Days traveling forwards. No further insane encounters, though he did meet a damn babi ngepit. This time around, knowing what it could do, Arthur made sure not to get near its explosive footsteps, instead using his spear to stab deep and then yank his spear out. Killing the creature with multiple attacks, utilizing his Cloud Step to head upwards or sideways, the nearby trees that shook and broke under the creature’s assault.
The entire fight had taken long minutes and by the end, he had fallen over, panting and exhausted. This kind of fight, where he had to constantly be on the move, where a single mistake could end him and yet the fight took forever was draining to the extreme.
Even so, once the battle was over, he pushed on, days blending into one another. For Athur, the process of climbing through the eight floor fell into the same routine. Push as hard and fast as he could through the day, cultivate at night and listen to the howls of the wolf packs towards the end.
Twice, he had to backtrack. The first was the worse, a swampy piece of land and muddy lake stretching for as far as he could see. Without a craft to utilize and cross the space, nor with the ability to water walk, he could not afford to risk swimming and be attacked by the creatures within.
There definitely were creatures within too, not the least of which were the ubiquitous leeches. If he never had to fight them again, he would be super grateful.
Going around the lake had taken him over two days, with numerous battles as the lake itself was a major water source. He even had his first encounter with a freshwater crocodile that were so uncommon these days in Malaysia, driven nearly to extinction except for a few remote places and the zoos. The came out of the lake, snapping at Arthur and forcing him to skip backwards before he embedded his spear in its head.
The second time, when he ran into a steep cliff face that curved away in such a way that there was no entrance to the other side. That one, luckily, had only cost him half a day – the sight of the old trail to the east of where he was had allowed him to bushwack over, cut across the trail and use its stone bridge and then, afterwards, he went back to traversing the land once more to try to regain lost time.
Each night he delayed, the howls grew louder. In the mountains, with the echoing rocks, it was impossible to tell how close they were. At times, it felt like they were over the next hill. At other times, many valleys away.
In the end, the only thing he knew for certain was that they were close.
Thankfully, so was he.
Cresting the latest hill, he blinked at what he spotted. A simple paifang, a free standing gate that was used by the Chinese to mark the borders of a residence or property line or the entrance to a location. In this case, if he had to guess, it was the marker for the end of this floor.
Which meant, as he stood there, catching his breath…
There! Movement near the gate itself. What he had believed to be a rock at first glance was shifting, rising up, up, up. Its newly risen head brushed the bottom of the gate. Twelve, fifteen feet tall at the least, a rocky and pale countenance the colour of bleached clay.
“An elemental? Come on, that’s not even to theme!” Arthur grumbled. A bit of a lie, that, because mud monsters and the like were part of the folk tales. After all, the local religions were all about spirits, though few gave them humanoid figures.
The rather more important thing was how difficult it would be to handle the fight. Elementals were well known to be lacking in vital spots. Killing them was a slog, requiring you to carve away pieces of their main body till the energy animating the body fled.
“Yin aura it is. Along with Imbued Strike, probably. Though maybe a bunch of Refined Exploding Energy Darts?” Arthur muttered to himself as he ambled down the way to the creature. He shifted direction a little, having spotted the trail that met up at the end, content at this time to meet with it.
No way to cross to the next level without going through the gates. Magical barriers made sure of that.
Arthur only barely managed to make it onto the road when another howl erupted. This time around, it sounded much too close and casting around, he realized that the creatures were visible. Eyes widening, he swore, the dozen or so wolves that were loping down the same trail he was on coming for him.
Reflexively, he turned and began to jog away. Only long years of training and his Yin mind kept him to a slower pace rather than an all out sprint. The damn elemental and paifang was too far away to sprint and he would likely still have to fight it at the end. Better to keep some strength.
At the same time, he started cudjelling his brain for details, trying to recall if he had to kill the final boss to pass through. Almost no one skipped them, of course, not willingly. If you wanted something good, an enchanted item, a scroll, something useful from the Tower, bosses were almost always guaranteed to be your best bet.
However, Arthur wasn't sure he had the time.
Feet pounding into the ground, kicking up loose dirt. Not a giant dust cloud, it was way too damp and humid for that. If anything, he had begun to sweat a little, the high humidity making it hard to dissipate heat. He would be sweating even more if he wasn't Yin based, another nice side effect.
Still, he grabbed his flask, took a long and slow sip before placing it aside. All of it done at a light jog without looking, so used to the motions by now, the warm water inside the flask only mildly refreshing. Disadvantage of a metal flask on a hot day, but it took battering around much better. There was a trace of metal in the spring water he'd taken, making it taste like iron and a little bitter. Limestone probably.
More importantly, his mind kept turning, searching for mentions. Maybe? One or two, where the 'heroes' had escaped a fight. The eigth and ninth, but Arthur was coming to a certainty that it definitely wasn't the tenth. Not that that was surprising. No escaping the Tower without dealing with the big final boss.
Twenty minutes, he'd get to the elemental in twenty minutes.
A glance backwards, and he figured he had maybe five before the lead members of the pack reached him after that.
Five minutes was a lot of time in battle. It would be tight, but he could do it. Would do it. He still needed to get everything he could out of his Tower, and a beating heart that he had no idea how to utillize did not count.
Thinking fast, Arthur formulated his plan as he kept a close eye on the massive elemental. Not that it gave him much clues on its habits or movement patterns, standing mostly still in front of the paifang.
About a hundred feet away, a short sprint, any of his plans flew out of his head as the damn creature started bulging. Intuition had Arthur ready when it released the earth spike, forcing him to dodge.
"Celaka!" he swore.
Any chance of staying out of range and just lobbing explosive darts flew out the window and he sped up, eyeing the ever growing number of bulges. In close and hard was the way to go, it seemed.