The First Floor of the World Tower

The process for entering the World Tower was simple.

Aside from providing your name the first time, all you had to do on subsequent visits was get scanned.

Wang Wen, who had attracted attention from all sides, was now at the entrance to the World Tower, chatting with the miniature scanning drone hovering in midair as if they were old friends.

Mechanical voice: [Please provide a name for registration upon your first entry.]

Wang Wen: "Wang Wen."

[Name already taken. Please provide another.]

Wang Wen: "???"

"Wait, what? I'm the Wang Wen who's as beautiful as jade, not some ordinary Wang Min!"

[Name already taken. Please provide another.]

Wang Wen thought for a moment, then gave it a single letter. "A."

[Name already taken. Please provide another.]

Wang Wen: "BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ."

[Name already taken. Please provide another.]

"..."

"Is this thing broken?" The thought flashed through Wang Wen's mind. Without changing expression, he recited a string of characters: "Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui, Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai."

Mechanical voice: [Registration successful.]

A beam of light descended from the bottom of the drone and enveloped him. It vanished in an instant, and the mechanical voice spoke again: [Personal belongings have been checked in. If you have teammates, please register them as well. Otherwise, enter the tower. Mr. A, good luck.]

Wang Wen's eyelid twitched. He lifted a leg and stepped into the light curtain at the entrance to the World Tower.

The scenery shifted before his eyes.

When the scene settled, he found himself standing in a square stone chamber. It wasn't particularly large—around a hundred square meters—but it was quite tall, perhaps ten meters or so.

A hulking mechanical monster stood in the middle of the chamber. It looked like an upside-down bull walking on its hands. The moment it spotted him, it charged over furiously, thrusting its hips forward.

When Wang Wen saw the giant hammer clutched in its hooves, he had a pretty good idea what was going on.

Still, to be safe, he ran off to the side first.

The giant hammer landed exactly where he had been standing a second earlier.

The first floor of the World Tower. Just as expected, it was a simple delayed-attack challenge.

Even the textbooks described it in detail.

The monster would attack without pause, but each attack would only hit the spot where the Tower Climber had been standing one second earlier.

As long as you didn't stand stock-still, you were basically safe.

The main difficulty of this setup was that it was unfriendly to newcomers.

Inexperienced climbers who ran around constantly to dodge the attacks could quickly wear themselves out, and they'd also find it hard to calm down and search for the entrance to the next floor.

When faced with a challenge like this, bringing more people to draw the monster's attention, explore, and work together wouldn't help.

Wang Wen knew that no matter how many people there were, there would be just as many hammers.

The first requirement for clearing this floor was to stay calm and not panic.

The clumsy, mechanical attack came once a second. Even a slightly brisk walk was enough to keep you outside the hammer's range.

The really flashy ones could even wait until the hammer came down before dodging. The hammer always aimed for the spot where two-thirds of their body had been, and those show-offs always found a way to have two-thirds of themselves in exactly the right place.

Wang Wen was past the age of showing off.

Besides, he wasn't in the best frame of mind this time around.

So he chose to walk, conserving as much energy as possible while keeping clear of the hammer and examining the stone walls.

The usual way to clear a floor of this difficulty was through mechanisms.

Since the main difficulty had already been identified as delayed attacks, and this was only the first floor, the mechanism that opened the door shouldn't be too complicated.

Wang Wen's main reason for entering the tower this time was to get some practice and warm up, helping him adjust to a body that still felt somewhat unfamiliar compared with his previous life.

If he didn't have people and matters to worry about in the world outside the tower, his experience would have been more than enough to let him remain inside the World Tower indefinitely.

He knew which floors had food.

Which floors were good for resting.

He even knew which floors had places to shower and change clothes.

His initial goal for the week was to reach around the hundredth floor.

After that, he'd decide whether to wait for the floors to refresh or leave the tower and visit the Academy.

He'd climbed a floor like the first one nearly a thousand times in his previous life. He wouldn't go so far as to say he could clear it in the blink of an eye with his eyes closed, but at the very least, it shouldn't take him too long.

He decided to play it safe.

He'd clear it in one minute.

Having made up his mind, Wang Wen strode along the wall.

With the giant hammer providing a lively beat behind him, he quickly made one full circuit of the chamber, staying close to the wall.

When he found himself back where he'd entered the stone chamber, his eyelid twitched.

There was no mechanism!

Unwilling to give up, he made another circuit, this time examining even the floor carefully.

There was still no sign of any mechanism.

Every stone block was perfectly uniform.

He had checked all six of the most common differences—color, size, thickness, pattern, texture, and hollowness—but found nothing unusual.

Why?

It was only the first floor. How complicated could it be?

Wang Wen's mind raced as he slowly sifted through his memories.

Among all the information he had gathered, he found one extremely rare possibility.

That one-in-ten-thousand possibility made him pause ever so slightly.

"No way. Could it be...? Damn!"

Tower Climbers could get distracted, but the giant hammer never hesitated. It came down mercilessly on Wang Wen's head.

"BOOM!!"

The loud impact echoed around the stone chamber again and again, shaking grit loose from the cracks in the walls.

Wang Wen carefully moved his head aside.

He watched as strange cracks appeared, starting at the hammer's tip.

They spread with a crackling pop all the way across the monster's body.

Before long, the entire mechanical monster, bull and hammer alike, crumbled into a heap of fragments.

He sat down against the wall, his emotions in turmoil.

"This again."

"A floor that's clearly meant to test your technique, and I still end up having to use brute force."

"Wang Wen, are you really getting old?"

As his brain throbbed with splitting pain, Wang Wen silently reflected on his mistakes.

Years of struggles between life and death had taught him a good habit.

The more dangerous the situation, the calmer he had to be. The more critical the moment, the steadier he had to remain.

He realized his mindset had been wrong from the moment he entered the tower.

In his previous life, with a record of reaching the 929th floor of the World Tower, it wouldn't have been much of an exaggeration to call Wang Wen the best in the world.

When it came to climbing the World Tower, he was unquestionably the strongest Tower Climber in the world.

But he wasn't that person in this life.

His abilities in every area lagged far behind his memories.

He was even well below the Academy's average student.

Wang Wen.

Even though he'd done his best to prepare himself mentally to start over as a newcomer...

He still couldn't stop himself from making mistakes after entering the tower.

Overconfidence, carelessness, underestimating his opponent.

On top of that, the events at the Academy had affected his mood more than a little.

They had made him impatient.

Since its beginning, the World Tower had swallowed countless lives.

A hell that devoured people was not a place where any floor could be taken lightly.

Clear it in one minute?

Just thinking about that idea made him want to slap himself. The nosebleed that had finally started to let up began gushing again.

How ignorant did someone have to be to show off in a deadly place like this?

Worse still, there was a more serious mistake on top of underestimating the challenge.

He'd gotten distracted!

He could hardly believe that, after all these years, he'd make such a basic mistake!

Had dying once not taught him enough?

Carelessness? Underestimating the enemy? Getting distracted?

Each question landed like a hard slap across his blood-smeared face.

Wang Wen tilted his head back.

He opened his mouth and drew in a deep breath.

He filled his entire chest, held it until his heart raced and his lungs ached, then suddenly let it out.

As he exhaled, it felt as if he were breathing out the jumbled thoughts in his head along with the taste of blood in his throat.

Once his breathing steadied, his expression and mind finally settled into calm.

He knew that this moment of self-reflection had come just in time.

He'd corrected his attitude right at the start of his climb, avoiding even worse mistakes later on.

Wang Wen wiped his nose and held out his hand. Looking at the blood covering his palm, he gave a self-mocking smile. "If this keeps up, I might be the first person to bleed to death from a nosebleed inside the World Tower."