Unconquered Tower

THIRTY-EIGHT

The first of the weapons hit the auction as they started out of the village. Roan had spent the entire time in the temporal buildings sketching enchantments on the weapons. He’d managed a single poor-grade enchantment on each of the six weapons, managing to do one weapon every hour he’d been inside of the shack.

The auction numbers were ticking as he put a single weapon at a time up, racing upward but not to the extent his warhammer had. He’d kept the bloodline enhancement enchantment for all of them, figuring it was those with bloodline abilities who had the most money to spend.

Rallying all of the mobs hadn’t taken long, the creatures more similar to flesh and blood robots than anything with a properly functioning brain. Moira had taken the longest, exiting her shack at the last moment with a wooden crate carefully under her arm. They still didn’t have enough explosives and had been forced to buy some, but Roan left that with Darren.

“You’re running another auction?” Taoya asked. The big man wasn’t far ahead of him and had dropped back.

“You can see it?” Roan asked.

“Yeah. Weird we can see it even outside of the market area. Better for the seller that way anyways,” Taoya said. Roan agreed. He’d had to set up for all of the weapons to display one after the other the moment the auction for the last one ended. All of the weapons were strapped to different mobs.

“It is. Why? Did you want one?” Roan asked. He didn’t know how well a regular steel blade would do with holding momentum. He could only imagine the thing blasting apart in a shower of steel splinters the moment he swung them.

“No, but others would later. Maybe the better grade options though,” Taoya said. Roan grunted, irritated that he couldn’t get the enchantments up to common-grade. It would take more time and practice, something that the tower was lacking so far.

“I’m working on it. What about you? I see your gauntlets didn’t last long,” Roan said.

“Need stronger materials to withstand the hits. But that’ll be for later. We need to finish this level and hopeful we can have a moment to breathe on the next level.”

“What do you think the odds of that will be?” Roan laughed bitterly as he said it. From what Hana had told him they were speedrunning the tower and all the time they were supposed to be given to train and grow stronger had been thrown out the window.

“Not every level is going to be like this. What do you think the next level will be?” Taoya asked. Roan could see that he was bored, but even bored he was alert. His eyes constantly swept their surroundings and he looked ready to fight at the drop of a hat.

“A further deterioration of this place or a new more populous area dealing with corruption.”

“Perfect for your bloodline,” Taoya said.

“Yeah.”

“You wonder about that?”

“How could I not? I just happen to be in the right place at the right time to somehow have a bloodline activate? Or be built, or whatever it’s called,” Roan said. He couldn’t stop his thoughts on it, even with how busy they were. It was like a constantly running background program churning out more questions than answers.

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“It is strange. And your family didn’t have a bloodline at all?” Taoya genuinely sounded curious, but Roan couldn’t help the paranoia that rose in him. It was second nature to him, a survival instinct that would never leave him.

“Why does he care? Does he have a point? What else do these scions know that I don’t?” It was the last question that gnawed at him. His family were desert rats and had been for generations. His great-grandfather had walked into the tower and left behind a wife and three children. And since then the rest of them had done the same.

“What is it about this tower that calls to us?” Roan knew why he’d entered. He’d come to die. Or at least he’d thought that. It was hard to piece together what was his thoughts and what had been brought with him by his Passenger. More worryingly were the blank spots in his memory that he only knew about when he accidently stumbled into them.

“You still with me?” Taoya’s question brought him out of his spiraling thoughts. He’d lost track of time as they walked and was pleased to see the first auction had ended and the second was beginning. It was nowhere near as aggressive as the first had been, but was comparative to the second with its leaps in bidding.

“Yeah, and no. None of them had one that I know of. My great-grandfather grew up here and entered the tower right away. Might have been the first or second time it opened. We never left.”

“The world is strange. Congrats on the sale,” Taoya said, pivoting their conversation. For a few minutes they idly talked, nothing important, just the quiet talk of two people learning of each other.

It took about an hour of marching until the environment started to change. When the trees began to become sparse and the wild grasses grew thin and brown all conversation stopped. Ten minutes later the only signs of vegetation were stumps of blackened, bubbling, ooze. They looked like pools of natural forming tar.

The ground looked sunken, devoid of vitality. Patches of the soil had become black sand, shifting on the warm winds. In the distance was a series of rocky hills, barren of life. Holes had been gouged in the sides, black holes that led into their depths.

“Think the plan just went to shit,” Taoya said. There were way too many entrances for them to close. Everywhere they looked was another cave entrance and the hills stretched out across the horizon. Whatever the limits of the size on the level, the hills commanded this entire part.

“Look, over there,” Moira pointed toward the closest thing that looked like a central hill. It was larger than the others and had only a single hole in it, but it was massive, twenty or thirty feet tall and wide with smooth edges. It looked like it had been bored out with modern machinery than whatever they’d seen from the goblins.

But it was what Moira was pointing at that held their attention. Stakes had been hammered into the top of the hill. With his enhanced perception Roan could make out the figures struggling on the stakes, thrashing back and forth under the hot sun.

“That’s Nash.” Roan felt his mouth go dry and a surge of guilt hit him as he looked at the figure next to Nash. It was Deacon.

“That’s right. My little brother is all tied up at the moment.” The voice came from behind them. Roan spun around but froze when he saw Grace with a dozen others standing relaxed. A javelin floated next to Grace, the air warping around the head of it.

“This is Grace?” Darren asked, stepping out from the mass of mobs and approaching the gangster.

“I am Grace. And that’s the little thief,” she said, pointing at Roan.

“Guilty as charged,” Roan said, giving her a one shoulder shrug. Tension built between the two groups, more than a few of Grace’s group touching the weapons at their waists. Taoya began to vibrate with energy, stepping away from Roan to give him room. The tip of Grace’s javelin followed Taoya, turning in the air without her touch.

“Now, no need for all of this hostility. We both have a goal. Why don’t we calm down a bit and figure out a winning solution for all of us?” Grace asked.