When I opened my eyes again, there was a long hallway in front of me. A ding and then a banner in front of me.

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Welcome to the first floor. This is a training floor.

Here you will encounter various types of monsters, or as the system will refer to them, mobs.

You will see them on the floors above you. Each hallway segment will have a different type of mob, and at the end of each segment is a room where you will challenge their respective second evolution. At the end of the four segments is the boss room.

Rewards will be calculated based on individual performance.

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"Alright, let's see if you've learned anything."

I rolled my eyes. Not much time has passed since we even made the trip to the tower, and he thinks we've done much.

"What do you mean? I dealt with that thing on the road."

"Once you start and the tower measures you again, you'll see the actual results of our training. I won't know how much I've done to make your rank go up until the system resets."

"Alright then let's get this started I guess."

I pulled my sword out of its sheath and walked past the blue glowing line on the floor. I didn't have to wait too long to hear the footsteps scraping against the stone floor. Out of the darkness came a few goblins.

I dashed forward, slicing my blade through them expecting some resistance but got nothing. I looked back unsure if I hit anything, only to see two goblins fall to the ground, blood squirting momentarily out of their necks.

The remaining one screeched, turning to charge at me, and I sliced its head off as well. The next group was five goblins, and I also easily took care of them. It went on for a bit till we made it to a large wooden door.

I pushed it open and entered a large circular room. Torches lit with blue fire one by one starting from the door around the room until they made it to a door on the other side. At the center of the room, there were two Goblin mages and one hobgoblin.

They didn't seem to react yet, so I dashed quickly at the mage on the left sliding when I got close, cutting his body in half at his abdomen. I planted my feet to stop sliding and leaped at the Hobgoblin in the middle, slashing downward.

He tried to block it with his club, but my blade slid through it cleanly and landed in his head. With all my weight helping me I sliced him clean in half.

Without thinking, I dodged to the left and avoided a fire spell I hadn't even heard be cast.

I reached the mage in a second and sliced his hand off. With the hand fell his staff. Then I sliced upward somehow going through him completely.

There was a ding and a click, and the doors slowly creaked open on their own.

"That was way too easy, what's up?"

"Outside of the tower your rank cannot change. All the experience you gain in dungeons accumulates and then all restrictions on your physical abilities or mana are taken off once you enter the tower. The difficulty should pick up a little bit now that you've been reevaluated."

"But why does it do that? I never heard about that."

Mezu had run over to me now and tried pulling me towards the door. I didn't resist him. I could tell he wasn't interested in the lackluster fights I just had.

"I suspect those guilds kept quiet about it. No wonder so few people have actually tried climbing.”

It was like a fire lit in his eyes, clearly aggressively annoyed with the situation.

“We should burn them all to the ground, even the so-called adventurer’s guild claiming to protect adventurers should pay for their hypocrisy.”

I laughed uncomfortably. “Look Alcoroth I’m not really into the whole political situation so like lets just do this as much as we can without getting involved with anyone.”

“I feel as if your utter lack of interest in these things will continue to annoy me.”

"That sounds like a you problem."

We walked through the doors, the hallway lighting up partially and there was yet another blue line in the stone in front of us. I crossed it and headed down the hallway.

Mezu walked behind me with Alcoroth and we continued on our way.

The next opponent was a lizard man carrying a spear. This was a bit difficult as I didn’t have much experience seeing someone use a spear, let alone fighting one. It screeched and lunged at me with its spear tip. I started a game of dodging, not wanting to get too close but also really needing to get close.

It had backed me into a wall and I ducked. It hit with so much force that it got its spear stuck in the wall. I went as fast as I could and lunged forward, slashing upwards, slicing its torso open. It dropped its spear in shock, clutching at its chest, so I did a connecting slice across it through its hand, and blood squirted out. It collapsed to the ground but to be safe I cut the rest of his head off.

“You need more practice.”

“Well, it’s not my fault all the low level dungeons outside of the tower are default goblin hoards.”

I glared at him and started walking again.

“I wasn’t blaming you, I simply made an observation. This is what the first floor is for, learning how to fight against different enemy types. I would have preferred it, though, if I was able to summon them for the training dungeon we had. That would have been so much more useful than me having to train you myself.”

“Then it sucks you weren’t able to.”

As we went down the hall another lizard man with a spear came at me. Knowing a little bit didn’t really change how pathetic I must have looked fighting him, but at least it went a bit quicker since I broke the shaft of his spear.