Flain was walking when suddenly he had a mont of hesitation. Three tiles in front of him – one lit up high, the second a bit lower, the third remained silent. He had three seconds. In his mind, he managed to visualize three possible combinations – and chose the most logical one.
He ran to the left tile, touched it, then passed through the center to the next one. His fingers barely touched it – and then... nothing. Absolute silence. The room froze. For a fraction of a second.
But then the light exploded again – this ti in the air.
One tile was floating half a ter above, about half a ter larger than the others. Another one started to activate – two, three – each in a different place, each at a height. Flain jumped without hesitation. His bones didn’t crack, but he landed hard. The tile beneath him reacted too late. He didn’t falter. Imdiately forward again.
’Dynamic layers. Multidinsional randomness. And they want to get tired, heh, but physically that won’t work since I’m a skeleton. At most ntally, but I’m sure of my will.’ Flain thought with a smirk.
Each of his next movents was more precise. He stopped thinking in numbers, began to feel the rhythm. He didn’t stop analyzing, but rationality turned into reflexes. He started moving like a machine, but inside he felt a strange tension. Not from frustration, not from fear. Sothing else.
’I’m tired. I don’t understand why this is exhausting so much. Maybe the influence of this floor.’
Flash. Another false touch. Pain flooded his head, which had to be an illusion because the undead don’t feel pain. His vision began to spin, he fell to his knees. But he didn’t hesitate. He stood up without expression. Only his eyes darkened.
In the following seconds, the tiles lit up like crazy – blue, white, so even glittering. Flain felt as if blood clogged his bones, even though none flowed. Yet his mind was working at full speed. In contrast to his very nature, he was experiencing extre exhaustion, as if the calm cold emptiness of a skeleton wasn’t enough to maintain discipline.
Flain suddenly stopped and smirked. "Heh tower, you want to exhaust ntally? Then go ahead and try." He murmured.
Flain walked on with a cold mind. He saw fake reflectors flickering in the corners of the room – light zones that vibrated subtly to confuse him. He recognized the rhythm: bad tiles had a frequency 0.02 seconds faster than the good ones. It was an extrely small deviation and it took him an eternity to notice it, but it was enough to ignore them.
With depth in perception, he made a move that no normal person would ever dare: he landed on the right tile precisely at the mont the frequency peaked, and without hesitation moved to the next. Even the absent strike of the bad tiles didn’t harm him, he had calculated when the next would trigger.
Then he noticed sothing unusual, a tile in the air. Flain didn’t think it was a reflex challenge, but sothing related to gravity. The frequencies of that tile were also quite different.
He jumped sharply, stretched out his armor-clad arm, and caught it at the edge. For a mont, his body swung above the tiles. Flain believed that this tile might have so kind of gravity obstacle, but there was a chance it didn’t, and he could use it very well, which would save him a lot of effort.
Maybe so of you are wondering why Flain simply doesn’t jump to the end or fly over. The answer is that flying simply isn’t possible. From the very first mont he stepped onto the 5th floor, a great burden was placed on him that prevented him from being in the air. In any case, Flain luckily was able to walk and run without any problems.
He landed silently on the creaking good tile, so his risk paid off, and the tile levitating in the air didn’t trigger anything.
Nothing could shake Flain anymore; he was using 100% of his focus. Even the tiles sensed it; they stopped blinking so rapidly. For a mont he was silent, focused only on each breath, even though he wasn’t breathing. The 5th floor was probably the most complex system he had seen in this world so far.
Of course, the airship might have been more complex, but he hadn’t examined it in as much detail.
Flain finally reached the end of the 5th floor. And then, almost imperceptibly, all zones went dark. The room quieted, the lights died out, the darkness that had been blocking the 6th floor disappeared.
This was probably even harder than the 4th floor, even though he hadn’t failed on this one, it was still extrely difficult. Flain would try very hard not to fail on the 6th floor and not have to repeat the 5th again. Even though he could now distinguish bad tiles from good ones, it would still be quite hard.
Flain also wondered how the hell he was supposed to handle the 10th floor if it had both the 4th and 5th floors at once, and who knows how hard the other 4 floors would be. Flain doubted he would have to complete all the obstacles at the sa ti, otherwise it would be nearly impossible.
Flain cleared his mind and continued to the 6th floor. He stepped into a large foggy room. Flain searched it for a while, but there was nothing in it except fog. In any case, he was already prepared that sothing might attack him from the fog.
"Move it you mutt, or I’ll beat you for not being able to stand." Suddenly, a voice echoed from the fog. It was anonymous, extrely strange, almost robotic-sounding, with no emotion coming from it.
Flain thought for a mont and didn’t know what the tower wanted from him. When he thought about that sentence, it seed sowhat familiar, but he couldn’t quite rember. Maybe another ntal ga.
In front of Flain, three nas began to form out of the fog: Itai, Fagiro, Geir.
When Flain saw those nas, he rembered why that sentence seed so familiar. He also figured out what the tower probably wanted from him. Flain smirked when he rembered the person who had said that sentence...
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