It has been quite some time since i took some of the authority of the lower floor gods by sending my minions to their floors. My own floor doesn't have a day and night cycle but many others do have a shared cycle. Going by this it has been exactly two months and thirteen days.
Naturally, I haven't been idle all this time. I spent my days creating blood monsters. A part of them were sent to monitor the first floors, these being most of the winged eyes and some wretched hounds. Meanwhile the rest were sent as reinforcements to the floors with gods residing in them since most of the weaker minions had been wiped out after countless guerrilla attacks, after all the advantage of being in their floor couldn't be ignored, foreign monsters suffered a great reduction in their strength.
However their deaths wasn't something bad. The spilling of blood allowed me to expand my domain even further, corrupting small areas of the floors into a blood covered environment, which lessened the strength reduction of my monsters insidethese areas.
"Should i try an attack on some boss stage?"
While i was pondering this a sudden pain caught my attention. It was sutile, almost nonexistent, but when i tried to find the cause i was surprised.
Apparently one of the winged eyes that i had sent to the first floor had been killed, but none of the monsters residing in that place should have been able to kill them. The first floor is a very simple one called the undead city, a ruined city inhabited by zombies, none of these zombies have the skills necessary to eliminate a winged eye.
Inside my mind were two possibilities. First is that some lower floor god had sent it's minions to he first floor to get rid of mine but that seemed unlikely. The second was that the ones who killed the winged eye were none other than the protagonists.
The only entities capable of ranged attacks in the first floor should be the protagonists. With that in mind, I sent a flock of winged eyes towards the location where the first one was killed. Sadly the eyes aren't particularly fast fliers so it took some time for them to reach the location, about three hours.
What they found upon reaching that place was a massive horde of zombies surrounding a house. In the roof of said house were two persons, senior high schoolers who took the role of protagonists in the game. The ones trapped there appeared to be Nayuta and Touji.
This is honestly not surprising. This is a possible scenario in the game that happens if you decide to hunt the zombies outside the house and break something loudly. It can be triggered by breaking a window and a variety of other objects. The result is obvious, a horde of zombies will spawn to chase the player and it will turn into a death end.
"What can i do now?"
I can't let them meet their demise here, so i need to help them. The problem is that i don't have the means to do so, the eyes are too weak to eliminate the zombies and they weren't suitable as bait because those monsters had already seen those two. The zombies have poor eyesight and react mostly to sounds, but once they see prey they won't let them go even if something attacks them.
"I could send some hounds but it will take them hours to get there...wait, what is she doing?"
While i was thinking about what to do i saw Nayuta taking a red gem from inside her pocket and throwing it far away from their position - Ah that's the item that can drop from the winged eyes, the blood crystal.
Blood crystals are small usable items that attract monsters. Once broken, it can be used as distraction or even just to encounter them more often. But how did she know this?
Not even the player would know their use because of the absence of item descriptions in the game. Tower of the end is a unfair game that doesn't give the player any useful interface. There aren't any indicators like hp, damage or stamina and it doesn't even have item descriptions, quest logs or basic instructions. Everything the player knows comes from notes left scattered through each floor and the only way to get descriptions for items and enemies comes from a hidden item found in the 20th floor, so it should be impossible for her to know the blood crystal effect.
Did she maybe...realize the zombies react to sound and threw it to distract them with the sound? No, it is more likely for it to be Touji's idea.
Regardless of what their idea was, it worked. The moment the crystal broke it released a crimson gas that attracted the zombies. The horde quickly shifted their attention towards the broken crystal leaving those two alone.
They didn't waste that opportunity and immediately jumped from the roof into an alley, quickly disappearing among the buildings. Seeing this, I sent some winged eyes to follow them while the rest launched themselves against the zombies to stop them from redirecting their attention to the students.
A monster as weak as a winged eye can't win against a zombie, but there is strength in numbers and those things have particularly fragile skulls. By crashing against their heads repeatedly some of them died and the rest started trying to catch the eyes. In the end all of the eyes had died and only about 1/4 of the zombies were killed, but that was enough.
Through the winged eyes that followed the pair, I saw them enter a house. It looks like they're safe for now but i ordered some of the eyes to stay vigilant around the house, it would take some time before the hounds arrived but once they do they will stay in the surroundings to keep them out of danger, sadly there aren't many hounds on the first floor, less than twenty and sending more to the first floor isn't easy since there is too much distance between it and my floor. Also there is the fact that i shouldn't try to protect them to much, there are some areas where it would be impossible for me to help them and if they are too weak they will definitely die.
"This is so damn problematic..."
For now I'll just try to eliminate big hordes that wander too close to them and let small hordes and lone zombies get to them, after all this is an unfair world, in the game respawning is normally impossible so dying means starting again, now that this is reality they don't have that option, so I'll have to make sure they don't meet their demise while slowly strengthening them.
"I would like to make contact, but with such a distance it is impossible. I have to wait until they get to the eighth floor"
My authority allows me to send my monsters even to the first floor but it only allows me to communicate to the tenth floor. By stretching its reach as much as possible, I can get to the eighth floor but that's the limit. I could try to steal more authority from the lower floor gods but it would be problematic if they team together to defy me, especially the abstract Monolith.
"I have done as much as i can, for now let's just watch"
I will wait and see . If the Monolith decides to take action, I'll have to come up with a new plan. But for now, I'll just stay put and see what happens.