For the most part, Sorin had spent the first week or so of his life in this new tower sandbagging in the spirit of cooperative growth. If he killed everything as fast and efficiently as he was capable of, he’d have stolen almost all the anima from his new team, and he considered their increased power to be an investment in his own future. He needed a competent team to back him up—maybe not today, but eventually.

  That had led to falling into some habits where he spent a lot of effort stalling out monsters so that Rue or Nemari could get the kill, and he suspected Odric would be joining them near the front now that he had room in his soulspace for some non-healing soulprints. For the most part, Sorin was fine with this arrangement. It was unreasonable to expect climbers with practically no experience to keep up with a veteran of forty years who’d additionally been the undisputed most powerful climber in his tower.

  Today, right now, the gloves were coming off. The berserker jacks weren’t voidlings. He didn’t need to remain hyper-focused on defensive dodging, not when he had soulprints like Iron Body and Minor Regeneration to help keep him alive. This was also the perfect opportunity to put Blind Sense through its paces and to test the limits of Warrior’s Vigilance.

  Really, I couldn’t ask for a better fight to test my new build against.

  Five monsters in various states of berserk bloodlust bore down on him. One more limped along, one of its legs missing but no less ferocious. It would make contact two and a half seconds after the rest of its pack. Calmly, Sorin sorted out which ones he’d deal with first.

  Then he exploded into motion. The berserker jacks couldn’t be driven back or controlled by inflicting pain on them, and they were weighty enough that it was difficult to just shove them aside. He needed powerful, heavy attacks that severed limbs at the very least, and his sword didn’t have that kind of capability on its own.

  The blade slammed into the first of the leaping jacks. Steel bit deep into its pelt, aided by a surge of anima forming thick, blunt ice blades to slam into the back of the blade. Sorin stepped into the slash, putting all his weight into it. With a sudden burst of strength, he bisected the monster cleanly, parting muscles and bones in a spray of gore and blood. Anima flowed into his soulspace, confirming not even a berserker could live through that.

  He stepped to the side, letting the second jack fly by. It screamed in impotent fury as it passed him, its incisors snapping in an attempt to bite him despite its mouth being over a foot away. It swallowed an ice blade for its effort and choked on its own blood.

  The third jack was probably the palest of the group, the only one that didn’t have any obvious injuries yet. It came in with low, bounding leaps, keeping close to the ground and shifting its angle of approach to align with another of the monsters so they’d both hit Sorin at the same time.

  It was a simple tactic, easily defeated by simply moving toward the more enraged of the pair. It was too lost in its own frenzy—or perhaps simply not smart enough to begin with—to even think to compensate for Sorin’s movement. He set himself in front of the monster, feet braced and sword held out directly at the jack for it to impale itself on it.

  The berserker immediately obliged, barely even bothering to alter its course enough before it leaped so that Sorin only had to make a minute adjustment to the angle he held the blade at. The sheer weight and speed of the monster drove him back a step, but he held his arm steady and let it inflict a mortal wound upon itself.

  The problem was, of course, that it didn’t seem to care that it had killed itself. That was something for the jack five minutes in the future to deal with, and present Sorin might not live long enough to see it.

  All part of the plan, he reminded himself as he stepped into a swing, sliding the jack off the blade before it could finish crawling up the length of steel to bite at his hands. It tumbled free, spinning sideways as it flew through the air to crash into the pinkish-white jack just before it reached Sorin.

  The next two jacks were too quick for him to set himself up for them, and Sorin contented himself with easy dodges and fast counterattacks that bled them a bit. He gave a silent laugh at that. It had only been a minute ago he’d been thinking that was precisely the worst strategy to employ. But these were the ones that had taken the brunt of Nemari’s attention and were already on the edge of death anyway. The fires they left behind in their wake were more of a threat than the jacks themselves.

  That had been back when he was trying to compensate for his team’s overall weakness, however. Now that it was just him, he had no fear that they’d overpower him, no matter how viciously they attacked. Their only chance was a coordinated rush, and that strategy had been defeated by their own nature.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The one missing a leg was the easiest to put down. Like its brethren, it left numerous openings when it finally did reach Sorin. Unlike the other monsters, it lacked the explosive speed they liked to employ when closing the final few feet. Sorin hit it six times in half as many seconds, with the final strike decapitating it.

  There were a few more tense moments over the next minute, especially when three of them managed, by sheer coincidence, to come at him from opposing directions almost simultaneously. His ranged attack helped break apart that accidental formation, and with one monster stalled, he manipulated the other two into colliding mid-air. That resulted in them briefly scuffling with each other, allowing Sorin to kill the late-comer first and the other two shortly there-after.

  After that, it was a simple matter of mopping up the remainder, though ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ weren’t the same thing. It didn’t require any complicated tactics or precision timing, at least, but those two berserker jacks had been given the most time to work themselves up. They were each sporting crimson fur that matched their eyes and refused to so much as be slowed down by such inconsequential wounds as having limbs chopped off. That didn’t save them, of course.

  By the time the battle ended, Sorin was half a mile away from the rest of his team. That was a lot farther than he wanted to be, but the jacks' ferocity had forced him into a continual retreat to keep them from rampaging right over him, and not necessarily in a straight line.

  At least I didn’t stumble across any other monsters while I was fighting. I was kind of expecting the noise to draw in something to ambush me.

  Even thinking that felt like asking for trouble. Sorin glanced around warily, but all he saw was the flickering light of small grass fires the jacks had left in their wake before he’d killed them. That left an easy trail for him to follow, at least. He took it at a slow walk, using the time to catch his breath and to mentally prepare for what was sure to be an interrogation when he got back.

  Any hope that the Antechamber being a personal event instead of a team one in the red tower had been quashed when he’d come out the other side and found everyone already in a fight. None of them could have survived eight berserker jacks on their own, which meant they had definitely come out as a group.

  He could already hear Nemari demanding answers while Odric silently supported her and Rue vacillated between distrusting Sorin and trying to figure out if joining in the accusations would cut her off from her meal ticket. If he wasn’t willing to cough up some answers, and he wasn’t, their team was probably only going to last long enough to find the Floor 2 portal hub. It might not even make it that far.

  Then again, they might have bigger problems, he thought to himself as he got close enough to see them.

  Odric was in the worst shape, while Nemari was unharmed. Rue was pretty messed up, and it was obvious where Odric’s anima was going. He probably could have fixed every single burn, bruise, and broken bone on himself, but he’d decided healing his sister was more important. Sorin couldn’t necessarily say he disagreed with that.

  “Did you lose the monsters out in the grass?” Nemari asked as he approached.

  “Something like that.”

  She looked him over, slowly this time, with her eyes lingering on the blood staining the steel of his sword and splattered all over his clothes. With a snort, she shook her head. “How in the ever-loving fuck did you manage to kill all of them?”

  “By being very, very deliberate and precise,” he said. “Make no mistake, a berserker soulprint is a weakness on its own. Losing control of yourself is a bad idea.”

  “Seemed to work well enough against us,” Rue croaked.

  “I’m guessing that’s primarily because none of you realized they were berserker jacks to begin with, probably combined with being dropped right on top of them while missing your front liner.”

  There were undoubtedly other mistakes they’d made, but it felt mean to criticize them when two of them were gravely injured. They’d done their best, but chances were they’d have been yet another unlucky group thrown into a situation outside their control that would have claimed their lives if Sorin hadn’t shown up when he had.

  In their defense, once a climber entered the Antechamber portal, there was no going back, and none of them had realized Sorin would be separated from the rest of the team. That violated the immutable rules of the tower as he knew them, so it was hardly fair to judge them for not predicting that handicap.

  On the other hand, if they wanted to be great climbers, they needed to learn to overcome exactly those kinds of scenarios. There were certainly better ways to approach the situation they’d found themselves in, but Sorin thought it would be better to hold off on that conversation until they’d had some time to heal and mentally distance themselves from how close to death they’d come.

  “You’re not wrong,” Nemari grumbled. “Rue went through first and practically stepped on one of them. Only they weren’t sleeping like those dogs from Floor 1. It’s been pure chaos from the very first second. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the tower has a personal vendetta against this team.”

  It just might. There have been a lot of extraordinary coincidences over the last few days. It’s probably not the team as a whole, though. It’s just me the tower is trying to kill. Then again, I wasn’t even here for the start of the berserker jacks, so maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  “That should do it,” Odric said, removing his hands from Rue and helping her to her feet. “Your ribs were a complete mess, but I think I’ve got things more or less in the right place. Take shallow breaths for now, and I’ll try to get everything fully put together once I get some more anima.”

  “Thanks,” Rue said. She tried not to wince as she stood, but Sorin could see she was still hurting. That wasn’t surprising. Broken ribs did not let themselves be forgotten, not even for a moment, and he could still hear the sound of that jack jumping on her over and over again echoing through his mind.

  “So, what happened?” Nemari asked, turning to face Sorin fully. “I think we’ve been patient long enough, and this latest weirdness almost got us killed. It’s time for some answers.”