Teeth snapped closed a hair’s breadth from Sorin’s nose as he jerked backward. They disappeared a moment later when a shard of ice formed between him and the monster. It slammed into the beast’s midsection, shoving it away and giving Sorin just enough time to see two more of the creatures closing in.

  They were similar to the giant rat quartet that had led the swarm they’d fought back in the house in size, but that was it. These monsters had a long body covered in sleek fur, black and smooth. Their bellies were a charcoal gray color, a distinction Sorin doubted he would have noticed prior to advancing Acuity to E-rank.

  The two uninjured monsters advanced on Sorin on their stubby little legs, deceptively quick for their size. Some kind of giant weasel? He thought to himself as he formed new ice blades to drive them back so he’d have enough time to scramble to his feet. This is why we don’t do this kind of shit out in the field.

  The one that had almost bitten his face recovered from being stabbed by a razor-edged shard of ice quickly enough. Its fur had absorbed most of the impact and protected it from being gutted, and now it reared up on its back legs to its full height of right around four feet tall. Hissing, it opened its mouth and shot a globule of fluid at Sorin.

  As much as he wanted to believe it would simply be some sort of weak acid or poison that wasn’t strong enough to penetrate his upgraded Iron Body soulprint, Sorin just couldn’t reconcile the difficulty of what Floor 1 was supposed to be with what he’d actually experienced. He threw himself sideways into a one-handed handspring to avoid the attack, then brought his sword down to crease the skull of one of the giant spitting weasels. It flopped to the ground in a boneless heap, not quite dead but definitely out of the fight.

  Once he was on his feet and ready to fight back, Sorin made short work of the remaining monsters. The uninjured one charged in first, only to be skewered by Sorin’s sword, and a couple of conjured ice blades took care of its companion. He then finished off the last of them and wiped the blade clean on a weasel’s corpse.

  Well, that was unexpected. But easy. Looks like I got a bit more motion tracking than I was trying for with Acuity’s upgrade.

  The only downside was that the soulprints were so big now that he was already out of space again. Minor Regeneration probably wouldn’t be able to advance until he reached rank 3, which Sorin didn’t know if he could actually do. He’d done whatever it was that had pushed his soulspace up to rank 2, but he couldn’t just assume it would happen again.

  Sorin shook his head and started walking. He had more immediate problems to deal with, like how he was going to get back up to street level. Hypotheticals could wait until they became relevant, which might actually happen pretty quickly if he ran into another rat swarm.

  His upgraded Acuity soulprint let him sort out shapes in the dark away from the sinkhole’s mouth, enough at least that Sorin was able to explore the tunnel he’d found himself in. Sometimes, the tower did this as part of any town- or city-themed area. There were no tunnels like this under Floor 0, but it wasn’t unusual to find whole networks of interconnected passages under ruins. Usually, there would be a ladder up somewhere.

  Depending on exactly how big the ruin was, Sorin expected to spend an hour or more just searching for an exit. If there were more monsters down here—and he had every reason to believe there would be—it could take much longer. The rest of the team would just have to survive without him for however long it took to catch back up.

  It was a slow process, hindered even more by the fact that Sorin still couldn’t rule out getting caught up in an illusion. That forced him to stop regularly and dip into his soulspace to confirm there was no magic affecting him, something he didn’t much care to do. He was only insensate for a second at a time, but sometimes a second was all a monster needed to ambush an unwary climber.

  And there were more monsters in the tunnels, hundreds of them. Sorin slaughtered weasels, rats, and some sort of small, scaly lizard-looking thing by the dozens and directed every scrap of anima he obtained into Warrior’s Vigilance. The path forward was a grueling endurance test, one that he needed all the help he could get if he was only going to survive.

  Eventually, covered in blood spatters and panting from exertion, Sorin spotted what he’d been looking for. A set of thin metal bars, evenly spaced and mounted into the stone work, led up to a small hole in the top of the tunnel. Please let it be wide enough for me, he prayed as he rushed forward to stand beneath it.

  Little pinpricks of light dotted the far end of the hole. There was some sort of thick grate above him, hopefully not sealed into place. Sorin looked around carefully, knowing he’d be vulnerable while he was climbing and that if there was anything watching him and looking for a chance at an ambush, it would happen in the next few seconds.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  There was nothing, at least nothing he could see. With some amount of trepidation, Sorin placed his hand on a rung overhead and his foot on one by his knee. Hoisting himself up slowly, he paused to look around again. Nothing. I’m getting paranoid in my old age.

  With no monsters in sight, he started climbing. Thankfully, the grate at the top wasn’t locked or wedged in place. It opened with only a moderate amount of effort and let Sorin back out onto the street. After two or three hours underground, it was nice just to get a lungful of fresh air again, but he couldn’t afford to just stand around.

  Sorin quickly located a three-story house and scaled the rough stone fa?ade to reach the roof. It wasn’t that he expected to spot the others just because he’d reached a high vantage, but he’d been hoping he’d catch a break. It wasn’t so easy, of course. Even with Acuity helping, he didn’t see any movement.

  What he did see was thirty monkeys scattered across the rooftops. All of them sat, motionless, peering down into the streets and ignoring each other. Those monsters were by far the biggest threat to him in the ruin, and really to anyone who wasn’t Rue. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity to clear the area of them.

  Let’s see what I can do as a rank 2.

  Eight ice blades formed around him, all aimed at the monkeys farthest away. They flew off, streaking through the air at maximum speed while Sorin conjured up another set. By the time the first monkey took a ten-pound slab of sharpened ice through the back of the skull, he’d fired a shot off at every single monster in sight.

  The first salvo killed every target, but the second round missed two of them when they twisted to look around in response to the dying screams of their brethren. Sorin threw new ice blades at those targets even as they began weaving their illusions. He didn’t get a good look at how well his third and fourth waves fared, but the little bursts of anima flooding his soulspace served to confirm that he’d managed to kill twenty-two of the monsters.

  He broke the illusions by retreating into his soulspace for a moment, then sent a final round of ice blades to the remaining monsters. They fell, one at a time, leaving the whole section of the ruin clear. Or, at least the roofs are clear. We never saw any of them at street level, but I can’t just assume I managed to kill all of them.

  Despite his travels underground, Sorin hadn’t lost his sense of direction. He knew where he was in relation to the sinkhole. If he went a few streets to the east, he’d be able to see it from a gable perched on top of a ruined building. That would give him a starting point to try to find the rest of his team, assuming they were still alive.

  Sorin climbed back down to street level and started making his way to the sinkhole. Tracking Odric across the town would be difficult but not impossible. There was enough moss growing up between cobblestones to hold a footprint or reveal a scuff, and if things had gone poorly, there’d be a trail of blood and broken bodies to follow.

  There was no blood, not near the sinkhole. Odric had followed orders and fled immediately, presumably taking Nemari with him. Sorin had a choice then, to either follow the street north and try to track down Odric, or to go looking for Rue, who was presumably closer to the wall. It was an easy choice to make. Nemari was wounded and Odric wasn’t much of a fighter. They needed his help far more than Rue did.

  North it is.

  But the trail never appeared. Whether the tower had deliberately obscured it, or Sorin had simply failed to pick it up, he was forced to admit that he couldn’t find anyone from his team. They’d gone to ground and hidden quite well. Or they’re dead already.

  He shook his head, banishing that thought. He’d lost more than his fair share of teammates over the decades, but it still stung to think of new climbers having their careers cut so short, especially when it had been his idea to come north to farm the bark elementals. If not for that decision, Rue wouldn’t have been lured into the ruin.

  There was one thing he could still do. Heldigar, Yoru, and Vendis were working their way to the heart of the ruin. If they pulled that off, the monsters would weaken or outright disappear, and the tower would stop trying to hold everyone inside the ruin. Other than physically finding his lost party, the next best way to help them was to put an end to the ruin itself.

  Also, killing a ruin guardian grants a lot of anima, not to mention the tower-forged treasure it's protecting. I wouldn’t say no to either of those, and now that I’m at peak rank 2 strength, it shouldn’t even be that dangerous for me to attack this place solo. Yoru would be pissed if I sniped the ruin seed from him, though.

  Do I care about that? Maybe a little. Yoru is obviously well-connected, and stepping on his toes isn’t doing me any favors, but if it saves my team, I’ll deal with it. Now, where should I be looking?

  The center was northeast of where Sorin was currently standing. Moving slowly and searching for any signs of Odric’s passage, Sorin walked the streets in that direction. There was nothing, but nothing also meant no blood, which there would certainly have been plenty of if his two teammates had been killed by monsters.

  Something flickered across the opening of a nearby window on the second floor of the house to his left, there and gone so quickly that Sorin almost missed it. He slipped off into a nearby alley and started scanning the street for movement, but whatever he’d spotted was alone. One of the monkeys, maybe? We never saw any inside a house, but there’s no reason they couldn’t go in there.

  Then Rue burst through the empty doorframe and paused. It took her only a moment to orient on where Sorin was hiding, her ability to sense anima no doubt leading her to him. She raced across the street while he stepped forward to meet her, only for her to pull up short in surprise.

  “What the fuck! How are you rank 2?” she demanded.