“That was gross,” I muttered, dismissing the field around my body, glad as all the blood, guts and acid just dropped to the ground.

  The acid sizzled, making new holes. I was glad to find out that all the holes in the ground were just aesthetics. Or maybe they had a purpose and we just didn’t find out because I’d never technically touched any of them until the boss was dead. In the future Infinite Tower write-up I was going to be doing, I’d make sure to mention that to warn people. Let someone else experiment to see if they did anything.

  “I’m glad I’m all the way over here,” Sunie said, leaning against the rounded wall of the tunnel.

  Again, I thought about giving him the bird. I’d really need to teach him and make sure it wasn’t super-offensive or something in his culture. There were moments where you just had to give your friend the one-finger salute.

  Notifications flashed across my vision as my body stopped its shaking. I was wiped and that headache was pounding now.

  YOU HAVE SLAIN IRONBACK CRAWLER

  YOU HAVE GAINED +50 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +50 MULTIVERSAL CREDITS

  YOU HAVE COMPLETED AN OBJECTIVE OF THE CRAWLER’S WELL DUNGEON.

  DESTROY THE IRONBACK CRAWLER 1/1

  YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE CRAWLER’S WELL DUNGEON.

  YOU HAVE GAINED +5,000 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +5,000 MULTIVERSAL CREDITS

  YOU COMPLETED THE CRAWLER’S WELL DUNGEON WITH 01:35:13 LEFT. YOU HAVE PLACED AS THE 96TH BEST TIME AT RUNNING THE CRAWLER’S WELL DUNGEON.

  YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE CRAWLER’S WELL DUNGEON WITH A SMALLER PARTY.

  YOU HAVE GAINED +9,500 TUTORIAL POINTS AND +9,500 MULTIVERSAL CREDITS

  YOU HAVE GAINED +4 IRONBACK PLATES, +15 CRAWLER’S TEETH, +2 ACID GLANDS

  YOU HAVE GAINED +1 DESTRUCTION ESSENCE

  YOU HAVE GAINED +1 LEVEL-UP

  “You can have the Level-Up,” Sunie said. “You basically killed that thing on your own.”

  “Naw,” I said, tossing the glowing gen to him. He caught it easily. “You can have it. I don’t want to level up yet. I need to get my last Support Essence up as high as I can before I reach the Tower’s First Floor cap.”

  I threw the rest of the stuff in my inventory. We’d completed the other Objectives of the Dungeon and made out with some good Tutorial Points and Multiversal Credits. The Acid Glands were cool, but it was only one a piece. Not that great a haul. We had a ton of Crawler’s Teeth though.

  The body disappeared as I walked back toward Sunie.

  “Hold on,” he said, looking at me confused. “What do you mean your last Support Essence?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve been holding off on getting that last slot filled for a long time. Just never knew what would go with my Blitzstriker Path. When we got the Destruction Essences, I thought about going with that. I mean, how cool would it have been to just have blown up that Crawler instead of stopping it? But I was also thinking Speed or Sound. I think I’ve ruled out Speed but..”

  “Wait,” Sunie said, holding up a hand to stop my rambling. “You only have Five Essences?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not seeing what the big deal was.

  “This whole time you only had five?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nick,” Sunie said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I already thought you were a monster but not even having a sixth Essence? I can’t imagine how strong you’ll be.”

  I shrugged again.

  “I thought the two of us taking out Dungeons meant for more people, just the two of us, each with six Essences, was insane. But to find out you’ve been underpowered this whole time?”

  I shrugged.

  Sunie started laughing. He reached out, clapping me on the shoulder.

  “Nick, my friend, we are going to have so much fun.”

  I laughed.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  ***

  We walked out of another hole in the ground about fifty feet from the wheel. This was a sloping tunnel and not anything we had to climb up or down. The entrance had been in the boss’ cavern. I was glad to find it. I’d not been looking forward to walking through the whole Dungeon and then somehow climbing up the pillars and then up the rope.

  We walked over to the well, retrieving said rope. Sunie coiled it up and threw it back into his inventory.

  “I wonder if I can trade Fred the Destruction Essences for a bunch of Sounds,” I mused, as we followed Sunie’s compass back to the Biome’s entrance. It was getting late and we figured we’d call it a day. There was a lot of loot to drop off. “What do you think the exchange rate would be?”

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  “Sound is relatively common,” Sunie said. “Maybe not on Earth, but on other planets. There are a lot of sound-based creatures on Cryim. Destruction is far more rare.”

  “There’s not many Sound on Earth,” I said.

  “You might have better luck trading the Destruction to someone else then.”

  “Yeah, but I like Fred’s guy that has the Essence. He’s a decent fellow and I want to help support Earth.”

  “Isn’t this Fred the head of a rival Clan?”

  “Technically, but we don’t really consider ourselves rivals,” I said with a shrug. “At least not yet.”

  “Not yet,” Sunie repeated, pointedly.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “Probably not best to outfit someone that could potentially fight someday,” I finished with a sigh. “I’ll have Fields do some digging around and see what he could get for them. If nothing of value, then I’ll trade them to Fred.”

  We walked for a ways in silence, eyes searching the tall grass for signs of any movement from potential ambush predators. The Biome’s sun was low against the horizon. Maybe we’d hunt some of the nocturnal critters before calling it a night.

  “Have you ever thought about just taking over the entire planet?” Sunie asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Not something I want to do.”

  “You may not have a choice.”

  “I’ve thought of that too,” I sighed. “I never wanted to lead, it just kind of happened. The first settlement I came across, it was only a dozen people or so, and they were ragged. Barely surviving. I saved them from a bunch of rampaging monsters.” I stopped and chuckled wryly. “I don’t even remember what the monsters were. But after that, because of how strong I was, they wanted me to stay and protect them. I had no problem doing that. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, since this damn System crashed down on us, just protect people. But over time it evolved to where I just became the leader. I delegated back then, just like I do now. I know my own weaknesses. I’m not a great leader, but I’m a great protector.”

  We stopped, seeing some stalks of grass shifting. Nothing seemed to be stalking toward us, the movements heading in the other direction. We kept walking. Wasn’t worth our time to hunt whatever it was down. Plenty of stuff would come to us.

  “Over time that little settlement grew. More people joined up. I had to fight off some marauders, some bandits and lots of others that wanted to take what we were building. Even had to fight, and kill, someone from within that thought they deserved to be in charge.” I shook my head, remembering Harold Wilson. “He might have actually been better than me, seemed more like Fred. Decent enough but just got a little power hungry. I didn’t want to kill him but he’d given me no choice.” I sighed, pushing that memory down deep where it belonged. “I actually tried to hand off the reins of leadership a couple of times, but it always just came back to me. I was the strongest and so the System kept me in charge.”

  “The Celestial Challenge System does love its strong Adventurers,” Sunie said.

  “That it does,” I said and sighed as a group of Bounders rushed out of the grass.

  The murder bunnies charged at us, a couple jumping into the air. Neither of us panicked or freaked out. They were just Bounders. I launched a couple of Force Lances, Sunie sent some ice spikes and blanketed the ground in his slowing frost. Each of our shots took out four of the things, dropping the bodies to the ground. The rest were slowed, their large rear feet sliding on the ice spreading out around the grass. I walked over, picked one up by the ears and held it at arm’s length. The legs tried kicking at me.

  Bounders were small, but their feet did pack a punch.

  I snapped my arm, hearing the bone breaking in the creature’s neck. I threw it at a couple of the others, knocking them down, and then just started throwing force lances. Sunie launched a barrage of iceballs, hitting the group of them.

  In a couple minutes, we’d wiped out the bunch, getting some Bounder legs and fur for our efforts. Only a couple of antlers, though. And some Credits and Points, which was always great.

  “We still need to hunt the Queen Bounder,” I said, standing up after looting the last one.

  “Should we stay up top tomorrow and do some of the permits?” Sunie asked, as we starting walking back toward the entrance.

  “Yeah, those are probably going to take us the longest to finish.”

  “And we need to stay overnight.”

  “Let’s plan on that in a couple days. Hunt some permits tomorrow, take a day so we can take care of stuff outside the Tower, and then do an overnight?”

  “That works for me.”

  It was about an hour later that we reached the Biome entrance. Stepping through the portal we entered the Hub. Same metal walls, portals aligned along both sides, obelisk in the middle and the viewing windows above the portals to the Nexus. I looked up at the windows, waving at whoever was watching.

  “Those typically are filled with the older Factions in the Nexus. They like to sit up there, gossip, do whatever deals they need to handle, and keep an eye on the rising stars.” Sunie said, glancing up but not waving. “That’s you by the way.”

  “Me what?”

  “A rising star,” he said, chuckling. “Everyone has their eye on you.”

  The hub was crowded. I saw some more of the horsetaur people, like minotaurs but with horse’s heads. A whole party of them. There were more of the horned and shades of purple skinned humanoids. I’d seen them around and everytime they were looking at me. Lizardman like T’Slask, the cat people. Anura, who everyone ignored but stepped out of the way when the frogmen walked by.

  It was obvious no one liked them, but no one wanted to get on their bad side either.

  Elves, humans not from Earth.

  Everyone mostly kept to their own kind. There weren’t any mixed parties that I could see.

  “How common are mixed Faction parties?”

  “Not very,” Sunie said. “To be honest, I was surprised when Elder Mashio agreed with Jeriyan’s proposal to team one of us up with you.”

  “I got the feeling that the woman, Gracia, I think her name was, she didn’t seem too happy with the idea.”

  Sunie laughed.

  “Neither she or Yoric were, but Yoric would have done it without complaint as it was his duty. Gracia would have done it, but it would have been a nightmare for you.”

  “I had that feeling.”

  “I’m just glad you picked me,” Sunie said, clapping me on the back. “To be honest, I never really fit into any of the Sunrise Formation groups.”

  “I’m glad I picked you too,” I said.

  We stopped at the obelisk and turned in the quests, updating our statuses.