23 14th Floor (2/2)

[Howl], as soon as he felt the pain, Li Wei activated his skill to push back the rogue, he now knew where she was and quickly stabbed towards her. But she was fast and stepped to the side and used her own skill, [Shadow Strike] to attack.

This time, Li Wei parried the dagger with his second sword but he still took some damage.

[Strengthen]

[Rush]

Both sides used their respective buffs and clashed once again. Li Wei swung his swords at the rogue, but she swiftly dodged and spun around Li Wei ending up just behind him.

[Cut throat]

She raised her dagger and placed it just below Li Wei's jaw, she was about to strike but Li Wei quickly hit her with his elbow. The [Cut Throat] was interrupted but the dagger still cut through his throat, ”-22”. Li Wei already lost more than half of his HP but just as he took the damage, he activated [Cleave] and rotated onto himself, striking the rogue, ”-23”

As the rogue took a step back, Li Wei followed up with a [Blade Draw] which was parried by the rogue's dagger.

Since all the rogue's skills were still on cooldown, Li Wei charged at her, but the rogue simply spun the daggers in her hands and threw them while they were still spinning.

They looked like 2 shurikens; Li Wei raised his swords made a cut in front of him, pushing away the 2 daggers. Fortunately for him, the daggers were much slower and easier to hit compared to an arrow.

As Li Wei once again focused his attention on the rogue, he once again found that she was disappearing in front of him but this time, the animation was different, it was as if mist came out of nowhere and surrounded her until she disappeared.

Li Wei frowned, he knew that this was definitely another equipment's skill. It was clear that the rogue was buying time for her skills to refresh, rogues depended on their skills to deal lots of damage in short period of times while warriors could deal consistent damage over time.

Li Wei focused, carefully looking at his surroundings to find any clue of the position of the rogue, but he did not find anything. So to avoid being taken by surprise like last time, Li Wei moved and went at the edge of the arena, he then turned and faced the empty arena; in such position, he did not have to guard his back since the rogue could not leave the arena.

Time flew by, it had already been 20 seconds since the rogue disappeared, most of her skills had refreshed except for [Rush].

Li Wei was still surveying the arena when he suddenly felt the air move, it was very faint and barely noticeable but Li Wei trusted his instinct and swung his blade in that direction.

And surely, ”Cling” his sword hit one of the rogue's dagger. The rogue's body came to light, despite her mask, Li Wei could see her surprised expression. He quickly took advantage of that and used his skills

[Howl]

The little knockback effect made the rogue lose her balance and Li Wei followed up with a [Cleave], ”-31”

The rogue took the strike and made a backflip before landing smoothly 2 meters away from Li Wei.

Both parties now had less than half of their HP but Li Wei did not stop here, he was close to her and quickly used his ring's skill [Chaos Sphere].

Li Wei smiled, the sphere flew out of his hands and was certain to explode on the rogue but at that moment, a white light came out of her pendant and transformed into a layer, protecting her.

It was clearly different from the layer that represented Li Wei's victory, it was, in fact, similar to the [Mana Shield] that mages used. Immediately after, the rogue threw her daggers at Li Wei and immediately used her own [Stealth], ”-9”,”-11”

The situation once again turned back to the previous one. Li Wei immediately went at the edge of the arena, calmly catching his breath. He took the opportunity to check his HP and MP, he still had slightly over 28 HP and 33 MP left. His HP and MP were actually slowly regenerating but this rate was very slow, about 1 HP/MP every 2 minutes. The waiting game the rogue was playing was also allowing Li Wei to recover slightly.

Once again, Li Wei intently watched his surroundings when he suddenly thought of something. Could he use Earth Wall to determine the position of the rogue? He quickly remembered what happened when he used Earth Wall under the Paladin's feet, the ground right below his feet actually rose up with a small delay compared to the ground having nothing above it.

...

Having formed his plan, Li Wei carefully observed his surroundings while activating [Earth Wall], this time instead of a tall vertical wall, Li Wei wanted to lift a very short flat horizontal wall, it could not even be called a wall. [Earth Wall] allowed the users to freely lift the earth in any way they wanted, the limit only came in terms of volume of Earth; so players could choose to create very large but weak walls or at the same time, strong but smaller walls.

Due to the volume limit, Li Wei could not target the entire arena, so he only chose to lift the ground within a 5 meters radius and surely, he found the location of the rogue. The ground slightly trembled and raised by about 3 cm. But due to the way Li Wei raised the ground, its density was rather low and clear footprints appeared 4 meters on Li Wei's right.

Seeing that, Li Wei immediately used his [Blade Draw] towards the rogue, at the same time, he charged in that direction.

The rogue was surprised, she never expected such thing to happen, it was the first time she witnessed such technique.

She quickly reacted and parried the [Blade Draw] but moments later, Li Wei appeared right before her, stabbing her stomach with one of his swords, ”-19” at the same time, his other sword was initiating [Cleave].

The rogue saw that, but her weird position could not allow her to parry, instead, she went on the offensive, using [Shadow Strike].

The 2 sides both took each other's skill and both were left with less than 10 HP.

The rogue frowned but she quickly spun on herself, using that rotation, she thrust her dagger at Li Wei from the side. But the latter would not let her succeed, as he saw the rogue spin, Li Wei placed his foot just where the rogue would put hers when spinning. And that simple action caused the rogue to lose her balance and miss her attack.

She fell on the ground and quickly after, Li Wei's sword dived into her stomach.

[Congratulations for defeating the fourteenth floor...]

...

At the same time, somewhere in Zero.

A young woman was sitting on an ethereal throne, watching several screens in front of her, each screen showed different persons doing different things. Among these screens, 12 of them were separately placed and right now, her attention was focused on the 7th screen and the person on it was actually Li Wei.

That young woman was actually Gaia, she was constantly monitoring the players and the development of the game, but she always kept particular attention on these 12 individuals.

'He defeated the 14th floor... He is slowly getting the hang of it... But what should I do... the Tower of Heroes is not supposed to be clearable...' said Gaia to herself.

'I am sorry... I can only make you lose... but I'll give you a fight you'll like in return...'

”Bypass protocol 9382, protocol... Sort data about NPC 238194 ..... Summon warrior type...”