1116 Reclimbing
“Fuck!” Alex couldn’t help but curse when he got back to the first floor. He was the one that had chosen the room to go into and somehow had ended up with the worst room for himself.
He wanted to say it was unfair, but it really wasn’t. Each room was fair to someone and unfair to others. That was how the entire sanctum functioned.
Hell, that was why there were multiple pathways to the top in the first place. So that the contenders had a fair chance to make it up to the top floor, as fair as one could get with luck involved at least.
Alex sighed, but this was no place to be worrying about anything. He needed to continue going up the floors.
Along the way, he found out that it had been over 3 months since they had entered the sanctum. He knew it was right, but for some reason, it didn’t feel like such a long time had passed.
He practically rushed his way through the rest of the floors, going into rooms he was used to and winning there.
2nd floor, 3rd floor, 4th floor, 6th floor. He went past them quite fast. Not as many people were challenging the tower anymore after losing so many times, so he got the opportunity to go up even faster.
He slowed back down around the 15th floor again as the people who were trying to go up had started to increase in number around here.
Still, that only meant a few days of delay.
Alex arrived on the 20th floor about 5 days later after restarting and was surprised that he had to go through it again.
He skipped the next 4 floors again and asked the spirit on why he had to redo it there but not the earlier floors.
The reason was apparently that everyone can do the 5th, 10th, and 15th floor since it was the most basic way to find a cultivator.
For the rest of them, however, there was a chance that it could be cheated on the pass-through. You could use what was definitely not your skill to skip the floor the first time around, so to weed those cheaters out, they were made to do it all over again.
Alex understood what he was trying to say and thought that was the right approach. His speed slowed down a little from 26 to 29, but it was nowhere near as bad as it was the last time he was here.
Since over 2 months had passed since the last time he was here, the number of people on this floor had saturated. Given the way the floor worked now, the wait actually came from having to wait for the rooms to be empty, rather than full like the last time.
Alchemy battle, Battle royale, Puppet battle, and Blind battle— Alex completed it all with relative ease as he had done it all the last time around and had a bit of practice.
Then, he skipped up to the 35th floor using the Endurance test on the 30th floor.
All this time as he made his way up the tower, there had been a single question on his mind.
Where were the assassins?
As far as he was aware, there were supposed to be 4 more left. He had killed the insect-controlling assassin and 3 clones.
So, by his understanding, there was the Clone’s main body, the girl he met at the very start of the competition, and then…
He wasn’t sure who the next two were. Since he didn’t know anything about their leader, of of the last ones could be the leader, and the other assassin was most likely the red-haired, fiery chick.
But then something didn’t make sense at all.
“The hell?” he thought. Had he perhaps not counted right? Or were there simply more assassins than he realized? What if the Dark Phoenix did not have 7 assassins, but more?
“I can think about it after I leave,” he thought and continued on with the next challenges.
The 36th challenge was the one that required him to walk straight to his destination while walking through an illusory dream formation that spoke sweet nothings to him.
This time around, with how ready he was for the formation, it didn’t work for him at all. He passed the 36th floor and arrived on the 37th floor where he waited for the Elemental battle room to be free.
He was so happy that he didn’t have to wait weeks for these rooms to be filled up and instead it only took a day at most.
The Elemental battle was the easiest for him because of his Demon eyes and he got to go to the 38th floor.
Alex arrived at the 38th floor and looked at the first room. He saw that it was open with only 2 more people required.
He then looked at the other one that was open with only 3 people inside, asking for 5 more.
Without hesitation, he went to the 2nd room. He did not want to go through the Painting challenge again.
He was sure that with his talent, after a couple of tries, or even a single session with a master painter, he would learn a lot and his painting skills would improve by many realms.
However, he did not have such luxury at the current time, so he had to take his chances and go with the other one.
Alex walked into the other room, even if it still needed 5 more people to begin. Or 4, now that he was in.
He walked into the room and saw the spots lying around. He was meant to sit on one of the 5 remainings.
He looked at the 3 people in the room and nodded toward them. He was surprised to see these people there.
One of the girls was a plain girl with green robes, who merely glanced at Alex before focusing on her own meditation.
The other girl was a small girl with pink hair and bright blue robes. She gave a small smile to Alex and nodded back to him before looking away.
However, it wasn’t these two that surprised him at all.
It was the third girl. It was the tribal girl he had fought in the battle hall, who he had also seen outside the sanctum.
He nodded toward her, but his surprise made him look at her for a second too long. At that time, his memory flashed back to the time when he fought her hand-to-hand.
There was a mystery for him at that time why her body had been so rigid at all. Body cultivators were strong, but her muscles felt very stiff.
When he saw the very well-hidden killing intent in her eyes, he realized what the reasoning was for that time.
Rigor Mortis. Her muscles were tough because it was a dead body.
“Oh fuck,” he said softly. “Another clone.”
The girl suddenly dashed out of her spot and started attacking Alex. Alex jumped back, but she easily reached him.
Her cultivation base was strong, at least in the Saint Core realm.
“How are you alive?” she demanded. “I killed you.”
Alex blocked her punch and gave a swift kick before answering. “Oh, and did you stay around to check if that really happened?” he asked.
“You could not have survived a Core Explosion,” she shouted and continued attacking. Alex could defeat her at any time, but he needed to call the spirit to take them elsewhere.
“Do you want to fight me so bad?” he asked, but the girl didn’t answer. ‘Did she learn from last time?’
“Y-you guys,” the pink-haired girl stammered a little. “We-we cannot fight. P-Please, stop fighting.”
Her voice came out like a plea and one could hear the desperation and fear in her voice.
“Please, stop fighting,” she said and stood up to go stop them. However, before she could move two steps, she tripped over her own foot and fell face-first onto the ground.
“Ouch!” she shouted and slowly got up. When she did, everyone in the room saw her two huge breasts fall out of her robe, fully visible to them all.
“Aaaah! Don’t look!” she shouted as she immediately turned around to hide it. However, the damage was done.
Not to her, to Alex.
He was distracted for a split second, and at that moment, a single needle was lodged through his rib that the dark-skinned clone had managed to sneakily attack him with.
Alex was sent flying along the walls of the room and fell on the other side. He slowly got up and immediately palmed the kick from the clone before spinning around to kick her away as well.
“My body is stronger than you might think,” he said as he pulled the thin needle from his ribs and smelled it slightly.
“Hmm… poison huh?” he thought and smiled back. “That was not a bad idea. You knew you couldn’t beat me, so you went for a poison attack while I was distracted.”
His grin turned even larger as he replied. “Sucks for you though. If poison worked on me, the Jade-Faced Assassin wouldn’t have died so easily at my hands,” he said.
Then, he turned towards the big-breasted petite girl. “That was a nice trick. That charming technique of yours,” he said.
“Can’t believe I came across two assassins at the same time.”