14th Floor

[Congratulations for defeating the thirteenth floor. Please choose one of the following as a reward:]

[First Option: Improved constitution - Effect: Slightly increases HP and reduces damage taken on hit]

[Second Option: Heightened awareness - Effect: Makes your senses (Vision, Smell, ...) acuter]

[Third Option: Improved body coordination - Effect: Improves synchronization and control on your body]

[Note: These are a type of passive skill with less visible effects. They will not appear in the skill window.]

Li Wei was standing still, slowly calming his breathing. The previous battle had taken a toll on Li Wei.

He blankly stared at the options. The rewards were good as expected but he did not know which one to choose.

The first one was good, but what Li Wei wanted was more offensive power. The second one could be useful, but Li Wei already had pretty good awareness since he could sometimes sense his enemies. The 3rd one was what Li Wei needed the most to improve his dual sword style, but he could also gain this over time by training and then it would then be a waste of the reward.

The better the choices, the harder the decision. Li Wei thought for a while; the voice did not prompt him to make a choice and eventually, Li Wei settled on the Improved body coordination.

Short term power spikes were not necessarily bad, and the coordination did not limit itself to the hands.

When Li Wei made his choice, light in the arena suddenly disappeared. This sudden change alerted Li Wei. He could not see anything, but still focused to try to hear something.

A few seconds later, he suddenly felt sleepy. That feeling invaded his whole body, making him move sluggishly. "Yawn", the feeling only got stronger with time and eventually, Li Wei could no longer keep his eyes opened, he lay down and lost consciousness."I must not sleep..." were the last words Li Wei said.

...

An unknown amount of time later, Li Wei felt the cold feeling of the floor on his back. He suddenly woke up and stood up grabbing his swords that fell right next to him.

Li Wei looked around only to find that he was standing on the 14th floor. A female rogue was standing on the other side of the arena calmly watching Li Wei while playing with her long red hair. She wore a mask, covering the lower part of her face but the rest of her equipment was exposing a lot of skin. Her armor was similar to a crop top shirt and her 'pants' barely covered her thighs. However, just from one glance, Li Wei could tell that her equipment was not simple.

Li Wei naturally let his eyes float a bit longer at the level of her chest. He was still a young hot-blooded man and in front of him was a young woman wearing such clothes. The rogue was not extremely beautiful, but she could be considered above average.

Li Wei quickly got himself together. "I don't feel anything different... what happened?"

He checked his event logs and found the last entry:

[Your body has undergone a body modification. Modification success, improved body coordination by 20%]

"Body modification ???" exclaimed Li Wei.

[Would you like to begin the fourteenth fight?]

As Li Wei was checking his logs, the announcement came out, but Li Wei immediately declined.

"No, give me a few minutes to familiarise myself."

The voice did not answer, and the rogue just continued to play with her hair while watching Li Wei.

The latter hesitated for a moment and ignored his surroundings. He took his swords and started swinging them, imagining a target in front of him. While doing so, Li Wei immediately felt the difference. There was not much difference in the movements, just with the feeling he got while executing them. Everything felt smoother. It was as if is body already knew what he wanted to do next to a certain extent.

After a few sets of movements, Li Wei sat down to calm down and get back to his peak condition.

'Although it is not exactly what I am looking for, the improved body coordination should help me perform combos better. Let's test it out in a real fight.'

Few breaths later, Li Wei finally stood up and shouted: "I would like to begin the next fight."

Hearing that, the rogue also stopped playing with her hair. She turned her attention toward Li Wei and drew two curved daggers from her belt.

[Floor 14: level 14 Rogue. Begin the fight in 5]

[4]

[3]

[2]

[1]

[Begin!]

[Stealth]. As soon as the fight started, the rogue activated her level 10 skill, the bread and butter of rogue classes.

Li Wei saw the rogue's figure quickly distorted in front of him and one second later, completely vanished.

'So this is Stealth... It's really different when you see it right in front of you... I cannot feel anything. I wonder if I would have been able to see locate her if I chose the improved senses instead,' thought Li Wei, while raising his swords and taking a defensive stance.

He calmly waited, focusing on his surroundings but nothing happened. The rogue was still invisible. Stealth could last for one minute.

30 seconds had passed and still, nothing happened. The longer it went on, the more stressed Li Wei felt. He constantly looked around him, spun around himself, to make sure the rogue won't jump from behind.

20 seconds left on the duration of [Stealth] and the rogue had yet to appear. Li Wei became more nervous. He started to walk in random directions trying to find the location of the rogue. He was regretting not choosing to improve his senses.

10 seconds...

Suddenly, Li Wei felt something move behind him. He tried to move but it was too late.

A dagger pierced his leg and a few moments later, his other leg was also pierced. "-19","-21"

[Howl]

As soon as he felt the pain, Li Wei activated his skill to push back the rogue. He now knew where she was and quickly stabbed towards her. But she was fast and stepped to the side and used her own skill, [Shadow Strike] to attack.

This time, Li Wei parried the dagger with his second sword, but he still took some damage.

[Strengthen]

[Rush]

Both sides used their respective buffs and clashed once again. Li Wei swung his swords at the rogue, but she swiftly dodged and spun around Li Wei ending up just behind him.

[Cut throat]

She raised her dagger and placed it just below Li Wei's jaw. She was about to strike but Li Wei quickly hit her with his elbow. The [Cut Throat] was interrupted but the dagger still cut through his throat.

"-22"

Li Wei had already lost more than half of his HP but just as he took the damage, he activated [Cleave] and rotated onto himself, "-24"

Since all the rogue's skills were still on cooldown, Li Wei charged at her, but the rogue simply spun the daggers in her hands and threw them while they were still spinning.

They looked like 2 shurikens. Li Wei raised his swords and made a cut in front of him, pushing away the 2 daggers. Fortunately for him, the daggers were much slower and easier to hit compared to an arrow.

As Li Wei once again focused his attention on the rogue, he once again found that she was disappearing in front of him but this time, the animation was different. It was as if mist came out of nowhere and surrounded her until she disappeared.

Li Wei frowned. He knew that this was definitely another equipment's skill. It was clear that the rogue was buying time for her skills to refresh. Rogues depended on their skills to deal lots of damage in short period of times while warriors could deal consistent damage over time.

Li Wei focused, carefully looking at his surroundings to find any clue of the position of the rogue, but he did not find anything. To avoid being taken by surprise like last time, Li Wei moved and went at the edge of the arena. He then turned and faced the empty arena. In such position, he did not have to guard his back since the rogue could not leave the arena.

Time flew by. It had already been 20 seconds since the rogue disappeared. Most of her skills had refreshed except for [Rush].

Li Wei was still surveying the arena when he suddenly felt the air move. It was very faint and barely noticeable but Li Wei trusted his instincts and swung his blade in that direction.

And sure enough, "Cling" his sword hit one of the rogue's dagger. The rogue's body came to light. Despite her mask, Li Wei could see her surprised expression. He quickly took advantage of that and used his skills

[Howl]

The little knockback effect made the rogue lose her balance and Li Wei followed up with a [Cleave], "-31"

The rogue took the strike and made a backflip before landing smoothly two meters away from Li Wei.

Both parties now had less than half of their HP, but Li Wei did not stop here, he was close to her and quickly used his ring's skill [Chaos Sphere].

Li Wei smiled, the sphere flew out of his hands and was certain to explode on the rogue but at that moment, a white light came out of her pendant and transformed into a layer, protecting her.

It was clearly different from the layer that represented Li Wei's victory. It was, in fact, similar to the [Mana Shield] that mages used. Immediately after, the rogue threw her daggers at Li Wei and immediately used her own [Stealth], "-9","-11"

The situation once again turned back to the previous one. Li Wei immediately went at the edge of the arena, calmly catching his breath. He took the opportunity to check his HP and MP. He still had slightly over 28 HP and 33 MP left. His HP and MP were actually slowly regenerating but this rate was very slow, at about 1 HP/MP every 2 minutes. The waiting game the rogue was playing was also allowing Li Wei to recover slightly.

Once again, Li Wei intently watched his surroundings when he suddenly thought of something. Could he use Earth Wall to determine the position of the rogue? He quickly remembered what happened when he used Earth Wall under the Paladin's feet. The ground right below his feet actually rose up with a small delay compared to the ground having nothing above it.

...

Having formed his plan, Li Wei carefully observed his surroundings while activating [Earth Wall]. This time instead of a tall vertical wall, Li Wei wanted to raise a very short flat horizontal wall; it could not even be called a wall. [Earth Wall] allowed the users to freely lift the earth in any way they wanted. The limit only came in terms of volume of Earth. Players could choose to create very large but weak walls or at the same time, strong but smaller walls.

Due to the volume limit, Li Wei could not target the entire arena. He only chose to lift the ground within a 5 meters radius and as he expected, he found the location of the rogue. The ground slightly trembled and raised by about 3 cm. But due to the way Li Wei raised the ground, its density was rather low and clear footprints appeared 4 meters on Li Wei's right.

Seeing that, Li Wei immediately used his [Blade Draw] towards the rogue. At the same time, he charged in that direction.

The rogue was surprised, she never expected such thing to happen. It was the first time she witnessed such technique.

She quickly reacted and parried the [Blade Draw] but a few moments later, Li Wei appeared right before her, stabbing her stomach with one of his swords, "-19"

At the same time, his other sword was initiating [Cleave].

The rogue saw that, but her weird position could not allow her to parry. Instead, she went on the offensive, using [Shadow Strike].

The two sides both took each other's skill, and both were left with less than 10 HP.

The rogue frowned but she quickly spun on herself, using that rotation, she thrust her dagger at Li Wei from the side. But the latter would not let her succeed. As he saw the rogue spin, Li Wei placed his foot just where the rogue would put hers when spinning. And that simple action caused the rogue to lose her balance and miss her attack.

She fell on the ground and quickly after, Li Wei's sword dived into her stomach.

[Congratulations for defeating the fourteenth floor...]

...

At the same time, somewhere on Zero.

A young woman was sitting on an ethereal throne, watching several screens in front of her. Each screen showed different persons doing different things. Among these screens, 12 of them were separately placed and right now, her attention was focused on the 7th screen and the person on it was actually Li Wei.

That young woman was actually Gaia, she was constantly monitoring the players and the development of the game, but she always kept particular attention on these 12 individuals.

'He defeated the 14th floor... Although it is mainly due to his luck, he is slowly getting the hang of it... But what should I do? ... the Tower of Heroes is not supposed to be clearable...' said Gaia to herself.

Gaia was well aware of the fifteenth floor's content and how hard it was to clear it. It was designed to be impossible to beat but seeing Li Wei's performance she could not help but doubt herself. It was not that Li Wei was extremely powerful; he always won on the verge of dying and his luck was good to have such match-ups but she could not risk it.

'I am sorry... I can only make you lose... but I'll give you a fight you'll like in return...'

"Bypass protocol 9382, protocol... Sort data about NPC 238194 .... Summon warrior type..."