Return of the Woodcutter

During the next few hours, Aito and the siblings rested at Ainar's shop, replenishing their strength, picking free equipment, testing them, and chatting about their next goal. 

Ascending the Tower.

According to the information they had previously gathered from various sources—guides, info brokers, or just anyone willing to talk about it—the fourth floor appeared to be a huge forest area filled with goblins, of course. 

There was also a lonely mountain at the center of the floor, housing a great number of those green nasty monsters in a labyrinth of tunnels. 

Yeah, dark humid caves with moss, dead ends, probably traps, and such. The kind that required preparations beforehand, but nothing too drastic. A good source of light would suffice. 

Another difficulty of this floor was the massive number of challengers that still remained on it. It could be hard to hunt and kill the required number of goblins to reach the next floor because, just like the resources on Earth, humans would exterminate the easy-to-kill monsters—well, goblins did respawn at some points. 

Furthermore, the trio already thought of something to bypass that difficulty. 

Killing every challenger… was out of the question. A huge loss of time. No, there was a much simpler way. 

To be there when no one else would, just after the cooldown period.

Anyway, compared to the fourth floor, the fifth floor was an old medieval-style ruined city filled to the brim with hobgoblins. Those vicious evolved versions of goblins would hide in buildings, ambush challengers who lacked caution. 

Sometimes, they could gather in masses when a red eclipse took place and swarm the city to attack the challengers dwelling in it. 

It has only happened twice until now.

Less than half of the challengers still alive in the Tower dared to go there because that event known as the Bloody Eclipse happened randomly. It could well be happening today or tomorrow or the next day. 

Who knew? 

As for the sixth floor, it was populated with orcs in a world filled with sand, a real desertic, arid area. 

The landscape wasn't flat like a desert. More like a mix of rocky valleys, small or medium sized areas of sands.

There were some buildings along the way, but, very much like the previous floor, those were ruined.

A rumor amongst challengers even said that a monster more dangerous than an orc lurked in this floor. To give a scale of power, one orc was possibly as strong as two or three sect members.

As for the High and Top floors, no one really knew for sure what awaited the challengers that dared climb those floors. Information brokers had infos on those but it was hard to believe until an eyewitness actually came back alive to tell the tale.

Well, Aito had more or less a good idea about what was up there but decided to wait a bit before sharing this information with the siblings. 

He wanted to test them first. Aito knew they were both capable to handle themselves well, but Fearmongers and the… things related to them were on a different level. 

Physical or magical prowess wouldn't help much against them. One had to have a tough mind, an iron will to face those things. Even more without proper protections. 

What he feared the most, was that the siblings wouldn't be able to accompany him on the ninth and tenth floors. 

However, that was a problem for later. 

For now, he wanted to focus on his preparations. 

"Got everything you need, boy?" Ainar asked, seated on his counter, smoking a charcoal-like cigar. His grumpiness had tuned down after a few hours of work on Aito's armor set, which now looked brand new—apart from a few small scratches.

It had required a few hammer strikes here and there, melting metal, melding metal, weaving thin steel threads, replacing leather parts, and other advanced forging techniques mixed with a few magical engineering ones.

Simple, really. As per usual… for Ainar.

"More or less," Aito replied, wearing his repaired set of armor while checking the items he had neatly settled on the ground. 

It could seem stupid to do so, but Aito wanted to have a good look at what he had prepared before departing. 

There was his morpho ax, the repeater charged with a magazine plus five others next to it, a new belt especially made for archers classes to strap their ammunitions on it—because of the inventory beads inside the magazine, storing it in another inventory bag would be impossible, so Aito had to keep these on himself at all time. 

Next to the magazines was a sort of torch with a crystal at the tip which would glow upon infusing mana into it. Very useful in dark caves, since it would light better than a fire torch. 

Ainar had asked him if he didn't want the light crystal attached somewhere on his armor or weapon, but Aito refused, thinking it could hinder him at some point during a fight. 

For example, if he attached it to his helmet, it'd be great since the light would follow his gaze. However, he felt better with the crystal on a torch. 

First, because he was more familiar with a torch since the island. 

Second, he felt more in control of the light this way. Being able to lay it somewhere on the ground when needed, or simply keep in hand just behind his shield, positioning the tip in an adequate position to avoid the shield hinders the light's path. 

Aito's gaze turned towards metallic balls half the size of his palm settled under the torch on the ground. 

Ainar called these boom balls for fun at first, then he stuck to it with time. Boom balls were his creation inspired by a few stories he had heard from humans who had transmigrated to this world.

Those were basically grenades. 

The minerian could have sold this to the churches to make lots of money, but it somewhat felt wrong. Although it would certainly help in the war, he felt those would be misused. Not that the churches lacked powerful items crafted from magical engineering. 

Also, the fact that he was a minerian didn't help with trading. Ainar was certain someone would make a similar item in a few years, anyway. 

He always carried some on him everywhere he went for self-defense. Never would he sell any of those. 

Ainar gave a few to Aito since it might help him clear the Tower. There were ten explosive boom balls and five blinding ones. Ainar hadn't had the time to make more ainium boom balls. 

What did they do? 

The explosive ones would explode and kill. The blinding ones would explode and blind. 

Simple. 

Also, those were an apology for what happened with the shield about the fact that it hadn't repelled Aito's aura upon infusion, just like it was supposed to. 

The minerian had thought it would be the case since every time he experimented with aura on ainium it always rejected it. 

But something he had overlooked was the fact that he always applied pressure. Never had he tried to coat it with aura. 

To sum it up, ainium would only repel aura when some sort of pressure was applied. A sword strike, punch, or even a telekinesis skill.

However, in the case of Durability when the aura would gently coat ainium there would be no violent rejection. Only when some hit the ainium would it reject the coating. 

A small yet important detail. 

Still seated on his counter, Ainar watched Aito going through his items, took a puff of his cigar, and said, "What's the shovel and pickax for?" 

"These? Well, you never know. Digging tools are always useful." Aito replied, thinking back to his time on the island, "They can be more useful than weapons sometimes. Question is, why does an arms deal like you have these?" 

"For digging out materials, mining ores, stuff like that," Ainar said. 

"Hum, makes sense… I suppose." Aito said, focusing back on his preparation. 

After double-checking everything, he packed up, taking the opportunity to triple-check everything. He stored most of the items in inventory bags he strapped to his new belt that was already half-filled with five bolts magazines. 

Fortunately, the belt had special strapping points that prevented the bags from dangling around, reducing their influence on the wearer's balance. 

"You guys ready?" Aito asked, turning towards the siblings who also ended their preparations. 

Sheyla had a new armor set composed of a weaved mail and leather armor parts. To her waist was strapped a belt with magazines and inventory bags filled with arrows. On her back was a morpho bow capable of switching from short to longbow mode. A long dagger for close quarter combats was stored in its sheath on her left leg, a few others were hidden here and there.

Since she had also taken a liking to the repeater, Sheyla had one of her own in a holster at her side. Unfortunately, it was the last one available. 

"Ready," she said. 

Ogoro morphed back his long sword into a short one then left it in his sheath that also served as a shield. He was dressed in medium-heavy metal armor. Having found no weaved mail suiting his size, he was forced to wear standard chain mail underneath the armor. 

"Holy shit, this morpho-sword is cool," He said, "ok, ready when you are." 

"All set, kiddos?" Ainar asked, "Now get out of here. You've been scaring away clients for a while now. And you, boy, don't forget that I'll be delivering your shield tomorrow morning. So you better be on the third floor when I'm there." 

Normally, Ainar wouldn't deliver items. Delivery minerian wasn't his profession. However, he'd do it this once because Aito might be in trouble if he comes back to the second floor after today's event. 

Ainar could move around unnoticed using the staff's staircase, anyway. 

"Where would I be other than the training ground?" Aito replied. 

"I don't know, but you tend to attract trouble like a magnet," Ainar replied. 

"Anyway, still have some preparations to do. See you tomorrow, Ainar, and thanks for everything." Aito said, heading out towards the food district accompanied by the siblings. 

The minerian watched their backs get small the further they went, sighed and got back to work on the shield.