Two Weeks Later:
I had finished with my preparations for the 5th floor boss, the first real hurdle in the tower.
In these two weeks, I had also learned a lot about the nature of the towers from Verminus, now talking from Lili's body whenever she fell asleep.
To sum it all up, there were towers all over the universe, and when we cleared floor 50, we would be transported to the Origin Tower, which would still be the same as in my memories, but now, inhabitants of different planets across the universe would join us once they reached their 50th floor on their towers.
This information greatly disrupted my plans, because I knew that the person that reached the 50th floor first would have a huge advantage, and now that we weren't all in the same tower, I couldn't monitor the speed at which other rankers were climbing.
'Fuck it, I can't build up the perfect foundation now. I'll just have to build a solid one instead, as I've cleared it with no foundation before, it'll still be possible.
With this information, I had sped up my climb greatly, not bothering to spend that much time leveling up anymore, resulting in being the first to clear the 4th floor and now being the first to reach the 5th floor boss.
Right now, it was currently day time in the tower, so Lili was out, which meant that I couldn't go into battle yet, or I would be greatly disadvantaged, not getting any help at all whilst having to protect the little girl.
I had made it a habit to fight only while Verm was "awake" so that I could get the help of a god and wouldn't have to worry about her at the same time.
The boss that I was going up against later was the 77th Demon King, Balouth.
So right now, I was sitting in another cafe, imagining the fight in my head, planning everything out, remembering the tricks that I had used so many times and the quirks in Balouth's fighting style.
If I remembered correctly, there was a certain item that would make the fight against Balouth a lot easier, and it was here in this very cafe.
Standing up, I motioned to the usually silent Lili to follow me whilst I approached the counter.
"May I buy some fish eyes?"
"And why would you eat them?" Asked a random NPC.
"Because they taste like rays of fatty sunshine."
Seeing that I had spoken the dialogue correctly, I was relieved when the NPC reached under the counter before handing me a box.
"That'll be 1,000 TC."
Forking over the money, I put the box into my inventory before leaving the store.
This whole time, Lili followed silently behind. It seemed that although I had saved her life, some thing, probably my creepy mask and my suspicious behavior, was keeping her from getting closer to me.
'Well, it's not my problem, she can do whatever she wants.'
Leaving the town on the 5th floor, I headed towards the mountain in the distance, a mountain that had smoke coming out of the top of it.
It was a long distance, but I still walked slowly as it was still midday, so there was time before I could fight anyways.
So, I thought about the reward for clearing the 5th floor.
Well, it wasn't exactly a reward because the thing you got after killing Balouth wasn't an item or TCs, but another test, namely, the job selection test.
During my many beta tests, I had used a number of different jobs, but now that I could only have one for the rest of my life, I really couldn't figure out which one to gun for.
So that was what I pondered for the rest of the walk there.
...
By the time we arrived at the base of the mountain, well, a mountain that was a volcano, night had almost fallen and it looked like Lili was about to go to sleep.
She slowly almost closed and opened her eyes for a few seconds before closing them completely. As she was about to lose consciousness, wobble, and fall, her eyes suddenly opened again and she looked completely awake.
"Are you ready Verm?"
"First off, stop calling me that dumb nickname, and secondly, when have I ever been not ready?"
"Right... well, do you want the plan?"
"Yeah, send it over."
I thought about my plan for a few seconds, highlighting all the details.
"Alright I got it... what the fuck type of plan is this?!!!"
"Are you sure it'll work?"
"It's a me-type plan and yes, it'll work."
"If you say so." She said, shrugging her little shoulders.
If you were wondering, although Verminus had transferred her consciousness over to Lili's body, 70% of her body was still in mine, so I could easily transfer thoughts over by sending them into the part of her body in my brain.
We climbed the mountain as the last rays of sunlight filtered below the horizon.
At the top, we stopped and looked down from the edge of a cliff at the bubbling magma bellow.
Taking out the box that I had gotten at the cafe, I threw a couple of its contents into the magma.
After a few seconds, something started rising out of the lava.
It kept rising and rising, reaching 10 meters tall before stopping and... trying its hardest to jump out of the lava?
The giant figure jumped and landed on the edge of the cliff opposite us.
As the lava cooled down, we could see what looked like a face and four limbs appear.
There were cracks all over the body as lava flowed out, and the eyes were like bright embers.
'The 77th Demon King, Balouth, the destroyer of towns, the demon that is lava.'
On my signal we started running, I was to circle the western side whilst Verm circled the eastern side.
'Let the hunt begin.'