Unconquered Tower

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Strip?” Roan asked, looking between the four faces staring at him. Tyler looked wired, her body tense, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Darren was wary, but he was always wary. The slight sheen of sweat that was on his forehead could be nerves or it could be stress from something, like activating his bloodline. Taoya and Moira looked relaxed, unworried.

“You battled the corruption alone. We just need to make sure.” Tyler spoke in clipped sentences.

“And I have a purification bloodline. I don’t think the corruption could take root,” Roan said.

“Stay calm. Tyler is a walking weapon of mass destruction. If they move, kill her first to eliminate AOE attacks, then Taoya before he can build up momentum. Moira and Darren last.” It was clinical the way he looked over his allies and diagnosed their weaknesses, their strengths, and the best way for him to survive if they turned on him.

“Roan, your eyes have changed colors and we’re worried you have been corrupted. Is there anyway you can prove that you’re not?” Moira explained patiently.

“Ohh. Stripping to see if I have any weird tumors.” Roan wasn’t self-conscious of nudity, he’d had Moira’s hands shoved into his gut at least once already. The showers in the barracks hadn’t been very private either.

“Yes. Or any reason why your eyes have changed colors?” Moira reminded him.

“What’s the danger in telling them the truth? You finished your second temper somehow. I doubt they care that much that I wasn't here when Harris and the others died. Not in comparison to being corrupted.” Roan didn’t want to unlace all the straps on his newfound armor.

“I purified the dragon core after we killed it and absorbed it. No idea how I did it or that my eyes changed color. My body tempering skill went up one.”

“Told you,” Moira said, rolling her eyes and walking away. Darren squinted at him, head turning slightly before his face relaxed and he shook his head.

“Alright, good enough for me. How long until we’re ready to move to the east?” Darren asked, switching subjects instantly. Only Tyler looked still prepared to fight, glancing back and forth between everyone before sighing, shoulders slumping as she nodded along.

“Sorry, Roan. But we had to be sure.”

“No, no, I get it. We might need to make protocols for this in the future though. I think the corruption is here to stay,” Roan said. He was irritated, but they’d been fairly lighthanded comparatively. He had to wonder how he would have reacted to a possible corruption case infiltrating their number.

“If I didn’t have my bloodline it would have likely been a more bloody confrontation.”

“Village is stripped down to the bolts. I’ve been dividing the gear into useful, combat useful, and to be sold,” Roan explained, pointing at the three mounds.

“How much are we getting from the market?” Darren asked. How he managed to smoothly switch from being ready to kill him, to business, was honestly impressive.

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“Shit. You know the market doesn’t pay good rates,” Roan said. The pile of gear they could sell was mostly inferior-grade with poor-grade mixed in as well. Anything higher had been snagged by someone and stuffed into a pack.

“Issue we’re having is carrying space. Spatial rings and packs are expensive and don’t hold much gear. We can always pack it out, we’re all plenty strong enough, but I don’t particularly want to fight with a few hundred pounds on my back,” Roan finished. He had a small cache of common-grade weapons he’d pulled to the side, all of them waiting for him to enchant them.

“The support guild can always carry stuff,” Tyler said dismissively. She wasn’t transitioning from ready to fight to safety as well as Darren.

“Sure, I can ask. But they’ll likely want payment of some sort,” Roan said. He’d already secured the aid of two of them by offering them enchanted weapons he’d make when he took his turn in the temporal huts. He wanted to get all the weapons enchanted if he could. Having the mobs helping him was speeding up his timeline significantly.

“How many are coming with us?” Darren asked, staying on topic. Taoya had flopped to the ground, closing his eyes and either sleeping or finding a deep meditative state. One that involved snoring.

Moira was shuffling through the piles of gear, her eyes alert for anything that she’d like. Roan had already cleared those piles out, but she might have luck finding something that he had passed over.

“None of the supports. Asked around the surviving fighters and none of them seemed too interested. Whatever hit you guys last night has them in a funk. There’s two-hundred sixty mobs to go with us.” Roan couldn’t believe there had been a thousand of the little guys, but once he had become the Sheriff he had an instinctive knowledge of their numbers.

“That’s quite a few of them. They're not very strong outside of their defensive positions though,” Darren mused, rubbing his jaw.

“How much explosives do we have left? Or can make?” Roan asked.

“Why? It’s so volatile it’d be a risk transporting it that far into a combat situation,” Moira asked.

“These guys are small and quick,” Roan pointed out. Silence met him and he found everyone staring at him.

“What?” Roan asked. Tyler snorted and shook her head in amusement while Darren blinked rapidly.

“We were told they live in caves, right? We send these guys down to the bottom strapped with explosives. Detonate when they hit the bottom, over and over again. Drive them up and out of the caves,” Roan said, explaining the plan he’d been toying with.

“Then what? We fight them out in the open where we can be surrounded?” Darren asked, brows scrunched.

“No, they are forced to run through an enhanced cloud of acid, or poison.” Roan pointed at Tyler who was looking interested in the idea.

“They fight their way through that and we have maybe twenty or thirty of these guys left and they crossbow anything that gets through,” Roan said.

“And if there’s multiple entrances?”

“We blow them up,” Roan said. Collapsing a series of cave entrances didn’t sound difficult to him.

“I don’t know if I can make that much in the time we need,” Moira hedged.

“You all just had a massive defense, right? I don’t see any expensive weapons or skills. We can buy more explosives. It’d be worth it if we can get our clear rate to a hundred percent,” Roan argued. He almost had them, he could see them wavering, ready to agree with his idea.

“Yeah, but someone already tried blowing them up. What if they’re still there?” Taoya cut in without opening his eyes.

“That is a problem. But, I think we should proceed with my idea and pivot if it doesn’t work. Afterall, we’ll have over two hundred crossbowman to hold a rearguard for us if it goes bad and we need to retreat,” Roan said.

“Alright. Let’s do this. I want to move out in an hour. That’ll give us about eight hours before nightfall. If we can’t figure it out when we show up, we retreat, agreed?” Darren said. Everyone nodded or voiced their approval. Roan was already moving with his newfound weapons to the temporal chambers. If he wanted to boost his earnings on this floor, he needed weapons to auction while they were walking.