HAPPY NEW YEAR! Well, it's still the Eve here but a lot of you are probably in the future XD
Thank you all for staying with me, and I hope you'll continue reading throughout 2014. I feel like I made a lot of progress this year, and hopefully I'll continue to do so to bring you guys better stories each time.
Chapter 27: Tower & Trial
The tower's exterior may have looked as if it were on the verge of collapse, but the inside was much more stable. The only indication of it being the same building was the thin staircase sticking out from the wall that cut off at the next floor, which was just as–if not more–aged as the outside. Light streamed in from the opening at the top of the stairs, but the room was otherwise dark as there were no torches or windows to let the sun in.
"Hold up", Kuroko heard from his right, and he recognized the voice as Aomine's before a floating lantern appeared and lit a circle around him. The skill hadn't been used much, judging by how small of a radius the light covered. Then a slightly brighter light with a doubly larger perimeter appeared, and after letting his eyes adjust to it, Kuroko saw the source floating around Kise. Momoi sighed because why do you two always have to one-up each other in everything? Now they were bickering and someone had definitely just thrown a punch.
The two only stopped when Kuroko cast a spell that easily lit the entire room, though the Cleric was too busy examining the stairwell with the rest of their guild to pay attention to their sulking. An invisible barrier hindered upward progress, meaning there was still an objective they had to complete on the base floor.
They split up to search the area, and it didn't take long before someone noticed a small creature scuttling across the ground.
Whatever it was, it was a quick little bastard.
After several failed attempts of killing the creature, because Aomine and Kise kept getting in each other's way, Aomine got the upper hand and cut it with his sword. "HAH!" he shouted, before twisting around for another attack to finish it off.
{Aomine has died}
"Did Aominecchi just die…? DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT? AOMINECCHI JUST DIED."
Ignoring Kise, Kuroko turned to the rest of his guild to inform, "I cannot cast Resurrect here because of a spell restriction."
On the ground was the wounded creature, an imp of some sort that snarled and tried to crawl away. Taking it in hand, Midorima sighed and said disdainfully, "Purple status indicator." After being caught and handled, the imp stopped resisting and sat compliantly in his palm.
Always one to be uninformed of in-game terminology, Kise had to ask, "What color is purple?"
Murasakibara turned and commented, "I'm purple."
"Well, yeah you are but that's not what I meant! I mean the status indicator!"
"It means it's a quest monster–a temporary familiar," Momoi supplied, watching as Midorima handed the imp to Kuroko. In a few seconds, it was fully healed and ready to scamper around the blue-haired man's forearm.
{Level 1/9 Cleared}
When Momoi got closer to get a better look at it, it ended up taking a shine to her and perched happily on her shoulder. It was hard not to be a little freaked out as the creature was kinda creepy and had unpleasantly dry skin texture, but she endured and made her way up the now-accessible stairs. At the middle, the bottom of the steps began to crumble, forcing the group to run up the stairs or possibly be trapped on the base floor and fail the quest. A twenty or thirty meter distance like the one from the ground to the next floor would be nothing for them to climb, but another boundary might appear by then and they didn't want to take their chances.
At the second floor, Aomine was revived.
Of course he was mercilessly teased with, "Oh, I didn't even notice you died," and, "Hmm? You we're gone? No wonder it was so quiet," but the affectionate taunts stopped when large monsters began to spawn from the walls. In total, there were six of them; one for each member of the guild.
The imp on Momoi's shoulder began to screech and bury itself under her hair. The beasts zeroed in on the sound and began to stalk toward it, snapping their jaws open and showing off several rows of teeth. Murasakibara struck first, dealing a heavy blow to the neck of the nearest one and producing a heavy clang–their skin was hard like iron.
[-692 HP, Denizen of the Tower: {119,308/120,000}]
"Shit! These things are strong," Aomine grunted, knocking one into the wall and immediately stopping another from trying to tearing into Momoi's back. The Spy was getting the worst of it as the monster's target was most likely the imp, and though leading them away would work for a few seconds, every time the imp made a sound, they were aggroed again.
"They have a weak spot on their stomachs!" Kise yelled, drawing one of the denizens away from Momoi and waiting for it to jump at him so he'd have a better angle at it. While casting an AOE, Kuroko caught sight of a small patch of skin there, lighter in color than the rest and screaming HIT ME I'M OPEN.
Having chosen Earth as an element, Murasakibara could continuously use a skill called Stalagmite which, like many other names of skills in the game, should be rather self-explanatory unless you happen not to know what a stalagmite is and should that be so, I suggest you search it up. Kuroko had similar attack spells on larger scales and put them to work as well, but he had difficulties as the monster he was fighting could claw at him faster than he could cast, and he ended up losing almost all his HP before it was drawn away by one of Midorima's arrows. He took half a moment to breathe a sigh of relief before casting a mass-healing spell and then getting right back to work.
While Kise would've preferred copying Kuroko's skills as they were stronger, he chose to take up Stalagmite into his arsenal as they couldn't afford to have another support member that wasn't quickly drawing the beasts away from the imp. Most likely they'd fail the quest if the familiar died, so keeping it safe was the main priority; meaning keeping Momoi away from monsters was of utmost importance as it wouldn't detach itself from her shoulder. She couldn't get close to the monsters, so she mostly threw throwing knives or stars at them whenever she wasn't running away.
The battle got much easier and faster once the first monster was killed. It only took about another minute of vigilance before the next died, and another after that, so before long all of them were dead on the ground or reverted back to pixels. After the final Denizen of the Tower died, an item shaped like a vial dropped. Kise grabbed it and they moved on quickly to avoid the stairs collapsing before they could get to the next stage.
{Level 2/9 Cleared}
{You are now on Level 3}
Despite being on a higher story, the third stage was actually much easier than the last. This one featured one gigantic beast that was similar but not quite identical to the previous foes. This one was about three times bigger and stood on its hind legs, wearing armored plates and swinging around a wooden club. It was guarding a small fountain in the middle of the room, and before anyone could do anything stupid, Momoi quickly proposed that they were to fill the vial.
As he was one of the fastest, Aomine took up the job of distracting the monster. It didn't come after him even though he was within the average aggro range, and even when he stepped right next to it, so he stabbed it and ran–this time finally getting the reaction they were hoping for. They wouldn't be able to kill it as the insane amount of DEF it had rendered all attacks to one or two damage points. Aomine had been hit only once and it felled his HP down to 77%, so Kise, Midorima, and Kuroko who all had effective ranged skills played a sort of monkey in the middle with it, attacking back and forth so as to switch its mark and avoid being mauled.
They finished filling the small container and moved on to the next floor.
Level 4 wasn't too bad. It was basically the same as the last, stepped up a couple of notches.
They had to grab an item that was tied around a monster's neck. It was invulnerable, agile, and did a shitload of damage. Midorima was tasked with shooting the item, a circular capsule, off without hitting the beast, but he had to sacrificed himself to keep the aggro off Momoi instead. A similar event occurred when Kise tried adopting his method. Unable to pinpoint where he should aim when his target moved the way it did, he ended up way too close when he fired and had no time to escape being swatted to death.
At one point, Kuroko cast a multi-shot spell and got lucky, tearing the ribbon fastening the capsule to the creature. Unfortunately for him, it triggered the monster's anger-buff and it charged at him, crushing him while the rest of the guild escaped up the stairs; Momoi had to be dragged up by Murasakibara and Aomine as she were crying over leaving Kuroko to die.
{Level 4/9 Cleared}
{You have reached an Intermittent Floor}
Kuroko revived. Momoi rejoiced. Midorima pushed up his glasses.
The capsule which had dropped from the last floor was opened, and inside, the group found a finely grounded powder. Without anything other ideas, they pulled out the vial and poured the powder into it, watching as the liquid began to bubble and glow neon yellow and green. The imp, which they had forgotten about for the most part, jumped over to Midorima who'd been handling the items. It grabbed the concoction and tipped it over to drink it, and the guild watched as it changed from creepy little bugger to miniature too-bright-to-look-at-directly sun to pretty little fairy thing.
"Thank you for saving me!" the fairy, presumably female, exclaimed as she twirled on the Archer's hand. Her wings twitched slightly, and after a few seconds they began to move fast enough for her to start flying.
"My name is Annara, the Faerie! As a token of my gratitude, please allow me to help you navigate the rest of this tower. Many adventurers have tried to defeat the tower's Guardian, including a party I once traveled with long ago, but alas! They have perished and I was cursed into that monstrous form…" she sang dramatically, and it took a full three minutes for her to stop talking about her pitiful background story. She sounded awfully chipper for someone describing her companions dying and being abracadabra-ed into an imp. She never really stopped talking, but most of them could easily block her out due to long periods of time spent with Kise who had a similar disease.
On the next floor, Annara explained that the task was Midorima's as he was the only Hunter-class player in the group. She pointed him to a window at a monster flying around outside. "The only way to deactivate the magic blocking our advance is to shoot it down!"
The span of the distance between the monster and the tower was way out of range for the average player, not to mention that the target was small and flittering erratically. A normal player wouldn't be able to hit it after a thousand shots, which was rather cruel after the last few floors they had to endure. Even if they'd managed to complete the last four levels through teamwork and strategy, none of it would matter if their Hunter didn't have the capability to overcome the trial.
Taking a few seconds to study the monster's flight pattern and steadying himself, Midorima pulled back his bowstring and fired an arrow, hitting his target dead on and killing it with one shot.
{Level 5/9 Cleared}
Level 6 held a Mage's floor, which strangely enough was an intelligence test rather than anything that had to do with magical capability. A few of the questions weren't even related to KWO and Kuroko suspected either someone had been drunk or the creators were just very, very–did I mention very?–strange people. When you're getting quizzed on monsters and spells and you expect that's all it would be, and then you suddenly come across, "What is the name of the current head of state?" and, "How many stomachs does a cow have?" you would probably think similarly.
Despite missing several answers and coming out with a final score of 39/50 questions correct, the guild was still allowed to move on. Kuroko wished that Momoi or Midorima had been the ones quizzed on this because they knew much more information about the game and likely the other subjects that appeared than he did.
But seriously, how was he supposed to respond to, "What continent is Zimbabwe located in"?
The seventh floor was where either Kise or Momoi had to attack a target five-hundred times in less than a minute's time. Rogue-class players generally have high amounts of AGT and DEX, the former of which allows a person to move faster and the latter which lets them attack and use skills faster.
Kise won a game of Paper, Scissors, Rock to step up first, and began stabbing the target–a worn-out scarecrow sort of thing–with his blade. He got up to 378 hits on his first try, as Annara informed as the blonde's time ran out, and though he wanted to try again and actually put his all into it, he was interrupted. In a moment of utter stupidity and diluted foresight, confidence abundant with a cocky grin to match, Aomine jumped in front of Momoi and said, "Let me try!"
{Aomine has died}
"Should we have stopped him?"
"No."
"That's cold, Midorimacchi."
Kuroko finished buffing Momoi and she stepped up to the plate, a short, thin dagger (to reduce drag) in hand. Her right hand gripped the hilt loosely, she took a deep breath, and the merciless barrage began; much of her frustrations from being irritated by Aomine and events in real life were taken out on the scarecrow, which in Kise's opinion looked more terrified than terrifying. Even Midorima could just barely keep up with her skill combos by sight. A lot of it may have been Kuroko's heightened buffing proficiency in play (the replacement staff he had gotten was good for that kind of thing), but she could have probably done without as suggested by 830 hits in a minute.
{Level 7/9 Cleared}
{You are now on Level 8}
Murasakibara literally destroyed this floor.
{You have reached an Intermittent Floor}
Unlike the last eight floors, this one had several flights of stairs to another floor above. They counted seven sets of stairs, each one identical to the next.
"One of these flights of stairs leads to the tower's guardian!" Annara proclaimed, "The rest are traps, and only one person is allowed to go up each path, so choose wisely. It has been a pleasure to travel with you, even if our time was short... PLEASE DEFEAT IT AND AVENGE ME!" Without warning, she clasped her hands together and began glowing, exploding into a burst of sparkles than rained upon the Adventurers, giving them extremely powerful power-ups customized to each of their classes with an extra effect of faintly shimmering auras.
"Annara's Final Wish."
Only Kise mourned her death–openly, at least; they wouldn't admit it, but Midorima, Murasakibara, and Aomine were crying manly, unadulterated tears on the inside.
Silent glances and words of good luck exchanged between the members of the guild, and each of them started walking up a set of stairs, finding that once they took the first step they could no longer go back.
{You are now on Level 9: FINAL LEVEL}
Kiseki World Online: Stat Points
Intelligence (INT)-Raises Magical Capability. The more INT a person has, the stronger their spells will be; attack spells get stronger and support spells such as healing spells and buffs become more potent. Also gives the player more Mana to use, a higher Mana regeneration rate, and higher defense against other's Magical attacks. INT is primarily used by the Mage class and certain archtypes of Hunters and Rogues. INT points will not make you smarter.
Strength (STR)-Raises Physical Capability. High STR makes a person's physical attacks and skills stronger, for example the swinging of a sword or throwing of a projectile weapon. Resistance to other's physical attacks is increased. The more STR points inputted, the more Health Points and the higher the regeneration rate for the Health points will be. Generally used by most classes–especially Fighters–save for Mages.
Agility (AG{L}T)-Raises Speed. As this implies, the more AGT a person has, the faster they will be able to move. Having AGT also causes monsters to deal less damage and sometimes "MISS" their attacks. Additionally, Stat Points inputted into this category results in players having more stamina to be able to keep up with their high-speed playing styles. You will find AGT mostly used by the Rogue class, followed by Hunters and Fighters.
Dexterity (DEX)-Raises Proficiency. The more DEX a person has, the higher they will be able to attack and use skills and spells; faster APS (attacks per second) and cool-down time. For certain classes, such as the Alchemist and Blacksmith classes ("Crafters"), higher DEX raises the chances of better creations. DEX also raises CRIT (Criticals) rates. DEX is a must for most Hunter and Rogue classes, but is used by most players in the game.
Sorry to leave you guys on another cliffhanger, but I wanted to update today and thought the chapter would get a bit long if I continued. Thank you for reading (btw, I planning to update the fic cover, any suggestions?)
Thanks for reading~!