They decided to use the same ring of trees for camp that night, even though they had to go south four miles to reach it. Rather than fight their way through the branches, bushes, and vines of the forest, they strolled along the outside edge. That had the unfortunate side effect of occasionally drawing a harpy or three to attack them, but really, they just made for good target practice.

  “Can you not kill them from so far away?” Sorin asked. “I’d like to actually check them for soulprints."

  “It’s good exercise for you,” Nemari said smugly.

  “I regret helping you get this soulprint,” he told her with a sigh before he jogged off to go check the corpse. Being immolated wasn’t great for soulprints forming from a part of its body, but it was still worth a look. Soulprints were by no means indestructible. Between the fire and the fall, it was entirely possible that any soulprint that might have existed had been destroyed.

  As expected, there was nothing to be found but burnt feathers and broken bones. This harpy, just like the last six, was thoroughly dead. He scowled down at the corpse, then glanced up as a shadow passed overhead. There was a harpy up there circling him, getting ready to dive.

  Annoyed, he fired off a salvo of ice darts and brought it down. It crashed to the ground twenty feet away, still alive, but too injured to fight or flee. He finished it off with a quick decapitation, then waited a minute to see if its anima would crystallize into a soulprint. As expected, it didn’t.

  “You know, I feel like we’ve left a lot of corpses behind,” Rue said after he rejoined the group.

  “I didn’t keep track,” Sorin told her.

  “Me neither, but I’ve been looking between the trees when we get to familiar spots, and I’m pretty sure there are a lot fewer than there should be.”

  “Scavengers get some, tower reclaims the rest,” Odric explained.

  “It does what now?”

  Sorin chuckled and said, “Monsters disappear the same way they appear, even if they’re already dead. It won’t happen while you’re watching, but sooner or later, a corpse on the ground is going to vanish.”

  “Is that going to happen with anything else? If I leave my pack unattended, will it disappear?”

  “No,” Nemari said. She looked over at Odric and said, “Honestly, Od, I thought you taught her all of this already.”

  “We went over it,” he said.

  “Well, go over it again.”

  The rest of the team bantered, but Sorin faded out of the conversation as they entered the forest again. They were near where they’d first arrived on Floor 1, which meant there was a chance they could run into another pack of hounds. They had a lot more experience working as a group, though Odric hadn’t actually gotten much hands-on practice since injuries were rare, but he still wasn’t keen on fighting ten or more monsters at once out in the open.

  Technically, it was Rue’s job to scout, but that was only because she had a sensory soulprint. By itself, it would only give them a second’s warning, and she lacked the experience to see the more mundane signs that they’d wandered into some monster’s territory. So, he kept watch himself, and he did notice the signs.

  “There’s some kind of monster nearby,” he said abruptly. “Bipedal, small. It might be amphibious. We should change direction.”

  The others paused and exchanged glances. “I don’t feel anything,” Rue said.

  “They might not be too close right now, but look here.” He pointed down to some triangular tracks on the ground. There were only six prints across a patch of loose dirt before they disappeared again.

  “How do you know it’s bipedal?” Nemari asked.

  “The heels are deeper than the front—tells me how its weight is distributed. The shallower spots here and here tell me it’s got long webbed toes.”

  “And you know it’s small because of how close the tracks are together,” Nemari said.

  “No, because there’s no sign of it bending over as it walked under those branches,” he corrected, pointing to some tangled foliage at chest level. He’d need to crouch down or crawl on his hands and knees to get through.

  Rue scoffed at the tracks. “I think we can handle one child-sized monster.”

  “It won’t be one. There are at least three just from these tracks, but if I had to bet, I’d say the number is closer to thirty.”

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  “There’s no way you can know that,” Nemari argued. “Not from this.”

  “No, that’s a guess based on what I think made the tracks and what I know about them. Most likely, that stream we hear off in the distance is home to a colony of warbler frogs.”

  “Oh, hell,” Nemari swore. “Yeah, let’s go a different way.”

  None of them needed convincing. Even if they didn’t think Sorin was right, it wasn’t worth the risk. They had plenty of water, and there were other places to refill their waterskins when they got low. Nobody sane wanted to tangle with warbler frogs for multiple reasons. They were about the same size as goblins, maybe a little bit smarter, but they used anima to generate a mind-numbing sound that robbed their victims of the motivation to do anything.

  Climbers had died listening to that distinctive croak. Whole teams had just stood near a riverbank and let the warbler frogs climb out of the water, sharpened sticks in hand, and stab them to death. Much like those hounds the group had encountered before, the more frogs there were in one place, the stronger their ability got. And there was no such thing as a lone warbler frog.

  I can’t believe I’m running from something on Floor 1, he thought to himself as he led his team away from where he thought the river was. The sound of running water was subtle through all the leaves and branches, but he thought he had a good idea of what area they needed to avoid.

  While they walked, he told his team everything he knew about the monsters. “If we see a single one, we kill it and run. It’ll be a scout for the rest of them. They’re vicious little bastards who like to chase down prey, but they’ll only go a mile or two from the water before they give up. They’ll use tools, but nothing fancy or complicated. Mostly it’ll be clubs or sharpened sticks. If one of them starts singing and you’ve got a way to shut it up, you do it before the rest join in.”

  “How far from their homes do they range looking for prey?” Odric asked.

  “Depends how hungry they are, but if we can hear the water, then we’re too close.” Sorin broke off and froze in place. The others followed his eyes to see another set of clear tracks in the dirt.

  “Shit,” Nemari swore.

  “Shit,” Sorin agreed. To the best of his knowledge, their team didn’t have a single mind protecting soulprint between them, and while he was confident that he was disciplined enough to fight off a warbler frog or five, he wasn’t willing to bet his life on being able to beat a few dozen, and he had no faith at all in anyone else being even slightly useful.

  They started jogging, still angled away from the stream and eyes peeled for trouble. Maybe I’m overreacting. Warblers on Floor 1 is kind of unfair. Maybe it’s something else, a cousin species of monster that looks similar but can’t mind-fuck people.

  He pushed through a bush and staggered to a halt. There, not ten feet in front of him, and looking just as surprised as Sorin himself was, stood a three-foot-tall bipedal frog. Its skin was mottled green and brown, with big, bulbous black eyes and a yellow throat that was already starting to expand.

  Or maybe the tower is just as much of an asshole as it’s always been, no matter what color it is on the outside.

  Sorin didn’t hesitate. Ice darts, as fast as he could form them, sliced through the air and into the warbler’s face. He charged after them, pulling his sword as he ran, and before the frog-man could raise any sort of alarm, Sorin ran it through. It fell back with a pained croak, one that was cut off when Sorin hacked his blade across its neck.

  “Damn it. That’s definitely a warbler,” he muttered. “We need to pick up… the… Damn it!”

  “What?” Nemari demanded. “I don’t see another one.”

  “The damn eye is a soulprint,” Sorin explained. “Fuck. We do not have time for this, but… Keep watch. This will only take a minute.”

  He pulled out his knife, squatted down next to the corpse, and gently peeled the eyelid back so he could get the blade in there. With smooth, practiced motions, he cut the orb free and held it up to the light. The soulprint was still in one piece. “This one is fragile. Does anyone have a jar of any sort?”

  “I do,” Odric said. He pulled off his pack and opened it up. After a moment of rifling around in it, he produced a small ceramic jar that looked just like the ones he’d stored the herbs he’d found earlier in.

  “Perfect. Here.” Sorin dropped the eye into the jar, and Odric secured the lid back on it. “Alright, let’s get the hell out of here before we all get killed.”

  They fled the field, moving farther south to escape the area around the river. After the first ten minutes without a problem, they slowed down to a brisk walk. “I think we’re probably safe now,” Sorin announced, “but I’d like to get a bit more distance just in case.”

  “What does that soulprint you found do?” Odric asked now that they were no longer running.

  “Perception type. Looks like it helps the user filter out dirt in the water to see better. I think it might also protect the eyes slightly to make it easier to keep them open.”

  “That sounds spectacularly worthless,” Nemari said.

  “Maybe on this floor. Some rank 15 climbers would probably pay good money for it, even if it’s only an F-ranked soulprint. It’s a good utility ability to have, especially once it’s been empowered.”

  “Should one of us absorb it then?” she asked.

  Sorin considered it for a moment. There was definitely room for something like that in a future build. Once it was a high enough rank, it would probably expand to include breathing underwater and temperature acclimation. Unfortunately, as rank 1s, their soulspaces were too small to spend on abilities that would be useful later but didn’t help them now.

  “No. Maybe if we were rank 3 or 4 and had a bit of extra room in our soulspace. This eye is too fragile to hang onto for that long, either. We should trade or sell it,” he said.

  “That’s assuming we live long enough to make it to the portal hub,” Nemari added darkly. “Fucking warbler frogs.”

  “We only even saw the one, and Sorin killed it in three seconds,” Rue said. “We’re fine.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. There’s nothing we can do except keep moving and hope to avoid notice.

  “I’d feel more comfortable if we put a bit more distance between us and them,” Odric said.

  That was when they heard a rustling from behind them. Rue was closest and spun to face it, with Sorin rushing up next to her and drawing his sword. A sharpened stick jutted out, followed by a webbed hand pushing the leaves aside. Two big black eyes surrounded by rubbery green skin peered out at them.

  Before either of them could act, a burst of fire roared past them and struck the warbler in the face. It fell back, its skin dried and cracking as it croaked in agony.

  Dozens of other croaks rose up around them in response.