Without Raphael and Lia to keep him grounded, Azekiel was starting to sway too far from where he began. He had no one to talk to, which left him all alone with his thoughts which were quite scary for him.
Whenever he was alone with his thoughts, his mind went back to uncomfortable memories as if wanting to keep him upset. To avoid remembering the past, he kept himself engaged. At times, he even talked to himself like he used to do before.
****
[Five Months Later]
Azekiel was on the 45th floor, and things had started getting somewhat difficult since he was finally entering the territory where old space territory started from.
Below this floor, it was like an entirely different world where young versions of all the Kings were present who had recently entered the tower.
However, from the 45th floor onwards, it was a much older territory. From here, there were only Kings from a much older timeline.
Even though he met young Alion on the 11th floor but it was quite possible that he could've met a present timeline version of Alion if Alion hadn't left the tower.
All the space time was chaotic on the power floors, but that was also allowed since on lower floors, the Kings weren't strong enough to affect the special chaos in a bad way.
On the contrary, on the higher floors, everyone had a strength that could certainly overload the spatial chaos. That's also why Azekiel had made sure that the space and time continuum on this floor was much more linear.
Even though space was also chaotic here, it was to a very small extent.
If anything, this was also where he was going to find all the Kings who had succeeded from their world in killing all the others, like the one who killed Raphael and the one who killed Lia and went higher.
Azekiel stepped out of the portal for the 45th floor. So far, he had managed to avoid being noticed by people who could have informed the woman at the top. However, from this floor onwards, he knew that avoiding such things was going to be quite hard, since this was where true rankings of the tower began.
The ranking board of the tower was available on all the floors from the 45th floor onwards. From here on, everything significant that a King could do granted ranking points to them.
Moreover, these ranking points weren't handled by their system or the tower. It was a completely independent mechanism.
This was also one of the ideas of his mother, which he went along with and implemented. From here on, all the Kings were monitored by the independent mechanism, and their actions were granted points based on the significance of their actions. Killing a person had some points and killing a more powerful person had more points.
Completing a quest had points, and even finishing secret tasks had points. There were also some points that depended on luck.
It was a mechanism that watched their every single move, which they couldn't avoid.
Throughout his journey till here, Azekiel had managed to avoid being noticed by many. Even the people who were keeping an eye on Raphael, Lia, and him from higher up, not realizing who he actually was, had lost his trail ever since he remembered everything outside the tower.
However, even he could avoid being observed by that mechanism. He could only have solace in the fact that no one could see what the ranking mechanic was observing, no matter who it was.
No person was able to see what he was doing, but they could definitely see the ranking. For what he had to do throughout his journey, he was sure that his ranking points were only going to stack one after another, bringing him much higher in the ranking, much faster.
It was only a matter of time before he was going to attract someone's attention through that ranking, which he wanted to avoid until he was absolutely ready.
The only option to avoid that was to climb the tower slowly so his unusual speed couldn't attract too much attention, but he wasn't happy with that option. He was already very impatient. He wanted to get to the top floor as soon as he could. Intentionally slowing down was no less than a torture for him.
As he stepped out of the Portal on the 45th floor, he had already noticed a few familiar faces.
There were quite a few Kings here who were supposed to be on a much higher floor. They were the Kings who should've been on the 80th floor... At least they had access to the 80th floor. Still, it wasn't unlikely to see them here. From the 45th floor to the 80th floor, everything was like a unified world.
Anyone from the higher floors could come down to the lower floors very easily. They didn't even need to use their hard-earned escape crystals. There were portals on each floor that brought them to their desired Floors.
Moreover, there was also no restriction on the Kings who hadn't cleared 45th or any higher Floor. If they wanted, they could also go to higher floors. There was no need to clear any trial of the floor to get access to higher floors.
Unfortunately, they still needed to clear each floor from the 45th to 80th if anyone wanted to access the 81st floor. They could've selected floors based on their preferences in a random order to clear, but they still had to clear all of them if they wanted to step onto the 81st floor, which was also like a combined realm up to the 99th Floor.
Even though anyone could go to any floor here, the Lower level kings still preferred to go by order so they could get stronger along the way, as higher floors were still more dangerous than the lower ones.
The ones he recognized in the distance were the ones who had already cleared most of the floors, excluding the 80th floor. They were technically on the last stages of the Mid Layers of the Tower. Unfortunately, breaking through that middle layer was the hardest part, even for them.
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