Eternal Tower

As soon as Ignatius materialized on the first floor of the Eternal Tower, a notification popped up in front of his face.

GAME: You have entered the Eternal Tower, the ultimate test for all Immortals. The Tower contains some of the most ancient, powerful treasures in the game… but also some of its greatest dangers!

The notification shifted to a second page of text, then another, as Ignatius flipped through the long tutorial message to reach the end.

GAME: Each floor of the Tower contains monsters and challenges designed to challenge a four-player party of the same level. Defeating floors higher than your level will grant you greater rewards.

GAME: When certain floors are reached for the first time, the player—or party—who reaches them will receive a huge reward, and all players in the game will receive a small reward to celebrate. From then on, players can start at these floors instead of Floor 1.

GAME: In the Eternal Tower, you have a "Hunger Clock" which starts at 15 minutes. When this runs out, you will be kicked out of the Eternal Tower. Eating food items will fill your Hunger Clock up, though only some food items and other abilities can raise the maximum value higher than 15 minutes.

GAME: However, if you have a companion, you can send them to buy and sell items for you from town, allowing you to stay longer. Check the Crystal Coin shop for a companion if you want to use this feature!

GAME: Good luck, Immortal. Rise heavenward and reach Floor 100 so that your wish may be granted! Perhaps, along the way, you'll learn how Brightlord Temporix is connected to this place…

Ignatius let out a long, relieved sigh when the tutorial message finally went away. He really wished he could've just skipped all tutorial messages entirely in this new life, since he already knew how everything worked.

"What an interesting place we find ourselves in, friend," said Siegmund from behind him. Though companions disappeared by default when traveling to public locations like towns, they remained when teleporting into dungeons, story missions, or other instances.

Ignatius turned and nodded. "Yeah. Be on your guard. Enemies could ambush us from any angle." Then he turned and examined his surroundings.

In a way that was similar to the randomized waiting rooms, each floor of the Eternal Tower was randomized in theme and layout whenever a player or party entered it. Different sets of floors had different "tilesets," or themes, which determined which monsters, traps, treasures, and map designs would be used to generate the floor.

The floor which Ignatius and Siegmund had just entered was a pretty common one: a library labyrinth, a huge maze with bookcases for walls. These books could be removed or destroyed by players, but most of them contained nothing but some AI-generated text describing the history of the game world that wasn't very interesting.

A few of the books contained Essence or even Skill or Stat Gems, though, and these ones had slightly different patterns on their spines. Ignatius knew which ones to look for, but most players wouldn't realize this right away.

The bookcases of this floor rose all the way to the ceiling, so that players couldn't just climb them and easily see the path to the next set of stairs. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, illuminating each passage with globes of magical light.

They didn't use candles, and, in fact, all fires lit in the Library Labyrinth tileset would immediately vanish. An enchantment in the area prevented any flames, to prevent a disastrous fire.

Thankfully, Ignatius didn't rely on any fire skills for damage. And also, thankfully, this was a low-level floor.

Though the Library Labyrinths which could be generated on later floors could be much more complex, designed as challenges to waste as much of a player's Hunger Clock as possible, the versions generated on the first ten floors would always be simple enough that they could be solved with the classic "hand on the wall" method: simply always following the wall on one side of the first corridor until the exit was reached.

There was normally a minimap which players could use to track their progress in areas of Path of the Immortal, but it was hidden in maze-type areas for obvious reasons.

Therefore, to keep himself from accidentally forgetting which area was forward and which was backward—which could happen after an intense fight where the combatants spent a lot of time dodging and circling each other—Ignatius pulled a book from the right-hand bookcase wall every few seconds and dropped it to the floor.

If he ever got distracted by a fight or other event, he could simply find the closest wall missing books in this pattern, and he'd immediately know it was the right-hand wall.

To entertain himself, Ignatius explained all of this to Siegmund in a low voice over the first few minutes that they walked through the Library Labyrinth. The hardwood floor under their feet creaked with every step, and the creaks echoed for just a moment before the thick books absorbed the sound and prevented it from scattering throughout the whole maze.

They had to keep their voices down—this was a library, after all! If they spoke too loudly, the Librarian might find them… and that was a fight so annoying that Ignatius didn't want to deal with it.

However, he knew that most other monsters this early in the Eternal Tower wouldn't be much of an issue. Since Ignatius was Level 7, he'd get a big damage bonus against the Level 1 monsters on this floor, as well as receiving much less damage from them.

This was the main reason he'd given the armor back to Siegmund—it would let the Onion Knight tank for Ignatius, drawing away annoying things like crowd control (CC) abilities, which the level difference didn't prevent, and let Ignatius focus completely on destroying monsters.

And it wasn't long before this strategy paid off.

After nearly four minutes of moving steadily through the dungeon, Ignatius pulled what looked like an ordinary book from the wall…

…And triggered a very rare enemy encounter as the book blasted him back with a shock wave of force, then grew to two meters in height!

The Black Book opened up, and a hand made of swirling dark energy reached from it to attack him!

The air filled with the sound of chattering, screeching energy, and Ignatius swore. The book itself wouldn't be too hard to destroy…

…But its main purpose was to create that huge amount of noise and distract players while the real threat approached, one which would be dangerous for players of any level.

The Librarian was coming.