Another gunshot to the head wouldn’t have been as shocking as what just happened. Gareth had him figured out from the beginning.
“Come back here, octopus boy,” Gareth said with a scoff. “Don’t worry. I’m not mad at you or anything.”
Arcen wobbled back into the cave, dragging his feet in shame. He sat down next to the campfire stealing sideways glances at Gareth every now and then. He was busy hanging the dead animals on a makeshift rack.
“Sorry I lied,” Arcen muttered once he gathered enough courage to apologize.
“Completely fine,” Gareth said, sitting down. “You shouldn’t trust other people in towers. Which is why using Reveal to see your Aura is one of the first things that I did.”
When did he do it?!
Arcen raised an eyebrow without asking what he wanted to ask. Gareth continued, answering it immediately. “I used it the moment you used Detonate on me. That’s as fair as it gets.”
“I’m sorry I did that!”
“No need for apologies again. That is also why I didn’t kill you. You used it on the knife when you could’ve used it on my face. That told me a lot Reveal wouldn’t,” Gareth said, smiling. “Relax. Lying isn’t wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just fucked up. Happens all the time.”
“So I should’ve hidden it sooner?”
“Yes. Your Aura looked much lower when I checked afterwards. You’re clearly using some sort of contract to hide it. I’ve seen one of those before. I won’t even ask you what it is. That’s none of my business,” Gareth said, leaning in. “I do believe you’re new to towers. But you have almost eight million. Now that, is way too weird to ignore.”
I’ll just have to tell him.
“Everything I told you about the corpo team was true. Helviter. They brought me here to do predictive analysis on a weird black egg,” Arcen started, rubbing his forehead to gather this thoughts.
“How did that get you from zero Aura to nearly eight million?”
“It went wrong. There was a demon in that egg. Meronolith, have you heard or seen that word before?”
Gareth waved his head sideways. “Can’t say I have. I know others that end with ‘lith’ just like that though. Hunted some of those before. Crabby things with black shells.” Gareth said, rubbing his thumbs. “The demon inside the egg, continue, please.”
“Well, it got into me and then it used me. It ate everyone alive. Their Aura became mine. I puked them back up. There was this kid I ended up fighting. She killed me, brought me back with a contract, took the egg. I was supposed to go back with the recovery team, but they shot me in the head. I came back from that too, somehow. I don’t remember. A flower deer found me while I was trying to find a way out. And now I’m up here.”
Gareth stared at Arcen, brows twisted in confusion. “I can’t confirm if that’s true or another lie, but that’s too wild to be a lie. I’ve been to six towers. Nothing like that ever happened to me,” Gareth said, tapping his cheek with his forefinger. “Any way to prove anything that you said?”
“I can’t prove anything,” Arcen said in a defeated tone.
Should I tell him about the shortcut?
Arcen considered for a few seconds. There was no harm in letting Gareth know about it. The risk would be the man wanting to climb halfway up the tower, but Gareth didn’t strike as the overly ambitious type. He had his hands full in this twenty-first floor, where creatures had the ‘blue stuff’ that he needed. He wouldn’t want to climb up to battle the Meronolith Queen.
“Wait, there’s this thing. There is a shortcut that goes four hundred fifty floors up. Do you know about this?” Arcen asked.
“There is a what?!”
“A capillary shaft that goes from the twenties to four hundred fifty-one. That’s where they got the black egg from.”
“I’ve never seen one longer than twenty floors at most! That’s ridiculous.”
“It is there. I can tell you that much, words don’t mean anything though,” Arcen said, keeping his eyes on the man. “We can look for it if you want to.”
Gareth looked at him bewildered. “I really can’t tell you enough how much I don’t want to climb that far up.”
“That’s why I told you,” Arcen said, smiling. “I don’t want to climb anywhere near that either.”
Gareth stood and took off his bloodied rag of an apron. “Now that we made things clear, you can fix your hands with Restore,” He said, pointing at Arcen’s bandaged forearms. “Be ready in ten minutes.”
“Uh? What for?” Arcen asked, his voice shaky. “You’re kicking me out?”
Gareth had more than enough reason to do just that. Arcen was worried about what awaited him outside in that scenario. He’d almost gone back to the flower pit, where he would’ve died if Gareth hadn’t stopped him. There had to be a thousand different things that Arcen didn’t know which could be certain death. He wasn’t ready to go on his own just yet.
“No, just come with me and get used to how I do things. It’ll help you climb down when you go back down,” Gareth said, frowning. “Unless you want to do everything on your own, of course.”
Oh, hell no.
They crawled through the underbrush somewhere south of the cave. Gareth had laid some traps there that he needed to check. Arcen followed closely behind, with only his left hand healed after three attempts with Restore. As it turned out, his Restore wasn’t as powerful as Gareth’s was.
Just thinking about it brought it up in his eyes, obstructing his view with creeping gold veins in his eyes.
╭ ╰︶?? OSIRYN ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RESTORE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ AUDITOR ╰︶
????
OSIRYN
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DUALITY ╰︶
????
LIFE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ RANK ╰︶
????
FIRST
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ TARGETING ╰︶
????
ENTITY
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DESCRIPTION ╰︶
????
REVERSE DAMAGE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ COST ╰︶
????
300 AURA
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
Arcen focused on his bandaged right hand and used it on his wrist, which was burning with pain. His flesh mended where he’d missed on the last attempt, and his wrist jolted as if it was hammered with a rock. The jolt of pain thundered up his arm into his shoulder. He winced loudly.
“Shh!” Gareth hissed, pulling him down. “What’s wrong?” He asked.
“Fourth one didn’t work either,” Arcen whispered, gesturing at his wrist. Arcen’s Restore was healing his wrists far less than what Gareth’s did for his ankles. Something was missing, and he had no idea what it was.
“Now’s not the time. We’re almost here. Be quiet,” Gareth said nudging toward the ridge above them. Arcen nodded. He wanted to ask Gareth all about how Restore works, but that had to wait.
They climbed over the ridge, carefully stepping on a slate rock staircase. Gareth had set up camp there some time earlier. There was a tarp tied under the bushes with a small gap.
Gareth pointed at the clearing beyond it. There were shapes moving in the dark, about the size of those rabbit pig things that he brought back. Arcen’s first instinct was to use Radiate, but he held off. Gareth was crawling into position and placed his face against the gap. He didn’t say anything else, so Arcen crouched next to him and watched.
Suddenly, something blew up in the center of the gathering of creatures. They scattered in all directions, howling like wounded children on a playground. One of them darted directly towards them and exploded before they got to the opening.
“Hit them with Detonate!” Gareth yelled, pointing at three of them escaping to the right. Arcen turned, his eyes already narrowed to target them.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
DETONATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
The first one hit one of the creatures in the back leg. It veered off the path into a dark crevice, squealing in pain.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
DETONATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
The second one hit a creature on the side of the belly. It flew off the ground, bounced off a rock and rolled away.
The third one was a miss.
“Kill them. Take this!” Gareth tossed his knife at Arcen, turned around and dashed out through the gap in the tarp. Arcen followed, running towards the squealing creature rotating on the ground like a wheel.
The head, I’ve got to stab it in the head!
He pinned the creature with his foot and brought the knife down on its head. The knife sank into its neck instead. It screamed, trying to wriggle free and bite his hand.
Arcen let go of the knife when a tooth grazed his knuckle. He swung his other leg and stomped on the knife handle to sink it further. Blood splashed everywhere like from a broken pipe.
The creature stopped moving moments later, squeals of pain fading into grunts. Arcen pulled the knife off its neck, trying to avoid looking at the mess that he made. He felt guilty about killing it, even if he had no reason to.
He found the other one already dead, bled out from its blown up hind leg.
Gareth used Radiate after the ruckus calmed down.
“My traps are all messed up,” he said, pointing at a bunch of ropes and pieces of wood that once would’ve been his trap.
“Messed up?” Arcen asked, crouching next to him as he gave his knife back. He didn’t know what this trap was even supposed to look like.
“Look at the ropes!” Gareth pulled a piece of rope up to Arcen’s face. It had frayed ends that were cut across cleanly.
“They bit it off?”
“No, someone cut it off with a knife. Probably took them for food.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea,” said Gareth, glancing around suspiciously. “This is close to camp. I should’ve detected them.”
Detected them how?
“Do you have like cameras? What are you talking about?”
Gareth dug into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a flattened tortoise shell. The back cover was a peculiar thing made of metal. It looked like a comb with thick hexagonal rods. Gareth pulled it off the shell and handed it to Arcen. It had a honeycomb shape with tiny segments packed tightly together like a pixelated display.
“That’s a Lacarlith shell. It lights up if anyone else with Aura is nearby.”
Sure enough, the center dot was glowing orange. There were fainter dots towards the top right edge and a bright one towards the bottom center.
“How is it supposed to alert you though?” Arcen asked. There was no way to tell what was nearby without looking at it. The traps could’ve been messed with when Gareth wasn’t looking at it.
“It resonates with Aura and starts vibrating,” Gareth showed him the metal ‘lid’ that slotted right into the honeycomb patterns. “If Aura changed around me, I’d know right away. This is why I used Reveal on you back then.”
Now that’s way clever than what I thought.
“Someone’s been here, someone who was hiding their Aura.”
“I-I’m not doing it though.”
“I know you can’t be that. I’m used to the way it vibrates when you’re around. That’s how I knew it when you tried to hide your Aura. It went completely still.”
“Someone’s hiding themselves in the right way then?”
“Could be,” Gareth said, sliding the shell back into his pocket with the lid facing his chest. “Grab the ones you killed. We’re going back.”
They hauled eight carcasses in two trips to the site of the massacre. Gareth quickly drained their blood for gold and extracted blue stuff. He put the vials back into the box where he stored the rest of the blue stuff and sat next to Arcen, sucking gold off his thumb.
“We’ve got to fix that,” he said, pointing at Arcen’s wrist that he held close to his stomach. It hurt whenever it was moved, the kind of pain that increased by the second. He’d made it worse trying to kill those creatures. Arcen would’ve passed out by pain if it weren’t for the high pain tolerance that his Ceph mutation gave him.
Gareth took his time to examine the wrist. There was a brief moment where a faint white light wrapped around Arcen’s wrist. His bones cracked into place, and the pain vanished almost instantly.
That worked so well.
“Why does it only work when you do it?” Arcen asked, twisting his newly healed wrist. He was still afraid to move it as freely as he wanted.
“I used a sixth-rank Restore,” Gareth said, pointing at his hand. “That’s about what it takes to fix bones.”
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RESTORE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ RANK ╰︶
????
FIRST
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
“Good to know. I think mine says rank first. What’s that good for?”
“The ranks work like this: one can heal a scratch, two a cut, three for something skin deep. Four is about where you can do muscles. Fifth can deal with deeper cuts than that. The sixth, bones. Higher ranks also give you bigger coverage.” Gareth said, gesturing a ball with his hands. “For a wrist, that’s enough to cover the whole thing.”
Higher power, higher range. Got it.
“How am I supposed to know these things?” Arcen asked with a sigh.
“You’re not. Towers don’t teach you. Nobody wrote books about it. You’ve got to figure things out on your own. You can do it faster if you talk with someone like me.”
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to sit down with Gareth and keep talking about everything. But Arcen already knew that wouldn’t be possible. The man was getting ready for another trip outside.
“Can you tell me how the ranks are decided?” Arcen asked, standing up. All four of his limbs were back in working order, and he felt much more confident in his abilities this time.
“Stats. Towers call them attributes. You can see yours.”
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ATTRIBUTES ╰︶
????
LOVE [9]
??
HATE [9]
??
ORDER [7]
??
CHAOS [10]
??
TRUTH [10]
??
DECEPTION [8]
??
HOPE [5]
??
DESPAIR [11]
??
CREATION [6]
??
DESTRUCTION [12]
??
LIGHT [10]
??
DARKNESS [8]
??
LIFE [10]
??
DEATH [10]
??
FUTURE [16]
??
PAST [3]
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
It was the long list that he’d glanced at before. Now that he used a couple of skills, he started to see the connection. Detonate had something to do with Destruction. Restore had something to do with Life. He had no idea what actually went into calculating the rank.
His stats were nothing spectacular, as far as he was concerned. Focusing on the first one brought it up in his eyes.
╭ ╰︶?? ERYNNIS ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ATTRIBUTE ╰︶
????
LOVE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DESCRIPTION ╰︶
????
ATTRIBUTE TRACKING
INDIVIDUAL CAUSALITY
OF LOVE, AFFECTION,
DEVOTION, PASSION,
LUST, FRIENDSHIP
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILLS ╰︶
????
NO SKILLS ACCQUIRED
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
Well, no need to rub it in my face.
Arcen stared at it blankly. Love was an attribute to keep track of seemingly everything to do in that general direction. He wondered what counted for it. It had both lust and friendship.
So if I fuck someone that’s plus one, and if I get friend zoned trying to, that’s also plus one?
Clicking his tongue, he dismissed it, trying his luck elsewhere. Despair and Destruction caught his eye, because he had double digits on those. He didn’t want to look at Despair. That was self explanatory.
╭ ╰︶?? BRAHMARA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ATTRIBUTE ╰︶
????
DESTRUCTION
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DESCRIPTION ╰︶
????
ATTRIBUTE TRACKING
INDIVIDUAL CAUSALITY
OF DESTRUCTION,
DEMOLITION, RUIN
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILLS ╰︶
????
DETONATE [1]
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
Oh wait, that’s where detonate comes from.
“Some of my stats don’t have skills,” Arcen said, pondering.
“Any attributes below ten are useless. You only get skills when you have ten or above,” Gareth replied.
Ah that makes sense.
He thought about his skills, and gold veins weaved it in his eyes right away.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILLS ╰︶
????
WRECK [1]
??
REVEAL [1]
??
INTIMIDATE [1]
??
DETONATE [1]
??
RADIATE [1]
??
RESTORE [1]
??
DRAIN [1]
??
PREDICT [1]
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
“My skills, I only have one rank on all of them, how do you get more?” Arcen asked.
“Ah, you noticed that,” Gareth smiled with a nod. “Rank is simple. It goes up every ten points of the stat. For example, if you have hundred, you’ll have ten ranks.”
“How do I get them though?”
“So,” Gareth breathed in. “An attribute is like a log. Think of it like God’s tally mark. It naturally goes up the more time you spend in towers, although very slowly. The only other way is doing tower quests. Those have attribute rewards sometimes.”
It’s a tally mark log of how fucked I am. Great.
Gareth continued, “Remember that Aura cost of a skill goes up with each rank, and there is no limit to how high a rank can be. Some people have been inside towers for eight years and most of their attributes are well under hundred. I’ve heard rumors that beyond hundred, the rank requirement doubles. To twenty, and so on. The real limit is Aura.”
Wait. There has to be some sort of limit to cost?
“Is the cost, like exponential? Surely not?”
“It’s not quite exponential, but you have the right idea. Someone figured out the formula, I don’t remember it. It does climb fast, bigger and bigger numbers,” Gareth said, tightening a strap around his thigh. “This doesn’t mean you have to use the highest rank of a skill every time. You can change the rank before activating, and save Aura that way.”
He wondered what sixth rank Restore costed Gareth. It had to be more than whatever gold he got from those dead creatures.
“Wait, then, when you healed me, you did it with your actual Aura?” Arcen asked.
“Sure did,” Gareth said casually. “I was lying to you back there about only using gold. Fixing you up costed me about ten thousand Aura. About seven thousand dollars right there if you do the math.”
Oh fuck! and I lied to this guy!
“Shit. I’m sorry I lied to you, man,” Arcen said in a low voice. “I can pay it back—”
“No need!” Gareth said, patting Arcen on the back. “Dollars aren’t that relevant in towers anyway. I wasn’t going to be able to cash it all, you know.”
“Huh? why not?” Arcen asked, unable to imagine why a father with a sick boy would refuse seven thousand dollars.
“When you sell Gold outside, tax starts at seventy-five percent. It can go up to ninety-eight,” Gareth said casually.
Say fucking what?!
“Unless you do it with third-party brokers for cash, of course. If you get caught, that’s straight life in prison for all involved.”
“I had no idea it was that bad!”
This was a spanner thrown in the works for Arcen. All this time he’d thought he had five million dollars’ worth of Aura to cash out. Doing the math at ninety-eight percent tax, that was just a measly hundred thousand.
“That’s just crazy. I’m going to cash everything out and move to bumfuck nowhere. Mark my words!” Arcen said, determined to move ahead with it.
“You’re not the first one that had that idea. The toughest part would be finding someone with that much cash in hand, willing to trade gold for it. You’re not the only one with millions of Aura, you see. There’s got to be thousands just like you all over the world right now.”
“Shit. It’s all fucked then.”
“As it always was!” Gareth said, handing Arcen a spool of rope. He was ready to head out.
They made their way to the next spot where Gareth had laid traps days ago. This time, it was deeper into the chamber than before. Gareth had another path ready, marked with arrows drawn on rocks with some sort of paint. He knew exactly where to crawl and exactly where to run.
They arrived at a pond with black water, illuminated by faint bioluminescent plants around them. On the opposite shore were large shadows as tall as houses lumbering above the canopy. The creatures had long necks and round heads. That was all Arcen could tell from their silhouettes.
“We’re hunting those?” Arcen asked, whispering as he crawled next to Gareth. He signaled Arcen to stay quiet. There were noises coming from the other side of the pond. Noises that weren’t from any creatures. It sounded like a woman laughing and a man talking.
Gareth pulled out his Lacarlith shell from his front pocket in a hurry. He pulled it off, and it rolled next to Arcen. Gareth looked dumbfounded at the honeycomb pattern of the shell, his face basking in orange yellow light.
What’s wrong?!
Arcen grabbed the metal lid. It was vibrating. He dropped it on the ground by accident.
“There’s people there. Lots of Aura. Almost as much as you.” Gareth whispered in the lowest possible voice, pointing at the opposite shore. “They’re the ones fucking up my traps!”
“Oh, shit!”
Suddenly, they heard heavy boots clattering on the wet rocks behind them. Someone was running towards them. Gareth grabbed his knife and leapt off the ground. Arcen didn’t have enough time to even think.
In the next split second, a figure dressed in all black came to a halt right behind them. Gareth jumped back, hit a rock, and winced loudly.
The man glared down at Arcen with a glowing red eye as he struggled to get on his feet. Arcen could remember seeing it somewhere before.
Wait, a goddamn minute—
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
DETONATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
Sparks burst between the man’s eyes. The Detonate did nothing. It was as if it hit an invisible wall right above his skin.
“I know you, don’t I?” The red-eyed man asked, tilting his head at Arcen.
Morgav! Fuck!
