Arthur felt the world lurch, his body pulled apart and reformed, or just transported so fast it felt like that. He was pretty sure he was being torn apart, transformed, and reformed on the other end. Like those Star Trek transporters. Which, of course, came with all kinds of morality questions of whether they really were people, and if they could do this pulling apart, was it possible to create clones? All kinds of crazy questions.
Except for the fact that the Tower only ever created a single individual. And the way they could manage power, the memories and the way they could control things, the idea of cultivation and the notices... it spoke of souls. Others had attempted, using Tower abilities, to replicate the division process. In other words, cloning in the outside world. The closest to success merely created undifferentiated blobs of cells, the kind that gave nightmares because they just . . . sat there. Stem cells, but not really, that had no face or shape. Some believed that it was clear evidence that a soul existed, was needed to create the right form.
Others said that the cloners had just done it wrong, that they hadn't figured out how to transport memory properly.
Arguments for philosophers and scientists and university kids in their ivory towers. As for Arthur, he was here; he had his spear, and he was looking out at the sixth floor.
The good news on the sixth floor? The rest of his team were coming into being next to him, forming up. They weren't being split into separate groups since they had all entered the same portal.
Better news? There were safe spots, Tower buildings, scattered throughout this floor. There wasn't a climber village, a central location where others congregated, though some had built small buildings next to the Tower-administrated ones. Places they could stop, recuperate, and even buy new gear.
All of which was great, except for the fact that the bad news was . . . this floor. Someone had decided to make the entire layout a vertical one, making the idea of climbing a Tower a reality. You started at the bottom, jumped, climbed, leapt or walked, and thus ascended a circular column. The fact that it was over two hundred levels upwards, give or take a score or two, was one thing.
The other was the constant rain of death.
"Left!" Arthur called out and the group shuffled away, watching as a large stone, a bouncing ball of doom, careened into the earth where they had been and ploughed into it.
Death from above by bouncing balls that sometimes went upwards or sideways was the least of the dangers of the sixth floor. But still a massive one. Arthur wiped at his face where mud had splattered. He sighed, looked upward, and judged for further bouncing balls, then called out.
"We need overwatch." A moment's hesitation, then he added, "Rick?"
"On it." The shooter, the only member other than Casey who utilised ranged weapons well, tilted his head up, checking for incoming danger.
"Everyone good? Ready to move? Remember the problems of this floor?" Arthur asked.
"One . . . second." Leia, the last to exit, was holding a hand to her head, trying to deal with the transition.
"Maybe we can talk things through? Know what's coming again?" Casey said, her bow held down by her side.
"Usual rule of three." Arthur complied immediately, looking around as he searched. "For monsters, that is. Traps too. Three kinds: balls, stakes, and swinging death traps. The monsters are weird: Swinging, eating plant monster with big fanged petals and grasping vines. An exploding, camouflaged, creeping piece of grass of some form. And finally, the only really mobile one. A moving mushroom."
"Weirdest part," Rick said, still looking up. "There's a platform floor of one form or another in all the Beginner towers. Many of them rather reminiscent of this one. And there's a game like this in the real world."
"Eh, if you can call a game. So boring, lah. Sifu used to make us watch it, and it was always bad," Eric said.
"It's a classic," Rick snapped.
"Classic of its kind, yes," Mel piped up. "The kind that’s trash and boring and only considered good because it's old."
"Hey!" Rick said, looking hurt. He couldn't look away from staring above, watching for the bouncing balls. Thankfully, they weren't that common, only two or three in sight at any one time. Sometimes, they got stuck, all the energy they used to bounce sucked up and jammed away. It was part of the reason why things got worse as you went higher, because the number of death balls increased.
"At least it isn't Cobra," Lam said.
The silence that greeted that random pronouncement had the man look around. "What? You all never heard of it?"
"I . . . sort of?" Rick was frowning. "I have some memory . . ."
"Wiki mention. I saw a few pictures," Arthur offered. "It's supposedly a very hard game. Not really relevant though. They say it's only tangentially related to the platform floors."
"It's a good game. Hard. Very hard to beat," Lam said. "Not like modern games. They all hold your hand."
"Right?" Rick said, glad to have someone agreeing with him. "I mean, not the Rings saga, though."
"Easy," Lam scoffed. Casey was looking at her bodyguard in new light.
"Boring . . ." Eric said.
"Enough," Leia interrupted, straightening. "I'd rather climb and maybe die than listen to a bunch of nerds whine about their video games." She waved a hand around. "As though all this isn't hard enough.”
“Hey!” Eric said, hurt. “I wasn’t—"
Arthur clapped his hands together, looked up, judged the falling ball, and pointed down a short distance. "We start there. Use simple vines to climb. Casey, take out the gripper with your bow, will you?"
She frowned, barely seeing the plant and its petals in question at this angle. Still, she nodded, heading left while the rest of the team approached the overhang. An arrow, drawn and loosed and curving through space, struck the creature; half the hanging vines were now jerking and spasming. The group slowed down a little, staring at the moving vines, some of which they might have unwittingly grabbed to pull themselves up, and a few gulped.
Another arrow, drawn and loosed, put a stop to the spasming. The group moved forward, taking hold of non-monster vines and began climbing, Rick and Casey watching for further trouble. Yao Jing and Eric were the first up, both of them reaching the top at the same time as they tried to outrace one another. Arthur just rolled his eyes at the competitiveness but figured it didn't hurt.
Someone had to be on top.
As he climbed, he couldn't help but reiterate his warnings, since they had started him on this. "Remember, we want to do this floor fast. It's one of the floors where we can save on time, which means trying to tackle it all in one big push. We'll keep heading up, as far and as fast as possible, but that doesn't mean we take risks.
"Slow and steady, just like the hare."
"Turtle," Casey corrected.
"What?" Arthur said, puzzled as he got onto the first level. He formed a Refined Energy Dart in his mind, looking upwards as he gestured for Uswah to take overwatch. On the ground, they’d had a lot of space to run. Now, on the small column of rock and earth that made this platform, if a ball came careening down, they needed to start moving. Which was, of course, why he was also trying to chart a path upwards that gave them the most options.
"It's a turtle, not a hare, that was slow but won the race."
"Eh, boss. What’s all this about hair?" Yao Jing said, ruffling his own.
"Hare. H. A. R. E." Lam, by the side, explained. "Not hair."
"Oh . . ."
"You sure it was the hare not the turtle?"
"Why would a hare be slow?"
Arthur shrugged. Not as though he'd ever seen a real one.
"Whatever. That way." He pointed to the right and a platform that was a short hop upwards. "There and then up via the vines. Kill the mushrooms lingering there." He flicked his gaze over the group; Casey and Rick were finally up. "Uswah, Lam, and Jan. Go."
They went. While he didn't want them too spread out, the platform they were on was small enough that it was getting crowded as it stood. Best to get moving, before they all got squashed.
After all, they still had one last boss to handle above.