SL: Chapter 743 – Day 6,401 – Tower Grinding

“Retreat!” I called out loudly so that Young Michael would know when to fall back. We had learned the hard way, that it was much different collecting crystals in an active battle zone with a tower to a zone that had already been cleared.

I was plummeting towards the ground, that way the flying monsters wouldn’t spawn anymore. Young Michael was already running and flying towards our airship in the distance. Once I landed at the base of the tower, I began retreating and wiping out the pursuing monsters while running around the base of the tower.

In ten minutes, I had wiped out all the flying monsters and quickly picked up the dropped crystals, not letting one point of my hard work go to waste. I then returned to the airship where Young Michael was already preparing dinner.

I got a shower and threw out my ruined shorts, putting on a new pair. While I tried to preserve my clothes, the fighting was too intense. Every day was a huge grind. At least with the zone grinding, I got a break when the zone was cleared. With the tower grinding it was non-stop. After getting out of the shower, we had dinner. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either.

“We need some mystery meat. Next time I return to Purgatory I am upgrading the city,” I muttered.

“Sounds like a plan. At least nothing chased me today,” Young Michael said and I nodded at that.

“Just have to stay at least halfway up the tower. Still burning through too much energy too quickly. How many level 7 crystals?” I asked.

“A total of 841 for a total of 635,796,000 points,” he replied. That was less than our regular grinding strategy. I let out a long sigh.

“That isn’t good,” I replied while thinking about the issue.

“Kill speed?” Young Michael asked and I nodded. That had been the problem. Even with my Regeneration stat I was using too much energy. While I wouldn’t let myself get below a third of my reserves, I should have been able to do better. The math just wasn’t mathing. The problem was with my combat ability, specifically my kill speed.

“The monsters adjust a bit too much. I can’t use the bare minimum energy needed to kill them. Especially as the battle goes on longer and longer, my reaction speed drops just a bit as I get more worn out. This is putting the entire operation in the red,” I muttered. It was frustrating that it was due to my capabilities. There were no incidents today that delayed grinding.

“Well, you spent about a third of the day grinding. You could get back out there again?” Young Michael suggested. I shook my head at that.

“I need to replenish my reserves and I am exhausted. Fighting like that continuously is exhausting. The tower monsters are like half a level higher than other monsters at their level. Probably to discourage such a strategy.” I let out a heavy sigh. While I didn’t mind grinding and working hard. This brilliant idea had encountered a major obstacle, myself.

At full speed I would probably get around 2 billion points per day, double of my previous grinding strategy. But going backwards like this was painful.

“Can you improve?” Young Michael asked me.

“It would be marginal at best. I need to precisely hit the monsters with beam attacks at just the right power to kill them. But they move about. I have to move about. I have to make my attacks slightly stronger to kill them in one attack, otherwise I would just waste energy with a second attack,” I explained.

I was good at fighting, but this kind of fighting was like nails on a chalkboard, trying to ration every bit of energy I could. Get the most precise angles that I could get. At first it had been a challenge, now it felt like torture trying to get a small bit of improvement to make this entire strategy work.

“How much more Regeneration do you need?” Young Michael asked.

“A lot more. If I had 100,000 energy per minute or 1,666 energy per second, then I wouldn’t need to worry about the cost of my skills. But that would require a lot more stat points. And just thinking about higher level monsters, I will need even higher Regeneration,” I said with a lot of frustration. I had worked hard to boost up my Regeneration stat after hundreds of days of grinding and it still wasn’t enough.

“What about dropping back to the ground during that time?” Young Michael asked me.

“It would make it impossible for you. No. I just need to get better and get higher stats. Their spawn rate is too much, which isn’t a bad thing. But it is just enough to be overwhelming.” I ate my dinner quietly as we sat there contemplating on our next move.

Ultimately the decision was mine, but I knew Young Michael had high hopes for this grinding strategy as well. Unfortunately, even with our adjustments over the last couple of days, I just wasn’t good enough to pull it off. I had to kill the flying monsters with my beam attacks. Melee was completely out of the question. That meant using up energy. The expenditure was just a bit too high.

“We continue,” I finally said as Young Michael was cleaning up dinner.

“Really?” he asked and I nodded.

“While it is a bit slower than our regular grinding at the moment, I will try out new tactics. Like using the corners of the tower more to alleviate pressure and get closer to the monsters before attacking. There are a lot more adjustments I can try and make. We aren’t that far behind what we were making before, which was around 750 million per day. We are about 100 million short or 132 monsters.”

“A thousand then, that should be the goal,” Young Michael said and I nodded.

“I could push deeper into my reserves. I just don’t like that. Too much of a risk if something shows up,” I replied.

“Can you improve that much without a stat increase?” Young Michael asked me.

“Maybe. But the gap to beating our previous zone grinding method isn’t that much. We just need to persevere and keep working at it. Upgrading my Regeneration stat more after each grinding session will help quite a bit,” I replied.

“Incremental upgrades?” Young Michael asked me.

“It will be interesting to see how much of an impact they make and to make sure I don’t lose my combat edge. While fighting by rationing every bit of energy is annoying, it is incredibly important for this method. Especially when we go to higher level towers. I need to be able to make them profitable as quickly as possible,” I replied.

It was a minor setback. But as I rested on my bed in the airship, I felt like it was a step forward. I was fighting the entire time. There was a renewed sense of pressure. It was too easy to fall into complacency while grinding. This was truly the case when I did my grinding by zone, clearing out a zone. Going slightly faster or rationing energy didn’t change anything with that grinding method.

But this tower grinding strategy forced me to improve in a way that was difficult. I had gotten used to having a lot of energy after my second meta-point. To the point I had been growing careless with the amount of energy I used. While I wasn’t wasting energy, I often used a bit more than was necessary to take out my targets to have a larger safety margin and to ensure they died.

Also, my aim didn’t need to be as good, since I put more energy into my attacks. But now all of that mattered. And it was made even more difficult since it was three dimensional fighting with monsters that had beam attacks as well.

A smile worked its way onto my face. This was a good kind of frustration. Since it meant I wasn’t skilled enough. I could see a direct representation in my skill level by the number of monsters I was able to kill each grinding session. Other grinders might have remained frustrated or gone back to the zone method, but that was a loser’s mentality.

I needed to improve. While I had defeated my enemies, I needed to be ready for the next one that would show up. That meant improving in ways that weren’t quantifiable with stat points. I needed to improve my overall combat skill. Just like the Divine Empress was a god of hand to hand combat. I needed to become a god of precision beam attacks and annihilation effects. Also three dimensional movement, I couldn’t forget that headache.

If I fought an opponent of similar strength and ability, then I would need to be able to be more skilled than them. Even if I fought a serious enemy, I would use overkill, but they could have minions like the sphere and the Ritualist. Then I would need to ration my energy. With the tower I had an advantage. I was fighting a singular type of monster over and over.

I could hone my combat skills to a much greater extent on this one monster than if I fought a range of monsters. While the grinding session had started off rough, it was only upwards from here. While I might earn more in the short term going back to zone grinding, it wasn’t about the points anymore, but about my combat skill.

The points did help, but losing out on a hundred million a day was a short term loss in exchange for honing my fighting style to even greater depths. I needed to be surgical in my attacks with pinpoint accuracy.

At least Young Michael hadn’t been scared off yet and was willing to tough it out with me. He knew there was a learning curve for both of us. And being in an active combat zone would keep him sharp, instead of picking up crystals in a zone that had already been cleared out. Tomorrow morning, he would wake up and clear everything around the tower including the golems at the base.

While he couldn’t handle swarms of flying monsters, he wasn’t weak. He could fight a level 7 monster and win. But there was a big difference taking out monsters on the ground and a swarm of them firing beam attacks in the air. I would also watch over him and provide support as needed. He had a couple of close calls but didn’t want to stop.

That was the mindset needed to get stronger in this place. Pushing forward and knowing one’s limits. Close calls in my mind meant getting hit in some way. Not death. While I would let him take risks, I wasn’t about to let him get vaporized or crushed by a monster and he wasn’t eager to overextend himself. It would also keep him mentally engaged over the long term. That was one reason I didn’t like zone grinding. Picking up crystals was mind numbing. Now he got some fighting in to keep him settled and improving in combat ability, just like me.