Aegon made his way down the pathway, lost in the random thoughts one has in such situations, and soon found himself in front of a familiar building.

A tilted tower with a fog-covered door and a window on each floor, he had accidentally made his way towards the Battle Tower.

[Hmph this is weird, I'm pretty sure this was the path I took to the Basis of Cultivation last time.]

Looking around he noticed a small pavilion to the side where a few students were sitting on the balcony, occasionally looking at the tower. He hadn't noticed that building the last time and decided to take a look.

The place was similar to a bar, several tables were spread across the room with yet more students idly sitting and chatting amongst themselves while drinking tea.

Noticing Aegon’s presence the “bartender” signaled for him to approach.

Taking a closer look at the youth, Aegon thought he looked familiar. After a quick search through his memories he found that this guy was in the pavilion with Bella and Travis when he was looking around for the Resource Hall, his opinion of this man’s character immediately plummeted.

“Hey, I suppose you’re new here right?” The young man greeted with a smile, unaware of Aegon’s thoughts..

“Yeah, I just entered a couple weeks ago.”

“I figured, well, I can explain this place real quick over a drink.”

[You made your price clear, I can respect that.] Aegon nodded and sat down at the counter, ordering lemon tea.

In truth the man’s job included explaining this type of things for free but cultivation often left many students scraping for pennies and having to find ‘mortal’ jobs to supplement their income, that being the case the martial house tacitly acquiesced to some ‘rule-bending’.

“So to start off, this building works as a bar as you can see, to let the students relax a bit from the arduous and lonely life of cultivation.”

Aegon nodded, inwardly agreeing even though he didn't really feel most of that harshness yet.

“It is also the place where people register to enter the Battle Tower, thus the proximity.”

The bartender smiled knowingly while asking: “I suppose you are here to try your luck in the Battle Tower?”

[That wasn't the goal this morning. I’m here though, might as well.]

“You could say so.”

“In that case the rules are pretty simple, the basic ones which Elder 1 explained to you I won't repeat as you should remember those well enough. But there are a few others, also some that aren't really rules but are things you need to know either way.”

The bartender raised one finger.

“First, you need to pay 5 contribution points the first time you enter the tower, every attempt doubles the previous amount so by the third time it will cost you 20 contribution points. This resets every month.”

Aegon nodded, the doubling of the price was surprising to him but he wasn't planning on coming here more than once a month anyways.

He raised a second finger.

“Second, you’re probably wondering how things work if you change ranks, well it's pretty simple, when you came in you were given a room based on your rank and that room’s number is exactly the same as your rank, in the future that won't always be the case. To prevent people from having to constantly change rooms you only change if you raise a “level””.

Aegon sat straighter in his seat and paid close attention, the moving was really worrying because of his herbs, moving them was possible but a lot could go wrong in the process.

“So for example, right now you should be in the 800 plus rooms so you only change rooms if you rank higher than 799. Let’s say you rank 788, you will only move from that room if either you rank a level higher again or if while you’re ranked 788, twelve other people increase their rank and you downgrade to rank 800.”

[That makes sense, since the rooms in the same level are all the same it's pointless to always move around.] He sipped his tea and nodded, indicating to the bartender that he could continue.

The young man raised a third finger.

“And third, the Battle Tower, apart from being the way to effectively progress inside the Martial House, is also used as a sort of potential meter by the teachers, a few of the elders come here occasionally and go to the second floor to unwind but also to scout for direct disciples, the importance of becoming a teacher’s direct disciple goes without saying, it's one thing to ask one or two questions a week and another to be guided by the hand in your training.”

This sentence left our hero with eyes of pure determination as he soon found himself inside the Battle Tower once again.

The walls and the door were still covered in that same fog and just like his previous visit a small hurricane of fog formed and soon took the shape of a martial artist with a large battle axe.

[It’s all the same, even the martial artist's weapon is the same, maybe the order in which they show up is fixed but I can't be sure just yet…let’s see what happens after this one.]

Drawing his right handed sword while signalling for Kuro to stay put he rushed to meet the fog warrior.

Sword and axe met in a furious clash that rebounded both weapons and sent both fighters back a couple of steps while Aegon painfully held his wrist with his spare hand.

Looking down his hand was trembling, barely holding on to the hilt of his sword.

Aegon pondered asking Kuro for help but ultimately decided against it. He wanted to see some progress, he had increased his cultivation level since last he was here, it was hard for him to accept that he was still dependent on Kuro’s help.

His decision made he sheathed his right hand sword and unsheathed his left one.

While he did that his opponent wasn't idling around and so the battle axe was soon descending on Aegon’s head in a large downwards swing.

Dodging to his left he saw his opponent’s flank exposed and aimed for his ribs yet he only pierced a small amount, a deep wound but not immediately fatal, before his hand lost its strength and he had to clumsily pull the sword out, leaving the soldier bleeding fog as he ran around avoiding every clash he could.

Eventually, after a minute or so of running around, the martial artist dropped to his knees and fused back into the surrounding fog.

Two new hurricanes appeared and Aegon’s prediction was proven right when they took the shape of two sword wielding martial artists.

[So I was right, that means that after this it's the bow guys… and I didn't bring a shield again…]

Mad at himself he signalled for Kuro to charge together. He stabbed at one of the swordsmen with his left hand while redrawing his other sword, using it to block an attack from the second fog warrior. It left him in a weird position with his arms crossed in front of him, an absolute mess, he inwardly cursed himself once again for how bad he was with his weapons.

As expected, Aegon’s attack was blocked but it left the swordsman vulnerable to Kuro who bit him on the leg and dragged him through the floor.

But there was another swordsman, his sword slapped aside Aegon’s extremely poor defence and pierced towards his torso.

Aegon could only clumsily retreat, falling on the floor with his crossed swords as his only protection.

Yet the warrior’s sword seemed unstoppable, it pierced through the hole between Aegon’s swords and got really close to his head before it stopped.

Opening his eyes, sword and swordsman alike were turning back into fog, Aegon could only catch a glimpse of a neck missing most of its flesh as evidence of what had occurred before that also vanished.