The Fractured Tower

Sorin found himself unexpectedly missing Lorvaine, and not for any personal attachment he felt toward the woman. She’d simply had a phenomenal selection of soulprints, far better than anyone else who was selling at the portal hub now. Sadly, he hadn’t caught up to her on Floor 4 like he’d been hoping, and his plans to obtain sponsorship from Yoru’s family also seemed to have fallen through, at least for the moment.

That left him browsing a subpar selection that had nothing of interest. Instead of buying a few upgrades, he unloaded the more worthless soulprints he’d picked up on Floor 4, keeping only the healing soulprint for Nemari or Rue to add to their build if they couldn’t find anything better.

It wasn’t that there were no tracking soulprints available. It was that Sorin had reached the point in his growth where he wanted to focus primarily on passive effects that would always be active and a minimal drain on his anima. Situationally useful abilities or spells could be replicated as needed, and he’d have to come across something rare or with fantastic synergy to consider adding it to his soulspace now.

There was nothing that fit his admittedly strict criteria available at the portal hub on Floor 3. He’d specifically been looking for visual augmentations, especially ones that he could mix in with Clear Eyes to enhance his physical sight even further, but since he’d had no luck, he’d settled for climbing up to where the portal waited and sitting there, staring out at the desert while free casting a long-distance visual boost spell.

He'd regained enough extra anima to free-cast D-ranked abilities again, which helped with scouring the sands for any sign of his companions, but unfortunately didn’t give him what he needed to divine their location. Oh, there were plenty of signs of climbers out there. More than once, he spotted a group trudging through the desert heading one way or another, and one time he even spied on an active battle between three climbers and a living, mobile cactus.

But none of those people were the ones he was looking for. Worse, he was in a very conspicuous spot being so close to the portal hub, albeit a quarter mile up the slope. Plenty of climbers had noticed him sitting up there, so he wasn’t all that surprised when a group of them started heading his way.

I suppose this is another way to go about finding them. I’m not going to hold back this time, though. I already caused myself enough problems being merciful.

There were six of them, all members of Nemari’s family or associated with them in some way. It was possible there were a few mercenaries in the mix, but the similar hair colors and noses made Sorin doubt it. Nemari’s uncle was in the middle of the group, distinctive enough that even without vision augmentation soulprints running, Sorin would have recognized him.

The party halted about fifty feet from Sorin, seemingly hesitant to approach much closer. “You’re the one who attacked us,” the uncle finally said.

“Rescuing a member of my team, yes,” Sorin agreed.

“An outsider who had no business interfering with an internal family matter,” the uncle growled back immediately.

“All things considered, it seemed relevant to my interests. Regardless, what are you going to do about it?”

Nemari’s family started spreading out and circling around him, like they were intent on preventing him from fleeing. Sorin almost had to laugh, not just at the idea that he needed to run, but that if he’d actually wanted to, there was any way they could have stopped him. The gaps were too wide, and they hadn’t managed to actually get behind him, meaning he could still go up the mountain.

Of course, he wasn’t running. These jackasses are the whole reason I’m sitting here looking out into the desert instead of meeting my team on a preestablished schedule.

“You know Samael wants you, don’t you?” Nemari’s uncle taunted.

“Debatable. I’d say his priorities have shifted after our last conversation.”

Something nasty twisted across the man’s features. “Well, we’ll just let him decide, why don’t we? I bet I can get a new hand for bringing you in—maybe a leg, too.”

“I took it easy on you last time because I thought Nemari might give a shit if you were still breathing at the end,” Sorin said. “I’m not going to do that again. Now, you can all pretend like you were heading for that portal the whole time and get the hell out of here, or I can take care of you.”

“You? Please, you’re rank 4,” one of the closer men said with a mocking laugh.

“Shut it,” the uncle snapped at him. “He wasn’t even rank 3 when he fought us last time.”

Nervous, huh? Good. You should be. Now, do the smart thing and tuck your tail between your legs, Sorin thought coldly. But he knew it wouldn’t go down like that. Intimidation only worked when the other party thought they could lose, and this group of idiots hadn’t encountered that notion yet.

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“Last chance to walk away,” Sorin said as the ring of men closed to within ten feet of him. They’d finally managed to circle the back half of the slope, which admittedly would have made it more difficult to run.

“Don’t kill him,” the uncle ordered. “But he doesn’t need to be conscious when we take him through the portal.”

Still Winter unfolded around Sorin, easily encompassing every one of the aggressors. Initial sputterings of summoned flames died out on the spot, and the two men who’d invested heavily enough in physical augmentation to be confident leaping at him seemed to hang in the air for a second.

Sorin’s sword beheaded the closer one as he sped past the man. By the time the body hit the ground, he’d reached his target: a pasty mage with his hair piled up and flopped over to one side, revealing that he’d shaved the other half of his scalp. He drove the blade deep into the foppish man’s chest, right through the struggling orb of fire that couldn’t seem to pull in enough air to grow.

Everything seemed to freeze in place for a second as the others realized that two of their family members were dead. Sorin triggered Speed Burst again and gutted the next closest enemy, then ended it behind a fourth man. The sword eagerly bit into the man’s kidneys as Sorin stabbed him from behind before disappearing again.

The fifth man to get hit was the other leaping brawler, and he was the first to put up even a shred of defense. He landed, brought both arms up in front of him, and activated a pulsing shield of heat that pushed back on Still Winter. It was strong enough that he started moving at normal speed again, which was still pathetically slow compared to Sorin’s own enhanced attacks.

He twisted with the attack and took Sorin’s charging thrust in the shoulder. It still hit hard enough to slam the man to the ground, and before he could begin to retaliate, Sorin’s heel came down on his face. The man was left in the dirt, wheezing through a crushed nose and with fragments of teeth stuck in the back of his throat.

“That just leaves you,” Sorin told the peg-legged uncle. “Rank 7. Strongest of this group, right? Presumably the strongest in your whole family, not that it’s saying much compared to how many independent climbers I’ve met just in the last month who’ve surpassed you.”

The old man just stood there, slack-jawed, as his nephews—presumably—died around him. It was only when Sorin came to a stop right in front of him, holding a sword red and slick with the blood of his family, that he finally jolted out of his shock and did something.

Flames rippled out of his body, an aura of heat that simmered so powerfully Still Winter was pushed back a few feet in every direction. Similar to the shield the last man had summoned, but far more powerful, it served as both offense and defense. The uncle threw himself on Sorin, his arms spread wide as if to ensure that no matter which way Sorin dodged, he’d be unable to escape.

Of course, Sorin wasn’t looking to escape. He didn’t even try to dodge. He just brought his blade up in a scything motion and unleashed a wave of fine-edged force, overcharged with anima to compensate for the soulprint’s low rank, that cleanly bisected its target.

“I’m getting sloppy,” he muttered. Two of the attackers were still alive, mostly thanks to their last-second twitches turning immediately fatal wounds into imminently fatal ones. Still, Sorin wasn’t interested in prolonging their suffering.

He killed them with a single strike each, then sighed and started searching them for anything useful. There was a small plethora of rings, bracelets, and charms that were enchanted, all with some sort of fire resistance, that every single one of them had. He also found an enchanted hat, a coat that he’d ruined by stabbing through it, and a single enchanted belt that seemed to grant a minor strength boost.

Remarkably poor for their ranks, Sorin mused. I’d bet there’s a family armory that they borrow equipment from when they go climbing as a way of pooling their resources so they can afford better support.

The bodies searched and looted, Sorin hauled them one by one and tossed them over the side into the portal hub’s trade center. People showed up to stare, but no one climbed up to do anything to stop Sorin, and a few minutes later, after free casting a water manipulation spell to clean the blood off him, he resumed his perch.

With any luck, word would spread quickly enough that the Sildfalls who’d taken over the hub were dead. The next time Sorin’s team came by to check, they’d realize it was safe for them to make their way to the portal, and he’d see them soon enough. Their schedule called for them to check the hub every other day past the meeting day, which meant he either needed to establish another waypoint for his liminal path or stick close to the hub when he went to hunt monsters.

Not seeing much harm in the first option now that he was reasonably sure Samael wasn’t going to show up, he carved the sign into a stone wall a little ways off the trail where it was unlikely to be spotted. Then he stepped through and strode across the newly created trail to exit back out in the middle of Floor 4.

The lack of heat felt good for all of five minutes before the persistent dampness started to set in again. Thermal Insulation helped keep him from feeling cold, but that didn’t make his clothes being constantly soaked any more pleasant.

As soon as we get everyone back together, I am getting off this damn floor, he vowed. Ideally, that would include Yoru and Vendis as well, since he was still hoping to forge a working relationship with that family, but if they didn’t leave Floor 0 anytime soon, he wasn’t sure how feasible that was.

He’d already set his plans back enough as it was. If it had just been him, he’d have been on Floor 5 a week ago. Yoru was still welcome to tag along, for the moment, but he’d have to find his own way up to Floor 5 to catch up if he didn’t show his face soon. Sorin was done with delays.

In the meantime, reaching rank 9 wouldn’t hurt. It was certainly a better use for his time than sitting on that mountain in the middle of the desert, though he’d need to go back and check to see if his execution of Nemari’s troublesome family members had drawn the wrong sort of attention. If so, he’d clean up that mess, too.

I’m getting real tired of cleaning up messes, though. This should have been a simple process. Join a team, kill some monsters, get stronger. Repeat. It feels like I’ve spent half my time dealing with other climbers and tower fuckery instead. Now there’s this whole void wall thing, and won’t that be fun to deal with?

For a few hours, at least, he could push all that aside and just focus on climbing. He found monsters. Sometimes monsters found him. They fought, and inevitably, he was the victor. It was a simple, uncomplicated chore, but one he found some measure of peace in.