A familiar but different path. Trials of the Tower

Two destruction blades materialized in Seth’s hands, his steps carrying him past the safety of the staircase and onto the first floor’s open plateau.

The nearby beasts all appeared to feel the presence of an intruder, stopping their roaming and turning their heads simultaneously toward Seth.

With the beasts, both near and far, beginning to charge towards him, Seth did the same, moving swiftly towards the closest beast to the safe zone, his eyes filled with resolve.

Seth and the boar met halfway through, the boar lowering its head ever so slightly, preparing to impale Seth using its husks. Seth also didn’t back down, creating a small barrier of destruction at his chest to block the tusk attack and leaping upwards, planning to flip over the charging beast and stab it from above with his destruction blades.

*Crack* *Break*

Halfway through his plan, the boar’s tusks connected with his destruction barrier, shattering it instantly and continuing to travel toward his exposed abdomen.

With no hesitation, Seth released all his energy from his source, creating an explosion of destruction energy between him and the beast to cancel his momentum, pushing himself and the beast backward simultaneously.

The explosion worked; the beast’s charge paused, and Seth got propelled backward like a ragdoll.

Once he recovered his footing, Seth didn’t dare to rechallenge the beast, even more so with its friends already drawing nearer, so he turned around and b-lined for the staircase.

Having reached the stairs just in time to avoid the other beasts’ arrival, Seth took a deep breath and observed their behavior. The beasts appeared to have lost their target, returning to their aimless roaming.

Putting surveying the beasts on the back of his mind, Seth looked down at the black marks that had appeared on his chest, where the beast’s tusks had managed to graze him slightly.

“What is this, and why is it extending?!” exclaimed Seth, quickly focusing his destruction energy to try to rid himself of the strange black marks. His efforts proved fruitless, the marks ignoring his energy and growing larger with every moment.

“Poison?!”

“It’s useless. To remove the soul rot, you must kill the source of the infection. In other words, you have at most another hour to take that beast out before the damage to your soul will kill you.”

Seth frowned when he heard Krum’s words and asked: “What are those things? And what about this soul rot? What kind of poison is it?”

“Seeing you beaten so easily made my bad mood go away, so I don’t mind giving you a hint.”

“They are called Murky Sabs by my people and are a species of beasts plaguing my homeland. Their bodies are stronger than anything you have encountered, and their spirits are a soul curse known as soul rot, which they exude through their tusks and breath.”

“Like every force available in the simulation, the soul rot is a complete concept. Also, your pathetic use of the annihilation force will not stand a chance against a complete concept.”

“That’s all I have for you, human. Success or failure in your endeavor, I’m looking forward to a good show.”

Seth lowered his head to look at the rot extending over his body before turning his eyes back on the beast responsible for it. Krum’s words couldn’t have been more precise. He needed to kill that if he wanted to rid himself of the rot.

He also knew that with its skin being as hard as Krum described, his only option was to find another way to damage it than a direct attack.

This was the first time Seth had faced something entirely immune to his destruction energy, but it was not hard to understand what he had to do.

He had to find a way to release his energy directly inside that thing’s body. Since Krum didn’t mention anything about the hardness of its insides and assuming this was not an impossible trial, it was only logical his energy would work on the internal organs of the beasts.

Looking at the rot mist a boar was releasing from its snout, Seth quickly realized that was not an available path and smiled wryly as his eyes moved to the beast’s behind.

Feeling the rot eating away at his energy, he dragged his battered body from the ground and got ready to leave the safety of the staircase once more. He knew the more he delayed, the smaller his chances would be.

“I’m sure that bastard did it on purpose…” muttered Seth, walking outside again. A repeat of the last time occurred, with the beasts charging toward him when he stepped outside the staircase.

Ignoring the other boars running in his direction, Seth’s eyes remained fixed on his target, doing his best not to let the pain spreading all over his body affect his charge forward again.

The two met again, the boar repeating its last attack, lowering its head to impale Seth.

This time, Seth had no plan on letting that thing’s tusks come even close to him, detonating his destruction energy beneath his feet instead to propel himself upwards.

The beast swung its tusks where Seth previously stood, releasing a dense rot mist in apparent anger at having not hit anything.

Seth was already up in the air when the beast’s attack missed, twisting his body and landing right behind the beast.

With a look filled with disgust, Seth stuck his hand forward, piercing it straight through the orifice under its tail.

A loud roar left the beast’s mouth at the sudden intrusion, but Seth paid it no mind, releasing his destruction energy inside it with reckless abandon.

The beast roared a few more times before its legs bucked under itself, and it fell to the floor, its eyes lifeless.

With no time to rejoice in his petty victor, Seth removed his hand from its body and moved as swiftly as possible back toward the stairs. His mission was over, but the other beasts were already drawing near.

Two beasts managed to reach him and bar his path, but using his destruction energy, Seth kept pushing his body through the air, using small explosions to propel himself forward until he was once more in the safety of the staircase.

Seth felt like he could hear Krum’s loud laughter despite the silence falling on the tower’s first floor.

Shaking his head to prevent himself from getting irritated, Seth checked his chest and noticed that the rot had indeed disappeared with the beast’s death.

He was left with one big issue - how could he ever make his way past that whole horde of beasts?

The option to kill them one by one was there, but it would take too long, and he knew time was still passing inside and outside the tower. The more time he wasted in this cursed place, the lesser his chances of rescuing Caitlin and finding Kronos got.

‘Will my energy last me enough to reach the other side by flying through the air?’

He realized how much he missed the system’s calculations and assistance. Before, when he was a god, his energy was endless, and after traveling back in time, the system was always there to give him an estimate of his remaining energy or simulate any plan he might have.

Heaving a long sigh, Seth resigned himself to the idea he could only count on himself right now and closed his eyes to rest, directing life energy from the surroundings to speed up the healing of his body while thinking about a plan to reach the other side, where the staircase leading to the second floor was.

After a few hours of resting, Seth opened his eyes with a confused look and tried to feel the state of his source better.

Due to his forcing a breakthrough to the eighth shell before reaching the tower, he only had a single shell remaining, but the injuries he endured due to the forced breakthrough made him unable to hold more energy than an early seventh shell would.

The quality of his energy was also not ideal, and his vortex was barely spinning anymore, the only thing keeping his source from vanishing being the Tower’s influence.

“I guess I can give it a try…” muttered Seth, closing his eyes and allowing his energy to spread through his broken body.

After forcing the vortex inside his source to increase its rotation speed, Seth’s cracked body started getting slowly destroyed from the inside out.

The internal organs were gone first, the destruction then expanding further until it devoured his entire body, leaving behind a mass of destruction energy in a human shape surrounding his source.

With his mortal shell discarded, Seth began absorbing the broken source inside his soul. The usual process of breaking through to the seventh shell.

A horrible pain, coming straight from the depths of his very soul, ensued due to his soul being relatively weak and the source already damaged.

The pain lasted for hours, and Seth could not do anything but continue despite it.

With the last trace of destruction energy disappearing, the spinning of the vortex stopped, and energy was released from inside, forming Seth’s body again, along with a set of clothes to cover himself.

Releasing a deep breath, Seth looked at his hands and body before sitting back up.

His source was still broken, but he didn’t have to worry about his body anymore. He could now transition between material and energy form, making passing the trials in front of him more manageable.

Changing his body back into destruction energy, Seth began to float above the horde of beasts, heading straight towards the staircase.

Just as it looked like the beasts could no longer reach him, they started roaring endlessly, quickly drawing Seth’s attention.

To his excitement, the beasts were all blowing upwards, spreading their rot in the air. Noticing the expected outcome, Seth quickly stopped in mid-air, watching the rot breath heading towards him.

When the breath was about to reach him, Seth’s source left the mass of destruction energy, propelling itself to the side and watching as the rot engulfed his energy, devouring it completely.

After the energy he left as a decoy was consumed by the rot, it didn’t stop there and continued forward, digging a giant hole in the ceiling separating the first and second floors of the tower.

Seth’s source followed right after the rot breath, passing through the floor and skipping directly to the second floor, where he regenerated his body and quickly looked around.

He knew that since he didn’t use the staircase, he would not arrive in a safe zone, and his intuition was immediately proven correct.

“Did you bring your whole family with you?” asked Seth under his breath, looking at the small army of six-handed people surrounding him with weapons at the ready.