[Congratulations, challenger, on reaching the second summit]
[The tower will now determine your path.]
Arthur read through, slowly growing slightly more confused with each word.
"My path? What does that even mean?" Fortunately, he didn't have to think too long; the floating text added a new line after a few seconds.
[The Challenger has a high affinity for the Bound Path]
Bound Path? This is really getting sillier by the second.... Arthur looked around for a bit, this time not in a rush to move for the third summit, as his curiosity was almost driving him insane.
Should I try asking someone?
The moment the thought crossed his mind, he began scanning the faces on the second summit, looking for someone approachable.
Hup!
Spotting a promising target, he stood up, ready to walk over. But the moment he took his first step, someone cut him off, stepping directly into his path.
Arthur froze, a slight frown surfacing on his face as he observed the intruder with caution.
"...you need something?" Arthur asked quickly with slight impatience.
"Oh... It seems you don't plan to make this difficult." The sneering was a dead giveaway that this stranger was out for trouble.
"You'd think my imagination would be more friendly..." Arthur muttered in a low voice with disappointment before speaking.
"Uh... I'm a little short on time. Do you need something?" Arthur asked again, this time a little short on patience.
Right before the situation could escalate, another challenger noticed the situation and decided to interfere.
"What's going on here? Ignear? What's happening?" The newcomer seemed to know the challenger opposite Arthur.
"They just keep swarming in... What was I even thinking...." Arthur almost facepalmed the moment he saw another challenger approaching slowly.
"I don't have the time for all this.... waking up should be my priority right now." Immediately deciding to avoid the situation, he quietly slipped away towards the stairs leading to the next summit.
The attention of the challenger Ignear, trying to stir up trouble, was drawn by the newcomer, making it easy to slip away.
"Rather than ask questions.... I'll just see a shrink when I wake up." Resolving himself one more time and setting the questions weighing on his mind aside.
He treated the entire awakening as another repetition of his bizarre dream, looking forward to waking up as soon as he could.
"Dammit, you let him escape..." Ignear complained, seeing that Arthur had already begun to climb towards the third summit.
"Escape?" The newcomer followed the sight of his friend, who had just arrived at the second summit, seeing Arthur, who was standing close by just a moment ago, climbing towards the third summit and not at a slow pace either.
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"Him?" The newcomer frowned slightly, adopting a tense tone he decided to warn his friend. "I hope you remember that the tower doesn't allow fighting among the challengers?"
"Come on... chill. I know the rules; I was just hoping to get some info by obstructing his climb a little bit." Ignear looked at Arthur with a complicated expression that grew more complicated with each new step Arthur took.
It was hard not to grow confused seeing the way Arthur was trudging forward without breaks or pauses to recover from the pain that came with each new step forward.
His focus on Arthur was distracted by the tower's notification in his vision, but only for a moment.
He looked at Arthur one last time before turning to his friend, who was equally lost, staring at Arthur, who had crossed twenty steps in one go.
"Who.. Is something wrong with him? Doesn't he feel pain?" He asked Ignear, meeting his gaze with confusion; at first he was going to inquire about Arthur's identity, but seeing the way he was blazing through the challenge.
He felt that question was more appropriate.
Ignear didn't respond to the question, instead letting out some thoughts of his own. "He's probably from one of those Noble Transcendent families.... Anyway, I can always get the information when I catch up to him on the third summit....."
"I hope I can catch up to him..." He rephrased his words when he saw that Arthur had crossed an extra ten steps in the span of time it took to exchange words with his friend.
The crowd heading for the third summit was very thin, no more than a handful, and they were all ahead of him at the moment.
Arthur took note of them, but that was it. He paid more attention to his own climb than their situation, except a single thought crossed his mind the moment he reviewed his time climbing from the first step till this moment.
"Don't they know that the tower disrupts your will the longer you stay on a single step without moving?" Arthur couldn't help but notice.
Subconsciously he treated the challengers in the tower as real but whenever he tried to rationalize what was happening, It was hard to reconcile his reality with the bizarre steps and summits that he only seemed to see in his dreams.
But after countless trials and failures in climbing to the top of the tower. He knew that the stairs would do anything to stop the challenger from moving forward.
Within the tower, moving backwards without being on a summit was impossible.
So it was either move forward once your feet were upon the stairs or stay in place. From experience, Arthur was able to understand that the tower was able to corrupt willpower, but only while you were on the stairs without movement.
And with each moment spent standing in place on the stairs, the tower took that opportunity to corrupt your willpower slowly without notice.
Each new step after corruption would seem insurmountable and next to impossible, deepening on the level of corruption, but without that, the difficulty of climbing the tower was uniform for all summits.
"Anyway.. It's none of my business." Arthur resolved once again to treat this as a dream and wake up as soon as possible.
Observing the group climbing ahead of him with no more than twenty steps between them, he thought to himself.
"It seems they'll reach the third summit before I do..." Although he thought this, he wasn't bothered in the slightest; instead, his thoughts moved onto the texts that appeared in his vision at each summit.
"It feels like a reward or something..." Arthur was incredibly curious since in the hundreds of times he'd scaled the tower from the bottom to the top.
This was the only time something like this occurred.
At least he had something to look forward to this time on every summit he crossed off.
Lucas looked back for a second, right before he could step onto the summit of the third floor had a shocked look on his face.
"What is he... dead inside?" He asked, still with his shocked look.
His words drew the attention of the challengers within reach, and they all followed his gaze, seeing a charging bull heading towards them.
"Do any of you know him?" A hulking-looking kid for a 14-year-old asked with similar confusion oozing from his tone.
"I was just going to ask you that question, Henry... the only hot-headed transcendent I know are members of your family." Henry looked up at Lucas, who was already at the summit a few steps away from his position, before sneering.
"I dare you to say that again when we leave this tower." With folded arms as he took a break before moving upwards he spoke with absolute confidence and fighting intent in his eyes.
"There you go... just proving my point." Lucas shook his head, turned to focus on recovery before muttering under his breath.
The other three challengers within the reach of the third summit said nothing. They were surprised all the same, seeing the speed Arthur used.