"Then you'll have to ask me to cook for you. I've never cooked for anyone else before."

Little Ye really wanted to see what kind of expression Lin Ye would make when he tasted her boiled vegetables.

"Alright, please cook for me."

Lin Ye picked up the gray fragments from the ground. These silhouettes were quite easy to deal with, and he was even considering farming fragments here.

As for memories, Little Ye could remind him of the key information.

"There seems to be something different in the right front direction."

Little Ye suddenly spoke up.

Lin Ye walked several steps in that direction before spotting what Little Ye had mentioned.

It was a lead-gray tower that stretched straight up into the sky, impossible to see the top even when looking upward.

"Should we go inside?"

Little Ye asked.

"This doesn't look like an exit."

Lin Ye approached the tower. Although this place didn't appear to be an exit, there might be clues about an exit inside. At the very least, it seemed more reliable than wandering aimlessly through the mist.

The tower's main door was slightly ajar, with a gap wide enough for an average person to pass through.

Through the gap, he could see a dilapidated hall inside, but nothing else particularly noteworthy.

Lin Ye slipped through the gap and entered the tower's interior. The atmosphere inside felt heavy, making one unconsciously hold their breath. The first floor of the tower contained only an empty hall. Just as Lin Ye was searching for the staircase to the second floor, a girl's voice suddenly sounded from behind him.

"Senior, what took you so long to come in?"

Lin Ye whipped his head around to find a gray young girl standing behind him.

"Senior? Are you another acquaintance of mine?"

Lin Ye glanced at Little Ye. It seemed he knew quite a few people.

"I don't know. My memories aren't complete."

Little Ye wasn't certain whether this suddenly appearing girl was friend or foe.

"I'm your junior. We occasionally played games together, but now isn't the time for casual conversation. You're late—all the other contestants have already set off. Only the first person to reach the tower's top floor can obtain the reward."

The junior circled around to Lin Ye's back and pushed him toward the exact center of the tower.

"Other contestants? I don't need any reward. I'm looking for a way to escape this place."

Lin Ye had absolutely no interest in participating in this inexplicable activity.

"I can't say more. I can only tell you that there's no exit here."

The junior circled back to face Lin Ye, smiling as she waved goodbye.

"Don't lose to the others, or I'll be very angry."

Lin Ye wanted to say something more, but just as he opened his mouth, he was teleported to the tower's second floor.

The second floor was quite similar to the first—still an empty hall, except the surrounding walls were covered with strange symbols of some kind.

Lin Ye walked to the exact center of the second floor and stood there for a while, but nothing happened.

"What does this mean? Puzzle-solving challenges?"

Lin Ye wasn't particularly fond of puzzle games because his thought process always ended up slightly different from the author's intended approach.

"Maybe you need to find clues from these patterns?"

Little Ye made a reasonable deduction.

"But there are so many! We don't have that much time."

Lin Ye looked around. There were at least several thousand completely different symbols here—just looking at all of them would take hours.

"That is indeed quite a lot... but I feel like there's some kind of connection between these symbols..."

Little Ye stared at the symbols, murmuring to herself.

"There does seem to be some kind of connection..."

Lin Ye's gaze swept across the symbols. He wasn't carefully examining each individual symbol but rather trying to grasp the overall pattern.

This wasn't easy. His brain couldn't scan and analyze all the information like a computer—he could only rely on intuition to find connections. But this approach was practically like searching for a needle in a haystack. Unless he got extremely lucky, it would be difficult to find that subtle connection.

Just as Lin Ye was struggling to find that connection, Little Ye had already discovered it and drawn a certain rune.

Lin Ye's vision blurred, and he was teleported to the tower's third floor.

"Looked quite intimidating, but turned out to be so simple. You should be close too, right? After all, it wasn't that difficult."

Little Ye wanted to help Lin Ye save some time.

"...Yeah, I was just about to draw it."

Lin Ye looked around. The third floor of the tower was filled with red stagnant water areas everywhere, with various shaped flesh-and-blood creatures climbing out from them.

The center of the third floor was an empty space, surrounded by stagnant water on all sides. To reach that spot, he would first have to pass through several stagnant water areas while being swarmed by monsters spawning around him.

"Perfect timing to replenish some limbs."

Lin Ye sprayed to death a fish-head monster that lunged at him, then used Corpse Irregularization on it.

More flesh-and-blood monsters gathered around. Lin Ye continuously spat Corrosive Blood at them, then used Blood Burning to blast them to the ground.

But even more flesh-and-blood monsters emerged from the stagnant water areas. These monsters seemed endless, constantly respawning and lunging at Lin Ye from various positions.

Lin Ye transformed the fish-head monster into an Irregular Limb and attached it to his abdomen. He wasn't sure what kind of limb this counted as, only that it would be quite convenient to use this way.

Aiming the fish-head monster at the approaching flesh-and-blood creatures, Lin Ye retreated while spraying high-energy blood from the fish-head monster's body. This blood ignited and exploded in mid-air, blasting away the approaching flesh-and-blood creatures.

New monsters continuously spawned from the stagnant water areas, quickly depleting all the blood within the fish-head monster. More flesh-and-blood monsters lunged at Lin Ye, but they failed to notice that splattered blood had already covered the entire third floor.

"Blood Burning."

Lin Ye took a step forward. The nearby remnants and blood that hadn't yet disappeared began to burn and explode, shattering all the nearby flesh-and-blood creatures. Under Lin Ye's control, the blood from these creatures gathered in mid-air, forming a thick, dark red blood mass.

From then on, whenever monsters spawned, Lin Ye would control the mass to spray blood and blow up the monsters, then use the mass to absorb the blood from the monster corpses, continuously repeating this cycle.

Lin Ye had no idea how long he kept spraying. Finally, when the spawning rate from the stagnant water areas slowed down, he stopped the cycle and merged that blood with flesh chunks, creating an irregular arm that he inserted into his chest.

"Finally stopped respawning."

Lin Ye began collecting the red fragments around him. Due to the excessive consumption of corpses, the number of red fragments obtained this time was far fewer than the number of monsters killed.

'I'm almost at one hundred red fragments now. I can synthesize them with other fragments to create an ultimate skill, or I can gather exactly one hundred red fragments to see if using only one type of fragment for synthesis will produce a stronger skill.'

Lin Ye thought for a moment, then finally decided to gather exactly one hundred red fragments before synthesizing the ultimate skill. After all, mixing and matching was easy, but gathering one hundred identical fragments was difficult—there might be something different about it.

Lin Ye stepped through the stagnant water areas to reach the center of the third floor. This time, the stagnant water areas showed no activity—not even any tendrils emerged.

The teleportation triggered, and Lin Ye smoothly arrived at the tower's fourth floor.

'Huh? This place...'

Lin Ye was surprised to discover that the tower's fourth floor was completely different from the first three floors.