A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 293: Chapter 284 — The Same Red II

Nobody sat down to have a discussion about it.

"Was that a one-off," James said, walking, "or is this floor connected to whatever was under that palace."

"No way to know standing here," said Maeve.

"No."

"So we go and find out. There’s twelve more."

James looked sideways at Alice.

She was not looking at the enemies or the causeway or him. She was looking at the crack in the flagstones where the last thread had gone, with her head very slightly tilted, and she had been looking at it for some time.

"Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Alice—"

"I have seen exactly what you have seen," she said. "A red light on a prince, and a red light here. I do not know its name, I do not know what it wants, and I will not invent one for your comfort."

"Fair enough."

"If I knew, I would tell you." A pause. "It would cost me nothing to tell you."

---

The second group was waiting on the causeway.

Five more warriors, and behind them another of the big ones.

`[HEAVY WARRIOR]`

`[LEVEL: 42]`

`[HP: 5,400 / 5,400]`

It went for Finn first, and it was simply stronger than the others. Finn got both axes up into the line of a two-handed downstroke and it drove him back three steps with his boots skidding on stone.

Ronan came into the next swing and did not take it square. He turned it — put the shield across at an angle and let a metre of steel go past his shoulder into nothing — and the Heavy’s own follow-through carried it round and left the outside of its right knee facing Maeve for about a second.

That was all Maeve had ever needed.

`[MAEVE CALLAHAN — HEXLIGHT BRAND APPLIED]`

`[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING IMPACT]`

The bolt came down on the mark and the knee joint blew apart inside the armour.

`[HEAVY WARRIOR — HP: 5,400 → 3,480]`

Finn was back in before it had finished dropping, both axes into the same side, working the leg it could no longer stand on.

`[HEAVY WARRIOR — HP: 3,480 → 1,760]`

James saw the opening in the plate and took it.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,880 / 3,100]`

`[HEAVY WARRIOR — HP: 1,760 → 470]`

Finn set his feet for the last one.

"*Don’t.*"

Finn stopped mid-step and looked at him like he had lost his mind.

"James, it’s at four hundred—"

"I know what it’s at. Leave it."

"Leave—"

"I want to see it happen again."

Finn stood there with a live enemy four feet away and both axes up and his whole body screaming at him to finish, and he did not finish, and James was going to owe him for that.

The Heavy tried to get its weight onto the ruined leg.

It could not. It went down onto one knee with the greave grinding on stone, hauled at the ground with its free hand, and stayed down.

Four seconds.

Then the cracks lit.

---

Same colour.

Same slow upward crawl through the joints in the stone, from underneath, from somewhere that was not this floor. It found the broken knee first, wound itself round the joint, and climbed.

`[HEAVY WARRIOR — HP: 470 / 5,400]`

The knee was still shattered. James could see the bend in the plate.

The Heavy put its weight on it and stood up.

"There," said James.

Nobody answered him. Ronan had already got his shield up.

---

James reached back and took the scythe off his spine.

He had not touched it since a field outside Caerleon. He did not want it now.

`[AUTHORITY RELEASE ACTIVATED]`

`[TARGET: AZRAEL’S BROKEN SCYTHE]`

`[DURATION: 30 MINUTES]`

The black came out along the broken blade and the temperature in James’s hands dropped, and the sound of the floor went slightly further away, the way it always did.

He walked in.

"Ronan, hold the line. Finn, the far shoulder."

The Heavy came at him faster than a thing with that knee had any business moving. Ronan caught the weapon line on the shield and grunted and held it. Finn came under the far arm and hauled the shoulder open, and for half a second there was a gap between the two of them with a red-wrapped arm in the middle of it.

James put the black blade across it.

The red came apart.

Not the armour. Not the flesh. The *red* — it peeled backward off the edge of the scythe like paint going up in heat, two feet of it stripping off the arm and recoiling, and where the blade had passed, the light tried to knit back across the gap and could not. It reached. It failed. It reached again and failed again.

Exactly, precisely, identically what it had done on a prince’s shoulder in the mud.

James felt the cold go up the haft into his wrists, and the ringing start somewhere behind his back teeth, and he did not stop.

He completed the cut.

`[HEAVY WARRIOR — HP: 470 → 0]`

`[HEAVY WARRIOR SLAIN]`

`[EXP GAINED: 320]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,910 / 3,100]`

The body came apart at the waist and the red came off it and ran, and went down through the stone, and was gone.

"Maeve."

"Same phenomenon," Maeve said, flatly, already moving. "That’s all I’ll say and that’s all we can prove. It behaves the same and it dies the same."

"Right."

"That’s *all* we can prove, James."

"I heard you."

---

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** SAME REACTION

**[ShieldMainSiobhan]:** THE SCYTHE DID THAT TO BALDWIN

**[ZeroFan]:** ITS THE SAME THING

**[user88317]:** WHY IS IT ON FLOOR 28

**[CorkClimber]:** CAERLEON IS OVER THOUGH???

**[FrontierWife]:** james looks worried and james never looks worried

**[GalwayGoblin]:** WHAT WAS UNDER THAT PALACE

**[MOD]:** Slow mode enabled.

Nobody answered them. Nobody had time.

---

One of the remaining warriors picked Alice, because she was ten metres from anybody and standing still.

She let it come the whole way.

It got inside striking distance and brought the sword down two-handed at her collarbone, and Alice caught the wrist on the way through, turned the entire armoured body past her hip with the momentum it had brought, and put the red-gold blade in under the arm and out through the far side of the chest.

`[ARMORED WARRIOR — HP: 3,600 → 0]`

`[ARMORED WARRIOR SLAIN]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,940 / 3,100]`

Cillian looked at the corpse, and then at the four still standing, and made no joke at all.

"Two on the left," he called instead.

James raised two more off the causeway.

`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA] ×2`

`[MANA: 2,780 / 3,100]`

`[HOSTILE ENTITIES ELIMINATED: 12 / 18]`

---

The last six were waiting at the far end.

Five in a ring, and inside the ring, a head taller than the Heavies and wearing a full harness with a red cloth sash rotted almost to nothing across it:

`[WAR CAPTAIN]`

`[LEVEL: 44]`

`[HP: 8,800 / 8,800]`

He did not come to meet them.

He kept the five tight and he kept himself in the middle of them, and he turned the whole formation to face whichever piece of Team Zero moved, which meant nobody was getting behind him for free.

"Ronan, front. Finn, take the left corner." James pointed with the scythe. "Alice — go wide right. Don’t engage, just *be* there."

Alice went wide right and did nothing at all, and two of the five broke their spacing to watch her, because there is no army in any world that can ignore a Fallen Angel walking along its flank with her hands empty.

Cillian put a lance through the gap they left.

And James sent his four skeletons the long way round, up the terrace and down behind the ring, because pushing dead men into the front of a shield wall is how you lose dead men.

---

The captain went for Ronan while Ronan had a warrior on his shield.

James saw it start. Saw the big blade come round on the outside of Ronan’s vision at a height that was going to take his head off.

He sent the nearest skeleton in.

It got there in time and it got there in the way, and the blade caught it across the spine and folded it in half against the stone, and that bought Ronan the half-second to get his shoulder round and his shield up.

Ronan did not thank anybody. He kicked the warrior off his shield and turned.

Finn came through the side and put an axe into the captain’s flank plate.

`[WAR CAPTAIN — HP: 8,800 → 7,150]`

Maeve did not brand him.

She stood behind Ronan and watched two full exchanges, and James saw her lips moving, counting.

"He loads the back leg," she said. "Every time. Every time before the big horizontal one, he shifts onto the rear leg first. Watch — there. And again."

"Finn."

"Heard her."

Finn gave the captain exactly what he wanted — came in high and open on the right, the sort of committed swing that begs for a horizontal counter — and the captain took it, and loaded the back leg.

`[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING IMPACT]`

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