Ch 208 – Floor Invader
"You just had to say something," Bonehead said in the most deadpan tone he could manage as all three boys slowly turned their heads to stare directly at Valorie with varying degrees of exasperation and accusation.
"That was going to happen anyway, regardless of what I said," Valorie brushed off their pointed stares, turning around to face the tunnel where the screaming was echoing from rather than continuing to look at the three behind her who were boring metaphorical holes into the back of her head with their gazes.
"—Help us!—"
"—AHHH!—"
"—Stone Worms!—"
Those were just a few of the many desperate shouts and terrified screams echoing from the tunnel entrance, all in English, meaning they had come from fellow climbers also trying to clear Floor Twelve.
"It doesn't matter if we try to help them or not," Valorie said with a casual shrug as she turned back around to face the three boys while reaching beneath her quiver to grasp onto something that had been secured there.
After unlatching it, Valorie pulled out a small spool of thread that was the size of a dagger in length, which had both Deacon and Bonehead confused, as they had not noticed it had been on her person until now.
Identifying the object informed the both of them of just what gave Valorie her confidence.
Item Name: Ariadne's Thread
Type: Tool – Navigation
Rarity: Artifact
Effect: Can be tied to a fixed location. When activated, the thread laid out by the user illuminates, clearly marking the path taken.
Description: A simple spool of dark thread that never seems to run out. The user may secure one end to a location, and upon tethering, the spool will begin to unravel as the user moves. Upon activation, the length of thread left behind emits a steady glow, making the path easy to follow even in darkness or complex terrain.
As Valorie infused a small amount of mana into the spool, the dark thread wound around it began to shimmer, its color shifting until it glowed with a steady golden light.
The nearly invisible strand —something that mildly irritated him, as it was yet another detail he had failed to notice during their entire descent —suddenly became visible as it transformed into the same glowing gold.
It then began to rise through the air, tracing the exact path Valorie had taken on her way down.
The illuminated thread climbed up over a hundred meters before making a sharp left turn and disappearing into the tunnel that Leon had destroyed on Deacon's orders, which had caused all four of them to fall down to this lower level in the first place.
"We can just try to find some valuable loot and resources on our way back up to the surface following the thread," Valorie suggested while gesturing at the glowing golden line. "I tied the starting anchor point to the spot where we all first found each other after teleporting to this Floor, so it'll lead us directly back."
"The Stone Worms have clearly found another group of climbers to terrorize and chase around, so we can probably—" Valorie's words were abruptly cut off as Leon quickly moved his hand to cover his twin sister's mouth before she could finish whatever statement she'd been about to make and potentially jinx them once again with her words.
Turning to look at Deacon and Bonehead with his hand still firmly clamped over Valorie's mouth to prevent her from speaking, Leon gave them both a look that very clearly communicated the message: We need to leave right now before something else goes wrong.
Nodding in complete agreement with Leon's unspoken assessment of their situation, both Bonehead and Deacon walked over to stand beside the Builder, and while they moved, Deacon quickly stored the filled Azure Water Reservoir away into his Spatial Sling Bag to free up his hands.
Now standing directly beside Leon with Bonehead on his other side, Deacon reached out with his left hand to grab a firm hold of Bonehead's shoulder while simultaneously grabbing onto Leon's armored shoulder with his right hand, maintaining a secure grip on both of them.
Deacon couldn't risk taking them up to the destroyed tunnel one at a time in multiple trips, because Leon would absolutely never agree to either going up first himself or allowing his twin sister to go up before him due to his extremely protective nature when it came to Valorie's safety, and simultaneously Deacon didn't want to let Bonehead go up first or remain below by himself without any protection, especially given the chaos and dangerous situations they'd been encountering constantly throughout this Floor.
And all three of the boys had silently agreed without needing to discuss it that they absolutely did not want Valorie to cast her Wind Magic levitation spell to float herself and her brother upward to the tunnel, because they were all genuinely terrified that she might end up accidentally jinxing them once again with whatever words came out of her mouth at any point until they completed the Floor.
Activating Power Boost and holding it at five percent while simultaneously casting both Flame Art: Flame Steps and Blood Sense, Deacon kicked off the ground with considerable force, carrying the other three with him. He reached roughly thirty meters of altitude before kicking off the air itself using Air Step, launching all four of them another thirty meters higher as he gritted his teeth against the strain of carrying the three of them.
Holy fuck, just how heavy is the armor Leon is wearing? Deacon complained internally to himself as he kicked off the air once again to continue their ascent, following the path of the glowing golden thread that would lead them directly back to where they had originally teleported onto Floor Twelve, which should theoretically be the location that the Floor's Quest parameters would consider to be where their fictional coven was located.
As Deacon was just two more jumps away from reaching the opening of the tunnel that they'd all fallen out of after Leon had destroyed its floor, a figure suddenly appeared and peered down at them from what remained of the tunnel's edge, right beside where the glowing golden thread turned and vanished into the tunnel.
The figure had a blonde buzzcut hairstyle and was wearing dark leather armor that looked extremely high-quality, along with a traditional thief's mask covering the lower half of their face, but did nothing to hide the patchwork tattoos across their forehead.
[Human Lv ??]
Deacon's eyes went wide along with everyone else's as they all simultaneously realized they were staring directly at Erik Jensen, the infamous Hoarder, who was looking down at them from above.
Deacon found himself completely caught off guard and thrown into momentary panic because Blood Sense, which should have detected any living being with blood in their body well before they got this close, had failed to pick up any blood whatsoever from the person hovering above them, which meant the Hoarder had some kind of ability or equipment that hid him from Deacon’s ability to detect him.
Which made sense for a thief to have in hindsight.
Valorie was similarly caught off guard as Ariadine’s Thread lost its golden glowing luster as a result of her pause in imbuing the artifact with her mana, vanishing the thread from sight.
All the power and momentum Deacon had been gathering in his right foot in preparation to launch them even higher suddenly faltered and failed entirely as his concentration broke from the shock. The four of them immediately began plummeting downward as gravity reasserted its hold.
Not a single sound escaped from any of their mouths as they fell through the air in complete silence, and even Valorie, whose mouth was still covered by Leon's hand clamped over it, watched in complete horror as the Hoarder tilted his head slightly to one side in what might have been curiosity and gave them a casual and almost friendly reserved wave as he watched them fall.
Just barely managing to regain his composure and break out of his panic, Deacon's boots struck against the air beneath them with as much Stamina he could desperately channel through his legs and into the air within what little time he had, successfully halting their rapid descent but forcing his entire body to absorb all of the kinetic energy and inertia that all four of them had accumulated during their fall.
The sudden deceleration sent a series of loud pops echoing through Deacon’s spine and joints as his skeleton absorbed the tremendous force.
Fortunately, his Skin of Jötunheim racial trait and high physical stats prevented any real damage, such as his right shoulder popping out of its socket, and he managed to halt their fall with roughly twenty meters to spare above the radioactive pond below.
"Hello there!" the Hoarder called down to them in a cheerful and friendly tone before he suddenly vanished entirely from where he'd been standing up in the tunnel entrance and instantaneously reappeared, hovering in the air directly in front of the group, floating at eye level with them.
"Would you four happen to have any interesting goodies or valuable items in your pockets or storage that you'd be willing to hand over to me?" the Hoarder asked in a conversational tone, though as those words left his mouth, his eyes began to drift downward as a faintly glowing object attached to Deacon's hip caught his attention and drew his gaze.
Everything seemed to shift into slow motion as all four members of the group followed the trajectory of the Hoarder's gaze downward, and Deacon felt his stomach drop and twist as though it was attempting to swallow itself as he realized what the Tower’s most infamous thief was looking at.
"Oh my, what do we have here?" the Hoarder muttered with obvious interest as his eyes locked directly onto the Soul Bottle containing Esmerelda's soul that was hanging from Deacon's belt.
Bonehead’s fist moved the instant he realized where the Hoarder was looking. His left arm shot outward, fist aimed straight at the Hoarder’s face.
However, just as Bonehead's bony fist came within inches of connecting with the Hoarder's face, a dagger suddenly appeared in the Tier Two climber's hand, seemingly from nowhere, and in a motion too fast to track in either of their eyes, the blade sliced cleanly through Bonehead's wrist, severing his skeletal hand from his arm.
Much to the Hoarder’s genuine surprise, one of the many magical relics on his person suddenly began warning him.
Alerted, he looked up from the strange, unidentifiable relic attached to the hip of the person before him — something unlike anything he had ever seen and which he had been unable to Identify due to what appeared to be an extremely powerful anti-scrying enchantment placed on it.
The Hoarder's gaze moved upward to see that Bonehead's severed skeletal hand, which was still clenched into a tight fist and positioned directly in front of where the Hoarder's face had been just a fraction of a second ago since only about one second had passed since he'd cut it off, was now beginning to uncurl and open itself by just a tiny fraction of a centimeter.
In that brief period of time, thick black smoke suddenly erupted violently outward from within Bonehead's severed fist, the dark cloud expanding at incredible speed to completely envelop everything within a fifteen-meter radius sphere in pitch-black smoke that was impossible to see through.
Not even a full second after the black smoke had erupted and filled the area, Deacon, who was still maintaining his grip on everyone in the group, shot out from within the obscuring cloud with twin jets of bright orange flame erupting from the bottom of his boots as he cast Flame Art: Flame Steps.
Within a heartbeat, all four of them plunged into the greyish-green, murky depths of the radioactive pond, leaving the Hoarder standing in the pitch-black smoke, tilting his head in confusion at what had just happened.