The duo continued ascending the floors, each one slightly more challenging than the last but still easily cleared.

This continued for another two days until they reached the strangest floor so far.

As soon as the two entered through the door, it vanished. Surrounding them in every direction was a thick and lush jungle. The sky had also appeared above them, and it was identical to outside. Despite the outside appearance of the tower not being that wide, Aren could not sense an end to the jungle.

“What the hell…” 

Aren muttered as he reached for where the door was but found that he could not touch nor sense it. It was as if they had been transported to another place altogether. Lillia had a slightly worried expression on her face as she too noticed this.

They began to search for the exit throughout the entire day but saw no sign of it even existing. However, they did find out that the total size of the jungle was about 100 miles in any direction from where they started, trying to move any farther and an inexplicable force pushed them back. There were also no monsters at all, but an abundance of small animals.

Ending the exploration for the day, they set up camp around the area where they had entered this floor, and soon the night descended. While they were theorizing about what this place could be, every single living thing in the area went silent. It was almost as if the world had stopped.

The monsters of this floor finally showed themselves.

Aren sensed immediate danger to his life, and dodged to the side at a dangerous speed, his muscles groaning in protest. A black blur shot past him, before stopping in front of him.

It was seven-foot-tall and humanoid in shape, except completely made of a strange, translucent black light. Its hands had six claw-like fingers on each, and Aren could tell there would be no chance of survival had he been hit by the attack.

When the monster launched another assault, he dodged each attack, before striking at it with his full power. But his hand completely went through, as if it had never connected with anything at all. And the monster seemed to be completely fine.

Not expecting this, Aren was not at all prepared for the next attack.

“AGHH!!”

The creature slashed through his arm, nearly severing it, and then carried on to his chest where it left six deep gashes.

Then the situation got a whole lot worse.

Dozens of these monsters emerged from the shadows and began a relentless assault on the two. None of their attacks had any effect on these things. The only thing they could do was try to evade, but the beings were also extremely fast.

This continued for the entire night until the morning came, at which point the monsters seemingly vanished into thin air.

Aren and Lillia dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. They had been moving at full speed for nearly eleven hours. Aren was covered in wounds, only having enough time to reattach his arm. His pants were now reduced to very short shorts, barely covering a certain body part. Lillia was much better off thanks to her ability, but even she was covered in shallow cuts. Thankfully, it was easy for both of them to heal these minor wounds.

Over the next several days, this cycle continued. Having tried everything they could think of, none of it succeeded in damaging the monsters. They ended each night covered in cuts and gashes, forced to sleep during the day.

On the fourth day, while sitting across from Lillia, Aren had an idea.

“Have you noticed that the mana around the monsters is black?”

“Mhm, why?”

“If it’s some sort of corruption, wouldn’t hitting them with pure mana destroy them?”

“How do we get that mana outside of our bodies though?”

Aren had come up with an idea for this already. Since mana flowed through every vein of the body, it should be possible to expel that mana out and cover the entire surface. Normally, he would expel the mana and form it into his abilities, but what if he didn’t use it to form an ability?

The mana floating around the world was slightly less pure than inside of the body, since when it was absorbed the small impurities were completely purged. This explained why the monsters could absorb the mana without being destroyed, at least if Aren’s theory was correct.

The two of them began to focus on the mana flowing throughout their bodies. Then, they imagined that mana seeping out, creating a coat on the surface of their skin. And eventually, just before the dark came, they succeeded.

A slight green glow emanated from them, just as the creatures appeared.

This time instead of running, they fought back. And to their delight, Aren’s theory was correct, and as soon as their strikes connected with the monsters, they started disintegrating. Both of them easily dispatched the rest of the monsters, also letting out pulses of pure mana which spread and killed all the monsters in its radius.

As the last one was defeated, a deafening roar echoed throughout the jungle. From thin air in front of them, a massive being appeared, identical to the monsters except it was more than 300 feet in height. However, this ended up being no problem for them.

If they had not learned this new technique, they likely would have died from this monstrosity had it appeared sooner.

Though they were not able to instantly destroy it, they slowly wore it down until it succumbed to its injuries and disintegrated. And where it fell, a glowing golden door appeared.