Mira decided that she would go to the Battle Tower tomorrow. She was a little annoyed that she had to fight in the Battle Tower and make it into the Top 3, but it's worth it to keep her daily use token at the Cultivation Cave. She had no such ambitions of making it to the top floor or take first place. The Elders already knew she was strong and skilled and this is just a way for them to prove to the other disciples that she is strong enough.
The next day, a few hours before dawn she found herself in front of the Battle Tower that is meant for Core Disciples. She was also able to see the leaderboards here as well.
[1. Alexa - 98th Floor
2. Cleo - 97th Floor
3. Jade - 95th Floor
…]
It showed the Top 10 disciples, but Mira only cared about the Top 3.
'So I just need to make it to the 96th Floor, huh? I wonder how difficult this tower is.' Mira thought to herself.
She then walked into the Tower and a mechanical voice played itself.
"Welcome to the Battle Tower, Disciple. Defeat all of the beasts on each floor to progress to the next one. If you want to leave the tower, then just say 'I give up!' and the tower will eject you.' The mechanical voice gave a basic introduction.
Then a Low-Stage Rank 3 appeared in front of her. Mira just took out her scythe and dashed towards it, killing it instantly. The beasts just disappeared after killing them. She then felt her body teleport to the floor above her and now there were 2 Low-Stage Rank 3 Beasts.
Mira repeated the same thing with these two beasts and they died instantly as well.
With each floor added another beast of the same rank. And Mira reached the 10th Floor in under a minute after instantly killing 10 Low-Stage Rank 3 Beasts. After all 10 beasts disappeared she was taken to the 11th Floor.
"Welcome to the 11th Floor." A mechanical voice rang out, seemingly just to remind her what floor she was on.
This time a Mid-Stage Rank 3 Beast appeared, but this still didn't change the fact that Mira could instantly kill it. She might be able to fight Low-Stage Rank 5 Beasts or at least Peak-Stage Rank 4. These low-ranking beasts were nothing but ants in front of Mira. She was taken to the 12th Stage where 2 Mid-Stage Rank 3 Beasts appeared and Mira felt like things would be way too easy for at least 50 floors. And she was right.
The 20th Floor had 10 Mid-Stage Rank 3 Beasts.
The 30th Floor had 10 Late-Stage Rank 3 Beasts.
The 40th Floor had 10 Peak-Stage Rank 3 Beasts
And the 50th Floor had 10 Low-Stage Rank 4 Beasts.
It barely took her 10 minutes to reach the 50th floor as she was able to kill almost every beast instantly by just running at them and casually sweeping her scythe. Even the Rank 4 Beasts weren't much in front of her even though they were supposed to be equal in strength cultivation-wise.
The 51st Floor is when things got slightly more difficult because a Mid-Stage Rank 4 beast appeared. But this beast lacked any form of intelligence, so Mira took out its eyes with a few ice needles and cut off one of its legs then finished it off by cutting off its head. Mira felt that if things continued like this, she might have to fight Rank 6 beasts on the upper floors. But she shook these thoughts out of her head and focused on what's in front of her.
The 52nd Floor contained one Mid-Stage Rank 4 beast and one Low-Stage Rank 4 Beast. She went for the easiest to kill first, beheading the Low-Stage Rank 4 Beast. Then just repeated the same thing she did on the 51st Floor with the Mid-Stage Rank 4 beast.
Instead of her only taking around 10 seconds or less to complete a floor, it now took her almost 2 minutes. That's over 10 times longer! But Mira kept this pace and even got better at killing Mid-Stage Rank 4 beasts. But since these beasts clearly lacked intelligence and were just running like mad at her, they were essentially just a walking training dummy. A normal Rank 4 beast would not fight like this.
But Mira didn't care about this as even if that was the case, one still needed the strength to kill them. If they wouldn't even cut the beast then all they can do is dodge or run, meaning failure to advance.
Mira just kept advancing through the floors at a steady pace. She was able to beat the 60th Floor with relative ease as well. There were only 2 Mid-Stage Rank 4 beasts and 8 Low-Stage Rank 4 Beasts. So the difficulty didn't spike that much for her from the 51st Floor.
The 61st Floor continued in a similar manner where a Late-Stage Rank 4 Beast appeared to which Mira had to dodge several of its attacks and repeatedly cut its neck before being able to sever its head. The battle actually took Mira almost 10 minutes to complete as the beast was much faster and tougher than the ones before it.
The 62nd Floor had one Late-Stage Rank 4 beast and one Mid-Stage Rank 4 beast to fight. Things were getting progressively harder and were clearly not meant for someone at her cultivation, but even so, it still only took Mira a little over 10 minutes to clear this floor. The floors continued in a similar manner as before and she eventually made it to the 80th Floor after around 6 hours.
As a recap of what happened on the previous floors, the 70th Floor had 2 Late-Stage Rank 4 beasts and 8 Mid-Stage Rank 4 Beasts. While te 80th Floor had 2 Peak-Stage Rank 4 beasts and 8 Late-Stage Rank 4 Beasts.
The Peak-Stage Rank 4 Beasts were a huge pain in the ass for Mira to kill as they were extremely tough. But she was able to confirm her theory! As far as pure strength goes, her body is equal to a Peak-Stage Rank 4 Beast. But she felt like she was hitting the limit of her capabilities and could only hope that they didn't introduce Rank 5 Beasts for Floors 81 to 90. But much to Mira's dismay, this is what actually happened.
When she made it to Floor 81, a Low-Stage Rank 5 beast appeared and she could immediately feel that if she had to fight this thing, she should be able to run, but actually killing it was a different story. But Mira wasn't an idiot with no battle experience. She knew that these beasts aren't very intelligent and she had the perfect technique for this! Her Ice Prison! Since the beasts can barely think for themselves, as long as she can run around for a while, then she'll be able to immobilize the beast and just saw off its head after.
This is exactly what Mira did! She didn't even bother to keep out her scythe for this battle. She just shot a barrage of ice needles towards the beast, hoping one would enter deep enough for her to use. And after almost 5 minutes of launching ice needles at the beast while running away, she was able to get one into its side. She then proceeded to use her Ice Prison technique. The Ice coursed through the beast's body and after almost 5 minutes, the beast became trapped in an Ice Prison inside of its own body. Mira was surprised by the time it took to finish this, but she forgot that she had enlightenment in her Absolute Ice Dao during her breakthrough. She just didn't realize it was this great. Maybe she needs to be focusing more on her ice attacks now that they are this strong as well.
After those 5 minutes, the beast was immobilized so Mira just walked up to it and started to hack its head off.
She made it to the next floor but wanted to try something a bit different. There was one Low-Stage Rank 5 Beast and one Peak-Stage Rank 4 Beast. Mira activated her ice domain, took out her scythe, and used her Dual-Bladed Scythe Art. And used her ice domain to unleash hundreds of ice needles, ice blades, and even her blue lighting was able to cause some damage now after it's been almost completely integrated into her body.
She was surprised to see that by only using her ice attacks, she was actually able to kill both of the beasts. And it also decreased the time it took to clear the floor by a few minutes. But she used up over double or triple her energy and also made her mind more fatigued as well. She didn't want to stick with this idea as she didn't get any breaks in between floors.
Mira continued using her Ice Prison for the next 2 hours on the Rank 5 Beasts until she reached the 91st Floor.
But she was rather shocked that the 90th Floor didn't have any extra Low-Stage Rank 5 Beasts and only had 9 Peak-Stage Rank 4 Beasts.
But the 91st Floor was different than the other floors. This one didn't start with only 1 beast, instead, 100 beasts appeared. There was 1 Low-Stage Rank 5 Beast while the rest of them were Rank 4 in different stages. Mira already knew exactly what she needed to do. She was just going to stick to what she's been doing. Kill off the weaker ones first to lower the number of beasts chasing her and then she can focus on the stronger ones. But she tweaked this plan a little and decided to save a weaker beast as well. Mira unleashed her full power now. She made her Ice Domain, covered herself in Ice Armor, turned her scythe into a dual-bladed scythe, and launched hundreds and thousands of ice needles and ice blades at the beasts. She was able to slaughter the beasts other than the Rank 5 rather quickly. Of course, during this onslaught, she found a weaker beast, removed its legs, and threw it in the corner of the floor. After only the Rank 5 beast was left, she put all of her Qi into her Earth-Shattering Fist. Her fist launched out like a rocket into the beast's head. There was a loud thud, but only the beast's brain was turned into mush. The floor just absorbed the impact, but there were no cracks or anything. She was rather impressed with the integrity of the tower. Mira was able to clear this wave of beasts in around 10 minutes, but she exhausted all of her energy to do so.
She looked over and saw that the beast she saved wasn't able to move. Mira took this time to return to her peak, except this time it took her around an hour to do so.
After she returned to her peak, she walked over to the legless beast and put it out of its misery. She then advanced to the 92nd Floor, but she noticed that the number of beasts doubled. There were now 2 Low-Stage Rank 5 beasts. She had to tweak her strategy a bit, but the premise remained the same. The only difference is she'd use her Ice Prison on the other Rank 5 Beast and slowly tear apart its head until it dies, then use a full Earth-Shattering Fist on the remaining beast, while keeping a weak beast alive at the end so she can rest. This would be her strategy until she was forced to change it.
Mira pulled this off flawlessly as she took out the fodder, saved a weak beast by removing its legs and throwing it to the side, using her Ice Prison on one of the Low-Stage Rank 5 Beast and slowly chipping away at it until it dies, then using a full power against the last beast, killing it.
This allowed her to advance to the next floor, where the number of beasts doubles again. Now there were 400 and 4 Low-Stage Rank 5. She used the same strategy as before and felt like she was about to reach her limit soon. It was getting incredibly hard on her mind to keep spamming her ice like this for so long. Even after an hour-long break. But she pushed her mind and body to the limit and was able to pass Floor 95.
On Floor 95 there were 1600 beasts and 16 Low-Stage Rank 5 Beasts. This was Mira's limit to these brainless beasts. She was now covered in wounds and blood, but luckily her vitality is incredibly high with her bloodline and higher cultivation so these wounds wouldn't leave any scars. But she did need to have longer breaks at the end of every fight to heal her broken bones and wounds along with regaining her energy. It took her around 10 hours to get to Floor 96. But once she reached Floor 96 she sensed a Mid-Stage Rank 5 Beast with over 30 Low-Stage Rank 5 beasts.
"I give up!" Mira yelled as was immediately shoved out of the tower. She noticed that it was around midnight now and knew that she was in the Battle Tower for almost an entire day. She made her way over to the leaderboards to see if it was updated.
[1. Alexa - 98th Floor
2. Cleo - 97th Floor
3. Mira - 96th Floor
4. Jade - 95th Floor
…]
Mira realized that the leaderboards are based on what floor you made it to and not what was the last floor you beat. She assumed that if someone were to clear all 100 floors, instead of saying [100th Floor], it'd say [Cleared] or [Completed].
Either way, Mira was satisfied and tiredly walked back to her room, got in her bed, and decided to go to sleep with Dominique.