Chương 14: Locals can also climb

"Friendly," I said, just in case. Biscuit ran straight between us, almost pouncing on Astarielle, tail wagging wildly. She caught him and started petting him.

"Aww, who's a good boy?" Everyone else's eyes were fixed on me.

"Biscuit?" Yukiko asked.

"It's a bit of a story," I said.

"Damian!" echoed from ahead.

"Chris?" I shouted back, recognizing the boy by his voice.

"Also friendly," I added for the rest of my group. Chris ran out from a side hallway, biting into an apple.

"I knew you'd come to this floor! Peace said you would!" He looked exactly the same. Brown hair, freckles, lanky build, just dressed in more modern clothes, a heavy jacket, and pants. He still had a short bow on his shoulder and a hunting knife at his hip. Sarah's sword came up immediately.

"Who is this? How is there a child here?"

"He's not hostile." I stepped forward.

"I met him on floor six. He's a local."

"A local." Henrik adjusted his glasses.

"A civilian inhabitant of the tower's lower floors is somehow present on floor eleven. In a post-apocalyptic environment. Eating an apple." Chris took another bite.

"Peace brought me. She said we would stay here for a few days. She's busy with something, so I went to scout the floor a bit. Isn't it awesome!"

"Peace." I studied him.

"She can move between floors freely?"

"Yeah, of course. She works for Paradise. They go everywhere." Four sets of eyes turned to me. I could read the questions in all of them, and I didn't have answers.

"Peace is a woman I met on floor six," I explained.

"She's connected to an organization called Paradise… whatever that might be." Henrik pushed up his glasses, which already shone as he was scanning Chris.

"That sounds like something one would expect to be in your reports." It would have been, if I had written any. If anyone even told me there were any reports.

"No one asked for one."

"Golden Sands…" Yukiko whispered.

"Typical." Liu and Sarah only shook their heads. Chris stepped forward, still cheerful.

"I can help! I know this floor pretty well since I've been scouting for a day now. Peace told me the dangerous stuff is deeper in, toward the central structure. That's where the waystone is. You're here for that, right?" Yukiko looked at him. At Biscuit. For a fraction of a second, her composure cracked. Then it reassembled.

"The boy is a liability."

"He's a kid," Sarah said, and for once, her concern wasn't theological.

"We can't bring a child into combat."

"I'm sixteen," Chris protested.

"And I've fought scarier things than some bugs."

"The tactical calculus doesn't support it," Henrik said.

"But the information could be valuable, if proven accurate. We have not found much, so far." Liu Wei studied Chris with genuine curiosity.

"Your spiritual root is interesting. Undeveloped, but present, yet untrained. How did you survive this floor without any techniques?" Chris shrugged.

"Biscuit's got a good nose. We avoid the big stuff." I looked at Chris. Bringing him along could actually be dangerous for him, especially with me around. A good insect ambush, and Chris could end up accidentally incinerated by Astarielle.

"Chris," I said.

"We are indeed looking for the waystone. If you know the area, can you tell us what direction?" He pointed down the tunnel.

"Follow the tracks for about an hour. There's a big junction. Go left, and you'll come out into the open section. You can't miss the structure. It's huge, like a fortress, right in the center of the cavern. The waystone's somewhere inside. I'll come guide you."

"That would be unwise," I said, everyone's glares already burning holes into me.

"We might fight something dangerous along the way, and you could end up seriously injured, even by an accident." Sarah and Yukiko almost pointed at Astarielle. She only raised her chin, looking away.

"Could you go back to Peace and tell her hi from us?" I asked.

"Sure!" He clicked his tongue twice. Biscuit slid from Astarielle and ran to Chris.

"We'll keep exploring for a bit, and I'll tell Peace afterward. Maybe I'll find something useful. I found this apple, so the floor's not all bad." He bit into the apple again.

"Thanks," I said. We left him at the platform. As we walked away, I glanced back. Chris had already hopped over debris and was heading in the opposite direction, Biscuit trotting at his side. He waved without turning around.

"Do you trust that boy?" Sarah asked quietly. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I trust his intentions and honesty," I said. Henrik snorted.

"I suppose this Peace is rather suspicious then." Yeah. She shouldn't have known we would be on this floor.

"It's too much of a coincidence to meet him here."

"The workings of the world are often a mystery until one can analyze them in retrospect," Liu said.

"But this indeed feels like a strange play of fate." We followed the tracks. Chris's directions proved accurate. The tunnel opened after roughly a mile into a junction, a massive hub where multiple rail lines converged. The walls were cratered, the rails torn up and twisted. A derailed train car lay on its side, gutted and covered in the same organic-mechanical growth as the insects. We went left, as instructed. The passage climbed upward, the air growing warmer, the chemical smell intensifying.

Something hummed in the distance, low and rhythmic, like an engine that had forgotten how to stop. As we progressed through the tunnel, I slightly slowed down, letting them gain a bit of distance. This tunnel had a lot of side paths, which we didn't explore as we had a clear direction. I looked into them. About twenty minutes of walking later, I spotted slime on the floor of a side tunnel and a dried-out carcass of a short but fat worm.

The others were ahead, so I slipped in there, motioning Astarielle to come with me. The side tunnel descended slightly, and we soon walked into a large chamber covered in slime. Dried-out husks, eggs, and slime covered most of the chamber, all over the machinery that was once in there. White worms slimed around the chamber still, each about two feet long, with a foot in diameter, pure white, moving on tiny legs. No mouth or eyes. Perfect. I pointed at one of them, glancing at Astarielle.

"Pick that one up, stuff it into some cage, and make sure it survives until I need it later. Not at the next summon." Her face twisted with disgust.

"Eww." But she stepped toward the worm, heels clicking on the floor. Making even more disgusted faces, she bent over the worm, caught it, and picked it up in her arms.

"Please be quick." I unsummoned her and rushed back to the main tunnel. The others were quite a bit ahead, but didn't seem to be looking for me. At a quick pace, I headed after them. When I got closer, I resummoned Astarielle, and we rejoined the group. Liu glanced at me with a raised eyebrow when I got closer.

"Took a leak," I said. We continued walking. The tunnel ended. We stepped out onto a ledge, and the floor opened up. A massive wasteland spread in front of us. The ceiling rose so high that the bioluminescent fungi up there looked like stars. The cavern floor was a wasteland of rusted structures, collapsed buildings, and dried-out canals that had once carried something. Industrial ruins, warehouses, refinery-like towers, all of it dead and decaying. And in the center, dominating everything, sat a structure.

It was enormous. A fortress was the closest word, but it was more than that. Rising at least three hundred feet from the cavern floor, built from the same dark steel as the tower itself, it had walls thick enough to be visible from here, reinforced with massive buttresses. The top bristled with spires and antenna-like protrusions, some of them still pulsing with faint light. A wide staircase led up to its entrance, flanked by statues so eroded they'd lost all features.

Whatever this floor had been, that structure was its heart. We all stared at it.

"That's another few hours of walking away," Henrik said, and for once, there was no arrogance in his voice.

"We are not making it on our current timer." Yukiko's eyes narrowed, measuring distances, entry points, defensive positions. Even she looked like she was recalculating.

"Unless we find a helicopter." Liu Wei raised a hand, palm open toward the structure. A faint golden glow pulsed from his fingers.

"The qi density in that structure is immense. I feel multiple strong presences. This is a defended position." Sarah gripped her shield.

"We have company." A sound rose from behind us. Skittering, but deeper, heavier. We turned. From the tunnel we'd just exited, a creature crawled along the ceiling. An insect, but not a skitterer. This one was the size of a horse, with thicker chitin plating and mandibles that glowed white-hot. Behind it, two more emerged, moving in silent, mechanical coordination. Sentinels, if I had to guess.

"Formation Alpha!" Henrik shouted. What was formation alpha, again? Sarah charged. Shield raised, she caught the first sentinel's mandible strike and deflected it upward. Her longsword blazed with bright flame as she drove it into the thing's thorax. It screeched, a horrible grinding of metal on metal, and thrashed, pushing her backward with its sheer mass. Yukiko appeared beside the second one. Blade blurring in her hand, she struck four times in under a second.

She severed one leg, cracking the joint of a second one, and the sentinel tilted sideways. She leaped back as it sprayed sparks. Liu Wei slid forward, feet barely touching the ground. His palm struck the third sentinel's head, and a shockwave caved in its faceplate. It stumbled, and he followed with a spinning elbow strike that released a burst of golden energy through its carapace. The sentinel's top shell shattered, but it still swung back with the mandibles, forcing him to slide back. I glanced at Astarielle.

She already held both arms up, one globe of crimson flame above each palm.

"Triple combo?" she asked.

"Yeah." She flung her arms forward. A bolt of crimson flame burst into the sentinel Yukiko had damaged. The explosion forced Yukiko back and blew apart one of its mandibles. A bright streak of crimson flame followed. It hit the open side of its face, piercing through, drilling a hole into it. Another bolt of flame speared from Astarielle. It hit the hole. In a thunderous explosion, the sentinel blew apart, burnt flesh and scorched metal erupting into the air, raining onto us.

Henrik finished casting, holding his staff in front of himself with both hands. Its top lit up, lightning bursting forth. It split into two currents, each hitting one sentinel. The electricity lit them up, their movement breaking, their entire forms shaking in place. Liu stepped to his sentinel and struck its face with an open palm. Golden energy rippled through it, and the back half of the sentinel shattered into fragments. Sarah raised her sword, light intensifying around the blade. She stabbed the last sentinel.

White flame erupted, tearing through the sentinel, blowing a hole through it. It collapsed. [ENEMIES DEFEATED — CORRODED SENTINELS (3)] [Drops: Sentinel Plating (Uncommon) (x3), Heavy Servo Core (Uncommon) (x2), Charged Mandible (Uncommon), 1 silver 40 copper, Resonance Shard (Uncommon)] I looked at the fortress again. It sat there, massive and silent, radiating power. I wanted to go in. But with a timer at ten percent, that wasn't happening in this dive.

"That went acceptably well," Henrik summarized.

"But we are out of time. We need to set the beacon somewhere." Sarah was already pulling the beacon from her belt.

"I will place it behind that rubble over there." Might as well. It wasn't like that spot was different from any other in any meaningful way. Sarah squeezed through the gap in the rubble, shield scraping the edges. She knelt inside, placed the beacon on the ground, and pressed the activation switch. The red veins pulsed twice, then settled into a steady, dim blue glow. She climbed back out, brushing dust off her armor.

"The beacon is set."

"I can see that," Henrik said.

"Time to extract." Since when was he the leader? We all exchanged glares. I turned to Astarielle.

"The next time I summon you, bring the drone halves."

"How exciting." I unsummoned her. The extraction claimed me, waking me back into the pod. [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 13] [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 14] [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 15] [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 16] [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 17] [LEVEL UP — LEVEL 18]