Floor 9 Chase Test

Lore & Background

In the Tower's design philosophy, the lower floors serve as a filter of fundamentals. Where Floor 1 tests raw determination and Floor 2 tests physical endurance, the Chase Test on Floor 9 introduces a temporal and spatial variable: you are no longer simply going up, you are going forward, and something is going after you. The forest is not static. Paths narrow, branches snap, the ground tilts, and the target you are chasing (or that is chasing you) seems to learn your rhythm after the first few seconds. The Tower's architects clearly wanted climbers to feel the difference between running in a straight line and running in a world that pushes back.

What makes the test quietly brutal is its psychological layer. The forest is loud—rustling, creaking, the distant thud of something large moving through the undergrowth. Climbers report that the sound alone erodes confidence before the physical strain does. The Tower does not need to show the pursuer's face; the noise is enough to make your legs stutter. Passing requires not just speed but a kind of calm, a willingness to let fear be a passenger rather than the driver.

Among the Tower's many trials, the Chase Test is often cited by veterans as the one that best predicts whether a climber will survive the mid-floor gauntlets. Those who pass it tend to carry a particular quality into higher floors: they do not flinch when the rules change mid-trial, because the forest already taught them that the rules were never fixed to begin with.

In Their Own Story

The canopy closed above like a green cathedral, and the air tasted of wet bark and iron. You could hear it before you saw it—that low, rolling percussion of something massive displacing the undergrowth three hundred meters back. Your lungs burned. Your left ankle had gone numb somewhere past the second ridge, and the path ahead split into three, then five, then a dozen threads of shadow that all looked the same.

You did not stop. You did not look back. You ran the way you'd been taught, the way the Tower demanded: not toward the finish line, but away from the thing that wanted you to turn around. The branches whipped your face. The ground tilted left, then right, then simply stopped being level, and your feet found purchase on nothing more than faith and momentum.

Behind you, the thudding grew closer. You let it. You needed it closer, because the moment it was far enough to be comfortable was the moment you'd slow down, and slowing down was how the forest ate you. You ran until the sound was a roar, until the trees thinned, until the first pale strip of Tower-light split the green and you knew—without turning, without stopping, without letting your legs forget how to pump—that you had made it through.

Reader's Guide

Floor 9 · Chase Test

The climber is deposited at the edge of a dense, enclosed forest. A target—typically a glowing marker, a small creature, or a point of light—is placed at a distance. The objective is simple on paper: reach or catch the target before the trial window expires. In practice, the forest is alive. Paths shift, terrain tilts, and a pursuer (a large, fast creature or a wave of force) begins closing in from behind within the first few seconds.

The unique twist is that the forest does not operate on fixed geometry. What looked like a straight path a moment ago may curve, fork, or collapse. The pursuer also adapts: it mirrors your turning pattern, so running in a straight line or repeating a pattern makes you an easy catch. Survivors describe the key as "reading the noise"—using the sound of the pursuer to judge distance and adjusting your route on the fly rather than committing to a single line.

Notable attempts: Many first-time climbers fail on their first run through, often because they turn to look behind them. The Tower does not penalize looking; it simply costs you the half-second that the pursuer needs. Those who pass tend to be those who treat the chase as a rhythm problem rather than a speed problem.

Design philosophy: The Tower uses this test to establish that climbing is not a vertical act. From Floor 9 onward, the Tower expects its climbers to think laterally, to read an environment in real time, and to maintain composure under sustained pressure. It is the first test where the Tower says, clearly: I will not be a wall you climb. I will be a world you must navigate, and it will not wait for you to catch your breath.

Did You Know?

• The Chase Test is one of the earliest trials where the Tower introduces an adaptive environment—the forest geometry is not fixed between attempts, meaning no two runs through the same floor are identical.
• Veterans of the Tower often note that the sound of the pursuer is the true timer; the forest is designed so that auditory cues become as important as visual ones, testing spatial awareness over pure speed.
• The test is frequently cited by climbers as the point where the Tower stops feeling like a staircase and starts feeling like a living organism with its own tempo and intent.
• Passing the Chase Test is considered a soft indicator of whether a climber will handle the mid-floor trials, where environmental adaptation becomes a constant rather than a single gauntlet.