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• Elijah Hammond, level 25 hunter.

“Probably because you were poisoned.” Loth said.

“The aftertaste on the meat was odd, but in a good, spicy way…and sweet old ladies don’t poison people.”

“That’s pretty much exclusively the demographic that poisons people.” Loth said. “Males just beat each other to death.”

“Huh.” Will grunted. “Well, either I’ll get over it or I’m already dead. No sense worrying about it.”

Will had more important things to do, which included debriefing his Party, seeing what everyone got for their Ability Upgrades, (if anything) and informing them that they would be trying for the fifth floor, since their levels were capped out for the floor. Two levels over the cap, actually, because they’d fought a raid boss, whose rewards weren’t under any kind of restriction.

June gathered everyone together, and Will took stock of his Party.

Reggie, the enormous Tank, capable of soaking up damage meant for others.

Mason, the Nuker, who had a balanced build, but a narrow frame.

Alicia, the Artillery, an archer with the ability to see through anything and launch devastating attacks from beyond the range of traditional weapons.

Travis, the Master Decoy, who could direct the attention of the enemy wherever they wanted it to be.

June, the Scout with a knack for leading small teams, who could cobble together her own arrows on the fly and set devastating ambushes.

And Loth, the Saboteur, Will’s second in command, some kind of Kobold demigod of intellect, who focused on the intersection of traps and insects.

“Alright, before we make plans to challenge the Key Site, what changes if any, did you guys make to your Builds?”

“I added the fungal Hydra to my Second Wind, It’s now a passive that heals and restores my stamina, but I can still use a Charge to boost it.” Reggie said. “Found a better shield with an effect that absorbs a bit of damage, which works to mitigate damage from toft. I’m currently looking for a Sacrifice that can let me protect more than one person at a time. I upgraded Heavily Armored.”

“I found a Sacrifice that expands Hunter’s Patience to apply to pretty much anything I do.” June said. “Along with a nice quiver that poisons arrows inside it.”

“I didn’t find anything,” Alicia whispered.

“I upgraded Feedback Shielding to be more potent.” Mason said. “I need a piece of Spirit Turtle from the Fifth Floor to give it a permanent passive effect.”

“I made out like a bandit and found an upgrade for Taunt that allows me to target multiple opponents with it, as well as one for Center of Attention that increases it’s effectiveness.”

“I found a sacrifice for Trap Savant that lets my Abilities bypass a small amount of the opponent’s Resistance. I didn’t find any Ripley Sacrifices on offer, so I upgraded Master of the Vivarium with a chimera Sacrifice that will allow me to interbreed and modify my insects.”

“Weren’t you already breeding them?” Will asked, recalling a long night where Loth explained how she had identified a strain of glowworms that produced more light, and had been breeding them to be even brighter.

“Inter breeding. Prepare yourself for spider-mosquitoes.”

Will shuddered.

“Sounds like everyone except Alicia found some good stuff,” Will said fishing through their luggage until he retrieved the preserved eyeball.

“What will this do for Penetrating Gaze?” Will asked, offering Alicia the eyeball, tag first.

Maribel Johan, Reached the 14th Floor and achieved level 62 before retiring. In life, acquired powerful healing and sight-based Abilities.

“I can’t read that,” she whispered.

“Oh, right,” Will muttered, handing her the Sacrifice so she could hold it in her hand to see what The System would say.

“Vitality Sight.” She whispered. “The functionality of Penetrating Gaze expands to include critical weak points, such as hearts, brains, nerve clusters, major arteries, and so on, as well as revealing whether something is dead, alive, or undead.”

“I’m not sure you would want to be looking at Will’s brain,” Travis chimed in.

“Wow.” Alicia glanced back at Will with a pleading gaze. “Can I?”

“Should you?” Mason asked. “that’s a church’s Sacrifice, isn’t it?”

“I ain’t gonna tell anybody,” Reggie said with a shrug.

“I know it’s dangerous, but…” Alicia’s voice diminished until none of them could make it out, even with superhuman hearing.

“But?” June prompted her to continue.

“Once this sacrifice is added to my Class…I might get offered a healing secondary. Everyone loves healers.”

I know some healers that might make you rethink that statement. Will mused.

“Do you want to be a healer or do you want to be loved by all?” Will asked. “Because those two aren’t necessarily linked.”

“…Both, I guess?” Alicia whispered.

“Alright, go ahead, if you want the option, it’s all yours,” Will said, motioning to the preserved eye.

Alicia nodded, and the eyeball disappeared in a flash of light a moment later.

She glanced back up at them and yelped, scrambling backwards and hyperventilating as she glanced around frantically.

“You all look so different.” She whispered, slowly relaxing, like someone might around a spider that hadn’t moved in an hour.

“Who is who?” Alicia asked, her voice barely audible.

“I’m Reggie,” Reggie said, tapping his chest.

“You’re five inches taller than everyone else,” Mason said, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. “You’re the most obvious out of all of us.”

“I’m Will,” Travis said, waving to Alicia.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I’m June,” June said, glaring at Travis.

Loth didn’t say anything, but she was several feet shorter than any of them with a completely different body shape. She was the most obvious.

“So that must be Will,” Alicia whispered, turning her gaze back to Will.

“Did you know you’re poisoned?” she whispered, glancing at his stomach.

“Don’t worry about it,” Will said with a dismissive wave as his Party’s collective gaze settled on him.

“…I’ll be fine.”

Despite painting a Tower-sized target on his back for Fate to skewer him, she held back her javelin of Cruel Irony. Will wound up having no worse than an upset stomach, which cleared up by the end of the night.

The old lady was nowhere to be found, which strengthened the case that it’d been a deliberate poisoning.

Odd that anyone would want to kill him, though.

William Oh was beloved by all.

Except the church of Granesh, and the Wyrd family. It was a pretty short list of people that didn’t like him.

Most likely? Mark Wyrd paid a local to try and poison him should he come by again.

It was unlikely the church knew where he was and went with something as tepid as poisoning…not after sending an entire Party to kidnap him.

Least likely? The woman had been jealous that Will was her son’s hero and had punitively poisoned him.

In any case, Will didn’t want to waste time chasing down someone who had given him free food. Once they were sure that Mark Wyrd’s Party wasn’t hanging around the outskirts of Way Station to ambush them, they headed out to the nearest key Site in need of clearing in exchange for a Door to the next Floor.

The Key Site was populated by water beetles the size of cows. They had spear-like proboscis and armor thicker than a man’s palm, and from what they observed in the distance, could charge forward across hundreds of feet in the blink of an eye to impale/crush their prey.

The boss was nearly the size of a house, his proboscis bathing in the stream of miasma flowing up into the Floor above.

They were all dead in a matter of seconds beneath Alicia’s rain of arrows. Each one struck dead center in a critical nerve cluster that dropped it lifelessly to the ground.

The men in the Party glanced at each other and shrugged.

Thank you for clearing the Key Site. You may advance to the 5th Floor at your discretion.

+ 2000XP

The only reason they got the option to advance was because they were Party members. Normally they would have to contribute somewhat to the clear, but The Tower was taking pity on them.

“You could be a one-person bus,” Reggie said, tousling Alicia’s hair.

“Nooo, those people are rude,” Alicia said, wiggling away.

Reggie kept at it until Alicia poked him in the shoulder and his arm switched off, fixing her hair while Reggie stared at his numb limb.

“Hah.” Mason allowed himself a sardonic bray laughter at Reggie’s expense, while Travis was strangely silent.

June cleared her throat, getting their attention.

“Are we ready?” She asked, glancing to Will and Loth.

They nodded, and as one, the Party moved up to the fifth Floor.

Will swallowed the rising panic as he approached that glowing yellow doorway, stepping through before his stupid nerves could catch up with him.

Welcome to the 5th Floor!

Miasma Acclimation: 5 days.

It is not advised to Ascend or Descend before the Miasma acclimation period has elapsed. Side effects of doing so include fever, bulging bloodshot eyes, coughing, pustules, necrosis of the extremities, paraphilia, parasitic twin growths, and Death.

There is a Stronghold to your East, and a Key Site in need of clearing to your South.

Again, it is not advised to Ascend or Descend before the Acclimation period has elapsed.

The Fifth Floor was…

Pretty much the best place ever.

The air was sweetened by the smell of wildflowers, carried by a gentle breeze that tempered the warm sun.

Will did a scan of the entire floor, looking for a kaiju or an ambush from another Party, and finding neither.

The surroundings were covered in knee-length grass, stretching across rolling hills and low mountains, with streams cutting through the idyllic landscape.

Are those…farms? Will thought, flabbergasted at the idea of farming under constant threat of monster attacks, regardless of how infrequent those monster attacks were.

Farms covered the land opposite a river in the distance, their irrigation drawing water straight out of the river to create a checker-grid-like pattern that covered the horizon…

Wait…Is that…

Will squinted, just barely making out the pale smudge in the distance.

No…way.

Will couldn’t see the edges of the city. All he could make out was an ivory wall seemed to dominate the horizon, fading into the distance rather than ending.

“I guess we’re going that way,” Will said, pointing.

Thea said that she’d arrange for a mercenary company to help them take down some kaiju and get their levels before they moved on.

They could probably find their other liaison in the bathhouses, which, now that Will had more context from the 3rd Floor, were probably brothels.

They spotted a road and followed it through the dense farmland, getting smiles and waves from the locals in a bizarre display of good cheer, as if living in the 5th Floor was some kind of blessing and not a belated death sentence.

“That guy has parasites,” Alicia whispered, pointing at a smiling man waving at them…Oddly skinny for a farmer.

“Go see a healer! You have parasites!” Will shouted at the man as they walked down the smooth cobbled road.

“Thanks, you too!” the farmer said, waving back.

Whatever. Not my problem. Will thought, giving the man a smile and a thumbs-up.

They realized that the city was more distant than they’d first thought as they stopped for the night on top of a hill overlooking the road that winded into the distance. The distant ivory smudge had gotten a lot more defined, and much bigger, but it was still a long, long way away.

If they rushed in the morning, and moved at a sprint…they could probably make it by…early afternoon?

They bedded down, Loth trapped the hill against any nighttime ambushes, and Reggie took watch.

It was an uneventful night, but in the morning, while Will was eating trail rations and watching the sunrise, he spotted a lumbering figure in the distance.

It looked like the silhouette of an octopus riding a goat against the horizon…

On the other side of the city! Will thought, lunging to his feet and staring.

That’s a kaiju! And I can see it above the city walls, even though it’s on the opposite side!

How many feet tall did such a creature have to be to be visible this clearly from this distance? Will didn’t know the exact answer, but he knew it was more than enough to crush a small village underfoot, let alone a Climbing Party.

That was when a streak of fire descended from the sky and smashed into the side of the towering monster, bursting out the other side in an explosion of light and viscera.

The malformed creature staggered, then slowly collapsed to the side, sinking below the height of the walls as it did.

But Will felt the shockwave of its fall. Tremors shook his legs a few breaths later as a nearly inaudible shudder passed through the earth itself.

I’ll be damned.

“That was Baron Akul.” Mason said from beside Will, squinting into the distance. “Since there is only a bare handful of kaiju spawns each month, and the baron can detect and destroy them in a matter of seconds, Akul is one of the safest Strongholds in the entire tower. You know, my parents modelled my Build after him?”

“What if he has an off day?” Will asked, eyeballing the spot where a city-sized monster had just been. It seemed like the average danger was low, but could wildly spin out of control if things went wrong.

“There are back-ups, of course.” Mason said. “The Kaiju Guard might have a tougher time, but they would keep the city running smoothly. The man does travel from time to time.”

Hmm…

The closer they got to the ivory city in the distance, the more crowded the road became, until they were nearly shoulder to shoulder with other rough-and-tumble types and wagons full of grain.

The packed road crunched down into a slow-moving line that processed a deceptively large amount of people each second.

Deceptive, because while the volume of people that Will saw getting into the city was high, the line still took an eternity for their party to reach the front gate.

“Take off any helmets or masks, and state your names.” A tired-looking garrison guard said, a glimmer of blue in his eye as he scanned their Party.

“Alicia Zodiac,” Alicia said, her voice barely rising above a whisper as she took off her headband.

“Yeah, right, and I’m-“ The guard swallowed the rest of his retort, seemingly scanning the air in front of him.

“Deeply sorry to make you wait in line, Miss Zodiac, you and your Party can head on through.”

“Do you need my name?” Will asked as he walked past the guard.

“Nobody cares.” The tired man said, waving him past.

Will shrugged and just enjoyed the…lack of recognition? I could swear that has a name.

“What’s it called when nobody knows who you are?” Will asked loth as they entered the city.

“Anonymity.” Loth replied.

Will enjoyed the anonymity.

“So there’s William Oh, buck naked, wrestling the dragon’s head into the mud so it’s fire breath won’t destroy the princesses evening gown any more than it already has…”

Alerted by his own name in the sea of voices, Will glanced up to see street performers recreating That Time he Totally Saved A Princess From A Dragon.

A massive, loincloth-wearing man whose muscles were easily five times the size and definition of Will’s own, was wearing a goat mask and his left hand was painted black, wrestling two men in a dragon costume while a scantily-clad young woman tied to a pole stage-screamed quietly enough that the narrator could be heard over her.

The young woman was very dark-skinned, causing Will to have an epiphany.

“I think that’s supposed to be you.” Will said, nudging Loth and pointing at the woman.

“I think that is also supposed to be me,” Loth said, pointing at the black dragon the muscular ‘Will’ was wrestling.

“Huh,” Will said, straightening. “I think you’re right.”