Chapter 288: Fourth Floor: The Faster You Kill, the More Things Wake Up [2]

Once the entire bridge was clear, Zich signaled the ape to gently place it down.

Even after laying it back on the ground, the Dire Wolf King never woke up.

"Move."

Without stopping, the group quickly crossed the bridge.

Within seconds, the sleeping Dire Wolf King and the bridge had already disappeared behind them.

If anyone outside could witness the trial, the entire square would probably be at a loss for words right now. The Fourth Floor’s rules were supposed to force challengers to avoid disturbing the beasts.

Zich’s solution had gone beyond avoidance.

He had literally moved the obstacle out of the way!

For any ordinary challenger, encountering a sleeping Dire Wolf King blocking the only bridge would have meant either taking a dangerous detour or spending precious time searching for another path. Yet Zich had simply treated the monster itself as another obstacle that could be moved.

More importantly, from beginning to end, the Dire Wolf King had never even realized that someone had carried it through the air.

If whoever designed the Fourth Floor had witnessed this scene, even they might have fallen silent.

As they went deeper, the density of magical beasts increased dramatically. Level 26 and Level 27 monsters became common, while Level 28 elite monsters occasionally appeared as well. Yet thanks to Blood Leech’s scouting and Zich’s greatly improved multiline control compared to a month ago, the team still created almost no disturbance.

Until the seventh kilometer, Blood Leech suddenly froze. It was not because of another magical beast.

Rather, it was because the ground was shaking. It felt as though something unimaginably enormous was moving beneath the earth.

The vibration grew stronger with every passing second, causing loose stones nearby to bounce against the ground.

Zich immediately ordered every summon to stop whatever they were doing.

Then a few seconds later...

Rumble...

A black boulder the size of a house slowly rose into the air.

No... It was not a boulder.

Zich’s eyes widened when he saw the scene.

At the same time, a gigantic dark yellow eye opened beneath it.

The earth within several hundred meters began bulging upward. Stones rolled away and soil collapsed as a head the size of a small building slowly emerged from beneath the wasteland, followed by its neck, its forelimbs, and a gigantic shell covered in countless rocks and dirt.

Only after the monster completely stood up did Zich realize the low stone hill they had noticed earlier had merely been part of its back.

[Earth Vein Ancient Turtle]

[Level: 30]

The relaxed look in Zich’s eyes finally faded.

This was the first true Level 30 monster he had encountered since entering the Trial Tower.

And judging from its enormous body and thick shell alone, it was obviously not the kind of opponent that could be killed in a few attacks.

Even worse, the Earth Vein Ancient Turtle had not awakened because of a Blood Awakening Pulse. It had been awake from the beginning.

As Zich looked at it, the giant turtle slowly turned its head, and its dark yellow vertical pupil locked directly onto him.

The next instant...

Boom!

A colossal foreclaw covering dozens of meters slammed toward Zich.

"Damn it, scatter!"

Zich’s command instantly echoed through every summon. The Silverback Ape Grunt leaped sideways, Blood Leech vanished behind nearby rocks, the four skeletons dispersed, and Slimy shrank back onto Zich’s shoulder.

Dark shadows exploded beneath Zich’s feet.

[Shadow Blink!]

Boom!!

The gigantic claw crashed into the ground, and the entire wasteland shook violently. A terrifying shockwave spread outward, sending several nearby sleeping magical beasts tumbling through the air.

Zich appeared over thirty meters away, his eyes growing sharp.

A Six Legged Rock Wolf that had been thrown aside slowly opened its eyes.

Then a second, followed by a third.

Although no one had died, the noise of battle alone had already begun awakening nearby sleeping monsters.

"So this is the real problem with the Fourth Floor." Zich finally understood.

The sleeping magical beasts ahead were never the true threat. These unavoidable guardian monsters were the mechanism designed to force challengers into triggering endless chain reactions.

The Earth Vein Ancient Turtle raised its claw again. At the same time, the seven awakened monsters nearby all turned toward Zich, while farther away, more sleeping beasts began trembling because of the earlier shockwave.

If this battle continued, hundreds of nearby monsters would eventually wake up.

And once that happened, even defeating the Earth Vein Ancient Turtle would become meaningless. He would immediately find himself surrounded by an entire wasteland of awakened magical beasts.

Zich stared at the Level 30 Earth Vein Ancient Turtle, and the fighting spirit in his eyes grew even stronger.

If he could not fight here, then he would fight somewhere else.

"Iron."

A massive summoning array exploded open behind him.

Dense death energy swept across the wasteland as the heavily armored undead knight stepped forward, gripping a gigantic bone greatsword with both hands.

Almost simultaneously, an even larger summoning array slowly unfolded across the sky.

A deep, majestic dragon roar echoed from within the sea of death energy.

Roar!!

Tiamant descended from the sky. The Earth Vein Ancient Turtle slowly raised its head. And upon seeing the majestic bone dragon, its dark yellow pupils visibly changed.

Zich pointed toward a distant canyon where no sleeping magical beasts were present.

"Don’t kill it. Drag it over there."

The blue soul fire inside Tiamant’s eye sockets erupted. The next moment, several pitch black chains tore through the air, crashing toward the Earth Vein Ancient Turtle’s enormous body.

What Zich did not know was that at the exact moment the Earth Vein Ancient Turtle fully stood up, something had also changed deep within the wasteland.

At the twelve kilometer endpoint, inside the Slumbering Altar that challengers were supposed to destroy, a pair of crimson eyes, closed for countless years, slowly opened.

...

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