Chapter 400: Day 827 – Entering The Tower

Chapter 400: Day 827 – Entering The Tower

The Divine Empress stared at me. Looking far less imposing in a gray gown than in her usual attire. I could tell that she knew if she took one more step forward I would shut the door no matter what. Her next move was to act.

We waited there, staring at each other in silence as the pressure began to build up. Who would be the first to act? If I acted first then she could tell herself there was no chance to get inside. But if she acted first, then she would have to commit.

Standing there waiting was incredibly stressful. I couldn’t think of anything more stressful in my entire life. Even arriving in the Systemic Lands, fighting the Ritualist, meeting the Divine Empress for the first time, and getting launched into the sky was nowhere near the level of this confrontation right now.

Sweat formed on back and forehead as we both continued to stare at each other. It was incredibly tempting to just end this, right now, but I couldn’t give up this chance to kill her so easily. I would not get a chance like this again any time soon.

She probably felt the same way. Once the doors shut, she would lose me. And I was going to the Astrologer as well. Then we could double team her. If we got the Protector, we could do a three on one and possibly finish her off without having to chase her down.

That was another reason why she couldn’t afford to let me go. If her two mortal enemies teamed up, then she would be in a rough spot. It was easy when you were the strongest and you only had one enemy to deal with. But when there were multiple players in the game, things got messy really quickly.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.

Then there was pride. She didn’t want to back down, and I didn’t want to admit my fear of her by shutting the door too soon. She had gone up to the limit I was comfortable with. If I shut it now or any time before, then it was fear.

I couldn’t let my fear control me no matter what. If I allowed myself to make a choice based only on fear, then I would lose out on the chance to kill her.

A minute became five minutes as we silently stared at each other. My energy had fully regenerated by now, but neither of us dared to speak. We just waited on the other person. How long could this go on for? Hours? Days? Deeks?

Was she going to try and wait until I was too tired to act quickly? That could be a possibility. Maybe she wanted me to try something to give her a slight advantage, to tempt her to attack? It was hard to say. If I was in her position, there would be no good answer.

If she took the loss, then she would be on the backfoot. Her evil empire was wrecked, so it wouldn’t be easy to increase her strength quickly without rebuilding it and her administrative talent was less than zero. She was a net negative on any administration.

Destroying what Clarissa had set up, would take time and energy with her wasting a lot of it killing pointless people. Allowing me to link up with the Astrologer would be a long term loss. The fact I was getting surgery when she arrived had only confirmed that I would run to the Astrologer in her mind.

The silence continued to stretch out. There was nothing more either of us could say that wasn’t pointless. I had thought through the situation and so had she. I needed to change things up. “Why are you so evil?” I asked breaking the silence.

A slight turn of my head, saw the tunnel go a ways to a dead end and a single right turn available near that dead end. There were no monsters coming for me, I didn’t sense anything unusual, and I didn’t hear anything.

The entry areas were probably safe areas if I had to guess. Well, maybe not safe, but I would call them staging areas. There wouldn’t be an attack here right away. I slowly got up and pulled my packs and myself into a far corner of the room, making sure I saw up, so I could keep an eye on all three tunnels.

This was it. I was committed now. My last restoration a quarter of a day ago. I had to climb all 49 floors in 19 days to reach the Astrologer. No idea what a tower was like. I had enough food and water to last that long, so as long as I didn’t lose my pack I would be fine.

But I was now down a hand and wasn’t able to use my most powerful close-range attack. I just had Acid Shot and Force Wave. I really didn’t count the second one as an attack.

I almost fell asleep right away, but I was on edge in case she went through another door and hunted me down. Well, no one escaped a tower, so hopefully, the doors would remain shut while I stayed on the first floor.

The worst part was, that I wouldn’t be able to keep track of the days anymore inside the tower or time. I didn’t wear a watch normally, since I could just look at the light source and know the time of day. I also didn’t have time to get a watch or some sort of time keeping device during the chase.

That meant my only units of measurement would be the pain in my gut and the number of floors I had climbed. I could easily see that messing with a person’s head. I settled into the corner of the entry room and tried to sleep, but the pain from the burnt stub on my left arm was making it hard.

I needed my wits about me if I wanted to survive the tower climb. Traps, monsters, time limit, and possibly a Divine Empress on my heels meant it would be the hardest thing I had done so far. I had always gone into situations with as much preparation as I could. Now I was in the deep end with no buoy or life raft in sight.

If I did manage to survive the climb, I was going to take a long vacation. I had no idea where. But at least 90 days, probably more. Even if the Divine Empress wasn’t dead, I was heavily in favor of the vacation idea. I had gotten too caught up in the empire nonsense and didn’t focus on the personal survival nonsense.

So, what if she was the strongest? I could just hide out in a level 4 zone and she would have never found me. If only that were possible. As for the Astrologer, I wasn’t sure if I was putting him in the friend or foe column yet.

His proxy had saved my life and kept Purgatory out of the clutches of the Divine Empress, but that was canceled out by putting a bomb in me and trending towards the negative. But he could help me kill off the Divine Empress, which was annoying.

Hopefully he would be helpful, and we could have a conversation. He better be able to get this bomb out of me as well. I wasn’t going to agree to anything until he took it out first, no matter what. Otherwise I would kill both of us and call it a day.

I drifted off to sleep.