Chapter 772: Not Leaving Yet

Leon had earned enough to leave Floor Six. His ribs objected to getting off the bedroll.

He lay in the small room behind the reservoir chamber and considered the difference. Somewhere in the outer regions, the Tower’s basic exits were waiting. If he reached one, his first guardian victory would count toward a B evaluation. He could go home with a ring full of crystallized essence and begin testing it properly.

That was a respectable result.

It was also less than he wanted.

He’d seen what the higher evaluations could offer. The inheritance from Floor Five had already shown him a weakness in his cultivation research that he might otherwise have discovered inside his own body. Now he could choose among offered rewards, provided he earned the opportunity.

He wanted to see what Floor Six kept for its better challengers.

The record mattered too. A ring of stations was feeding power toward the citadel, and the people who built them had wanted something kept inside. He would have to understand more before approaching the center.

I’m staying, he decided. After I can sit up without making that noise.

He rolled carefully onto his good side and reached for the dressing.

The cut beneath his ribs had closed into a tender pink line. The bone underneath still hurt when he turned. He cleaned the area, then searched through Loriel’s little jars for the right salve.

She’d marked the lids with small drawings as well as labels. A cut. A flame. The rough outline of a bone. Beneath the flame, she’d written a neat warning about where that salve belonged.

Leon smiled at it. She had apparently decided that making the distinction difficult to miss was worth the extra ink.

He selected the jar marked for cuts, dressed the wound again, and placed the others back in their original order. He could almost imagine her inspecting the result, then reaching over to straighten the wrapping he’d just done.

For a moment, he wished she were there.

Then a vibration passed through the floor from the reservoir machinery, reminding him where he was. He tucked the jars away and settled down to recover.

The next few days passed quietly. His ordinary reserve replenished while he meditated, and he checked his holy reserve separately as its own source restored the expenditure. Between sessions, he ate dried meat and the other provisions he had packed. The rice cakes were gone. He found himself missing them despite their dryness.

His armor needed repeated attention. Each day he fed power into the damaged plates along his left side, watching the cracks draw together. The wound stopped troubling him before the ribs did, so he waited rather than mistaking comfortable breathing for full recovery.

While he rested, he examined the fallen guardian.

Its heart was ruined, but three of the larger armor plates remained intact. The lines etched along their seams were remarkably fine. He detached the plates and took two sections of shoulder conduit as well. They held no active charge now; their value lay in the material and the workmanship.

He tried to imagine Bai Heng’s expression when he saw them, then decided the smith who eventually worked on them would probably be more interested in what Leon had done to the rest.

The hammer took some effort to separate from its mounting. It was taller than he was and ugly enough that he briefly considered leaving it.

Then he tapped its curved blade against a broken plate. The edge had survived the fight without a chip.

Ugly is fine.

It went into his ring with the other salvage. He left the chamber’s conduits alone.

By the fourth day of recovery, the ribs no longer protested ordinary movement. He gave them another night’s rest, then tested himself properly. A brisk walk became a run. He lifted a loose pillar fragment, turned with it, and set it down without a twinge. Three short spatial steps brought him across the chamber and back.

He finished with a controlled exertion of strength against the loose stone rather than firing into the walls around the working reservoir.

Nothing pulled beneath the dressing. His armor held. When he checked the wound afterward, it remained closed.

That was enough waiting.

Before leaving, he returned to the record pane and studied the surviving map. He matched the reservoir’s position to the foothills and followed the ring toward a point between two mountain peaks. It lay north and east of his present position, in a notch along the range.

A pass, probably. The map gave him a location, not a description of what survived there.

If the station still existed, it might hold another record. It might also have a guardian, although he had no proof that the Tower’s four targets corresponded neatly to the old network.

He would find out when he got there.

The feeding ground had changed during his recovery. When he reached the crack in the outer wall, most of the southern pools had dimmed. The herds had moved toward brighter vents farther north, taking the predators with them.

Only a few stragglers remained among the trampled mud and discarded bones.

The Stiltreaver he’d frozen across the old channel had finally sagged against one wall. A black-winged scavenger perched on its lowered head, pulling industriously at something beneath the beak.

Leon watched it for a moment, amused that his hurried prop had lasted at all. Then he slipped out through the quieter southern approach, keeping his aura close and an illusion over his passage. He made it beyond the feeding ground without attracting pursuit.

The journey into the mountains took two days.

Old roads appeared beneath the scree, vanished under landslides, and emerged again higher up. Broken watchtowers stood on the ridges. Leon followed the useful stretches and bypassed the rest, stopping only when he needed shelter or a better view of the route.

The wind grew stronger as the valleys narrowed. Concentrated currents swept through the gaps in pulses, carrying grit and loose stone along recurring paths. He watched one strip a slope clean, then crossed after it passed.

On the second afternoon, he reached the notch from the map.

A squat tower stood against the western mountain wall. A wide terrace extended from its eastern face, with a paved ramp climbing from the south. Above the terrace’s northern edge, a projecting spur divided the worst of the descending current. Debris streamed past the exposed ramp, while the ground tucked beneath the spur remained comparatively sheltered.

Thick conduits ran down the tower’s north face and disappeared into the rock. Their seams glowed faintly.

Leon lay along a ridge opposite the station, studying the dark heap on its roof. Branches, perhaps, though some pieces looked too large.

A shadow crossed the terrace.

He looked up. An enormous slate-blue bird banked over the tower, its wings catching the current without effort.

It completed half a circle before turning its head toward the ridge.

Toward him.