Exploration: The 3rd Floor and Powers (1)
---- Last Time ----
I gave a half-bow to the Guardian, "Thank you for the warning Great One." Then straightening myself I said, "I agree to the contract."
"Very well boy, but be careful as the other Guardians may very well ask for you to agree to many terms when you go to make contracts on their respected Floors," the Guardian gave a final warning.
I nodded my head and proceeded to walk through the portal that had appeared behind me, hopefully taking me to the long-awaited 3rd Floor.
---- Present -- Caleb's POV ----
As I walked through the portal I expected to find myself blinded by light but was surprisingly greeted with very little of it at all. What I did find was myself standing in front of a town in the middle of a forest.
'Where the fuck am I?' I thought to myself before a rush of information to my head almost knocked me on my ass for the third time today. 'Ok then, that is going to be annoying. I guess this should be the main town of the 3rd Floor. It's called Fuji, not that I care cause I won't be here for more than a week.'
I walked over to a tree and sat on the ground while resting my back against it to go over the information I had from the Guardian. 'Sigh, this Floor is too weak,' I thought to myself, 'It seems the most powerful monsters on this Floor can be compared to an E-Rank Magician[1] according to Tatsuya's information. I guess that makes sense, after all, this is only the 3rd Floor. I would be concerned if the creatures here were stronger than that on one of the lowest Floors.' Getting up, I head towards the gate expecting to be stopped or something but to my surprise I'm able to just walk right through into the town.
'This place is bigger than I had thought.' I had looked through the Guardian's memories and the size of the "town" was more comparable to a city. As I walked in the direction of the Residential Area I thought back on my meeting with the Guardian. 'I'm really glad that I have the Guardian's knowledge otherwise I would probably have to spend some time searching for a place to stay,' I stopped in my tracks, 'Wait... do I have any money?'
A quick look into my pocket told me that I had 1,000 points[2] in my account. 'I don't know who or where I got these points but that settles that problem. I mean sure, I could go towards the Hunting Grounds today but I want to explore my abilities a little and get some rest before I do anything.'
Now in the Residential Zone, I walked towards the nearest apartment building and went inside. I wasn't going to go searching for a super nice place right now for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I had little money and was gonna order a lot of food so I wanted a cheap place. Secondly, I already knew where and how much the good apartments cost here thanks to my knowledge from the Guardian.
As I walked up to the front desk I was greeted by the receptionist, an average looking girl with shoulder-length black hair and green eyes. "Hello sir, can I assume you wanted to rent a room?"
"Yeah, I wanna rent a room for tonight and tomorrow."
"Of course sir," she replied, "We have many rooms available. Is there anyone you are looking for in specific?"
"Preferably one off of the ground floor," I said.
"Alright then sir, you will have room 23 on the 2nd floor. You can go ahead and head on up and your account will be deducted the appropriate points and the room linked to your pocket for the duration of your stay," she said with a cheery voice, "Enjoy your room."
I gave a quick, thanks, before heading up and into my room, locking it behind me with my pocket and flopping down on my bed.
'First things first, I need to figure out how to open and access my Inner Wor...' and just like that, I was in a vast and empty grassland. "Holy shit! I didn't even feel any movement and I just appeared here!" I took a minute to examine my surroundings. "So is this it? Is this grassland all I have to start with? Actually, on second thought, this isn't so bad. I have space as far as the eye can see to do whatever I want with. Before I do anything here though, I want to experiment with the entry and exit of this space. It'll be awesome if I can appear anywhere in this place." So with a thought, I left my internal world and reappeared on the bed in my room. 'So can I only exit to the exact position I was in or can I move a bit? Let's find out.'
After a few more experiments which included bringing a nightstand into my world to test where I could appear in there, I had mostly figured out travel involving my internal world. Sitting down on my bed I went over my new information in my head. 'So I am apparently able to appear anywhere within my internal world, that's nice. The only problem is when I exit. I can appear anywhere within 1 meter of my entry point but that's it.' I let out a sigh as my head hits the pillows, 'I'll figure the rest out tomorrow, I'm tired right now.' With that, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
---- The Following Morning -- Caleb's POV ----
I woke up the next morning with a headache. 'I don't know if the headache stemmed from moving through my internal world so much or from the excess of knowledge from Tatsuya's memories. One thing is for certain though,' I thought as I took a whiff of my clothes, 'I need a shower.'
----
I left the bathroom feeling extremely refreshed. 'Time to find some food,' I thought as I left my apartment building.
----
As I was leaving the Residential District I was going over a map of the 3rd Floor that was in the Guardian's info dump. Looking at the map I couldn't help but think, 'Wow, this setting reminds me of a national park from back home.'
Fuji is the shape of a big circle that is 3 kilometers in diameter and divided into quarters. You enter through the South quarter which is called the Test District. Here you can find information on a lot of things within the Tower and arenas where the Floor Advancement Tests take place. To the West is the Residential District which holds all the apartment buildings and living spaces. The East quarter is the Commercial District where you'll find shops for all your needs. Finally is the North quarter where the ruler of the Floor is located along with any governmental or political buildings.
As I enter the Commercial District in search of food, I bring up my pocket to check my balance and see that I'm left with 985 points showing that the room I was renting was 15 points a night.
'Hmm, according to the Guardian's information the Test is a 3v3 battle and each person must spend 250 points to enter the test. This means that I need to find myself two teammates and a total of 750 points for the three of us to enter. Sigh,' I stopped in front of a restaurant. 'First, I'm gonna fill my stomach.'
----
"I should go test my abilities against the locals," I say to myself as I'm leaving the restaurant. I sit down on a bench outside and access, like a slides presentation, the information the Guardian so kindly shoved into my head.
"'The Howlings can be considered a mix between howler monkeys and gorillas. They attack in groups and the strongest ones use sonic attacks that are capable of knocking out most beginners on the Floor,'" I think over what I know about sonic attacks from Tatsuya's information, 'I'll have to test out a few ideas on them.'
"'The next up to bat is the Scorpios. These giant mosquitoes come pre-equipped with scorpion tails with stingers all in order to make your experience more painful. They range from about .5 to 1.07 meters in size and attack in swarms of about 6 to 12 bugs. In case their numbers aren't enough to kill you their tail stinger, along with their proboscis[3], holds a paralysis poison that can paralyze most beginners and allow them to swarm your immovable body to suck out every last drop of your blood,'" I stop again and think up a few ideas to test my resistance to their poison.
"'The finally to our monster encyclopedia is your plain jane Giant Centipedes. These suckers grow anywhere from 1.5 to 4 meters long and normally attack alone due to their tendency to attack and eat their fellow species.'" Huh, cannibals, interesting, 'Note to self, just vaporize the centipedes.'
'Well no point waiting any longer,' and with that I got up and made my way towards the town gate.
——
[1] - From what I could find from Fandoms and Wikis, Magicians in I.A.M.H. are categories from E to A-Rank. There are exceptions of course, like Tatsuya. Tatsuya was the first Strategic-Class Magician introduced in the series. Strategic-Class Magicians are people who have magical abilities surpassing all conventional weaponry or magic and can cause an enormous amount of change or damage in a large-scale area.
[2] - Points are the currency used in Tower of God.
[3] - The proboscis is the spear-like nose of the mosquito.