Opening his eyes, Takashi was greeted with a loud growl coming from his stomach.
'.....I forgot to eat dinner...'
Although a bit embarrassed at forgetting such a simple important thing, he shrugged it off and opened his inventory.
{Profile}
{Inventory}!
Oak Planks: 12
Sticks: 8
Rotten Flesh: 24
Bones: 13
Iron Ingot: 4
Iron Ore: 12
Wheat Bread: 6
Sleeping Bag: 1
Bandages: 4
Heart Dust: 15
Empty Atlas: 1
Cooked Chicken 50%
Stone Axe 92%
Stone Pickax 99%
Stone Sword 97%
{Attributes}
{Skills}
{Combat}
{Mining}
{Crafting}
{Knowledge}
Taking out the rest of the chicken, he was surprised to find it was still warm, meaning his inventory kept things in the same state that they entered, very useful.
As he ate he decided to sort through his menu, first by looking at the stuff in his inventory.
The {Planks and {Sticks} where just that, the {Rotten Flesh} also self explanatory, pretty disgusting, the {Bones} all looked like a leg bone, the {Iron Ingots} where also just that, being about 6" long, 3" wide and 2" thick.
The {Iron Ore} was just a large block of stone with iron running through it, {Wheat Bread} was just an average loaf of bread, the {Sleeping Bag} looked to be high end and military grade, the {Bandages} were just rolls of cloth, and the {Heart Dust} was a small pile of dust that had a reddish pink color with a silvery glow.
As for the {Empty Atlas} once Takashi pulled it out it turned into {Atlas} and looked to be a map, with a small white arrow representing him.
After looking through its functions and testing it, he found out several useful things, for one that the arrow pointed towards the direction he was facing and followed his movement as if it could track him, it also was empty except for any area he had been to before, a circle around the arrow filled up the map automatically as he walked.
Oddly the mp only had just the map on a page in the middle of the book, being unable to turn to any other page was odd to say the least.
As well as that, the {Antique Atlas} came with a few features, it had a waypoint system that let you put a waypoint on the map with and icon of your choice, as well as a name of your choice, once you did that a large beam shot up into the air from where ever the mark was placed, allowing Takashi to see it from anywhere, as it could even be seen through the walls of his tent.
The Icons also ranged from a small house to the head of a dragon, one for each type, defiantly VERY useful, this meant he could leave and go where ever he wanted and still find his way back here, or where ever he decides to call home.
Putting the {Atlas} away, Takashi looked at his menu, and opened up the {Knowledge} tab, the only tab he had not looked at yet.
{Profile}
{Inventory}
{Attributes}
{Skills}
{Combat}
{Mining}
{Crafting}
{Knowledge}!
Index
Creatures
Monsters
Elements
Looking through everything he found that it was basically just a storage for information, any time he come across anything new a tab will be added to it, that will explain what it is and how it can be used, while useful, its not something he would need to check often.
Closing his menu, Takashi stood up and stretched.
Today was going to be a big day, today he planned to clear all the floors of the battle tower.
After getting a drink at the river, Takashi walked over to the battle tower, pulling out his sword in his left hand, and pickax in his right, his plan ran through his head for the third time.
It was a simple plan really, run up the stairs to the next floor he has not cleared as fast as he can, dodge all attacks and while mining the {Vortex's} also as fast as he can, before killing all the mobs and looting the chest.
Then simply rinse and repeat
As for plan B, well no need to think about it until its needed right?
As soon as the opening into the battle tower came into view, Takashi ran and jumped into it, running directly up the stairs from floor to floor until he came to a floor he had not cleared yet.
Seeing the {Vortex's} he run to the left one immediately and started mining it, within a few seconds it popped out a Zombie, the other one putting a mob as well. As the zombie approached him, he swung his sword at it, slashing it across the chest, nocking it back, while mining the {Vortex}
Slashing at it again, this time he made sure to hit its neck, which sliced through cleanly. As the zombie broke into particles, Takashi heard a hissing from behind him, he ignored it as the {Vortex} was all most broken.
Suddenly the {Vortex} shattered and Takashi jumped towards the chest right as something leaped right at his previous location, rather than fight it, he ran to the other {Vortex} and started mining it.
A second hiss sounded as the vortex spit out another mob, this time right on the other side of the {Vortex} right in front of Takashi, causing him to freeze as he saw what it was, a new mob, it was a spider.
Normally this would not be much of a problem, however, this spider was the size of a dog, coming up to the knees, it had red glowing eyes and silky green black body.
Takashi's instinct went into over drive upon laying his eyes on the hideous spider, immediately switching his sword out for his axe he smash the spider in with the back of the axe head.
As the spider shattered into particles, he dodged towards the wall and swung his axe across knocking the other spider into the chest, he quickly followed it up with a swing of his pickax turning it into particles.
Without hesitation he started mining the {Spider Vortex} with renewed vigor, spiders were fine, giant spiders on the other hand, freaked him out.
After breaking the {Spider Vortex} Takashi looted the chest without looking at the contents and ran up towards the next floor. If he wanted to complete the tower before dusk he did not have the time to sort through his loot.
Plus looking through it all at the same time would be fun.
Exiting the staircase, Takashi ducked out of the way just in time to avoid several arrows nearly piercing his head, swinging his axe at the closest skeleton he shattered its skull. without enough time for another full swing, he jabbed is axe at the knee of the next skeleton smashing in it's knee cap, and causing it to fall to the floor.
Running behind the left side {Vortex}, he quickly mined it while watching the now three skeletons trying to shoot him as he peaked around the {Vortex}.
As soon as the {Vortex} broke he jumped behind the chest, just to immediately step around it swinging his axe into the head of the first of the three skeletons, the other two of which fell quickly the first one having it's spine snapped, with the last getting it's jaw smashed in from bellow.
Mining the last {Vortex} Takashi leaned against the chest to catch his breath.
'I had better take it a bit slower from now on'
Hearing the sound of bone rattling, he turned towards it cursing himself for some how missing a skeleton.
Luckily what came into sight was not a full skeleton that he some how was blind to, rather it was the skeleton that he had broken off its leg, it was crawling towards him while trying to draw its bow at the same time.
It honestly looked kinda pitiful
Deciding to be kind, he walked over to it and with a quick apology for forgetting about it, he smashed its head in, putting it out of its misery.
'Though in not sure if skeletons can even feel pain, after all since they appear to be just bones they shouldn't have any nerves'
After finishing his break and looting the chest Takashi headed up to the 7th floor, with only two floors left he definitely will be able to finish before dusk, maybe even before midday if he's lucky.
Walking up the stairs, Takashi peaked around the doorway into the 8th floor, having decided that running in without any information was pretty stupid of him.
Inside he saw several spiders on the left near a {Spider Vortex}, and on the right was a {Zombie Vortex} surrounded by a few zombies, though one zombie in particular looked..... odd, for one it had much smoother skin than any other zombie he had seen so far, with way less flesh missing and overall looking closer to human, it also had a strange purple flame flickering on it as if it had been lit on fire.
After several minutes of thinking, he decided to not take any chances with this one.
Takashi faced the back of the staircase and pulled out his pickax, before mining out a chunk of the wall, enough that he could fit through, crawling through the hole he paused as his head got to the other side, with a drop of what had to be at least fifty feet, he almost rethought his plan then and there.
Shaking away the fear, he wiggled his way through, holding onto the edge of his hole until he was all the way out, hanging from the tower.
Ignoring the instinct to look down, after a pause, Takashi opened his inventory and pulled out his {Wood Planks}, placing one against the stone tower.
'That's a bit unrealistic'
He couldn't help but think after seeing a 3' by 3' wooden block attach to the stone, though at the same time, while his instincts say that there is something wrong with it working like that, its not like he had ever seen it another way, though, again, at the same time, its the first time he has seen anything like this.
Well its whatever, his random ass thought would make this a lot easier.
Reaching with one hand, he grabbed the top of the wooden block, only putting a little weight on it at a time, not fully trusting it at all.
After being confidant that it would hold him, he grabbed it with his other hand and pulled himself up onto it immediately putting his back against the stone tower and looking sideways so as to keep himself from looking down.
Placing one {Wood Plank} after the other, Takashi made his way around tower over to the large open "window" having to crawl past it so as to not be noticed by the monsters inside.
Once on the back side of the tower, he mined a hole through right to the {Spider Vortex}, and, although it was a close call, he managed to be able to reach the {Vortex} and mined it, quickly making his way over he did the same with the {Zombie Vortex}.
Having stopped any more monsters from spawning in, he walked on his wooden path back to the window, peaking his head around, by this time the monsters had moved around, with the closest one to him being the strange zombie covered in purple fire.
Switching to his axe in his left hand and sword in his right, he counted to three, before jumping into the tower through the window, swinging his sword down at the head of the strange zombie.
With his weight behind this swing, his sword came down towards the head of the zombie, who turned upon noticing him causing his sword to land on its shoulder instead, sending it stumbling backwards, while trying to get back its balance only to trip over a spider that had noticed Takashi and charged at him.
Seeing the strange zombie fall to the floor, Takashi rushed forwards, hacking his axe down on the spider the zombie had tripped over, killing it on impact.
Immediately having to dodge to the left after pulling his axe back up, he narrowly avoided the punch from the strange zombie, it having got back on its feet while he killed the spider, stabbing his sword towards the zombie, his eyes widened with surprise when the zombie, rather than ignoring the attack like all other zombies he had fought up to this point, it dodged his stab by jumping backwards.
Shaking his head out of his initial shock, he ran around the chest bringing his axe up and crushing it down on the head of a normal zombie, only to reverse and run back at the strange zombie and stab at it again, only this time when it dodged he pushed forwards, turning the blade towards himself and slamming the hilt into the chest of the zombie causing it to stumble backwards yet again.
Though this time it did not fall and simply stopped and starred at him as Takashi swung his axe down crushing another spider into particles.
As a few zombies attacked him Takashi made sure to keep one eye o the strange zombie at all times.
As he swung his axe down into a zombies skull, he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and immediately stabbed his sword behind his back.
Having noticed the strange zombie try and use the others as a distraction to attack from behind.
As he felt his sword hit resistance he knew he had hit his target, with the zombie in front breaking into particles after its health drained to zero, he swung his axe up as he turned and swung it down into the skull of the strange zombie.
Luckily that was enough to drain its abnormally high health and it broke into particles, leaving behind a cluster of exp that flowed into his body.
Not forgetting the last zombie and two spiders, Takashi quickly made work of them before looting the chest and sitting down against it to catch his breath.
After a quick break he got up and walked up the stairs to the last floor.
Peaking around the doorway he let out a sigh.
Luckily it was just two {Zombie Vortex}'s, and all the zombies were completely normal. As he really did not want to have to go outside the tower like he did last time.
While height did not scar him that much, it did still make him very nervous and rightfully so, even people who don't have a fear of heights will still have a sense of unease when on a cliff edge.
Deciding to take this slower, Takashi walked out of the stairway putting his axe on his shoulder and holding his sword down at his side, as nice as the extra exp from destroying {Vortex}'s fast was, he simply did not have the stamina to run around like that for so long.
The crowd of zombies stumbled towards him as he walked towards them, reaching the zombie in the front, he bounced the axe off his shoulder and brought it down hacking its head in half.
Before it could even turn into particles, he had moved, dashing forwards and stabbing his sword up and through the jaw of the next zombie, using the momentum to swing his axe around and into the neck of another.
Like this he plowed his way through the zombies and over to the {Vortex}, destroying it before moving on to the other.
With the floor finally clear, and the chest empty he glanced outside, and noticed the sun was already making its way down, building the walkway around the tower must have taken more time then he thought.
As he was turning to head back down to the bottom of the tower, he noticed a doorway, on the other side, which upon approaching it he saw a set of stairs heading up.
"Fucking Dammit! of course there is a roof ugh..."
Though as annoying as it was that he had more work to do even though he was thoroughly exhausted, it did make more sense for the battle tower to have 10 floors rather than 9.
Walking up the stairs, Takashi hoped that it would be some easy monsters, like on the 9th floor.
As the 10th floor was open, the sun hit his face before he got to the top, this also meant that he would have to peak up rather than through a doorway, and as he did so, what greeted his sight was not zombies, skeletons nor spiders, as a matter a fact there were not even any {Vortex}'s, just a large chest sitting out in the middle.
Sighing with relief, he made his way up the rest of the stairs only to freeze as the rest of the roof came into view.
On the roof, on the far right side, stood a large stone golem.
Standing at 12ft in height and with one large blue eye in the center of its head, the Battle Golem was a sight to behold, though at the same time it was also an extremely intimidating sight.
Having froze at the sight of it, Takashi just barely fell out of the way in time to avoid a red laser beam that shot out of its eye, though it was more luck than skill, he immediately used it to his advantage and ran down the staircase back onto the 9th floor, only to keep running down to the 8th floor and then the 7th, all the way to the bottom.
After reaching the bottom he ran all the way back to his camp and onto his bed, only looking behind to make sure the battle golem hadn't followed him.
"I'll have to wait until tomorrow to clear the tower"
Laying back he let the adrenaline fade, quickly falling asleep.