[Mission: Save 5 Captives.]
[~ New addition! ~ Difficulty choice after mission completion!]
Wow. Just wow. Was the Tower marketing its new feature or something? What was up with that?! Also, should Josh complain about it stealing his idea?
Meh, whatever. He would simply enjoy this Floor. Looking around, he took a deep breath. Ah, the comforting smell of a giant spider-infested forest. There were also great visuals, lots of darkness, boring vegetation, and big-ass flame-resistant trees.
Josh swore to himself that one day he'd come back here and burn it all to the ground. He'd find a way to accomplish such a petty task somehow.
He couldn't help but chuckle as he pictured himself one day clearing the Tower and getting a biography written. The very first sentence could be: "He climbed for love, for arson and the love of arson."
Before long, Josh was already done freeing his "fellow humans". They were as shadowy, blurry, and awkward as usual. But, hey, they clearly knew how to blend in human society with their multipurpose "THaNk yOu FeLLoW HuMan!".
They used it for greetings, used it for small talk, used it as a war cry, and even used it for deep conversations about the meaning of the universe. At least, that's what Josh wanted to believe.
Actually, that gave him an idea. What if one coded an 8-Ball-like program? But instead of a black billiard ball, it was one of these NPCs (?) and it would always give the same goddamn answer. How amazing would that be?!
What use would such a thing have? None whatsoever! That was the beauty of it. Art was like that, utterly useless at first glance but so amazing on a fundamental level, for it brought the feels (and fun).
[Ding- Rescued 5 captives! Mission completed! Please choose a difficulty. The options are-]
"Good, you're here. I'm picking impossible difficulty again. Ah, but make sure you update your rewards on the Boss beforehand. When I last cleared it, it was a placeholder one!"
[Cleared it? Calculating, calculating. The current humans cannot clear impossible difficulty. Impossib- Reward Missing. It has been cleared. Data says….ERROR ERROR ERROR!]
"Hey, are you alright there?"
[ERROR! - Possible data corruption. Analyzing. No data corruption detected. Current clear rate of 100% across the Tower. Deployment of temporary fix. Impossible difficulty renamed Possible difficulty. Fix over. Possible difficulty picked. Good luck.]
"…"
What the HELL?! What kind of fix was this?! The Tower had simply changed the name.
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The clear rate was presently 100%. It was very likely that only Josh had entered it. The data was likely extremely skewed, so why had it done such a drastic change?
"Hey, system! People will misunderstand if you write it like that! It's better if-….." Except the Tower Protocol was already gone.
How ridiculous! This meant that the Tower would now give the Normal, Hard and finally Possible difficulty. That would look so sketchy! Still, the clever ones would notice the problem with one look, thanks to the order.
There was no point bothering about such a small change. If Climbers couldn't notice such an obvious detail, then they'd probably get killed anyway later on. What mattered were the red tears in space appearing in the air. Josh was simply clasping his amulet, hoping for the worst.
But when he saw the number of spiders making their way to this dimension, he began cheering. They all looked so damn beautiful! There were so many that they kept colliding with one another. It reminded him of bumper cars. Perhaps he should call it bumper spiders?
Josh began his killing spree. Of course, before doing so, he didn't forget to equip some very sweet spider shoes. There were now so many spiders that they could cover the entire sky with their webs.
It was a good thing that the monsters lacked any sense of coordination. In fact, they all kept aiming directly at him whenever they shot their web. This made it so he had ample room to dodge.
The amulet was working like a charm! On average, it almost doubled the monster spawn. That combined with the Impossible, eh Possible difficulty it gave great results. It was a monster fest!
Now, he simply needed to figure out how long it would take to summon the Boss. Earlier, it had taken him days. This time it only took 3 hours. How magical! The impressive White Dragon-Devouring Spider appeared once more.
Then ensued an extremely hard fight that ….or not. Josh simply murdered it the same way he had in the past, by using the power of friendship! Yes, using allies as meat shields counted!
As the Boss fell, Josh couldn't help but to devoutly pray. "RNGod, please grant this poor Climber the white spider set. Please and thank you!" As he saw four white glows, he felt as much happiness as a child eating cookies.
<Rank E+ – White Spider Gloves>:
<Rank E+ – White Spider Bracers>:
<Rank E+ – White Spider Pants>:
<Rank E+ – White Spider Boots>:
Hell yeah! Now he finally had seven- eh, four pieces of the set. As he wore it all, he could feel…absolutely nothing. He either needed more pieces, or that was already the limit of this set. Oh well, there would be no use thinking about it. He chucked all the loot inside his weird cocoon.
"LET'S GO!! Eh, I mean, teleport out!"
Then Josh entered once more. From now on, it would be rinse and repeat until he managed to get his full set. Or was it? By playing around with the cursed amulet, Josh realized one thing. He figured out how the monster increase worked.
The effect was active in a medium-sized area around the wearer, and it actually persisted for a little while with a constant refresh. What did this mean? Well, Josh could run to a red glowing portal, and it would start spewing more monsters out for a short while.
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He simply began running everywhere to curse the portals, so they spawned even more monsters. How beautiful! Spiders all around, white stuff flying everywhere, lots of targets.
After 2 hours, he finally managed to summon the Boss. It appeared as a super Epic Big Daddy spider and died not long after like a bitch. This time Josh prayed for missing pieces. It dropped *Drum Roll* … Gloves, Bracers, and a Helmet!
With this, it brought his set pieces to 5! Wow! Josh couldn't help but smile as he checked his status.
<White Spider Set Effect (3)>
Crawling of the White Spider: White and Sticky (5 min) Cooldown 1 hour.
<White Spider Set Effect (5)>
Calling of the White Spider: Phantom Ally Cooldown 1 hour.
So there was a set effect at (5), but there was no duration to the ability itself. Did this mean that Josh would be able to invoke a companion to fight by his side?! He couldn't wait to test it. He reset the Floor once more.
He handed the amulet to Navi this time, tying it up around its white floating prism body. "Alright, make a round and make sure to go near as many portals as possible." The fairy would have nodded if it had a head.
The great thing was that the curse itself didn't count as an attack at all. This meant that it wouldn't draw aggro from the spiders.
As a spider fell in front of him, Josh adopted a fighting stance. "Alright, the moment of truth. Here goes nothing. Activate ability!" He shouted it as if that would change anything.
He expected a pet to spawn. Nope. The reality was far weirder. On his back appeared a white spider. It was at shoulder level and see-through. It looked to be some kind of phantomatic existence.
In fact, he now looked like he had 8 spider legs and a spider head popping out of him. It kept twirling its legs in the air for what purpose he ignored. It was weird, but Josh wouldn't disregard it for such trivialities. "Hey there, what are your abilities, little one?"
It simply looked at him and then screeched loudly! "REEE!" What?! It kept going too! Josh observed his new companion. It really didn't do anything besides that. The worst was that the surrounding spiders did not react to it whatsoever.
The spiders were still dying just as fast, spawning just as fast, and- actually…That is when he noticed something. Whenever he went near a portal, its spawn rate would suddenly skyrocket.
That's when he thought of a crazy theory. What if this amulet's curse affected anyone that had so much as touched it for a while? How great was that?!
That is when white boots, gloves, and bracers spawned. Well, technically, the Boss did and instantly turned into loot. Sadly all items were repeats of what he already had. Yes, he chucked it all in the cocoon. It had taken 1 hour and a half to beat the boss, and he now had an idea to improve his time.
He respawned, and he thoroughly rubbed himself with the amulet, trying to make the bad luck stick to his very pores. He did the same for the godly rat and Navi. Both of them couldn't even protest.
"Alright! Go forth and spread out across the entire forest! Get all the monsters to me!" Josh declared gusto!
If the previous scene already looked crazy with the portals spawning spiders in industrial quantities, well, now it had the speed of someone using copy-paste to send well wishes to the distant family at Christmas. Or so he imagined…
He kept going and going. It was a brutal and gory dance realized at the expense of the poor monsters that were just trying to live their lives. But they were simulations either way.
This time Josh exterminated the Boss while using the Calling of the white spider. It surprisingly didn't do shit. It just screeched at the Boss, the Boss screeched back, and that was it.
Josh couldn't help but imagine that the dialogue had probably gone something like.:
- Phantom:
Hello from the other side (of the human).
I must have screeched a thousand times.
I'm just stuck here on his spine.
Sorry for killing you as he Climbs.
-Boss: Imma murder you bitches.
Maybe? Josh didn't know, for he didn't speak dead spider. But he turned down the ability, for it made him tired somehow.
Anyway, this time he got something new: <Rank E+ – White Spider Leg>! Hell yeah! There was still no extra set bonus at 6 pieces, but he was also clearly missing the chest piece.
He exited the tower and reentered it. But this time, not only did he use allies, but he also used spiders to rub bad luck on them before letting them roam free. At this point, even Josh himself wasn't sure how he was coping with so many of them.
Actually, it was their lack of coordination that made it possible. Still, it was especially hard, even by his standards. This time it only took him one hour to make the white spider spawn. Josh was smiling relaxed, but then he noticed something weird.
In the distance, he was not seeing 1 White Dragon-Devouring Spider…but 10?! What the HELL?! It turned out this curse amulet was very effective! Shit….