Book 3, Chapter 49

Everything that happened at the end of Floor 22 overshadowed the Antechamber rewards. They’d claimed them, stuffed them into storage, and then promptly ignored them to focus on keeping Odric alive. And that was fine by Nemari. She had no issues with the priority order.

But that was yesterday. Today, Odric was alive, and, if not in good health, at least he was in no danger of expiring if they didn’t keep an eye on him every second. Sorin still hadn’t returned from his exploration mission, which meant there were a few hours of free time to kill while they waited for him to get back.

The idea that he might never return barely entered her mind. If it had been anyone else, sure, she might have worried. With Sorin, she found herself wholly believing in his abilities. Back in the early days, things had been different. He’d had the experience and the knowledge, but lacked the leverage to use them to their full advantage. Now he had that, too.

He’s not infallible, she reminded herself. A single glance at Odric was enough to confirm that fact. He made mistakes, just like anyone else, but even still, there wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind that he’d come back safely.

In the meantime, she pulled out a pair of gloves and an earring made of blue-gold wrapped around a polished chunk of ruby. The metal was a deep, vibrant ocean blue like nothing Nemari had ever seen, but the ruby was the real draw. Its facets, tiny though they were, were almost hypnotic. Somehow, the gold and the gem worked in tandem to forge a blue light inside the ruby itself.

Sorin had taken one look at it and informed her that she needed to prioritize merging Water Bond with one of her fire-based soulprints if she wanted to get the maximum value from the earring. It would greatly enhance her control over either element, but combining them together was where its real power could be unleashed.

To that end, he’d given her his own reward. The gloves helped manipulate anima, both when channeling it to create a spell, and internally in her own soulspace. In practice, that allowed the wearer to free cast more easily, which was a boon the likes of which she’d never heard of.

And he didn’t even care. Said he didn’t need them and tossed them into my lap like they were worthless junk.

She’d played with the gloves for a few minutes yesterday, just to test them out, and had quickly come to the conclusion that they were literally priceless. Yoru had backed up that appraisal and informed her that he would appreciate a turn with them when she was done. As a learning tool, they were invaluable.

Rue disagreed, of course. She understood the practical value of free casting and soulprint merging—how could she not after climbing so many floors with Sorin—but in her mind, there was still low-hanging fruit to be picked in the form of rank ups. There was some truth to that; they were barely maintaining parity with the floor they were climbing, and their mosaic gave them the ability to exceed that limit.

They were not using that advantage to its fullest, and Rue wanted to spend her time farming anima rather than practice complex and esoteric techniques that, in her own words, she sucked at. There was something to be said for Rue’s strategy, too. Enough raw power could trump technique, but Nemari also understood the reasoning behind mastering soulprint merging.

Against an enemy that would literally steal the anima out of their soulspaces, technique was going to matter far more than flashy, explosive magic. It was a war of attrition, and the more they had, the more the void could take from them. Fortunately, Rue’s objections were mostly to time spent practicing merging soulprints, not to training her skills in a fight. In that regard, she was perfectly happy to keep improving.

That’s probably why the tower gave her that mirror, Nemari thought with a wry smile.

Even Sorin had been surprised at the complexity of the enchantment it contained. Rue was sleeping with it on her chest right now, and if was working the way they thought it did, she was in her own little, compartmentalized dream world, one provided for her by the tower itself. She would gain no anima from the monsters she fought there, but the wounds they delivered were no more real than the dream itself.

That kind of risk-free practice was invaluable, but equally so was the fact that it gave her a window of efficiency by allowing her to use the time she normally spent sleeping to train. Sorin suspected she wouldn’t gain the benefits of a true night’s rest while employing the mirror, but it was still a boon.

Yoru hadn’t spoken of his own reward. It was some sort of pocket watch, she thought, and that was all Nemari knew about it. It had disappeared the moment he’d laid his hand on it, presumably into his dimensional storage, and she hadn’t seen it again since.

Azlo, on the other hand, had been more than happy to show off the ring he’d received. It unfolded all the way down his arm, almost seeming to grow as layers of some sort of black metal slid out of nowhere to form a sharply ridged protective sleeve. There were repair, durability, and weight enchantments all woven into it in addition to the spatial properties. All it really did was make him better at taking hits, but since that was all he wanted to do anyway, he was extremely excited about it.

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Odric’s reward was a plain, boring, gray rock small enough to fit in his hand. At first, Nemari had assumed it was some sort of soulprint, but that wasn’t the case. It did something, obviously. It had to. But no one could figure out what, not even Odric himself. The hope was that he could experiment with it once he was back on his feet.

With the earring in her left ear and the gloves on her hand, Nemari dove into her soulspace to practice manipulating the threads of anima that formed her spells. The earring was phenomenal for holding together patterns related to fire or water magic, making the task so easy she almost didn’t need to do more than think it for it to happen. With the gloves enhancing her overall control on top of that, she was able to go through her full repertoire in just minutes.

Practicing spells she didn’t have soulprints for was a lot more difficult, but relative to just a few days ago, it was still easy work. And while free casting wasn’t the same thing as merging soulprints, the skill had enough overlap that she was excited to try her hand at crafting something new out of Water Bond and an as-of-yet undecided fire soulprint.

Flame Shaper, maybe? The control aspects would fit nicely together. On the other hand, Conflagration is C-rank and far more powerful. Keeping it from spreading where I don’t want it to go is the hardest part, and Water Bond could definitely help with that.

Her fear was that she’d lose too much of the ‘water’ part of the soulprint if she took all the control out of it and gave it to a flame ability. What she wanted wasn’t to salvage a fraction of Water Bond but to truly merge it into something better than its component pieces. In that regard, Flame Shaper was the better choice despite being weaker.

Nothing was happening today, though. The morning was just for practice, and Nemari frequently emerged from her soulspace to ensure everything was fine in the house. Sorin claimed to have made a C-rank soulprint that allowed him to watch the world around him from his soulspace, but when he tried to explain what had gone into it, she’d been unable to follow at all. It would be a long time before she was at that level of proficiency.

Yoru and Azlo showed up before Rue got out of bed. Azlo had his own place on Floor 0 that he shared with his brother, but Yoru normally stayed with the team. Wherever he’d gone, he hadn’t let anybody know. Judging by the smell of him and the redness around his eyes, he hadn’t slept and had likely spent the night in a bar or worse.

One of the benefits of superhuman stamina was that they could do things like that without it affecting their ability to function, so Nemari refrained from commenting. Whatever he was working his way through, he’d ask if he wanted help. Until then, it was his business.

Sorin appeared next, walking out of thin air like he always did and shedding what had to be ten pounds of snow off him in the process. He raked a hand through his hair to brush off even more, then gave the mess on the floor a slightly guilty look.

“Good news and bad news,” he announced. “I found the polar wyrms. Well, I’m pretty sure I did. They look kind of like the ones I’m familiar with, only a lot smaller and less territorial. Bad news is I killed about a hundred of them already, and there was no Burning Light soulprint. So either I’ve got the wrong monster or collecting this one is going to be a chore.”

“What’s the plan, then?” Azlo asked. “We can’t just sit here doing nothing, right? But at the same time, we kind of need our healer.”

“There’s no good solution,” Sorin told him bluntly. “The best we can do is send you back to hunt rot shamblers. Nemari and Yoru know some weak healing magic, but your strategy should be to not get hurt in the first place. I’ll keep working the polar wyrms as soon as I can get confirmation that I’m killing the right thing, and hopefully this will be a temporary measure for a day or two.”

Nemari gestured toward the beds. “What about Odric in the meantime? Leaving him here unsupervised seems like asking for trouble.”

“I actually hired Heldigar to watch over him,” Sorin told her.

She blinked in surprise. When did that happen?

“You did?” Azlo asked. “When did that happen?”

A small huff of laughter escaped Nemari’s lips. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she explained when he looked over at her.

“Yesterday while we were eating,” Sorin said. “It’s only for a few days, but that should be long enough if we’re lucky. And Heldigar has a good reputation, so I trust him not to screw us over.”

The giant of a man wasn’t nearly strong enough to face the big threats, but Nemari still felt better knowing he’d be there to scare off any two-bit burglars. A year ago, they’d all been safe in anonymity, but now they were known entities, and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone would take advantage of Odric’s weakened state to claim an easy kill.

“Speaking of, he should be here already,” Sorin muttered. He went quiet for a few seconds, probably peering through walls and down streets with that invasively powerful sensory soulprint he’d made, then nodded to himself. “Give him another five minutes. He’s on his way.”

They got Rue up and brought her up to speed while they waited. She wasn’t thrilled about leaving her brother with such a low rank guard—she didn’t seem to notice the irony of calling someone at rank 9 weak—but she kept her grumbling to its typical level. Odric also woke up long enough to be filled in, gave them a single nod, and then closed his eyes again.

Once Heldigar had arrived, they got everything ready and followed Sorin through Liminal Gateway. He deposited them at the edge of the jungle, told them he’d be back to check on them in a few hours, and disappeared to leave the team to their work.

“Closest one is that way,” Rue said, pointing with her sword.

“I see it,” Azlo confirmed. “Anything else nearby likely to interrupt?”

“Not if we go kill it right now.”

And so they did exactly that.