Trial Two "Strength" - 3
(Author's Note: Sorry for the short Hiatus, I had been buried under a bunch of schoolwork and wasn't able to write. Thanks for waiting and enjoy the chapter!)
[Welcome to the second floor of the Tutorial Tower!]
In front of me was a line of stone slabs that grew bigger and bigger the further away they were.
I didn't even bother to read the directions that showed up in front of me and walked up to a slab that was a little bit taller than me and was about as wide as my body.
The rules of the test were simple, you just had to choose a stone slab, and if you were able to break it in one punch, you would gain some strength stat points and then you would be able to move on. The only catch was that you if you didn't break it in one punch, you would be immediately killed. Also, the bigger the slab that you broke, the more stat points that you earned from this floor.
Because I had played the beta test hundreds of times, I already knew which slab to pick with my capabilities right now, as I had done it hundreds of times.
"Boom"
My fist shattered the slab and I found a door behind it. I then checked my stats again.
[Player Shinubwa Lv. 1:
Strength: 17
Stamina: 10
Agility: 20
Mana: 10
Hp: 10
Perception: 20
Intelligence: 10
Extra Stat Points: 15
-------------------------------
Job: None
Titles: None
Skills: None]
[Congratulations on finishing the second trial!]
[You have completed the trial in record time!]
[You have gained 10,000 TC*]
[You are ranked 1st on the leaderboard, would you like to reveal your name?]
"No"
[World Wide Announcement: Player, "Unknown", is the first player to clear a second trial in the Tower of Trials.]
[You have gained 7 strength points.]
[Your fame has increased!]
[More gods have taken an interest in the player "Shinubwa"]
[Some gods are considering whether or not they should sponsor the player "Shinubwa".]
Looking at these notifications, I wondered why I was still the first one to clear the second trial.
There were two possibilities for this. Either all of the tutorial towers were the same in the order of the tests, or the towers in which people got the strength test, which was one of the shortest tests, first, had been too scared of something to proceed quickly.
Another problem right now was this idea of "sponsoring", but I didn't have a clear idea of what that meant right now so I just shoved that into the back of my mind right now.
"Hmmmm, I should probably take a look at the leaderboard."
Pulling up my status window, I pushed on the tab labeled "Leaderboard".
[Leaderboard:
1. Anonymous (Tutorial Tower 83) - 2nd floor | Lv. 1 | 21,000 TC
2. Liu Zhang (Tutorial Tower 61) - 2nd floor | Lv. 1 | 10,035 TC
3. Zero (Tutorial Tower 3) - 2nd floor | Lv.1 | 7,515 TC
...
9. Bam25 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 1st floor | Lv. 1 | 3,128 TC
10. 876 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 1st floor | Lv. 1 | 3,122 TC
...]
'So the leaderboard counts how many floors you've cleared so far, not what floor you are currently on.'
Taking another look at the leaderboard, I paused on the 9th and 10th places. I knew what tutorial towers were in each country as they still corresponded to the number of the server that the players from each country were put on in my online game.
83 was for the Kyoto area where I was, where I was, 61 was the Shanghai area, 3 was the whole eastern seaboard and midwest in the U.S., and 82 was for the Tokyo area.
Most countries had only one server set aside for them in my original game with some small countries being clumped together into a single server. Some big countries like the U.S. and China were split into 5 and 6 servers. Japan was supposed to only have one server based on its size, but I had split it into three due to my bias for Japan with the Sapporo region being 81, Tokyo being 82, and Kyoto being 83.
The reason I took a second glance at the 9th and 10th places was due to the names, rank, and area.
'These two could very well be possibly my two sisters.'
The reason for this was first, their names, which were references to media that I knew that they had each liked back when I was in the family, second, they were from the Tokyo region which was where I was originally from, and third, they were pretty high ranked which was probably due to the fact that I had talked to them about the storyline for my game back in the 2 years that I had been developing it, which meant that they also had an advantage that other players didn't have.
(Author's Note: These are references to TOG and The Author's POV)
'I shouldn't be too worried though as they only know the storyline, so their gameplay should be lacking still.'
After all, they couldn't compare to me, who had perfected my gameplay through the hundreds of tests.
I was thinking about checking the chat feature, but then decided against it, as I was currently wasting time to complete my third trial, and I needed to complete these first to get the 10,000 TC reward that came from completing these trials first.
Knowing this, I opened the door to the next floor.