“I… hate… everything,” Jasmine mumbles between pained groans. “If I weren’t so goddamned tired, I think I’d smack you for talking me into this mess, Laney.”

“Then it’s a good thing you are that tired,” Alana responds. “Because I seem to remember how eager you were to come to the Tower last night. What was it that you said? You were going to kick ass, take names, and that you weren’t sure about the second of those?”

Jasmine again flips the bird, though it’s more in the playful sense than anything aggressively hostile. No longer being in mortal danger has a way of brightening even the darkest of moods. And seeing the final System notifications trickling in makes for a sight for very sore eyes indeed.

[Your party has scrapped 1,331 Golden Constructs (Levels ranging from 34 to 38). You have gained a boosted 324,500 Experience.]

[You have gained enough Experience to reach Level 46 (From 44). [Strength] +2, [Speed] +2, [Vitality] +2, [Mind] +2. Please assign free stat points (Remaining: 8).]

I assign four points to [Mind], then four points to [Strength]. As useful as more [Vitality] is, right now, I’m not sure I need all that much more. Between Chloe’s [Saintess’s Cloister] and [Saintess’s Blessing] both doubled in efficacy by [Angelic Bond], my survivability is far beyond what the average fighter in the mid 40’s ought to be. What I need is more offensive capabilities, to make sure I can continue to blast through hordes like this one quickly enough to not fall into a war of attrition. A war of attrition that I can still very easily fail; even the tyranny of stats will give way to the tyranny of numbers in the extremes.

[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x 2 + Current Level + Rand[1,3] = (235, 237)]

[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0,2] = (185, 186)]

[Level: 46; Experience: 1,594,100; To Next: 35,940]

[Current Stats: [Health]: 5,016 / 6,477; [Ether]: 859 / 4,719]

[Current Stats: [Strength]: 113 (Base: 62); [Speed]: 100 (Base: 55); [Vitality]: 173 (Base: 95); [Mind]: 255 (Base: 140)]

[Your [Glyphcasting (Rank XXI)] has upgraded to [Glyphcasting (Rank XXII)].]

[Your [Intermediate Glyph Manifestation (Rank III) has upgraded to [Intermediate Glyph Manifestation (Rank IV)].]

[Your [Ether Bullet Barrage (Rank XII)] has upgraded to [Ether Bullet Barrage (Rank XIII)].]

[You are subject to [Exhaustion (Rank I)]. All stats operate at 90% efficiency until recovered. Strenuous activity will deal commensurate damage to [Health] and [Ether]. (Duration: 00:29:14)]

Half an hour of fatigue after that nasty fight aside, holy shit. Those are the only two words that come to mind when I look at my current combat parameters. If I’d encountered myself two months ago, I think I might have soiled myself. Hell, if I’d seen myself three weeks ago, just before we started exploring this twisted space, my reaction wouldn’t be any different. This is… a lot of power. Power enough to lord over a city, maybe even a small country.

In ordinary times, it would be a power too great to entrust to a single person, no matter how virtuous or well-guided they might be. In these current times, such power is necessary. Both to ward off others with similar power whose intentions might be less noble, and also to fight against the hordes of monsters the System has sent and will undoubtedly continue to send over the coming weeks and months and years. Thankfully, a substantial chunk of this power is only thanks to Chloe. That, right there, is an enormous failsafe of its own, especially because Chloe is one of the few people I believe absolutely will not be corrupted by the power she possesses.

We make our way back to the main room of the floor. The throne room is up ahead, with a glittering crystalline staircase waiting to lead us up to the eighteenth floor. But right now, the steps themselves are the far greater sight. I’m not the only one exhausted after that brutal battle, and a chance to sit down and rest for a few minutes and just… celebrate the fact that we’re all alive and none of us have any injuries beyond Chloe’s admittedly prodigious ability to heal.

“Okay, Laney, I gotta apologize,” Jasmine says after about five minutes. “The levels I gained were totally worth.”

“You gained two levels as well, Jazz?”

“Oh, Alana really does call her Jazz,” I silently remark to Chloe.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable nickname. I wouldn’t be surprised if others do as well.”

“I can call you Clo if you want, but I think Clo-Clo is a bit much.”

“I think it’d be better to just stick to Chloe, then.” She gives me a glare, but her mood is playful, not upset in the slightest.

“No, Laney. I didn’t gain two levels for that. I got three.”

“Damn!”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m still the lowest level of the four of us, being only at 37 now.”

“41,” Alana says.

“43,” Chloe says.

Everyone stares at me. I demur for a moment before realizing I’m not getting out of this so easily. “I just got to level 46 on that fight, and I’m most of the way to 47.”

“Experience boosts?” Alana asks. “I think Lindsey has a Skill that does something like that.”

“Yeah, I have something along those lines.” I don’t want to outright lie and say that it’s a ‘trait’ and not a ‘Skill’— not that I exactly know the difference between the two even now. But I don’t mind simply not clarifying and letting people draw the wrong conclusions. “It’s less valuable than it looks thanks to Experience scaling; Chloe and I have been in all the same fights together, and she’s always kept to within two to three levels of me.”

“Why is that?” Jasmine asks.

“Who can say for sure? I think it’s because the System wants us to keep exploring these Towers and dungeons and get stronger, and Experience scaling is its way of pushing us forward, instead of just reaching max level by fighting the weakest enemies for three hundred years.”

“Three hundred years?” Alana asks. “Is there an immortality Skill?”

I shrug. “Probably at some level? Even if there isn’t, a high [Vitality] corresponds with a longer lifespan.”

“Huh,” Jasmine says. “That so?”

“I don’t have positive proof to that effect, but I believe it to be true.”

“So, it’s just a guess,” Jasmine responds. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I decide not to press the issue any further; Madison might have been nearly a hundred and sixty years old. But my memories are just hearsay, and I’m not going to bring them up in front of a woman I’ve seen all of three times for a few hours in total. At some later point, perhaps. For now, I’m content to let the idea seep in their minds.

----------------------------------------

We stay like that for an hour, idly chatting and making some plans and even taking a betting pool for what awaits us on the eighteenth floor. Alana’s money is on something based on the Golden Age of Piracy, or at least its common cultural interpretations. Chloe bet a twenty on some sort of zombie apocalypse, which I think is a pretty good guess. It would be thematically appropriate, and considering she is a shrewd user of the Light element, probably one of the easier encounters we could face.

Jasmine, on the other hand, is thinking haunted house or horror movie themed, something subtly different from Chloe’s guess, but still in the broad general theme of the undead. And me, I’m thinking we’re due for some sort of steampunk setting. No rhyme or reason behind my guess. Just… seems in vogue right about now.

As we banter about, taking a small snack and hydrating ourselves a bit more, I prepare an [Ether Canister] for myself. But I hesitate right as I’m about to open it. Having injured myself using a canister a couple of weeks back, I’m worried that I’ll hurt myself again if I use my [Ether Manipulation] to try to increase the efficacy beyond its baseline. After a few moments of weighting the options, I decide that if I don’t pull too hard and force my limits, I probably won’t damage my [Ether] channels too badly.

My decision to balance risk and reward pays off; I’m able to double the base absorption to just over 400, and I don’t feel the slightest bit of strain as I do some basic [Ether] manipulation exercises afterwards. I’ve now got a bit over 2,500 [Ether]. Not ideal, but enough for a couple large spells on the next floor, should push come to shove.

“We ready to move out?” Alana asks.

It’s been nearly ninety minutes on this floor already. And while I don’t know exactly how long we have on any given floor before the Warden shows up, I would definitely like to avoid meeting it if at all possible. Especially important on this floor, considering how close the entrance is to the exit.

With that in mind, and some granola in our bellies, the four of us make our way up to the next floor. As I sort of expected— all four of us were wrong about our guesses, and none of us were particularly close. Maybe by some stretch of the imagination, I could be said to be the closest, but not nearly close enough to have won the bet.

A fierce wind blows, carrying with it dust and sand. Not particularly coarse or rough, actually— it’s a very fine, smooth grain— which only makes it all the more irritating and conducive to getting everywhere, from inside of my shoes to inside my armor and stuck to my hair and scalp and, well, everywhere else.

“I hope this sandstorm stops soon,” Jasmine says. “I already did a full exfoliation last night and–” She starts coughing and spitting, thankfully not on any of us.

“Can you do something about the gusts?” Alana asks, her eyes narrowed and her hand covering her face and nose like a makeshift mask.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

I probably could form some sort of wind barrier, maybe solidify the air in a bubble around us, but if I do that, chances are that we’ll eventually suffocate from within the hermetic seal. Even if that problem could be solved, I’m also still only just above half my maximum [Ether] and need to conserve it for whatever fight might await us.

Thanks to Chloe’s wellspring of good luck, the sandstorm starts to abate only a few seconds later. Not enough for me to easily see through with my eyes right away, but enough that I’m no longer on the verge of tears and hacking up a lung just trying to breathe. A couple more minutes pass, and the gusts die down enough for us to see our surroundings. A desert, though one marked by fewer endless dunes and far more desert vegetation, including no small number of tumbleweeds. Cacti dot the landscape every so often, though none are the famous saguaros which are often stereotyped with the biome.

And, most oddly, there’s something resembling a town out in the distance. An old shantytown, maybe fifty to sixty buildings, mostly rust-colored, with a few white and off-white ones scattered about. With no other leads on where to go, Alana leads the way, while I again take the rear, keeping an eye out for any trouble that might try to chase behind us.

No trouble approaches, and within ten minutes, we’re in the town. My jaw nearly drops at what I see. People. Actual, honest-to-goodness people. Probably not actual people— these, like everything else in the Tower, are just constructs of Ether given human form. But they seem intelligent, going about their way as people would.

A man about my age, or maybe a year or two older, greets us. He’s got short, blond hair and is of an average build, though his arms and legs show the definition of someone who’s done manual labor for quite a while.

“Hello there, and welcome to Auretun,” he says. “Or at least, that’s what I’d like to say.”

“Is something wrong?” Alana asks.

He lowers his head. “I’m afraid so. Though, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about it out here.”

He gestures to a pair of young children, each six or seven if I had to guess, and then eyes toward a large building marked with the word ‘Saloon’ on the obverse. As expected, we’re in some mining town modeled after the Wild West.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “First drink’s on me. I’ll explain the situation, and then you ladies can decide whether you want to be sticking around or heading out.”