A curse exited Noah's lips as his figure stood before a huge wall of grass with no paths beside it.
"Another dead end," he hissed heaving a tired sigh.
This was one of the fifteen dead ends he had arrived at in the last four hours, and by this point he was frustrated. Highly even.
Thankfully he had left a trail of icy spikes and he could return down the path to find another one that he hoped would allow him to advance.
Thanks to the black pillar that he had started to see at some point, Noah could gauge how close he had come to the center, and it saddened him to realize that he still wasn't close enough.
His luck had stopped working at some point and it left him with mistakes left and right.
At times Noah had to retrace his steps down many paths just to find the major path he had picked to traverse another one since the other only led him farther away from the pillar.
Hours continued to pass as the challenge proved even more hardous than he had initially thought.
He legitimately thought he would never leave that place due to how endless it seemed, but he suddenly struck a lucky choice that began to lead him down better paths but also contained the hollow beasts.
The more than 17 hours Noah had spent within the maze had not been lonely. He had encountered groups of hollows and had taken it upon himself to wipe them out.
When he reached level 95 the exp he gained from killing them had plunged and the distance between each level increased.
Even killing five of the beasts stopped granting him levels and he had only managed to reach level 99 in those hours.
According to his calculations, he was now about halfway into the middle stage, he would need to advance about 18 times to finally reach the higher stage, but things weren't looking so smooth again.
Wiping out entire groups of ten hollows multiple times didn't grant him levels, and he calculated that he would need to kill a lot of them to finally reach 100, but at some point, he began to value reaching the center more than killing the beasts.
He had gotten mentally tired and even physically; fighting the beasts since he would initially need to go through a round of filling them up with his spells before attacking. But he considered it a waste of energy and time.
The closer he got to the center the more a feeling of danger increased. He could sense that something big existed at the center and he was both eager and cautious to get there.
Noah had to spend a day and about ten hours before a wide area unfolded in his eyes.
The walls of grass began to draw farther and farther from him as he walked deeper into that plain field, a sense of joy overwhelmed him, but his moment didn't last long, since a strong presence flickered into existence immediately after a panel appeared in his eyes.
[Defeat the boss and touch the stone to advance to the next floor]
The purple-green panel had been specific and the appearance of a green octahedral stone floating at the center of the grassy field proved that. The stone had replaced the black pillar in the blink of an eye.
Noah stopped in his tracks when his instincts ran wild as a result of the danger they signaled to his consciousness.
Noah's survival instincts took charge when he failed to react adequately and he found himself sprinting towards the edge of the field, with the strong feeling of death looming over him.
No sooner than he took off the ground split open and a huge silver object with a vague outline erupt out of the splitting ground.
Noah didn't even have time to move since the ground beneath his feet gave way as the sight of five silver objects tried to reach him.
In the blink of an eye, he executed the second form with all his might intending to go up, and he managed to appear high in the sky!
The event remained shocking, to say the least, but Noah had to create a platform of air beneath his feet to stop himself from falling.
Thankfully the height restriction didn't apply there, at least at that height it didn't.
From that height, Noah was able to watch the event going on the more easily, and a curse exited his mouth when everything had finished.
"How am I even supposed to beat this," he muttered staring awe-filled into the red eyes that loomed over him even from that height.
A hollow beast, the largest Noah had ever seen had emerged from the ground, and its height towered 90m.
[Hollow beast]
[Level: 120]
[Affinity: [Unavailable]]
[Level of danger: Unknown]
The thing had already crossed into the higher stage, and the oppressive air it released spoke loudly of that reality.
The gloves appeared on Noah's hand as he prepared himself to battle the darn thing. He didn't even know how to begin.
'I guess we should dodge first,' Noah thought watching the hollow raise its arm above him to bring it down in a descending strike.
The air wheezed and the ground experienced more cracks, but Noah had long since sprinted out of that place.
Due to the fact that he was unable to unfold his consciousness he had to rely on his eyesight to create platforms far from his figure, allowing him sprint in the air.
The hollow missed its strike and calmly watched its targets figure escape it.
Noah found that event odd, but what happened next explained it to him.
A crack suddenly opened on the silver face of the hollow. A moment later it raised its deformed head, and the crack widened, suggesting that it had voiced something.
Although Noah heard nothing, a sudden fear far stronger than what the level 100 hollows could inflict smashed into his mind, and distracted him from creating another platform, hence causing him to plunge towards the messed up ground.
Noah lost consciousness due to the intensity of the skill the hollow had unleashed. His mind could not even dream of repelling the innate ability, and Noah lay amongst the rubble of shattered rocks. It had been lights out for him when the beast had screamed.
Thankfully the same weakness that the weaker hollow's suffered was present too.
The giant hollow could barely move, but with the five minutes its target would require to regain consciousness, it could gain significant distance.