reason why there were only four people left to reach stage twenty-one in my last run.

And those who survive that far are permanently altered. A lot of the people that didn't clear stage twenty died by their own hands, disgusted with what they'd done to clear nineteen." Adam was starting to understand why Emelia hadn't wanted to talk about it.

"Even if floor nineteen in the Tower of Mirrors is a poor facsimile, you shouldn't risk it. Last time I didn't know and just happened to skip over it. It probably made the difference for why I survived," Beck said with a full-body shudder. Emelia expressed an inability to keep looping, because it was too much. I wonder just how much of that came from the Flesh Prison stage.

If it's as damaging to the mind as Beck makes it seem, it likely also explains why time-loopers who have looped several times end up completely fucked up. Mórrígan was a total nutjob after all. Even Emelia had signs of something not being quite right.

"I doubt I will get that far," Adam remarked.

"I'm up against a Flayed Lady worshipper, a Nwetrou worshipper, and someone from my stage six who has a very unfavourable opinion of me."

"My opponents seemed normal," Kat said.

"They're not opponents," Beck scolded her.

"You can't beat the boss if they're dead." She didn't reply, but Adam knew she'd listen to Beck.

"Well, mine seem to be," Adam said.

"Even if Sarah will agree to work with me, the two others are clearly going to be hostile."

"It could be worse," Beck said with a grin.

"All of them could be Nwetrou worshippers like in my group." Kat and Adam paused to look at the old guy, both worried for his safety. Beck waved a hand dismissively.

"You two can't solo the boss because you've never fought it, but don't worry about me. I'll have you know I defeated a time-looper by myself with nothing but my brain and a lot of traps. Dealing with three fish boys won't even make me break a sweat and the chimera will be dead before it can touch me."

"Let's see if we can get rid of any of them in the tavern," Adam replied.

"We have two days, so we can eliminate two players each." Kat hummed.

"I will evolve another weapon and obtain the ' Challenge Stone' as well."

"Let's hope they're not all blocking us," Beck remarked. Then he looked at Adam.

"Anyway, there was something I'd like to try with your new build."

"What's that?" Adam asked.

"I'd like you to toss me."