Eventually, Odric got everyone else free. The first thing Rue did was reclaim her swords so that she could stab Raf’s corpse a few more times while Nemari rolled her eyes and Sorin tried not to laugh too hard. After everything the thug had put her through, Sorin couldn’t really blame Rue for wanting to be extra thorough in ensuring his death.

  “That’s going to be a problem,” he said a few minutes later, nodding toward the portal still waiting in the air for them. “The Antechamber won’t wait much longer, and you don’t have a choice but to go through it.”

  The only other option would be to go to the portal hub, a place they definitely couldn’t set foot in. Just because one batch of thugs was dead didn’t mean they were safe from the rest of the gang, and none of them were in great shape to take on another fight at the moment.

  “So we’ll loot the bodies and walk through,” Nemari said. “It’ll only take a minute. Surely we’ve got enough time for that.”

  “I can’t walk through with you.”

  She blinked, looked over at the portal, and then back to Sorin. Realization dawned, and she started swearing. “You didn’t help kill the dust ghoul.”

  “Nope. Bit of a flaw in our plan, huh?”

  Sorin could kill the floor guardian himself. That was no issue. The real problem was that his Antechamber wouldn’t deposit him in the same spot on Floor 3 that theirs would. Maybe they’d get lucky and land relatively close together. Maybe they’d end up a hundred miles apart. There was no way to tell.

  “And we can’t not take it,” Nemari said. “Otherwise we’re trapped on Floor 2.”

  Rue stopped stabbing Raf’s corpse. “What do we do?”

  “Take all the supplies with you,” Sorin said. “Nemari can make water. Monsters can be eaten. You’ll survive the environment that way, and I’ll catch up when I can. I’ll stay here, loot the bodies, and recover. Next time I collect a drop, I’ll have my own supplies. Then I kill the floor guardian and join you on Floor 3.”

  “We’ll need a meeting point,” Odric mused. “I don’t know much about Floor 3 beyond that it’s a desert.”

  “There are a few oases,” Sorin said. “I couldn’t find out a ton, but the biggest and most well-known one is at the foot of the only mountain on the floor. Pretty good landmark.”

  “Samael’s people will definitely be looking for us there once they realize this group failed to capture us,” Nemari said. “Maybe we should meet elsewhere.”

  Sorin didn’t even have to consider it. “Agreed. Let’s say five miles west of the mountain.”

  “Still a lot of ground to search,” Rue objected. “It’d be easy to miss each other by a thousand feet.”

  It wasn’t a perfect solution, but then again, there wasn’t really a good one. Without better understanding of the floor’s geography, it was impossible to pick a specific point. “It’ll do. If I have to search for a few days, I will.”

  They spent a few more minutes scrambling to make last-minute plans and rearranging their supplies, but the portal started flickering, and they were out of time. The trio made their way through, Nemari first, then Odric. Rue stopped just before she walked through.

  “You’re actually going to show up, right?” she asked.

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

  “Well… everything. I can’t help but think you’d have been better off without us.”

  “Most of the time, yes. But sometimes things go to shit, and you can only fail to survive that once. When I needed you guys, you were there. I’m not planning on dissolving our partnership just yet, certainly not when we’ve still got the rest of the Black Hellions to deal with. Maybe you guys should consider ditching me, though. If it becomes publicly known that we’ve parted ways, you’ll probably be left alone now that the guy interested in you specifically is dead.”

  “I…” Rue trailed off. With a sigh, she said, “See you on the other side, Sorin. Don’t get yourself killed trying to solo this guardian.”

  “See you there. Now get going before that portal closes.”

  Then Rue was gone, leaving Sorin alone with his thoughts and his pains, both physical and spiritual. He’d mauled his own soulspace to give himself that little extra boost of power, and there was nothing he could do to speed up recovery. Even gaining new anima wouldn’t make a difference.

  He sat there for another ten minutes, just waiting for his reserves to recover. Finally, there was enough in there for his passives to start working again, which was blessed relief in and of itself. The weariness fell away, as did the majority of the pain. His wounds started healing instantly, fast enough that he thought he’d be back in fighting shape within a day or two.

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  Slowly, he got up and started searching the bodies. There were all kinds of little trinkets, things like Raf’s needles or a metal bracer the earth mage had hidden under his sleeve. It looked like an earth magic amplifier, though Sorin didn’t take the time to study it. He wanted to be out of the bowl before a new dust ghoul appeared to take up the mantle of floor guardian.

  Looting the bodies took a bit of time, but eventually Sorin had a full pack of enchanted gear. He also went out of his way to check the little hide-away they’d been using, where he managed to procure a week or two’s worth of supplies.

  Then he lugged everything a few miles back out of the valley. Though the undead weren’t particularly threatening, he wasn’t interested in waking up to find one trying to kill him. The floor outside the valley wasn’t safe, either, but it was better than hanging out there.

  An hour or so was spent cataloging the spoils, most of which were discarded into the ‘sell’ pile. No one in his team was interested in needle throwing, though he hoped the returning enchantment woven into them would increase their sell price. He did decide to keep the whip. It would be useful for Nemari against anything that managed to get close to her until she got a few passive enhancement soulprints to make her a bit less fragile.

  There was also a small trinket made from a shark tooth that had been carved with tiny runes. That one was surprisingly complicated, and Sorin couldn’t help but chuckle when he figured out what it did.

  So that’s how he made those water discs so sharp. This is so specific that I can’t see any of us using it, but it’s small enough and valuable enough that I think I’ll just hang onto it until I can sell or trade it myself.

  The earth manipulation bracer also went into his ‘keep’ pile even though they didn’t have a single soulprint across the entire team that could utilize it. The ability to dig through solid rock was indispensable later on, and a soulprint that allowed him to move freely underground was on his short list of must haves.

  The final piece he decided to keep was a valuable item known simply as a recall stone. It had been in Raf’s pockets, though it had unattuned upon his death. They couldn’t transport the user between floors, which meant that it had likely been meant to whisk Raf back to the Floor 2 portal hub, possibly with news of a successful capture. It wasn’t immediately useful to Sorin, but recall stones weren’t something he expected to see before Floor 10, maybe even later considering how much harder the red tower was than his own.

  The temptation to sell it was strong. Trading it for an immediate advantage, or even to just keep the danirs in his account for Bradford to move on some of the rarer and more expensive soulprints when he came across them, was a smart move. But a recall stone was a life-saving tool, literally whisking its bearer out of danger. In the end, prudence won out over greed.

  * * *

  Five days later, fully recovered and resupplied from the latest dead drop, Sorin entered the valley and killed the dust ghoul. Its attempts to blind him were futile, though the dust did make it harder to track the monster’s location. As far as its poisonous claws went, those only worked if it could land a hit. The ghoul was all offense and speed, relying on its undead physiology to push through hits without slowing down.

  Against Sorin, it lasted almost two minutes before he killed it. The familiar pang of a rank up echoed through his now-healed soulspace, and, once he’d picked up his supply bags from where he’d left them a few hundred feet back, he stepped through the portal into the Antechamber.

  This time, the Antechamber looked much like the one he remembered from his previous climb. The details were a bit different, unsurprisingly—little things like red highlights instead of blue, and a bit more gold ornamentation over silver. His reward for clearing the floor and immediately venturing into the unknown was waiting for him on a simple pedestal of fluted marble.

  “No box?” he asked the Tower with a laugh. “I guess the fact that I’m here alone would make it pointless.”

  Clearing a floor solo was rare, or at least it had been. He supposed that would change now that he could effectively outrank a floor. Taken in that context, he was probably lucky to get anything at all. He couldn’t really complain, though. No matter how the tower had decided to measure things, he’d gotten a fine prize.

  The sword’s blade was an icy, arctic blue, edging to white on the outside and deepening toward the middle. The cross guard was studded with a single, fat onyx that seemed to almost swirl as Sorin turned the blade to examine it. He was reminded, somewhat uncomfortably, of the void in liminal space, but he quickly dismissed that thought.

  The hilt was similarly wrapped in dark, almost black, leather, and a vibrant blue stone was set into its thick pommel. It was the exact shade he associated with his home tower, which he didn’t believe for a second was a coincidence. In fact, the whole sword looked strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen it before.

  Memories broken and forged anew.

  The words spoken by the three witches echoed in his mind. The more he stared at the sword, the more he became sure that he had seen it, that he was supposed to know where he recognized it from. A few experimental swipes with it were enough to familiarize himself with its weight and balance.

  Why do I feel like this is my sword? he wondered. It wasn’t, and he knew that. The blade he’d wielded on the last floor of his tower had looked nothing like this one. It had been forged of star-singing steel, pure silver until he channeled anima into it. Then it blazed iridescent white. This sword, while very nice and definitely powerful for a freshly-minted rank 3, couldn’t compare. It was a candle next to a volcano.

  Sorin claimed the scabbard resting on the pedestal behind where the blade had sat and strapped it into place. His old steel sword went onto his pack to serve as a backup weapon and eventually be sold to the next budding climber looking to upgrade his weapon. Then he paced across the Antechamber, only pausing in front of the exit portal.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?” he asked. Unsurprisingly, the tower declined to answer. “Alright, well, I’m doing my best here, but this would be a lot easier if you’d clue me in to what exactly is going on.”

  He went to step through but paused again. “And I’m just saying, this would be a lot easier if you’d give me my real team back. Whatever it is you want, maybe help me to help you. Or don’t. I’ll still make it to the top, either way.”

  Then Sorin left the Antechamber behind and entered Floor 3.

  End of Book 1

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