Chapter 602: The Tower's Revenge

Zaine's eyes glowed as she stared at the items. She flew over to Roma who had just put away her cauldron and showed them to her. The gypsy was shocked, then ecstatic for a different reason. 

After having read the effect of her new Cauldron of Evil skill, she had been doubtful of its efficacy. Fortunately, this test had proven that the skill was far better than she had ever imagined. 

Zaine claimed the Enhanced Mind skill book and the Intelligence Booster focus crystal for herself. Now, she was really glad she had decided to let Roma take the lead, as capturing that Intelligence Sentinel would not have been nearly as useful as the created items. 

Zaine posted their info in the Morningstar Group's Party/Clan Chat, allowing Draco and Eva to see them as well. Rather than the items, they – just like Roma - were far more excited to have discovered the usefulness of Roma's new skill. 

After all, it was unlikely that later floors would have anything that would grant them fixed levels. Just like the first 10 floors, they would either be forced to use different systems, or they would be reverted back to the normal system where the two of them would only get 1% experience from all sources. 

At that time, they wouldn't be as enthusiastic to kill their foes as they were now. It seemed far wiser to let Roma cook them up into something useful, especially if they encountered special and unique enemies worth the investment. 

The Intelligence Booster focus crystal slotted itself into Zaine's forehead as the Enhanced Mind skill entered her list of passives. As for the other items, Draco and Eva would place them in the Guild Shop once they got out for those who might be interested. 

Zaine immediately felt the boost in power. Not only did her psychic abilities get stronger, but they would also drain far less from her compared to before. 

The Royal Succubus rushed over to hug Roma, who could barely breathe being squeezed by those huge mounds. Eventually, Zaine let her go and stroked her sister-wife's hair gently. 

"Darling Roma, since you've blessed me with such a great gift, allow me to reciprocate. Come." Zaine offered as she led Roma towards one of the Endurance Sentinels who had yet to be engaged as it lagged behind its companions. 

When Zaine hovered above it, she immediately used one of her active skills, Psi-Blade! 

｢Psi-Blade – Active Skill 

Effect: Slash out with purified mental energy condensed into the form of a blade that severs all thoughts and sentience. This deals 200% mental damage and incapacitates a single target. 

Duration: 5 minutes. 

Cooldown:  6 minutes.｣ 

The Endurance Sentinel took 98 million points of damage from the attack - as the group were still under Hikari's 5x buff, plus Zaine's new buffs from the passive skill and focus crystal - and fell to its belly, completely out cold. 

Zaine then turned to Roma. "I know you have a skill called Life Drain that allows to you increase your Endurance stat in special circumstances. Surely, this is the best target to use it on." 

Roma's mind clicked as she remembered the existence of that skill. It was certainly one that was broken given the circumstances, but because Roma was solely focused on her Mystic Arts path, she did not care much about it. 

She was not like Zaine who dabbled in this and that. As such, this skill, which was actually perfect for these floors, had gone unused until now. 

Roma lowered her broom and pressed her palm on the back of the Endurance Sentinel. A green light glowed where her hand met the Sentinel's flesh, and a red light could be seen being pulled into that green light from within the Sentinel. 

Life Drain! 

｢Life Drain – Active skill 

Effect: When in physical contact with any enemy, drain their life at a rate of 2% per second and restore yours by the same amount. If at full health, drained life is converted into stat points for END. 

Cooldown: None｣ 

Roma was definitely unscathed and at full health, so she felt the energy that entered her body fusing with her cells, fortifying them as they naturally increased her Endurance. 

Gazing at her panel where the stat was rising, Roma was able to glean that the conversion rate was 1 point of health was equivalent to 0.0000001 points of Endurance. 

In other words, to gain one full point of Endurance from the Life Drain skill, one would need to swallow 10 million points of HP. 

In truth, with Roma being at Rank 4, that was shockingly cheap! 

If she paired her Mirage skill which would put enemies into a trance and used this, she could act like one of those demonic cultivators who extracted the energies of others to empower themselves. 

However, increasing her Endurance was not a priority for her. If it had been Spirit or Intelligence, she would have been spamming this skill every time, but such was life. 

Not counting the about 100 million HP Zaine had taken away with her first strike, the Endurance Sentinel had a whopping nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred million HP left. 

Or in simpler terms; 

｢Name: Endurance Sentinel – Colonel Rank monster 

Level: 150 

HP: 999,900,000,000/1,000,000,000,000｣ 

Roma unilaterally drained them at a rate of 2% per second of the total, which meant this lovely lady swallowed 20,000,000,000 HP per second. Putting that aside, her current conversion rate at a 1 point of Endurance for 10 million HP, she was getting 2,000 points of Endurance per second. 

By the time she drained the entire Sentinel, she would have gained a whopping 100,000 points of Endurance at the end! 

Heck, not even Gods or even Origin Gods of Boundless had that much, right?! 

… You were expecting it weren't you? 

Both you and I know that such a thing was not possible, otherwise, the AI might as well cut to the chase name Roma Queen of the Universe and delete the game. 

Roma noticed that her Endurance that was previously at 10 points rose to 500 points and did not move an inch from there no matter how much more she drained. 

Moreover, Roma noticed that due to her draining, the Endurance Sentinel did not release the flow of energy that allowed them to level up for the HP it lost. As such, Roma took her hands off of it after draining just 10% to be sure, then reported what happened to Zaine. 

The succubus did not seem surprised though, instead she just nodded. "We are lucky that the limit was set to 500. I had estimated it to be far less than that, 200-300 somewhere in that range." 

Zaine pinched Roma's delicate skin. "Thankfully, your lovely skin is still soft like butter. If it had turned as tough as leather, I wonder if Draco would have wanted to caress you anymore?" 

Upon hearing this, Roma panicked and almost cried. She held Zaine intimately with big cute eyes. "Big Sister Zaine, Draco wouldn't hate me if I really became like that, would he?" 

Zaine chuckled dotingly as she hugged Roma back. "Don't worry, I was just joking. Stats don't physically augment us, otherwise with both of us having more than 300 points in Intelligence, wouldn't our brains have swollen up like hot air balloons?" 

Roma sighed exaggeratedly. "Whew, that was close." 

After fooling around a bit, the two sister-wives continued on into the battle, using their low cooldown skills to assist the Angels who made up the bulk of the fight. 

As for the Black Dragon, it was taking on five Strength Sentinels by itself, weaving through them as it beat them down one by one, getting insta-kills with each attack. 

Pure Destruction Energy at the same Rank was practically fatal unless one had a type of energy that could resist it... and those Sentinels just weren't that lucky. 

By the time the Back Dragon was done, Roma had just left the Endurance Sentinel alone and was playing with Zaine. It looked to the Angels' side and saw that the 16 of them were easily dominating their foes. 

Archangels like Michael and Uriel were absolute monsters. After all, Archangels were chaotic in their power, usually belonging to different ranks despite being in the lowest band. 

Micheal was the Angel of Battle, commander of all fighting angels, so his power was something, Camael, Jehoel, and not even Samael could match. 

With the potent Aetheric Energy being provided by Hikari, he was able to display power that was on a similar level to the Black Dragon in terms of insta-kills. 

Uriel was the only Seraphim Eva had and she made sure to leave no doubt as to why she belonged into the highest order of Angels. Her fighting style consisted of crazily using AOE Holy Light abilities that vaporized everything she targeted to ash regardless of how much HP they had. 

In fact, mere Aetheric Energy could not sustain Uriel for battle, and Eva would definitely suffer greatly if she tried to summon a Seraph at her current power. 

However, Uriel had been summoned in her capacity as an Archangel, which was an obvious loophole that Eva enjoyed. It made one wonder whether the previous controller of Heaven designed it like that so s/he could too could abuse the rules. 

Of course, this also lowered the power Uriel could use. She was limited to only 30% of her full Seraph power, yet it was enough to display such an overpowered effect here. 

One could not help but wonder how powerful Uriel would be if Eva one day summoned her in her full capacity. At that time, could the Seraph destroy an entire empire on her own? 

The Sentinels that made up this army would tell you that they could care less. Right now, they just wanted to retreat from this damned battle as they realized they were like flies flying into a zapper. 

Despite numbering about 81 when they had started their attack, only about 30 of them were left by the time 7 seconds had passed. 

Among them, almost all Agility Sentinels had been vanquished, the Intelligence Sentinel that had led them had been cooked to death and only about 5 Endurance Sentinels were left. 

As one could expect, the battle was in the bag. There were no upsets, as about 4 seconds later, the rest of the Sentinels were butchered completely, leaving none alive. 

The 16 Angels, the Black Dragon, Qiong Qi, and Clarent, as well as the two dark-skinned beauties, returned to the Grand Bastion with smiles on their faces. At this time, the energy from the bodies of the Sentinels flowed over to them, splitting into many flows. 

Unfortunately, not only was the experience split too much, but some of it was not accessible, like the 10% HP (or 2 levels worth of experience) from the Endurance Sentinel that Roma had drained, as well as the entire amount from the Intelligence Sentinel since its essence had been cooked into those items. 

Otherwise, how could a Rank 3 foe produce a slew of Legendary Items? If those had been so easy to get, would Draco and co have reached Rank 6 without ever having one in their lives? 

The gross experience was 799,000%. This split into 24 streams, granting 33,292% experience to each person. Once again, aside from the Morningstar Five, the rest was pretty much wasted... 

Draco went from Level 148, 47% to Level 150, 33,139%. This only yielded a single stat point to allocate, which he placed into Charisma, raising it to 85 points, while Eva did the same only with Endurance. 

Roma went from Level 150, 0% to 200, 99%. Her gain was 25 points of which she placed all into Spirit, bringing it to 160 points. 

Hikari went up by the same amount and reached the same threshold. Her 25 points were placed all into Spirit as well, bringing it to 570 points. 

Zaine went up by the same amount and reached the same threshold. Her gain was 25 stat points were shared between Strength and Dexterity, bringing the former to 40 points and the latter to 30 points. 

NPCs gained 1 stat point every 2 levels at Rank 4 just like players did at Rank 3. 

Seeing that the three NPC Beauties had hit the Rank cap again, Draco and Eva smiled, prepared to take them into the Inner Universe to Rank Up. However, Zaine's expression was not one of happiness, but shock. 

Before she could say anything, the floor collapsed in on itself, and the group was ported out and back into the castle. The Angels and Black Dragon were automatically desummoned, leaving the Morningstar Five, as well as the two idiots, behind. 

"Not good, we should have allowed ourselves to-… damn, it's too late…" Zaine cried out, then sighed with defeat. 

Draco frowned as he wondered what was wrong. Seeing the confused look of everyone else, Zaine explained what she had deduced. 

"We are about to reach Rank 5. Don't forget, we don't have trial tokens of our own, and have merely been granted a status equivalent to Draco's summons." 

Zaine sighed once more and gazed at Draco with a gloomy look. "And what Rank is Draco?" 

Speaking this far, how could the others not understand? 

Their faces changed greatly, especially Roma and Hikari who looked like the world had crumbled atop their heads. 

They had been extremely excited when the Inner Universe had been created because it had meant they could be with Draco at all times, fighting by his side and exploring the world together with him. 

Eva did not know what to say, as she was exempt from this. She, like Qiong Qi and Clarent, had no problem as they were the same Rank as Draco. 

However, while the tower could still accept 'summons' one Rank above the 'summoner', the same was no longer true for beings two Ranks above the challenger. 

Allowing the Four Beauties to take part had already been a concession by the tower and that was only because the Inner Universe was a loophole nobody could have expected, not even the AI, not to mention in early floors they had started out at the same Rank as Draco. 

If the tower tolerated everyone going wild, wouldn't it be bullied to death by these greedy fellows called trial takers? 

One shouldn't forget this wasn't a dungeon, but a challenge, a competition meant for them to fairly compete against each other, not a place to show off who had the mightiest allies. 

Just as Zaine finished speaking, Tadaima appeared in the throne room. The orb looked as good as new, as if someone had summoned forth a version of it that had yet to suffer the torment Draco had inflicted upon it. 

It floated slowly through the room, as dramatically as possible as it hovered right before Draco's nose. 

"Candidate Draco, it is great to see you again. I have never expected to see you so soon again, after the tower had acceded to your wishes last time. Who knew that such a matter would crop up, and so soon!" The orb didn't even try to hide the glee in its robotic voice, its usual monotone all but gone. 

Draco had a terribly ugly expression on his face, yet he still folded his arms and sneered. "Report what you want to say! I have a tower to climb!" 

Tadaima seemed disappointed that its time for revenge would be cut short, but his protocol dictated that it was no longer able to rub it in Draco's face, so it got down to business as it regained its characteristic monotone. 

"Candidate Draco, the tower has sent me here to remind you that you have accepted to follow the rules at the time your companions have been granted a special status!" 

Tadaima paused and played a recording of Draco saying just that. 

"Given the Rank difference, you're no longer allowed to summon Special Summon Zaine, Special Summon Roma, and Special Summon Hikari to help you with your climbing. Any attempt of doing so will be regarded as a violation of the rules and will be dealt as such." 

Draco was extremely unwilling to accept this and argued. "So what? It is through their own power that they grew while in the tower. Are you telling me that trial taker is forbidden from using their summons just because of this?" 

"What if the candidate is a beastmaster with stronger beasts? Just because of this rule, would you expect him to go to the next floor alone?!" Draco questioned righteously. 

Tadaima bobbed up and down slowly, turning itself left then right as if trying to mimic a person shaking their head. 

"Candidate Draco, there seems to a mistake in my communication." 

Tadaima suddenly neared Draco as its eye stood inches away from Draco's nose and its voice dropped a few volumes. 

"I am merely here to inform you of this fact, not to negotiate with you. If Candidate Draco is displeased by this decision, even after the tower has even paid you a 'compensation', then allow me to point you to the exit. Feel free to leave at any time." 

Tadaima then slowly bobbed away, leaving the castle leisurely. It almost seemed like the orb wanted to hum a lovely tune as it was clearly in an incredibly good mood today. 

As for Draco, his expression was bleak. He laughed darkly, shouting; "Good, good, good! Just enjoy it while you still can! Let's see who will be the one to have the last laugh!" 

Eva who stood beside him had darkly narrowed eyes and an extremely terrifying expression. Zaine displayed a frown, blaming herself for not having accounted for this earlier, while Roma's smile was stiff. Hikari lowered her head, feeling bad about the whole thing. 

Clarent and Qiong Qi looked furious as Hikari was Clarent's little sister and Roma was Qiong Qi's tight buddy. 

Draco took a deep breath and regained his calm. "I'm sorry that I can do nothing about it right now. Let's head into the Inner Universe and get you guys Ranked Up, then we'll decide what to do next." 

With a wave of his hand, the castle was emptied out, leaving only a gloomy atmosphere behind. 

Unfortunately, Hikari, Zaine, and Roma could not use growth items to lower their levels. The way experience and Ranking Up worked with NPCs was fundamentally different from players. 

Players could keep extra experience when at the Rank cap and needed to perform a Rank Up mission to pass. It wasn't imperative for them to go forward, and they could remain where they were for years if they chose to, or lacked the ability. 

For NPCs though, their Rank Up was compulsory and unstoppable once they reached the cap. Any extra experience they gained would be destroyed, unable to keep it for the next Rank. 

Hikari, Zaine, and Roma could theoretically drop back to Rank 4 after ascending to Rank 5 by sacrificing their exp, but that was like a cultivator reducing their cultivation. 

The next time they would try to 'breakthrough' to where they had been before, it would be much harder, and their potential would take a great hit from it, so the gains did not make up the losses. 

This time, the tower got them good.