Is this really a Game?!

Reign and the others continued climbing up, they had come across multiple groups of monsters that were controlled like the first one. The main difference between the new groups they encountered was the fact that they were lower in numbers compared to the first one.

Almost all of the groups had only about half of the initial group's numbers and they were easier to deal with. Well, at least at the beginning. The higher Reign and the others climbed, the stronger the monsters became and sometimes the control the enemy had over them was better as well.

The control depended on the monsters, the ones that had higher willpower and perhaps spirit stat were harder to control, at least that's what the team figured since it made the most sense. Some groups were harder to deal with, while others were relatively easy.

Since Reign and the others knew that the enemy was controlling the monsters, they started implementing measures against it. Well, calling it measures was a bit of an overstatement. What they did was quite simple, actually.

Reign would constantly try to sense enemies around them, his incredible sensitivity towards the changes a soul had was incredibly beneficial here as he could sense all the controlled monsters in a wide radius around them.

Beast as well used his specialty, his eagle would go above them and scout the next platform in order to check for any ambushes nearby while he would also use the incredibly well smell that Blackie and the two lions had in order to try and smell any enemies.

There was no guarantee that there were only controlled monsters nearby after all and Reign was only able to sense those that were controlled.

Their carefulness proved to be right as some of the larger groups of monsters they encountered were mixed. There would be about half or more of the controlled monsters amongst them, while the others would be normal.

That saved them from underestimating the number of monsters they would face, and potential ambushes from monsters that were not controlled.

The enemy was smart, they knew that the control they had over monsters wasn't perfect, whether it was because of the distance between the monsters and them, or the strength of the monster, Reign and the others knew not, but it seems like the enemy either simply controlled a portion and left the others so it was easier to control them, or they had perhaps controlled all the monsters before releasing the control over half of them in order to control the others more easily.

The enemy was shrewd, even without knowing it, they had put traps against Reign's strongest weapon that he had against them, his sensitivity to the soul.

Luckily Beast was here to pick up the rest of the effort and pinpoint the other monsters, making things a lot easier for everybody.

Shadow was the one that had the most work next to them, he used his ability to stealthily kill monsters without alerting the others, of course, that was sometimes impossible and they would simply need to attack the monsters with a swift attack, but he was mostly able to cut down the monster numbers before they would notice that something was wrong and group up.

Wolf helped him out with the stealth kills, as a former assassin, Wolf was incredibly adept and doing such things, even without any abilities or skills that would help him in sneaking around. Well, that was not entirely true, the techniques he learned from his father quickly got recognized as skills by the system as he did them and he was able to get some help in that regard.

The higher the team climbed, the stronger and fewer the monsters became, it didn't take them long to come to areas where there were no controlled monsters either or parts where controlled monsters were few in number.

That could easily be put to the enemy team simply not being powerful enough to control them, or because they were lucky and evaded them as the platforms that were present there were huge. There wasn't just one platform at the same height, but 2 or more.

Calling the final floor a floor was simply an understatement simply because of how huge it was. There were multiple ways to climb up and there were also many powerful monsters that Reign and the others dared not disturb, sometimes there would be multiple on the same platform as well.

There were even huge snakes that would come out of giant holes that were present on the inside wall of the building, compared to the snake they had fought before, they were much larger and definitely more dangerous.

They were only able to come out for a relatively short distance, however, and from what Reign and the others were able to see when they would hunt other monsters, they weren't able to get to the same height as a platform that was above or below them.

That made it possible to simply evade the giant monsters that treated them as snacks.

Soon, Reign and the others were able to see the ceiling of the building. It was still quite high up, but it was finally visible.

What waited for them on the top was unknown and since Reign and the others had still not come across the two teams that had come in before them, it was possible that they were waiting for them somewhere higher up, it was also possible that they were simply unable to continue climbing up as the monsters had become too powerful.

Tier II monsters were roaming freely on the higher platforms and even though they were just like the tiger and were amongst the weakest of Tier II monsters, they were still incredibly powerful and dangerous to any player on Earth at this moment.

Reign and the others didn't overestimate their own skills, but they were quite confident that there were not many that had the power they had, not to mention any that were even more powerful than them.

One change that occurred was the width of the floor, as soon as they were able to see the ceiling, the higher they went, the narrower the floor became.

That was what made them think that the enemy team might be waiting for them above, planning on ambushing them.

Beast had to summon his eagle back a while ago as the giant snakes that came out of the walls could easily kill it, not to mention the fact that there were many monsters that were more powerful than it was, which made using the eagle to scout incredibly dangerous.

The floor slowly became more narrow and from being a couple of kilometers in diameter, it was now about 1km. The platforms became very close to the walls until they formed floors of their own. Reign and the others were now unable to see the ceiling of the building as they could only stare at the ceiling of the next platform/floor that stood about 20 meters above them.

Gems and crystals that shone brightly could be seen on the ceiling and the floors weren't dark, but the feeling of being on each floor made the quite tense as the monsters here were a bit above what they could handle without using any trump cards.

Another thing that puzzled all of them was the fact that they were able to see the ceiling of the building before, they knew it wasn't a platform as the colorful lights and weird symbols that they could see on it were much different from the lower part of the platforms that just had gems and crystals.

That was simply impossible as the ceiling should have been completely blocked by the platforms at this point, but Reign and the others simply decided to not think about it. The whole building was above what they could comprehend and held more mystery than anything they knew about, they felt that their brains would explode if they tried learning more about it.

Finally, as they came to a staircase that led them to a higher platform, Reign and Beast stopped as they felt something.

Beast never stopped using his enhanced sense of smell, and neither did Reign stop using his soul sensing.

Both of them could sense it, they could sense about 20 monsters and 14 people above them.

Reign was able to sense 3 people that he couldn't before when he started sensing mana, but he also couldn't sense 4 people whose souls he was able to sense.

The 4 were definitely those whose mana he was unable to sense when they were in the safe zone before the challenge started. As for the 3, Reign couldn't sense their soul at all, which was weird considering that he could sense all the others since their souls were somehow connected to the monsters they controlled.

Upon learning that the enemy had prepared an ambush close to the entrance of the next platform, everybody became tense. It was impossible to evade the ambush as there was only one way up, going around was simply not possible.

Reign and the others stared at the staircase that now looked like the jaws of a powerful monster that was waiting for them to come in before devouring them.