Devil Fruit Powers In The Tower Of God - Chapter 39

The 22nd Floor was one gigantic forest, filled with trees as tall as skyscrapers. The residents of the Floor used those trees as buildings. They would hollow them out and change their insides to fit their needs, be it apartment buildings, stores, or entertainment facilities.

The place was filled to the brim with Regulars, like almost any other Floor from the 21st and upwards. You could easily find hundreds of thousands of Regulars on those Floors, especially on the lower and middle ones.

The Test on the Floor requires at least six members to participate, but you can have a team up to twelve Regulars. The Test is a team battle in an arena enclosed by massive walls, erected there, to stop Regular from interfering with the Test, and to outline the arena boundaries. The arena is separated into three areas, one for each team and a middle area, and is the size of a city like New York.

Each team will have six cube-shaped holes, that could fit a dozen humans, on their side. In order to complete the Test, you have to fill all six holes at the same time. And the object that you need, the cube, could be found in the middle ground, where there are a total of eleven there. Each one a large distance away from the others, so teams would carefully have to decide where they will send their members.

The Test has a time limit of four days, due to the large arena, so if neither team manages to complete the objective, both of them will fail.

Despite the large number of Regulars residing on the Floor, only two teams would usually take on the Test every few days or so. That would mostly depend on how long it took the previous teams to complete or fail the Test.

Three months had passed, since Lumen and his group arrived on the 22nd Floor.

Due to the large amount of life force he had in his body, Lumen had entered deep into the forest, so that he could safely deal with it. For the first few days, he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t fall asleep, his body was twitching, his brain felt like a CPU that was overclocked.

Lumen tried training with increased gravity to tire himself out, but that didn’t work. He tried overusing his light powers, but that also didn’t work. Lumen also tried using his new darkness powers and was able to get a lot of practice done with them, but that didn’t tire him out as well. He had even tried using the Shinsoo strengthening technique that Urek taught him, by trying to use the life force inside him instead of Shinsoo, but that also didn’t work.

When he had killed the mountain-sized Iron Mackarel Shark, he had released a massive amount of his black flames, and that had helped out to a point, but he had ended up killing all other Sharks in the are, which made the issue even worst.

Lumen had thought of doing the same, but he didn’t want to cause another commotion, plus there were a lot of creatures living in the forest, so doing that won’t help him.

He wanted to keep the fact that he is alive hidden for a bit longer. His survival from being attacked by a FUG Slayer would be a big deal, and reporters would flock to him if they learn about that. And from the 21st Floor and upwards, you could easily find hundreds of reporters on each Floor.

Lumen was fine with them asking questions like that, as long as they didn’t bother him. Otherwise, with him being in the limelight, he would have a harder time baiting the rats out. He was under the impression that FUG had already lost three Slayers and an Elder since he believed Karaka had died on the 10th Floor.

After what Urek had done to them, he didn’t think that they would dare sent another Slayer or Elder, considering they have lost so many already, but he was hoping to bait out a high ranking member. As long as FUG sends someone to check out the identity of the new masked Regular, he would be happy with that. After all, he had a nasty surprise prepared for them and was working on another one as well.

When Lumen was at his wit’s end, he tried out his white Phoenix flames, and finally, he had some success. He was able to refine the life force coursing through him and strengthen his body with it, but the process was a painfully slow one. It would take him one day to refine a day’s worth of life force, and he had at least a few years in excess of it inside of him. He didn’t plan on spending years just to get rid of the surplus of life force, so he worked on ways to make the process faster.

A month after they reached the 22nd Floor, he had managed to combine the strengthening technique Urek taught him, with the refining done by his white flames. By doing that, he was able to increase the speed at which he refines the life force by seven times. He could now refine a week’s worth of life force in a day. And after spending two months doing just that, he still had a surplus of life force in him, but he no longer had the same symptoms as before. He would need about three to four months to refine all the residue life force.

Lumen was currently sitting in a relaxing manner under a gigantic tree. Saber, now looking like a small cat with two fangs, was peacefully snoring next to him. He didn’t know when, but she had learned how to resize her body, similarly to how Compression Licensers are able to.

Normally, massive individuals can form a contract with the Guardian on the Floor in order to resize the size of their bodies, since their giant size makes it inconvenient for them to move around and do activities in the Tower.

However, Saber was able to achieve that without forming a contract with a Guadian. That was a natural ability of hers, considering Berserker was unable to do the same. The big lizard had eaten a lot of the forest’s creatures, and Lumen had returned him back to his bowl.

As he was sitting under the tree, he was able to sense two individuals that were fighting nearby. His range of reading Shinsoo was immense, and he could sense things up to 1km away from him.

One of the Regulars that were fighting was a muscular man that was easily over 2m tall. The man had black hair and red eyes, and he was wearing black shorts, a black short-sleeved shirt with a green collar, and black and green sneakers. That was Novick, a branch member of the Ha Family, and considered one of the top 20 E-Rank Regulars, despite becoming one very recently. Like any other member of the Ha Family, he had an extremely strong physique.

Both of them had incredibly strong physical bodies, but Ran was faster and more agile than Novick. The blue-haired boy was landing hit after hit on the muscular man, with each strike being enhanced with electric Shinsoo.

Despite that, Novick was standing strong, he was a member of the Ha Family, so his durability was immense. While taking hits from Ran, he was trying to counter-attack with his own Shinsoo abilities. He would gather red-colored Shinsoo around his hands and punch, causing it to explode outwards in the form of a shield. Unfortunately, Ran was moving to fast for him to land a hit on him.

Novick had gathered red-colored Shinsoo in both of his hands and was about to hit the ground with them, trying to use one of his techniques, but Ran appeared in front of him in a burst of speed before he was able to finish it.

“Time to end this.” Ran said and formed two electric infused Baangs of Shinsoo in his hands and fired them off point-blank at Novick. Being hit by the two blasts of lightning, the muscular man was sent flying from the attack, right towards where Lumen was sitting.

Before the flying Novick could hit him, a shield made of black mass formed in front of him and stopped the flying man. Despite hitting the shield with his head, Novick stood up shortly.

“What the hell did I hit?” He said as he stood up. Looking around, he couldn’t see the object that he hit, but he saw a masked-man that was staring at him.

“Who are you?” Novick asked Lumen with narrowed eyes. Regulars usually wouldn’t come so deep into the forest, so he found the masked-man suspicious for being here. Maybe he was planning to take him and Ran out after they tired themselves, securing an easier time of passing the Test on the Floor.

“You come flying towards me, but rather than apologizing, you ask me who I am? Has no one taught you manners?” Lumen replied and released a bit of killing intent.

Feeling that, Novick took a few steps backward. The masked-man was definitely not ordinary, but like any other member of the 10 Great Families, his arrogance was sky-high, and it didn’t sit well with him to apologize.

However, he didn’t know what to do and was conflicted. Normally, he would attack and kill any other Regular if they had told him that, but the masked-man felt extremely dangerous. Just as he was wondering what to do, Ran walked in.

“Who are you?” The blue-haired boy felt the dangerous aura coming from Lumen and immediately focused his attention on him.

“Another one that hasn’t been taught manners. It’s common knowledge that you have to introduce yourself first before asking for someone’s name.” Lumen replied.

“You don’t know who we are?” Novick asked in wonder. The two of them are from the 10 Great Families and are quite famous amongst the E-Rank Regulars, considering they are regarded as one of the strongest, despite recently advancing to E-Rank.

“No, and I don’t care who you are unless you are members of FUG…” Lumen paused to evaluate their reaction of him mentioning FUG, and to read their emotions. Judging that they do not have a connection with FUG, he continued. “Or you want to join my team.”

“Join your team? Tsch. If you are good enough, I could let you join my team.” Ran responded arrogantly. Despite sensing the dangerous aura of Lumen, he was confident in his own abilities. He didn’t think that just any E-Rank Regular could match his strength.

Lumen lazily stood up and did a few stretches. “I haven’t fought in quite some time. You seem like a good opponent for a nice warm-up.”

His words angered Ran. How dare an unknown Regular look down on him, and think of him as nothing more than a warm-up.

“I will teach you not to look down on me!” As he finished his words, he appeared in front of Lumen with a burst of speed. Ran sent a punch infused with his electric Shinsoo, but Lumen caught his fist without taking any damage from it.

Both Novick and Ran were astonished at how easily Lumen stopped the attack.

“Not bad speed and strength. Your Shinsoo control is also good. However, you would at most be considered sixth in strength in my team.” Lumen told him truthfully. He could give Vespa and Hatsu a good fight, but the two should be able to take him down. Anak and Androssi were out of the question, as they would easily crush him.

Ran jumped backward and studied Lumen carefully. Despite his arrogance, he was an intelligent one, and he knew that he picked a fight with someone who he shouldn’t underestimate.