The Fractured Tower

The first upgrade was something Sorin had been carrying around for weeks. It hadn’t been important enough to include in his build because it was of limited usefulness when he was working with his team. The D-rank soulprint was called Shadow Illusion, and he’d been hanging onto it since all the way back on Floor 3.

Now that he was climbing solo, a stealth soulprint that aided him in setting up ambushes or avoiding fights altogether was something he could use. The only reason he hadn’t absorbed it four days ago was that having the empty soulspace to free cast C-rank soulprints was more important. Thanks to the lightning elementals, now he could do both.

He’d also found Camouflage from a leopard that had tried to eviscerate him a few hours before the rains had started, which, when merged with Shadow Illusion, would remove the soulprint’s primary weakness: needing shadows to hide in.

Next was an eyeball he’d scooped out of a gold-feather eagle on his third day. Telescopic Vision was only E-rank, but it would pair well with the visual soulprint he already had. A knotback warthog had donated a tusk with Wild Pierce bound to it, and though he’d initially planned to sell it, he was now in possession of a jar of electrically charged dirt, courtesy of a ball lightning elemental.

That dirt had the Lightning Flash soulprint, which made for the perfect pairing. Sorin absorbed both soulprints one after another, his mind already picturing which parts he’d keep and what he’d discard when he formed a new C-rank out of them.

There were three other soulprints he planned to use. The first was Multitask, which would help with his coordination in executing multiple attacks at the same time. He’d acquired it from a bizarre looking monster he’d never seen before and didn’t have a name for. It was something vaguely humanoid, except with six limbs on an elongated torso and a reptilian face.

The second was Kinetic Shift, gained from a pack of rodents that swam through the ground and attacked like a school of piranha. His plan was to merge it with Speed Burst to gain far greater control of his movements during intervals of enhanced speed.

The final one was the one he most needed, given his overall exhaustion. It was a simple stamina increaser called Oxen’s Breath—ironically obtained from an ironhorn buffalo—and not something he’d normally consider, but it was a compromise forced on him by the situation. He’d managed to avoid tearing any soulprints out of his soulspace so far, but this one was probably going to get discarded once he finished the trial.

It took him less than a minute to absorb all eight soulprints. That was the easy part. Diving into his soulspace to merge them into what he wanted was where things got dangerous. He wouldn’t be able to see, hear, or feel anything while he was in there. If a monster started chewing on him, he’d never know about it.

The first soulspace dive was to merge Shadow Illusion and Camouflage into Stealth Phase, which made him all but invisible to both mundane senses and extrasensory abilities that relied on sight. Moving weakened the effect but didn’t break it.

Telescopic Vision and Clear Eyes fit together seamlessly, forming Keen Sight. He lost a bit of max viewing distance, but it was worth it to regain the space the soulprint had taken up. Wild Pierce and Lightning Flash weren’t as clean a merger, but they formed his second C-rank: Chain Bolt. A lunging attack that sparked bolts of lightning to leap from one target to the next over moderate distance was excellent for clearing out packs that didn’t conveniently clump up.

Finally, Kinetic Shift and Speed Burst combined into Lesser Aspect of Grace. Sorin couldn’t help but grin when he saw that one. It was still only D-rank, but the full B-rank Aspect of Grace had been a staple part of his original build in his home tower. Getting this version felt like recovering a lost piece of his identity.

Between each merger, he came back out of his soulspace and took a minute to look around with Living Earth, mostly just to make sure there were no monsters nearby. That proved to be a prudent decision, because after his second merger, he found a forty-foot-long snake of some kind attempting to crack the stone shell he’d built by coiling around it and squeezing. It only took a few moments to kill the monster, but it did result in him needing to relocate before he could finish his work.

When he was done, he had a significantly more robust build. Oxen’s Breath, Pressure Resistance, Water Breathing, North Homing, and Limited Telepathic Bond were all E-rank soulprints. Force Weaver and Chain Bolt were C-rank, and everything else was D. There were actually quite a few of them now—Still Winter, Warrior’s Vigilance, Blood of the Mountain, Counter Heal, Thermal Insulation, Iron Bulwark, Blade Work, Living Earth, Horizon Watcher, and his new Multitask, Stealth Phase, Keen Sight, and Lesser Aspect of Grace.

All of that, and I still have enough empty space to free cast C-rank soulprints. I’m starting to feel more like my old self again.

By the time he emerged from his underground bunker, the rain had let up completely. What few remaining lightning elementals had dispersed, perhaps returned to the already-thinning clouds overhead. That also heralded the return of the local monster population, which included a trio of small birds already swooping down on the back of his head before he was even fully out of the ground.

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The instant they entered the radius of Force Weaver’s range, they were diced into pieces. Sorin took a moment to examine the remains, but there were no soulprints to be had. Shrugging, he started walking again. There was a jutting rock formation a few miles away that had a nice crevice on one side. It was cool and hid him from the majority of the monsters that might attack, leaving only a single angle of approach. He’d already used it to catch a quick nap twice, and he was hoping to do it again.

* * *

Four days turned into two weeks, and the monsters never stopped coming. By the end, Sorin was operating almost completely on instinct. He could barely even remember the second week beyond the blur of motion, the tangy stink of freshly spilled monster blood, and the steady flow of anima from each kill.

No matter how many he killed, no matter what ways he tried to hide, more monsters kept finding him. Rank 19 became rank 20 became rank 23, and Sorin soon reached the point where he couldn’t even tell if the monsters were getting stronger or if he was simply growing too weak to fight effectively. Even pushing Warrior’s Vigilance and Blood of the Mountain up to C-rank wasn’t enough to keep him upright anymore.

And then, finally, a miracle happened. Clouds darkened the sky once more, and the monsters retreated, disappearing into their holes or perhaps vanishing into the void, for all Sorin cared. Though one part of him balked at the wasted opportunity—lightning elementals were worth far more anima than anything else he’d found—he couldn’t push himself any further. He returned to his favorite napping rock with Stealth Phase active the whole way and pushed up a thin screen of stone to hide himself.

Sleep was more an act of letting go than anything else. For so long, he’d kept going on nothing but willpower. Once he finally relented, exhaustion claimed him. Sorin’s only conscious thought at the end was an acknowledgement of vulnerability, that he might never open his eyes again. It wasn’t enough to spur him back toward wakefulness.

He didn’t know how many hours had passed when he finally opened his eyes again. He was more concerned by the wyrm that had his leg between its jaws. Curved needle-like teeth sunk deep into the meat, ensuring that no matter how Sorin might thrash, he would only tear himself further. The pain of the bite paled in comparison to the venom pumping into his leg, already burning as it spread out.

Sorin recognized the monster. He’d killed a hundred of them already, maybe more. Typically, they hunted in packs, which made Still Winter ideal for slowing them down so that simple swordplay could dispatch them. They generally only got to eight feet in length, ten at most, and they spent more time digging through the earth in search of small prey than they did on the surface.

This one had come up under his wall of stone, breaking through the thin crust Sorin had formed to protect himself and give him a moment’s warning. All of them had terrakinesis of varying strengths, and only two feet of its body were even visible, the rest being hidden in the ground.

If it retreated, it would likely rip his leg off in the process. It had been less than two seconds since the pain of the bite had woken Sorin, but already his mind was dissecting the situation and determining the best course of action. Still Winter wouldn’t work here. He needed Living Earth to hold it in place, then Force Weaver’s precision to kill it without hurting himself in the process.

Multitask proved its worth. Both soulprints activated at the same time, locking the wyrm down and decapitating it in an instant. The stump of its body sticking out of the ground flailed around, squirting blood everywhere, but the head didn’t so much as twitch.

Still alive, Sorin noted, looking into its eyes. That wasn’t uncommon for wyrms. The decapitation was just to prevent it from moving. Now its only options were to relax its jaw and release him, or to bite down harder. It wasn’t difficult to guess which action it’d take.

It was too late for Iron Bulwark to save him from the bite, but not too late to keep the teeth from sinking in deeper. Sorin could feel the monster scraping bone as it tried to crunch through the limb entirely.

A second application of Force Weaver took the top of its skull off. Brain matter splattered against the blood-covered stone, and that finally did the trick. All said and done, Sorin had been awake for five seconds before he’d made his first kill.

Working with a more delicate and detailed application of Force Weaver, he slowly separated the jaws and extracted his leg from the wyrm’s teeth. At the same time, he free cast a few Antivenom spells that were general purpose enough to neutralize wyrm toxin. Once he got rid of the wyrm itself, he free cast Restoration to swiftly regrow the leg muscle the wyrm had shredded and repair the bone.

Probably used a third of my anima reservoir in my first minute of being awake, but, honestly, worth it. I feel amazing.

He couldn’t take long to recover. There were other wyrms not far away, for one thing, and the smell of the corpse would draw in scavengers that didn’t mind a fight if it came down to it. Besides, looking at the mess, the idea of sitting there wasn’t appealing anyway. If there was ever a time to be thankful for the tower cleaning up the bodies, it was now.

Sorin’s nap spot would be ready for use the next time he needed it, but only if he left it long enough for the tower to do its thing. He took down the wall he’d formed to hide himself and stepped back out into the light. Beneath his feet, the rest of the wyrm pack felt the vibrations of his movements, and as one, they closed in on him.

Back to the grind, he thought happily. I should see about getting something good for strength and endurance. Some sort of long-range scouting ability wouldn’t hurt either. I do want to get out of here someday. Hmmm... What sort of monster here has that?

Sorin let Still Winter bloom around him, chilling the air, slowing the monsters, and dampening their own anima-powered abilities. The wyrms erupted out of the dirt anyway, undeterred, and he got to work killing them one after another while he considered how best to prepare for the guardian.

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