69 – Solo Leveling
From the 30th Floor onwards, every time a Regular failed a test, they would have to wait a whole year before attempting it again.
But tests were scheduled regularly as long as there were enough teams and Regulars to participate, so a strong enough Regular or team could simply keep going after passing, with no cooldown.
In theory, this meant that it was viable to go up about one Floor every couple of months if you never failed and rushed to the next Floor as fast as possible without any breaks, to immediately schedule for the earliest opportunity.
Despite the change from E-Rank to the D-Rank Floors, the tests didn't change all that much, there were just stronger opponents.
Canonically, I knew that the main cast teams easily went through the next five floors in a year, and I needed to do the same. The Hell Train cycled back to the starting station every year, so if I made it there later this year, I'd be able to catch the run during the year before the canon groups got on.
Even if I was going solo, I thought it would be no trouble to repeat the feat which was easy for the main cast teams.
My true combat strength, based on Ha Jinsung and Hwa Ryun's objective assessment during the first spar, was already greater than an entire team of E-Rank Regulars, and that was without factoring in Derf's higher level auras/beams.
Not only had I improved since, I'd kept the full power of the water spirits under wraps, only using a small portion of their abilities.
That was why I considered an alternate course, where I could train more seriously with the water spirits, and not have to worry about hiding them.
Taking the test directly from the Administrator.
…
To my surprise, after I met the Floor Administrator, I'd learned many new details about the tests I hadn't known before.
Apparently most of the Floor tests were scaled to the Floor and not to me, which was my main concern with them after the 2nd Floor's test where I was forced to fight a Ranker risking my life.
"The 1st and 2nd Floors are special, duh. That's where you get judged worthy of climbing the Tower or not. If every Floor Test was scaled to you, then what's the point of having different Floor numbers and having to pass an earlier Floor before the next one? They'd all just be the same!" The Administrator had explained.
And there was no chance of rewards if the Irregular took the "normal" test, or negotiated any of the test conditions/rules, like Baam did.
Instead, to be eligible for rewards, one must take a higher difficulty Challenge test, and then it was randomly awarded based on a number of factors including performance, luck, and fighting style.
After passing certain groups of Floors, there would come opportunities to do a special Challenge test, called a Seeker Challenge. It just meant that the taker could request a more targeted reward in advance, and while a reward would be guaranteed after passing the test, a perfect fit for the request was not.
"Don't ask for something stupid like finding true love, I'm not a genie. You want to make a wish like that, try going to the top of the Tower. Otherwise, asking for something too specific or powerful will probably get a bad or funny version of it instead, or something entirely unrelated, at least until you get to much higher Floors."
The essential rule was that the reward from any test had to match the Floor's level, or the level of the Floor group in the case of the Seeker Test.
The more ways that a request could be fulfilled, the more likely that the reward would be a proper match. Naming a broad category of items would have no issues, but trying to name a personal weapon somebody else owned was useless.
But if it was a really bad reward, there was still a choice whether to accept it or not. There wouldn't be anything like a cursed contract.
"I think I'll just do a Seeker test right away, since I'm qualified for it," I said, pacing by myself after taking some time to think about it before contacting the Administrator again.
"Why not save it for a higher Floor?" Derf asked. "You'd have more experience with it then, and the reward might be better."
"Because the difficulty goes up too, and I should have the largest raw power advantage on this Floor. The reward quality is capped anyways, and on this set of Floors it's probably to D-Rank, which means it won't be anything amazing regardless."
"You think the difficulty could rise that much in a few Floors? Even a few could make a big experience difference," said Derf. "Not for us, maybe, but definitely for the water spirits since they haven't seen much live combat. And wasn't that the point of this whole Irregular test thing?"
"Well, the uncertainty is more reason to take it now. If I can't take the Challenge tests after passing the Floor any other way, that means I can only do them up to the 35th Floor where we're gonna board the Hell Train. That's still the priority here, any rewards on the way up are just a bonus. I need to make it to the Hell Train in less than a year, so if these tests are too hard then they're not even worth doing," I said.
"Oh right, because they also have a cooldown, even if it's just one month, compared to one year for the Regular tests," said Derf.
"Yes, exactly, if I fail any tests it gets riskier. Better to go all out on the easiest floor, and get the reward early if it works out, or if not just forget it and try an easier test, the normal Irregular test or even the Regulars' test."
…
I contacted the Administrator again and was teleported in front of it as I declared my intention and then described my desired reward.
"The Shinsoo flows that strengthen the body over time through training can be lost if body parts are severely damaged or altered. Normally it requires retraining over a long period, which means that the body is weaker during that time. I'm looking for any method or skill, but not a contracted ability, that allows me to retain or quickly recover to a similar level of strength and speed before and after a major replacement of most of my body's cells, organs, and muscular structure, or simply isn't affected by such physical replacement at all, assuming my body is still roughly humanoid."
"OK then, I'll prepare the test," said the Administrator.
O O O
"The test area will be this cave system, which contains many tunnels and underwater paths. Once you enter, you can't exit without forfeiting. There's several groups of Shinheuh, most of which will be hostile and territorial. At the center of it, underground, is a sealed chamber. To access the chamber, you can't break through by force. Don't bother trying. You'll need the 'key', which is hidden somewhere else in the cave system, and you might need to fight your way past other things that also want the key for other reasons. Your job is to find the key, open the chamber, grab the special plant inside, and return to the exit with the plant. This Seedhunter Fish will help you find the key, so you'd better protect it. You also lose points if you don't return with it at the end, or if you put it inside a storage item of any kind."
"So the pass condition is just to return to the exit with the plant, right?" I asked as the Seedhunter Fish was sent towards me. It was the size of a mature salmon, with flowery designs on its scales and a fin that was lined with what looked like plant seeds.
"Yes. There might be other ways to do it if you lose the Seedhunter Fish, but it's all up to you. Contact me with the Pocket if you have other questions, but I won't answer anything that you need to figure out yourself."
Once the Administrator disappeared, the Seedhunter Fish started moving towards the cave entrance on its own.
I followed it into the passage, which was big enough to fit a few trucks stacked together.
"So what's the plan, Partner?" Derflinger asked, popping up into normal size.
"I'll map out the area first and take a look at the chamber remotely. We'll just follow the Seedhunter Fish for now while scouting ahead for trouble. You guard me while I operate the Lighthouse," I instructed, before taking out a Canjon-class puppet from Manbarondenna.
"Got it," Derflinger said, quickly picking up on what I meant, positioning himself into the puppet's hand.
Although it would be too costly for him to take control of it outright, even with the lowest level of User Boost which cost 10MP/sec, this way, I could operate the puppet with minimal attention while doing other things, and Derflinger would take full control in the event of an actual threat.
Next, I materialized one of my Arms Inventories, the one where I kept Bowls, and then released three large Rhyme dragon type Beastionts, which had been recently trained to quickly gain some Shinsoo resistance using my new method to handle these higher weren't sapient like actual Rhyme dragons, but were intelligent enough to follow more complicated commands without my directly controlling them as familiars, even if I didn't invest any will imprint or water spirits into them like Axie.
"Protect that Seedhunter Fish," I commanded them.
I had more Beastionts and Shinheuh, but there was no need to make the space difficult to maneuver in with too many combatants.
Like this, I rapidly deployed Lighthouse Cubes to scout the areas ahead.
It wasn't long before we started encountering enemies.
The first was some kind of huge starfish that was able to propel itself a high speed into the air with Shinsoo blasts then spin like ninja throwing stars.
Its edges were lined with armor that made it sharp enough to embed themselves into the cave walls.
The Beastionts easily intercepted the first few and tore them apart with claws and fangs.
But after a while, we had to pass through an area full of them, at which point the Beastionts were forced to shield the Seedhunter with their bodies with dozens of the shuriken starfish flying around, and Derflinger entered the fray.
I also helped out with a Lighthouse barrier to push forward at the front. Each starfish packed a serious punch and would probably severely injure a typical new D-Rank Regular if not take them out of the fight in one bad hit. But I was sure that Team Ship could also handle this without much trouble with good tactics.
It was all going smoothly for me and I had located the central chamber less than ten minutes into the test.
Until suddenly a bipedal mammalian creature with armored plates on its limbs and chest appeared, almost like a kobold, and it was literally holding the starfish like shuriken with a fighting stance.
"Rahh!" It cried before expertly launching the shuriken, and then the starfish blasted themselves mid-air to achieve an even higher speed.
Derflinger parried one of them, sending it crashing into a wall, while the other tore a large wound into one of the Beastionts that shielded the Seedhunter with its body.
The armored kobold grunted and gestured with its hands into a series of hand signs, causing a pulse of Shinsoo to emit from his body.
There didn't seem to be anything dangerous about the Shinsoo pulse, but then numerous fallen and mangled starfish started regenerating at high speed.
"Shit!" I cursed, realizing the mass of flying stars could overwhelm our defenses coming from all angles and inside of our formation rather than just the front.
It would not be difficult to fight through this, except for the fact that we needed to protect the weak Seedhunter Fish, and I had limited defensive techniques for this purpose.
As such, I immediately Burstshifted to the Seedhunter and grabbed it, then had the water spirits create a spherical Shinsoo shield bubble around me.
The onslaught of starfish that blasted off every surface after tore apart the Beastionts and heavily injured the Canjon puppet even as Derflinger skillfully avoided or parried most of them.
The Shinsoo cannon I took from Lo Po Bia Ren appeared and fired a beam that blasted the ninja kobold apart.
I took no half measures in case that thing tried a repeat performance to stun lock our group and bring reinforcements while I was forced to defend the Seedhunter Fish.
The beam I'd fired from the cannon wasn't from a basic Baang I created myself, but one which I had the water spirits prepare in advance, stored in the Shinsoo item.
This was one of the special features of advanced Wave Controller equipment, to store extra powerful charges to be fired later.
Had I asked the water spirits to do it in real time, it might have been slightly lagged as I hadn't fought that much with their help before, and the ninja kobold might have avoided it.
Once the kobold was dead, I released another group of Beastionts to destroy the starfishes, and I retreated with the Seedhunter fish back a bit where it was safe.
The heavily wounded Beastionts also regenerated by consuming a portion of the starfish, while I collected some of them plus the kobold into other storage capsule Bowls that didn't contain any other Shinheuh.
Once that was done, I reorganized our formation and prepared to advance with the Seedhunter at the center.
Three Beastionts in front, three behind in case anything came around from another route. Derflinger and me next to the Seedhunter. My Light Cubes at the head for the barrier and a couple to scout.
"Derf, there's a big room ahead with a bunch of those kobold things and even more starfish. The Seedhunter seems to be going in a path into it. I say we clear it out directly instead of waiting for the Seedhunter to get there."
"Sounds good to me."
I left the Seedhunter guarded tightly by the Beastionts, then deployed the AAPV with Offensive Bias in charge of defense.
Although putting the Seedhunter inside the AAPV was most secure, it might lose points for being inside storage, so the best I could do was have Offensive Bias control drone teams and monitor for enemies, communicating via my Lighthouse with audio through a Cube I left behind, since the AAPV comms tech didn't work effectively in this environment.
Then I went into the large room directly holding Derf, fully Reinforced myself, then Ignited with Derf.
The enemies weren't very durable so I judged that we might not need to rely on higher level magics to damage them.
Derf's Shinsoo based attacks were now comparable to Level 3 beam/aura, which was capable of destroying heavy armor and plate, but half the strength of the L4 which was comparable to shaped anti-tank blasts. Of course, this was just looking at general physical damage without accounting for Shinsoo resistance, where this was far inferior to the magic beams versus high resistance opponents like the White Steel Eel or the Zahard princesses.
Fortunately, the ambient Shinsoo in this area did not suggest that these Shinheuh would have significant resistance, just normal levels for the Floor for most Regulars, which barely registered as defense against actual attacks, only enough to survive without discomfort in the atmosphere.
It was primarily a speed contest here, and in a fight where I had no need to worry about guarding something vulnerable, and could focus on pure offense…
Only a few minutes later, hundreds of starfishes and a dozen ninja kobolds lay dead, cut down by a blitz of Burstshift combined with my maximum personal Reinforcement.
As the Burstshift's maximum velocity was about 220 m/s, it was only around the same as the max speed I could get by applying Derf's level 10 Boost stacked on all physical buffs given improvements in my base and Reinforcement skills over the years, but cost negligible amounts of MP in comparison due to the split second uses.
After that, the next few hours went by without anything very exciting. We continued to follow the Seedhunter and defeated a variety of other less interesting Shinheuh that were more common around the Tower with no great special abilities.
Meanwhile, I had examined the central chamber's entrance, and it seemed as though the 'key' was something round that had to be placed into an indent of the door where an altar of sorts sat along with a cup-like protrusion.
At some point, it seemed like the Seedhunter was retreading prior ground, and I began to analyze the paths we had taken more closely.
"The target might be moving," I said, operating my Lighthouse screen with Offensive Bias' visor now on my face, so that he could also see out of the front-facing camera.
"I believe the most likely location is at G7," said Offensive Bias, referring to the grid we had used to demark the areas on the map. "But it could be actively trying to evade us. Shall I try to corner them?"
"No, your drones are too weak and it's inconvenient to repair them here. I'll send my Light Cubes instead, you just tell me which paths would be optimal," I said.
Ten minutes later, we caught it. It was a bipedal salamander-like creature with pale skin.
I rushed over immediately, once again, leaving the Seedhunter to be protected.
It destroyed my Cube just as I arrived, then tried to slink away into the shadows, but I was faster and had Derflinger swinging towards it already.
It turned to face me just as I was swinging and roared, a blast of Shinsoo emerging from its mouth and blowing me away.
The blast wasn't very strong, so I quickly recovered and rushed back, already noticing that it had an odd round seed-like object embedded into its chest, with tendrils digging its skin as if the seed had taken root in its body.
Yet when I attacked again, my next several charges were again repelled, either with Shinsoo or physical blows that countered Derflinger and left the creature undamaged.
With a mana signal, Derflinger went to level 4 Aura. Yet the creature, intelligent enough to recognize the more powerful attack, didn't even let the sword land, instead parrying with a hand that was engulfed into Shinsoo, pushing the whole weapon away before it could make contact.
I fell back and observed it for a bit, considering whether to simply brute force through with an even stronger attack.
But at that point, the salamander slapped its hands together, then released a pulse of Shinsoo.
"That seems familiar, it feels like the pulse those kobold things used to revive the starfish?" Derflinger remarked.
As soon as he said that, the shuriken fish flooded in from the surrounding tunnels and crevices, and even some kobolds came with it.
"Is this the boss of these guys? Weird that it's an entirely different creature," I said.
The salamander blasted another Shinsoo wave at me, then fled while its minions distracted me.
I barely missed it before I got swarmed by the starfish. After slaughtering my way through, I chased the salamander, but it had apparently grown wings out of its back and was skillfully navigating the tunnels while also grabbing starfishes on the way and throwing them at me.
"Damn, you're not getting away!"
Finally, I decided to just get the water spirits to help.
Liquid Shinsoo rapidly condensed and formed a raging torrent dragging the salamander towards me. It swam hard against the tide, but I also charged at max Burstshift speed and channeled even more powerful Shinsoo into Derflinger with the water spirits' help.
A few seconds later, I'd cut it into pieces and carved the seed out of its skin.
The salamander actually regenerated at high speed to my surprise, but I already had the seed in hand so I simply unleashed a powerful Baang, obliterating it without worry for collateral damage.
The seed itself seemed alive and tried to use some tendrils to attack me, but without its host it didn't seem capable of doing much, so I just cut off its tendrils until it quieted down.
O O O
Once I checked with the Seedhunter Fish that the seed was the target it was seeking, I went to the chamber and placed the seed onto the cup.
The 'keyhole' area lit up and the seed was seemingly absorbed into it. The altar and cup receded entirely, then the chamber opened up.
Inside was a cylindrical tank in the center, along with a raised platform with a screen panel and control buttons on it.
I looked at the panel to see that it had some information displayed in an unrecognizable language. After I brought out my Pocket, the translation was displayed on the Pocket's holoscreen.
It took a few minutes of reading and playing with the controls to understand what this chamber was about.
The seed which I had inserted outside the chamber was called a "Blood Fusing Beast Seed", by whomever created this place, and the tank in front of me was doing a special alchemical incubation using the seed as an ingredient.
The seed itself was some sort of parasitic plant that attached itself to Shinheuh or people and provided the host with extra Shinsoo through [Blood Fusion] and granted the ability to use a weak form of [Transformation]. It would absorb the hosts' Shinsoo over time, then move on to new hosts, while allowing new hosts to use Transformation to use a part of the skills and manifested body parts of previous hosts.
It was not clear where this seed originally came from or why it evolved this way, but the people who discovered it and created this secret chamber thought it might help them obtain the higher grade Transformation ability that belonged to the beast fusion tribes of the Lo Po Bia family, for themselves.
With that ambition in mind, they developed a method to forcibly grow the Blood Fusing Beast Seed into an edible flower.
Although they were not able to replicate the true power of Transformation, the flower could be made into a drug that could assist the consumer in learning some related but much more limited skills.
It seemed that to complete the test, I would have to wait until the plant grew in the tank.
O O O
"Congratulations, you passed," said the Administrator after teleporting me to them immediately after I exited the tunnels.
The flower simultaneously disappeared from my hands in a flash of light.
"Now, your rewards. You did pretty well, and since I'm feeling nice, I'll even let you have a choice. You wanted some way to preserve or recover your body's Shinsoo flow enhancements from training."
Three balls of light appeared in front of me.
The first ball of light faded to reveal the syringe floating.
"First is this Blood Power Syringe. If you take blood from yourself until the syringe is filled, you'll be temporarily weakened for a few days, but later you can inject yourself with it to immediately restore all the power in your body from the time you first drew the blood. Works even if your body's changed, but it'll only restore whatever parts are roughly similar to your old body, like having the same number of limbs. You can also use it on somebody else, or inject a different person's power, but the efficiency goes down if the donor and the recipient are too different in power or incompatible, it can even fail lethally if the donor is too powerful."
The second ball of light revealed a paper book.
"Next is a D-Rank Shinsoo external martial art skill manual. It doesn't actually preserve your body's internal flows. But if you master it, that won't matter because the power of this martial art is only dependent on your control of Shinsoo and it doesn't need any internal flows. All you have to do is absorb more Shinsoo to get back to the same power, no matter how your body changes. If you get good enough you can even use it to fight with a phantom limb made of Shinsoo."
The last ball revealed a pill.
"Your last option is this Blood Fusion Flower Pill. A better version of what those people tried to make out of the seed you had to find in the test. I specially refined it for your request. You won't get any Transformation skill out of it, but it'll let you create a Blood Fusion Pattern. When you take it, the remnant Shinsoo inside will try to reform the Beast Seed, but since there's no seed core, you can take it over and mix it with your own Shinsoo to make a special Shinsoo pattern akin to an extra organ. It will give you the ability to create your own Blood Fusion, out of your own Shinsoo flows. In other words, it will absorb, store, and record a part of your internal Shinsoo so that you can restore your Shinsoo flows or ability later. Unlike the Syringe, this only works with your own Shinsoo, but there is no chance of incompatibility problems no matter what happens to your body. It also takes longer to store your Shinsoo, but you don't get weakened as much while you're doing it."
"How much longer?"
"Syringe can work pretty much instantly, depending on how much blood you draw and how much you're willing to weaken yourself. You'll have to master the pill's Shinsoo first, and then after you make the pattern, how quickly you can store your Shinsoo flows depends on your mastery and how much Shinsoo you can put into the effort. I would guess it might take you a few months."
I carefully considered the options before me.
"When you say Shinsoo flows or ability, do you mean that with the pill, I could even restore special abilities and Shinsoo Quality, not just physical enhancements?"
"Yes. That's how it works for the Syringe too. That's what Blood Fusion means—fusing an ability into your blood."
"What does that mean exactly? It's not just physical blood, is it? Because if I lose all my blood, then does it still work?"
"Well, if you still survive or recover from that, then yes it will work. As for what blood means here, it's the essence of you that makes your Shinsoo distinctly your own, your blood is the main medium for it. Some people call it Shinsoo true essence instead, or the Shinsoo spirit."
"How does it relate to the soul?"
"If you want to know more, you should ask for it as your next Seeker Challenge or find out from somewhere else. I won't say anymore," said the Administrator. "And don't take too long. You have five minutes to make your choice."
Damn, I couldn't just exploit this for free knowledge huh?
"What do you think, Derf?" I asked for a second opinion while running through the pros and cons of each in my head.
"I dunno…they all sound pretty good," said Derf. "But if the first one can transfer other people's powers to you, isn't that the most valuable?"
"On the surface, yes, but remember these rewards are probably capped to D-Rank power, so I suspect it simply won't work well on the people or powers I actually want to get, or it might only give me a weak version of what it absorbs, even if it doesn't cause serious side effects. The risk seems high."
"That's true. It's a double-edged sword then. Other two are a toss up. The skill would be cool if I could also use it. The pill seems to be the best match for what you wanted though."
A few moments later, I made my decision.
The skill had the obvious drawback that it relied on a Shinsoo environment. It would be difficult to use outside of the Tower and didn't really complement my existing abilities.
But in the end, the best choice was the one the Administrator specially made for me.
It might take time to master and didn't seem powerful at first glance, but it might solve a major weakness for me. Since internal Shinsoo continued to work on other planes, this should allow me to recover in the event of grave wounds outside of the Tower, without having to come back to the Tower for retraining and absorbing Shinsoo.
And there might be ways to make it more useful, after I studied it further.
"I'll take the pill."
"Okay, take it," said the Administrator as he disappeared the other two choices.
I grabbed the Blood Fusion Flower Pill and was instantly teleported back to where I'd initially set up camp on the 31st Floor Middle Area.
O O O
