Chương 32: “Impawsible Odds (1)”

Smack! The flat of the spear came down hard against the stone floor, and the centipede beneath it stopped moving. Celestia stared at the flattened insect for a moment. Its legs were twitching, curling inward. She picked it up with trembling fingers. It was roughly the length of her index finger. Dark brown, segmented, and glistening faintly with fluids. She put it in her mouth and bit down. Crunch.

The exoskeleton cracked between her teeth, and the texture and taste was so profoundly separate from her life that her body's first instinct was to vomit it out. But she forced herself to quickly swallow it. She reached for her scabbard and took a small, careful sip of water, just enough to wash the taste from her mouth. Celestia set the spear across her lap and leaned her back against the wall and closed her eyes. Sleep wouldn't come.

She had noticed this pattern forming over the past few days, or what she assumed were days. Her body was exhausted beyond anything she had ever experienced, but her mind had energy from sleeping too much. It hovered in a cruel middle ground, too drained to think clearly and too wired to rest. So she did the next best thing. Meditation.

She had roughly understood the concept, an article about mindfulness she'd skimmed on a flight, and the many webnovels she had read about characters doing it to breakthrough to the next level, or simply just a form of training. When exhaustion eventually allowed her to sleep, she would lie on the floor and sleep. And when she woke again, with no idea whether minutes or hours had passed, she meditated again.

And when the gnawing in her stomach became unbearable, she dragged herself across the floor to find another insect, and crushed it with the flat of her spear. Smack! Swallow. Sip. Meditate. Sleep, repeating this same routine whenever her body needed to. Even when the light from the barred window changed, she stopped counting. The notches on her dress-armor went unupdated; the mental effort of tracking time was a luxury her body could no longer afford. Then, somewhere along this cycle, the hunger disappeared.

Was this her body reaching its limits? Even so, she still continued in order to survive, through the monotony that was its own kind of torture.

'Could this be what Paimon felt?' A random thought suddenly surfaced. The isolation and helplessness… What kind of horrors did she face to keep surviving?

'When I get out of here,' she thought,'I should prepare a feast for Paimon.' And then, without warning, a sound cut through the silence. A clear chime rang through her head. [Floor 1 - Cleared]'Huh? What?' Celestia blinked at the notification in her vision. She had survived. But before the relief could fully set in her body, a second notification appeared. [Proceed to the next floor by touching the checkpoint.] Celestia exhaled as she reached for the scabbard and drank the last of her water.

Then she gripped her spear and planted its butt against the floor. Standing was difficult; her legs shook so violently that the first attempt failed, her knees buckling before she'd gotten halfway up. On the second try, she used the spear as a crutch, levering herself upright inch by inch. She waited for the dizziness to pass, then turned toward the black door. She hadn't been told where it was. Professor Griffin's had never covered the mechanics of floor transitions. But for some reason, she knew.

There was an instinctive awareness that the door was the checkpoint, bypassing logic entirely. She shuffled toward it, one hand on the wall for balance, the spear dragging beside her. When she reached the door, she tried to lean her weight against its surface, expecting the cold resistance of iron. Instead, she fell through. She expected the door to be solid, but instead, she fell forward into whiteness. Her knees hit a smooth, featureless floor.

White in every direction: the ground, the walls, the ceiling, if there even was one. But directly ahead of her, placed on the white floor was a clay jug and several pieces of bread. She could feel her mouth flooding with saliva. From where she was, she could see that the bread was stale and the clay jug looked to only carry clean water. Neither would have warranted a second glance in any other circumstance. But right now, they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

She crawled forward and reached for the nearest piece of bread. Her hands trembled. She brought it to her mouth and stopped herself.

'Slowly.' If she ate too fast, her stomach would reject it. She this after having read far too many novels where characters made exactly this mistake after prolonged starvation. Flooding the stomach with actual food after days of barely anything was a fast track to vomiting everything back up, or worse. She tore off a small piece and dipped it into the jug. The water softened it just enough. She placed it on her tongue and chewed slowly. The taste was unremarkable. Stale bread and lukewarm water.

But she savored it all the same. She waited for a little bit before she tore off another piece. She repeated this process piece by piece and drank small sips of water, giving her body time to acclimate itself to the newfound sustenance. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. The next thing she knew, the bread was gone. All of it. She hadn't meant to eat everything, but her hands continued to move before she even noticed.

Energy trickled back into her body and the trembling in her hands subsided. She was able to think a bit more clearly now, too. She could rest here in the white space, an actual proper rest on a full stomach. But she knew that was a terrible decision. She didn't know what the next trial would be; the Tower had already proven it was different from her judging from the first floor alone. Assuming differently would be foolish. So she used this time of rest to check the Tower's system first.

—Stats: Strength: H | Dexterity: H | Speed: H | Wisdom: F | Aura: H — Special Stats: 1 — Active Skills: 2 — Passive Skills: 3 It was identical to what she'd gotten from breaking that stone in Professor Griffin's class. Same letter grades across the board. But there were a few changes.

'Active and Passive Skills?' She dismissed the Tower's system and brought up her own. * Name: Celestia Von Reingarde Race: Human Elemental Attribute: ክዐ፪ጎረጎፕሃ Synchronization: 12% Story Relevance: 26/100 Stats: Strength: H (71/100) Dexterity: H+ (93/100) Speed: H (98/100) Wisdom: F- (30/100) Aura: H- (15/100) Special Stats: Nobility: S+ (101/100) Active Skills: Noblesse Oblitère (S-Rank) Cooldown: 3 Days Description: Strike infused with Nobility so overwhelming that lesser beings crumble on contact.

Damage scales with rank difference. Plebeians may detonate. Effect: Instantly inflicts massive physical and spiritual damage weighted by hierarchical superiority. Targets may experience fear, humiliation, or sudden existential crisis. Knighthood (S-Rank) Slot Limit: 1 Sir Ozymandias Effect Cooldown: 1 Year Description: A princess bestows the peerage of knighthood as the highest honor. Once sworn, the bond can be invoked as a royal decree made manifest.

Effect: For a brief period, your anointed knight returns to the peak of their prowess; body and spirit restored to their finest state. When the grace ends, the borrowed perfection is reclaimed, leaving the knight heavily spent. Passive Skills: Fatigue Recovery (H) Faint Resistance (H) Concentration (G) * Celestia read the passive skills twice.

'Fatigue Recovery. Faint Resistance. Concentration.' Three passive skills, all earned from refusing to die. Fatigue Recovery and Faint Resistance were self-explanatory, her body had been pushed to collapse and adapted just enough to keep functioning. But Concentration was G-rank., one tier above the others. It was a pleasant surprise. She still didn't know exactly how effective the passive skills were.

Her System displayed them clearly enough, but it offered no quantifiable metrics on what Fatigue Recovery at H-rank actually meant in practice. Did she recover one percent faster? Five? Was it a flat rate or a scaling percentage? Still, in a world like this, passive skills were passive skills. They would eventually compound over time. Every webnovel she had ever read treated them as the backbone of a strong build. Though "easy to earn" was a generous way to describe the process. She had nearly starved to death.

'That's enough rest.' Celestia stood. Her legs were steadier than before, though still far from stable. The transition between floors within the Tower operated on intent. Entering the Tower required touching its surface and willing yourself inside. Moving between floors within a rest area like this worked the same way, minus the physical contact. You stated your intention, and the Tower moved you. Thinking it or saying it aloud made no difference.

"I want to move up." And before she knew it, she was in a different place. A corridor stretched before her. It was wide, perhaps about four to five meters, enough room that she could swing her spear in a full horizontal arc without the blade touching either wall. Torches lined the walls that gave visibility to the path ahead. And when she turned around, she found that there was no wall behind her. The corridor extended in both directions, forward and backward with no visible end in either.

The torchlight continued into the distance until the flames became indistinguishable from pinpricks, and then vanished entirely. It was as though she had been dropped into the middle of an infinitely long hallway. A system window materialized. [Floor 2] Time Ratio: 48: 1 There are walls that rise to test the traveler.

Some are broken through and others are walked around; this is for those who have never met a wall at all, whose paths were cleared before they took their first step, the question remains: what will you do when the road no longer clears for you? Confront the obstacles, or evade them. Reach the end. We look forward to your endeavors and wish for your success. The Tower's first trial had been about endurance, about surviving in the absence of nearly everything.

It almost felt like the Tower was looking at her previous life. After all, she never had to face any obstacles because of her family's wealth; it had carved a path so wide that she technically never needed to do anything in life. And just like Floor 1, there was a time dilation, though it didn't directly mention if it were seconds, minutes, or hours. She adjusted her grip on the spear and faced forward. The corridor stretched endlessly ahead, torch after torch disappearing into the dark.

There was only one way to find out what "obstacles" meant. She stepped forward and her right foot sunk in the ground. The mechanical click that followed was unmistakable. Fweeee. Her body reacted before her brain caught up. Something thin and fast cut through the space where her skull had been a fraction of a second earlier. She felt the displaced air against her cheek, heard the hiss of the projectile passing her ear, and then a sharp, hot sting bloomed along the top of her right ear.

The arrow continued to fly behind her. Celestia stood frozen, her foot still on the ground with her head tilted at an angle. A thin line of warmth trickled down the side of her ear. The arrow had grazed the cartilage, shaving off a sliver of flesh. She opened the Tower's trial window and reread the scripture-like prose.

'Why,' she thought,'could it not just say "traps"?'