He coughed up into his hand, finding freshly red blood spread on his palm. It was his entire body that ached and burned, exhausted beyond any state he felt he'd ever pushed himself to. Now that he looked at himself, he wasn't exactly in a pretty state, with his cloak being burnt and torn, and his shirt missing a chunk out of it with his bruised chest on full display.
'I guess Frederick can wait–I need to get home and rest…then I can–' he thought.
The formulation of his thoughts came to an abrupt stop as the ground sank beneath his right foot, causing him to lose his balance as he was left utterly taken by surprise. As he looked down, the blackened soil was overtaken by cracks that stretched outward, splitting it apart and breaking beneath him.
"Huh–?!"
It happened so quickly, with not enough time for him to take a single step as a feeling of weightlessness overtook his body. The soil had crumbled completely, causing him to slip through the ground as he began descending.
What he fell into wasn't a bed of dirt, but a vast interior of stygian steel that blended into an architecture of roots and lightly-glowing, deep-red leaves that clung to the walls like overgrowth. It was a hollow section, devoid of anything that he could see besides the colossal perimeter of the tower's width.
'This is–huh? How?' He thought, finding it difficult to formulate thoughts mid-descent.
It was an area of the Tower he had never seen, nor had most adventurers: the "between floors."
The empty space between floors, with in the center being a closed-off stairwell that connected the two. As he plummeted, feeling his hood flap and his brown hair wave, he looked over towards the isolated stairs, finding no way in from his descending position.
Perhaps hundreds of meters he had already fallen, looking around him for the closest wall, beginning to flap his limbs as he tried to near himself to one the of the mighty walls nearest to him.
'C'mon–!' He urged.
It was hard to breathe, or harder than it already was with his battered body, as his fast descent made the air feel sharp. He waved his arms around, looking down as he saw the ceiling of the floor below rapidly approaching now; a forest of trees, with the glowing leaves acting as its roof.
From his belt, his slime-forged tool was retrieved, lacing it around his hand quickly as he looked to the wall closest to him as it rapidly passed with his descent.
At the speed he was falling, he knew simply flinging the rope of sticky slime wouldn't be enough.
With his exhausted, hesitant body, he forced himself to act as he yelled out amidst his fall, "Levin!"
The silver charge infused itself through his hand and into the slime as he flung one end forward. It shot away with intense speed before splatting against the spot in the wall beside him, though that spot being much higher than him once it actually gripped onto the overgrowth-infested stone.
'--Got it!' He thought.
Gripping onto his end of the gooey rope with all of his strength, his downward momentum began to slow as the slime stretched itself, finally breaking his fall completely. He gently swung over to the wall he was anchored to, keeping his slime-held hand above him as he leaned against the stone, peering down at the ceiling of trees that was no more than ten meters below him.
"...Phew…" He breathed out, wiping his nose as a bit of blood leaked from his nostrils.
It felt as though some unseen force was toying with him the continuous bad encounters he suffered in this single excursion.
'Below is the tenth floor…How the hell did this happen? I managed to fall this way…If the stairwell is connected to the chamber below, then that only means one thing…It's the where the tenth guardian is,' he surmised.
In his current state, it felt like a joke to even consider encountering a floor guardian at this point, especially the one overseeing the tenth floor. He knew rumors of the tenth floor guardian well, even enough to remember the name of the guardian well enough:
'Bakasura'...That's not something I want to fight, at least not right now. I might be able to sneak past though, the entrance to the stairwell should be in the guardian chamber,' he thought.
Hanging against the bleak wall as he looked down at the field of scarlet leaves below, his boot brushed against one of the roots that clung to the stone, brushing blood that leaked from his nose with his glove.
"Guess there's no road left but the one ahead, huh?" He mumbled to himself as he tugged on the slime anchor, plucking it from the tower's wall as he dropped down onto one of the giant branches.
It was difficult to see into the chamber below, as the luminescent leaves were plentiful and obscuring.
'I could try leaving the guardian chamber and navigating the tenth, but that runs the risk of having to actually find the floor's Descent. It's risky, but if I can get to the stairwell that leads up, it'll put me near the eleventh's Descent,' he planned.
Every floor had a "Descent" of its own, acting as a flipside to the Grand Ascent: a stairway on each floor leading directly down to the first. Of course, it's only when a floor guardian is defeated that that floor's Descent is available to use.
He listened if he could hear anything, though only silence filled his ears. Trying to remain quiet, a throbbing in his throat forced him to cough as he slapped his hand against his mouth to squelch the sound. Enough coughing made his throat raw, forcing a pained exhale from him as he pulled his bloodsoaked glove away from his mouth.
'Not looking too hot,' he thought.
Either way, there was no avoiding where he needed to go as he slowly pulled his hood over his head, tugging the cowl down as it clad itself around his face. Immediately, the swelling sickness of the enchanted relic set in with a swirling nausea from his head to stomach.
It made him feel like spitting up bile, though he buried those feelings the best he could as he quietly climbed down the branches with the element of invisibility on his side. There was an abundant stretch of branches, like a maze, full of jagged, curved limbs of wood with glowing leaves brushing against him.
'Easy does it…' He thought, having to almost crawl downward through the thick of the foliage.
Finding his way through, the floor that met his eyes beneath was a field of silver grass, littered with overgrown, giant roots of ashen, gray bark that stuck out from the ground and overlapped. Holding onto a pair of branches, he let his body hang down, permitting his boots to gently land on the chalky soil below.
A lifeless chamber; a bleached forest with only the scarlet leaves bearing any life in the isolated environment.
It was his first time seeing it for himself, the infamous tenth floor of the Tower: "The Godless Forest."
'Okay…I made it in, where is–' he thought.
Immediately as he looked up, his vision was consumed by the bone-chilling sight of it: a monstrous, humanoid figure with sapphire skin and four arms, sitting upon a throne built of roots that extended from the wall. Tusks extended from the corners of its mouth, curving upward and being decorated with golden jewelry; the clothes it wore were torn rags of gold and black.
'The guardian of the tenth floor…Bakasura, the "Man-Eating Demon",' he recalled.
The inhuman guardian looked to be twice his size, at least, boredly sitting with its head resting on its own fist, looking in his direction with its eerie, golden eyes.
It was an unfortunate part of the Tower of Yggdrasil he encountered in that moment: the floor guardians, required to be beaten so that the next floor may be opened, will revive every so often. A cruel part of the even crueler structure.
To his dismay, he wasn't alone in stumbling upon the intimidating domain–there was another adventurer: a young man in scarlet armor on his knees, quivering as he held his broadsword in one hand, pointed towards the guardian, and holding his unconscious, bleeding companion in his other arm.
The freshly mauled corpses of others likely belonged to the same group; an unkind reality of the Tower.
'More adventurers?...Looks like they bit off more than they could chew,' he observed.
Still, it seemed as if the malignant entity had yet to notice him as he kept himself completely still in his breathless, unseen state. It didn't stop his body from being overcome with goosebumps as his hairs stood up, being enveloped in the suffocating presence of the tenth guardian.
He could see it–right beside the throne of roots: massive set of marble doors, opened with the upward staircase within it. It looked like a light of salvation, beckoning for him, with only the demonic figure between him and his freedom.
It wasn't a rare thing that adventurers met their end in the Tower; it was more common than surviving, in fact. He told himself that, believing that he was essentially letting nature run its course if he ignored the cornered adventurers.
"--" He remained silent, doing his best to compose himself while devoid of breath.
The sight of skulls and discarded bones that were littered around the natural throne was a disturbing sight; the bored guardian held a femur in his hand, gnawing on it while sitting there like a king.
'...I just need to get past it. That's all. Just fifteen, maybe twenty steps,' he reminded himself.
As he attempted to walk forward, a wall stood between him and the next step, not able to plant his foot down as he froze. An unseen barrier; one not forged of physical material, but his own fear.
It wasn't fear of the impossible foe ahead, but of repeating a mistake. A fault that could not happen again; one that he had not yet forgotten, nor forgiven himself for.
"Stay away…!" The wounded man in scarlet armor begged, holding his blade up as his feminine companion bled from her head.
Looking at that desperate adventurer, whose tears streamed plentifully down his cheeks and eyes that ached with agonizing sorrow, surrounded by a scenery of death, unpleasant memories surfaced to Bastian's mind.
Before he secluded himself to his lonely excursions into the Tower, before he solely chose to work for money, abandoning his passion, before he lost everyone–
["...Bastian!"] The shriek of a girl he once cared for played in his head.
["Run, Bas! I'll hold them off–so get Annaliese out of here!"] The desperate words of a reliable friend repeated, remembering the sight of the fully-armored shielder standing in front of him.
["I don't want to die. Bas…Is this really it? After all this, will we really not reach the top? We promised–we promised to reach it together."]
He was frozen by these unwelcome memories, feeling his heart ache within his chest, resonating with emotions he had long since buried.
'Dammit all…Why now of all times?' He asked himself.
All the while, the demonic figure laughed, continuing to chew on his bone, beginning to raise one of his hands in an ominous fashion.
The hidden adventurer saw the opening ahead, yet found himself unable to continue onward. The cries of the desperate figure behind him anchored him from stepping away.
'What am I doing? I got this far because of my good sense of caution–avoiding danger is how I survived this long. Lately I've been reckless…Why? I want to live right, so the right choice would be to turn back…It might be the longer route, but it's safer, isn't it?' He questioned.
Placing his hand over his own chest, the thumping of his heart resonated against his palm. Though it was irrational and lacked logic to him, everything told him to take the risk; he knew why he was so driven to push himself.
'But when I see that guy desperately waving his sword around, crying…I can't help but see myself from that day. I didn't want to be saved then. I wanted to die. I lost everything–I had no reason to stand back up. No reason to keep fighting. He still has someone though…More than anything in the world, you want to protect them, don't you?' He thought.
It felt as if he turned his back on the path ahead of him, he'd abandon that fire that was lit in his heart; he'd be forced to return to his stagnate life of living on the lower floors, never growing, never encountering excitement. Even death sounded more pleasant than a life like that, to him.
'Screw it all–I'd never sneak past it anyway. There's no point in surviving if I'm just going to regret it for the rest of my life,' he thought.