Chapter 6: Stair Hell

My view from the top of the stairs was correct. There were only stairs here, and there was going to be a lot of up. I had just finished descending, only to see that identical concrete steps awaited me. I couldn't see the top from down here, the lights that were on the walls were too dim to see more than a few hundred meters.

My legs had definitely become stronger over the last… I think it has been a bit over a month by now. It really doesn't feel like it's been that long. Felt like just a few days ago I was walking down a normal city street.

"Well, every journey starts with a step." I talk out loud for the first time since coming to these floors, and my voice sounds incredibly raspy, unrecognizable.

I was startled by how little it sounded like the voice I remembered in my own head. I guess that is just what happens when you don't talk, I guess. I haven't had any reason to, and have actually had many reasons not to talk, so I can't really be blamed for this.

In the end, I was already on my way up the endless staircase. Thoughts raced in my mind, thoughts of the outside world. Thoughts I haven't had in a while, even when I was living a normal life.

I was thinking of my family. My mother and father, who were probably wondering why I never came home. If they even noticed yet. I had no way of knowing if time flowed the same way down here as out of this place.

Would any time have passed at all, will I reappear in front of my old friends, as if nothing ever happened? I won't know until I get out of here, I guess. I had plenty of time to worry about that as I paced myself up the stairs. No sense getting tired immediately if I had such a far distance to travel.

Step after step, I climbed. There wasn't much to look at on this floor. The concrete stairs were rather bland in comparison to the river filled with various colors of fish. The random buildings and islands. Then we just have concrete stairs and walls, actually, this looked similar to what the second floor looked like.

Except instead of dim incandescent lighting, it was recessed lights illuminating the stairs. If there was a ceiling, it was too far away and too dark to see it. I wonder how tall this place really is, and is it even possible to make a room this tall not in this place?

Wouldn't the accumulated stress just completely crush the bottom section of the wall? Unless this is dug underground and the concrete is just here to keep the dirt and rocks out of the room. That doesn't explain how some floors have their own weather patterns and skies though.

I'll just chock it up to some fantasy thing being hard at work. No sense explaining things that can't be explained I suppose. I was trapped here whether I understood the mechanism or not, and I'm pretty sure that even if I somehow knew how it all worked, it wouldn't matter anyways.

I took my first break as I felt my legs start to slow down while I was climbing the stairs. I wasn't breathing too heavily, but taking proper breaks was going to get me through this floor faster overall, and see that I could start the next floor without stopping.

My main worry here was what if this took as long as the average floor. What would happen if it took me a few days to walk up these stairs, would I just die from exhaustion? There's no way in hell that I could sleep on these steps. Any movement in my sleep would see me starting to fall down the staircase.

If I ever find a way to break this concrete, I should really try and bring it with me, because it would make it so easy if I could just dig out part of the steps and just lay down. I'd be able to sleep, but the tradeoff would be hauling the weight of whatever can do that, and then the energy to actually break and move enough of the concrete to lay down.

I really do wonder if a convenient tool like that exists down here. It should, but how heavy would it be, or how much work would I have to put itn, and at that point, it's probably no longer worth the trouble, except in a few very specific scenarios.

My break time was over and it was time to continue walking up the staircase. If I was working against my own timer here for sleep, I wonder how long I can push myself without sleep? When was the last time I had to push myself without sleep anyways?

Ah yes, it was a long time ago. I was working on a class project with a friend when they suddenly ditched me to go and play games instead of working on the project due the next day. It was a classic 'You'll do a better job without me', and that wasn't really true in that scenario.

I was forced to stay up all night to finish his part of the project that he apparently didn't even start. What was the point of the five hours we had spent working on it the day before, did he even work on anything or was he playing with the people he ditched me for all those times.

Now I was angry, when it is something long in the past, something I've already given up on getting an apology for. Something not even worth an apology this far past. After rubbing my hands through my greasy hair, it was already out of my mind.

What wasn't out of my mind was how greasy my hair was. I wiped my hands off on my pants. I haven't been able to clean myself since the third floor, and that was two weeks ago. Two weeks of agonizing work. Well, the previous floor wasn't hard work, it just took some careful attention and small bursts of hard work when I tried to catch some fish, or tying off to a dock.

I wish the water of the previous floor was something I could have used in some way, but everything it touched eventually got this off white slime on it. I was not going to bathe in water that left such a strange thing on everything.

Something was starting to change with the stairs. They were getting taller with every step. It was very slight, but after all this time of walking up them, I was starting to notice how I was getting tired faster and faster.

God, not only was this floor boring, it was now a grueling experience. Steps that had been normal at first were now about fifty percent bigger. Talk about boiling a frog, I never even noticed, not until I was getting tired faster and faster.

Instead of just getting taller though, the steps got wider, Meaning that if this pattern kept up, I would eventually have the space I needed to lay down and properly sleep. I wonder how long that would take though?

Without worrying, I continued on, taking breaks as I needed. Something was creeping into my mind, the author of the books. What was their motivation? Was there a direct advantage to helping as many people as they could through the floors?

I would normally push a thought like this to the side, mentally catalog it for later, but I had some spare time here. If I thought about it from their perspective, I might find out why. The author clearly has good intentions, telling the exact dangers of the floor in simple terms.

If they are still alive, they are trying to get as many people through the starting floors as they can. Interestingly, if there are more people, then the later floors will become easier. Especially if there is a hub. Information trading will be huge.

Information that I actually have for once. I have a feeling though, that I will have to get past floor eleven to find The Hub. I'm not surprised if that's the case, after all, the book with the dead man basically said as such. Why he decided to go all the way back to the river though, it made me curious if there are problems with the other floors that would stop him from staying on them.

I can see an issue with this floor. There was nowhere good to stop and leave anything, no sights to see, but I could hardly believe that this floor was random. It is literally just a set of stairs that increased in size over time, but I only got a few words of description for the coming floors.

The next was interesting. Chairs and a monster that could detect sound. If it was a floor filled with those noisy folding chairs, I would find who or what created this place and kill them. I don't care if this place is naturally occurring or it was created by a literal god, I would kill them.

I hated those dumb chairs with a passion. I'll try to stop thinking about them for now. I didn't want to get worked up over something that might not even happen. If the monster is attracted to sound, I can see why stopping on that floor is a bad idea if you're just trying to get away.

He probably didn't think about death until he had been on the river for a while. He probably gave up hope after sitting on it for a while. I've never gone back up a floor myself yet. I've had no reason to do that.

Going to floor three might be nice, just to completely restock and clean myself. I would think about staying there until I found a compass, and it would make floor four super easy. Floor five is just kind of relaxing. I can get a good sleep without worrying about wolves or creatures making loud noises directly into my brain.

Going backwards through floor five would be interesting. Would I find a door back up if I kept going down the river, or would I have to try and go up the river. Going up floor four would be challenging, the floor isn't randomized, so is there only a single entrance to that floor, and would I have to find it?

A curious question indeed. It doesn't really matter though, I would find out if I tried to climb the floors back up. Something I currently had no reason to do. I was making good progress and had enough resources to survive for at least two weeks. Two weeks of constantly moving and needing to refuel.

A slow moving and low effort floor like floor five, I could probably survive three weeks without finding any resources at all. I was beginning to learn exactly how much food and water I needed to feel like I wasn't going to die. I was confident with my estimates.

The stairs were starting to get a bit ridiculous. Each step was as high as my knees. The estimated time to get to the top was a bit grueling. If it gets as bad as I think, I'm going to be doing more climbing soon than walking.

Going down this staircase would be a challenge in and of itself. I would be constantly scared of missing a step. Something I was worried about a little with how tall these steps were, as falling this far up a flight of stairs with no way to really stop falling, I'll die.

Even if I don't, I'll certainly wish I had. Enough doom and gloom, I need to focus on climbing the stairs as they reach my mid thigh in height and length. I'm taking a break every hundred steps at this point, but they are getting taller, faster.

Now well above my waist in height, each step was a battle as my muscles screamed at me. I was going to be traumatized from this. I would look at a set of stairs and think about this place. My own little reminder of hell. Hell that would be present every time I made it to the exit of a floor.

God I hate stairs now. They reached just below my chest, but taking breaks constantly was getting me through. Every ten steps I took a break once they reached my chest in height. How much taller would they get before this place was happy enough with my suffering to let me move on?

Once the steps got as tall as me, it was time for some sleep. I had no way to tell how much time passed, but I did know that I needed some sleep before I could keep going. I took my pack off, laid my ax beside me as a weapon to grab quickly in case I needed it, and slept.

…

Waking up, every muscle hurt. Every single one of them. I slowly managed to get up off the hard ground and stretched my incredibly stiff joints. My joints cracked and grinded, creating awful noises that made me shiver. This was more muscle pain that the time I trained for that dumb marathon that ended up getting cancelled.

I took some time to gather myself, did my standard gear check, then started to climb. One step, one break. I could see the exit at the top when I was standing on the edge of the steps. I only had ten more to go, but I needed to jump to even grab the edge of the steps now.

It was hard work. I slipped, I nearly fell backwards a few times, and I struggled. Two steps left and I had to throw my bag up first before I could even think about climbing. Dangerous, because I could easily throw it up there, then not be able to climb up them myself.

The final step was more of a puzzle than a physical challenge. I couldn't jump high enough on my own to reach the edge, no matter how much I rested beforehand. I needed to get creative. Drinking the last of my water, I set the bottle down.

An old video I saw from my teens. People climbing walls and jumping off them, parkour. I had never done any of it myself, but it always looked pretty cool when done by a professional. So I figured why not try it.

My injured hand was hurting from all the climbing, but there was nothing I could do about it for now. I'd take some medicine and rest once I finished climbing this last step. I ran at the concrete wall, jumping as high as I could while placing my strongest leg on the wall. I pushed up and off the wall as best I could, reaching for the top of the step with outstretched arms.

I barely managed to grab it with the tips of my fingers. It hurt, it hurt so much, but I was able to reposition until I had my arms up, and from there it was a simple climb up the rest. I laid on top of the step for a while, my wrists burned with a pain I'd never felt before.

I was hoping I didn't injure myself too badly, but it didn't matter. I needed to continue on through the floors. This one was a good challenge, but a little exercise never hurt anyone. I slowly sat up, my hands barely moving, feeling like they were being held in a thick mud.

I went over to my bag, and got out the acetaminophen. I downed three of them with a decent amount of water and laid down against my bag. I was going to sleep, and nothing could stop me.

…

And nothing did stop me. I awoke from what felt like an incredibly long sleep. My muscles were sore, but not all that bad. My hands still felt slow and gripping things was hard, but it didn't hurt. My muscles were tight, I would have to rest them, but not here.

'The ignorant city' I should be able to rest there. If it is a real city, that is, or even close enough to real. I wasn't worried for now. I was rested, and I was ready to face my next challenge. I opened the oddly familiar door with a push on the bar that reminded me of school gym doors.

The sight of normal stairs made me feel happy. Guess I wasn't traumatized, just relieved.