[POV - Ice Queen]
"Has anyone died?" I asked, looking around the group.
I had tried my absolute best to keep everyone alive through Floor 0 and Floor 1, but it was proving nearly impossible, even for me. There were simply too many monsters, and I couldn’t be everywhere at once, especially during chaotic boss encounters.
"Total body count is five as of now," Michael reported.
"Hmm... not bad, considering."
I glanced across the crowd, gauging how everyone was holding up. I knew this entire situation was a massive shock to most people. It had been for me, too. But I had been exceedingly lucky right from the start.
Unlike almost everyone else in this room, I had obtained a passive skill that allowed me to remain completely level-headed regardless of the situation.
[Calm Mind (Legendary): Grants absolute composure and clarity of mind at all times.]
It sounded like a deceptively simple skill on paper, but it was utterly overpowered, especially in a place like this.
I wasn’t sure how or why I had received an EX-Rank skill in the first place; all I knew was that it had arrived via an anonymous donation the moment I entered the tower.
"Is there anything else I should know?" I asked.
Michael, one of my closest friends, gave a hesitant nod. He seemed nervous to bring it up out loud, so he leaned in close and whispered directly into my ear.
"There’s a small group of challengers suspected of murdering other players by staging... ’accidents.’"
I simply nodded, keeping my expression neutral.
It was bound to happen. The Tower was entirely severed from the outside world and legal authorities. Whatever atrocities someone committed inside here would stay hidden; a killer could wipe out a whole squad and easily claim they died to monsters later.
I didn’t even need Michael to point out the suspects. I had already picked them out of the crowd, mostly because of the disgusting way they carried themselves.
I could feel their eyes crawling over my back, my waist, my chest, undressing me with filthy, persistent glares.
Absolute garbage.
I’ll clear them out as soon as possible.
Luckily, the upcoming boss room would provide the perfect cover for a few "unfortunate casualties" of my own.
"Is everyone ready?" I called out, wiping the cold disdain from my face and flashing a bright, reassuring smile for the crowd to see. "We’re heading into the Floor 1 Boss Room!"
As the crowd cheered and nodded in agreement, my thoughts briefly drifted back to the lone challenger who had chosen [Hell] difficulty.
Why on earth did he pick that? I shook my head internally.
Given how taxing even [Easy] difficulty had been for large groups, I couldn’t begin to imagine the nightmare waiting for a solo player in [Hell] mode.
He’s probably dead already... Though for some reason, I really want to meet him again.
[POV - Caliste]
A cold shiver ran down my spine as two glowing crimson eyes locked onto me from the dark. I recognized that oppressive aura instantly.
"To think I’d be fighting a Noble Demon Knight in the fucking tutorial..."
I could barely suppress a manic laugh. This was the real deal.
I threw my head back, looking directly toward the dark ceiling where the invisible spectators were lurking.
"I don’t know which one of you bastards jacked up the tutorial," I shouted, a wild smirk spreading across my face, "but I only have two things to say to you: Thank you, and fuck you!"
I thanked them for the absurd EXP drop I was about to claim, and I cursed them because my odds of dying here were still terrifyingly high, even with my jacked-up stats.
The very next moment, the Noble Demon Knight slammed its heavy broadsword into the stone floor, detonating a massive wave of dark energy across the chamber.
[Warning: You have been hit by an environmental Mana Pulse!]
[Due to your high Mana Power attribute, you have resisted 50% of its effects!]
[Movement Speed reduced by 20%.]
[Physical Strength reduced to 1.]
"Thank god for that fifty percent resistance..."
This fight was explicitly engineered to be a death trap. Those viewing bastards knew it, and they were probably sitting back with popcorn, waiting for me to get turned into paste.
[Spectators watching you: 2,140]
[Spectators watching you: 3,890]
System alerts flashed rapidly as news of a Floor 0 death match spread through the upper spheres. Viewers were flooding into my channel just to watch a Level 12 human struggle for his life.
"Just keep watching, you sons of bitches."
My Strength might have been gutted down to 1, but I knew this bastard’s psychological layout inside and out. I didn’t need high physical power to beat a Noble Demon; I just needed to break its AI.
The key to beating any Noble Demon was simple: enrage them until they stop using defensive maneuvers and start swinging recklessly. In my past life, players had discovered a single, fool-proof trigger to break their composure.
Insulting the Demon King.
"Hey! You oversized tin can!" I yelled, raising my voice over the ambient heat of the arena. "Where’s your precious King hiding? Did he crawl back into his hole, or is he still cowering like a dog?"
Most rookies assumed tower monsters couldn’t understand human speech, but higher-tier demons were fully fluent and ridiculously fragile when it came to their hierarchy.
The insult landed instantly.
The Knight froze, black fire spewing from its visor before it charged straight at me in a blind, fuming rage. It abandoned all defensive posture, swinging its massive broadsword in wild, telegraphed arcs that fractured the surrounding stone.
It was opening up massive blind spots, but a new problem immediately presented itself: with my Strength tanked to 1, my [Dull Stone Sword] couldn’t even dent its obsidian plate armor.
I had to hit the single exposed gap in its design, the narrow visor slit on its helmet.
As the Demon Knight overcommitted to a heavy overhead slam, I fluidly side-stepped the crushing blow, using its own momentum against it. Pivoting on my heel, I snapped my wrist and launched my [Dull Stone Sword] like a throwing knife straight at its faceplate.
Any normal player would have missed a target that small under pressure, but after spending twenty hellish years climbing this spire, I could make a precision throw like that with my eyes closed.
THWACK!
"ARGHHHHH!"
The stone blade drove deep into the helmet’s eye slit.
While the throw wasn’t enough to kill an Elite Veteran outright, it accomplished something far better: it impaled both of its glowing eyes at once.
Blinded and screaming in agony, the Knight began wildly flailing its broadsword in every direction.
I dropped flat to the ground, suppressing my breathing and cutting off all footstep noise. Trapping a blind boss in a feedback loop was child’s play.
Stealthing around its frantic swings, I closed the distance, grabbed the exposed hilt of my sword sticking out of its visor, and repeatedly plunged the blade deeper into its skull, twisting the stone edge with every strike until the heavy armor finally went limp and crashed to the floor.
[Spectators watching you: 10,450]
[Congratulations! You have defeated the Floor 0 Boss (Noble Demon Knight)!]
[Due to the scaled difficulty, your clear rewards have been exponentially increased!]
[You have received a direct reward from the entity who initiated the challenge contract.]
The boss corpse dissolved into dark mana particles, but the system alerts didn’t stop. They began cascading down my field of view in an endless, golden wave.
[You have received a new private message.]
[You have received a new private message.]
[You have received a new private message...]
The upper-sphere viewers who had just watched a Level 12 human destroy an Elite Veteran boss were swarming my inbox.
Messages I was all too familiar with.