As I finally completed the ninth floor, I looked back on the climb I had done so far and realised how incorrect my guess had been. I hadn’t been close to the claimant at all. Even by distance alone, I had misjudged how far up the tower I had gone and how much further I had to go. Though, that wasn’t necessarily my fault.

  My muscles ached. The climb from the sixth floor to the seventh didn’t take me very long after defeating the lightning elemental, but my pace had slowed massively after that. The enemies were all more powerful than on the prior floors and that naturally slowed my progress.

  The seventh floor was a floor I had decided to dub a “swarm floor”, where elementals simply would not stop appearing. As opposed to a “boss floor” like the even numbered, these endurance battles were frustrating. The individual enemies weren’t much of an issue but when they appeared in the dozens it started to get dangerous. I had to be on full alert while clearing out the creatures which appeared. When they were all defeated, the door to the next level was unsealed and I could progress.

  The eighth floor had another elemental boss, this time a straight up Storm Elemental. It was stronger than the lightning elemental from two floors lower. That meant little with my newly improved mental imagery. My skills flowed from me like water as Spirit danced within the mana. I hadn’t noticed how much my fragile inner world had caused me to hold back until the shackles fell away. The storm elemental didn’t know what hit it.

  It was on the ninth floor that I found the limit of my unending push. Another swarm floor with almost none of the more “basic” cold enemies I had faced in the tundra. Nearly all of the elementals at this point had some aspect of storm-based energy. There were cloud elementals which were even more obnoxious to kill than the sleet ones and attacked by trying to choke me but they weren’t the worst. Floor nine introduced my newest nemesis, a thunder elemental.

  Shaped like someone had torn a piece of Picasso’s angular art from the frame and then given life, the nearly two-dimensional things were surprisingly quiet when they wanted to be. Almost impossible to see, they were not even hard to kill. In fact, I had only managed to defeat two on my own. The others had all taken themselves out as a thunder elemental’s only attack was apparently to blow itself up with the loudest noise I had ever heard.

  Even when my ears had been bleeding from one, the sound from the next somehow magically ignored the damage to my hearing. Of course, nothing else could be heard through the deafness so it was debilitating as well as incredibly painful. The System allowed my hearing to recover, but I had used another two swigs of health potion to keep myself alive in some of the stickier moments. I now only had two left.

  However, all of that was expected and far from the main reason it was taking me longer than expected.

  The real cause had taken me some time to wrap my head around. After completing three of the extended spaces, I was certain that the rooms were larger than they should be. Perhaps they always had been, but after the sixth floor things got weird. It was quickly apparent that space was playing silly buggers on floor seven, which felt twice as big as floor six. Floor eight was then double the size of seven, and nine continued the trend. There was arguably a small silver lining in the fact that the next rooms were much larger than the ones preceding but it only served to further piss me off.

  The only vindication the first nine levels of the tower had given me was a level of my own. It had taken a while, but upon the defeat of the storm elemental mini-boss and completion of the ninth floor it finally happened.

  And it was worth the wait.

  Ding! Level up! +27 Attribute points! +8 Command Attribute +6 Regeneration Attribute, +5 Strength and Recovery Attributes, +4 Agility, Power and Resilience Attributes, +3 Dexterity and Perception Attributes!

  The feeling of this one level up was completely staggering. Just looking at the numbers was exciting, maybe even intimidating. My first thought had been to go for one hundred points in Command but I held myself back to do some tests before I made any decisions. As I let my health and mana recover while waiting on the ninth floor, I could hardly take my eyes off the attributes.

  As far as my current body went, I was a demi-god when compared to myself before the System’s arrival. I didn’t need anything, but whether I was best served with a larger mana pool or something else was up for debate. I often found that I would prefer more Regeneration than total mana pool. Bringing my entire mana pool for use in a skill at once was difficult but I had many abilities which were demanding on a per second basis. I could always do with more Recovery, Regeneration or Resilience but they also weren’t especially attractive upgrades. Command was winning out because it was the only attribute I could push over the one hundred mark now that I had hit the threshold for grade zero.

  I crushed some of the loose ice scattered around still, the room so cold it didn't melt even after an hour or two of rest. A large block crumbled to dust and water in moments in my grip. It was barely even a test, but I didn’t really need one either. Fighting the elementals had been a slog but it had taught me a lot about myself. My Strength was in a good place, and could be made even greater with Infusion and other abilities. My Agility and Dexterity were also in a great place.

  When it came to physical combat, I felt nearly unstoppable at this point. Between my attributes, an incredible weapon which worked alongside me and the trial-by-fire training method of surviving the dungeon, I was a beast. The physically strongest elementals were the massive ice-based ones, and even they couldn’t stand up to a serious attack from myself and the Jingu Bang.

  A part of that dominance was my powerful skills but it was a rare enemy which pushed me to use all of them. Within the tower so far that honour went only to the lightning elemental. Even the storm elemental mini-boss had only required a few seconds of focus, a Catalyst powered Mana Barrier and some calculated swipes with my staff. I was becoming something of an expert on battling the constructs at this point, too. Attacking an elemental’s core directly was an easier task with each fight.

  “Any input?” I asked Tag as I slowly hauled myself up the final steps to floor ten. While for me, boredom had begun to set in, my Mind Palace bound version had no such issues. I even had to repeat the question to pull his attention to me instead of the varying mana concepts we had absorbed recently.

  “More mana,” Tag said simply, “less problems.” He immediately returned to his work and I could tell I had frustrated him by even asking. For a moment I considered how strange my life was, as I had often done since waking up in the dungeon. My subconscious mind was sassing me to my face. Not many people could say that, I bet. Still, Tag was right. He also wasn’t the only thing pointing me towards Command either, as the Spirit Well pulsed each time I considered placing the final attributes of grade zero. There was an achievement waiting.

  So, what was I waiting for?

  Naea’s words about pushing oneself came to mind. Was it that simple? A System-inherited instinct not to push myself further than I should? No… no it wasn’t that simple. I could feel myself on a precipice. To press home that point, I looked out one of the openings in the side of the tower. I hadn’t spent much time in tall buildings throughout my life. I was as high up as I had ever been before. I felt it vividly.

  I was the strongest human on Earth.

  There shouldn’t be a debate on that. I had seen too many world-first achievements and convenient numerical thresholds that others simply weren’t likely to meet. I knew how lucky I was to be in this position. However, I also knew that if I pushed myself further, I would take another step from humanity. Another step away from the person I had been when all of this started.

  I looked down at the tundra below me. It stretched out further than my eye could see, but I knew that I was looking in the direction of Ascentown. My town. A town full of non-human inhabitants who were going to need protection. The world wasn’t kind in the first place and I had no expectations for that to have changed during my time in the dungeon.

  “Stop being a dick,” I told myself, placing the points. As my Command attribute grew, I felt the Spirit Well growing more animated as I approached a threshold for another sizable achievement. The decision to take that step further was not even a question once I asked myself the stakes. I didn’t know what would happen once I left the dungeon but I knew one thing for certain.

  I would protect the people who trusted in me. It had happened almost without my noticing but my faction was not just a tool. I thought of the ents, goblins, gnolls, sundercats as well as the more disparate creatures which made up the forest zone. I thought of the denizens of the desert and tundra that I had yet to make allies with. If the cost of their survival was that I felt a little weird? Easy price to pay.

  My Spirit Well was basically bouncing around my soul. My mana channels were singing, swelling with each point placed. I wondered what it looked like from inside the Mind Palace but I didn’t wait around. With determined action, I placed the final free point needed. I fell to my knees as my Spirit Well went into overdrive. The weight of the achievement landed upon my soul and I gasped. Even before I saw the achievement, I smiled as I felt the change within. It was immense.

  It had been dumb of me to worry.

  Achievement Unlocked - Command Sovereign (World First)

  A dearth of mana can solve nearly any problem, something you discovered quickly. While others struggle in the dirt with their hands, you need simply tell the world what you desire. This incredible example of growth before reaching Grade One has added weight and indelible quality to your soul.

  Effect: Doubled Effectiveness of Command