Trial 8 "Survival" - 8

I was greeted by the smell of soil, plants, leaves and trees, and the sounds of birds chirping, and insects and small animals scurrying about in the grass.

I was in a dense forest, with little pockets of sunlight being filtered through the trees reaching the ground.

I climbed up a tree to get my bearings, and found that I was in the northern region of the map for this floor.

[Trial: Survival

Objective: Survive in the forest until you kill another player

Difficulty: Easy - Insanity

Rewards: +3 all stats

Punishment for Failure: Death]

This was the reason why all of the top rankers were stuck on this floor. It was simply due to the fact that they had climbed the tower too fast, making it so that it would take a long time for another player to come up.

Looking at the leaderboard and seeing that the second ranked in Tower 83 was in 54th place and only on the 6th floor, I decided to go to a hidden piece on the map, that only I, the coder, and one of the beta testers who accidentally found it knew about.

I walked for a while, and with the setting sun, I found the boulder I was looking for. After I pushed it to the side, a set of stairs descending down into the darkness showed itself.

You see, on this floor, there were dungeons scattered around the map, with most of them being F-E rank dungeons, with a few D - Rank dungeons in there too.

This was why the difficulty of this trial varied, as it could be very easy with a person just spawn camping the noobs that came in unprepared, or it could be very hard, depending on what dungeon you went into.

Zero was probably already clearing a dungeon, which explained their leveling, but it was too slow, telling me that it was probably only an F Ranked dungeon.

There were also some monsters that came out of the dungeons and walked in the forest, but on this floor, those were only weak goblins that I had put there to give new players experience hunting.

One of only two hidden pieces on this map was the dungeon right in front of me.

It was a hidden B+ Ranked dungeon, which was the reason why the highest difficulty for this test was insanity.

Sure, at this level, killing one monster in a B+ Ranked dungeon would probably allow a player to level up 3-4 times, but the problem was that these monsters were way harder to kill than F- Ranked goblins and they were also way more dangerous.

'Well, nothing comes free in this world. If you want to become stronger, you have to put your life on the line.'

Although, I wasn't really putting my life on the line, as I had already done this so many times and I had probably memorized the attack patterns of almost all monsters inside the tower.

Also, I was using one of the weapons that I was best at, the two beginner daggers, as I had used these to clear the entire tower alone multiple times, because I had wanted to test the limits of them and because I had been too lazy at that time to go look for better weapons or to buy some slightly better weapons from the shop.

Though I had decided against using this strategy, as this was now a real game of life and death, and one shitty mistake like the one I made during the perception test could kill me, so it would definitely be a better option to use a much better weapon, probably the one I can get after clearing the Tutorial Tower.

Readying myself by doing some light exercises and stretching, I descended into the dark dungeon.

Even though I hadn't brought in a torch or a mana stone, I could still very clearly "see" in the darkness due to my high perception stat, that was 10 points higher than the other top rankers right now.

After only proceeding forward a few meters, the most common monster in this dungeon appeared. It was a twin-headed troll.

Trolls were widely known for their super regeneration abilities in most games and light novels, so I had kept this trait in my game too, but I had added a hidden easter egg where if you stabbed the troll in both knees, and then the stomach, it would die immediately. I had added this feature in solely due to the fact that when I was beta testing, I had been so fed up with having to take more than 10 minutes to kill each troll, and that was only when I was at my best.

"Seeing" the first troll, I dashed at it, and in a spit second had already slashed both of its knees. I then went right back around the troll and stabbed it in the stomach, effectively killing it.

This process had taken less than 5 seconds, compared to the 10+ minutes that it would have taken me if I soloed it normally, which was an impossible feat in itself for all of the other top rankers, they would have probably needed a well balanced party of 5 or more to take it down in 30 minutes at this stage.

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

Feeling the refreshing aura that surrounded my body, I smiled as my stamina, mana, and Hp were all replenished.

In my game, the only real advantage to leveling up was that it first, restored all statuses, so if you were fatally poisoned, you could level up and the effect would be removed. Second, it gave you 2 extra stat points each time. Third, although this could be both an advantage of disadvantage, it let other players know your strength if you were at a high level, or it would show your weakness if you were at a low level.

Running around the corner, I spotted a group of 5 trolls and quickly dispatched them.

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

...

After about an hour in the dungeon, I had already cleared the whole thing not missing a single troll, even clearing all of the dead ends in the maze-like dungeon just for the sake of leveling. I then turned and faced the gigantic doors leading to the boss room.

I first bought a fire immunity potion for 15,000 TC and drank it. I then looked at my stats and started distributing my extra stat points. I added 12 stat points to each stat except for agility, which I added 20 points to, taking care of the remaining stat points and also boosting the stat that my class relied on the most.

I had been thinking about saving some stat points as a trump card for PvP battles, but decided against it, as the dungeon boss that I was about to face was extremely hard to beat. Even in all of my beta tests, I had never been able to beat this boss fully without losing something in the process, so to keep my chances at there best, I used all of my extra stat points.

This was my completed status window.

[Player Shinubwa Lv. 49 (174,905,000 TC):

Strength: 29 (+12)

Stamina: 52 (+12)

Agility: 40 (+20)

Mana: 42 (+12)

Hp: 32 (+12)

Perception: 42 (+12)

Intelligence: 32 (+12)

Extra Stat Points: 0

-------------------------------

Job: None

Titles: "Perseverance Maniac", "Millionaire"

Skills: Tactical Domination (S), Figureless Shadow (AAA)]

I walked up to the boss room doors, steeled my nerves, and then pushed it open.

"Well, here goes nothing!"