Chương 39: Chapter 35 - The tentaclevator is fully operational

We passed through the waiting room without stopping. Sarah led, mostly because she made sure no one could pass her. The four members of the we-hate-Damian committee fell in behind her. I trailed at the back, maintaining the polite distance that made others less uncomfortable. At the end of the waiting room, a technician blocked our path. He held an open box.

"We've got new technology from the R&D department. Each of you takes one. The earpieces should enable you to speak with each other remotely inside the tower." As if that would help us cooperate. I swallowed the snort and instead approached with a serious face. Sarah took one, putting it over her head.

"What a splendid blessing. We might even find each other now after we separate." We all took one earpiece. It fit well into my ear. We entered the dome. The usual pre-dive buzz filled the space. Cameras swiveled, the tribunes were two-thirds full, and the host loaded up his trademark smile. He opened his mouth for a question. Sarah walked past him, took the beacon from its pedestal, and tucked it into her belt without breaking stride.

"With divine providence, we climb." The host's mouth stayed open for half a second before he recovered.

"And there we have it, folks. Determination like that doesn't need a mic." I slipped into my pod. The display flickered. Damian Gabriel O'Connor. Level: 25. Tower perks: 0. Artifacts: 0. Highest floor: 22. The pod closed. Darkness swallowed me. I blinked, and the amber sky returned. We materialized in the commercial district, right where Sarah had placed the beacon, last dive. The mall with the cinema was nowhere in sight. Locals walked the sidewalks, gave us a glance, and moved on.

Just another group of armed strangers appearing from thin air. Normal Tuesday for them. Sarah immediately gathered the group. This time, even Chen's squad formed a loose semicircle around her. Progress, apparently.

"Last dive, while Damian was occupied—" a diplomatic word for going rogue, "—we scouted toward the city center. About three kilometers north-northwest, there's a special skyscraper. It's the tallest structure in the city. Black glass, steel frame, at least seventy stories. The ambient mana density around it was significantly higher than anywhere else we encountered." She looked at each of us.

"We believe the waystone is inside."

"The mana signature is distinct," Adaeze added, staff tapping the ground once.

"Highly reminiscent of floor overseers. It is very likely that the overseer is a part of the structure." That sounded promising. They actually found something.

"We didn't get close enough to scout its defenses. The timer caught us." Sarah adjusted the beacon on her belt.

"Today, we go straight for it. No splitting up. No detours." She looked at me on the last sentence. I shrugged.

"Fine." That got a reaction. Chen's eyebrows shifted. Kenji's head turned a fraction. Even Zhao opened his eyes. Sarah studied me for a beat, her blue eyes carrying the specific suspicion of having known me for a while.

"Really?" Well, I got everything I needed last time.

"I don't have a competing agenda today." She almost said something more, but stopped herself. Smart. Don't question a miracle when it's happening.

"Then let's move," Chen said, and started walking. We headed north-northwest. The city unfolded in blocks, wide streets and functioning infrastructure, the amber sky casting everything in warm tones. But the closer we got to the skyscraper, the more things changed. The buildings grew taller. The streets widened into boulevards. The locals thinned out, then vanished entirely. No café tables, no newspaper readers, no arguing shopkeepers. Just empty sidewalks and dark windows.

The shadows behaved differently here, too. They pooled in corners longer than they should have, given the ambient light. They stretched toward us when we passed, then withdrew. Not attacking, yet. I summoned Astarielle. She appeared in a burst of crimson flame, dressed in her usual black number. She took one look at the empty boulevard, the looming buildings, the creeping shadows, and clicked her tongue.

"Charming neighborhood." The four glowered at us. I was used to it. We walked for twenty minutes before the skyscraper came into view. It dominated the skyline. Black glass, black steel, rising easily seventy stories into the amber sky. Every other building in the city had lights, life, the suggestion of a world that functioned. This one was dead. The architecture was sleek, modern, and utterly lifeless. A wide plaza surrounded it.

Paved in dark stone, featureless except for a ring of figures standing evenly spaced around the building's entrance. Shadow spawns. A dozen of them, standing guard. Taller than the ones we fought before. Armored in something that looked like solidified darkness, with faceplates that glowed with faint white light. Each held a weapon, swords, halberds, a spear. They stood at attention, perfectly still.

"Twelve," Kenji said from ahead.

"Static positions. They likely respond to proximity."

"Formation?" Sarah asked.

"Standard breach," Chen replied.

"Tear through the center. Push to the door." All right. We could try to fight in an organized manner, for once. I summoned Ashy, who flashed in already in sword form. Zhao Liang stopped pulsing with his qi.

"They have nothing guarding their flanks. We should—" Seven crimson bolts flew over our heads. Right. The others managed to pierce me with a swift glare before the spell hit. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. A series of explosions thundered from ahead, together with the usual heat wave and shock wave. Nine shadows bolted out of the explosions toward us. I glared at Astarielle. She shrugged, smiling cutely.

"What? I had a great angle." Chen bolted toward them. He crossed the remaining distance in a blurry burst of speed and smashed his warhammer into the nearest shadowguard with a force that cracked the stone beneath its feet. The guard blocked with its sword, a flash of dark energy. The warhammer smashed the shadow's weapon and the arm holding it. His follow-up swing, a simple top-down smash, crushed its head into the torso, and the torso. Sarah was a step behind, shield raised.

She caught a halberd strike meant for Chen's flank, deflected it upward, and drove her longsword through the guard's midsection. White flame erupted. The shadow armor cracked. She twisted the blade and ripped it free, already pivoting to block the next. The shadows converged on Chen and Sarah. Kenji covered their backs, parrying one strike, slashing the other shadow guard across the throat. Shadow spilled out, but it didn't slow down the attacker.

Adaeze finished her spell, motes of light creating barriers around everyone other than me and my demons. Still not a part of the team, apparently. Two shadow guards ignored the crowd, converging on Astarielle. Ashy flew toward them, her whole form looking like it was made of aluminum. Ha, so she did learn how to use the advanced engraving. She spun before one shadow, twisted her flight into a downward slash, and her form shifted, the aluminium silver turning into dark, tungsten gray. The shadow tried to block.

She crushed through it, cutting it in two, landing into the ground. She cut into it with a heavy boom.

"Ha ha! Got him!" Astarielle aimed at the approaching shadow. She fired three crimson bolts. One into its chest, blowing it apart. The other two curved past it, clearly not meant to hit it, and slammed into buildings across the square. The explosions shattered the windows, setting them on fire. Of course. Zhao filled the front line, driving an open palm into a shadow's chest. Gray qi exploded upon contact, blowing the shadow apart. With four shadows remaining, this fight was practically over.

I motioned at Astarielle to stand down. Ashy wiggled on the ground, clearly stuck. She shifted into human form, pulled her tail out of the hole she made, and turned back into sword, floating to me as if nothing happened. Chen smashed another shadow, Kenji cut one apart, and Zhao decapitated the last two with a flying, spinning kick.

[ENEMY DEFEATED — ELITE SHADOWGUARD (x12)] [Drops: Shadowguard core (Common) (x12), Dark essence fragment (Common) (x6), Solidified shadow plate (Uncommon) (x2), Resonance filament (Uncommon) (x3), 4 silver, 187 copper] No rares or above. Everyone ignored the loot pile. The building's entrance loomed ahead. Double doors, black glass, ten feet tall. They were open. Chen stepped through first, warhammer up. Sarah followed, shield and sword. Kenji vanished ahead. The rest of us entered.

The lobby was everything one'd expect from a corporate building's ground floor. Marble floors, polished to a mirror finish. A reception desk in dark stone, unmanned. Elevator banks to the left and right, six per side, all closed. A wide stairwell entrance straight ahead, spiraling upward. Everything fit the corporate aesthetic, except for the walls. Above the marble paneling, the surfaces pulsed. The same organic, breathing quality I'd seen in the Paradise offices.

Pale panels swelling and ebbing in a slow rhythm, veins of cabling branching through them like capillaries. A faint, wet warmth radiated from the walls, and a low hum vibrated through the floor. Astarielle's eyes narrowed. She stepped closer to one of the walls, not touching, just studying. Her expression went from curiosity to something harder.

"Found anything?" I asked. Her forehead split open, a third eye appearing.

"This building is the overseer. Or at least, most of it is. It has a lot of mana." Sarah pointed toward the stairwell.

"We need to go up. The mana density is concentrated at the upper floors. Stay tight." Astarielle graced her with a glare, the third eye vanishing from her forehead. We moved toward the stairwell. Chen took point. The stairs were wide enough for three abreast, marble steps with steel railings, spiraling counterclockwise around an open shaft. I could see up for maybe ten floors before the shaft bent away. We climbed. The first five floors were empty.

Corporate offices with dark desks, dead monitors, and no appliances. No chairs either. On the sixth-floor landing, the lights shifted. The ambient glow that had lit the lobby dimmed. Replaced by something colder, bluer, emanating from the walls themselves. The organic pulse quickened.

"Something's—" Adaeze started. The world slammed shut. A translucent barrier of compressed energy crashed down across the stairwell between me and Zhao Liang, who walked two steps ahead. The impact shook the landing, blue-white light erupting from the barrier's surface. Another slammed down behind me, sealing off the stairwell below. I heard more impacts, above and around, the building locking down in rapid sequence.

Barrier after barrier, floor after floor, the entire structure compartmentalizing like bulkheads on a sinking ship. Shouts echoed. Muffled. Through the barrier ahead, I could see Zhao's back. He'd spun, palm raised. Gray qi struck the barrier. The energy absorbed it without flickering. He struck again, harder. Nothing. Behind me, the barrier sealed off the landing completely. I was boxed in, the sixth-floor corridor stretching to my left, another barrier visible at the far end.

"I'll get this one!" Ashy slammed into the barrier ahead, full force. The impact rang through the corridor. The barrier didn't move. She hit it again. No effect.

"Or maybe not. I'll get the next one!" Astarielle raised both hands, crimson fire building between her palms. She released it point-blank into the barrier. Ashy flew behind me. The flames exploded into my face. My shields caught it, but it still stretched them. Not even a scorch mark on the wall.

"Well," Astarielle said, clicking her tongue.

"This is a problem." No shit. I tapped the comm in my ear.

"You guys all right on the other side?"

"Yes," Sarah answered.

"But we don't see any mechanism to control it."

"There most likely isn't any. I'll find my own way. Good luck." I turned, heading into the open corridor to my side.

"I'll wait for you at the top." Sarah snorted into the mic. They headed up, and I to the side. Astarielle looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

"This time, we are innocent."

"Well, we didn't cause this particular incident."

"At least not directly." We both chuckled. The hallway stretched ahead, offices flanking both sides, the organic pulse of the walls casting everything in that cold blue glow. Energy barriers intersected the corridor at irregular intervals, some transparent enough to see through, others opaque and humming with mana. They created a maze out of what should have been a straight line, forcing me through offices, around corners, through a conference room, and back into the main corridor on the other side of a barrier.

The building was railroading me into a trap. We all knew it. None of us cared. The first shadowguards appeared at the end of the conference room. Two of them, armored, swords drawn, emerged from the walls like they'd been growing there. They were faster than the ones outside. Sharper. They would have reached me if it wasn't for the four crimson bolts from Astarielle. The explosion erased them from existence, together with the office. Not the outside windows, though. Those had no damage.

[ENEMY DEFEATED — ELITE SHADOWGUARD (x2)] [Drops: Shadowguard core (Uncommon) (x2), Dark essence fragment (Uncommon)] We pressed on. Roughly about every two rooms, I met some shadowguards. At least one, at most five. None of them reached me. Since Astarielle caught the hang of how to hit them, most encounters ended with the first spell. The occasional stray shadow that survived the alpha strike got cleaved in two by Ashy. I found an elevator. The door was closed, and the button didn't react.

I motioned Astarielle at it.

"Blow up this door." She stepped to it, pressed her palm against the door, and an explosion swallowed the room. Once again, Ashy floated behind me to avoid the damage. The worst thing was, I couldn't even complain, because tanking the blast with shields cost less mana than resummoning Ashy. I stepped into the shaft. The elevator was nowhere in sight. All right. I started summoning tentacle worms. First, a hundred. I had them connect into a chain, and reach into the elevator.

They stretched over, latching on the opposite wall. Two hundred more worms. I had them slither in, creating a worm swing. Five hundred more. The worms filled the elevator shaft, creating two worm swings. I unsummoned Astarielle and stepped in. The worm floor wiggled underneath me, but held. The first worm swing caught me, stretched, and threw me up. The second worm swing caught me, and the first one slithered upward. Ashy flew near me, doing her best to avoid any worm slime. With a smirk, I climbed.

They could stick their energy walls right up into the waste pipe. The worm elevator even picked up the pace. On the elevator doors, I could see floor numbers. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. An infinite amount of free labor sure solved a lot of problems. The earpiece rang into my ear.

"Damian?" Sarah nearly shouted into my ear.

"Peace is here."

"What floor?" I shouted back. An explosion answered me, followed by static.