Chapter 851 – The Ground Flour!
“Shall we begin?” Micheal clapped his hands twice after the Q&A had concluded.
Without further ado, he teleported everyone to the first floor of the Tower of Ancestors.
Felix opened his eyes to the sight of an ancient designed great hall.
There were many magnificent artistic paintings on the walls and crystal chandeliers hanging from above.
Weirdly enough, the hall was connected to a library, dining rooms, guest rooms, and even bathrooms.
On the hall, there were many desks, tables, chairs, and other furniture of all sizes, making it seem pretty crowded.
Felix ignored everything and focused on the twelve sets of stairs that were placed neatly next to each other on the wall before them.
“Each staircase leads to a different segment of the tower.” Micheal explained, “Although the floors are randomized, it doesn’t mean that the floors haven’t already been picked for each segment.”
“In other words, the moment you choose a staircase, you will be deciding how your game’s experience will be for you.”
“What’s the point of telling us about this?” Timewatcher asked…He was the captain of the shadowborn team.
The others were pretty confused too.
In their eyes, they had no idea how to find out what’s sorts of challenges were prepared for them behind those staircase…It was all about luck.
“I am telling you this because the game have started the moment you teleported here.” Micheal smiled widely, “The ground floor is also part of the tower. This meant, you will be required to pass a challenge to climb to the next floor!”
The players were stunned.
Based on the rules’ details, all of them believed that they would be needed to pick a staircase randomly and start the journey.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at all.
“In this great spacious floor, there are hundreds of clues hidden about the first ten floors behind the gates. Believe me, those clues are a must if you want to understand the condition to pass the floors much faster.”
The moment they heard so, the players started to squint their eyes around them, realizing that this giant hall wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
One of the dangers in the floor weren’t the missions, but the fact that they had no idea about the condition to pass those missions!
It was like being given a quest without the requirement to pass it.
Thus, those clues were critical to their climb if Micheal didn’t exaggerate the Intel in them.
“If you want to seek those clues, feel free to spend as much time as possible.” Micheal smiled, “But, you will not be able to enter any staircase unless you find the key to unlock the gates leading to the first floor.”
“By the way, you can’t use abilities or engage in combat.” Micheal warned, “Any troublemaker will be severely punished.”
‘So, that’s the challenge…This is getting too complex at the very beginning.’ Thoughtful, Felix rested his chin on his palm.
He understood that finding the clues would be utterly useless individually.
After all, no matter how many clues they found, if they weren’t applicable to the segment they were entering, they would serve no purpose.
In other words, they needed to find one of the twelve keys first and start trading clues with other players to collect as much Intel as possible about their corespondent segment.
“What happens if we find two keys or more?” The Magnifier asked…He was the captain of Dune’s team.
“You can hide them, you can play with them, and you can even sell them or trade them for favors with other teams.” Micheal stressed, “But no matter what you do with them, you can’t leave the hall with more than one key.”
It was impossible to block players from entering their segments by stealing their keys.
“You can remain in the ground floor for no more than 6 hours. After six hours, you will be teleported to randomized segments.” Micheal added, “Last but not least, there are no clues related to the ancestral floors, so don’t bother seeking them.”
The players didn’t react weirdly about those last couple rules. The primogenitors didn’t have all the time in the world to wait until they find the keys.
Plus, there might be teams that would hold other hostages by finding more than one key and remaining in the ground floor with them.
Seeing that no one had any more questions, Micheal glanced at his bracelet and wondered, “What are you still waiting for? The clock is ticking.”
‘Spread out and focus on the keys first.’ Felix ordered his teammates after seeing that most players started to flip the entire hall upside down.
Although the heavenly turtles and dragons were gigantic, the hall still made them appear tiny like it was built in mind for hosting titans.
This implied that Felix resembled an ant traveling through a mansion!
‘Abilities can’t be used, so it will be difficult for me to check the walls and ceiling up close…I will leave it to my team.’ Felix thought as he squinted his eyes on the red carpet.
The majority of the players went to check on the paintings, chandelier, tables, chairs, and other furniture.
Some even went to the library and started flipping books or went to the bathroom and checked the sewage system.
No one in his right mind would check the carpet first before dealing with the usual suspects of hidden clues.
Felix first activated his infrared vision and started to scan the red carpet for any sort of radiation. Unfortunately, nothing strange came up in his radar.
‘Make sense, many races have infrared vision.’
Instead of giving up, he switched to his other visions, starting with his ultraviolet vision. After a thorough checkup, he was met with no results again.
“Jackpot!!”
Suddenly, an excited loud bellow resounded through the hall.
Felix dropped his search and looked at a stunning male spirit fox, who was grinning widely while showing a gray small key to his teammates.
He was standing next to a flipped desk that had a hidden compartment on one of its drawers.
“Lucky bastard.”
“Check all the desks now!”
“Damn it! They can enter the tower right away and put a sizable distance from us.”
The players weren’t pleased at all that the first key had been found so soon.
They understood that finding the clues might be helpful but not mandatory.
Thus, Kumiho’s team were free to start climbing the tower while they were still at the ground level.
Fortunately for them, Kumiho’s team weren’t that rush.
They switched their focus to locating the clues, hoping that it would belong to their segment of the tower.
Felix ignored the players, who started focusing on the desks and kept using his visions on the carpet.
He was certain that such a vast carpet was at least hiding a few clues underneath it.
However, after he failed with his Gama vision and x-ray vision, he started to lose a bit of confidence in his judgement…Especially, when the rest of the players kept finding one clue after the other.
Even Webor had gotten lucky and managed to secure a clue that was written with small letters next to the signature on one of those magnificent paintings.
Felix didn’t check on his clue as he asked them to keep gathering as much as possible now, and they would discuss them when they find their key.
‘Frequency vision, heh.’ Felix chuckled in derision as he used the last type of vision he possessed.
He almost never used this vision due to the lake of proper situations that needed him to pop it off.
In this ancient looking castle, he found it extremely unluckily that he would be able to see radio frequencies or at least waves of the same low frequencies.
He was absolutely right…
He found not a single frequency that was being emitted under the carpet.
‘Well, this was a complete waste of ti…Hmm?’
However, just as he was about to turn it off, he managed to pick up multiple faint frequencies coming from different directions.
Yet, the most shocking frequency was actually being emitted from within the right most staircase.
‘The hell?’ Curious and somewhat bewildered, he looked at the other staircases and found out that nothing was being emitted from them.
‘Don’t tell me?’ Speechless, Felix swiftly sprinted towards the staircase, attracting some players’ attention.
When they saw that he was heading towards the right most staircase, their hearts sunk to the bottom.
“F*ck, did he find a key also?!”
“Most likely!”
“I don’t think so? I had my eyes on him for a while now, and he was merely staring at the carpet without moving an inch.”
Upon hearing so, the nearby players had gotten even more confused about Felix’s sudden interest on the staircase.
‘Captain, you found something?!’ Webor asked excitedly.
‘I don’t know.’ Felix replied while climbing the stairs hastily.
Micheal didn’t ban players from climbing the stairs since without the key to open the gate, it would serve no purpose to do so.
After a few moments, Felix was met with a humongous dark wooden gate that was decorated with giant dark nails at the sides.
Felix didn’t bother glancing at anything besides the large keyhole at the center of the gate.
‘You got to be f*cking kidding me.’
When his eyes landed on a black key that was fitted perfectly in the keyhole, he was left at loss for words.
One of the twelve keys was hidden at the gate itself…The most obvious location yet at the same time, the most shrewd place to hide it in!!
