The chamber he escaped into was different from the ones he passed through when he reached the queen's chamber.
Red veins lay all over the floor, faint lights pulsing through them at regular intervals in all directions. He tripped over a mess of them only a few steps into this chamber. These veins looked like some part of a larger plant, or, God forbid, a creature.
This could be something like that queen with thousands of tails.
His situation was dire than he realized. He was four hundred floors up with nothing to protect himself with. This floor made Norm nervous from the get go and here he was running around here like an idiot.
He used Reveal on a red vein.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SPECIES ╰︶
????
JARTERRA STRINGS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SENTIENCE ╰︶
????
12%
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DOMAINS ╰︶
????
STRING PRISON
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ AURA ╰︶
????
734,128
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
That’s a fucking plant with seven hundred thousand Aura.
He didn’t really need to think too hard about how it got so much Aura. It was probably like that pit flower he was dropped into—if not worse than that.
Arcen limped across the messy red veins towards the center of the chamber, tripping now and then as he went. His Radiate wasn’t enough to show him anything beyond two feet. He relied on the ambient red light darting through the veins on the floor instead.
He had to find the exit from this chamber as soon as possible. He wasn’t far away enough from those lunatics. Morgav could easily find him here.
Maybe I can listen like Karla?
He brushed some veins aside and placed his ear to the rocky floor. He heard more sounds than he knew what to do with. Distant steps, rocks clattering, water flowing, screams, shouts and whispers. He couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Completely lost in these sounds, he thought about how stuck he really was. Things were way worse than before. He didn’t know his way back to the capillary shaft. Even if he knew it, he didn’t have the air bubble thing that Isadora used to travel through it. He had absolutely zero chance of making it down four hundred floors on his own.
I’ve got to find someone to help me!
That in itself was just as hopeless as other options. He was more afraid of other climbers than he was of creatures.
He had to decide where to go. He preferred to make this decision based on sounds that he could hear rather than running around like a headless chicken. At the very least, it made him feel like he was doing something right.
Telling himself that he made the right choice, he started walking towards the sound of water.
He already knew the outer rim was all barren chambers. That would likely mean water was one of the resources that were scarce towards the edges of the floor. A large stream of water would be useful to come across, assuming the stalk is where all the water is coming from. Walking in the same direction as the water would eventually take him towards the barren edge of the floor. Hiding in a chamber ash and dust would be significantly better than ending up in one with twenty different things that wanted to eat him.
Keeping an eye out for the water, he passed by a dry carcass of a dead horse-like creature tangled in a mess of red veins on the floor. It had been strangled to death, either by itself or by the roots—he couldn’t tell which. He could easily picture himself ending up in the exact same position.
Oh, fuck no. I’m out of this place!
Quickening his pace, he turned away from the carcass as the red veins on the floor only seemed to get more numerous and fatter in the direction he was facing. He made sure to avoid stepping on them from there on.
Despite his best efforts to avoid big veins, they seemed to be thickening no matter which direction that he walked in. The new direction that he picked didn’t have any carcasses on it. At one point he had to make up his mind and keep moving, just to see where this would take him.
He hoped to find the chamber wall as soon as possible, walking with his head down, making sure to watch where he stepped.
Suddenly, he bumped into a soft surface when the veins were getting as thick as a thigh. The surface that he bumped into had the texture of a kiwi fruit. He raised his head and gasped when he saw what it was. It was indeed exactly like kiwi fruit, if one was scaled up to the size of a house.
It was ‘breathing’ from a series of holes at the bottom.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
REVEAL
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
He remained frozen, afraid to make a single sound or movement that could trigger whatever this breathing fruit was.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ACTIVATION SUCCESS ╰︶
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ NAME ╰︶
????
JARTERA BULB
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SPECIES ╰︶
????
JARTERA
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SENTIENCE ╰︶
????
35%
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ AURA ╰︶
????
126,765
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
He had managed to put himself right next to exactly what he wanted to avoid in this chamber. In addition to hot breath tickling his ankles, it smelled rancid as if something had died inside it. The fake confidence that he used to get this far evaporated right then and there.
He turned around slowly and started running, something heaving behind him as he did.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RADIATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
The light was barely enough to avoid the large clumps of red string on the floor. He kept running in the direction that he picked, hoping to see the chamber wall as soon as possible.
The heaving mass behind him was rolling on the ground, sending vibrations up his feet. Hot, rancid air swept around him in great waves.
It was fast. Much faster than what he thought it would, or should be.
It was only tens of meters away.
Arcen kept running, using Radiate for lighting where he needed it. The fourth Radiate revealed something that made his skin crawl.
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There’s more of these fucking things?!
He was staring at three of them arrayed before him, soon to be disturbed awake by the rumbling giant chasing after him. He had absolutely no way of winning against four of them.
He turned around, focusing on the ground before him.
╭ ╰︶?? BRAHMARA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
WORM PIT
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
A huge circle of the rocky ground collapsed right away, cratering towards the pit of a thousand worms. He only caught a glimpse of it as his targeting vision faded.
I have to be bait!
The rolling Jartera bulb came into view, silhouetted against the faint light from a Radiate he used elsewhere. It had red strings all around it, wrapped like wool around a tennis ball. Arcen stayed in place, ready to run in any direction after it rolled itself into the worm pit.
It slotted right in.
He heard the crunch on the ground as it tried to break momentum, but it slid off the edge and sank a quarter of itself into the pit.
The Jartera bulb started screaming from its breathing holes as the voracious worms carved pieces out of it. Green mist exploded out of some of its holes. It sank lower into the pit every second, getting ripped apart at the bottom.
The screams from the bulb filled the air. Arcen had already realized what that meant, this bulb had alerted all other bulbs in the vicinity.
I fucked up!
Red veins pulsated all around him, carrying a wave of energy outwards. Rumbling sounds came from all directions, more violent and rapid than ever before. The ground started rumbling beneath his feet.
He started running again, continuing in the same direction. He was surrounded by Jartera bulbs closing in from every direction, but there was a chance to slip between them if he was fast enough.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RADIATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
The bulbs weren’t rolling anymore.
They were jumping.
Two of them launched off the ground, dragging hundreds of strings under them. They bounced right off, moving closer to him with each bounce. It was as if they knew exactly where he was.
He couldn’t avoid the twirling red strings on the ground in his panicked escape. They rippled and swirled around his feet every split second his toes touched the ground. If he stopped running now, they would trap him and hold him in place for these jumping giants to pounce on him.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RADIATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
He saw at least six jumping bulbs straight ahead. There was a pattern to their movements. They also seemed to move at the same pace towards him, encircling him from all directions instead of heading straight towards him. For some plant creature with thirty five percent sentience, these things were collaborating on his demise way better than he thought they would be capable of.
Arcen dashed past the first one as it launched itself off the ground, leaving a rancid green cloud of mist behind. His eyes teared up as soon as he ran into the thick green mist. It was the worst thing that he’d ever smelled. It felt like needles poking into the depths of his nostrils.
Not doing that again!
He avoided the second bulb as it rammed onto the ground only a few feet away from him. He hopped around and rolled away as the third jumped directly above him.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
WORM PIT
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
He was targeting the ground behind him, hoping to lay it as a trap for one of them.
He’d missed the fourth one. It came from the left and landed in a puff of suffocating thick green mist. Arcen gagged, unable to even stand. His head felt lighter. The worm pit activated about two feet away from him.
Oh fuck! Oh fuck!
The ground collapsed beneath his feet, cratering towards the worms below.
He fell screaming into his own Worm Pit.
A worm stabbed straight into his ribs, burrowing deep into his lungs, dragging him around like a rag. Other worms coiled around his limbs, drilling their way through his flesh. Massive waves of pain rippled through his body, but he went numb when one worm burrowed into the right side of his head, and another one ripped into his spine.
The fourth Jartera bulb crashed into the pit, slamming him and the worms to a pulp beneath its massive weight. He saw red and white before everything went dark.
Arcen opened his eyes. He was pinned under a massive blanket of red strings. He felt the surroundings with his hands, trying to remember how he got here. He knew it without having to think too far. He’d died in his own Worm Pit before a jumping giant bulb flattened him like a pancake.
╭ ╰︶?? ORISRYN ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
YOU HAVE BEEN REVIVED
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
I’m back? It happened again!
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ATTRIBUTE INCREASED ╰︶
????
DEATH +1
[12]
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
He couldn’t move under the weight of the red string blanket. He frantically looked for a gap in the weave to squeeze out of. He found it on his right. Crawling out, he noticed he was still in the same crater that he created. It was full of strings now.
He’d definitely died, and come back alive yet again. There was no explanation of it.
This has to be a dream?
He hoped against hope that it was. He wanted to wake up in his bed, and he wanted go to work every day. This fever dream of a tower couldn’t and shouldn’t ever be real. There couldn’t be little girls with death-reversing powers. There couldn’t be towers that bring dead back to life. He would’ve heard about it in the news. It would’ve changed the world as he knew it.
He climbed out of the pit, feeling like he was walking on clouds. None of this could be real. He just had to go through with this experience. Maybe he was still on the ground floor plugged into the predictive inference machine. Maybe his headset bugged out.
Arcen clenched his fist and punched himself hard on the gut. That woke up him up.
Snapping back to the present, he noticed the chamber was as calm as before he used the first Worm Pit. Jartera bulbs had calmed down again.
This time, he decided to take things slowly. He tiptoed in the gaps between the strings, making absolutely sure to not touch any of them.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
RADIATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
There was a Jartera Bulb at the edge of the crater, likely the same one that flattened him to death. It was bleeding a viscous yellow liquid from deep gashes where the worms had ripped into it. Arcen quietly circled around, and kept walking.
He had escaped from the Nostrum group with no idea how to survive on his own. While escaping itself felt good, he had just died to the one contract that he used. There was a lot that he needed know to survive this tower. It was hard enough in the twenties below.
Now he had to do that in four hundreds with far more dangerous chambers.
He didn’t have the right tools yet. Detonate wouldn’t have worked against these jumping giants. None of his Skills were powerful enough to survive this floor, just like his Restore wasn’t as powerful as Gareth’s.
His survival was all about contracts now.
I need more contracts. I don’t know where to get them though.
He walked for hours, thinking in these same circles, trying to come up with a solid plan where there could never be one. Eventually, he found the chamber wall, and then after a while, the luminous veil out of the chamber.
He sprinted into it, away from the chamber with red strings.
He ducked beneath a grey root and his bare feet crunched on brittle bones. The chamber that he entered into felt oddly familiar.
Fuck, I’m back here again!
He had somehow returned to the chamber that he escaped from before the red string chamber. Panicking, he activated Fabricate Weakness again.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯CONTRACT╰︶
????
FABRICATE WEAKNESS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE︶╯
He didn’t want to stand out in the darkness with his eight million Aura for all to see.
He dropped to his knees and started listening to the floor.
It was eerily quiet, only the background noise that he could hear in any other chamber. There was a battle being fought here when he left, Morgav fighting Tymon. There were no traces of them now.
Where did they go?
He kept himself low, sneaking around like he learned from Gareth. The slate rock and ashen roots provided him enough cover to hide in the shadows. He reached the center of the chamber in a few minutes.
He didn’t dare use a light. Tymon or Morgav could still be here somewhere, and he’ll just be putting up a beacon for them to see.
That shark asshole doesn’t have a reason to hide, though.
Tymon was three times as powerful as the Queen. He’d have no reason to hide from someone like Morgav. If Tymon was here, the chamber would’ve been much louder. There would be spatial distortions. That only left the second worst option—Morgav.
If the fight was over, Morgav could be injured or, better yet, dead.
Arcen moved in the dark towards the white bone blade that the Meronolith Queen had been pierced with. Arcen quietly used one Radiate, placing it in a crevice under the dead queen so the light won’t leak or be visible from far corners of the chamber. He saw her rotting dead face in the faint blue light.
Tymon had fought with her for fun. That was entirely the wrong reason to fight any creature of this caliber. He could imagine Gareth having a valid reason, although he wouldn’t have dared to even try.
There had to be something valuable about this queen creature that was just like the blue stuff that Gareth harvested from those pig rabbits.
What happens to contracts when you die?
Gareth had given a subcontract to Arcen, but trading contracts like that wouldn’t work with dead things. It had to be initiated by someone else. He tried to remember how else he got contracts besides that trading method.
He remembered when he was fighting against the oily girl as King, he had a whole list of contracts. They were all from the people that he swallowed. He had no way of figuring out the exact mechanics behind it.
Maybe I have to eat people to make that work.
But he didn’t have the King anymore.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
REVEAL
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
He used reveal on the queen’s rotting corpse.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ACTIVATION FAILURE ╰︶
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ INFORMATION ╰︶
????
TARGET [MERONOLITH QUEEN]
IS DECEASED
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶SEARCH ︶╯
So Reveal doesn’t work on dead things.
He focused on the word ‘Search’, interested in at least knowing how this type of creature could steal other’s contracts the way King did.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ NAME ╰︶
????
MERONOLITH QUEEN
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SPECIES ╰︶
????
MERONOLITH
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SENTIENCE ╰︶
????
76%
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ TRAITS ╰︶
????
COMMAND
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DOMAINS ╰︶
????
RED COURT
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
This was all new information. He focused on the word ‘Command’, trying to see whether this was something that he could take.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ACCQUISITION FAILURE ╰︶
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONNECTION ╰︶
????
NO CONNECTION
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ INFORMATION ╰︶
????
TRAIT [COMMAND]
IS NOT TRANSFERABLE
??
YOU HAVE NO CONNECTION
WITH THIS TARGET
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
Red Court gave him a similar answer when he tried. It made sense. These were the most powerful capabilities that this queen possessed. The ‘connection’ seemed to refer to the fact that Arcen had never met this creature in person. Rootsong had made it impossible to take things from strangers.
His effort, however, was not in vain. He’d just discovered a new mechanic in the towers. He could rummage through the belongings of a dead thing, and if that ‘acquisition’ word meant anything, there was a mechanism to loot things from the dead.
He also noticed that the Meronolith Queen had no contracts or skills. She only had traits and domains. The sentience score of seventy-six was just as unexpected. It was a living being that could talk and strategize just like humans. Either this sentience scale went beyond humans, or humans received special treatment from the towers, gaining access to skills and contracts.
He had to use Reveal on an actual human with contracts to make sense of this. Luckily, he knew where to look for them.
Karla and Leyland had to be here in this chamber, thoroughly dead.
Maybe I can steal contracts this way?
Gareth had told him the only way to transfer Aura is with Gold. There had to be something similar for contracts. Considering he got all those contracts from the people he swallowed as the King, Gold seemed to be the way to transfer contracts as well.
He couldn’t know if it would even work. He could just as well be wrong, and contracts could automatically transfer over to the one that killed them—Tymon.
The tower wasn’t explaining anything to him. Regardless, for the first time in a great while, he had a clear plan on what to do.
I just have to steal from the dead.
