Return of the Tower Conqueror

Graveyard of Swords (VI)

Cain sat on top of a tilted sword, a cigarette in his hands, observing the four who had scattered around the ravine. He was silent, a conflicting look in his eyes, sighing ever so often and pondering whether he was pushing them too far. It's been nearly four hours already since he went off at them, and the four hadn't stopped to even take a break since then.

Jamal and Emma were sparring slightly deeper in the ravine, the former trying to break through Emma's defenses with minimal movement while she tried to defend and evade without attacking back. Diya observed the two and occasionally healed and buffed them, trying to time it perfectly, while Senna stood isolated near the ravine's entrance, trying to command multiple weapons individually to do different things.

"Khehekhe~~" a familiar, grating voice once again soured Cain's already bad mood as Te'gha jumped out of the inventory and landed on Cain's lap. "Your friends, weak! Time Thief! Keheheeke~~"

"Your ass is weak too," Cain scoffed. "So, the hell are you calling them out for?"

"What?!" the cat exclaimed angrily. "Te'gha not weak!! Very strong, Time Thief! Take it back!! Grraarr!" as Te'gha jumped up and tried to scratch Cain's face, the latter casually pulled it by the back of its neck and held it in front of him while it flayed around with its paws.

"Hey," Cain grinned suddenly as he seemed to realize something. "I think I have a way to see whether you're as strong as you claim to be.

"H-huh?" the cat stopped flaying its paws abruptly, its expression turning eerily human-like as it seemed to sense bad premonition from Cain's words.

"Prove to me just how strong you are, then..."

Cain had Te'gha drag everyone into their individual illusions -- with Emma being stuck defending a single person from a group, Jamal fighting a foe that can only be defeated through precise and nimble strikes, Diya having to heal a massive army clashing against another army, and Senna fighting an army all on her own by using her weapons.

"Don't overexert yourself," Cain said with a faint smile, patting Te'gha's head, slowly beginning to completely understand the cat's strange personality. "If you can't hold them in any longer, it's fine to pull 'em out. Alright?"

"..." the cat merely harrumphed and looked away, causing Cain to chuckle lightly as he straightened his back and sat cross-legged on top of the sword, taking a deep breath.

It would do him little good if he just lazed around while the rest trained, and as there was not much he could do otherwise, he decided to train the elemental augmentation.

He slowly began to charge one element after another, starting with Creation as it was the easiest 'opener'. By the time he got to the fifth element, he had begun struggling, feeling his Mana 'clog up' and begin turning sluggish. On the sixth, the movement of his Mana practically came to a screeching halt as he was forced to dissipate the charged elements since he didn't want to unleash the attack.

Taking a deep breath, he focused and replayed everything in his mind -- everything went smoothly until the quadra-attunement where he felt the first signs of slowing down. By the fifth, the movement of his Mana declined considerably and his control over it wavered, and by the sixth, it may as well not even have been his own. The problem begins with the fourth... there was no point in trying to 'fix' the hexa-augmentation if that was just the collapse point. Rather, he first had to find out a root cause.

The first three augmentations follow a simple pattern, he considered inwardly, tapping his index finger against his knee. And even the opposites can be forcibly combined. With the fourth, forcing things becomes much more difficult... if they are naturally-flowing elements, I feel almost no clog... but with the contrasting ones, the problem is already quite difficult.

In truth, he'd already mulled over this hundreds, if not thousands of times before. However, he was never able to cross this bridge, and his hexa-attunement, although considered somewhat impressive even twenty-five years into the future, was extremely forced and unnatural. If he even tried to do it twice in a row, his Mana would go berserk and would cause countless internal injuries in the process of rampaging through his body.

What exactly changes with the fourth? He continued to mull, uncertain. It wasn't even considered one of the 'big jumps', like the third, fifth, and seventh attunements were. Am I making a mistake during the initial charging?

Nobody quite knew where exactly the Mana was stored in the body -- most theories suggested that there was a pocket-realm of sorts somewhere inside the bodies from which Mana is drained, but nobody was ever able to confirm it. What was known, however, was that Mana flowed through everything -- veins, nerves, bones, muscles, and even skin. The means of drawing it out were largely dependent on the type of skill and personal preference.

Cain mostly drew it out through his veins and bones as he found it was the fastest for him, especially considering he used external movements to discharge attacks. It helped him get into the rhythm and slowly increase the speed at which he charged the elements over the course of the battle, though it did result in some wasted Mana unlike if he'd used nerves in combination with skin. Means of charging is irrelevant... Inferno and Dragon had completely different means, but they were both around the same skill level toward the end...

Sighing, he took out another cigarette and lit it up, losing himself in the thoughts and memories, mulling over the countless battles he fought before. Is it really just up to the talent? He didn't want to believe it -- because, if he did, he may as well just turn into a trainer for the four in front of him as it would mean he would never get much better than he was today. Sure, he may obtain better items, higher mastery in his skills, new titles, and better stats, but those were just numerical crunches -- they had a ceiling.

There was a common saying in the previous timeline -- Numbers can carry you as far into the Tower as elementary physics can into the secrets of the universe. It was exaggerated, obviously, as higher numbers were definitely necessary as the climb continued, but nobody has ever cleared a floor boss off of the numbers alone... as it was impossible. There would never be an item on the floor that would entirely negate that floor's boss, so each climb further up was achieved through one of two ways: either the next-level skill... or just throwing countless bodies at the boss and hoping it dies before the group runs out of the bodies.

It's not the talent, he shook his head. It speeds things up, makes 'em easier, gives a boost to those who have it... but it doesn't determine the ceiling. If talent truly was the limiter, I would have never made it this far, to begin with.

Though he may have felt envy countless times in his life toward those whose beginner stats equaled his fifty levels down the line, he never felt discouraged or defeated by it all. In part, it was because he never dreamed of becoming the strongest, or even just 'one of the strongest' -- he was content with simply continuing to grow stronger and climbing, at whatever pace it happened. In some ways, he admired those who were the first to conquer the floor and move on, as they opened up a path for people like him to do the same, but with far fewer risks.

"Pull 'em out," dragging himself out of his thoughts and noticing a pained expression on Te'gha's face, Cain called out to a cat with a sigh.

"Humph! W-why? Te'ghe not tired!"

"Yes, yes, you're not, but they are," Cain said with a shrug. "They might pass out at this rate.

"Hggheeeka, weak humans!" Te'ghe crackled its patented laugh, grating at Cain's soul, as it pulled out Emma, Jamal, Diya, and Senna from their illusions. Though Cain was merely making up an excuse for Te, the four truly did appear exhausted.

"You changed the time flow?" Cain asked with slight curiosity.

"Hegghee~~ admire me, Time Thief? Keke~~"

"Not bad," Cain chuckled, petting the cat who seemed to enjoy it. "What's the ratio?"

"To a four!"

"..." What the fuck?! That's the rate of the Dimensional Quaker! "Your personality aside, you really are a golden treasure, Te..."

"Kekeke~~ of course, Te'ghe grea--what Time Thief mean 'personality aside'?! Te'ghe has best personality! Best! Grrargg!"

"Yes, yes, yes..." Cain spoke dismissively as he jumped on his feet and picked up Te, putting it on his shoulder. "Yo, hard workers," he hollered at the four as he walked in front of them. "You are allowed to rest, you know? Nobody's holding a gun at your head and forcing you to work without breaks..:"

"Oh, geez, thank you for being so kind after reaming us in our behinds..." Jamal replied through short breaths.

"How was it?" Cain asked, ignoring the jab.

"I was terrible," Emma gritted her teeth. "That poor thing died every time!"

"I... I let so many die, too..." Diya mumbled in frustration. "It's hard..."

"I'm starting to think your advice is literally impossible," Senna growled. "My head starts to explode when barely controlling the two individually, let alone more than that!!"

"And I haven't missed a single hole that much since the first time I had--let's not finish that sentence..."

"..." while everyone else looked at Jamal strangely, Cain merely chuckled and shook his head. Yup, he confirmed with a self-mocking smile. I'm an idiot. Oh well...

"Yes, because LeBron James woke up one morning at the age of four and was suddenly able to do a three-sixty windmill off of the bounce, just like Mike Trout one day woke up and was able to swing a bat with so much force he could punt a goddamn ball hundreds of yards into the air, and just like--"

"We get it, we get it! Just stop with your dated sports references!" Jamal interrupted, slowly standing up to his feet. "Get us back in there! We can do this!"

"..." Cain felt Te flinch on his shoulder, though the poor cat continued to put up a brave front. Though Cain considered teasing it for a moment, he decided against it. "Go and sleep some. You all look like Emma's mom without makeup."

"..." expecting Emma's rebuttal, everyone grinned. Yet, even after a few moments passed and the rebuttal never arrived, they all glanced at her to find her preparing a sleeping bag. "What?" she looked at them. "I give him six free yearly passes to take whatever shot he wants at my mom, and, in return, I get to bitch about his however much I want. It's a good deal, isn't it?"

"..." as the thought that Cain and Emma were not a pairing they would ever understand began to solidify in the other three's heads, everyone began taking out their sleeping bags as well and laying them down, finally feeling the tiredness overcome them, and desire to sleep overwhelm them. Even Cain decided to join them, as sleep was by far the best way to restore anything and everything naturally, be it Mana, Stamina, or Health. As means of protection, they'd long since installed several dozen Mana Traps all around the entrance that effectively acted as sentries and, in some ways, were even better than if one of them stayed awake.