「Congratulations on completing: Tower of Babylon Twenty-Second Floor
Time elapsed: 365:01:02
Objectives complete: All
Assessment: S+
Reward:
12,500 Score Points
1 Treasure Selection Reward – High Silver Grade」
Because they had chosen to use this floor as a grindstone rather than focus on the objective, Draco and Eva had lost out on a perfect score. However, the benefits of this could not be compared to the increase in power they had enjoyed.
(Author's Note: I could spend a long bit explaining their various power-ups, but I want to get this set of floors done so that we can complete the Tower Arc and move onto the next filler arc, Meeting The Family.)
Their power up was condensed into such;
「Draco's power up: (21st-22nd floor)
1. Swordsmanship – Peerless Sword Style, Sword Skill 401-450 completed, adding many more lightning variation skills.
2. Subjective Magic – Defensive magic casting greatly improved. Shields now had 200% their original durability and now acted like a passive skill, always being active.
3. Control – Able to engage in a permanent enhanced state by re-arranging muscles in a certain way that enhance physical prowess. All physical damage increased by roughly 30%.
4. Class – Not much growth unfortunately, but proficiency with the Transformation skills had increased due to repeated use.
5. Psychic – Now able to integrate his psychic power with his Void of Perfection, meaning that he could affect the atomic realm slightly.
6. Demon – Now able to stay in the Horned Demon True Body for 2 minutes without using any techniques. Can now use techniques with substitute Worldly Energy, but to a limit.
7. Dragon – Now able to stay in transformed Dragon form for 2 minutes as well. Can now use techniques of the form with substituted Worldly Energy, but to a limit.」
「Eva's power up: (21st-22nd floor)
1. Assassin/Stealth – Riveting Night had taken over for this bit and had begun improving on her own set of techniques. Her growth was extremely great, as Eva's new affinity with her bloodline gave her a range of options to execute her power. She came up with a new set of Assassin Skills which she dubbed the Extreme Killing Techniques.
2. Divinity – Her Divine Skills had greatly grown thanks in part to her repeated use. Now she could stop time for 10 seconds around a single powerful foe, or for 3 seconds around a small group.
3. Control – Able to enhance her Elemental Control by infusing her Void of Perfection into her passive skills and Light Control. Now, she could re-direct attacks that missed, regardless of the angle.
4. Class – Same as Draco.
5. Psychic – Now able to implant seeds of confusion directly into the mind of foes, temporarily giving them a random status effect. Eva couldn't fully control it yet.
6. Goddess – Now able to stay in the Heavenly Goddess True Body for 10 minutes without using any techniques. Angels on the lowest tier have reduced their Bloodline Energy drain to a minimum, making it feasibly to call them out in reality for long periods of time.
7. Light – After intense practice, Eva had managed to somewhat acquire the use of Ultra Violet light in her Light Techniques outside of what the Inner Sun gave her. Now, she could add Ultra Violet properties to her Light attacks in reality.」
The White-Haired Duo was even more tired this time, actually sweating a bit due to the stress. Making breakthroughs, especially on so many fronts, was not easy, as it forced one to consider their current power, fully understand it and chart a route in which they could feasibly push their power forward and then put the effort into it to do so.
All this time, they had to face entities with their exact level of skill and overpoweredness, but with 10% advantage!
The duo now pitied anyone who had fought them in the past. They really never had a fucking chance, not even for a second.
After a day of rest, they jumped into the next floor.
「The Twenty-Third Floor – Divine Quest
Description: Welcome to the Rooms of Reflection! In these ten sequential rooms, you will fight against a copy of yourself with all your power and abilities plus a bit more to provide a challenge! Here, you will discover your flaws and strengths, allowing you to come out stronger than ever or in a body bag!
For the Third Reflective Room, you need to reduce your enemy's HP to 10%.
Limitation 1: Enemies are limited to within your Rank.
Limitation 2: You may retreat from the floor at any time, but upon re-entry, you would have to resume from the exact situation you were in at the time.
Limitation 3: Any external help summoned (Combat Pets, Attack mounts) will also be mirrored and forced to fight separately.
Limitation 4: This Floor's Shadow has 120% of your full power.
Provision 1: You have full use of all your powers and abilities in the same way as you would outside.
Provision 2: You may use all items within your Inventory to help out, but the same item can only be used thrice during the battle.
Provision 3: The Shadow mimics all forms of your powers, (Techniques, Equipment, Class, Titles, Bloodline, etc) but cannot use items.
Rewards: Score Points, 1 Silver-tier Reward Selection.」
As expected. The HP reduction requirement was now at 10%, the Shadows' power at 120% and the number of times a single item can be used had increased to 3. Everything increased linearly, so Draco and Eva knew what to expect.
The grind began again for them. The White-Haired Duo spent the next 12 days fighting for their fucking lives, and made some progress because of it.
「Congratulations on completing: Tower of Babylon Twenty-Third Floor
Time elapsed: 290:54:18
Objectives complete: All
Assessment: SSS+
Reward:
20,000 Score Points
1 Treasure Selection Reward – Peak Silver Grade」
This time, they didn't pause to rest as they jumped right into the next floor after that. With bloodshot eyes, Draco and Eva seemed determined to complete the Floors of Reflection in one playthrough or die.
Their progress over the past floor was as follows;
「Draco's power up: (22nd-23rd floor)
1. Swordsmanship – Peerless Sword Style, Sword Skill 450-500 had been completed, completing the Lightning element skills. He could now move onto another advanced element.
2. Subjective Magic – Support magic was significantly enhanced. Draco could now cast debuffs repeatedly every second, forcing a check on a target, much like the Four Horsemen.
3. Control – Base physical damage increase boosted by another 10%, making for a total of 40%. Interfaced with Eva after the previous floor, allowing him to gain the ability to re-direct all magic attacks.
4. Class – Zilch.
5. Psychic – Can now use Telekinesis to disturb atoms slightly. This causes great destabilization in all attacks, allowing him to either explode them ahead of time to disintegrate them.
6. Demon – Time spent in the Horned Demon True Body increased to a total of 5 minutes without using any techniques. Can now use most techniques with Worldly Energy, but some require Aetheric Energy straight up.
7. Dragon – Time spent in transformed Dragon form increased to 5 minutes as well. Can now use techniques of the form with Worldly Energy, but the stronger ones require Aetheric Energy.」
「Eva's power up: (22nd-23rd floor)
1. Assassin/Stealth – Extreme Killing Techniques have greatly improved. Riveting Night had created the first fundamental skill of the set, the Death Walk.
2. Divinity – Her time stop could now hold a single foe for 12 seconds and a group for 5. She could now bend space to banish foes into a void where they would insta-die, but 99% of competent foes would be able to resist it unless he had help.
3. Control – She had interfaced with Draco after the previous floor, so she got his permanent muscle symmetry, meaning that she too had a 30% buff to her physical prowess permanently. Eva's efficiency of projectile control stepped up, allowing her to maintain control over them as long as they numbered less than 5 at a time.
4. Class – Nada. Sorry.
5. Psychic – Focused solely on her mental suggestion implantation, which now gave her semi-control over the kind of status effect a target would receive from the system.
6. Goddess – Time spent in the Heavenly Goddess True Body increased to a total of 15 minutes without using any techniques. Angels on the second-lowest tier have reduced their Bloodline Energy drain significantly, allowing them to be summoned in reality as well.
7. Light – Her proficiency with Ultra Violet light had increased. Work on the other forms of light in the spectrum were ongoing, but little progress was made.」
Not a bad bit of progress made, but they were struggling to make new improvements. Most of their upgrades had been progressing in previously made categories they had started in.
However, there was no rush. The kind of growth they were experiencing was supposed to occur over years of training, condensed into a few days thanks to the excellent training environment these floors provided.
Without it, they would need far more time. Even the time dilation hadn't seen them make as much raw progress as this.
Heck, even training for all her life using the best resources and teachers from her Lineage was inferior to this in Eva's opinion. She guessed that the same held true for Draco, though it was harder to tell.
However, there were some things she had learned previously that helped her now, while the same couldn't be said for poor Draco.
Tsk, tsk, next time, when you reincarnate, try to be like Eva! Beautiful, heavenly, untainted, and majestic!
Never try to be like Draco, vile, evil, beastly, and handsome!