The elevator rushed past smooth stone, guiding me ever closer to the next layer. As I continued rushing down, I excitedly wondered about what kind of biome I would find down there. There had been all kinds of weird and fantastical settings, and I honestly had no clue what could be next. To take my mind off what was to come, I started studying my new spell matrixes for a bit. Void rend was quite the complex spell, as expected of an S-tier spell, but it somehow still paled in comparison to void teleport. While it was only an A-tier spell, anything having to do with teleportation seemed to add five extra layers of complicated on top of the already difficult spell.

My studies were cut short as wind suddenly rushed in and I found myself in the open, a reddish sky simulated on the ceiling. I curiously peered over the edge, finding a barren, rocky field directly below me, surrounded by two devastated cities on either side. Broken buildings, collapsed skyscrapers, craters from explosions, the whole shebang. I could see several explosions going off as I descended, monsters constantly adding to the destruction. I almost jumped off the platform when there was a sudden loud ping, a wave of blue color spreading across the fake sky with my elevator platform as the center.

I wonder what that was all about.

I waited for something else to happen, but aside from the odd ping, nothing else jumped at me until the elevator came to a stop. Not seeing or feeling any monsters close by, I hopped off the platform, eager to take a look at the evolution conditions of this layer.

Evolution Goals:

Reach Level 20

Complete 20 Individual-tier quests.

Bonus Objectives:

Complete 5 village-tier quests.

Complete 3 city-tier quests.

Descent Requirements:

Evolve to the 8th tier.

Receive permission to take part in the final challenge.

Well, that was… odd.

The theme this time around seemed to revolve around doing quests and, for the first time, I needed to fulfill one more condition aside from simply reaching level twenty to evolve. I wondered how I would go about finding and accepting the quests, but the wording suggested that there might be some sort of quest-givers down here. The descent requirements were also of interest since it was the first hint at what the penultimate mission on the lowest layer would be.

Sure, it just said “final challenge” which wasn’t all that helpful, but it was interesting that I needed to get permission to participate. It all pointed toward some sort of people being down here, but supposedly there were no intelligent races on this planet. Maybe there would be some kind of system-controlled robots giving out the quests? I seriously doubted that any sane person would inhabit the cities around here, which barely qualified as a pile of rubble at this point, much less an inhabitable city.

Putting the mysteries of this layer aside, I picked a random direction and started looking for trouble. There was a new spell I had to test, and there had to be some volunteers around here somewhere. As I leisurely hopped along the barren ground I left my ears open, enjoying the fact that I was able to hear once again. Sure, I had become accustomed to not being able to hear, it was quite nice in fact, but hearing was nice as well. As I went I could hear distant explosions, monsters crying out in pain or aggression, buildings collapsing, and even the odd thumps I made whenever I landed after a jump.

I inspected the environment for a bit, looking at the pitiful excuse for grass that occasionally emerged from cracked rocks. Everything was bathed in a red hue, due to the sky being some odd shade of red. I wondered if that was normal here, or if the sun was going down right now. Since I couldn’t see it due to the cloudy weather, all I could do was guess. There was a city looming somewhere ahead of me, and as I took a closer look, the construction style seemed oddly familiar. It did somewhat look like a city on Earth, but something about it just felt… off.

My line of thought was cut short when something entered the range of my feelers. A black hole became noticeable about ten meters to my left, behind an impressive pile of rubble. The feeling was still odd since I could “see” the hole in the void, but at the same time, I couldn’t actually see. It was as if another layer of reality was overlaid over what I could see and what was around me, but instead of physically seeing it, my brain processed the information I got from my feelers into something resembling sight. Thinking about how exactly that worked made my head hurt, so I stopped trying to comprehend it and instead started building the spell matrix for void rend.

There was nothing that could stop me from testing this spell right here, right now. I made extra sure not to cast poison assassination to avoid the same situation as with the elevator guardian and carefully made my way to the top of the rubble. I used my eye stalks to peek over the pile while keeping my body hidden, getting my first look at a tier-seven monster.

A giant rat was digging through the rubble, looking for something. Its fur was gray and mangy, falling off in patches. Several spikes ran along its spine and at the end of its long tail was a club seemingly made out of bone. It was constantly salivating, the liquid dripping on the stone below and melting holes into it with an angry hiss. It was one ugly bastard.

Eager to see how it would hold up against an S-tier spell, I finally completed the spell matrix, the spell snapping into place. I giddily cast the spell with a mental command, excited like a child at Christmas.

A tiny sphere formed above my head, made from pure void mana. My void feelers went crazy as soon as it appeared, but if I didn’t have them, I would’ve had to strain my eyes in order to see the thing. My feelers revealed that the sphere was spinning at an incredible speed, warping reality around it like a miniature black hole. A split second later, a strand of void energy shot out of the sphere, even thinner than a human hair. It remained attached to the sphere, whipping across the rat with a speed that was impossible to follow before vanishing together with the sphere. For but a fraction of a second nothing happened, as if reality needed to catch up to what just happened.

Then, absolute chaos.

I watched as the world leisurely split apart along the path of the void rend, almost as in slow motion. Immediately after, the world seemed to remember that excessive force resulted in an explosion, and I was thrown backward as a massive explosion thundered across the seventh layer. I was reminded why it was nice to have no ears and immediately sealed them shut, even if the ringing remained in the silence.

You have killed a T7 Lv.5 Apocalypse Rodent

You have been awarded 0 XP

You have been awarded 255 Data Points

I stared at the floating system notification in front of me as I remained still where I landed some ten meters back. The scene of the void rend replayed itself in my mind over and over as I tried to process what just happened. It had looked like the spell had cut through reality itself, which was just so… wrong. The sheer memory of reality splitting apart made me shudder as if I’d looked upon some ancient taboo, yet at the same time, I almost couldn’t contain my excitement.

I mean, that was fucking amazing!

Was there even anything that could withstand such power? My memory proceeded to put me under the proverbial cold shower as the image of a gigantic voidling flashed across my face. Right. There were voidlings out there that probably would only get scratched by a spell like that. Mildly annoyed, at best. Aside from the crazy voidlings out there, I couldn’t help but wonder just how many tiers there were, and what the monsters at these higher tiers were capable of. If I could wreak destruction like this at the seventh tier, I shuddered to think about what a monster at tier fifteen or twenty could do. Sure, if I compared myself to the other monsters on my tier, I was obviously a special case, most likely being able to keep pace with monsters several tiers above me, but still.

I slowly put myself right side up with the help of my tentacles, slowly going back to ground zero. The pile of rubble had been scattered to the seven winds by the spell, leaving behind only a clean cut in the ground decorated by copious amounts of blood. I did not see any remains of the rat since the poor guy probably evaporated. Right. Probably not the best spell to use if I intended to eat my kill.

Speaking of not getting something I wanted, I pulled the kill notification back up, taking a closer look at what it said. I’d been a bit preoccupied the first time I’d looked at it, but another look confirmed that I’d received exactly zero experience points for killing the rat. Why?

I felt like it couldn’t have been because the rat got blown to smithereens, and it shouldn’t be because I used an S-tier spell. I had killed tons of monsters with giant spike which was an SS-tier spell, and all of those kills had given me XP. Then why? I puzzled over this mystery, as I considered just how strange and unorthodox this layer was so far when I felt four monsters rapidly entering the range of my feelers.

Not intending to get ambushed I spun around, preparing to cast a poison explosion in order to split the monsters up since they were probably hunting in a pack. As soon as I laid eyes on the quartet of monsters, my spell fizzled out as my jaw hit the floor. The four monsters stopped a few meters in front of me, keeping a wary distance but obviously not intending to fight.

There, a mere few meters away from me, stood four Asphons.