Flaming dire monster
Floor boss
Level 5
Base attack: 7
Base defense: 7
Skills: Flame wave-C, Dire howl-C
Health-75/75
Mana-20/20
Stamina-100/100
Strength-40
Vitality-30
Intellect-14
Perception-25
Agility-40
{WARNING! Floor bosses' attributes have double the effect of humans.}
Troy nearly had a heart attack. He could not beat this thing. The system watch even gave him a warning about how fucked he was.
Slowly backing towards the edge of the clearing, the clearly intelligent floor boss just watched him. It probably thought the energy it would get from him wasn't worth the effort of opening its mouth to eat him.
Slowly leaving the clearing where he had fought the bear, he could still feel the eyes of the beast on him. Troy turned and ran, running as fast as possible towards where he left his tools.
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The beast simply watched as the small thing ran, terrified by it. Shaking its head, it went over to the dead bear and began to eat it, then just as quickly spit it out and left. The small being had removed all of the mana from it, making it worthless to the Flaming dire monster.
Oh well. It could easily get other prey. It left the clearing in the opposite direction the thing ran, in search of more prey.
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Troy was running harder than he ever had in his life, away from the clearing, hoping that the floor boss didn't change its mind and come to kill him. Quickly grabbing his tools out of the small alcove he left them in, he continued running until he came upon a small stream. He took this chance to look at what he gained from the short-faced bear.
{Gained 200 EXP from kill} {Extracted 8 STR, 6 VIT, 1 INT, 6 PER, 8 AGI, skill-fast dash(D)} {Fast dash D-rank: spend stamina to increase your running speed by 15%. 2 stamina for 5 min of increased speed}
It was a much higher amount of points than he had ever gained from extracting a kill, and it was all five stats. With this, he even confirmed that he could extract intellect, but it was a small amount, and he guessed it would probably stay that way. The skill was nice too, but he probably wouldn't use it. He then looked at his other gains.
Looking at what he had gained from the chest, he realized he was supremely lucky. Either one of the two rings would have been an incredible gain, but he got both. Looking at them closer, the storage ring was silver with small lines carved through the entire thing connecting to a tiny black gem. The water ring was made of some blue metal with directions of waves and rivers all over, with a small blue gem he did not know of set on the top.
Using extract on them just to see what would happen, the watch popped up a message he had never seen before for the space ring, while the water ring could not be extracted.
{Searching for impurities… Found mana debris in spatial pathway…. Removing…. Removed. Storage space increased to 1.5 meters sq.}
It wasn't a huge increase in size, but any increase in size was good. Putting his tools and bow in it, he hid it in his clothes just in case somebody knew what it was. He destroyed his reed bag to not incur suspicion about why he was carrying an empty bag. He slipped the water ring onto his left hand and left the stream. He wanted to find some food after that fight.
Finding a black deer while traveling through the forest, Troy killed it and carried it away, eventually finding a clearing where he gutted and bled it. After cooking it, it was nearing 5PM, when everybody on the floor got the same alert on their watch.
{The monsters have gone into a frenzy.}
That wasn't a good message to get. Troy cursed his, along with everybody who had entered with him, luck. This was a rare event that could occur on the first floor, and when it happened, instead of the normal 45% of people the first 4 floors would take, it jumped to 60%, with the ones who were just lucky to survive the first floor would be weeded out, leaving only those who came prepared and those who had good talents.
In this frenzy, all normal creatures and monsters would become able to track the players, and become far more aggressive than usual. The silver lining in the thunderstorm was that the biome and floor bosses did not get affected by the frenzy, otherwise nobody would be able to leave the floor alive.
Troy immediately left the area he was in, knowing that there was the nest of forest ants nearby. The best place he could be right now was the edge of the forest in a tree, that way he wouldn't need to worry about snake type monsters that couldn't climb trees. In that area, the worst threat would be the big cats tracking him from the plains, meaning he would have no sleep tonight.
While running, Troy checked his status.
Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 5 EXP 32/255
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 5
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: Lump toss-upper F(active, magic), Appraisal-B(active, magic), Strong kick-E(active, physical), Fast dash-D(active, physical)
Free attribute points: 20
Health-30/30
Mana-20/36
Stamina-50/55
Strength-56(+8)
Vitality-25(+6)
Intellect-28(+5)
Perception-29(+6)
Agility-54(+8)
Luck-53
Seeing he had leveled up, Troy put 3 points into INT and saved the other 5 once again. Since he had confirmed that he could get INT from extraction, he was less inclined to shove all of his points into INT, but before he really started to disturbed his points, he needed to find out if he could get luck through extraction.
Taking his eyes away from the status screen, he could see the forest thinning, meaning he was nearing the plains. Looking around, Troy climbed the biggest tree around, hiding in the thickest part of the foliage. Troy stayed like this for several hours, even as the sun went down, as he didn't want to fight a monster that found him, which could attract more from the sound and snowball into his death.
Suddenly, a person came running through the forest, chased by a black stag. Getting backed against a tree, a man looking to be in his mid-twenties, tried to fight back with his fists, but the stag had the range advantage with its antlers. Less than 30 seconds later, the man was bleeding from multiple wounds on his stomach. Slowly, the man's resistance lessened as the antlers of the stag stabbed his left armpit, reducing his left arm to nothing more than empty weight. A minute later, the man was dead, his throat torn by the antlers.
Watching this happen, Troy was glad to be in the tree, as who knew how many more monsters would show up as the smell of the blood spread. That is when the stag looked up towards him and started hitting its head against the tree, trying to get to him. As its antlers broke and its head started to bleed, it continued. Eventually it broke its skull open and started spasming on the ground, all the while trying to get to Troy. The frenzy made the animals go completely irrational, to the point where they would stop preserving their own lives. Or this one had some sort of disease. He wouldn't rule out the tower putting diseased creatures on the floors to make those who ate them sick.
Deciding to size the opportunity, Troy quickly climbed down the tree and used his talent on both of the corpses. The human one, just like the last one, turned to dust and disappeared. Climbing back up the tree and hiding, Troy looked at his gains.
{Gained 3 PER, 1 VIT from black deer; 1 LUC, 2 INT, 3 VIT, F-rank skill taste enhancement from human.}
It seemed the boy was simply lucky to have survived this long, but this did confirm that the luck attribute could be gotten from extract. Troy was snapped out of his thoughts by a peculiar flapping sound, like that of wings. No, not like that of wings, but actually wings. Looking up, Troy saw a bat with a wingspan of 75 centimeters and a body about 9 inches big. "Oh no," Troy said, with a bit of sadness in his voice. That was a blood bat, and they were the forest ants of the skies, except far worse, because forest ants started in the forest as long as the colonie didn't get too big, but blood bats were everywhere.
The blood bat flew down from the sky at Troy. Taking out his blades, Troy hid the left one, keeping the right one in sight of the bat. As the bat swooped down, trying to push Troy off the tree, it avoided the right blade, and was promptly stabbed through the chest by the left one, dying instantly. Extracting its attributes, he got 5 PER but nothing else. He flicked his blade, and the blood bat flew off of it and onto the ground.
Sitting back down on the tree, Troy reflected on his entire life. When he was born, he was put into a lottery, along with thousands of other kids born within the same month, to be sent to tower academy. His family drew the short stick, and he, along with 500 other kids, were enrolled in tower academy by the government. A guarantee that at least somebody was entering the tower. That somebody was collecting the resources and climbing the floors. To make sure that humanity was producing people with the ability to protect themselves.
Of course, the tower was open to all. Those who lived on the streets made the majority of those who entered the tower, and the majority of those who died in it. Tower academy taught survival strategies and monster weakness to its students, while the vagabonds who entered had at most read a single book about how to survive until floor 5.
Thinking about how fucked up it was, Troy shook his head. None of it matters now. He had a SSS-rank talent. While in the short term it wasn't as strong as an A-rank stat enhancement talent, because of how it worked, it would eventually make him the most powerful person in the tower.
Snapping himself out of his thoughts, Troy remained vigilant. Besides a blood bat, which he threw away after the extraction failed, nothing happened until nearly 3 in the morning.
Over the past hour, a wolf pack, numbering 8 regular wolves and one larger wolf, which Troy had found out was an alpha, had surrounded the tree. They knew he was there, he had seen them smelling the tree base and looking up. Troy wasn't worried though, as wolves can't climb. What he was worried about was them attracting a big cat like a cougar, which could. The space on the tree branch was simply too small for him to fight a big cat.
Looking at the time, it was 3:30 in the morning. He only had to survive for one and a half hours to move to the next floor. Looking down, a black deer* had appeared. The wolves turned towards it, and a fight broke out. The wolves killed the deer in 30 seconds without any injuries. This showed that while the animals became irrational, they still fought over prey. Another blood bat appeared. Troy killed it and threw it away from the tree as hard as he could, hoping that the allure of easy food would make them go away, even if it was temporary. They didn't budge.
One hour later, with less than half an hour to go, what Troy had been hoping didn't appear came into the clearing. A mountain lion, nearly 3 meters long and standing half a foot taller than the alpha wolf, it stalked into the clearing. The wolves, seeing a competitor to the prey they had found, turned around.
After a minute of staring at each other, the wolf pack and mountain lion began to fight. Splitting into groups of two, the wolves surrounded the cat, which retaliated by lunging at the group containing the smallest wolf in the pack. Pinning the wolf under its body with its claws, it tore the wolf's neck apart with its teeth before moving back to avoid the other wolf who was attacking it. However, when it did this, the two wolves behind it jumped onto its legs and clamped down before ripping the mountain lion's tendons apart. With no way to maneuver its back legs, the mountain lion was soon killed. This process took about 5 minutes, providing Troy with a source of entertainment and removing the fear of the mountain lion climbing up the tree.
Staying vigilant for the next 20 minutes, nothing happened except the wolves circling around the tree, trying to find a way up. At 5 AM exactly, with the sun just starting to come up, an announcement was made through the system watches of everybody still alive in the tower.
{Congratulations to everybody still alive. You have managed to survive 4 days, and will now be transported to the second floor.}
Troy and everybody on the floor vanished the next second, as if they were never there, leaving some very confused monsters behind.
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Appearing in a small room, another announcement was made through the system watch, presumably to everybody who just came out of the first floor.
{In recognition of your survival through a frenzy, you will have 10 hours to rest before moving to the next floor.}
Troy also got a different, separate message.
{For defeating the most creatures of anybody on the floor, along with being the only one to eliminate a floor boss, you will be gifted a reward chest.}
A clear, pink chest dropped on the floor in front of Troy. Opening it up, the chest lid was surprisingly heavy for something that looked made of a crystal. Inside, Troy found a book, a bow, and a pendent. After taking everything out and setting it on the floor, the chest disappeared. Before taking a look at what he just got, Troy looked around the room he found himself in.
The first thing he noticed was that there was no door. Other than that, it was small, probably just 3 meters long by 2 meters wide. The only piece of furniture in the room was a bed. Looking back at what he had received from the chest, he picked up the pendent first.
{Pendent of mana regeneration. Regenerate an extra 30 mana an hour.}
This item would surely speed up his mana regeneration, though not by much. Instead of 1 mana a minute he was currently regenerating, he would get an extra mana every other minute for an average regeneration rate of 1.5 mana a minute. Using extract on it the rate increased from 30 an hour to 35. Looking at the next item, the book, he picked it up.
{Survivor's guide to crafting. Skill book, gives the D-rank skill Amateur crafting. Amateur crafting: makes crafting items from stone, wood, or monster parts easier, +5% chance to get a unique ability on item.}
Learning this skill instantly, Troy felt a massive headache come and then leave, the skill putting information into his brain. Shaking his head he looked at the last item he gained, the bow. It was made of a dark-colored wood, and the string looked to be made out of the tendon of something. Along with the bow, there was a quiver with 10 arrows, the heads made of bone or teeth and the shafts made of the same wood that the bow was made of. The ends were fetched with dark-colored feathers. Without even looking at the system, he used extract on all of the arrows and the bow.
{Dark forest bow, 4-Star. Made of the wood from the deepest regions of a forest along with the tendons of a tiger. Arrow speed +7, Arrow piercing power +5.} {Dark forest arrows x10. Better penetration when used with the dark forest bow}
He could get rid of the terrible antler bow and replace it with something that could actually fire straight. Tired after staying up all night on high alert, Troy climbed into the bed and fell asleep. Waking up 9 hours later, Troy was thirsty, and his lips were cracked. Deciding to use the ring of mountain spring he got from killing the bear.
Looking at it, he thought about getting water, and a shower of water came from the small blue gem. Troy immediately ceased the flow, pulling out the water bottle he got from the same chest. Holding the water bottle in one hand, he thought about getting water at the rate of a faucet. This time, the water came out slower, but it went straight up into the air. Stopping the flow once again, Troy twisted the ring around so that the gem was facing down, towards the bottle, and again thought about getting water. A stream of crystal clear water came from the ring and into the water bottle. Drinking the water, it was cool, but not too cold.
After waiting around for another hour, Troy was suddenly transported to the foot of a mountain.
*to clear something up, black deer and black stag are the same species of monster, but one has antlers and the other doesn't.