Even though the fight with the digging hare boss was close, Yunan still chose to push forward to the 67th floor and all the way to the 69th floor, pa.s.sing by armoured moles that could swim through soil like it was water using an extreme adaptation at manipulation of earth type magic on the 67th, a type of barely visible bugs that could eat away at his armoured dragon scales as if the armour was tofu, and the boss was basically a queen that could mobilise the whole swarm, Yunan had to walk around pumping out all kinds of chaos and elemental magic on the 68th floor in order to avoid them.As for the 69th floor there was only one monster, a keeper of sorts, it was built like an amalgamation of all the monsters in the 60s, it had the build of a yeti, the exoskeleton of an ice wraith, the armour of a mole, the spirituality of a yuki, the great potential of a jötunn king and finally the sharpness of the storm falcons.
Yunan was out of his depth, but that did not mean he spent the last 2 years pushing past the 60s like a curse on steroids without gaining anything, and so he fought the 8 bosses in one with unrelenting spirit, the fight lasted for a whole week and resulted in a defeat, Drogon did not interfere until the last moment and teleported Yunan back home for treatment.
And like so a vicious cycle started, Yunan begins his week fighting the 6th guardian for 6 long days before returning home to get treatment and have a rest day, Drogon took this chance to boost his own power by helping in the fighting in the last day making sure Yunan does not slip and dies by some stupid mistake from the prolonged and overdrawn fights.
Life was like this, hard and strenuous for the hard working and easy for the trophy wives, even Catelyn was growing fast and spouting nonsense faster, too fast for Yunan"s liking. Soon the date for the promised vacation came creeping closer and closer, even when fighting in an already overloaded match, Yunan could feel the excitement at home for the trip towards the awakened island, thankfully his ability had caught up to his understanding and was getting the better fight each week.
… right fist to punch the monster arm away, left hand arm guard to parry the incoming claw, wing to swipe at wing and miniature sound bullets to disrupt blood flow, tentacles shooting anesthesia and venoms, weapons manoeuvring in mid air like they had limbs invisibly wielding them about, sparks of magic to devour and block flew amidst the chaos that outsiders would perceive, inadvertently however, to the two involved, it was chess at the highest level, each limb cut off, each block, each breath, each drop of sweat, everything was perfectly calculated, the sole purpose was victory.
This was a battle at the doorstep of the sage level, this was the introduction to sage level for those who would cross that threshold in the 79th floor or a bit earlier.
Sage level was something that could be felt and described but only grasped through hard work and devotion, although Yunan was a step away from pushing open that door, to cross that step was to be twenty times as good as one was before reaching the door. For some, it was even worse. Like Yunan, who, due to his potential and many many lucky encounters, he needed to be at one hundred times better, this turned the last step from a hair crack to become a canyon, and Yunan steadily bridged that gap over a long year"s worth of daily near deaths.
The 6th guardian had a limit, it would be twice as good as anyone who just stepped up to the door of the sage, to Yunan that was nothing big especially when he was already past that point in comprehension, his only shortcoming was the slow climb of the attribute points, the fact that he neglected his own growth came back to bite him.
Contrary to us, to Yunan, what he saw was the only way to get used to fighting with attributes as low as the other adventurers, they had parties and he was alone, but if he was no match to them on the same level, he would think that his years of training were wasted on him. Thus after spending 8 months fighting like nothing else mattered, he was finally on the same level as the guardian, and he could fight it to a stand still without much effort, thus he took the chance to train his Drogon for 3 more months.
As a dragon, Drogon could just forgo fighting and eat his way to the highest levels, but his master was Yunan, therefore he was required to be able to earn his food when needed, thus he went forward with the 3 months of training, the duo were able to both grow and increase their level of synchronization to be as close as a having the same heartbeat.
With one month left before the a.s.sembly at the awakened island, the crest on Sapphira"s brow started to glow and show itself, prompting Yunan to finally kill the 6th guardian and enter the 70th floor, he didn"t even wait to take a good look before returning home and start packing, he gave the the genie and the grown up artificial intelligence at home a few ideas to improve the research on the mechs, and told them to fire up the much improved floating fortress and get it ready to travel.
His rewards were plenty, a few items for the armour to feed on, some knowledge crystals and other things, the most important among them was an introduction to the sage level golden book, although he had the book from Apophis, it was the outlook of a deity, this one was written by those who pa.s.sed the sage level while still ignorant about ascendance and deification, something that a deity like Apophis would not account for, the book also had stories of failure due to seemingly logical and sometimes irrelevant small details, something that most G.o.ds would never have to face, because to a G.o.d failure means to just chose another path, to a mortal, failure means the end of the road most of the time, rarely is there a possibility to start over or correct the mistake.