Chapter 595: Floor 15
Tadaima paused again, seemingly receiving information and instructions from the tower or whatever entity controlled it. After a short while, it faced Draco once more and hovered a bit backward slowly.
"Candidate Draco, the tower acknowledges your suggestion as valid and will implement it as long as you and your female partners do not try to overtly or subvertly breach it!"
Draco smiled, but sneered inwardly. This tower was really overestimating itself and its value. It was a mere tower with a limit of Divine grade items and materials, not even having things of the Origin grade.
Not only that, did his women really need to desperately try to imitate trial takers so they could accumulate more score points? It was obvious that the tower feared Draco harbored some cruel and insidious plan towards it.
If he decided to add his OP wives as well, they could harvest enough score points to send the Tower into debt when they would choose to exchange them.
However, it had never seen Draco perform Refinement since he had always done it in his Inner Universe, so it had no idea that Draco needed just one of every item, not hundreds of them.
Once he got a sample, he could mass-produce them himself at the cost of time and energy, but energy was a moot point thanks to the Inner Universe and time too was less of an issue since Eva - and himself to an extent - could slow it down around him..
He only saw this tower as a fun pastime and a means to acquire precious materials that were scarce on the main plane or otherwise too hard to acquire. The tower was like an ugly girl who was warning a handsome dude not to have any ideas about her when the fellow only wanted to ask for directions.
Utterly delusional and way over its head.
"We are willing to adhere to the rules." Draco conceded, keeping his derision hidden, though Zaine and Eva picked the emotion from his mind with their psychic abilities easily.
Eva snorted coldly towards Tadaima while Zaine smirked.
"Acknowledged. Carry on then, Candidate Draco." Tadiama said, before it turned around to leave. However, Draco called out to the orb before it could leave with an amused tone.
"I do not think we are done here."
Tadaima paused and almost seemed to flinch before turning around. "Is there any other issue you wish to discuss, Candidate Draco?"
Draco nodded. "That's right. As stated earlier, I have suffered unfairly from the abuse of the tower and the attempt to restrain me and my wives' rights and enjoyment. As such, I feel that I am owed some reparations by the tower. I hope the tower is not trying to default on this?"
Tadaima paused and then spoke with an almost frustrated tone. "Does Candidate Draco already have a proposal about how he wishes to resolve this matter?"
Draco smirked inwardly, but showed a casual expression outwardly as he gazed at his fingernails. "Nothing too much, just a sum of three million score points to alleviate my pains and to soothe my wives' anger."
Eva and Zaine's expressions froze as their eyes twitched while Roma closed her eyes, pretending not to see anything. Hikari simply nodded profusely, agreeing with Draco because he was never wrong.
Tadaima recoiled like it had been struck with a physical blow, and some of its circuits shorted as electricity crackled around it. In a slightly disjointed robotic tone, it replied.
"Candidate Draco, the tower finds your claims excessive!"
Draco frowned deeply and banged his throne's handrest. "Excessive? How so? When I, the leading trial taker who has successfully cleared more than 10 floors with perfect scores is treated like this, you think anyone will trust the tower?"
Draco harrumphed coldly as he leaned back into his seat. "I'd like to see how the tower would get trial takers to put in the same effort. After all, why should anyone try to reach level 99 when the fellow with the highest chance to do so is abused freely in private by the tower, thinking no one would find out?"
Tadaima simply bobbed up and down where it floated, speechless and unsure what to say next. It soon communicated with the tower for a while before speaking in a defeated tone.
"The tower... acknowledges a certain validity to your argument. Nevertheless, the sum you demand is equivalent to achieving a perfect score for nearly 80% of the tower's floors! It is therefore far beyond the rules for any penal remuneration. The payout will be limited to 150,000 score points. That is the tower's bottom line!"
Draco looked to the side, then looked up to the sky, then looked to his right as he hummed and snorted each time. He finally closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them with a sigh.
"Fine. I shall be the bigger man and forgive the tower for its transgression. I agree to the payout and shall not push further, granting the tower a chance to redeem itself since it so dearly wishes to bless me with such a boon."
He then waved to Tadaima in a shooing motion as he looked away. "I never really wanted this money, but since you came all the way to force it upon me, I can only accept your plea for forgiveness. Now leave quickly, or others might get the wrong idea, that I, Draco, receive backdoor bribes when my integrity is challenged!"
-23! -12! -31!
These three damage numbers appeared above the heads of Roma, Eva, and Zaine respectively, as blood trickled down the side of their lips. Hikari paused as she felt something was wrong, but was too innocent to truly understand it.
Tadaima itself seemed to have aged a hundred years after processing Draco's words. Its already terrible shape after it gad short-circuited previously became worse as it looked rusted and ready to explode.
Without even acknowledging Draco, Tadaima quickly disappeared from his castle, afraid that it might become scrap metal if it stayed for even a second longer.
Draco noticed that his score point tally had increased to over half a million, 544,437 points overall. He casually scrolled through the list of redeemable rewards and chuckled maliciously when he saw that he could clear out around 20% of the tower's stock.
Well, since he was in a good mood, and the tower needed clearing, it was time to jump to the 15th floor!
Draco entered the floor with Eva and co in tow, wondering what the story would be about this time.
When they appeared, they noticed that they were in the midst of a chase once again. There were a few dozen riders on horseback ahead of them, while behind them were two Endurance, two Agility, and one Strength Sentinel chasing after their group furiously.
Draco and his group were in between both parties, trying to hold back the Sentinels as they were in the midst of using skills automatically, which were likely randomly selected from their repertoire each.
｢Charm - Active Skill
Effect: Force a target to obey your commands unconditionally.
Note: This is effective based on Cha. If you possess less than 1.9x the Cha of your target, you will suffer a backlash.
Duration: 3 hours.
Cooldown: 20 hours.｣
Draco used Charm randomly on the Endurance Sentinel, which immediately passed the Charisma Check since he had 76 points and the Endurance Sentinel had only 2 points.
For the next 3 hours, this mighty Sentinel that was indefatigable and durable was under his control.
｢Light Ball - Active Skill
Effect: Concentrate a large amount of light energy into a spherical shape that deals huge AOE damage, amounting to 800% over 100 miles.
Cooldown: 8 minutes.｣
Eva cast her Light Ball which rose into the air behind them and exploded in a great flash. Coupled with her Inner Sun's boost among all her other items, this dealt about 35,000,000 damage to the two Agility Sentinels that were close to them and the one Endurance Sentinel still free.
The Strength Sentinel was too far away to be affected, but it was still visible because of its size. Its slowness was killing it, as each step took it a bit of time, but since it was trying to sprint, it would build up speed quickly.
The attack made the Agility Sentinels falter a bit, but they maintained their chase.
｢Dark Hands - Active skill
Effect: Summon a plethora of undead arms from the earth that trap all enemies within 1 mile and rip them to shreds.
Duration: 2 minutes
Cooldown: 30 seconds.｣
From Roma came her famous Dark Hands skill - formerly Necrotic Hands - which created a plethora of greenish-undead arms that rose from a green portal on the ground and grabbed the legs and torso of the two Agility Sentinels.
This time, they were actually stopped by the skill and could not move any further, as the hands grew in size to match their target. They wrapped the entire body of the Agility Sentinel and pulled them at all sides, trying to rip them into pieces.
This caused continuous damage and would continue doing so for the next 2 minutes.
｢Psi-Blade - Active Skill
Effect: Slash out with purified mental energy condensed into the form of a blade that severs all thoughts and sentience. This deals 150% mental damage and incapacitates a single target.
Duration: 4 minutes
Cooldown: 7 minutes｣
Zaine was made to use her Psi-Blade, which was an intangible attack that showed no visual effects except for a blue light surrounding the sensual succubus. When it hit her target, the Endurance Sentinel not charmed by Draco, took 4,980,000 damage and was instantly floored as its eyes glazed over.
It had been stunned for a 4-minute duration.
｢White Light Healing - Active skill
Effect: Infuse an injured target with the holy light of purity, alleviating their pains and bringing them back to full health while fully restoring mana and stamina, focus, and willpower.
Cooldown: None
Autocast: Off｣
As for Hikari, she was made to cast White Light Healing on all the fleeing warriors in front of them, completely healing the injured and restoring their vitality, much to their shock and joy.
The five were dismayed by the forced cast, especially Draco who could have used Charm on something else, but decided that it might be the tower getting a little subtle payback.
The floor details then came up.
｢The Fifteenth Floor - Divine Quest
Description: The mighty Chosen One was able to endure the assault of Ferrut Fort and ensure the safety of 10% of the warriors, while the rest have valiantly sacrificed themselves to hold back the other Sentinels so that your group could escape to fight another day. However, Ferrut Fort has unfortunately fallen in the onslaught, and you must regroup at the next defensible location, the Grand Bastion!
Protect your group until you reach the Grand Bastion, where you can regroup and plan your next course of action.
Limitation 1: Enemies are limited to within your Rank.
Limitation 2: You may retreat from the floor at any time, but upon re-entry, you would have to resume from the exact situation you were in at the time.
Provision 1: Every 5% of HP removed from the Sentinels allows you to gain one level regardless of your current Rank or experience requirements.
Provision 2: You have full use of all your powers and abilities in the same way as you would outside.
Rewards: Score Points, 1 Bronze-Tier Reward Selection.｣
The group shared a look as their lips twitched. The kind of thing the tower did each time was frankly getting annoying. Wouldn't it be more interesting to adjust the plot according to their actions instead of sticking to its own ideas?
If the tower could hear them, it would likely fight them to the death. Ever since they had entered from the first floor, they had taken actions that not only had been overkill for most of the floors' requirements, but would have put an end to the story if it had been allowed to be carried over!
Not interested in wasting time, Draco rolled his eyes and jumped into the air. He then used the Ultimate Transformation technique on himself to metamorphose into the Black Dragon.
He had learned his lesson from the previous floors, and would not summon the bloodline version or anything really. That was why he had also left Qiong Qi and Clarent behind, since those two would swallow experience without contributing anything useful to the fight.
Draco only had about a minute or so in this for, so he made sure to make every second count. He found that he didn't have to waste his own Bloodline Energy to manifest attacks and could absorb ambient Worldly Energy to do so instead.
This would not run down his timer, so he channeled a huge Orb of Destruction in his maw by dragging torrents of Worldly Energy over towards himself.
When it was ready, he fired the orb at the two bound Agility Sentinels, who were struggling against the Dark Hands. When they saw the black orb rushing towards them, their expression became ashen, much like their bodies did after connecting with the orb.
After dealing with them, Draco flapped his wings and soared over to the Endurance Sentinel that was stunned by Zaine and punched its head with a claw coated by Destruction Energy.
Immediately, its head was crushed open and the blackish energy corroded its brain, slowly eating away the rest of its body. Draco had one-shot a being with a trillion HP, but this was not surprising since he was a Black Dragon at the same Rank.
It didn't matter how much HP you had when faced with Destruction Energy, only the quality of your existence (i.e Rank) compared to the assailant using the energy in the first place.
Draco then saw the Strength Sentinel in the distance that suddenly dug its feet into the earth to slow its charge, its expression of horror and fear showing as it tried to turn around and run for its life.
However, Draco was simply amused by this. He simply waved a claw lazily, creating a wave of Destruction Energy that hurtled towards the Strength Sentinel and struck it in the middle.
Its body split in half as each part began fading away into ash. Four Sentinels down in less than 5 seconds, the Black Dragon was invincible and supreme!
As for the last Endurance Sentinel that had been charmed by Draco, he was unsure what to do with it. He decided to keep it in his Inner Universe just like he had done with those two princesses from Floor 10 which Zaine had volunteered to train, intending to deal with it later.
The moment he did so, the usual energy flow rushed into the Morningstar Group, but this clean flow was split equally between the five, which was finally a piece of good news after so long.
They had ended four Sentinels, which meant a gross total of 8,000% experience. Split between the five, it meant that each person got 1,600% experience, which was equivalent to 16 levels.
Draco went from 132, 47% to 148, 47%. This gave him 8 stat points to allocate of which he placed all into Charisma, raising it to 84 points.
Eva went up by the same amount and reach the same threshold as Draco. Her 8 stat points were put into Endurance, which now reached 84 points as well.
Roma went from 136, 13% to 150, 99%. Her gain was 14 points of which she placed all into Spirit, bringing it to 135 points.
Hikari went up by the same amount and reached the same threshold. Her 14 points were placed all into Spirit, as usual, bringing it to 545 points.
Zaine went from 135, 47% to 150, 99%. Her gain was 15 stat points were shared between Strength and Dexterity, bringing the former to 25 points and the latter to 20 points.
Most importantly, the three of them were ready to Rank up and hit Rank 4. Of course, they suppressed it and would undergo it within the Inner Universe where there should be enough energy and privacy for anything they wanted to do.
Soon, the floor began to decompose as the objective had been perfectly achieved as usual. The group casually observed their success in the form of the results screen.
｢Congratulations on completing: Tower of Babylon Fifteenth Floor
Time elapsed: 0:0:20
Objectives complete: All
Assessment: EX+
Reward:
19,000 Score Points
1 Treasure Selection Reward - Peak Bronze Grade｣
With this Draco's current score point tally had climbed to 178,350 score points on the leaderboard and 563,437 overall.
When they re-appeared in the tower, Draco immediately whisked the group away into the Inner Universe. He noticed that the ladies were beginning to lose control of their States of Being that were dying to absorb energy to increase their power.
As such, he Apported the group to Clarent's Dragonperch, which was high enough that they wouldn't disturb the rest of the Morningstar Clan.
Of course, Clarent who was there was startled by this sudden invasion. He had been with Chrona, and began raising a tantrum and demanding that Draco pay him three billion Origin Crystals for the trespass.
Draco naturally kicked the fellow down the Dragonperch, and then politely asked Chrona to borrow their home. The Silver Drake gently acquiesced before giving Hikari, Zaine, and Roma space to do their thing.
As for Clarent, he howled the entire way down while screaming curses, until Chrona reminded him he had wings. Abashed and ashamed, Clarent hastily flapped them and hid his face for forgetting this crucial detail in his panic.
Eventually, the suppression the three had put on themselves was released as an explosion of energy suction occurred. Zaine and Roma pulled in huge swathes of Aetheric Energy into their bodies that created a fine greenish-blue mist around them.
As for Hikari, she solely pulled in Divine Energy, which was a consequence of her State of Being upgrade. The whitish energy was abundant in the Inner Universe though, so she was able to collect it freely and with ease.