“Look, this doesn’t really change anything,” Sorin said. “Whatever my personal problems are, we’ve still got a gang of people who are all stronger than us out for blood. The only solution is to get stronger or run to someone who can protect us. Unfortunately, that person doesn’t exist, so we’re back to option A.”
“Uh, it changes a lot,” Nemari objected. “We’re following your lead, and you just dropped yet another fire storm on us. I need to be able to trust your judgment if you’re going to be in charge of this team, and normally, I don’t let people who claim to have had the kind of experiences you’ve had tell me what to do.”
Sorin couldn’t argue with that. He sounded crazy. He knew he did. He wouldn’t have trusted his life to the snap decisions a team leader needed to make if they sounded like he did. Unfortunately, while he wasn’t crazy, he wasn’t sure what to do to convince them of that fact. Nor did he know if he wanted to.
Now that I know I can push a rank up without killing a floor guardian, I don’t really need a team. The arm is a handicap, but I can grind out the anima on safe enemies over the next few weeks and fix it myself. Then I just need a few more soulprints to round out my base kit for the lower floors. I can start working on environmental defense after that.
It was sheer arrogance. That plan had every chance of getting him killed. Blind Sense had nowhere near the range he needed to be able to thoroughly scout out every encounter before engaging the enemy. He was completely missing any sort of stealth soulprint to avoid fights he couldn’t win or an escape ability to get him out of any battle that turned against him. Even Minor Regeneration wasn’t a true healing soulprint.
If he’d had access to the floor’s trade hub and didn’t have to worry about hostile climbers, he could have risked it. Careful research, going into well-known and frequently-traveled areas only, and a willingness to take things slow would have helped. He could even have gone back down to Floor 1. That was what a lot of climbers did, after all. They expanded their soulspace, then went down a few floors to grind out anima where it was relatively safe for them. It took longer, but there were a lot less fatalities.
None of that bore any resemblance to his reality, however. In the red tower, he was a fugitive of sorts, and his only allies were starting to doubt his grasp on sanity. And they needed to stick together if they were going to have a chance at surviving.
“I don’t know what I could possibly say or do to prove to you that I’m not an unhinged lunatic,” he said. “I haven’t lied to you about being a higher rank who got knocked back down to rank 0. I understand why you don’t believe it, but if my all-around ability to handle myself in a fight and wield anima isn’t good enough, I can’t offer up anything else.
“And, honestly, I’m done with this conversation. Every time something weird happens, it gets dragged up again. I thought we settled this last time. You’re in or you’re out. You all said you were in. Well, be in then.”
Nemari’s mouth flopped open and closed a few times, then she let out a frustrated growl. “Fine. Fine! You’re right. As long as we’ve still got the Black Hellions on our asses, we’re in it together.”
Sorin doubted this would be the end of it, but he was sick enough that, right now, he was willing to take his chances climbing solo if it meant not having to rehash this conversation again. Maybe if no more crazy shit happens, we might go two days without the team threatening to splinter. That’d be a nice change of pace.
“We were planning a few more days in the Witch Wood, but I think we can make up for it in the foothills northeast of here,” Sorin said. “We’ve also got a resupply coming up tomorrow. I want to take out the floor guardian in the next four days, which should be possible as long as nothing delays us too much.”
“Uh, I think Od and I are both going to need a few more days to cap everything we’ve got, not to mention we’ve still got some empty space for new soulprints,” Rue said.
“With any luck, Bradford is going to come through for us big time.”
If he was able to procure even half of what Sorin had listed out, they’d all have enough options to round out their kits for Floor 2 and get a strong start on Floor 3. That wasn’t likely to happen, not in the least because there was no way Bradford had gotten enough danirs from selling their loot to pay for it all.
Sorin led them out of the Witch Wood and onto open plains that stretched about thirty miles or so before running up against a ring of mountains. They were rather small and unimpressive compared to some of the ranges he’d seen on higher floors, but his team didn’t have that perspective. They were suitably impressed by the two-mile-tall piles of stone looming over the edge of the plains.
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It was a fast march crossing the plains, and it was considerably easier than the Witch Wood had been. Monsters still attacked, of course. Rue and Sorin saw them coming every time, and even the other half of the team often spotted them just because the plains were relatively flat and there wasn’t much cover. Nemari ended up claiming the bulk of the anima from those kills simply by virtue of being their primary ranged offense.
They didn’t make it across the plains that night, which was annoying to Sorin since he couldn’t just carve the sign to use Liminal Gateway into the dirt. It had to be something more solid and stable. A random rock wasn’t good enough, but a tree or a stone ledge was. He wasn’t sure how exactly the magic decided whether the placement was acceptable, but he was leaning toward ‘tower permanence’ as the explanation.
Basically, anything that was liable to be moved around wasn’t viable. Things that could theoretically be moved but never were seemed to be fine, though, and of course the link vanished from the path if the sign was damaged or removed in some way.
That did mean it was difficult to find a spot to carve the damn thing in the middle of the plains, but they did eventually locate a low rock shelf jutting out of the ground. It was only four feet tall, and it required Sorin to scrape a thin layer of top soil off it to reach a carving surface, but it worked. Cutting through stone to etch the sign was also annoying, but he managed it.
It did not slip Sorin’s mind that if his team decided they were better off without him, this was an excellent chance for them to cut ties. He didn’t think they’d do that, both because they still needed each other and because he was the one coming back with all the supplies. Never mind soulprints, they needed food. Foraging was possible but never fun or easy.
“I should be back soon,” he said as he hefted the packs with the large collection of herbs and the much smaller collection of everything else over his shoulder. “Save me some dinner, yeah?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Odric said. “Don’t forget my replacement seasoning jars. I’m low on everything.”
“Top priority,” Sorin assured him.
The trip back to Floor 0 only took a minute, and most of that was spent studying the front end of the silver path. He got only a hazy sense of the world around the sign, and he couldn’t use Blind Sense to scout from the path itself, but the room appeared to be empty. Hesitantly and acutely aware that if he was stepping into a trap, he wouldn’t be able to reactivate the sign from the other side fast enough to escape, Sorin stepped out into the world.
Blind Sense unfolded around him, immediately reassuring him that there was no one nearby. Even holding perfectly still generally wasn’t enough to hide someone anymore, though if they held their breath, it got a lot harder to track them. Sorin had no doubt that even that weakness would vanish once he added another sensory soulprint to the mix.
It was a short walk to the dead drop, with more of his time and effort going to doing a loop around it looking for spies than anything else. Only once he was sure the drop was unobserved and empty did Sorin actually enter the building. It was an old, rundown affair, the stone walls cracked and with enough holes in the thing to convince squatters that they could find better shelter elsewhere.
The drop was behind a slab of wall leaned up against a corner in the basement. With only one good arm, getting the stone moved enough to pull out the bag was a chore, but Sorin managed it. Then he had to hook a boot around the bag and drag it into the open. Then he had to nudge the new packs back into place, which proved to be even more difficult.
I need to get this arm fixed sooner rather than later, he thought to himself with a bitter smile. The pain had mostly faded to a dull ache that he forgot about when he was busy, but it always lurked in the back of his head, waiting to fill the quiet moments of his day. That was bad enough, but losing most of the strength in that arm was a serious handicap.
Once he finished the switch, Sorin took a moment to rifle through the pack for the letter Bradford was supposed to have left for him. It took him a moment to find it, partially hidden behind what appeared to be a taxidermized animal foot.
I was able to find most of what you requested, the letter read, but I wasn’t able to secure enough funding to acquire it all. Please see the attached list of what was available but beyond what I was willing to credit you, and return any instructions on where you’d like me to focus.
Additionally, I made some inquiries on your behalf on the other issue we discussed. I know a climber from my old days who could perform the magic you need, but the price is as steep as we feared. For a friend, five hundred danirs will suffice. I’ll understand if you wish me to start holding back the money acquired from fencing your goods to pay for the service. Unfortunately, he does not accept payment plans, so you’ll need to provide the full balance up front.
The letter wasn’t signed, of course. Part of the purpose of the dead drop was to preserve anonymity just in case it was discovered. As much as Bradford insisted he wasn’t afraid of Samael, neither of them wanted to tempt fate. Whatever protection he had from the gang leader might not hold up in the face of Samael’s greed.
There was a list of supplies purchased and at what price points Bradford had obtained them, as well as one showing what he’d found available and how much the owners wanted. Despite everything, he’d gotten a solid hundred and sixty danirs for everything Sorin had handed off a week earlier, though that amount was reduced once the fence took his cut. It would be another six weeks of work at minimum just to save up enough to get his arm fixed at this rate.
In six weeks, I can just do it myself at rank 5. Hell, if we can keep things moving, I bet I could get to that point in half the time.
Sorin scribbled some instructions on the letter and marked a few items off the purchase list that were higher priority for him, then retreated with his supplies and made his way back to Floor 2.
