Return of the Woodcutter

In his blue challenger's room, Kai was revising his plans. 

He had suffered terrible losses "thanks" to the black challenger's hands. Not that he cared about human lives, in fact, he was thankful Aito had ridden him of useless cannon fodders that would have betrayed him for gods at some point. 

In a sense, he stood to benefit from the death of around a third of his sect members. Why? Because of the soul cores, he had harnessed from them.

Challengers' soul cores. 

Those soul cores were of better quality than the ones found on the fourth and fifth floor. In general, a goblin's soul core was barely worth a third of a level 1 human and a hobgoblin's half. 

The reason was unknown, but Kai had his own hypotheses. Either the Tower's monsters weren't as powerful as humans—clearly wrong—or simply because most challengers still alive had already absorbed quite a hefty amount of souls in their bodies.   

Well, those were only hypotheses. Theories. Nothing that could be verified. To his mind, there was clearly something underhanded, something that stunk to the high heavens about the monsters in the Tower. 

Kai couldn't exactly put his hands on what that was, though. The gods were playing their own games. A game a mere mortal wasn't allowed to join. 

Never mind that, he had his own business to take care of. Now that he had collected more than two hundred human soul cores, Kai had to decide where to invest those. Selling them would result in an enormous loss. 

No, with these he could probably make 8 or 10 more level 2 challengers considering that most of his henchmen had already absorbed quite a few soul cores. The purpose would be to form an elite team entirely loyal to him. 

Kai already had four, no, with the death of a manager he had already forgotten the name of, Kai had three level 2 challengers under him now. 

Roisin, his personal attendant, but also a powerful level 2 Dual Elementalist that was capable of wielding the ice and fire element. Normally, upon leveling up, an Elementalist would specialize in an element, the most common one being fire for some unknown reason—maybe because humans liked to play with fire, who knows? 

Anyway, dual elements that were a complete opposite were rare but not unheard of according to the information Kai had gathered from the shop owners. 

Apart from Roisin, there was also his Lv2 Bowman Zephyr, a truly mysterious guy who liked to hunt for the thrill of it. Apparently, he had been a professional sniper in his past life on top of hunting games with a hunting bow during his spare time. A useful stealthy guy who could perfectly blend into the environment. He was currently wounded but would be in top shape tomorrow.

There was also Sam the Lv2 Swordsman who had recently undergone quite a power-up. Amongst his current three managers, Kai thought the baldy had the most chances of reaching level 3 early on. Not that he knew how many soul cores it required to do so. 

Investing all the human soul cores he had currently acquired in Sam would be a waste. No, building an elite team would be much better. 

In front of him, on Kai's desk, were ten status files from employees he had personally selected for being part of the team. 

Its purpose?

Clear the Tower and bring back the reward. 

He had wanted for the black challenger to lead this elite team. However, try as he might, Kai hadn't been able to talk to him during the event that was starting to be known as the Square's Carnage amongst challengers. 

It had been too chaotic, even more than anticipated. Furthermore, he had seen the black challenger and siblings staring at him from time to time. To avoid being targeted, at the time, he had hidden far from the frontline. The further the better. So it had been more difficult to talk with the black challenger because of the positioning. 

Now, Kai seriously doubted Aito would take more risks in the future. In fact, he was certain the black challenger would avoid sect members like the plague. So would the siblings. 

What's more, according to the reports he had received during the day, the black challenger, accompanied by the two siblings, had been gathering quite a lot of resources. Weapons, armors, food, they had everything. 

'Are they preparing to climb the Tower?' Kai thought, looking at his reports. 'No, impossible. The siblings are unmarked ones. No wait, they manifested new powers earlier today. Did they level up and gained marks? But… that's ridiculous. Unless Aito has…, haha, no, no way. It would have alerted the gods by now if that were the case. No, the only option I see is that the siblings had hidden their powers until now. There can't be another explanation. Which means that the black challenger would soon climb the Tower and be out of my reach.' 

Nothing had gone according to plan concerning the black challenger. Ambushes, provocation, or even trapped amidst hundreds of people. Nothing. 

Sending hundreds of people after him appeared useless, not when he'd be climbing the Tower soon.

Kai started to lose patience. If nothing worked against Aito and by nothing, Kai meant capturing, then he had no choice but to send his soon-to-be-formed special squad after the black challenger. 

After all, if he couldn't have what he wanted, Kai would destroy it so that no one else would. Well, this time it was more a matter of pride than anything else.

***

On the third floor, an epic one-sided ass whopping sparring session was taking place. 

Morpho ax and repeater in hand, Aito dashed towards Gwen as fast as he could, zigzagging along the way to confuse her while shooting bolts after bolts that were simply deviated from their trajectory with ease. 

No matter, touching her wasn't what he was aiming for. Destabilizing, analyzing, get a feel of her abilities were the goal. A goal he couldn't seem to reach. 

Aito soon neared his opponent's effective range, activated Durability on both ax and armor set then, without an ounce of hesitation, went for a vicious downward slash powered by the weapon's increased weight, plus his monstrous strength. 

Gwen saw such an obvious blow coming from a mile away, smirked, then swiftly used the tip of her stick to lightly push Aito's ax head, using its own power and weight to deviate it. 

Feeling his ax changing trajectory in the middle of the strike like it was natural, Aito barely reacted in time to stop his ax from slashing the air, only for his helmet to warmly welcome Gwen's stick, which sent him flying to the side. 

He only realized what was happening to him mid-flight when he saw the large ceiling in his field of vision. 

Aito crashed against the ground, rousing clouds of dust in his wake. He lifted his head to take a look at Gwen, that hadn't moved one bit from her initial position. 

There, at that moment, he knew how wide the gap between their abilities was. He knew, yet didn't want to acknowledge it. Not because he was jealous or something petty like that, but because he simply didn't understand. 

Every fiber of his being wanted to comprehend, what was happening. Gwen hadn't used any complex or flashy skill, but it felt so profound, so far from Aito's grasp. Something he couldn't reach despite the fact it was right in front of him. 

He desperately wished to acquire such strength. But to do that, he needed to understand what was happening. 

With that idea in mind, he rose up, stared at his target straight in the eyes, stored the repeater in his holster, and darted towards Gwen, who was still smirking. 

This time, he took a straightforward approach.

No zigzagging, nothing fancy. 

He faced the giantess head-on with another downward slash, only to be sent flying once again, only to charge at the moderator after standing up again. 

After the twentieth time, Gwen said, "Charging mindlessly like that won't get you anywhere. I'm seriously disappointed if that's all you got." 

Meanwhile, Aito rose again, so engrossed in his thought that he chose to ignore Gwen's taunt, 'That's not it. Where is that feeling? I can't feel her blow properly. Unless…' 

"What are you doing?" Gwen asked, seeing Aito take off his helmet that, despite all previous blows, remained somehow intact with barely any bumps on it. 

Gauntlets, pauldrons, greaves. Apart from his vest and pants, Aito took off each armor part because it felt useless for him to keep them on. 

'I can't feel shit with these protections on.' 

During his one month of training on the third floor, Aito had noticed something interesting when sparring against Ogoro. He learned at a much faster rate after feeling an attack striking his body. 

In a sense, the more he got hit, the faster he'd be able to adapt to an opponent's fighting style. It wasn't a skill per se, more like…, it was hard to define, even for him. 

Every time he was beaten up, he felt like he wanted to resist more than before. He could also feel, remember the areas of his body that had been struck, which helped him figure out at what angle the enemy usually attacked from. 

Also, he felt like he was growing complacent because of the new armor set that allowed him to ignore most physical attacks at his level. 

Aito stored his armor set into an inventory bag, then threw it to Ogoro, with the instruction to take good care of it. 

"If you think I'll go easy on you because you took off your armor, you're dead wrong little man." 

"No need, let's continue," Aito said, charging towards Gwen without losing another second. They weren't here to talk, after all.