The rats poured into the tunnel without end, coming at him from both directions in a rising tide of furry bodies. Then, as abruptly as the fight had begun, it was finished. Sorin’s clothes were shredded, and what was left was soaked through with the blood of a thousand monsters. His flesh was somehow whole, and his muscles ached from the abuse he’d put them through.

  But he was alive. Despite everything, he was still alive. His spontaneous and miraculous rank up had given him the power he needed to withstand the onslaught of the swarm, but now that the fight was over, he was left mostly with confusion.

  Rank ups only occurred when defeating a floor guardian, not in the middle of some random fight in a ruin. What he’d just done was impossible, which meant it was certainly related to all the other mysteries the tower had thrown at him. He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d done it, other than that the overflowing monster anima he’d taken in had somehow pushed him up to the next rank once all his soulprints were full.

  In that situation, what normally happened was that the anima was wasted, dissipated into nothingness or reclaimed by the tower. Scholars had never quite come to an agreement on where exactly it went, but as far as Sorin knew, it definitely didn’t push a climber into a spontaneous rank up. It was supposed to be lost.

  I need to get a look into my soulspace, but there’s no way I can do it safely in the middle of a ruin, especially by myself. Now… How do I get back out of here?

  The dust had settled somewhat during the battle, at least enough for Sorin to see daylight filtering down from street level. Even with the pile of cobblestones against the wall, it was a thirty-foot climb to get back up. Worse, the dirt crumbled in his grasp when he tried to find a handhold. No matter how deep he dug into the earth, it was so soft that it disintegrated the second he tried to put any weight on it.

  “Shit,” he muttered. Raising his voice, he yelled, “Odric! Can you hear me?”

  He waited a few seconds for a reply but wasn’t surprised when nothing came back. His specific instructions to the healer had been to run like hell if monsters showed up. Hopefully, everything had focused on him, and he wasn’t going to find two corpses with the meat flayed down to the bone from a thousand monstrous rats eating them alive.

  How exactly Sorin was going to escape from the sinkhole that had opened up directly beneath his feet was still a mystery—that rope in his bag was useless without Odric to secure it to something up above—but he wasn’t terribly surprised by the sudden turn of events. The tower was at its most malicious inside ruins, where coincidence stretched the bounds of believability at regular intervals. Everyone knew there was some sort of intellect guiding the tower’s trials, whether it was God or some other thing.

  Sorin wasn’t much for religion himself, but he found it hard to believe a God as described by the holy books would imprison humanity in the deathtrap that was the tower. Uncounted generations had been born, raised, and died without ever unravelling the mystery of why their whole world was the tower and that small stretch of land around its entrance. Whatever the explanation was, he doubted it was that some ineffable divine being had willed everything to happen this way.

  Not important right now, he thought to himself. Focus on surviving the next few hours and leave theological musings for later.

  In the end, what mattered wasn’t whether it was truly some great coincidence or if the tower itself had opened up the hole in the ground. What mattered was how he was going to get out, and simply scaling the side of the hole wasn’t likely to accomplish much. Even if he could climb up to the top, there was a lip to the sinkhole that would prevent him from easily escaping. He could probably throw some ice blades up there to blast that obstacle aside once he’d recovered some anima, but it would be pointless if he couldn’t reach the top in the first place.

  Should have bought that Air Step soulprint after all. It’s fucking garbage, but it would have gotten me out of this. Alright, if I can’t go up, I’ll have to go through these tunnels and find another exit. That means I need to be able to see in the dark, which… maybe I can get Acuity to grow in that direction. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s not like I’ve got much of a choice. Thousand damn rats and not a one of them had a soulprint. Tower probably whipped the whole swarm up special just to kill us.

  Without a team to split it with, though, the anima gains had been phenomenal. He’d filled three soulprints to the point where they were ready to advance, and then there was the whole weird overflow thing that had forced his soulspace itself to rank up. It wasn’t the end of the world that he hadn’t gained a new soulprint, though a night vision ability from the rats would have been welcome. He could have merged it with Acuity to get what he needed instead of hoping the rank advancement would provide it.

  Speaking of new soulprints, though, I still have that Minor Regeneration one to add to my build now that there’s room.

  Sorin dug it out of his pack and quickly absorbed it into his soulspace. He wanted nothing more than to find a safe spot to see what had changed, but without Watcher of Doors to let him keep an eye on his surroundings while he was in there, it was too risky. Doesn’t matter, does it? I’m just going to have to take the risk. I need better night vision, which means guiding Acuity to E-rank. It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two with a soulprint this small, but… God, all it takes is a few seconds to die to a surprise attack.

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  It'd been about five minutes since he’d yelled for Odric. There’d been no reply, and he’d heard nothing coming from street level. The mountain of rat corpses fifty feet away hadn’t shifted one bit, so there probably weren’t any live ones hiding amidst the dead. Sorin was as alone as he was likely to get.

  He briefly considered burying himself in the rubble, just to give himself the extra few seconds it would take for a monster to dig him back up and eat him, but that ran the risk of the noise of him shifting the rocks attracting trouble that didn’t already know he was here. Instead, he ghosted back into the tunnel and shrouded himself in darkness, then crouched down and curled up on himself with his hands laced behind his neck.

  He couldn’t protect himself, but he could block some of his own vital points with his body. It probably wouldn’t make a difference in the end, but an extra second or two might very well keep him alive if he came out of his soulspace and found something chewing on his arm instead of his face.

  The first thing he saw when he entered his soulspace was the expanded mosaic. Now it showed him facing the door with the circle and seven lines symbol above it, but there were shadowy figures that he thought might be his climbing team at the new border of the mosaic. On the far end, the outline of the tower he remembered from his youth rose up behind the door. Flanking it on either side were six more towers, all of them little more than silhouettes with hints of color running up the edges.

  He recognized one of them, though. It had perhaps a bit more color than the others, or maybe he was just imagining that. But either way, the distinctive metal barbs placed on the tower walls gave its identity away. It was the red tower, the one he was currently trying to climb.

  What the hell does this mean? Are there seven towers? Is the doorway a literal door between them? But why? What’s the point of all this? No, ignore it for now. This isn’t why I’m here.

  He shifted his attention to the elaborate oil paintings that represented his soulprints. Ice Dart, now Ice Blade, was the largest by far, brimming with anima and ready to expand to D-rank. Next to that was his newly advanced Warrior’s Vigilance. It had grown without his control and in response to his needs, so it was no surprise that the majority of the expansion was dedicated to increasing his stamina. That was what had allowed him to keep fighting long after he should have collapsed from exhaustion.

  Iron Body and Acuity were both smaller paintings, still F-ranked, but practically trembling in their frames. Beyond them, looking small, with faded, washed-out colors and set into a cracked wooden frame, was the Minor Regeneration soulprint he’d just absorbed. Unlike the rest, it sat empty.

  I should do Iron Body while I’m working on this. It’s doing more than anything else to keep me safe, especially right now while any monster that wanders by can take a free shot at me.

  It was an easy soulprint to do. Its purpose was simple: to increase his resilience. With it, teeth and claws could skip off his skin, he’d be less hindered by intense heat or cold, and even the pressure of deep, deep water would be slightly more tolerable. The stronger the soulprint got, the more resilient he’d become. After he merged it with a few other resilience-type soulprints, it would be the foundation of his ability to survive the extreme environments of the higher floors.

  For now, he simply directed the soulprint to grow into more of what it already was. Rank-E Iron Body did the exact same thing as rank-F; it just did it better. The soulprint required almost no direction at all as it expanded. He simply curated it with a light touch to keep all of its aspects balanced and otherwise stayed out of its way.

  Anima flashed through the painting, deepening the colors, making them richer, and sharpening the designs. His own body, stripped to the waist and with muscles standing out in dark definition while he flexed, grew sharper and took on a metallic sheen. Sorin laughed at the pose, something he’d be embarrassed to do in real life, but it was Iron Body, after all.

  The soulprint finished growing less than a minute later. Now empty of anima, its former glow was replaced by a vitality that transcended mortal art. If anything, the painting looked… more alive. Even without anima, it had transformed from the work of a talented amateur to something created by a master artisan. He half-expected his own visage to turn its head and toss him a saucy wink while it flexed.

  Sorin climbed back out of his soulspace and looked around warily, but there was nothing to be seen beyond the dust still dancing in the daylight above the pile of busted cobblestones. Good. One down, one to go.

  Acuity was much trickier to advance to rank-E, mostly because it wanted to keep sharpening his vision, to increase his ability to make out fine details and track movements. Both of those were fine qualities to have, but not what he needed right now. Sorin pushed it toward separating colors and picking up more light in dark spaces.

  The soulprint didn’t physically change his eyes so much as it put a sort of magical filter over them, the same way Iron Body didn’t actually make his skin tougher. The magic just repelled attacks that would have otherwise broken skin. That might seem like a pointless distinction, but it was actually important to understand before absorbing a soulprint. There were many that would cause mutations in their bearers, things that couldn’t be fixed even if the soulprint was ripped out later.

  It took about three minutes to mold Acuity into what he needed it to be, but Sorin had plenty of practice with this, and when he opened his eyes again, the shadows around him were much brighter.

  Alright, that risk paid off. The only one left is Ice Blade, but… E-rank to D is going to take a lot more anima and space, and it’s not like I need more firepower right now. On the other hand, nothing has attacked me yet, and I’m going to need to do the advancement sooner or later.

  He already knew what he wanted—more control, more range, more efficient casting. If he could gain some sort of elemental mastery soulprint, he might merge that together to give the spell a great deal of flexibility in what it created, but lacking that vital ingredient, he wasn’t about to form a staircase made of ice today.

  Working quickly, he tried nudging the soulprint into unfolding even more to D-rank. Like he’d suspected, though, there just wasn’t enough of anything to make it happen. He needed more anima and, more importantly, more space. His soulspace was already straining just from the recent upgrades.

  He opened his eyes and was happy to find that he wasn’t dead. There were, however, three massive furry creatures sniffing at him. One of them startled when he suddenly moved, and the next thing Sorin knew, its fangs were lunging for his face.