The Tower of Emnu

Aaron went back to his new home and packed his things. He got all of the supplies for a short stint on the fifth floor right there, so he did not have to resupply in the Town. Hopefully by the time he would be back, in a week or so, his Cauldron would be done. Alchemy called for him. The effects of the pills were just too good. He was still not hungry, which was basically a miracle to him. If he could prepare and sustain a decent amount of pills at all time, he would be much more versatile and capable. Even if the pills would be at reduced potency when he made them.

So for this foray into the Tower Aaron brought with him a bunch of containers for various alchemical ingredients. He also stored the egg glands he had gathered in the cold room to make space in his bag of holding. When he had packed everything he thought he would need, he climbed up to the second floor. There he hunted scorpions for a few hours and was surprised how easy it was. Aaron had grown used to fighting scorpions, dodging them was like second nature and there was very little variation in how they attacked. But he was surprised by how strong he was. A single punch even without intent shattered any resistance the scorpions could muster. It was probably because of his breakthrough to the seventh realm, if Aaron had to guess.

Even if he did not feel any different now that he was in the seventh realm. It was a cumulative effect, everything was slightly better. His senses, his strength, his speed, his agility. There was nothing that had not been improved at least a bit. The detox pill also had apparently made him prettier. Not that Aaron cared about things like that. He was more pleasantly surprised by how smoothly his Qi flowed in his body and how his every attack, reinforced with intent or not, simply obliterated any critters on the second floor.

But he was careful not to damage the back of their corpses and leave the stingers intact. He got his enchanted dagger out and started to dissect the stinger and its tail until he found the poison sac. Then he carefully drained the poison in it into a small glass jar. Now he would only have to do this twenty more times or so. Which turned out to be not that much work when you only needed one move to destroy a scorpion's brain.

The butchery and the poison harvesting was the only time consuming part of hunting for ingredients so far. Aaron went towards the center of the desert, because he remembered someone saying the poison of the boss was valuable. Sadly the boss was dead at that time, so he waited for the boss to respawn. In the meantime he killed the normal scorpions to fill up three jars of the poison. Then when the boss was back, Aaron dispatched it with one intent reinforced hammer blow to the brain.

It was ridiculously easy. Most monsters on the fourth floor were tougher than this boss. It had a lot of obvious weaknesses, but considering this would be the first boss Aspirants would face while climbing it made sense. The poison sac of the boss scorpion was quite large and the poison a slightly different color. While the normal scorpion poison had a slight green tinge, this one was almost milky white. But Aaron did not doubt its potency. He stored the poison securely in a container and even labeled it, so that he would not get confused in the future. That done Aaron grabbed the scorpion mark to get rid of the nasty dehydration he was feeling and jumped towards the jungle.

Finding poisonous snakes was not a problem on the other half of the floor, but rainbow boas were comparatively rare. Aaron spent most of his time running around the jungle until he spotted one of the rainbow colored snakes. The problem was that they smelled and moved exactly like all the other poisonous snakes in the jungle. Which meant that he had to see the snake to check. Which in turn meant this was utterly tedious and the cold from the curse did not make this any easier. With disgust Aaron got himself the snake mark before doing anything else. The snake boss was luckily already defeated so it was just a small detour while he scoured the jungle high and low.

The only way to identify rainbow boas was by their beautiful rainbow colored scales sadly, but it was not like Aaron was in a hurry. When he found a snake he got fairly little poison out their dead body, which meant this whole ordeal turned into a scavenger hunt in the jungle. It took him almost 6 hours until he had filled enough containers with their poison. And it would have taken even longer than that if he had not figured out that he could make the snake bite the jar so that its poisonous fangs deposited the poison directly into the jar. It was actually more efficient than killing them. The snakes deposited just a ton of venom with each bite and drained their stores in three bites. Squeezing out the venom from their venom sac took five times as long comparatively. It also meant he could let the snake live for another time.

Aaron half considered making a small rainbow boa habitat somewhere, but he discarded that idea quickly. Having a small area to farm poison was far more effort and time than just hunting in the jungle for the rainbow colored snakes. It could not be helped, some things just took time. But he was a bit on a timer on the second floor to open the door to the third floor. Luckily the marks he had gotten were still good and so Aaron managed to get up to the third floor, now with enough poison for his alchemy trials.

Oceanview welcomed him with food and plenty of the magical seaweed he wanted. Aaron bought 20 giant bushels of seaweed for a pittance. There was a giant seaweed farm on the outskirts of Oceanview that grew the kelp like seaweed and it was so big and efficient the prices were laughable. Aaron ate a small meal, a delectable fried fish in spicy marinade, just because he liked the smell of the dish, not because he was hungry. It was a very different experience. The taste was still incredible with his increased senses, but his hunger had added a lot to his experience. Which meant he would not enjoy food properly until the hunger pill had dissipated. But that was a good trade in Aaron's mind.

After his very brief stay in Oceanview Aaron hurried up the mealstrom. With more experience crossing the floor this way and a higher cultivation rank it was easy and almost leisurely. Also it was good training for Wind Steps and that was worth a lot to Aaron. Aaron tried his best to keep his steps even as he jumped around the maelstrom ever upwards. The training he got form that was less from reacting to the environment and more in focusing on precision in his every jump. But even with this he reached the top of the maelstrom in half an hour.

The fourth floor and its darkness welcomed him after a short climb up a staircase and Aaron went on the rather lengthy boss killing spree as he hurried through the shortest route to the fifth floor he knew. It still took him hours to do, but with intent fueling his completed triplet it was like night and day in difficulty. No monster withstood much damage and Aaron even managed to stay relatively clean. He only bathed in one of the lightpools at the end to get his sweat out of his clothes. During his rush through the floor Aaron went out of his way to fight the moths and gather their dust. In the end he had a big bag full of the stuff, which should hopefully be enough for his immediate alchemical needs. With this he only had two ingredients left which were both on higher floors.

If Aaron's memory served him right they were Icehearts from the 7th floor and harpy eggs from the 8th. Aaron was very curious about the higher floors and their opportunities, but for now he wanted to consolidate his gains. Rushing up the tower was a mistake as every single one of the Cultivators had told him plenty of times. So for now he planned to hunt wildcats and one or two behemoths a day. It was easier to fly under the radar that way and even though it would have been almost impossible for any other group to find him. It was not impossible.

Aaron set up his tent and camp in the center of the floor this time. There were other climbers there, if only a few and so Aaron looked for a rather desolate area. In the end he found a giant monolithic rock that had a ledge three quarters up its height. The ledge was rather spacious but so high up nobody bothered with it as a camping place. It was a really nice find and Aaron pitched his tent up there. It would be unassailable by anything but archers or mages who could shoot around corners. Maybe someone attacking him could get a rope up here, but that would be very foolish if they were fighting him at the same time. He did not have water access here, but he only had to jump a bit to get to one of the creeks so it was fine in his book. Once he had set down his supplies he went hunting.

Throughout the day Aaron focused on incorporating intent into his every move. It had to be an ingrained response, something like muscle memory if it was to be useful in the future. Aaron was sure he did not have the mental capacity to focus on a fight and manage his intent minutely. It had to come naturally from a lot of repetition or it would be unusable. Exceptions to that was the Qi projection stuff, that needed minute focus and Intent as it was also the most costly thing Qi wise.

So while fighting the Wildcats Aaron focused on his intent in every action. This drew the fights out into longer battles because the giant cats were built tough and fast. He was still doing damage, but he was not trying to hit their weak spots, debilitate them or anything like that. He was here to learn and react to whatever the wildcats threw his way while training. But in the end Aaron was simply too strong.

Even without using any Qi projection his offensive capabilities had increased tenfold. Every punch could break bones, even from the wildcats and his defense was just as solid. Aaron tested out the limits of his martial arts. He let the wildcats charge him and then halted them with a single palm. His palm's Qi buffering the kinetic force and letting it dissipate. But even though this was a physics defying feat, doing something like that did cost Qi. Was it worth it to try? Absolutely. But it was better to use their force against them.

Typically Aaron would take one aspect he wanted to train and did that until the wildcats either tried to flee or were too injured to be useful for him. First he focused on compact strikes with a lot of impact because of the intent behind them and that was a very quick fight as he broke both of the male wildcats skulls within 10 moves. He tried not to target their heads from then on and learned more that way.

Next he trained defense, which meant guiding strength away from him. Aaron let one wildcat come for him and then pushed it off path with his palm. This worked really well and he could even make the two giant cats collide if he used it right. Everything he could do could be overcharged with enough Qi. But it was never worth it against opponents he could beat rather easily otherwise.

Aaron kept out of the way of other climbers by going deep into the floor and fighting there. Which meant he was basically undisturbed. At the end of the day Aaron had gathered 20 wildcat cores and so he hurried over to the left side of the floor and got himself two behemoths as well. Using Qi projection was necessary for that, but the power of their cores was worth the cost.

Aaron leapt across the hyena territory, stepping on grass as he flew through the air, he passed the river, ignoring any enraged creatures trying to kill him on the way. He spotted a behemoth quickly, continued his path and jumped on top of it. He focused while he was still basically undetected and the warning cries of lizards were only just beginning and then he killed the behemoth with one concentrated Qi strike to the back of its head. He cut out the core and the egg gland next. Although he did have to fight some of the lizards for the latter. Which was no problem. Just more training.

A lizard swarm was basically defense training. His palm strikes and fast positioning while being surrounded by lots of teeth was more than enough to crush them. The bigger lizards charging at him needed a concentrated punch to the face to kill usually, pulverizing their skulls, but that did not need any Qi, so it was fine in Aaron's book.

He took down another behemoth after he had finished with the first one and called it a night as the darkness began to creep in. He returned to the central area and took a bath in one of the creeks, before returning to his camp up in the rock. There he settled down and started to cultivate.

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His first agenda was to get rid of the spirit still sitting on his chest like a fat leech. It had bothered him the whole day more than he could express in words. Intent was difficult to form when in the back of your head you felt something cling to your spirit in a way that was impossible to ignore. He had taken it as increased difficulty for his training, but he had enough. When Aaron found the place of quiet and tranquility in his mind he cultivated for a bit, just drawing in the Qi in his body into his dantian, getting the fiend-god art started as it cycled and made the Qi his. Only when he was absolutely calm did he start with the spirit. It was massive, fat and cumbersome and it struggled as Aaron pulled it slowly but steadily down into his dantian.

The struggling was ignored for now, but it did disturb him a bit. The higher the level the spirit was the more like an animal and not an unconscious thing it seemed. Which meant true consciousness was not far off. But Aaron was fine snuffing out spirits for his own gain. It was in his mind no different than killing to eat. So far these spirits were only animals, but eventually they would not be. Killing had been part of Aaron's life for as long as he could remember. His father had made a living killing as a soldier and then Aaron had too as a hitman. Now Aaron was a Cultivator and yet killing was always close at hand. People who hated him for no reason other than his nature, people following orders. In the end it did not matter. Taking a life came natural to him and the Spirits would be just the same.

The fat spirit finally stopped struggling as it was submerged in Aaron's Qi. Then the absorption began. Slowly he turned the spirit into pure Qi and funneled it through his cycling pattern back into his dantian. It took a long time and required constant adjustments. It was a bit like a game kids would play. Diverting a small river into channels you made out of rocks or mud. The water would find every weakness and you had to repair it. Until the water flowed exactly where you wanted it to.

When the spirit was finally absorbed it had granted almost 10% of his dantian, so practically tripled his Qi that was available to him. It was awesome. But it had taken a lot of time and mental stress. The beastcores on the other hand were a pleasure to work with. Aaron continued with the cores and absorbed one after another. There was no malicious struggling, just pure absorption and a slow steady trickle of Qi into his dantian. It felt like relaxing in a bath compared to the stressful Spirit absorption.

Aaron opened his eyes to the first rays of the morning and stretched lazily. He had burned through all of the 22 cores he had hunted for the previous day and the progress was sizable. He had gotten around 10% from the spirit and each of the wildcat cores gave around half a percent, while the behemoth core gave around 3%. This was incredibly less than he had gotten before, but it was still sizable. In the End Aaron ended up with his dantian almost 30% full.

This meant if he just continued on like this it would only take days to fill up his dantian entirely. Which was quite incredible considering how much Qi it needed to be full. But maybe his estimates were off as well. Hunting and killing beasts on the fifth floor was easy with his intent fueled triplet. Once again the wisdom of his teachers had turned out to be true. Learning the first triplet would allow him to walk up to Ambition without any trouble. But Aaron had no plan on doing that. He would struggle down here, fighting and hunting for beastcores until he was in the foundation realm. Which meant if he stuck to his plan that he would need to learn and actually succeed in crafting an Amalgamation pill.

Aaron pulled the scroll out of his bag of holding and read through the recipe of the Amalgamation pill. It required beastcores as its primary resource, 100 of them for one pill which was an excessive amount. Besides that it required Ice hearts, crystal dust and rainbow boa venom. It was a rather complicated recipe. First he would have to refine each of the ingredients and create the right essences, a water and a wood essence which combined would increase the potency of the pill. The issue was that he would have to melt down the beastcores into something the scroll called Qi-base. That required complementary essences depending on the core. Which meant he would have to experiment to find out each cores elemental alignment before processing them.

That also meant if he could get only one source of cores it would be the most beneficial. Which practically meant wildcat cores. The Hyena alphas were too few to make up that number reliably and he did not want to have the whole floor of hyenas chasing him either. Gathering 100 wildcats was entirely doable though, although it would take a lot of time and effort. Also he would probably need at least three tries to get it right so if he was conservative 300 wildcat cores. Which meant if he hunted around 20 a day at least 2 weeks of hunting non stop without cultivation with any cores. The solution to this was simple, hunt 40 a day. But at that point he would worry about making a dent in the wildcat population. Sure there were probably thousands out there, but still.

Aaron could try to make a quota and see how close he got each day. It would also give him a nice goal to work towards.

That decided he got down from his camp and went through his stretches and the katas, working slowly, meticulously and often calling upon the memory cores to ensure he was doing it right. When that was done he went hunting.

That was how Aaron spent a whole week, in the morning he would go through his martial arts, then he would go hunting aiming for 40 beastcores a day. Then he would do one session of training again, trying to incorporate everything he had learned and worked on the entire day. After that he started to cultivate with half the cores he had gathered. His rapid progress form the first day did not repeat itself, as Aaron used less cores to cultivate, but he made steady progress. On average he used around 15 cores a day and he always snuck a few hyena and behemoth cores in there too.

He usually did not go back to his camp straight from the right side, but went all the way to the left before entering the foot hills again. Simply because he hunted behemoths last. It worked out well as nobody really bothered him. Only after three days did Aaron start to get hungry again, marking the end of the Hunger pill. It was a pain to cook and hunt enough game to sustain himself after that, but there was plenty meat to hunt and Aaron slowly but surely ate himself through the foot chain as he trained and hunted for cores.

The first night he had entirely absorbed the hunger pill was almost sleepless. Even though he had eaten half an antelope that night he still laid with his eyes closed in his sleeping bag, feeling the gnawing of hunger in his guts once more. It took him many hours to fall asleep and while he did wake up feeling better, it was still a silent agony that never went away. It was easier to live always with constant hunger than having experienced how it felt without it. He got used to feeling hungry again slowly and it was not all bad. The food tasted better and there was a sharpness to his movements that he had lacked while feeling full.

Aaron was not afraid to try roasted wildcat ribs or hyena spitroasted over a fire. Most of the time he realized that the meat was too gamy to be enjoyed without a proper sauce that would compliment the meat. So Aaron made plenty of stews and sauces while he tried everything out. Cooking was kind of a relaxing thing he could do without focusing too much, just letting his hands do the work while he zoned out. His senses guided him to not let anything burn and usually he made rustic dishes that did not mind 20 minutes more over the fire. Still the tastiest predator on the floor were the lizards. They really did taste like chicken, if a bit deeper in flavor, especially the behemoths.

Aaron made a bunch of fried lizard pieces he breaded and enjoyed with a spicy sauce trying to recreate proper fried chicken. It was delicious, but not the same sadly. Still well worth the oil for the flavor.

In his bag of holding the beast cores started to accumulate, making big piles of slightly different colored marbles. Sometimes Aaron was tempted to use them, but he had good self control at this point. Something constant hunger teaches you. In the end the benefits of cooking, eating and enjoying food outweighed the downsides of hunger in his mind.

At the seventh day Aaron took stock of his progress and was very satisfied. Although his initial assessment of how big his new dantian was had been woefully inaccurate. He had still gained a lot more Qi than he felt possible. He made around 5-10% of his total dantian in volume of Qi every day which meant that after 7 days he was around 80% full. His progress was simply incredibly fast now that he had a stable source of Qi and no other limits other than how fast he wanted to go. Aaron did not want to break through again so quickly. He was not really ready yet and he had barely grown comfortable with his improved body again.

So he vowed to himself to learn alchemy first, make his own amalgamation pill and then break through. To give himself time to acclimatize and not fall behind in training. But his timeline had moved up quite a bit and so Aaron decided it was time to challenge the 6th floor today and get the iceahearts if he could on the 7th floor after that.

Aaron packed his things and broke down camp before he crossed the floor in the early morning. None of the places on the fifth floor were a challenge for him, although he had not really checked out the hyena rock properly. Another thing on his Agenda. But Aaron had still 2 whole minor cultivation realms to go after this one, so he had time. He still put it on the top of his Agenda as he passed by the rock and leapt over the grassland like a particularly big and graceful grasshopper. He did not touch the ground, but jumped from grass to grass. It was quite difficult, even more difficult than jumping on water.

In water he could at least let his feet sink in and then accelerate himself from there, but with the grass he needed to use the little resistance the grass offered as leverage for the next jump. It was his favorite pastime while he had hunted. It kept him alert and literally on his toes. It was hellishly difficult to keep up for longer distances and taught a lot of minute fine control of his martial art. Which was necessary to use in combat, especially against stronger opponents.

He arrived at the entrance to the 6th floor and walked through the open doors up a staircase to the next floor. He did not know much about it other that there were bosses there. Aaron would not mind a good fight right about now. He was itching to challenge himself and the beasts on the fifth floor were not really a challenge anymore. Still he was weary and walked carefully up the steps, his senses alert and his mind ready.

Aaron emerged in a giant room with high ceilings and columns made out of bright stone that glowed in the dark, turning the whole room bright and lit and oddly surreal. The ground was hard packed dirt and it was not even that big for a whole floor, if this was the floor and not just the atrium. Aaron senses magic in the air, dense spellforms typical of the Tower's own mechanics. He stepped over the threshold and the giant doors behind him started to close ominously. Aaron had a moment of panic where he considered going back, before he steeled himself and looked forward.

This was not like him to freak out like this and he considered the spellforms again suspiciously. His shoulders felt heavier and his steps ponderous as he walked out into the open dirt packed arena. Because it was an Arena he soon realized. It was circular and had exactly eight massive pillars holding up the roof made out of typical blue Tower stone. No sky emulated at all. It was quiet for a long eerie moment before a roar echoed through the room and slightly behind and to his right a door opened as the door down to the fifth floor fell shut.

With a rumble and shaking earth a giant being emerged from the darkness of the newly opened door. It was a creature Aaron had never seen before. It was tall at least 20 feet, had a humanoid torso, arms and legs, but both arms and legs ended in claws more than hands. And yet the create held a giant stone rod like club in his hands that it dragged after itself through the dirt, creating a sound like churning gravel and with its heavy steps it was like a giant had appeared. The giant was not really a giant Aaron realized when he saw that it only had one massive eyeball in its face that was more of a caricature of a human. Its maw was wide and studded with jagged yellow teeth, its nose just two holes and the eyeball was massive and the Iris was red like blood. It halted just a few hundred feet away and then bellowed an earth shattering roar.

Aaron felt fear settle into his guts, but because he was super sensitive he immediately recognized it for what it was. A trick. A spellform, a curse. Fear, demoralization. This floor was a challenge, a boss fight with yourself. Aaron had to scoff to himself as he pushed through the fear with a will forged through pain, patience and hunger. He stepped forward boldly, his first step heavy, his second step faster until he ran at the monster. Fear was nothing more than a warning, warnings were good, but that was all they were. A warning. Aaron chose to ignore the obvious trap of a warning and pushed through. The closer he got the more his limbs woke up, the lighter he felt and then Aaron leapt into the air.

The cyclops bellowed again and grasped his massive stone column like a bat. Then he swung, faster and more viciously than Aaron could have expected, but he simply paused mid air and let the giant stone club roar past him with enough force that the air battered his face. Then Aaron resumed his charge, and infused his whole body with intent.

He was here for a challenge, he was not hear to fight his own fear. Especially not fear in combat. His fist was imbued with the intent to crush mountains, to drill into stone while being harder than diamond. All of his momentum was fueled into the attack as Aaron's comparatively tiny fist impacted on the cyclops face. The cyclops had turned its head away and closed its eye, but that did not save it from the kinetic force that impacted the side of its face.

It was a thunderclap of noise as Aaron's fist broke through the flesh, shattered bone underneath and tore through. His body followed as the sheer mass and weight of the creature saved its life and turned the lethal attack into only a flesh wound. The howl of the monster was earth shattering up close and Aaron winced as it battered his ears. He jumped up and away from a hand trying to swat him, before he smashed into the top of its head again. The dark gray skin popping open revealing flesh, blood and bone underneath. Its massive size meant that Aaron had to attack many times to do some damage.

But the cyclops was disappointing in the end. After a few hammer blows to its head and dodging the hands trying to get him off, Aaron managed to drill into its skull without even using Qi projection. Then once inside, Aaron pulverized its brain, which was comparatively small to its size. The giant fell after that dead to the ground and the sound of it falling to the ground was what hurt the most. Sure he was covered in brain matter, dark blood, but the beast had been too slow to ever be a danger.

The artificially induced fear did not vanish, it intensified after the creatures death and Aaron noticed another door opening slowly on the opposite side of the arena. So this was a gauntlet not a one time challenge. Aaron could not help himself but grin and swipe away the gore before he leapt off the defeated giant and walked out into the Arena facing the next challenger.

His fear was just another thing to ignore, nothing what he had not done with hunger before. No matter how strong the curse of the 6th floor would be, it was not enough to rattle him. It was an induced emotion and knowing that point made it so much easier to overcome.