Tower of God: The Flower of Earth (Slow Updates)

Chapter Forty-Four

"Are you ready to do this thing?!" Kal tackled Weldon from behind when we were in the welcoming zone of the eleventh floor of the tower, the floor of the scouts.

Weldon yelped and tumbled down to the ground as he was not expecting her to do that and had not mentally or physically prepared himself. "No. No, I am not." He mumbled from underneath Kal as she was grinning from ear to ear in excitement.

I chuckled and helped him get her off, as she ran ahead to go check them in. "You gonna be ok?"
"If this floor doesn't kill me, Kal will eventually. So as ok as I will be, I guess." He dusted the dirt from the ground off his clothes. "You should go head to the not scout resting zone. We will see you all later. Hopefully." He gulped down some saliva and air, seeing a lot of menacing looking regulars who were going to be attempting to complete this floor as well.

I nodded and put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "We will be cheering you on. Make sure you keep Nightbane on hand. And your E-Pocket open. Kal may be hyper and ready to take on the world, but she does want to work as a team, so don't get separated."

He nodded and opened his pocket to get the axe out. "See you guys later." He waved and walked into the crowd to look for the self proclaimed Queen of the Penguins. Soon Weldon spotted her thick bun of kinky hair in the front of the crowd and pushed his way forward.
He couldn't make sense of what the administrators of the floor was saying over the cheers of the crowd, before everything went dark. He panicked. Was the tests already starting? What was the tests?

"Flashlight... Please tell me I still have my flashlight..." He tried to find it in his inventory but couldn't. "Oh Jahad..."

Weldon closed it and kept the axe close to him, sensing there were people around him, but not how far they were until he felt an arrow wizz by his ear, missing by millimeters.

He silently cursed and tried to find a way out of there, running as more arrows began to shoot, only missing him as he powered up his speed and ran faster and faster. Then he ran square into a wall, or something that felt like a wall. "Wall. Door. Where's a door?" He felt around like a fool, before feeling a hand grab his head and shove him down to the floor as he heard an arrow strike the wall right where he had been standing a second ago.

"You didn't close your eyes did you?" He heard a clear voice ask him.

"Oh thank Jahad Kal. Why would I have closed my eyes? I can't see anything in this pitch black darkness."

"It's as bright as daytime Weldon. You were supposed to close your eyes during the transfer." She helped him up. "Come on, get on my back."

"What? No. Why would I do that?"

"Just get on my back!" She snapped, and forced him to wrap his arms around her neck as she got him into a piggybacking position.

He felt a few more arrows nearly hit them before she took off running, a bit slower with his added weight, but still enough to get away from their attackers. "Ok. Kal, what is going on?"

"We are in the test. Anyone who had their eyes opened during the transfer are getting killed off first. It's like the first floor. We all kill each other until there are only a hundred of us left. We need to find you a river so we can get you to see." She started panting, getting tired.

Weldon tried to process this. He was almost killed. "Oh. Well... Thanks for coming back for me. "

"Don't sweat it. But seriously. Don't sweat. I think some of them have acute sense of smell."
They soon stopped, as Weldon heard roaring water. "River?"

"Close. River Rapids. We can clear your eyes here."

He heard a sproing and a splash, before feeling a cloth drenched in water gently rubbing his eyes as he slowly started seeing light again. He took the cloth and gingerly rubbed them himself, until he could fully see.

"Thanks." He sighed, and looked to see her hair was out of the usual bun, the tight curls surrounding her face as they floated free of their confines. "Your h..."

She held up her hand to stop him from talking. "Don't even." She took back the strip of fabric he had used to clear his eyesight and struggled to pull it all back into a nice-ish bun. "I will fix it later. Come on. We gotta keep moving."

He followed, speachness, as he followed her. He held his axe close as he kept surveying the scene as they followed the river upstream, away from the battle grounds.

He watched her movement, as the action crazed girl seemed... Mellow. Way too mellow. And tired. "Kal, you ok?"

"I see a waterfall. We can scale the cliff to see how many more are left." She ignored him, and ran ahead.

Weldon sighed exasperated and chased after her until he reached the bottom of it with her. "Kal, what is going on? You don't act like this."
She ignored him, using her twin blades as if they were ice picks and stabbing them in between cracks in the wall to start climbing up.

"KAL!" He shouted after her before rock climbing up, trying to not fall behind.
He reached the top exhausted as he found her sitting on the edge and staring at some floating number in the center of what seemed to be a giant half sphere dome surrounding the arena. 115 of 100. Only a few dozen people had been killed.

"Kal, come on, what is going on? You are worrying me." Weldon reached into his bag and grabbed a bottle of water to drink.

"Come on, we gotta keep moving. The further away we are, the better off we are. We only need to wait for fifteen more deaths." She got up and started walking away as Weldon fumbled to grab her and stop her to get some answers.

He fell onto his side as the cliff side cracked, and made him panic and jump away from the edge, it falling down into the raging river below. He panted and looked at where he and Kal had been sitting moments before, before looking back at Kal who was walking away as if nothing had happened.

What was going on?