"How tall is this damn building?!" Shadow shouted as he and the others stood on one of the platforms that could be found inside the building they were currently climbing.
They had already been climbing for a day and had managed to climb god knows how much, but they still saw no end to the task.
"A whole day, we have been doing nothing but going up and fighting for one freaking day, over 20 hours and we still don't even see the damn end of this thing!" Shadow cursed once again before sitting down and looking at the meat that was currently being roasted over an open fire.
The team was now at a point where the platforms were over 1km in diameter and there would sometimes be more than one right next to each other. The sheer width of the building was astonishing and they didn't know how something like this was even possible.
"A treasure of a Transcendent and it is so remarkable, wait, is this even considered a part of Drayce's treasure?" Reign softly asked as he looked around them.
The whole building truly made him astonished, just thinking how even someone like Drayce wasn't considered to be an influential figure in the universe but had something like this made him excited for the future.
'Will I ever have something like this, will I manage to become as powerful as Drayce, Eldar and the other Transcendents are, what about even further, what about those that have reached the realm of Gods, just how powerful are they?' Thought Reign before shaking his head, it was useless to think about things like that when he wasn't even close to Transcending yet.
"Alright, food is ready, let's eat," Wolf said as he put out the fire before giving everybody a stick where a large piece of meat could be seen. They had used the branches of the trees to make the sticks, after which Wolf used his fire to make them darker and make sure there was nothing on them to get on the food.
The team ate, drank, and rested a bit by sitting down on the grass and relaxing. Mia and the angels had managed to fit in quite nicely with Reign and the others, but the squabbling between Shadow and Liona would sometimes get in the way of relaxing, after which Reign and the others would get to the two and divide them.
"For crying out loud Shadow, you two are acting like a married couple that has lost all love, the hell is going on with you two, you banging behind everybody's back and are trying to cover it up like this?" Reign asked Shadow as he quietly whispered the second half of his sentence, which made Shadow stare at him with a deadpan expression on his face.
"F you, I would never get with a girl as annoying as she is."
"Yeah, you say that but that's what people who are in love usually say, I don't know, seems to me that-"
"Zip it, you bastard, I said I'm not!" Shadow said as he started choking Reign who started mimicking the sound of somebody that was losing breath.
As that was happening, Mia and the other two angels were also talking to Liona. Marcus was the one that did most of the teasing while Jane and Mia simply tried not to laugh at the poor girl who looked like she was getting scolded by her older brother.
As time passed, the team continued climbing. The monsters that they would run into now were all above level 90 and some were problematic for them, still, it wasn't anything they were unable to deal with, at least not yet.
In the 20+ hours they spent climbing, they had come across a multitude of monsters, most of which were nothing special, but there were some more powerful ones that were limited in the area they could move around in.
Multiple Tier II monsters bared the way up to the team who either had to pass quickly through the area or were forced to go around and use dangerous methods of climbing in order to not die a senseless death against a monster that was clearly many times stronger than them.
The short interaction with the giant snake showed them the dangers of going against a more powerful monster, even after the giant monster had taken tens of hits from Reign and the others, the only thing they were able to do was to slow it down, it was barely scratched from all of the attacks and still looked fine after they had managed to get away.
It was only after 5 more hours that the team ran into trouble. As they climbed onto yet another giant platform, the team could sense that something was wrong. It was as if there was a weird smell in the air that made them tense.
They walked deeper on the platform as they actually had to in order to continue climbing up. There was only one way up, and it was at the other end of the platform which was filled with trees and bushes, perfect for hiding.
Reign and the others only managed to get halfway to their goal before a change occurred.
The trees and bushes rustled as tens of monsters showed themselves to Reign and the others. Some even fell down from a platform that was above theirs and soon, there were over 100 monsters around them.
Each of the monsters was over level 90 and none were pushovers that Reign and the others could kill easily. The most they had faced before this was about 30 such enemies, and even that wasn't easy.
The party stared at the monsters that were visible targeting them, none of the monsters attacked since they were also able to sense that Reign and the others were dangerous, but they would definitely attack them the first chance they had.
The team leaned on each other as they made a circle and stared at the monsters while letting their mana go out in hopes of pressuring the monsters into not attacking them.
The strategy did little to make the monsters stop, however, and they simply continued staring at Reign and the others while keeping a short distance from them.
"What the hell, how are there so many of them suddenly?!" Shadow asked in anger as he stared at the monsters. They weren't in a situation that was impossible to get out of, nor was it impossible to win, but none of them wanted to use their marks or boosts right here when they would definitely need them later as well.
"I think I know." Reign said as he constricted his eyes while observing all the monsters. There were a couple of different kinds of monsters currently surrounding them, there were the usual animal-like monsters such as apes, wolves, and similar, while there were also those that were humanoid.
Some looked like humanoid animals, while others were a bit more bizarre or unique-looking.
"You know?" Wolf asked Reign who simply nodded in response.
"I can feel it, their souls, most of them had their souls tampered with, the weakest ones almost have their souls completely destroyed, while the stronger ones have what I can only explain as a tainted soul. Somebody played around with their souls and managed to manipulate them, and who do we know of that can do such a thing?" Reign asked as the others all had solemn expressions on their faces.
"So it's those guys, to think they would be one of the two teams inside of this place, I figured they were planning something since they were silent for so long, but how were they able to get so many of these monsters under their control?" Wolf asked as the team slowly moved toward where they needed to go in order to climb up.
"I don't think it's one of the two teams, but both of them." Reign suddenly said, his words making everybody take glance at him.
"There were two new teams that joined the challenge, I could sense that they were strong, both of them, but I didn't think they would be these guys, they surely hid well." Reign said as he observed the monsters that were slowly becoming more and more reckless.
"The two new teams, but wasn't it forbidden to work together with a team from the same territory?" Tank asked as Reign shook his head.
"It was, but that was for the challenge, you forget that inside this place, the rules are a bit different, which means that we are potentially not only facing two teams that wish to kill us but a lot of monsters that they had managed to control as well."
"Hell, I even doubt that this was planned, the two must have met in the arena during the hidden task and decided to join forces for this part of the hidden task, damn, this just gets harder and harder." Reign said as the team continues moving toward the other end of the platform while keeping a keen eye on the monsters around them.
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