“So we did all that just to get her some dessert?!” Arcen asked after Elena handed the orange fruit off to a climber wearing a chef's hat in a busy tent.

  “Rika gets these cravings sometimes, so she sends people to bring the things that she really wants,” Elena said. “She pays super well, of course!”

  “Really? How much for that fruit that I almost got killed for?!”

  “She wanted to pay me fifty thousand in Gold, but I did it for free. It's actually very tasty; it’s for ice cream. You'll see! Rika shares with everyone around,” Elena said, swinging her hands casually.

  She refused fifty thousand Gold and this bride-looking woman is craving for alien fruit ice cream. What the hell is going on inside this tower?! It's a camp for absolute fucking lunatics!

  The distortions faded abruptly like a reverse shockwave converging back towards Rika from all directions. She rubbed her hands together, and one climber quickly sealed the gold tank and hauled it into one of the large tents. Rika took one glance towards the kitchen where Arcen was, turned back around, and went into the largest tent.

  This woman didn't look like she belonged in a tower. Her mannerisms, even her walk, had a slow elegance just baked into it. Arcen couldn't imagine her ending up face-first in a pool of spicy water as he did.

  He had always been out of his element ever since he set foot in this tower, but this woman was somehow thriving in towers, dressed in a Met Gala outfit.

  What even is the element at this point?

  It didn't matter; he was here for a reason. He risked a glance at the black egg on Elena's shoulder, wondering when his opportunity would be. He felt guilty now that he got to know her a little bit better. She was more likable than he thought. He didn't want to betray her outright. His initial assessment was still valid. Despite everything, she was a child. He could save himself by whatever means necessary, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he actually harmed her.

  He couldn’t live with himself at all if he got stuck in gray sands for all eternity, either.

  That’s it. I need a fucking smoke.

  He got the soggy pack out of his pocket and opened it, expecting to find at least one dry enough to smoke. There wasn't. Every single stick in there was completely wet.

  “Fuck,” He whispered under his breath.

  “Hm? What's wrong?” Elena asked.

  “All my cigarettes are wet.”

  “Oh, isn't that good news? Smoking is bad for you.”

  “You shut up.”

  Elena dug into her long coat and handed him a zip-lock bag with about ten sticks. She had salvaged the dry ones and put them in her message note-carrying bag.

  Oh! What a wonderful kid.

  “What do you say?” She asked, raising her eyebrow, a shit-eating grin spreading on her face.

  “Thank you, Miss El,” He bowed his head, “I owe you everything.”

  Arcen loitered around for a few hours exploring the base camp. Elena tagged along, introducing him to people that she knew. Everyone he met was fascinated by his presence. Some of them reacted as they had never seen a full Ceph before in their lives.

  It was partly true. Cephs were never popular for anything. It was more of a tragic mutation than a spectacular one. Most full cephalopod mutations went badly for the affected. Some turned out to have categorically ‘non-human intelligence’ to the point they couldn’t even be considered human anymore.

  Two climbers had stories about someone they knew having a troublesome Ceph mutation that required a lot of medication. Arcen had never talked quite so much with strangers before, but he pushed through, forcing himself to enjoy their company.

  He’d been through too many life-changing experiences to shrink back into the nerdy, bitter recluse that he always was.

  Fake it till you make it.

  And it worked out wonderfully well. The tower had beaten the lonely loser syndrome out of him. It only took three deaths. It wasn’t a fair trade by any means, but a welcome one nonetheless.

  Eventually, he followed Elena into Rika’s tent.

  He expected to see a house, but the tent was mostly empty with some sort of soft beige colored grass on the floor. He had to remove his shoes to enter. Rika’s own footwear was arranged neatly in a corner, gold heels with intricate patterns.

  Kysa would’ve gone crazy on these.

  Rika was sitting at a table in the far corner, bent over a map with a bunch of other climbers. They were discussing something loudly; it sounded like everyone was at each other’s throats. Rika remained quiet, rubbing her temples with her eyes closed.

  The chef arrived with a huge tub, and Rika snapped her fingers, chasing everyone away. She still didn’t speak a word.

  “Come on,” Elena said, pulling Arcen along, walking against the crowd of climbers that stared curiously at them.

  “Wait, she looks pissed.”

  “She’s always pissed. Don’t worry, she won’t eat you.”

  He felt like livestock being dragged to the slaughterhouse. This Rika had two billion Aura. That had to mean something.

  “Ah, Elena dear.” Rika sang in a soft voice. “I was waiting all day for some of this!” She said, staring hungrily at the chef as he scraped three balls of orange and white striped ice cream into a bowl.

  She had a faint but distinct European accent. Arcen couldn’t tell if it was French or German right away. She looked like she could be either, or even a mix of both.

  Arcen knew a lot more about fashion and beauty than the average guy simply by growing up with Kysa, who started modeling at ten years old.

  He had an intuition about Rika just seconds into seeing her up close. This woman was beautiful in the way people who always wanted to be beautiful molded themselves to be beautiful when they finally got the money to spare for it.

  He’d seen the exact same thing from a lot of Kysa’s friends. They changed themselves to measure up to various standards with no regard for what actually works for their faces, bodies, and personalities.

  He couldn’t tell Rika’s age at a glance, but she looked like she was in a phase of just overdoing it. She had a very apparent obsession with looking ‘beautiful’. The dress, the hair, the jewelry, it was as if she got everything she ever wanted, all at once.

  Of course, he didn’t judge her harshly for it. Not everyone was lucky to be born with insane confidence, a vibrant personality, and looks to match like Kysa.

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  This woman’s popular, and probably very rich. So, it all worked out for her in the end, way better than it did for my sister.

  “You’re new. I’m Rika, by the way. You've definitely heard about me,” She extended her hand, breaking Arcen out of his chain of thought.

  “Arcen, Nice to meet you,” He shook her hand gently.

  “This is the octopus guy you were telling me about, right?” Rika asked, guiding Elena by hand towards the chairs. She also gestured at the chef to put more ice cream plates down.

  He knew it as soon as she said ‘the octopus guy’.

  That's German. She’s German.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think he was going to climb, but I met him at the doctor’s. Can you guess who he was with? It's someone we know!”

  “Oh dear. Let me think,” Rika closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me that idiot Tymon beat him for no reason and dropped him off there?”

  “Wrong! he was with Zuhara!” Elena said excitedly.

  “Really? You know Zuhara already?” Rika asked, turning to Arcen right away.

  “Yeah. I saw Jelly after some…stuff, followed her there, and met her.”

  “Ahh, Jelly… I really want to see that little brat soon,” Rika said, grabbing the spoon. “You know she came here once when Zuhara fell asleep for half a day? No tunnelers, just on foot.”

  “O-on her own?!” Arcen recoiled. It was like hearing a toddler walk across state lines all alone. He didn’t like imagining Jelly sneaking through the dangerous chambers that he just passed through.

  “That’s what everyone said!” Rika laughed. “Jelly needs a harness like a little puppy dog. I bet anything you found her where she’s not supposed to be.”

  “Yeah, in the next chamber. This bat-like thing was attacking her.”

  “See what I mean? She gets into trouble all the time!” Rika said, shoving a scoop of ice cream into her mouth.

  Elena already had a mouthful in hers. “Oh my god, this is really good! Try it!” She said, aggressively pointing at Arcen’s ice cream bowl with her spoon.

  It tasted like custard with a confusing mix of sweet fruits that added up to something between apple, mango, and cashew.

  ”I told Zuhara you’d love to see her, but she kinda wants you to visit her.” Elena said, wiping her lips.

  Rika laughed. “That’s fair! She’s the one who got hurt. Not going to be able to visit, though. I have to leave today.”

  “Really? I thought you’d be around here a while.”

  “New plan for four fifty-seven. I was away for three days. Holmer is pissed at Tristan, and Tristan is pissed at Holmer. Vanya is just not talking with any of them. Everything falls apart when I’m away. ugh. These…children!” She said, stabbing at her ice cream. “Sometimes it feels like I never stopped teaching elementary!”

  ”Hey, I’m a good girl. I listened to you, no problem, so there’s nothing wrong with the kids!” Elena said, pointing at herself proudly.

  “Actually, you’re right! Real kids are better than these three idiots, my god. I’m never bringing them for another climb.”

  They enjoyed their ice creams for a few minutes in silence. Arcen looked at the map laid out before him with various annotations made with a pink highlighter. It seemed to be the floor plan of the next floor, and it was exactly like he imagined the tower floors. A maze of concentric circles, randomly segmented into chambers of various sizes.

  Three large circles were shaded with diagonal lines with dots at the center of each.

  “So, there’s this crazy thing happening with him.” Elena broke the silence, dropping the spoon on her empty plate.

  Arcen almost coughed ice cream out of his nose. He knew the topic that she was about to discuss.

  “He just keeps coming back from the dead for no reason,” Elena said, patting Arcen on the arm.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Rika raised her eyebrow at Arcen.

  “Yeah, but do you know why it’s happening? I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Elena asked.

  “It could be a bunch of things. I’ve seen it happen maybe twice.”

  “So it has happened before!”

  “There was this guy in Denmark who couldn’t be killed no matter what. He would just reappear. This was early days. We had to give up because it was impossible to catch up to him. He climbed that tower to the top. Nobody saw him ever again.”

  Rika tapped her lip, thinking hard.

  “The next one was in the Philippines. There was this girl who kept coming back to life. I was climbing with Swann, who knew a little Tagalog. He asked her, and she told him ’death god wanted her to live’ or something like that. It was some sort of quest, if I remember right.”

  Arcen almost shivered where he sat.

  Well, shit. I should've told her not to talk about me dying with others! I'm fucked. I have to do something!

  “Oh? That must be it then? Can you check? Do you have a quest?” Elena asked, turning towards Arcen.

  He gulped, trying to keep his composure. He could very easily say the wrong thing here and ruin it all. He couldn't evade it without coming across as weird. The last thing he wanted would be to gag at some weird point that he cannot foresee from here. Whatever Elena couldn't, Rika would figure out instantly. He picked the one thing that would absolve him, even if they saw the quest.

  He pretended to try by closing his eyes tightly. “I-I don’t see anything. Can you use Reveal on me?”

  “Wait? You’re that new?“ Rika asked, tilting her head towards him. ”It's really weird you're this high up, but you don't know quests aren’t visible to others,” Rika said, sounding exactly like a teacher.

  Oh, thank fuck. But can Elena mind hack it out of me?

  “Really?”

  “So are skills, stats, and Gold. Others can’t see them. What are you doing up here if you don’t know that?” Rika asked, genuine concern in her voice.

  “I'm not here because I want to. Things happened. I don't know how much you know,”

  “I know about the egg right there,” Rika said, pointing at Elena's shoulder. “And I know there was some corpo incident on the ground floor. Sorry if I’m prying, but why are you climbing up? Shouldn't you be climbing down?”

  “See, I was working on it. I wanted to go back through the shortcut. I don't have a contract that can help me do that. I came here with Zuhara because there was this dying girl who had one.”

  Rika straightened and looked quietly at Elena. “He knows all about the shortcut?”

  “I knew it from the beginning. I saw it from Norm Lorraine's memories.” Arcen interrupted before Elena could speak, saving her the trouble of trying to defend herself.

  Elena gestured at Arcen with both hands as if to say, See, it wasn't my fault. Rika stared at him unblinking.

  “You can do that?”

  “Uh, yeah?” Arcen said, shooting a side glance at Elena. She was just as confused by Rika's change of demeanor.

  She placed her spoon next to the plate, brought her hands up to her face, and rested her chin on them, closing her eyes. She seemed to be thinking hard about something, her eyelids twitching.

  “Tell me more about that. What exactly were you doing on the ground floor?” Rika asked, opening her eyes.

  I thought she knew about that? Isn't Wells working for her?

  “I do predictive analysis at Helviter, sorting embryos-”

  “Those are just a bunch of words to me. Tell me what you did in normal words.”

  “Can you do this?” Arcen nudged Elena, at a loss for where to even begin.

  “So, they wanted him to look into Norm Lorraine's memories, to understand what happened, what the Meronoliths are, it's whatever. And they shoved him into the egg at the end to see what would happen. That's where it went wrong.”

  “I got that part. What I'm asking is, How can he do that?”

  “Well, there is this helmet I can use contracts through Mind Matrix. It was this contract called Glimpses of the Future. They had Glimpses of the Past, too.”

  “Interesting. How did they register those contracts with the GGC, I wonder? They sound very disruptive.”

  “It’s Helviter, they can just do it, they’re like DJB from Germany,” Elena said, joining back in.

  “Ahh? I get it, I get it.” Rika exclaimed, nodding back and forth. “So they’re like, big, big?”

  “What’s DJB?” Arcen asked, completely lost in this conversation.

  “Deutsche Juniper Biotech. It’s a big company from Frankfurt, they were in towers from day one, made billions of dollars selling pills,” Elena recited like she was reading from an invisible textbook. “They’re like Germany’s Helviter.”

  “What is this about registering contracts?”

  “You can’t use contracts outside of tower areas,” Rika said, exactly like a teacher again. “Outside is all Mind Matrix, in here is Panlangra. Unregistered contracts only work with Panlangra.”

  “W-wait, I don’t understand. What the heck is a Panlangra?”

  “Oh my god, someone teach this guy! I don’t have time for this,” Rika said, hands on her head. Elena burst out laughing, and Arcen stared dumbfounded at them both.

  “I’ll explain it to him soon!” Elena said, trying to hold her laughter.

  “Good. You know what, octopus man, I have an idea. I want you to hang around until I come back in two or three days.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I’ll pay you, of course. What do you want?”

  Do I want anything?

  “I-I don’t know. I don’t know what this is even about.”

  “Alright, a hundred thousand Gold per day.” She grabbed a notebook and wrote it down with her pink highlighter, tore the page off, and handed it to Arcen. “Show it to Barnes in tent four.”

  “But what is this for?” Arcen asked, taking the paper she shoved towards him.

  “I have a couple of corpses I want you to take a look at. This might actually solve four fifty-seven if I'm right.”

  “I don't have the contracts or the helmet! How am I supposed to—”

  “Don't worry about anything. You won't need a helmet. I'll get you a better Chronos contract. Problems solved?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Arcen said apprehensively. “Where are these bodies?”

  “I don't have the bodies here. They're all up there,” Rika said, pointing up at the ceiling. “They died in a tricky spot, but I'm going to get them this time, just wait a couple of days for me, got it?”

  “Alright, then. I'll stick around.”

  “Good, just learn things from this girl right here, don't feel bad because she's a kid. She knows better than some grown-ups I work with. It shouldn't be an issue. You guys are cousins, right?” She asked, waving her hand towards Elena.

  “Pardon?” Arcen asked, squinting at Rika. He'd clearly misheard what Rika was saying. It could’ve been a mispronounced German word.

  Rika froze, letting her hand drop limply onto the table. “Oh mein Gott, this can't be happening! This guy knows nothing about anything!”

  “Wait, didn't I tell you already?!” Elena asked in a raised voice. “Are you telling me you didn't know this whole time?!”

  “What? When did you- No, you didn't? ” Arcen howled.

  “Raus, jetzt! That's it. I‘ve had enough of you two. Get the fuck out of here. Shoo!” Rika clapped her hands, standing up. She whispered a string of German curses under her breath and disappeared into a small room in the corner.

  Next chapter on Wednesday.

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