Chapter 175: Stealing is Efficient
Warm, wet air hits me in the face. Instantly, I can taste salt on my tongue, and the way it sticks to my hair. It’s humid and oppressive, but luckily for me, Kuro quickly shifts their shape to shield me from the worst of it. The shadow becomes a cool, light garment on my shoulders.
Inu sighs, and the armor around her turns liquid, then seeps into her [Reservoir]. How she managed to hide armor in there is something I don’t quite understand, but I respect it. Despite the heat, Opal does not take off their trenchcoat, and Thatch seems to almost bask in it.
Salty water drips from the top of the cave down to its bottom, filling shallow little puddles at the cave’s ground. The mana here is about as thick as on the fourth floor, though not as violent as on the fifth. And, being here, a weight finally falls off me.
There’s no more reason to hide. I can finally fully use all my skills again - healing, anti-magic, debuffing, all of them. Kuro gives an almost disappointed hum that they’ll be less important to my kit, but I reassure the little critter with a mental poke, letting them know they can still contribute just as much as before.
Eager to see more of the cave system, I reinforce the cruncher on myself, making sure that I walk about as fast as a mundane human might, and then moving forward. [Observation] brushes along the walls of this place, unveiling the structure of this place and building a mental map. Actually, that does make me think.
Lifting up a hand, I cast [Solidification]. It doesn’t take a lot of mana to make something solid - I’ve already used the skill to make knives, swords, spears, and barriers, floating needles, chisels and more. I can clearly control and shape the solid mana. So, then, what’s stopping me from…
[Observation 19 > 20]
I feed the information from my scans right into [Solidification], and above my hand, something begins to take form. It strains me, and I feel the way it pushes against my brain. There’s so much detail to capture about the walls, where stones just in and out; so I filter it all.
My mind stretches as I push. My eyes bleed.
“Oh, Snow’s at it again,” Sylves comments with a snicker.
“Been too long, I guess,” Opal says.
“Are you really making that your gimmick?” Thatch asks with a faint frown, as Inu just sighs.
Despite their admonishments, I smile. I push upon the boundary, wanting to feel the freedom now that I’m no longer being seen. There’s nothing to hide. I feel a dozen eyes on me, but I still cast. My mana grows into tubular spirals, cascading outwards bit by bit as it crystallizes. And then, after a moment where I taste iron in my mouth, I stop.
[Solidification 24 > 25]
I’m holding what is by far my most detailed mana working yet. A map. A full, 3D scan of the surrounding area where my mana touched it, complete with eleven figurines for where we stand. Like an echolocation survey, the surroundings mapped onto it. I smile faintly, then hold it hovering there with my will alone.
Very slowly, I move it over, in front of Thatch. He looks confused for a second, then his eyes widen and he looks around. His eyes glint green. “Oh damn,” he says. “You made a map?”
“I made a map,” I nod. It’s a bit crude, but it does show the tunnels for the next… fifty, maybe hundred steps or so. There’s a chance I could push it further, but I’m already bleeding, so I don’t. Instead, I decide to walk.
After all, there is something moving in one of the tunnels down the line.
- - -
Very carefully, I hand Trey a long spear. It’s lightweight, made entirely from mana, and imbued with my skills. It should make things a lot easier on him.
Inu holds down the thing in front of us. It’s a worm, though it has little fins that extend from its side, and its mouth is filled with ringed teeth. It’s also as thick as my legs, so I truly don’t want to stand in front of it. Yet, despite that, Trey swallows and does just that.
Metal ripples out from Inu, forming a solid grip around the monster. Her authority, void, brushes against it, synergizing with her class, and she steals its momentum. The monster screeches, but it can’t thrash, and I make sure the sonic attack is [Suppressed] until it doesn’t hurt.
My headphones would have been lovely for this if they still had battery, but instead, they’re just safely tucked into my backpack. I don’t trust anyone with them but myself, so even if it’s dangerous, they come along.
“A-are you sure?” Trey asks, holding the spear awkwardly.
Opal gives an encouraging nod. “It’s the easiest way! This’ll give you a level or two for sure, even if you’re not the main contributor.” Which is true. After all, the worm isn’t exactly weak.
[Boneburrower lv. 32]
In fact, it could quite easily tear the little kid limb from limb if we let it. But it can’t. Anna watches carefully, and Bofoy looks on with interest as Trey bravely walks forward. His hands shake a bit, but he does it nonetheless. The spear stabs down, piercing the worm’s flesh, spilling cloudy ichor onto the stone floor.
[Suppression] tightens on it like a noose. I force the worm to stay still as Trey stabs it again. The spear sinks in easily, applying a whole host of sinister effects. A small shiver runs through the boy, but when the worm thrashes once, and its teeth get closer to him, he musters up his courage.
With a violent motion, he stabs the boneburrower a final time, and it falls limp. I nod quietly to myself, even as the boy stands there, panting, looking at the corpse. Already, the environmental mana is tearing at it. The effect is even more pronounced here, despite the mana in the air being thinner.
That might be because… well, this is fake. Floors here get terminated and reset all the time. That’s how monoliths work. They’re populated by mana and mana-borne creatures, usually reflecting some region that the tower scanned in the past. Now, things can be taken outside from them, still. We also deposit mana by using abilities inside.
It’s a strange little exchange that I don’t quite understand yet. But despite everything, I know that the worm would have been reset anyways. It’ll be here again once this floor is completely empty, and might show up later for someone else. But for us, it did its job.
“Level four…” Trey whispers, his eyes glinting. “I’m level four.”
“Remember what we talked about,” Anna says gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Heart and vessel. Make sure to start with a few points in heart.”
Trey rolls his eyes, as if he’d heard it a hundred times before. “Yes, sis,” he says quietly, and I watch as he interacts with the invisible menus. Thatch walks off for a moment and there’s a small noise of violence down the tunnel, but I ignore it to watch what happens within the boy.
[Observation 20 > 21]
The mana patterns are beautiful. As always, it is astonishing to see the Tower at work. It’s so efficient - the changes that happen in the kid’s body are entirely powered by the pitiful haze of mana that surrounds his cracked vessel. The Tower even assimilates the little needles I left inside him to keep the mana suppressed.
All of those tiny wisps of energy, worth little more than a dozen points of vessel, change his body entirely. His skin mends, all the micro-deficiencies that plagued him suddenly washed away. I see scars disappear as his heart doubles from its base value. He grows so much in but an instant as his system properly awakens.
And then, it streams into his vessel.
[Vessel Construction 9 > 11]
I watch, and instantly understand. I break a threshold.
[Annexation 3 > 4]
My eyes bleed horribly in an instant. The patterns are too intricate for me to comprehend, and they sear themselves into my mind anyway. I look at the tiny pieces of them as best as I can, staring to see runes so tiny I’d need a microscope to properly take them in, yet locking them in my archive anyway. Piece by tiny piece, I look at the spells that weave through Trey, ever-changing and beautifully powerful.
His vessel fuses back together. The crack is melded into one with that tiny amount of mana. A pitiful thing, yet so perfectly integrated that the ethereal organ crystallizes over the gap. The mana creates a lattice structure for the vessel to naturally grow around, like reinforced concrete.
More blood spills from me as my brain boils slightly. I strain my supernatural mind, healing myself to give myself a chance to watch just for another moment. The tower’s beautiful magic fills his newly reinforced vessel, wipes away the scars on his body, and strengthens him. I blink for a moment.
[One of your minor requests has been consumed for the information you took.]
A smile spreads on my lips, but it’s entirely eclipsed by the radiant expression on Trey’s face. He jumps at Anna, wrapping his arms around her, and both of them tear up.
I look at the notification and nod. Once again, stealing truly is the most efficient way. The Tower never would have given me this info for a minor request, but since I took it instead of asking, it can’t properly refuse. So, it takes a smaller price than usual.
I love stealing.
“Come on, I think I found the way forward!” Thatch yells from down the tunnel - and so we follow him.
Chapter 176: Worms and Brine
“So, what did we learn about running ahead?” Anna sits next to Trey as I put him back together. There are tears misting the boy’s face, but he doesn’t scream. What a brave kid, indeed.
I stitch him up. Mana threads pull his skin taut before I cast my healing into him. Bofoy is the only one who looks at me with surprise, having now known that I was a healer until now. The zoof stares in surprise, but then turns away and scouts a bit. They’re an informant, after all, so finding out things is kind of their job.
“Got it, sis,” Trey says through gritted teeth. “Won’t… happen again.”
Somehow, I severely doubt the validity of that statement. But Trey is beginning to realize what it’s like to have magic. His skills are just awakening - well, one has, and the other is still in flux. But his first is pretty simple. [Bleed]. If he cuts something, he can make it bleed more.
It’s weak, for now, but that’s okay. After all, he just recently got it to level one. He’s still weak. A floor-born kid who could never take the pilgrimage, because of a cracked core.
Really, in comparison, Anna has done well for herself as a thief. Those weren’t even her original skills - I haven’t asked what she started with. In the same way that no one asks me. I think they assume I must’ve started with healing and [Solidification], since the effects of my two starter skills are a lot more sneaky.
But without me, Trey would have died.
That’s indisputable. I’ve saved his life twice, once during the fight with [Suppression] and once after with [Biological Restoration]. Not that I make a big note of it. I dragged him in here, so it’s my job to keep everyone alive.
When he smiles at me and thanks me for healing him, that’s all it is. A job. I nod at him, even as Inu smiles brightly and ruffles his hair. I let her take over handling the kids as I move forward to Bofoy, the quiet zoof who asked to come along as an opportunity.
They’re in their 50s or 60s level-wise, I’m pretty sure, but they’re… frankly, mediocre at fighting. Most of their skills are surveillance or movement based, making them great at running and not much else. That’s fine, though, I don’t need them to fight. That’s what we’re here for, after all.
Isabelle, too, seems eager to carry her weight. There’s a look of determination on the old woman’s face that wasn’t there before. She still hasn’t thanked us. In fact, she’s said shockingly little, but she keeps throwing herself into fights with so much abandon that Sylves and Opal have to fish her out.
She fights with a glaive, and it’s an almost offensively bad weapon, so I enchant it out of frustration more than anything else. From then on, it cuts through the worms much more easily. Which doesn’t change that she wields it poorly, but there’s a sort of dogged persistence to the old woman that I can respect.
So, I decide to save her when she’s about to get eaten by a horde of worms. Also, in part it’s because Jean would indeed be really sad if she died.
I don’t kill any of the worms for a specific reason. The same reason that I don’t put my new vesselsmithing technique to work, in fact. My mana is still right ahead of the breakpoint. A single level with me investing all my stats will put me over. And I have a bit of a bad feeling about it, so there’s a small plan cooking in my head for now.
Just gotta make it to the safe room.
Which becomes harder when, after three days, we still haven’t found it.
“Does the booklet have anything on finding floor exits?” Opal asks.
Inu sighs, having read the entire thing, and nods. “Yes,” she says. “They’re usually meant to be easily visible for landmarks.”
When Opal raises an eyebrow at Thatch, he shakes his head. “Nope. Haven’t seen anything.” Despite his [Piercing Gaze] being rather good at scanning through walls. Shame.
“Is it time to start trying bad ideas?” Sylves asks with a smile. She seems almost giddy at the thought.
And, to be fair, a glint runs through my eyes as well. Inu looks at the two of us, and sighs. “Alright, what’s the bad idea?”
I look at the faerie, and our eyes meet. Instantly, we nod. “Okay so what if we ride the worms.”
“Wow, somehow, that’s worse than I thought.”
- - -
[Solidification 25 > 26]
I get another level as I manifest a lot of tiny and bigger bits of mana. For bridles and reins, of course. Sylves spins thread around them. Thread that’s provided by me, again, having learnt from Amelie. I try to make it from mana, and it’s terrible. Brittle and weak, but despite that, Sylves manages to make it work.
With our impromptu riding equipment, we just have to catch a worm. Which is made a lot easier when Inu and I debuff it into stillness. [Suppression] and her void work rather well together to steal someone’s strength and momentum entirely.
So, it only takes us a day or so to find a worm. By then, everyone is tired and grumpy. Isabelle complains about sleeping on a rock floor. Opal complains about having to take watch. Trey complains about not being allowed to do more. And I’m sick of them all.
Which means that when Sylves asks who wants to ride the worm, I raise my hand immediately.
“... Are you sure, Snow?” the fae asks me, smiling crookedly.
I shrug. “I’m best suited to surviving on my own. And to make it back. I can make a map as I move along. Opal could make it back easiest, but they’ll get lost halfway.”
“So true bestie,” the heroic knight laughs softly, echoing down the tunnels. “Yeah, I’d never see you all again. No shot.”
Snickering softly, Sylves nods, then tightens our very poorly made saddle around the worm’s midsection. It’s little more than blankets made from brittle mana with a strap at the bottom. But it stays in place. The bridle goes into the worm’s mouth… somehow, and the reins go into my hands.
“This is gonna go poorly,” Inu notes with a click of her tongue.
I smile and nod. “Probably. That’s okay though. I’m all set.”
With a soft sigh, the tough girl takes her hand from the worm. The void recedes, and momentum streams back into its motions. Instantly, it tries to buck me off, writhing as it shoots forward through the tunnel.
I cling on, shaping the mana to lock me in place. The motions pull at my legs and whip me all about, making my hair wave through the air, but I stay on.
Then my face slams into a pile of rocks.
“Ow,” I note, as I cast to heal the damage. I’ve just barely fixed the cuts and abrasions when I smack into the wall again. “Hey,” I say to the worm. “Stop being rude.”
In return for its behaviour, I stab the boneburrower.
Of course, it just writhes more. More than once, it drags my face through the wet-salty brine, rubbing it against sharp outcroppings… but it does move through the tunnels. Very swiftly at that, desperately trying to get rid of me. I hold onto the reins very poorly. Sometimes I pull them, but within minutes, the party is out of sight, and I have to focus on keeping a mental map.
[Annexation 4 > 5]
Luckily, my skill proves useful once again. And it’s only thirty or so minutes of having my face slammed into rock and worm stabbing and healing before the thing slows. Instantly, I know why.
The answer is simple. From on top of my completely ruined saddle, I stare down a warren of… about two-hundred worms, I’d guess. “Ah,” I deadpan, blood still trickling down my face from my most recent intimate meeting with a pile of stones. “This might be bad.”
Chapter 177: Warren
It takes approximately twelve seconds for every single worm in the dang burrow to smell me. I see the way their mouths full of jagged teeth turn towards me, and very swiftly dispel the saddle I so conveniently created. This, of course, means that when the worm thrashes again, I am promptly launched back into the tunnel, landing with more than a few scrapes that I swiftly heal.
“Kuro, I will need your help here,” I whisper, as what I can only describe as an avalanche of giant worms crashes towards me. A blink later, darkness floods the tunnel. Kuro summons shadows that creep across the hallway, clinging to the walls, like a thin mist made from clinging, black smoke.
“Huh. When’d you learn that?” I ask, whispering, as I start to run away. Kuro simply purrs in response, creating a cat’s head from my cloak for me to pet. I oblige my little critter-friend, and then I focus a lot more on the whole ‘running’ business.
[Obfuscation] wraps around me heavily, and I rely on my mental map of the caverns. [Annexation] has helped me keep track of every intersection and which way the worm headed down, so it’s easy to maneuver my way back - though the worm’s screeching gives me a headache.
“Kuro, you can’t dampen noise, can you?” I ask politely, but I get a small negative response from them. They even sound disappointed in themselves. “No, no, don’t worry, you’ve not done anything wrong,” I reassure them with a small smile.
So cute. To think that they once tried to eat me from the inside out, when they’re now such a gentle creature. I shake my head softly, darting down another intersection, quickly imbuing some rocks with [Suppression] traps. It’s a novel usage of the skill - enchanting rocks to detonate into little fields that’ll slow the worms down - and I feel a small pull of a level, quickly suffocating it.
Just a little more waiting, and I’ll gladly embrace another threshold of mana. There’s just a small bit I need to prepare before then. Just a tiny thing.
One of the worms leaps at me from the darkness, clamping its jaws around my shoulder. A moment later, Kuro erupts into a coat of spikes, ruining its insides, and then my [Suppression] hits it like a truck. Instantly, the worm stops thrashing, and after another two steps, I hit it with a heavy [Deconstruction].
Its teeth disintegrate from the spell and the worm flops to the ground a moment later. Bleeding and motionless, but not dead. I continue to sprint.
A few more turns, and a good hour of nonstop sprinting, supported by Perpetual Pursuit, before I return to the rest of the party, sporting only a couple bleeding bites and only a dozen dire worms behind me. Opal laughs. Inu sighs. Thatch rubs his eyes, and Sylves loudly mocks me.
It takes all of fifteen seconds for them to dispatch the worms. In the end, Inu holds one of them again, for Trey to put down. The kid is still staring at his first skill with big eyes, watching ichor pour from the worm he stabbed. Anna gently pulls him away while it bleeds out.
Then, I have to go through the horrible chore of telling everyone about what I saw. “Found the exit,” I say simply. “It’s past a worm-warren. About two hundred.”
“You also lost a bit of skin, Snow,” Sylves teases instantly, giggling at me.
Softly, I tilt my head, triggering my healing skill and pouring a ton of mana into it. In a moment, gold and white pour over me, and I smile slightly. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
The faerie looks at me as if I’ve broken her heart, and sticks out her tongue. “Cheater!” she declares loudly, earning a snicker from Inu.
“Now, now,” our vanguard says. “Snow, you found the way up?”
I nod.
She smiles. “Good job,” she praises. “The worm-riding did its job, then. Think we can take the warren?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
In a swift motion, Inu claps her hands and gets up. “Good,” she says. “Then let’s do that. I can feel other people on this floor, after all.”
At that, my eyes widen. “Other people?”
“Strong,” she supplies with a nod. “And… rather angry, too, you see?”
Ah. That’s how she spotted them, then. My [Observation] is omnidirectional, but it’s much shorter in range than her [Empathy]. Thatch’s [Piercing Gaze] is great for mapping out tunnels, especially in terms of finding secret rooms, but when it comes to detecting people, Inu is better.
I nod, then rise to my legs again. My muscles are burning from the run, but despite that, I keep the cruncher active. It makes it harder, but I can feel myself growing, even as I burn through calories. Luckily, we prepared supplies - I would prefer to avoid eating worm-meat. Yes, it’s picky, but food aversions get like that.
Then again, Richard could probably make them taste decent. I eye the small hiy’ht, only to find her already chewing on the worm that Trey put down. When she notices my gaze, she gives me a wide smile and quickly finishes the meal.
And then we’re off, off to clean up the warren.
- - -
“Ugh, this is horrible. Do we really have to do this?” Isabelle complains. She grimaces at the water in her boots, she complains about the smell, she complains about the need to fight at all. She complains so much that I get almost nostalgic for first floor Norman.
“Snow, stop insulting my dad in your head,” Inu chides me.
I look at her, and my eyes must have given away my surprise, because as I stare at her, the girl just rolls her eyes. “How?” I ask.
At that, she smiles smugly. “Well, you had that look. The one you usually have when you consider killing my dad because he’s being a bit grumpy.”
Isabelle’s head snaps over at that. “You were thinking of killing me?!” she demands.
I shake my head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Never. I was just thinking back to how Norman used to, uh, nag at me for every little thing I did. Or didn’t do. Really, he was just upset at everything.”
“And then he learnt!” Inu says with a smile. “He’s gotten better, right?”
For a moment, I think. Then I remember him stealing for me. Him saving me from social interaction at the party. The way he actually stood up for me, too. I smile, just a tiny bit. “Mhm, he did.” Then my eyes fall on the old lady, and I compare her with modern Norman - a much less favourable outcome.
Something in my eyes must have given it away, because she just grumbles, then stomps further ahead, as if looking for something to kill. She does find worms. Only one of them is left toothless after giving me a bite wound. And we continue on.
- - -
We make it to the warren within about three hours, walking swiftly. Trey gets tired, but whenever he does, Opal just lets him ride on their shoulders. This does make him hit his head on the cave roof once, but I quickly heal that bruise. Bofoy, somehow, manages to keep up effortlessly, and has proven themselves a rather capable scout.
They’re swift, have good hearing, and can reliably pass messages between people. It’s a less combat-focused build than some, but they slot into the party nicely, and their mantle is one that can preserve information, almost like voicemail. It’s useful.
Still, they do try to fight, dashing in with a rapier. It looks a little funny when held in their thin, wiry hands, but they move it well and are able to swiftly damage some worms before getting back out. Mediocre, but acceptable. Isabelle, for her part, butchers them.
Her glaive carves through the worms quickly, though she often needs multiple strikes to put them down, courtesy of her low stats. They were carried up here, after all. Apparently, if an authority is strong enough, it lets people make “links” and pull people up floors that way. It’s only really feasible for Eyes or their main avatars, though.
It also negatively impacts the people being moved, generally. They’re, after all, not ready for that mana density yet. It can cause some amount of sickness, even small mutations. Not really too extreme on the lower floors, of course, but the higher up in the tower one goes, the stronger the effects of being dragged up.
Then again, the floor apparently open up a bit on the higher ones. I’m curious to see what that’ll look like.
[Selection 27 > 28]
With practiced ease, I lay down a large-scale [Suppression] field in the warren, while making sure that it only targets the worms with [Selection]. My party moves unimpeded through the field, while the worms struggle, as if they’re underwater. Or maybe in honey.
A small smile spreads on my face as I think of how the tower made me feel. Like an insect trapped in amber, when it shunted Flamando from the third floor up to the fourth. I can see the similarity to what I’m doing. I’ve learnt.
And that makes me happy.
I watch as Opal [Blinks] again, cutting another worm in half. Sylves hovers above the battlefield elegantly, skewering them with lances of compressed air, or by gently asking the dripstone or water for aid. Her grasp on nature seems to be expanding.
Thatch simply tears into them, manifesting giant claws. Weapons are force-multipliers, giving better leverage - but Thatch creates that leverage by simply giving himself longer limbs, outfitted with natural weaponry. More than anyone else, he scythes through the crowd.
And then I look at Inu. My best friend, as she elegantly steps in the middle of the horde, whistles, and has a tide of worms flowing against her. And yet, when they reach her, they freeze, one by one. Then, she hits them, using her gauntlets, and a moment later, they explode.
It’s awesome to watch.
Bit by bit, we clear the warren. Some of us more swiftly, some more slowly. Anna slinks around the edges, throwing knives made from mana while sticking to the shadows. Trey very carefully pokes them with his spear. Isabelle and Bofoy run in and fight, but still stick to the edges, Richard rampages hungrily.
And then it’s done.
Two hundred worms, all in their 30s or 40s level-wise. Enough to wipe out a small town of mundane people back on Earth. It’s almost scary how quickly we brought them down. Almost. But seeing Opal teleport, seeing Sylves hover so freely in the air… I’m still glad for these powers.
Even if mine are a bit destructive, I can live with that. As long as my friends get to be free. As long as I get to grow, as long as I get to see more, to indulge my curiosity. I smile, ever so faintly, as the exit to the floor unlocks - a staircase, with a runic inscription on its side. A hundred million runes, so tiny and intricate I can’t even begin to decipher them, hidden behind a dozen layers of obscurement.
Enough to let me know they’re there, not enough to let me have them. The Tower truly is dastardly, teasing my curiosity that way. But in my deep kindness, I forgive it. It’s more fun to find the secrets myself anyway.
Taking care not to get any worm-blood on my shoes - namely by walking on a carpet of shadow - I make my way to, then up the staircase, flanked by my friends. The first safe room awaits us. And there, finally, I’ll indulge the levels pressing against my class. I’ll cross another threshold of mana.
And I’ll survive. I definitely won’t explode from the pressure of my own mana.
Probably.
… Surely.