CHAPTER 212: 8TH FLOOR [2]

Chapter 208: 8th Floor [2]

The teleportation to Floor 8 was different.

Usually, there was a sensation of cold, a digital shiver.

This time, it was like stepping into an oven.

We materialized on a ridge of jagged, red rock.

The air was thick, shimmering with heat distortion.

Above, the sky was a relentless, cloudless expanse of bleached white, dominated by a sun that looked too large, too close.

[Floor 8: The Scorched Wastes]

[Objective: Reach the Northern Oasis (20km)]

[Environmental Hazard: Extreme Heat]

"Hot," Kaelen gasped immediately, doubling over.

"It’s... so hot."

"Status check," I barked.

[Status Effect Applied: Scorching Heat]

[Stamina drain increased by 200%. Mana regeneration reduced by 50%.]

"It’s an endurance floor," Seraphina said, wiping sweat from her brow mere seconds after arriving. She squinted at the horizon.

It was a sea of red dunes and black rock. "Twenty kilometers? In this? We’ll dehydrate before we make it halfway."

"That’s the point," I said. "The Tower isn’t just testing our combat specs. It’s testing our sustain."

I looked at the team. Alex was already sweating heavily in his plate armor.

Kaelen, with his low constitution, looked like he was going to faint.

Even the Twins, usually unfazed, looked uncomfortable in their black leather.

"We can’t run this," I said.

"We walk. Slow pace. Gideon, conserve your decay mana; it won’t help here. Kaelen, do not cast cooling spells on everyone. You’ll burn your mana pool fighting the environment, and you’ll pass out from exhaustion."

"But we’re burning up!" Kaelen protested.

"We’ll manage," I said. "Follow me."

I started walking.

In the game, Floor 8 was the "Great Filter" for speed-running teams.

The heat mechanic was brutal. Teams that tried to sprint, relying on speed buffs or ice magic to cool themselves, always hit a wall around the 10km mark.

Their mana ran dry, their stamina bottomed out, and they were left crawling in the sand, debuffed to oblivion.

The trick wasn’t to fight the heat. It was to find the safe spots.

I led them down the ridge, into the dunes. The sand was loose, shifting underfoot, making every step a chore.

"Chief," Alex panted after twenty minutes. "My armor... it’s cooking me."

"Endure it," I said, not looking back. "If you take it off, the sun damage debuff is worse than the heat exhaustion."

We trudged on. The landscape was monotonous, a hellscape of red and orange.

Somewhere to our east, I saw a flash of blue light.

"That’s Team Azure Blade," Seraphina noted, her elf-like vision picking them out.

"Leon’s team."

I activated [Quantum Analysis Mind] and zoomed in.

Leon was at the front, radiating a massive aura of [Holy Ice]—a fusion spell he was struggling to maintain.

He was creating a bubble of cool air around his team. They were running, moving fast.

"They’re moving twice our speed," Seraphina said, a hint of worry in her voice. "They’re going to beat us to the exit."

"They’re going to crash," I said coldly. "Look at their healer."

Leon’s healer was stumbling, being half-carried by their tank.

The mana cost of maintaining a temperature differential in this environment was exponential. Leon was burning his candle at both ends.

"They’re sprinting a marathon," I said. "Let them go."

We kept our slow, plodding pace. 3km. 5km.

The team was flagging. Kaelen was stumbling. Even Seraphina had stopped scanning the horizon and was just watching her boots.

"Water," Gideon croaked. His skin, usually pale, was flushed a sickly red. "I need... water."

"Canteens are empty," Alex rasped. "We drank it all in the first hour."

"Michael," Seraphina said, her voice tight. "We can’t keep this up. We need to stop. We need to find shelter."

"There is no shelter," I said. "Not on the map."

"Then we’re going to die of heatstroke in a simulation!" she snapped.

"We need to turn back to the start point, regenerate, and try again with Ice potions."

"No," I said. I stopped walking. I scanned the horizon.

To the naked eye, it was just more dunes.

But I wasn’t looking with naked eyes. I was looking for a landmark.

’In the game, at kilometer marker 7, there’s a rock formation shaped like a cracked skull. Due west of that, hidden behind a mirage field, is the only resource node on the map.’

There. A jagged black rock, protruding from the sand like a broken tooth.

"We turn west," I said.

"West?" Alex looked at his map. "The exit is North-East. West is just... more desert."

"West," I repeated.

"You’re leading us off the path," Seraphina said, her voice rising. .

"This is madness. We’re dying of thirst, and you want to take a detour?"

"Seraphina," I said, turning to her. My face was dry, not sweating. My [Aura Dominion], kept on a low, internal cycle, was regulating my body temperature perfectly. "When have I been wrong?"

She stared at me. The sweat dripped down her nose.

She hated me in that moment. She hated my calm.

She hated my arrogance.

But she remembered the Golem. She remembered the Puzzle. She remembered the Ambush.

"...Never," she whispered, hating the word.

"Then walk."

We turned west. We walked for another kilometer, away from the objective.

The heat seemed to intensify. The air shimmered so violently it looked like liquid.

"I see nothing," Gideon mumbled. "Just sand."

"Keep walking," I ordered.

We approached a massive dune. The air in front of it was warping, a classic desert mirage reflecting the sky. It looked like a wall of heat.

"It’s a dead end," Alex groaned. "Chief, it’s a dune."

"Walk through it," I said.

"Through the sand?"

"Through the air."

I stepped forward, directly into the shimmering distortion field.

And vanished.

"Michael!" Seraphina cried out.

From my perspective, the world flipped.

I stepped through the illusion barrier.

The blinding white sun vanished, replaced by the cool, dappled shade of palm trees.

The sound of wind was replaced by the sound of water.

I stood on the edge of a small, hidden oasis. A crystal-clear spring bubbled up from the rocks, pooling in a stone basin before disappearing back into the earth.

Trees laden with heavy, purple fruits lined the water’s edge.

[Discovery: The Hidden Spring]

[Bonus: Environmental Mastery]

I stuck my head back through the illusion. To the team, I appeared out of thin air, half my body sticking out of the heat haze.

"Get in here," I said.

They stumbled through, one by one.

As they crossed the threshold, the reaction was visceral.

Kaelen fell to his knees, sobbing with relief as the cool air hit him.

Alex dropped his shield and ran—actually ran—for the water, dunking his entire head in. Gideon stared at the trees, his eyes wide..

"Water..." Seraphina whispered. She walked to the spring, cupped her hands, and drank. She let out a moan of pure ecstasy.

"It’s cold," she said, looking at me. "It’s actually cold."

"Mana Spring," I explained, leaning against a palm tree and plucking a purple fruit. "Restores HP, MP, and applies the [Hydrated] buff. Stops stamina drain for 4 hours."

I tossed the fruit to Kaelen. "Eat. It tastes like grapes and mana potions."

The team descended on the oasis like starving wolves.

They drank, they ate, they splashed water on their faces. The red flush faded from their skin. Their breathing slowed.

Their mana bars refilled rapidly.

We sat there for an hour. It was paradise in hell.

"How?" Seraphina asked, sitting beside me, holding a half-eaten fruit. She looked at me with that same look she’d had in the courtyard—like I was a puzzle she couldn’t solve. .

"The map shows nothing here. The sensor grid showed nothing."

"The heat distorts mana sensors," I lied. "But heat also rises. I looked for the spot where the heat shimmer was... wrong. Inconsistent. It meant there was a cold pocket behind it."

"You saw a variance in the heat shimmer," she repeated flatly. "From a kilometer away."

"I have good eyes," I said.

She shook her head, a small, incredulous smile touching her lips. "You’re a monster, Wilson."

"I’m a survivor," I said. "Check the rankings."

She pulled up her interface. Her eyes widened.

[FLOOR 8 STATUS]

Team Azure Blade (Leon): Distance 12km. Status: Critical. Healer Down. Moving at 20% speed.

Team Inferno (Eric): Distance 10km. Status: Stationary. Resting.

Team Ironclad (Magnus): Distance 8km. Status: Heavy Fatigue.

Team Anomaly (Michael): Distance 8km (Location Unknown). Status: Peak Condition.

"They’re dying out there," Alex said, looking at Leon’s status. "They sprinted, and now they’re crawling."

"And we," I said, standing up and stretching, "are fully buffed, fully hydrated, and immune to the heat for the next four hours."

I looked at my team. They were no longer the ragged, exhausted group that had stumbled in here. They were fresh. They were ready.

"Fill the canteens," I ordered. "Pack as much fruit as you can carry. We’re finishing this walk."

We stepped back out into the furnace.

But this time, it didn’t bite. The [Hydrated] buff shimmered around us, a cool, protective film. We didn’t trudge; we marched. We moved with a steady, relentless pace.

We passed Magnus’s team at the 12km mark.

They were huddled under a cloak held up by spears, trying to share a single, warm bottle of water. They looked at us—marching in formation, looking fresh, eating purple fruits—with expressions of utter, hollow disbelief.

Magnus didn’t even have the energy to glare. He just stared, his lips cracked and bleeding.

We passed Eric’s team at the 15km mark. They had stopped trying to move and were just waiting for their cooldowns.

Eric watched us pass, his eyes narrowed, calculating. He saw the fruit. He saw the lack of sweat. He realized, instantly, that he had missed something crucial.

And finally, at the 18km mark, just in sight of the exit portal, we passed Team Azure Blade.

Leon was carrying his healer on his back. He was staggering. His holy aura was gone. He looked like a man who had run through fire.

He heard our footsteps and turned.

He saw me. Walking calmly. Hands in pockets. Kuro/Nox asleep on my shoulder.

"Michael?" he rasped, his voice a dry croak. "How...?"

I stopped. I didn’t mock him. I didn’t gloat.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a canteen filled with the Oasis water. I tossed it to him.

"You’re overworking yourself, Leon," I said quietly.

"A hero doesn’t have to burn himself to light the way."

He caught the canteen. He looked at it, then at me.

"Why?" he asked. "We’re enemies. It’s a race."

"It’s Floor 8," I said. "We have twelve more to go. I need you strong enough to make it interesting."

I signaled my team. "Move out."

We walked past him, towards the swirling blue vortex of the exit.

Behind us, I heard the sound of Leon uncorking the canteen, and the gasp of relief as he drank.

[ Floor 8 Cleared ]

[ Time: 4 hours, 12 minutes. ]

[ Rank: 1st. ]

[ Bonus: Hidden Oasis Discovery. ]

We were the first to the exit. Again.

But this time, we hadn’t just outsmarted them. We had outlasted them.

As we stepped into the portal, Seraphina looked at me.

"You gave him the water," she said. "Why? You could have buried him here."

"Because," I said, staring into the swirling blue light, "beating a weakened opponent proves nothing. I want to beat them when they’re at their best."

And, secretly, I knew that Leon owed me now. A life debt, small but significant.

In the game of the Tower, favors were the most valuable currency of all.

"Floor 9," I said. "The Mimic’s Game. Stay sharp."

The world dissolved.

(To be Continued)