The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 65

It was a mixture of one part relief, one part exhaustion, one part pride, and one part annoyance that filled Sorin when he finally stumbled into camp about an hour before dawn. He’d grown worried when he started finding monster corpses that the tower hadn’t reclaimed, and following that trail had led him right to his team. All of them were unharmed, and they’d camped a sensible distance from the ruin.

No injuries. No one dead. Easily defending themselves. It’s like they don’t even need me. I could have just recovered at the hub instead of pushing myself so hard. Oh well. At least everything turned out for the best.

Vendis and Nemari were on watch when he approached, and neither of them had a strong sensory soulprint yet. They’d fix that on their next check in, now that they were rank 6. Curious, Sorin activated his new Cloak of Blending and walked closer. Neither reacted in the slightest. He strode right between them, sat down next to the burnt ring of grass that had probably served as a magically fueled firepit, and pulled a small slab of stone up out of the ground to lean back against.

Definitely need to get them something besides Sentinel’s Vigilance to sharpen their senses. At least one person needs it for watch alone, just in case Rue or I can’t stand our rounds for some reason.

He sat there for a good ten minutes, his eyes closed and his breathing light and regular. What he really needed was a few hours of shuteye, but failing that, this was a good alternative. Food would also go a long way toward seeing him upright and in fighting condition, but that would come later.

Finally, Vendis turned toward Nemari. His eyes swept across the camp in the process, and Blind Sense told Sorin the exact moment he froze in place. Lacking the night vision to make out fine details, he probably couldn’t tell who was sitting upright in the middle, but he knew there was one more person there than was supposed to be.

“It’s just me,” Sorin said, defusing the tension before Vendis did something rash like try to attack him.

“What?” Nemari yelped, spinning in place. Light flared over the middle of the camp, casting harsh shadows and waking everyone up. “Sorin?”

“Hi. We need to talk about adding sensory soulprints to your builds.”

Nemari’s face flushed red when she realized what he was talking about. Two people on watch hadn’t been enough to stop Sorin from walking right past them and settling down in the middle of their sleeping allies. It didn’t matter that he was a higher rank or that he had a cloak to help hide him. If he’d been a monster, somebody would likely be dead.

Unfortunately, soulprints like Blind Sense were incredibly disorienting. Omnidirectional vision wasn’t something the human mind adapted too quickly or easily to. Rue somewhat sidestepped that issue based on the fact that the sensory input from Aura Sense was more like feeling them than seeing them—though she could see them as well if she focused, but only inside her actual range of vision—but she was still discovering new gradients of sensitivity as she got stronger and more acclimated to the soulprint.

She’d already told him that Train of Thought had helped with the mental processing load immensely and asked if he could recommend anything similar, but the only option he thought would work at the moment was to push Train of Thought up to D-rank, which wasn’t an option yet.

At the rate they’re going, it might be by the time we’re done here, he mused.

Sorin’s arrival was an early wake up call for the rest of the team, but none of them complained about missing half an hour of sleep. They quickly caught each other up on the news, which for Sorin meant finding out what the train of rock-borer beetles had done after he’d left Floor 5. Burrowing directly into the ground had not been on his list of possibilities, and in some ways, it was the worst possible outcome besides the monsters actively attacking his team.

Now they had no idea where the beetles were or what they were doing. There was a very real possibility that their previous tactics would fail utterly if they tried them again, and that they’d find themselves surrounded by beetles that had dug new tunnels up to a mile out from the edge of the ruin. They were once again at risk of being surrounded by an endless horde.

“We’ll simply have to move slowly and carefully as we approach the area,” Sorin told them. “I’d rather set them off at the edge of their expanded territory so we can make a run for it than wait to start fighting at the ruin itself. And all of that is even assuming the ones out here will let us walk on by without attacking.”

“And if it proves impossible to go deeper?” Yoru asked.

“Then I’d say our best option is to assess whether we can continue to farm anima here. If not, we’ll abandon the ruin as a bad job, head over to the Giant’s Finger, and move on up to Floor 6.”

The relief at that statement was obvious. Did they think I was going to insist on a suicidal charge up the ravine to get that cache or something? Come on, I’m not stupid. Not most days, at least.

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They got a late start before breaking camp. Sorin took an hour-long nap—not nearly as long as he wanted, but better than nothing. The others occupied themselves with their own projects, and today, Sorin didn’t care what those were. He was too tired to help anyone figure out merging, or to offer insight into their builds, or to oversee sparring practice.

When he woke back up, the sun was halfway up the eastern sky. One hour had turned into three unnoticed, and while he wanted to be annoyed that no one had woken him up, the fact that he’d slept undisturbed the whole time told him he’d needed it more than he’d thought.

Regardless, his anima reserves were the next best thing to full, and he felt great. Or rather, he felt like normal, which was great compared to last night. And he’d learned his lesson about overextending. He was powerful, especially as a rank 10 on Floor 5, but he wasn’t invincible.

They set out toward the ruin, which was three miles away. Moving at a light jog and only firing off Speed Burst every thirty seconds or so, they made it there in about five minutes. Along the way, Sorin made sure to focus on the sensory feedback Living Earth was giving him.

They were half a mile out from their destination when he called for a halt. There, at the very edge of his range, was a beetle. It was barely ten feet underground and completely motionless, like it was just waiting for him.

It’s a sentry. As soon as it notices me, it’ll tell the rest of the hive to come get me.

Sorin was strongly considering calling the whole thing off, but then he stopped to think about it, and he realized something. Odric had already said it; they communicated by pulsing vibrational patterns through the ground. All he had to do was contest its control of the area directly around it, and it wouldn’t be able to signal that it had spotted him.

For that matter, he was reasonably certain he could lock the ground they walked on well enough that the beetle wouldn’t sense any vibrations from his own team. In theory, with Living Earth acting as a dampener, they could stride right through the ravine, completely invisible to the swarm that infested it.

Theory and fact didn’t always see eye to eye, though. Before he was willing to commit to the plan, he needed to test it. After explaining what he’d found to the rest of the team and pointing out where the beetle was, he announced his plan.

“I’m going to try to isolate the area around it with Living Earth to see if I can interrupt its communication abilities. The hope is that we can find these sentries and pick them off one at a time.”

“What good does that do us? They’re actively hostile and organized now,” Yoru said. “It’s time to call this whole thing off.”

“That leads me to my second experiment,” Sorin replied. “If this works, I’ll know that I can block them from summoning assistance. Then I’ll see about creating a thin, dampening layer at the surface which prevents them from even realizing we’re there in the first place.”

“We could walk through the ravine, right through their territory,” Rue said with a laugh. “And since they never hang out on the surface, they’ll never notice us.”

“Even if they were up here, I don’t think they’ve got any real sensory organs. It’s all earth sense to them.”

“What will we do if things go wrong with your tests?” Nemari asked.

It was an eminently practical question, one that greatly interested the rest of the team. As one, they all turned to look at Sorin. He had to bite back a laugh at the sudden surge of attention.

“Well, I’ll be out there alone for the first one to see if it even notices me. Once I’ve confirmed that it can’t see me, I’ll let the dampening effect go so that it tries to call for help. If I can’t block it from talking to its buddies, then we’re leaving in a hurry because this whole ruin just became unbeatable. If I can, then it’ll probably still come try to kill me on its own. At which point, it’s just another beetle just like the last couple of hundred.”

“It would be nice to farm some more anima off them,” Yoru murmured, scratching at his chin as he thought. “The rate of growth was… impressive. It would be well worth another day or two of our time to push through to rank 7 or even 8 before tackling the floor guardian.”

“Not that it’ll matter. Sorin will just kill it in one hit same as the last one,” Rue said.

“Well, there is some truth to that,” Nemari said. “I’m not saying I mind, but…”

“It does kill any sense of challenge,” Yoru finished for her. “Hard to feel pride in your personal growth sometimes.”

“Exactly that.”

Sorin looked back and forth between the two and said, “Look, I can just stand back and let the rest of you fight if that’s what you all want. As long as I get a hit or two in, the tower isn’t going to care one way or another.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Yoru told him, his voice pitched to sound haughty as he sniffed. “Go on and ruin our fun. We’re all adults here. We’ll get over it.”

“Alright, enough,” Nemari said. “Go play with your giant bug, Sorin. Not sure if I want you to succeed or fail, but let’s find out so we can get on with our day.”

Still chuckling to himself, Sorin spread Living Earth out beneath him and let it still the subtle vibration of his footsteps. It wasn’t perfect; anything with fine enough senses would notice the loss of all vibration in that area, but that didn’t stand out nearly as much as the other way around. The beetles being only a Floor 5 monster, Sorin didn’t think they’d pick up on the difference.

Sure enough, no reaction. Either I’m right about this, or it’s trying to bait me into a trap.

He strolled forward, his thoughts focused on his target and watching for its reaction. Only once he was right on top of it did he start stress testing the dampener. First, he stomped his foot a few times. Then he leaped several feet into the air and slammed both feet into the dirt.

Still, the beetle sat there unmoved. Nodding to himself, Sorin proceeded to wrap a second layer of dampening around the whole area, thirty feet in each direction. It even extended beneath the monster, because when dealing with creatures that moved in three dimensions, it was important to remember and compensate for that fact.

Finally, he let go of the dampening beneath his feet. It turned out he didn’t even need to take a step. The instant the protective layer vanished, the beetle surged up through the dirt. With such a short distance to travel, it broke through the top soil in seconds, practically lifting Sorin into the air on top of it as it rose out of the ground.

He didn’t let that happen, of course. Standing right in front of it as it emerged was far too advantageous of a position to give up. It put him exactly where he needed to be to perform the one-two combo of a kick-delivered Soften and a sword strike driven right through its brain.

“Guess it works,” Sorin said, looking up at the others.