The moment I regained my senses on the Infinite Tower’s lobby, I opened my Status Window. I knew I had successfully completed the mission—if I had died, I would have been expelled to the outside world.

The real question was the costs of using Soul Explosion five times in a row. 100 Stat Points, gone in a blink. Fortunately, just for the duration of the Infinite Tower. Twenty points from Physical Defense, forty points from HP, twenty points from Mana Regeneration, and twenty points from Mana Pool.

Name:

Jarek

Level:

39

HP:

9/9

Physical Defense:

10

Strength:

10 (+5)

Mental Power:

10

Dexterity:

10 (+5)

Agility:

10 (+10)

Perception:

10

Luck:

10

Mana Pool:

105 (+10)

Mana Regeneration:

48 (+10)

Available Points:

0

Coins:

2,036,000

Class:

Mana Modulator (D-rank)

Profession:

Rune Master (C-rank)

Titles:

Region Lord (E-rank)

Skills and Spells:

Identify (E-rank)

Mana Modulation (D-rank Core)

Death’s Defier (A-rank)

Mana Sensing (C-rank)

Healthy Magic (E-rank)

Aquatic Respiration (E-rank)

Polyglot (E-rank)

Soul Communion (D-rank)

Cursed Lightning (D-rank)

Spiritual Traveler (D-rank)

Soul Explosion (D-rank)

Mana Control (C-rank)

Affinities:

Internal Mana (D-rank Low), External Unattributed Mana (C-rank Low), Soul Magic (D-rank Low)

Equipment:

Vampiric Blade (D-rank): +5 Strength, +5 Agility.

Bloodied Battle Robes (D-rank): +5 Mana Pool, +5 Mana Regen.

Greedy Gloves (D-rank): +5 Mana Pool, +5 Mana Regen.

Bonded Blades (D-rank): +5 Dexterity, +5 Agility.

Communication Amulet (E-rank):

Personal Mana Shield (E-rank):

Interdimensional Pouch (D-rank):

Missions:

Zone Offense

Renegade Bounty Hunter

I could only breathe a sigh of relief in the knowledge that I would regain Stat Points when I returned to the real world.

I realized I had been standing in one place in the Infinite Tower this whole time, so I promptly started walking towards the store.

The first question was if I wanted to sell anything. It seemed like an easy way to gain an Achievement—I could sell things that I had gained from previous floors.

What do you think I should sell?

Silence.

Samantha? Are you there?

No response.

After two Soul Explosions, I had blacked out, back in the Metan facility. Since Samantha had been in control of my body, maybe five Soul Explosions were her limit.

Samantha?

I would have thought I would be more excited about being alone, but I was actually worried.

What would my life be like, if I no longer had Samantha? I wouldn’t stand a chance making C or D-rank Rune Patterns. I would be a mess of a fighter. I would be incredibly reactionary, instead of standing on the forefront of defending the world.

Part of me wished, in this moment, that it was Samantha that was messing with my head. Maybe she was intentionally hiding, and manipulating my thoughts to make her value me more. Or, maybe she wasn’t.

I knew what two Soul Explosions in a row felt like. Samantha went through five, all in order to help me become stronger.

If there was one thing that I could say about Samantha, it was that she wasn’t hypocritical. She had never asked me to put myself through that much pain, and she had made it clear from the outset that her goals were to help me become stronger.

Although, there’s no telling what comes after that.

Rather than try to guess at the amount of stuff I should sell to the store, I decided to wait for Samantha. I spent the next few minutes browsing the store of C-rank items. There was a C-rank Invisibility Cloak, a C-rank skill called Soul Assassination, and of course C-ranked weapons and equipment.

I spent fifty minutes in the lobby, but there was still no sign of Samantha. Every time you entered the lobby, you had one hour before you had to leave—either through the massive black wall that would teleport us out to a new floor or mission, or we could leave just by selecting “Return to the real world” inside the Atropos Schema notifications.

After fifty minutes of waiting, I had enough time to think about my next move.

I sold four Mana Orbs to the man behind the counter, gaining me an additional achievement for entering the top 1% of sales again.

With the sale of the four mana orbs, my accumulated points increased by 500 points. Before challenging this mission, I had 910 points. I had gained 1000 points for completing the mission, taking me to 1910, and then the four mana orbs brought my total to 2,410. But I wasn’t going to spend any points yet.

Before starting the assassination mission, I had twelve Achievements. Now, I had eighteen.

Samantha had mentioned previously that every available mission would always be harder than directly challenging the floors.

I knew that the five floors that I had to challenge next would be 1 C-rank opponent my level, and then 5, and then 25, and then 100, and then an unknown challenge.

While this may sound intimidating—I had nearly died several times when facing C-rank opponents multiple times—the level cap meant that these opponents were more limited in the total number of stats that they could have.

Over the course of the last two weeks, I had managed to gain more than 300 Stat Points before reaching level 40.

For a C-rank opponent, by the time they were level 39, they would have gained 10 points per level at their relevant stats, as well as 28 points towards their own HP, taking them to a bit over 400 Stat Points.

With my own unique class, and Samantha’s skills, this gap should have been easily overcomeable.

However, I had already sacrificed so many points from my stat sheet from the Soul Explosion that I had no confidence in my own ability to face off a single C-ranked opponent, without Samantha’s help.

Considering the difficulty of the “normal” floors, I figured any missions were off the table—unless Samantha woke up in time.

Fortunately, I still had one trump card—the Aviaton. I was going to bank everything on the fact that I could fly an Aviaton.

With just ten minutes left before I would be automatically kicked out to the real world, I climbed into my Aviaton.

Finally, I could make use of the lobby’s massive size, its spaciousness, and high ceilings.

Entering the Aviaton required pressing the deceased general’s Identification Crystal against a certain panel, and then I was able to climb in relatively easily.

I harnessed myself in, and then hit the button that Samantha had pressed the first time she got into an Aviaton—the button to access the full manual controls.

I wasn’t interested in manually stabilizing the antigravity runes, or manually adjusting the density of the Mana Shield in specific locations of the Aviaton.

Fortunately, the Aviaton was capable of performing many of these tasks autonomously. It was just up to me to tell it which way to go, with the various sliders in front of me.

I tried to remember what Samantha had said. I vividly remembered that my left thumb aimed and fired the Mana Cannon.

Besides that, I couldn’t remember anything else.

I sighed. Well, time for some hit-and-miss testing.

I tried sliding my right index finger forward, a minuscule amount, and I heard the painful grinding of my Mana Shield against the marble floor of the lobby.

Right index finger—forward and backward.

I slid my left index finger forward, and the plane floated effortlessly up into the air.

I was running out of time, and I didn’t want to cut anything close.

Floating just a few feet above the marble floor, I gently eased the “throttle,” floating my Aviaton through the black teleporting wall.

I appeared in a massive, grassy field, floating in my Aviaton just a few feet above the ground. Noticing nothing above me, I immediately increased my altitude to about fifty feet, searching my surroundings for any opponents, crossing my fingers and hoping for a land-based short-ranged opponent.

It seemed luck was at least partially on my side. There was a humanoid figure standing on a hill not far from where I was.

The figure unslung a bow from their back, and launched an arrow before I could process what just happened.

The arrow pinged off of the Aviaton’s Mana Shield, and I suddenly had a very good feeling about this encounter.

This was basically target practice. I put a dozen Stat Points into Dexterity, and moved my left thumb around. As I did, I could see a red icon of concentric circles on the window of the Aviaton, moving around with my left thumb, letting me know where the Mana Cannon was currently aimed.

The archer, though, wasn’t just standing in one place. After launching his first arrow, he ran to a nearby hill, jogging as he readied his second arrow.

I tapped my thumb once, and a concentrated Void Bolt flew towards the archer, but the archer was already moving to the side.

Fuck. The Void Bolt was far too concentrated. I needed to fire a wide-range weapon. I could picture the burning forests underneath the warship that I had barely escaped from.

Glancing at the controls in front of me, I realized I had no idea how to change the size of an attack, or even the type of an attack.

I played around with various controls. Fortunately, I quickly learned it was somewhat intuitive. There were several buttons near my left thumb, each of which could select a different type of Mana Crystal. Also under my left thumb’s aiming and firing sphere was a slider, which changed the size of the concentric aiming sights on my window.

I can do this.

Ping!

A second arrow landed on my Aviaton, reminding me that I hadn’t moved once from my original spot. I took a breath. One thing at a time.

I made the concentric circles absurdly wide—encompassing several different hills—and fired.

The archer, of course, was already running, but there was no way he could escape the breadth of my most recent attack.

It was another Void Beam. The attack didn’t seem to have much effect, though, on the archer, or on the area around him. It was like the grass and the topsoil of the hills were vanished, but not much more than that. For the archer, his armor was shredded, and I could make out a few drops of blood from the distance, but he was still running around quickly, launching yet another arrow towards me.

I moved the Aviaton forward, this time, towards the archer, until I was just twenty feet above him. Then, I fired, point blank, a narrower void beam.

This time, the beam pierced directly through the archer’s chest, and I was immediately teleported to the next stage.

More clear blue skies. More rolling hills. Except this time, five dragons were rapidly approaching me.