30 The Tower Array Challenge: The Second Floor!

Arriving on the second floor of the tower was a shock for Yun. She left the previous floor at near what she perceived as midnight, but this floor looked to be nearly at noon time. This was extremely disorienting, and would certainly have ill effects on anyone who was already haggard when they traversed.

Stepping inside, she looked around. This floor was in possession of much less forested land, and was also a smaller overall size. The ground here was rough and had many ridges and cliffs framing long and winding valleys. Finding a safe place to sleep would be much more difficult here, as would traveling to find the next floor's stair. Before she proceeded to the next floor, though, she first needed to fight on this one. Not knowing how drastic the difficulty difference would be between floors, she determined that she absolutely had to fight on this one at least once to see whether she could challenge the next level.

While adventuring this new space Yun was beginning to get frustrated. She'd been on this floor of the tower for almost two days and had yet to encounter any enemies. She wasn't willing to move to the next floor without first measuring the power of these second floor Volvaka.

Deciding she'd traveled enough for time, Yun finally found a cliff with a small cave and settled down to rest out of sight.

That night she heard noises in the valley she was residing in and crept to the edge of the cliff to look down. Below her there were dozens of Volvaka Fire-Eaters gathered into a large organized military formation. Each Fire-Eater expelled small bursts of flame from the sides of their mouths whenever they exhaled, making it easier to determine the size and shape of this group. Spending some time counting them, Yun was shocked to see that there were more than two hundred here. She could barely fight off three on the first floor, how would she survive two hundred?

Shivering in fright, Yun silently scurried back into her small cave and spent a good part of the night doing everything in her power to avoid making noise. As morning neared she heard the sound of these Volvaka moving again and looked out once more. The sight she saw shocked her.

The entire group of hundreds of Volvaka were running in all different directions, disappearing into the walls of the valley rapidly and without any sense of order. Now Yun realized why she hadn't been able to find any Volvaka so far. They spent the day below ground! Thinking back to her studies at the sect she remembered that these giant lizard folk were subterranean creatures who relied on the volcanic temperature to regulate their body temperature. Naturally, in a cooler region like this, they would spend most of their time underground, preferably close to a heat source. This night must have been some kind of gathering that she was fortunate enough to see!

Knowing now why she hadn't been able to find any enemies gave Yun a chance to relax. She left her cave in the morning and proceeded to search for the exit again. Being able to go hunt down enemies any time meant that she could find the exit first before testing her strength against them.

After another three days Yun finally found the exit to the next floor. She spotted it from quite a ways away, so she decided to set up camp for the day and prepare herself to hunt a foe the next day near the exit. She had an aversion to sleeping near the exit after what happened on the first floor, so she climbed halfway down a cliff near her current location and camped in a cave there.

The next day, after spending some time cultivating overnight, Yun climbed the rest of the way down the cliff and started checking into each cave at the bottom. After investigating quite a few she finally found one where she could feel heat radiating outward and could hear noise from activity inside. Creeping inside slowly, she felt like she had an extreme amount of luck today. Inside the cave was a small hollowed out area, maybe 100 meters across, with a pool of lava and two Volvaka sitting with their backs to the door. Yun cheered inside, while silently creeping closer to these two oblivious warriors.

After getting in range she instantly pulled her spear out and stabbed one of the two in the base of the skull, instantly severing his spine and causing him to dissipate. The other of the two was startled, but quickly stood up and prepared for battle.

The first two strikes from Yun were easily parried by the large Volvaka warrior, but she wasn't giving her full effort either. One on one she was confident of her victory, so she wanted to see what was different on this floor. After more than five minutes of sparring with neither side being hurt, the solitary Volvaka started to become angry. With his anger he lifted his hands up near his mouth and breathed out a small puff of fire over the claws. Immediately they turned bright red and began to emit a strange smoke that made it difficult to see his face and upper body. Wherever he struck out the smoke would linger and obscure.

Understanding now what changed on each level, Yun took a few more minutes to understand how to combat this ability before dispatching her enemy. Each floor upwards traveled would unlock more of the special abilities of the Volvaka! They didn't particularly get stronger or faster, but they became more difficult to deal with because of these abilities. This time she dealt with the basic level ability of the Fire-Eaters, Smoking Gauntlets, which created an obscuring ash cloud while adding fiery elemental damage to the weapon it was applied to. Every blow exchanged with those claws would transfer heat from the claws to the struck surface, eventually most weapons would become red hot and unweildable.

This was the first level of Smoking Gauntlets, Smoky Heat!

Yun once again looked at her spear with appreciation. The black threads taken from the Immortal Wyrm corpse were quite impressive. The threads from the Wyrm were very good at dealing with thermal energy, they spread it out very effectively and dissipated it quickly as well. Additionally, she learned in this battle that the wide blade of her spear could be swept across the cloud to disperse it somewhat, giving her a better view of the enemy hiding behind it.

Having gained the knowledge she was seeking, Yun left the cave and climbed the cliff slowly again. At the top she proceeded towards the exit, intending to continue upward once again.

Nearing the stair to the next floor, she noticed that, yet again, there was a large gathering of Volvaka, but before she could hide herself she had been spotted. It seemed that every floor, once the stairs were found, would summon guardians to the stairwell and make it difficult to proceed.

Lowering herself to make it easier to close in, Yun circled around and tried to draw out some of the enemy. She succeeded. Over ninety percent of the group of fifty-plus Volvaka guarding the stair were in pursuit. Their large bodies causing the ground to shake with each step due to their numbers. Fleeing at full speed, Yun took a circular route back around to the stairwell before engaging the few remaining guardians in combat. Having had much more experience with them, she quickly dispatched the first three she dealt with before being engaged in a deadlock fight with three more.

Thinking carefully, she lured the three away from the stair and fought them in a circular fashion, eventually managing to maneuver behind them and dash up the stairs after dispatching one more of the remaining three.