31 The Tower Array Challenge: The Remaining Time!

Yun entered the third floor cautiously, taking care not to be seen as she exited the stairs into this new space. Looking around at this new space, she marveled at the terrain she knew nothing about.

This new floor was a massive open space with seemingly nowhere to be unseen. The ground undulated gently as the wind whipped over the hills, carrying the sand with it. This was a desert, something that didn't exist on the Cradle. Within this desert there were a number of short cliffs with caves dug into them, as well as larger flat plains. The edges of this space, as always, were riddled with cliffs and caves that could hide the stair upward.

The only difference was this time the stair could also be covered in sand.

Yun spent quite a while on this floor, nearly three whole weeks, before she finally found a hint of the passage upward. In this time she had many fights with the Volvaka, some of the time they were easy duels, some of the time she had to flee from an entire regiment.

These three weeks tempered Yun and significantly improved her ability to survive in the wild yet again. Her ability to rest without being ambushed became increasingly important, and she soon learned to be woken by her senses if anything approached her.

Additionally, her battle sense had also greatly improved. Fighting against intelligent creatures was the best way to grow yourself, as they were capable of adapting and fighting you on an even footing.

In this third floor, the new power the Volvaka showed was even more annoying to fight against than the last. This time they were able to project fire outwards from their enhanced weapons and armor. A slash of the claws, once activated, would create an arc of flame that jetted out towards her up to three meters away.

This was their Flaming Projection level!

Fighting against such a skill became increasingly difficult, as now she couldn't just block their swipes as she had before, she had to make sure that blocking would not result in her being hit with that flame attack as well.

This new ability made group battles even more dangerous, as the Volvaka were now willing to surround her and fling flame instead of directly engage her in physical combat.

Once, when she hadn't woken up soon enough, she had been surrounded while sleeping in a cave on a short cliff. Three of the Flame-Eaters entered the cave to flush her out and nearly killed her before she could respond.

The battle was pitched and fierce, and more than once she was singed by their fires. Finally she managed to dispatch those three who had entered and, at full speed, left the cave and vaulted over the encircling Volvaka. Taking advantage of their smokescreen to be unnoticed until it was too late, Yun fled at her top speed without stopping for over an hour.

After finally discovering the passage to the fourth floor, Yun knew she didn't have a lot of time before a large group of the enemy would show up to surround her. She quickly went to work on clearing sand from the entry so she could get in, but the more she tried to move the sand out, the more the hills of it next to her collapsed into it.

Finally, calming down, she pulled out one of the larger flat-bladed weapons from her storage artifact and used it to shovel sand much faster. After nearly two hours of shoveling sand she managed to clear enough space to wiggle her way into the stairwell just as the horde of Volvaka came close enough to attack her. Losing a few tail-hairs as she wiggled her way in, she breathed a sigh of relief as she finally began to travel upward.

On final count, Yun realized that she had slain nearly sixty Volvaka on this floor in the three weeks she'd stayed here. This was significantly more than either of the previous floors combined.

Entering the fourth floor was an incredibly remarkable experience. This floor consisted of numerous small islands connected by extraordinarily sturdy arched bridges. As with the previous floors, this one was also smaller in circumference than the last, but the incredible part of this floor was, if you looked down, you could not determine how deep the water was.

Each island had a small hole in the center of it, and each hole proceeded straight down as far as the eye could see. These walls of these holes were honeycombed with cave mouths, each of which had numerous scratch marks on the lower lip. Just looking at it, it was quite obvious that these were Volvaka hives built into this small space. The temperature in this region was remarkably warm, which allowed them to live in such a way without the presence of lava.

In the next twelve days Yun adventured these islands and did battle a number of times. Each night the Volvaka Fire-Eaters would come out and fight, using the darkness in combination with their Smoking Gauntlets ability to stealthily attack.

After the first night's attack, Yun knew what ability they had unlocked here. Smoky Gauntlets third ability, Ignition Spirit!

Ignition Spirit added onto the previous two levels by imbuing their effects with a minor intelligent spirit. Each warrior was capable of having four of these spirits active, and typically would have them stay close to the gauntlets and grieves. This way, when they attacked with the claws or kicks, the spirit would be able to spurt bursts of flames for them. At this level the warrior no longer had to directly spit their flame onto the armor, they just spit out Ignition Spirits and told them where to go.

In addition, the Ignition Spirit level extended the flame burst range to five meters! The spirits, she discovered on the fourth night, could be destroyed. Unfortunately, she also learned that with enough time they could be summoned again as well.

Over the course of the twelve days she spent on the fourth floor she quickly realized that she could not bear to travel another floor upwards. This floor's difficulty was her current limit. Each morning she would rest, each lunch she would practice with her spear, and each evening she would cultivate until dusk neared.

As the days wore on she managed to consistently kill more than one Volvaka per night. As she continued fighting night after night she would use the small space of the islands to her advantage. Fight on the bridge, fight near the cave mouth, fight in the smallest space possible. This gave her the best chance to duel the enemy without being surrounded and pummeled with five meter long bursts of flame.

Continuing to adapt and learn, Yun grew increasingly adept with her blade. Near the eighth day she finally mastered the ability to deflect the flame blasts with a fierce twirl of her spear by intentionally angling the spearhead to create a gust of wind as she spun it.

By the eleventh day she had slain over fifteen Volvaka total on this floor.

But on the twelfth day, disaster struck.

Dusk arrived quickly on this day, and Yun was becoming more complacent about her surroundings. She had rested on a slightly larger island that only had one bridge, thinking that she could defend the bridge as a choke point.

As the Volvaka began to stream forth from their holes on the neighboring island and cross the bridge she engaged in pitched battles, two on one, on the bridge. She easily slayed the first two she fought on the bridge after only an hour of dueling, but soon she discovered that a new hive opening was slowly being uncovered behind her!

The island had its own hive after all!

She continued to fiercely fight with the group on the bridge, hoping she could eliminate more enemies before the Hive behind her could fully open and spew out more opponents. She defeated two more enemies, leaving only three left, but she also learned that the enemy was now fully emerging behind her as well. In a desperate gambit, she vaulted herself over the three in front of her and landed behind them, spearing one in the neck before he could turn and react.

Little did she know there were more enemies on this side of the bridge than she was aware of.