Chapter 186: Mount of the Supreme War Emperor

"Hmm..."

Kaelen barely reacted to Felix’s message when the elevator shook and the gate slowly slid open noiselessly, unlike back at the lobby.

The cold, biting wind was the first thing that greeted him through the gaps, and as the gates widened, a white expanse stretched across his vision.

It was a world consumed by a snowstorm.

Kaelen inhaled deeply before stepping out into the storm and activating Infinite Mana. His mana perception spread across the white plain, immediately picking up several signs of wildlife and predators. But the first thing Kaelen noticed was that he was in the middle of nowhere, and when he turned around, both the angel’s gate and the elevator were gone like they had never existed.

"Okay..." he mumbled, his breath turning cold.

[Welcome to the Second Floor of the Tower of Babel]

[You are Team Blue]

As the notification flashed across his vision, a panel appeared in the sky, featuring a blue and red scoreboard and a frozen timer in between.

[The rules are simple]:

[Every beast kill allocates 100 points to your team, and when the countdown reaches zero, the team with the highest score wins and clears. The losing team dies.]

Kaelen frowned.

"Teams?"

If he was the first to enter the second floor, then who was the second team: Team Red? And how many were they in number?

Six?

Most importantly, if he used the Hearthstone now to return, and at the end of the timer the other team accumulated more points than him, would he die?

Even when he was already in the safety of the lobby?

At that moment, he recalled Felix’s message and quickly navigated through his system to message back.

[Your inbox has been temporarily disabled]

Kaelen’s eyes widened in disbelief.

The biggest problem wasn’t the fact that there was another mysterious team on the floor, but the fact that if they were greater in number and fully capable, it’d take him the effort of the entire team to catch up, let alone surpass them.

[For extra points, hidden Easter eggs have been planted across the floor with varying points that both teams can find and allocate to themselves. In addition, killing a member of the opposite team triggers a bonus 1000 points, which will be allocated to your team.]

"Great. Just fucking great."

Kaelen was yet to figure out who his opponent was, and a bounty had already been placed on his head. On the bright side, he didn’t have any teammates who could be killed for bonus points.

If only he had chosen the Nameless Shadow God ability or the Spark of Extinction, this floor would’ve been a walk in the park.

It wasn’t too late, though, because with the Fate-Rewriting Pill, Kaelen could always make a last-minute change.

"Wait a minute... that’s right. The Fate-Rewriting Pill. Why did I never think of this?" Kaelen blurted the moment an idea struck his mind.

If the pill was created by Elyndra, and she could create more of it, Kaelen could use it as a bargaining chip to trade his knowledge of the Heavenly Gourmet Cauldron formula with her.

With enough pills in hand, Kaelen could switch abilities at any point in time to the ability that suited the floor best, just like at that moment.

The Nameless Shadow God would put Kaelen at an unbeatable score halfway through the timer, with over 5000 shadow summons killing at least one beast every minute.

The only problem was that Kaelen wasn’t sure how much of the pill she had on her or if it was something she could create inside the tower. So until he was certain of that, he couldn’t be rash with the pill’s usage.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it if it came down to that. It sounded like a better option than the Hearthstone, given the possibility that he might still die if he escaped the floor now.

Luckily, he still had the Heaven’s Window to tell the exact strength of each beast, the Maw of Annihilation to take them out from a distance, and the Mount of the Supreme War Emperor to outpace the other team by a far margin.

As long as the other team didn’t know he was actually alone, they wouldn’t come after him recklessly.

[The small dots below each team’s scoreboard indicate the number of candidates on each team. Each time a candidate dies, the scoreboard updates to show the number of candidates still alive on the team.]

[Good luck. May the odds forever be in your team’s favor.]

Kaelen almost choked on his saliva as he looked up at the scoreboard. Sure enough, there was only one green dot below the blue team’s scoreboard. Then he shifted his attention to count the red dots below the other team’s scoreboard.

Two, four, six... eight... nine...

"N-Nine?!"

How was that even possible?

Each lobby had the capacity for six candidates at the beginning. Maybe seven, if you were to calculate the candidates who cleared the first-floor Hell’s Mode and were assigned to already completed parties.

But nine?

Where did that number come from?

There were two possibilities Kaelen could think of. It was either the current set of candidates weren’t the first to enter the Tower of Babel, or... the Tower of Babel might be a multiplayer tournament, with candidates from beyond.

Not that it made any sense, but none of this had ever made sense a year ago, when Kaelen’s goal was simple: to make enough money to escape the slums and live inside the stronghold.

There was always room for crazy possibilities, but Kaelen didn’t panic.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before exhaling softly, a small smile playing on his lips.

The average person was supposed to feel fear at this moment, but all Kaelen could feel was a tinge of excitement, which was confusing given his current state.

He controlled the mana inside him to reach for the tattoo behind his back, causing it to awaken and summon the slumbering beast inside him.

He felt a strange, dread-inducing flow of energy from his back down to his feet in a shadow before it expanded and materialized into a towering, horse-like creature that absorbed all the light around it.

Kaelen was mesmerized as he felt the beast’s thick hide before climbing onto it and settling on its back. The moment he did, the dark energy exuding from the beast flowed upwards to encompass every bit of him.

For a moment, his vision went dark before a sharp slit formed across his eyes, and he looked at his hands to see he was now entirely covered in black armor from head to toe, with the twin Heaven-Splitting Blades hanging from his waist now extended and transformed into broad, long swords that suited his foreboding armor and mount.

Kaelen didn’t know it, but he could tell their strength had also been increased with it, the same going for his previously nonexistent defense, which now blocked out the biting wind from reaching his skin.

He exhaled in awe before pulling out one of his swords and holding it to the side as he grabbed the reins of the beast and leaned forward.

Turns out he had totally underestimated himself, and it was time to see just what he was capable of doing with his newfound strength.

"Charge!"

Boom—