Winston drank from his bowl, feeling the energy flow into his body and course through his veins. Each drop was like a reservoir of energy. Instead of overflowing from the bowl, the energy-rich liquid had simply condensed.
With each passing second, Winston felt himself grow more powerful, but most of his focus was on something else. As he drank, he shaped the world around him. It was supposed to be a mind palace, but he had no desire for some grand palace in his soulspace.
Brick by brick, his structure assembled until he ran out of the crystalline water. Winston slowly opened his eyes. He waited a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light before looking around. Besides Roderic’s grave stood yet another tombstone. On it, written in the same strange language as on Roderic’s grave, was a single word. And despite being nothing but a random collection of lines, its meaning was clear: ‘Renir.’
After staring at the grave for a moment, Winston looked up and around the rest of his soulspace. Just past the two tombstones was the foundation of a building. It was just an incomplete layer of stone and brick.
Looking at it, Winston didn’t even know what it was meant to be. While the grave of Renir had been purposefully shaped, the foundation had been created by his subconscious.
Staring off into the distance, Winston took in the beauty once more before allowing his consciousness to leave his soulspace.
Blinking awake, Winston found himself back in Erynd’s sleeping roll. Stretching, he looked down at the sleeping Erynd. Padded up to his face, Winston licked it gently before waddling out of the tent.
Plopping down outside the tent, Winston stared up at the sky. The eternal daylight was nice, but he wished that sometimes it would be night. He missed watching the night sky. He missed spending hours staring up at the stars. It was a thing that he found comfort in. And comfort was something that he needed more than ever right now.
Settling for a shady patch, Winston opened his status screen, ready to distribute his stats.
Name: Winston
Race: Corgi
Class: Relentless Consumer (Unique)
Rank: Initiate 8
Titles (3/5):
Non-Humanoid Progenitor
[Redacted]
Modified
Food Energy: 300/300
Stats:
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 6
Toughness: 10
Charisma: 44
Stomach: 30
Mind: 5
Free Points: 39
Active Skills (3/10):
Consume lvl 7
Channel Food Energy lvl 7
Mental Manipulation lvl 1
Passive Skills (2/10):
Enhanced Stomach lvl 3
Passive Charm lvl 6
Winston’s eyes went wide. 39 was a lot. His Stomach was already his second-highest stat, but he still couldn’t neglect it. This last battle had taught him that he needed more Food Energy. He couldn’t always rely on being able to [Consume] something to replenish himself.
Winston set 15 points aside for his Stomach stat, leaving 24 to distribute. He decided that Charisma had more than enough, but ended up putting one point in anyway. Winston put ten points into Mind before he could rethink. As much as he hated using Mental Manipulation, he couldn’t deny how vital it had been in the fight against the Alpha Fringillade.
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After distributing the rest of the points to his physical stats, he looked over his status screen.
Name: Winston
Race: Corgi
Class: Relentless Consumer (Unique)
Rank: Initiate 8
Titles (3/5):
Non-Humanoid Progenitor
[Redacted]
Modified
Food Energy: 450/450
Stats:
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 11
Toughness: 14
Charisma: 45
Stomach: 45
Mind: 15
Free Points: 0
Winston sighed. He looked around at the ring of mountains, each straining to scratch the sky. It was hard to imagine that a world so beautiful could be so cruel. With a thought, he pulled up the rank leaderboard for his group. There was an option to view a leaderboard with every single contender in the tower, but it didn’t work. He supposed he would probably have to wait until the 10th floor to access it.
Rank Leaderboard (Group):
1st: Sol (Acolyte 2)
2nd: Arin (Acolyte 2)
3rd: Thalysar (Acolyte 1)
4th: Naeris Hale (Acolyte 1)
5th: Laora Hale (Acolyte 1)
…
4,319th: Winston (Initiate 8)
Winston read through the names in the top five. It was good to see Thalysar up there, given that he was the leader of the camp he was in, but who were those who’d reached Acolyte 2? Looking at 4th and 5th, Winston tilted his head. Were they related somehow? Winston supposed it didn’t really matter. What did matter was something that had been bothering him since the moment he opened the leaderboard.
Caedric had been the Caltheran who got to the second floor, but why wasn’t he on the leaderboard? It didn’t make sense. Switching to the floor leaderboard for a moment, Winston found that Caedric was indeed still alive. Back on the Rank leaderboard, Winston willed the System to show him Caedric.
Rank Leaderboard (Group):
1st: Sol (Acolyte 2)
2nd: Arin (Acolyte 2)
3rd: Thalysar (Acolyte 1)
4th: Naeris Hale (Acolyte 1)
5th: Laora Hale (Acolyte 1)
…
84,727th: Caedric (Initiate 1)
Winston’s eyes widened in surprise. There were only 87 thousand Caltherans left in total. And of the few who were still stuck at Initiate 1, Caedric was one of them. Winston took a deep breath.
What made even less sense was that when the Caltherans had first found him, he remembered Roderic saying that Caedric had gained three ranks. That meant he’d have to be at least Initiate 4.
Winston sighed. He was sure the rest of the camp had already figured this out. There was nothing he could do about it for now.
Deciding to look over the spoils of the battle, he pulled out the corpse of the Alpha Fringillade. Wincing at the spurt of blood that shot from it, Winston took inventory. He had the entire corpse, including the claws and beak. Forming a scalpel of energy, he began sawing off the claws.
Winston lost himself in the work, using every ounce of concentration he had to make the cutting more efficient. The rhythmic sawing offered a much-needed escape from reality. After taking both claws and the beak, Winston looked at himself. Erynd had bathed him in a stream on the way back to camp, but he was already getting filthy again. Winston sighed. It was too late now. He was already bloody again.
Winston tried selling each piece of the bird to the System Shop and was pleasantly surprised. While the two Ursiterra claws were worth ten credits each, a talon from the bird was worth 45. The beak was worth 50, meaning that if he sold it all, including the Ursiterra claws, he would get 160 credits.
After a moment of thought, he sold everything but a single talon, saving it to consume later. That put him at 118 credits. Winston yipped happily. This was the first time that he’d exceeded 100 credits!
After a moment of celebration, he looked at the rest of the bird. He could probably sell the corpse for a significant amount as well, but he wanted to have something to consume. Immediately, he consumed half of the corpse. Then, he stored the rest of it in his spatial ring.
With nothing to do, he decided to check the shop. He browsed the item and skill sections first, filtering it so all the products that showed were ones that he could use. After browsing for a while, Winston found that almost everything was out of his price range.
Moving to information, he first filtered for only items he could afford. He knew how to grow in strength, sure, but he didn’t even know anything about how the tower worked. He didn’t want to stumble into the next floor without knowing anything.
Eventually, he settled on a guide for 56 credits. It was titled A Basic Guide to the Tower. Winston winced as he watched his hard-earned credits drop. Before he could dwell on the purchase, he found information being inserted directly into his mind.
When the strange sensation was gone, Winston shook his head. He’d only bought a couple of pieces of information so far, but he didn’t think he’d ever get over the feeling of having knowledge drilled directly into his brain.
Winston closed his eyes and perused the new information available to him. He tried to ignore the unnaturalness of the knowledge as he absorbed it. Unlike what he’d originally thought, contenders didn’t need to clear all 100 floors to leave the Tower. They only needed to clear the first 50. After that, they could leave anytime they cleared a floor. The higher the floor they reached, the greater the reward was upon exiting the Tower.
The guide came with some other information as well, like how, after the 10th floor, other sapient beings would be in the tower. These would be people like Winston’s humans. And they would be scattered all across the hundred floors. Winston shuddered at the thought of his humans being stuck all the way at the top of the tower. Despite what he told himself, it was a very real possibility.
Before he closed the shop, Winston checked the item and skill section one more time. Upon opening the skill section, his eyes widened. It was…perfect.
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