The Fractured Tower

“I have new soulprints for you all,” Sorin announced.

The bag thumped onto the table, bulging and obviously heavy. It turned out that Samael’s vault had three types of soulprints in it. There were the mutagenic ones, which Sorin had very little interest in. It was a slow and painful route to eking out just a little more power by overspecializing against a single type of enemy.

Then there were the rare and valuable soulprints. That didn’t necessarily mean they were useful, though they often were. Rarity alone was only worth so much. A difficult to obtain but ultimately useless ability only had value as a collector’s item. Samael had been much more interested in concrete results, so his collection skewed heavily toward some of the most sought after and powerful soulprints available in the red tower. They’d need careful consideration before being distributed.

The final category was what filled the bag. They were the essentials for climbing, things like Heat Resistance and Water Breathing, though in this case, the selection was geared more toward the challenges they’d have to overcome on the next six floors.

“Finally going to fill those holes in our builds, huh?” Rue asked.

“Some of them. You should still leave a bit of room to practice soulprint merging,” Sorin said.

He opened the bag and started sorting the contents into four piles. “You’ve all already got the basic physical enhancements, but Hyper Breath focuses on making sure you get the most out of the air you breathe. We’re going to need it for Floor 20, according to the road map Samael laid out. It’s all flying islands and thin-air environments.

“Trackless Wanderer is for Floor 22, which is a jungle so overgrown and tangled that you can’t get through it without some sort of magic. Cutting your way through doesn’t work. The tower restores the terrain many times faster than normal there.

“Lava Walk is for Floor 19, for obvious reasons. Also Smoke and Ash, which will complement Hyper Breath and Dark Vision to keep you conscious and able to see. We’re also adding Depth Sense to North Finding for navigational purposes. The magma tubes all look very much alike, and it’s easy to get lost.”

“I don’t know if we have room for all of this,” Yoru said. “Even if we take nothing else and continue to push up our ranks, we’ll struggle to fit so much into our build.”

That was why Sorin had stressed learning soulprint merging months ago. Taking all the abilities needed to survive the various environments the tower threw at them would leave them with no room for soulprints that actually increased their strength. It would do no good to survive the terrain if they died to the first monster they saw. Climbers who failed to master merging didn’t tend to make it much further than rank 20 or so.

“I’ll help you merge soulprints together as best I can,” Sorin said. “You’re still going to have to put in the work, and I’m afraid we don’t have the time to practice at your leisure anymore. I need this whole team up on Floor 24 with me. We might be able to skip a floor or two if we focus our efforts on growing on a different floor. Floor 19 takes three new soulprints to navigate, four if you include Hyper Breath.”

Sorin would still have to clear the floors, but he wasn’t worried about himself. He already knew how to merge everything he needed, not to mention having an abundance of extra soulspace from being rank 27. Abusing Liminal Gateway to take his whole team directly to the portal guardian was an option, though it would hurt them in the long run.

But if it saves us time, it’s worth it now. If we farm anima every few floors, they’d only need the soulprints for Floor 22 and 24. They can sort this out properly once the crisis has been dealt with.

One part of him cursed Samael for confronting Sorin on Floor 10. The problem of the Void Wall was almost a decade old, and it would have held for a few more months if Samael had maintained his efforts to keep it in check. Another part of him recognized the abhorrent nature of what that effort took, however, and he didn’t have it in him to blame the brain-washed climbers who were just now waking up from their nightmares and abandoning their posts.

It didn’t take long to put together a map, one which allowed his team to cut the number of soulprints they needed to incorporate into their builds down to a third, but which presented a new issue. Someone still had to climb those floors, and if the team was busy sitting on Floor 18 farming anima while Sorin did 19, 20, and 21, they didn’t have a front-liner to help them.

“Could you get Algial back?” Sorin asked.

Yoru shook his head. “I already tried. Your... falling out—if we can call it that—with my father pretty much eliminated that as a possibility. And hiring a mercenary capable of keeping up with us is implausible.”

“Maybe someone from a different high family,” Nemari suggested.

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Yoru shrugged. “It’s not impossible, but it’s unusual for someone so strong to be unattached to a team, already. Maybe that will change in the future, once the higher floors are accessible again. Today, though...”

“Maybe someone from the Hellions.”

Everyone looked over at Odric, who hadn’t contributed much to the conversation up to that point. He stared back blankly.

Huh. That... is a possibility, technically.

“I’m not sure we could trust anyone from that faction,” Yoru said as delicately as he could. “Certainly, I wouldn’t want to risk my life.”

“You or Rue could do it instead,” Sorin mused. “You’d need to pivot your builds to include more defensive abilities, which would force you to push harder at merging, but it’s technically possible.”

Yoru was probably their best bet in that regard. He was further along than anyone else in mastering the technique, and if Sorin took the time to coach him, they could probably free up enough room for some of the heavy defense and battlefield control soulprints he’d need.

But that was looking at the situation without considering Yoru himself. He’d never been one to take the center of the battle. When they’d first encountered each other, he’d hired an absolutely massive climber named Heldigar to hold that position. Later on, he’d had a full squad of four mercenary climbers with him. After he and Vendis had joined Sorin’s team, Sorin had done the work. And then Algial had filled the spot once Sorin had gotten separated from them.

Yoru could still do it, but even without considering his own disposition, there was another problem. Sorin had noticed that Yoru was a lot more skittish when it came to fighting than he’d been before Vendis had died. His style had shifted even more toward ranged attacks, and he’d augmented that with speed enhancing soulprints that boosted his maneuverability and reaction time.

Rue had a different problem. Her whole build leaned heavily into her essentially being a ghost. She hid behind illusions, misdirection, and raw speed to confuse monsters and leave them vulnerable to devastating attacks. Then she vanished without allowing them a chance at retaliation. It was an effective strategy, though not without its weak points. Monsters with powerful sensory abilities were difficult for her to fight alone, for example.

But taken all together, it didn’t lend itself well to a front-liner whose job was to keep the monsters distracted and controlled so they couldn’t break from the melee to target the more vulnerable members of the team. If anything, Rue’s job was the exact opposite of that.

And this is why we don’t overspecialize, Sorin thought with some annoyance. Despite his best efforts, he was still the only person on their team who could fill every role a climber might need. He knew that wasn’t a fair assessment, that everyone had to start somewhere. They simply hadn’t had the time and the growth to develop the skills and acquire the tools needed for that kind of versatility.

“No?” he asked, correctly reading both their expressions. “Then Odric’s idea probably has the highest chance of success. We already know the Hellions have more people above rank 20 than anyone else. I’m not sure how much the void combat specialists could be helpful in this scenario, but they’ve definitely got more traditionally built enforcers on their roster.”

“How would we even begin to go about validating any of those options?” Yoru asked. “It would be one thing if you were with us, but without you, there’s not enough of a differential in raw power to mitigate the risks of going into the field.”

“Didn’t you hire a bunch of mercenaries who ended up betraying you?” Rue asked. “I’m pretty sure I remember killing them when they went after us.”

“Yes, and I learned my lesson! That’s why I’m so much more hesitant about trusting elite members of the city’s most powerful gang and de facto rulers of the underworld.”

“But at the same time, you don’t have any better ideas.”

“I can try finding someone from another high family. It’s not impossible for that idea to pan out.”

“But you don’t think it’s likely to work. You already said that.”

“It’s still worth the effort to at least check,” Yoru argued.

“We’re on a clock,” Sorin said. “We need to get this figured out and start taking steps forward in the next hour. If it’s that much of a longshot, is it worth wasting the time to even check?”

“I get that, but we also have to think about the future. Rushing now could get us all killed tomorrow. We’re already going so much faster than any of us are comfortable with just trying to keep up with you, Sorin.”

Yoru had a point. Climbing from rank 0 to 18 in less than six months was pretty much unheard of. Even climbers being carried rarely advanced that fast. If nothing else, they slowed down when they started getting into the double-digit ranks. Thanks in large part to the Telpike family’s resources, they were more or less on track for the soulprints and gear they’d needed to acquire, but in terms of practical experience, the team was woefully behind.

Could any of them beat a rank 15, or even a practiced rank 13? Their biggest advantage has been being able to outrank the floors, but now we’re pushing so hard that they’ve lost that, too. It’s really just my presence and the gear that’s carrying them.

That thought forced Sorin to consider whether his team would even be worth anything once they got to Floor 24. They’d be relying almost entirely on the unique gifts the tower had bestowed on them through various Antechambers at that point. The fact that they were more resistant to the void’s erosion of the soulspace and had weapons specifically designed to fight back was a massive advantage, but Sorin wasn’t sure it would make up for the fact that they had so little experience actually using those advantages.

They’d just have to learn as they went. He’d keep them alive long enough to learn how to handle a voidling as safely as possible. In fact, he’d already started doing that, using each chance encounter with one to demonstrate effective tactics to use against enemies that killed just by being in close proximity and were immune to magic. That, more than being an expert climber, was what he needed from them at the moment.

“We can put this decision off for a few days while we work on Floor 18,” Nemari said.

Something flickered through Observer, right at the very edge of Sorin’s range. He took a moment to look closely, then scowled. “I don’t think we can. It looks like my visit to Samael’s base of operations has triggered something. Urd just launched an attack on one of the other splinter factions.”

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