“And here they come, like vultures circling the prize,” Yoru muttered to himself, though not quietly enough to avoid being overheard. That was the point, of course. His snide remarks were starting to grate on Sorin’s nerves.

  “Seems only reasonable to share in the rewards, considering that without our help, you’d have failed to kill the guardian,” Sorin said. “Looks like four soulprints; let’s just split them evenly.”

  “We will do no such thing. This ruin belongs to my team, and so do its spoils. You’re lucky I let my healer waste valuable anima keeping your team from dying.”

  “That’s not really—” Heldigar started to say.

  “Nobody asked for your opinion,” Yoru snapped. “I hired you to be muscle, not to make decisions.”

  The big man frowned unhappily and shifted in place, but otherwise made no move to oppose his employer. Their agreement probably included a cash payment for Heldigar and no looting rights, so he really had no stake in the dispute. Sorin couldn’t blame him for not interfering.

  “We appreciate your assistance earlier, but that doesn’t cheapen our contribution to this fight,” Sorin said evenly. “There are four soulprints. Two of them are ours.”

  “No. At best, you’d be entitled to one, considering you didn’t even show up until near the end of the fight.”

  “It was only the end because we showed up. Without our help, you’d have been forced back at best, wiped out at worst.”

  “You can’t prove that,” Yoru responded. “More importantly, you yourself agreed that the ruin was ours when we first saved your team. You have no right to try to claim any of the loot now.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. We fought, we deserve a split.”

  “Yoru,” Vendis said.

  Yoru turned to glare at his healer. “It’s ours!”

  “He’s not wrong, though.”

  It was probably just his imagination, but Sorin thought he could hear Yoru’s teeth grinding. “Fine,” he spat out. “One soulprint. Your team forfeited the second in exchange for the healing.”

  “One, but we get first pick,” Sorin said.

  “And that’s all you get. The cache of Tower-forged loot is mine.”

  Not really fair, but that’s probably as good as I’m going to get unless I want to fight for it. Without some healing of my own, that’s a bad idea. Yoru’s probably just as low on anima as me, but Heldigar’s in fighting shape, and Vendis doesn’t really do much mid-battle anyway, so him being tapped out won’t change anything.

  “Deal,” Sorin said.

  “Really?” Rue hissed from behind him. “He’s ripping us off.”

  “Better than nothing. Let’s get a look at these soulprints.”

  The beak was a basic soulprint pattern Sorin had seen on a thousand different monsters, and exactly what he was expecting given what he’d seen the severed head do. It was called Lunge, and it used anima to propel its wielder forward a short distance at a high speed. Worthless.

  The soulprint embedded in the guardian’s shell was the source of its spike growing ability, which was certainly unique—and valuable precisely because of that uniqueness—but it had no place in Sorin or Rue’s build. That just left the strip of flesh Yoru had already harvested and the foot.

  Sorin moved to the back of the corpse and examined the foot. Tremor sense. Perfect! If only it wasn’t such a bulky vessel… Can I fit this in my soulspace?

  “This is the one,” he said quietly.

  “You didn’t even look at the one Yoru already harvested,” Rue said. “We should at least find out what it does.”

  “You can ask if you want. Just keep an eye on me for the next thirty seconds first. I’m not sure if I can absorb this soulprint right now—need to check.”

  “Got it.”

  He sent his awareness into his soulspace and looked around. Ice Blade and Warrior’s Vigilance took up most of the area, with Acuity and Iron Body claiming almost everything left. Minor Regeneration was squeezed off into the corner with barely enough room to breathe. There was no way he was fitting another soulprint in, not even an F-ranked one.

  Unless… if I merge it with Acuity now… That’s going to be tricky with neither full of anima, but I can probably siphon some off my other soulprints. This is going to hurt.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He came back to reality just long enough to grab hold of Tremor Sense and pulled it into his soulspace, where it immediately rebelled. Pain lanced through his chest, but Sorin pushed past it. Inside, the new soulprint floated in the air, already starting to unravel into pure anima since it lacked a spot to anchor itself.

  No, you don’t!

  Pulling on anima from everywhere he could, Sorin pushed it into Acuity. Even if he’d had enough to fill it to full, it wouldn’t have mattered, not without the space to rank it up. That wasn’t the point though. The anima was needed to form a bridge between the two soulprints, anima that would normally be cycled between two equally full parties, but which his soulspace couldn’t hold.

  The soulprints didn’t want to merge, not as lopsided as they were. Sorin forced them to, anyway. Cracks appeared in the walls of his soulspace and the frame of the paintings that represented them started to splinter. Colors ran dripping down the canvas to pool along the bottom before dripping into his soulspace and fading away.

  “Come on, you bastards! Merge!”

  Sorin grit his teeth and forced the anima from Acuity to flood into Tremor Sense. It was only pure willpower that kept both soulprints from tearing each other apart. Slowly, he forced one piece into the next until he’d woven the whole thing into a wreath of anima. Finally, he tightened it up so there was no telling where Acuity ended and Tremor Sense began.

  With a crack and a flash, the merger completed. The damage to the painting disappeared as the oils shifted around, color bleaching out into a scene of grays and blacks showing him standing with his eyes closed, surrounded by shadowy figures. Blind Sense—a fantastic base sensory soulprint.

  In real time, it had taken less than a minute to complete the soulprint merger, but it had felt like much longer. When Sorin came back out of his soulspace, Rue was standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?” she asked quietly, her eyes flicking over to where Yoru was watching them.

  “I’m good. Had to get tricky to make room for this soulprint, but I’ve got it sorted now.”

  Blind Sense wasn’t a soulprint he’d had in his original build, but he’d heard it described. It was supposed to give him full perception of his immediate surroundings, but only of things that were in motion. It was great in a hectic battle once the user acclimated, but it wouldn’t help him navigate a dark cave.

  The range was more limited than he’d been expecting, but that was probably the result of trying to merge two soulprints together like he had. Blind Sense had stayed at E-rank, but it was completely drained of anima. His other soulprints were a bit weaker, too, and with Acuity no longer a pure soulprint, his telescopic vision was vastly reduced.

  “And now your business is concluded,” Yoru said acidly. “Feel free to clear out of the ruin. I’d like to finish up without any more interference.”

  “Gladly,” Sorin told him. Insufferable prick. That attitude is going to get you killed in a few floors unless you develop the skills to back up your mouth.

  He walked off, Rue next to him. “Which way?” she asked.

  “Got a bit turned around in the fight?” Sorin laughed. “We came in from that street.”

  His new soulprint caught motion behind him and he turned to see Heldigar walking his way. “Good fighting with you,” the big man said. “Maybe when this job is done, we’ll meet up somewhere. Would be nice to work together again.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Sorin said doubtfully, eyeing the two huge swords strapped to Heldigar’s back. “Maybe you should look into a more conventional fighting style, though.”

  “And waste these beautiful muscles swinging around toothpicks like yours? Never!” Heldigar’s laugh cut off and his face turned darker. “Watch yourself on the way out. The boss doesn’t like it when things don’t go his way. He won’t let us come to your aid again. I’d hate to find your corpses when we leave.”

  “I appreciate the advice. Not dying is high on my priorities, too.”

  “A good philosophy,” Heldigar said. “I’ll see you around, maybe on Floor 2.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Sorin watched the warrior leave through his new soulprint, trying to get a feel for its maximum range. He had it pegged at around fifteen feet, more than good enough to give him warning about something on foot coming at him, but probably not strong enough to let him dodge an arrow to the back. Similarly, an assassin lurking motionless could just wait for him to walk by and then stick a dagger in him once he was within arm’s reach.

  “What happens now that the monster is dead?” Rue asked as they left the square.

  “Presumably, the path to the ruin’s seed is open somewhere. Yoru should know how to find it. They’ll go in and break it, collect the cache of Tower-forged gear in there, and be on their way. We’ll link back up with Nemari and Odric, make our way to the walls, and wait for a gate to open.”

  Rue was silent for a moment as she considered something. “So… Tower-forged items have anima in them, right?”

  “Yes, generally. Why?”

  “Well, it’s just that there’s a bunch of anima below us. I thought it might be, you know, the big prize or whatever.”

  There were empty buildings on either side of the street, but he had no way of knowing if any of them had basements. “It’s probably not the big cache, but it might be something smaller that we can use. The question is how to get there…”

  “That cellar is close,” Rue said, pointing to a set of wooden doors set at an angle next to one of the houses. “And I don’t feel any anima moving around. As long we’re careful about traps, I think it’s worth taking a minute to check it out.”

  Yoru would say that anything Tower-forged we find belongs to him, but he’s not here. And fuck that guy anyway.

  “Let’s do it.”

  The door was locked, but a few kicks staved in the wood around the latch. They went down cautiously, but there were no traps on the stairs. Sunlight filtered in from above, throwing the cellar into shadows that made it hard to see. “No anima moving around,” Rue reported. “The stationary anima is that way.”

  “Behind that wall?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was made of solid stone. “That might be tough to bust through, but I think I can manage it,” he said.

  He didn’t have much in the way of anima reserves, but he’d recovered enough to shape his Ice Blades into something that he hoped would work. Placing both hands on the wall, he wove anima into the minute cracks, filling them with more and more ice in an attempt to rip the whole thing apart.

  Ice shattered, dislodging stones and sending them falling to the ground. A hole about a foot wide opened up in the wall, and they peered through it together. A thin pillar of glittering red crystal was in the center of the next room, stretched from floor to ceiling with veins of the material running into the stone like it was a living thing. The crystal glowed softly, bathing the whole room in red light.

  I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s not blue, I suppose. “Looks like I was wrong,” he said aloud. “Yoru’s going to be pissed that we found the seed before him.”