Chapter 506: Cursed Tower
Chapter 506: Cursed Tower
The climb of the tower seemed endless.
Every ten steps of stairs, there would be a short platform break, then another set of stairs. Because it was a tower, the stairs were in spiral form, but due to the sheer width of it, each ‘floor’ took about half a minute to climb, and the stamina requirement was insane. As such, the girls and I decided to take a break before long, on one of the short platforms serving as breaks between sets of stairs.
Lin Luo sighed and leaned against the pillar at the center of the spiral staircase, folding her arms and closing her eyes calmly, not saying a word.
Flaria, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.
“Ahhhh! I can’t take this anymore! Let me just blast my way through this thing!”
She ran around in circles screaming at the top of her lungs, like a kid with AD/HD. But I mean, could I really blame her? Having been through those downwards stairs from the mountain, it would be safe to assume these would be approximately the same length if not longer—not to mention these were ascending stairs, meaning it was even harder to climb and more stamina-draining.
“Calm down, Flaria,” I sighed after a while, shaking my head. “This is just the beginning… you’re the one who wanted to come. I warned you, didn’t I?”
“Ernghhhh, that’s true, but still…!” Flaria gritted her teeth in annoyance, pouting. “This is so boring! Can’t something, like, happen or something? I expected a lot more excitement from a so-called god’s lair!”
“Oh, no…” Terrarim muttered in my head, and I arched an eyebrow.
What?
“Uh…”
Suddenly, a loud giggle rang out in the staircase, and all of us immediately put up our guard.
“… What was that?” Lin Luo asked cautiously, hand resting on the handle of her blade, but-
“Excitement, you say~? Very well~” The voice giggled playfully and disappeared as it came, and the next thing we knew…
“… Oh, shit.”
The sound of mechanical whirring came from below us, and soon, the source came into view. Several massive sawblades made of highly fast and violent wind rolled up from the stairs below us, and tore apart the stone like it was nothing.
“Run!” I yelled, and the girls didn’t need to be told twice. We raced up the stairs as fast as we could, and the sawblades trailed close behind us.
“This is what I meant…” Terrarim muttered, and in a surge of frustration, I yelled ‘yeah, thanks’ out loud.
“D-Dad! Carry me!” Flaria yelled in a panic, struggling to catch her breath. Hurriedly, I backtracked a few steps and picked her up on my back, then took off once again.
“Tch… Level Three Sky Magic — Lightning Barrage,” Lin Luo whispered under her breath, and several streaks of powerful yellow lightning shot out of her palm to strike the incoming sawblades of gale.
Unfortunately, they weren’t powerful enough to stop them.
“Immune…” Lin Luo gritted her teeth and kept running up, with Mei Gui in second and me in dead last.
Shit… I gotta do something…!
Wait… there’s that… I can use it here, maybe…?
Suddenly coming to a stop and turning around to face the incoming sawblades, I closed my eyes and calmed my mind.
“H-Hey! What are you doing?!” Flaria yelled from my shoulders in a panic, body trembling in fear. “H-Hello?!”
“Master!” Mei Gui yelled, but it was fine.
Forbidden Magic — Zero.
A wave of black and red energy released around my body in a sphere with me at the center, and struck the sawblades head-on. Rather than destroy them, however, it erased them, as if they hadn’t been there in the first place.
Soon, the blackness around me faded away, and I opened my eyes.
“… Whew.”
“Oho… so that power can even suppress an Empyrean…” Terrarim murmured in my head, as if deeply intrigued.
“Hehehehe~ not bad, not bad at all~” The voice giggled again, satisfied with our performance, it seems. “But… what about this…?”
Suddenly, we heard the sound of… crickets?
And we knew what was coming.
From below us where we just came up from, a horde of crickets flew at us, screeching in their own language and for whatever reason attacking us. My Forbidden Magic—Zero couldn’t kill living beings, so there was only one option left to us:
Run.
“Screw you!” Flaria yelled and breathed out flames from her mouth at the cricket storm, but since she could not transform into her Phoenix form here thanks to the flight limitations set in place by Aerim, the power of her attack was significantly reduced. Even so, she managed to wipe out a large portion of the crickets, but there seemed to be no end to them as more from the backlines simply took their dead comrade’s places.
“There!” Lin Luo yelled, pointing to a pair of double doors ahead. “We should be able to close those doors if we make it there!”
Potentia Excitant: Celeritas.
Speeding up myself using Blessing Magic while Mei Gui did the same, we sprinted towards the double doors at full speed. The horde of crickets weren’t about to go down with a fight, though, so if a fight’s what they want, a fight’s what they’ll get.
… Or that’s what I’d like to say, but it would seem Mei Gui acted first. She hit the ground with her palm, a blue aura surrounding her body, as a wall of ice rose up from the ground that reached all the way to the ceiling. This would block the crickets momentarily, but not for long.
Still, we didn’t waste this tiny opening of time we had been graciously given, and hurriedly dashed through the doors. Once there, Lin Luo activated a mechanism on the other side, and the doors rolled shut right before any crickets could fly in.
We all collectively let out sighs of relief.
The stairwell didn’t seem to end here, though. There was another door right next to us leading out, possibly continuing the stairs’ ascension. But for now, we could relax in this ‘safe room’ of sorts. All of us were tired after that, and this fluorescent pink aesthetic made for a nice change from the dull grey walls of the castle.
But just as we began to relax… a strange scent began to fill the air. I sniffed it and thought it smelled faintly like chocolate, but couldn’t be quite sure.
“Hey… are you guys smelling that?” I asked the girls, only to see…
“Hah… hah… ahn…”
Lin Luo, who was usually composed and collected, was now for whatever reason taking her armor off and panting heavily, a flushed expression on her face. Her hands traced along her own sweaty body as if wanting to be touched, and-
“Uh… you okay?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. But upon turning to my left, I saw that Lin Luo wasn’t the only one. Flaria too was blushing deeply, and trying to strip down all her clothes.
“H-Hey now…” I gulped in fear at what was going on, but then, I felt a tug on my right arm, and I turned to see Mei Gui looking up at me with her tongue out, also with flushed cheeks.
“Master… kiss me…”
“E-Even you, Mei Gui…?”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence before Mei Gui pushed her lips against mine and inserted her tongue into my mouth, thirstily exploring it. That didn’t last for long, however, as Flaria and Lin Luo pounced on me at the same time, both of which had taken off all their clothes down to their underwear. I was pushed to the floor in an instant, and the two licked their lips with hearts in their eyes.
“Now then… we’ll be feasting on you, Xuan Kai~” Lin Luo whispered in an uncharacteristically seductive tone, and traced her fingers down to my hips.
“No!” Mei Gui suddenly pushed her way in, nudging the other two away. “Master is mine… stay away from him… or else…!”
Even like this, she’s still protective of me, huh… wait, no, that’s not what I should be thinking about!
“Ngh…”
With some effort, I managed to use Blink to teleport away from their clutches, but all of them had incredibly fast reaction speeds and quickly tried to reach for me again, but I managed to escape through the other door. Indeed, it was a continuation of the stairwell, and as expected, the girls followed me.
As soon as they left the room, however, they stopped, as if waking up from a trance. Then, they glanced at me, then down at their bodies, then back at me.
“P-P-P-Pervert!” Flaria screamed at the top of her lungs, and Lin Luo clenched her fists tightly while gritting her teeth. Mei Gui, on the other hand, only covertly averted her gaze.
“… If Master wants to do that with me… all you need to do is say so…”
“N-No no no! You guys are misunderstanding!” I yelled. “That room behind you—it made you guys start stripping all of a sudden! I didn’t do anything, I swear—you can try going back in yourselves if you don’t believe me!”
The girls exchanged glances, then actually stepped back into the room.
And… nothing happened.
“… Well?” Lin Luo narrowed her eyes at me from inside the room, folding her arms.
“Uh… it was on a while ago?”
“… Tch!”
I didn’t have time to say anything else before I was clobbered in the face.