The seventh chapter of the royal climber

Unedited

Chapter 7

From puzzles to lizard knights

Kat found herself surrounded by water. There was no land or sun for that matter. The light came from all over above her. It was sort of like the first floor except without the clouds. All she could see as far as she looked was water. Looking down, trying to figure out what was keeping above the water, she found herself looking down at a stone path that ended roughly six feet from either side of her feet. The path was roughly three feet wide and ankle deep in the water. She was grateful that her feet were dry thanks to her new boots which ended a few inches above the water.

She looked to her left and found a bunch of dark shadows swimming near the path. She couldn’t see too far down as the water was too dark. She looked behind her and remembered the fact that the Tower had turned her around when it dropped her into the second floor, but there was no path behind her. There was a very large shadow deep in the water not that far from where she was standing. Unlike the other shadow this one was only moving slightly side to side. Kat found it very creepy.

“So a labyrinth or a puzzle floor?” She asked herself as she tried to follow the path with just her eyes very aware that the big shadow thing was still behind her. She couldn’t see the path as it disappeared a few feet ahead of her. Not that it wasn’t there, just that the water was too dark to see the path anymore.

With nothing else to do, and still very much aware of the scary shadow behind her, she started forward with her head down following the path. The path led forward for roughly fifty or so feet then it ran into another path that ran east and west of the path she was on. Her father told her that if she was ever in a labyrinth room to always go in one direction. The Greeks like to go left, but he told her that it didn’t matter. Pick a direction, he had told her at the time, and always go in that direction. If you come to a dead end and turn around and keep turning the way you have been. She took his advice and turned left, because she liked the Theseus and Ariadne myth from the Greeks.

She kept on going even though a path branched off on her right. Aside from the huge shadow that seemed intent on following her, the walk was boring. She was about a half hour in when the path under crumbled. She quickly turned around and jumped back, as the huge shadow swam upwards at a terrifying pace. She got back on the path before it reached her, but she got a good look at it before it sank back down to the depths.

The shadow turned out to be a shark with a huge wide mouth that looked like it could swallow her whole. It had teeth too. Lots and lots of teeth that looked like little jagged triangles that formed several rows inside its mouth. It swam upwards until she got out of the water then the mouth floated backwards back down the depth where it waited for her to fall in again.

Really, really glad she hadn’t thrown her staff away, she pulled it off her back and used it to test the path in front of her. She backtracked to the path that branched off of the path she was on. This time she took it because it was now on her left. Not ten feet or so later a path branched on of the she was now one. Since it was going left she followed it. About a hundred yards down that path, her staff hit a soft part and the path in front of her collapsed. She didn’t fall in, nor her shadow who was constantly following her rise up to eat her. She turned around and continued on her way.

Time seemed to slow down as she walked on the path. She was starting to regret choosing to only take the left hand side as every time she did the path under her collapsed. If it wasn’t for her staff, she would have died to the shadow that followed her. She was doing alright when she saw the hovering exit in the distance. Her path didn’t lead to it, so she backtracked and looked for a way in the same direction where she had seen the exit. That was when she committed the worst sin a climber could in the Tower. She got complacent.

She started to jog on the path not really looking around anymore. Her staff was still out, and she was pushing it in front of her in case the stone path collapsed, but she stopped paying attention to what was around her. That nearly cost her her life.

The moment she realized she was in trouble was when she saw the shadows on the water in front of her. She froze and looked up, and saw falling nets. She reacted fast, bringing up her staff and catching the wide circular net before it fell on her. She spun her staff so that the net wrapped around it, before sending it flying to her left. She glanced down and found herself surrounded by yellowish looking fish people. They were dragging nets behind them as they swam to the surface completely ignoring the huge shadow below them. As soon as one of the fish people reached the surface he threw the net into the air where it stretched out above her.

Once more she captured the net on her staff and threw it away from the fish person who threw it. Then she threw a Musket ball of vitality at it. The monster was very close to the surface and her ball struck. She yanked her hand back and the fish person died almost immediately. It had very little vitality stored up in it that almost as soon as she pulled on it, he died.

Kat felt her muscles burn as her first skill stole strength from the fish person. She was slightly distracted as her muscles burned that she almost missed seeing the next fish person break the surface to throw its net. Her grace saved her as she brought up her staff much faster than she could have before she had entered the Tower. Once free from the net, she killed the fish person. Then she started killing them just before they broke the surface of the water preventing them from throwing their nets. She had to ignore the burning sensation in her muscles, but her enemies started dying much faster.

Between one second and the next the fish people stopped their attack. Looking down she saw the shadow that had been following her flashing all over the place eating the dead. The living fish people were in retreat, not that she thought they needed to as her shadow wasn’t after them. He seemed only to care about the dead.

Kat started to run with her staff out in front of her. The shadow was busy and the fish people were in retreat. She knew this was the perfect time to go for the exit. She could see the exit in front of her, maybe a hundred yards when the path dropped in front of her. Kat paused to look back and around her, but there was no shadow following her anymore. Knowing she was being stupid, but really wanting to leave this floor, she dove into the water. Holding her staff in her right hand she swam to the exit.

In her head she imagined the shadow right behind her. Both her enchanted muscles and her panic gave her strength to swim far faster than she had ever before. She nearly leaped out of the water when she got to the stone under the exit. Not watsing any time she dove through the door. Her last thought right before she passed through the exit was that there was no path to the exit. She could clearly see that there was only a single block of rock that was not connected to any path. It was then that she realized that the floor was both a labyrinth and a puzzle floor. She failed the puzzle, but won the floor.

After spending a single second as well as all of eternity between floors, she found herself standing in a cave. She felt the icy sensation of a new power she asked the Tower to add it to her vitality. The cave must have been completely dark as her stolen night sight was already showing her that she was standing in a cave roughly thirty feet across.

The cave walls were rugged while the floor and ceiling were covered in pointy stalagmites and stalactites. There were hundreds of them, leaving very little space between them. She made a mental note not to fall down. The cave sort of went sideways and at the far end was a small opening. Looking around she noted that it was the only opening in the cave.

Making her way around the stalagmites she saw that it cleared up once past the cave inside the opening at the far side. The opening led to a wide tunnel with a very smooth rock floor that looked like it might have been a river bed at one point. Looking up just past the opening to the wide tunnel, she saw that there was a bunch of stalactites surrounding a very thin opening in the ceiling. It was way too thin for any human to slip through, but she thought it might have been a waterfall at one point in the past just going by the streaks of different shades of greys on the rock. She assumed they were different colors, but her stolen night vision couldn’t tell the difference.

The path angled downwards. It was like she was walking down a large hill, if that hill was made up of solid rock. There were steep parts that she mostly avoided, but when she couldn’t her stolen grace help her with not falling. It was when she came to a drop off in the path where she had to jump about five or so feet down if she wanted to continue using the path when she spotted her first foe.

She spotted it just as she was about to drop down. She stopped herself in time, but still nearly fell even with her stolen grace. The thing looked huge, almost as big as the bear she had encountered in the icy tundra of the fourth floor, but fatter. It was digging into the rock path with it’s two short front legs that were more claws than legs. While she had never seen one in real life she thought it looked like a mole in some of the pictures of her fathers books except much, much bigger.

While it was about a hundred or so feet away, Kat decided to see if she could hit it with a musket ball of vitality. It was standing sideways to her. Knowing she had a really big target, made her think she had a chance to hit it. She built up an overpowered musket ball and threw it. She threw it high, and holding her beats, she watched it arch downwards pulled down by gravity until it hit the thing in its side. She yanked her still outstretched hand, and vitality rushed up the ribbon connecting it to her.

The beast reacted immediately and let out a screech in anger. She watched it as it spun around a few times looking for, she assumed, her before falling over dead. The vitality kept coming for a half a second after it died before abruptly drying up. She felt a warm flush over her muscles almost immediately afterwards.

“Grace.” She muttered to herself as she recognized the burn. If how long the warm feeling lasted for was any indicator, she guessed she got a lot from her kill. While the burn wasn’t as hot as it had been in the past it lasted much longer than the half a second or so the other times when her skill added it to her body.

Dropping down off the ledge on the path she cautiously walked towards the dead beast. Now that she was closer she saw that it looked like someone had crossed a porcupine and a mole. While it looked mostly like a mole it had the quills of a porcupine. The most disturbing thing she found about it was that it had a really long thin tongue that stretched out in death about six feet or so. She wondered if it’s tongue was also some kind of weapon that it used along with it’s large claws. She found the claw marks in the stone that the mole had made was filled with a bunch of some kind of tiny white worms. It wasn’t hard to guess that the mole thing was looking for its dinner.

An unknown time later, maybe an hour or so later, she found it hard to tell time in the dark, she came across two more mole-like creatures. Again she spotted them about a hundred or so feet away. One was sleeping, while the other one was digging in the floor like the first one had. Her musket ball of vitality hit the wrong one when she threw it. It missed the one digging, and hit the sleeping one. It hit the sleeping one just above its tail, but she still felt a good connection after it hit. She pulled on it’s vitality and drank deeply.

It let out a screech which panicked the one that was already awake. As she drank down the vitality, the other mole thing also let out a screech and backed up towards the wall. She could see it’s tongue flicker out of its mouth much like a snake, then slip back inside its snout. It’s head spun back and forth and Kat didn’t think it could see or smell her. She was not sure if she was too far away or if there was another reason. Either way she was glad it was effectively blind as she tossed out a second musket ball of vitality. A few seconds later the warm feeling of her grace improving told her that they were both dead.

Not far after the two moles she found a side tunnel that started to her right. It was smaller than the main tunnel, but large enough for a mole to pass through. Really wanting to stay with the main tunnel she debated silently with herself. While she didn’t want to leave the main path until she had too, she really didn’t want to leave a potential enemy behind her. Grumbling to herself she turned and entered the smaller tunnel.

It was a long and windy tunnel that had four mole-like things, but luckily they weren’t all grouped up together. They were all spread out and didn’t hear the screeching that came from one of their number dying. The moles never saw her as the closest she got to any of them was about fifty feet if that. She tossed out her musket balls and they died. She did note that if she tossed two of the musket balls of vitality she could kill the beast faster. Oddly enough her grace gave her much better accuracy, and she only missed a handful of times. Not that it mattered, the Moles never figured out where she was.

The tunnel which was pretty much level, never going down or up, ended by getting smaller and smaller. She had to crawl on her belly for the last few hundred feet. She only stopped when the hole got so small that she knew that any creature not the size of a real life rat wouldn’t be able to pass through. Then she had to crawl backwards until she could turn around and later stand up. The entire episode was claustrophobic, but she could hear her father in her ear telling her to never leave a potential enemy behind her. It was a good way, he had told her, to get stabbed in the back.

Time slowly passed as she went down the main tunnel. There were a bunch of moles that she had to kill as well as a bunch of mole filled side tunnels in her travels. She noted that her vitality started to leak again on her second side tunnel getting steadily worse until it was that same trickle she had before she ate and slept in the Matriarch’s tent. On her fourth side tunnel she came across some water. It tasted metallic, but it was water and she was thirsty. Before her fifth side tunnel she felt an increase in the trickle of vitality for a short time before it settled down to it’s normal drain. She assumed she got sick off the water as the vitality loss never slowed down even after she drank from the tiny pool.

When she finally got to the end of the main path she had lost count of how many side paths tunnels she had been down. She did stop exploring too deeply when the tunnel got too small to stand up as she never came across any other enemy but the moles. She felt a bit bad about her laziness, but she was tired of exploring on her belly while the tunnel closed in on her.

There was one last side tunnel right before the main tunnel ended in a bowl-like cave. Inside the cave were three moles. Two were normal looking mole creatures that she had been fighting and killing during her trip, and the last one was a huge one. It was much bigger than anything she had fought so far. She also noted that all three of the moles were awake and digging in the stone below them.

Really wanting to skip the last tunnel, but knowing that leaving an enemy behind her was a huge mistake she turned to enter it. She also discovered that she was becoming addicted to the feeling of getting stronger. Her gracy had greatly improved since she had entered the tunnel system. The only thing she found that was a bit sad was that the length of the warmth had slowed down to less than a second from a few seconds when she first started killing the moles. While she didn’t know for sure, she guessed that she was running out of vitality to improve it more. She knew, mostly from attacking the metal monster and stealing magic from it on the third floor, that she could still improve other aspects of attributes. The desire to squeeze out as many improvements as she could was the real reason she didn’t bypass the side tunnel.

She was glad she did when she came across another chest in the back of the tunnel. She had to kill six more mole creatures to get to it, but she thought it was worth it. The chest was locked, but a few bashes with her staff and she knocked the lock off. She opened the chest much more carefully than she did the first time she found one. Her father talked about how dangerous chests were to open because of traps.

According to him, they came in all different ways. Some were simple like a crossbow bolt waiting to be fired upon opening, to poisonous gasses being released. It was best to take the entire chest with you if you could, but Kat didn’t have a backpack or anything to carry it outside her arms. The chest itself was rarely worth anything, but the things inside it was. The last thing she wanted was to have her hands occupied incase of an attack. So she went with the next best method. Bash the lock in and open it from behind and hope for the best.

To her relief, the thing didn’t explode nor fire a cross bolt out when she opened it. Peeking around the top of the chest, she saw that the chest contained an unstrung crossbow. She picked it up from inside the velvet covered chest, and could see it glowed a faint blue to her mage sight. She had thought it was her imagination for a few seconds as she hadn’t seen anything but shades of gray for a really long time. But after it didn’t go away she assumed it was a magical bow which while finding one wasn’t that rare in the Tower it was pretty rare finding one so early in a climb.

It was a beautiful, very polished wooden bow that was slightly longer than her staff. It was surprisingly light in her hands. The top and bottom parts were flat, and looked like separate flat pieces that were combined inside a round middle part. She could see where they were layered into the middle part. There was some smooth red twine that was wound around where she would be her hand, giving it a good grip.The bow strip was included, but it wasn’t strung up. It was instead, lightly coiled around the hand piece. While she really wanted to string it up, she had no arrows to shoot with. With a sad sign she pushed the ends of the bow into the loop of her staff strap. They fit together snugly and she strung them both up behind her on her back.

Killing those last three moles was just as simple as killing all the other moles. The big one when hit by a Musket ball of vitality ran around more, but it died just like all the rest. Kat felt the fight was a big let down. Oddly enough she wanted a harder fight. She wasn’t stupid enough to endanger herself to get it, but it didn’t lessen the feeling that the fight could have been more exciting. She still got a bit of grace from killing the three, but it was almost so little that she barely felt the warmth. The exit appeared floating in the air after the last mole died.

After adding her reward for clearing the floor into her vitality, she found herself standing at the top of a very windy cliff. The light was coming from two sun-like objects in the sky, it made everything an odd washed out white. It wasn’t as bad as her stolen night vision as she could still see some colors, but they appeared to be washed out. There also weren't any shadows that she could see. Which made the oddness even worse.

She edged over to the ledge and found a goat's path that zig zagged down the cliff to the bottom. It was very far to the bottom, and if she had to guess maybe about a mile or so down. Maybe longer. She wasn’t too sure.

The exit was clearly visible at the very bottom of the cliff. Outside the cliff which seemed to go on forever, or at least all the way to the horizon, everything looked the same to the sameness of the land behind her. There was nothing, either behind her or down below, that stood out besides the grey loose dirt that was all around her. It reminded her of the red desert of the first floor except on that floor there wasn’t any wind.

“No time like the present.” She muttered to herself, and started towards the goats path.

The path was only about a foot or so wide so she had to walk sideways with her body pressing up against the cliff. She was glad she was walking that way when as soon as her head fell below the top of the cliff a gust of wind flew at her from behind her. She had to hold on to the side of the cliff as the wind threatened to toss her off the cliff. The wind continued to get worse the more she went down the cliff, but with both her stolen grace and strength it was never as bad as the first gust of wind. It was not being prepared that made that first gust of wind the most dangerous one.

It took her hours, if the passages of the suns were the same as the world outside the Tower. Once the first sun disappeared behind the cliff, she started to see shadows again. It was both a blessing and a curse. It made the whole oddness of the floor go away, at least slightly. It also made it harder to see hand holds and where parts of the really small trail were missing. The missing parts were only about a foot, but the first time she stepped in one she nearly fell. The shadows made it hard to tell if they were there or not. Sometimes they appeared to be a missing part because the shadow looked like it, but then it turned out not to be. Sometimes it hid the missing part in the shadows. Her grace made her react fast enough that it wasn’t a real problem after the first time.

Once on the floor she looked up, and noted that the cliff looked much taller now that she was on the bottom of it. It looked like it was more than a mile she first guessed. The wind was blowing like crazy at the bottom as well, which kept pulling the hood of her coat over her head. It wasn’t that much of a problem because she was glad for any protection from the wind. It was blowing the dirt up which was starting to hurt if it hit her exposed skin. The wind also seemed to push her towards the exit, and she had to lean back into it as she made her way as quickly as could towards it.

On the next floor, Kat found herself in an oversized posh house. After asking the Tower to boost her Vitality she appeared by the front door of a larger than average house. The door was nearly twice the normal length. It was also locked and didn’t budge when she tried to open it. The windows were also much bigger, but she was not able to look out of them because of the colored pane of glasses. It looked like church windows except that there weren't any pictures being shown. Instead it was, at least to her eyes, just random colors.

She tried to bash the windows out, but they were much stronger than she was. She didn’t even leave a mark on the glass. Putting her staff away, she turned back to what was in front of her. There was a huge staircase that dominated the front room. There were two more oversized doors on either side of the huge staircase and two exits on either side of the room. The one to her left led to a room that had a huge fireplace in it. The other room on her right looked like it was just a small room before there was another room beyond that filled with what looked like an indoor garden.

Since the door to the right was just one room, she went that way first to make sure there were any enemies waiting to ambush her. She stopped by the open door and peaked in. She didn’t have much time to look around because she found her first enemy. Standing in the corner was a huge rat that was bigger than she was. It saw her and charged at her silently. She tossed two quick musket balls of vitality at it then dove to her right as the thing jumped at her.

Her enchanted grace saved her. She was not only faster than the rat, she was also much more agile than it was. She rolled to her feet before it crashed into the side of the door. It had just enough time to get to its feet before it fell over and died to the loss of its vitality. She felt her muscles burn as she stole a small amount of grace from the rat.

She quickly looked around, but there were no more enemies. She did get a better look at the room though. The walls were painted an ugly lime green that went from the blue and black persian carpet all the way to the white ceiling. The ceiling, which had paint peeling from it, was very high above her. Thirty or more feet above her, if she had to guess.

The fireplace was big enough for her to stand in and still have a few feet of room. It was made out of very expensive red brick that Kat had only heard about. The fireplace was also dirty. There was black soot where the flames had licked the sides of the fireplace.

Suspicious of the fireplace, Kat walked closer. She flashed her hand in and out to see if it wasn’t trapped. Nothing happened. She then stuck her foot in and left in for a couple of seconds, but again nothing happened. Feeling better about it not being trapped she stuck her head in and looked up the chimney. It was full of soot, and while it seemed to go on forever, she could see some light coming down it from the top. She thought about climbing it, but decided against it when she noticed that the chimney closed in on itself the further up it went.

While still looking up, she noticed that this wasn’t the only fireplace that shared this chimney. She could see some openings once she was far enough back inside the fireplace. Feeling uncomfortable standing directly inside the fireplace she quickly got out and left the room. She also didn’t stop to look back, even though the hair on the back of her neck started to raise.

She quickly started to walk towards the other room on the other side of the first room. As she did she glanced up and to her surprise saw a metal knight standing at the top with a polearm in its hands. Her mouth dropped out in surprise as it jumped high into the air coming right at her. Her body reacted before her mind did. She dove to the side and she found herself throwing out two musket balls of vitality at the falling knight. She felt the connection establish between her and the armored figure as she rolled to her feet.

She yanked her hand back, and got flooded with vitality as the armored figure dropped its polearm where she had been standing only moments ago. The metal sword at the top of the staff made a clanging sound as it bit deeply into the wooden floor. It yanked it out only to stumble then fall to the ground as she felt its vitality end. It crashed to the ground, but unlike the last armored figure she fought it didn’t fall to pieces. She looked around making sure that there were no more dangers before going over to the dead knight. As she did so she felt the burn in her muscles that told her that she had stolen a large portion of strength from the knight.

She raised its helm and blinked at what she saw underneath. It was a lizard person. It had yellowish scales with big bulging eyes that looked like a human’s eyes. It had a white outside like a normal person, and a ring of blue around a pitch black pupil. It didn’t have a nose like she did, but it did have two slits in where a normal human would have their nose.

“Eww.” She muttered letting the helm close. “You’re an ugly one, aren’t you.”

She got up and after making sure there were no rats or armored lizard people she went to the next room. The room was covered floor to ceiling with wood paneling. The ceiling was white, but it didn’t look like it was covered in paint. Instead, it looked like the substance was thick and bits of it dried like it was dripping down. It didn’t look dangerous, so Kat ignored it.

The next room stopped her in her tracks. The room was dominated by a huge white tree. It looked like a white pine that appeared north of her village. She loved the smell of the wood when it was put into the fireplace. This looked like those trees, but this one had a much thicker trunk, and was much taller than the one north of her village.

The room had a skylight built into the ceiling, and a spiral metal staircase. Something she had never see nor had head anyone talk about it before. The spiral staircase led all the way up to the ceiling where there was a small metal platform that had a few flowers on it. She left them alone not sure if they were predators or just plants. She did get closer to the tree wanting to break off a small tree branch to see if she could eat some it's vitality. She did no cautiously as she was also unsure if the tree was a predator or just a normal tree.

It didn’t attack her so she cautiously broke off a small tree branch that contained a leaf. She stuck the leaf into her mouth and chewed on it just to see if she could eat it. After sucking on it she got a small ribbon of very tasteful vitality. Oddly enough it tasted like raspberries.

She then sucked on the small tree branch and got back the same tasting vitality, but there was more of it and it tasted a lot stronger. Smiling, she started pulling small branches off, and after opening her coat she started putting them through her Tower granted shirt that she got when she entered the Tower. She had used up more than half her black tree branches from the first floor, so she started recreating her fake belt. Once her belt was rebuilt she rebuilt the circles around her arms as well. Once she was done, she put her coat back on, and with a stick in her mouth she headed back to the stairs.

This time she tried the door to the left of the stairs, and she was not sure if she was greatful or worried that it would open easily. The oversized door led to a large courtyard. It was mostly empty except for large square rocks that made up the floor and two huge rats. The rats hesitated, Kat didn’t. She shot off two musketballs as the rats eyed her. Yanking her hands back she started eating the first rat's vitality. She was very full from the last rat she fought so she had to dump a lot of vitality through her legs as she did so.

Two things happened after that. First the rat she hit started digging at the furious pace. She was not sure what it was trying to do, but she ignored it as the second rat charged. As that was happening, the vitality she was dumping into the ground did something. She felt a rumble below her even as the rat jumped at her, and she dove away to avoid it.

The rat never landed. A white pine looking tree grew up with tremendous speed impaling it. The tree kept on growing even as the rat was raised upward by the tree. She lost sight of it as the vitality she had been stealing from the first rat stopped abruptly. She glanced over to see the rat in a large hole it had dug, dead. As she looked over at the dead rat the tree finally stopped growing. Kat looked back not sure what to think and heard a snap sound, and a large branch fell with the impaled rat still stuck in it.

“Blazes.” Kat said, shocked at what had happened.

She found she couldn’t look away from the dead rat impaled by the tree for a few seconds. She had heard about plant magji and the odd things that they could do, but the sense in front of her still shook her. Shaking her head she looked up to see what looked like a sixty foot white pine full of green leaves. It was even bigger than the tree in the room she just left.

Since there was no other entrance except for a single door beside the one behind her. She opened it to find herself back in the first room of the floor, just on the other side of the huge staircase. With no other direction to go, she headed up the stairs. The stairs were so large that she had to take two steps for every step just to reach the next one. The stairs themselves were about three feet tall, and about the same wide.

At the top of the stairs she found herself with only two directions to go. Like the first floor she could go either left or right. Because she went left first downstairs she went right this time. The hallway led to another hallway with a bunch of doors. She turned around and went the other way, curious to see if the left was the same as the right. She found it was, sort of.

There were a bunch of door just like the other hallway, but this hallway had two armored knights who were guarding a door at the end of the hallway. They immediately charged her as soon as she walked into the side hallway. She fired off two musket balls of vitality at the lead knight and it fell about five feet from her. She fired off two more musket balls even as she fainted to the right of the large hallway. Both her musket balls sunk into the charging knight as she fainted then jumped to her left as the knight reached her and tried to drop it’s polearm on her head. It missed, and she moved behind it still sucking down it’s vitality.

She noted that beneight the carpet was wood as the knight pulled his polearm out of the floor. It spun around and tried to slice her in half, but she was much faster with all the grace she had stolen. She easily dodged out of the way, and dodged once again as the knight spun the polearm trying to cut her in half. She stayed in place as the knight recovered and tried to stab her. She caught the polearm and to her surprise held it as the knight tried to pull it back. It tugged on it twice before it tried once more, but this time much weaker. Then it let the polearm go and fell to the ground dead. Smiling, she let the polearm fall to the ground as it was much too big for her.

“Now what were you hiding?” She asked softly to herself.

She went to the door that they had been standing in front of and put her ear to it to try and hear what was going on the other side. Either the door was too thick or there was nothing going on in the other room. Shrugging and taking a chance she opened the door. It was unlocked and opened easily.

As soon as she opened the door she cursed her stupidity and tried to close it as fast as she could. She had found the exit alright, but there were four knights standing around it. Two on either side of the floating darkness, and two a few feet from the door. She slammed the door shut and pulled the doorknob towards her trying to hold it closed.A knight on the other side must have decided to ignore the doorknob because after a couple of long seconds the bladed part of a polearm pierced through the door inches from Kat’s face.

“Blazes.” She cursed, stumbling back away from the door as the blade disappeared back into the door. Then it appeared again, but this time it was joined by two others.

“Not enough room for the fourth?” She asked with an excited smile. Like they heard her, the fourth blade part pierced the door as soon as she was done talking. A large piece of the door broke off and fell towards her. She looked down at the piece of wood that came off the door then into the hole in the door. She saw knightley faces staring right back at her.

The taboo held for a few more seconds then one of the knights reached into the hole and grabbed the wood on the side of the hole. It then yanked a larger piece of the door away. Then another armored hand appeared and helped the first at enlarging the hoel. Kat shook off her shock and threw two musket balls of vitality through the hole and felt the both connect. Unfortunately, they connected with two different knights. It wasn’t hard to tell as she felt connected to two different vitalitys.

She yanked her hands back as the knights widened the hole in the door. She then took a few steps back pulling the ribbons with her. It didn’t force any more vitality away from them when she did it, but she still felt better when she heard a knight hiss in what she hoped was pain. It took only a few more seconds for them to break a large enough hole for one of them to get through. She wasn’t connected to the knight who came at her, so she just dodged and played for time as she consumed the vitality from the two she had.

She was fine for the first couple of seconds as she dodged the knight and his polearm, but a second knight joined him. She was still fine as she dodged two polarms, but things got complicated when a third joined them. She turned and ran as the fourth finally joined them. She looked back over her shoulder as one of the knights threw his polearm like a spear. She dodged to the side, but didn’t stop running as it passed her and buried itself into the wall ahead of her.

She turned the corner and started down the stairs as another polearm came flying at her. She leaned back and it missed her by a hair. It brought a smile to her face, as she jumped down the huge stairs. It slowed her down and one of the knights was able to catch up to her. She stopped running when it tried to stab her with it’s overly large polearm.

She grabbed it and pulled it. To her surprise the knight let it go. It was too large for her to be comfortable even though it was very light. It felt too awkward for her to wield it with any confidence. So she tossed it away. The knight then came at her throwing a fist at her face. Instead of ducking it, she grabbed its arm and pulled it over her shoulder like her father friend Charles had taught her. The armored knight was heavy, but she was still able to toss him. He went flying down the stairs.

As he went flying past her, the others caught up. She dodge two of the three polearms coming at her. The third hit her in the leg, and went right through it. Crying out in pain, she grabbed it and pulled it out even as the knight tried to push it deeper. Once it was out of her leg, she pulled on the polearm and the knight behind it. The knight was already trying to push so when she pulled on it instead of pushing he too went flying.

She looked back up the stairs for the other two enemies, but they had finally died to her vitality drain. She spun around ignoring the now two dead knights behind her. She fired off an overcharged musket ball of vitality as the first knight charged up the stairs. It hit the knight, but he didn’t explode like she thought he would. Instead she just felt connected to his vitality like normal.

Pulling on the ribbon that connected him to her she then raised her foot and kicked him with the flat of her foot sending him back down the stairs. It gave her a chance to send another musket ball of vitality at him. Yanking her hand back she watched the second knight run at her with his polearm out and pointed right at her chest. Taking a few steps back, she charged out and jumped with her right foot out. She sailed past the armored knight’s polearm then hit him in the head. She dropped to the really big floor feeling the edge hit her back just below her staff and bow. She screamed in pain, and she felt some numbness from her waist and dowards towards her feet. It only lasted a few brief moments before it went away, but gave her a brief flash of fear that faded seconds later.

The first knight died to her vitality drain, and the second knight must have hit the floor wrong because he didn’t get up after he hit the ground floor. She stood up and not trusting that the second knight was dead, she sent a musket ball of vitality at him. It hit, but there was no connection in return. Without that connection her skill faded.

With all four knights dead she started laughing. She didn’t mean too, but it bubbled up from her chest. She just took on four armored knights and won. It was exhilarating and she felt powerful as she went over the fight in her mind. She knew she just took a bad fall, but it didn’t matter. Her vitality was still almost topped off, and her healing ability was very powerful. She wondered if her father had felt the same way when he was climbing the Tower. Then she remembered that he had died.

“Don’t get overconfident.” She whispered softly to herself as she turned around and headed towards the broken door and the exit to the floor.

She thought about checking all the other doors, but decided against it. She wanted to get to Massachuttes city. She had already spent too much time climbing these first ten set of floors. This was the eight floor, and she was only one floor away from entering the city. She just wanted it over with, now.

She passed through the broken door, and entered the now abandoned room. The room was a large room, even larger than any room she had been inside on this floor so far. The exit was floating on a pedicel. She jumped up onto it and stepped into the darkness. She spent a second and all of eternity between floors then it was over. She asked the Tower to put her rewards into vitality then she found herself on the ninth floor. The hardest floor of the first ten set.