The next time the wolf exhaled poison black mist across the arena, Heldigar burst into golden light and immediately neutralized it. Soon after that, Sorin dispersed the first voidling, and it became a straightforward task to chop down the other one. Warily, he scanned the battlefield to make sure there wasn’t a third about to join the fray, but he saw nothing like that.

  Instead, Yoru and Nemari were blasting the portal guardian with basic elemental soulprint attacks while Heldigar kept it under control. Several times, it tried to turn to snap at Rue, but she was quick to dodge backward, and the big man was more than willing to leap back in front of it. Kind of jealous of that armor. I definitely need some upgrades to my kit so I’m not scrambling all the time.

  No one tried to assist Sorin with destroying the two voidlings, either because they knew better than to use soulprint-granted abilities fueled by anima, or because they were busy dealing with the portal guardian. Rue and Heldigar were the only ones who could have made an impact on the outcome anyway, and the unpredictability of adding another variable to that fight wasn’t something Sorin wanted to deal with. It was better for everyone if they just stayed on the guardian.

  The second voidling eventually went down, and he joined the rest of the team in attacking the wolf. Between Heldigar and Nemari, they completely locked down its ability to flood the arena with mist, which prevented the smaller shadow wolves from appearing. From there, it was just a matter of time and effort to slowly break down the guardian’s impressive defenses and bleed it out.

  It was easy to tell when the wolf finally succumbed to its accumulated injuries. Sorin felt the subtle sweep of anima flooding into his soulspace, which usually signified a rank up. In his case, that had already happened, albeit somewhat more violently, in the tunnels beneath the ruin. Instead of that feeling of his soulspace expanding, it felt more like a sort of reinforcement, like another layer was wrapped around it.

  It didn’t grant him room for more soulprints. He wasn’t sure if it did anything at all. If he had to guess, though, he thought that maybe killing the portal guardian had added whatever part of a soulspace other people could sense that would let them identify him as a rank 2 climber.

  Nobody spoke while the tower’s magic worked its way through their soulspaces. They were all too busy panting and trying to catch their breath to make small talk, though Sorin didn’t miss the way Yoru was staring daggers at him. The obvious animosity had been a large part of Sorin’s decision not to burn through more of his own anima to kill the portal guardian faster, just in case he needed to defend himself.

  “Damn, was not expecting to get rank 2 on this job,” Heldigar finally said after the process finished. “Good little bonus.”

  The attunement brand hit then, causing everyone but Vestus to flinch. Nobody cried out this time, both Rue and Nemari being more prepared for the experience, but neither did they pretend it was pleasant. Attunement was universally agreed upon to be a necessary evil, and it only got worse at higher levels. Some climbers had ended their careers simply because they didn’t want to go through it anymore.

  There were two ways forward now. The first was the portal sitting in the middle of the arena, right in front of the pedestal the wolf had been posed on. Going through that would lead to a cache of tower-forged treasures and Floor 2. The other way was to return to the portal hub to use the portal there. Either way, they’d end up in a random location once they crossed over. The only difference was whether they did it now and earned some rewards, or retreated to safety to resupply and perhaps farm Floor 1 for more anima.

  “You, claim-jumper!” Yoru snapped, stalking across the arena to approach Sorin. He looked a mess, with dried blood running down one side of his face, scuffed, torn, and soiled clothing, his formerly tidy hair in disarray, and a hot, wild look in his eyes. “I know you looted that ruin seed.”

  “I did,” Sorin acknowledged. “We happened to stumble across it. Nobody turns down free loot sitting right in front of them, especially not a trove of tower-forged gear at the heart of a ruin.”

  “That was my ruin! My family claimed it. You stole from me, and after I rendered aid to your teammate, saving her life, you ungrateful bastards.”

  “While we appreciate your timely assistance, I would say that we more than paid you back assisting you with the ruin guardian,” Sorin said. “Not to mention giving you three of the four soulprints. We could have continued to work together and split the remaining loot, but you tried to be greedy and claim it all for yourself. You can hardly blame us that we got to it first.”

  “He’s not wrong, boss,” Heldigar unhelpfully supplied.

  “He agreed with me that we had claim on the ruin!” Yoru sputtered, jabbing a finger at Sorin.

  “Wasn’t worth an argument in that moment,” Sorin said easily. “And honestly, I didn’t expect you to chase us out of the ruin for almost a week. You must have a good tracking soulprint to pull that off.”

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  “That’s none of your business!”

  “Sure. I don’t much care. Simple fact here is that I found the ruin seed before you did. So I collected the loot. You already got three of the four soulprints off the guardian that you couldn’t have killed without our help, and now you’ve jumped into the middle of our portal guardian’s fight and gotten your rank 2 attunement as well. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”

  “Sir, he’s not exactly wrong,” Vestus said. “You’ve benefited immensely from this team’s assistance. Surely you can forgive the loss of some largely inconsequential prizes.”

  “It’s not about their value. It’s about the disrespect and betrayal,” Yoru insisted.

  “Well, what do you want? Shall we fight over it? I’m ready when you are,” Sorin said.

  “Maybe we could share the loot,” Nemari interjected, having walked forward to join the argument. “It’s not like every piece was directly useful to us.”

  I wasn’t expecting you to be so timid, Sorin thought as he looked at his team’s leader. Do you know something about this guy that I don’t?

  Sorin expected Yoru was part of some climbing family, and that they probably had some measure of influence over the lower floors. But the kinds of people who became the biggest players on Floor 0 rarely had influence past Floor 5. They were only a threat to climbers too weak, incompetent, or unmotivated enough to rise through the ranks.

  But that was blue tower logic, and Sorin had already seen plenty of examples of how society had developed differently here in this new tower. He could very well have made a mistake offending the scion of a powerful family that could dog his progress for the next twenty or thirty floors.

  “Are you sure?” he asked quietly. At her nod, he took a step back and gestured for her to take his place.

  Squaring off in front of Yoru, Nemari looked him straight in the eye and said, “I know who your family is, and I know you know mine. Let’s leave them out of it for the moment, though. I recognize that I might be dead if not for your healer, and I’m not an ingrate. Both our teams fought in that ruin. We killed and bled and struggled.”

  “You’re trying to frame this like it was an equal contribution, but it wasn’t.”

  “From what I heard, it kind of was. Our group defeated several of the smaller guardians and assisted with the main guardian kill. You took three out of the four soulprints off the guardian, and it was a struggle to get you to give up even one. Then you tried to drive Sorin and Rue off to prevent them from claiming any of the cache from the seed room, and you’re pissed that it backfired when they got there ahead of you, effectively doing to you what you were trying to do to us.”

  Nemari hadn’t raised her voice, but by the time she’d gotten to the end of her speech, she’d gone from standing three feet away to right in Yoru’s face with a finger shoved into his sternum. He backpedaled, surprised by the sudden ferocity, but then rallied his courage to push back.

  “None of that is relevant. I didn’t ask for your help. Your team interfered where it wasn’t wanted or needed. That doesn’t entitle you to a reward just because you showed up somewhere where valuable soulprints and tower-forged loot could be acquired, not when another team was already actively working there.”

  “None of the rest of the families recognize the legitimacy of your little alliance,” Nemari told him. “If we’d been sponsored by one of them, you might have a leg to stand on. We’re not. I’m independent, and this is my team. I’m not beholden to the rules you all agreed on with each other, so stop barking at me like I’m in the wrong.

  “Now, in the spirit of cooperation, because your team did help save mine from an unexpected encounter with an area guardian, I am willing to give up one item from the cache that we don’t need for our group. You can accept that generosity in the spirit with which it was given, or you can hold your breath and stomp your feet while my team walks through that portal over there and you get nothing at all.”

  “One?!” Yoru protested.

  “I was going to offer two, but the way you’ve behaved made me change my mind.”

  He let out a strangled, unintelligible sound that made Sorin worry that the man might have actually suffered from some sort of rage-induced aneurism. He’d seen several climbers die from things like that, though usually they were magically inspired by monsters that manipulated emotions.

  Eh, he’ll probably be okay. There are two healers within thirty feet of him.

  Nemari watched Yoru choke on his own anger, her face cold and pitiless. It was a side of her Sorin hadn’t seen before, and it was making him reconsider everything he thought he knew about the woman. There was obviously some history there he was unaware of, because she’d almost instantaneously switched from willing to compromise to sneering in his face, and that wasn’t the kind of behavior he expected out of her toward a complete stranger.

  Something to ask about later. I’m not going to get in her way now.

  Nemari fished out the little necklace with the light enchantment from her pack and dropped it on the ground in front of Yoru. “Here you go. All yours. And you’re welcome for dragging you up to rank 2 with us. Now, my team is going through that portal. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you’re welcome to follow us and collect a piece of loot for yourself. But I won’t be surprised if I don’t see you on the other side.”

  She gave a significant glance to Yoru’s two followers. Vestus merely inclined his head in return, but Heldigar’s smirk couldn’t be more obvious. He probably hadn’t much enjoyed his time in Yoru’s employ and wasn’t willing to go haring off onto Floor 2 with no preparation and no contract in place to ensure he profited from it.

  Come to think of it, though, I wonder if we could recruit him. He’s good in a fight, and having a second front liner would make things a lot easier, even if it would cut into how quickly we can grow.

  Sorin didn’t suggest it, though. Instead, he gathered up with Odric and Rue near the floor portal and waited for Nemari to stride across the arena. “Damn, she’s kind of hot right now,” Rue muttered, digging her elbow into her brother and grinning at him.

  Odric’s face flushed, but he didn’t rise to the provocation. Nemari strode past them, every inch of her imperious and perhaps a little bit frightening. Wordlessly, the rest of her team followed her through.