Chương 81: Chapter Forty-Six: Forward Thinking

FORTY-SIX"ROAN!" Taoya's big voice seemed weak in comparison to the massive monster's screech but it still drew every eye as Roan stepped out around a tree and saw the massive group. More people had found them it seemed as he saw faces he didn't recognize, the group now up to nearly fifty people. Half of them were wounded, but there were a few of the bloodline fighters he recognized. Taoya of course, Darren off to the side, Harris and one of his friends who Roan couldn't remember the name of.

There was no sign of Moira or Tyler, but he was sure they'd be around eventually.

"You have my gear," Roan said, keeping his voice even as he walked with careful steps, eyes on all the wounded. His hand rested on the pommel of the sword, but he kept it sheathed for now.

"Yeah, I saw it as we were retreating and figured I'd grab it. After all, if you didn't make it, you wouldn't need it," Taoya said with his customary smile.

"How thoughtful," Roan said as he stepped toward the bag and snagged his warhammer. It felt right in his hand as he threw the pack around a shoulder. Taoya didn't make a move to stop him, instead was prattling on about how they'd run into that beast.

"I got ambushed by those little goblins, like everyone, but figured I'd help others out. Started running around and gathering up anyone who I could and fought a few of the bigger ones. The ogres. Darren, they're called horde lieutenants!" Taoya said. He pulled out a trio of the necklaces and clattered them around.

"Kept going around and found a big ass cave and thought maybe there'd be treasure. Flew down it, went fairly deep, and found that monster instead. So, my bad on that guys!" Taoya said.

"It was in a cave underground?" Roan asked.

"More like a burrow I should say, but yeah fairly deep," Taoya said with a shrug.

"I saw a tumor on it. Under one of its legs when it turned," Roan supplied as he sat down and drank from his canteen. More than a few eyes followed the canteen and he made a note of that. Thirst could drive a man to make dumb mistakes. Or a profit.

"What do you think then?" Harris asked. For one of the secondary fighters in the primary group, the man didn't seem too special. Aside from always being next to Darren.

"Rough idea. We started underground in the crypts right. The items there were all corrupted life energy items. Our big fight was cleansing the mushroom, right?" Roan asked, turning to look at the others who would have been in different instances of the first level.

"Yeah, sounds right. You're thinking this is a storyline or something? A continuation of the first level?" someone asked. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"That's a big jump in logic," Darren said, but it was half-hearted.

"If this is a storyline, or something similar to it, then I think we know where we can find the staircase," Roan said, turning to look at Taoya.

"To go up we have to go down?" the big man asked. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded before saying, "sounds about right."

"Then we're going to have to find a way to kill that thing. It has to be a level guardian, right? It's tough," the same random guy said, he was pushing himself to the front of the group and Roan realized he'd likely been a leader in his instance." Not your problem. Darren can have those fights," Roan reminded himself. He sank back a few steps and discreetly checked the bag, finding that everything was where he'd left it. If Taoya or someone else had rummaged through it then he didn't see any sign of it.

"Tyler could do it," Darren said, seeming to dismiss it.

"Doubt it, Darren. That thing had a powerful healing factor and it's big. I could barely hurt it. The only reason we're alive is that it can't maneuver for shit. Inside of it's cave? Where we can't run around it? We're dead," Taoya said. Darren looked at the man, judged his words, then nodded in acceptance.

"Alright then. We need something to kill the big nasty to explore the tunnels where we suspect the next set of stairs are. What's the time limit, five days? We need to find a way to access the market, buy skills and whatever else we need, and prep," Darren decided.

"Alright, but where is that? It's all forest from what we've seen," the unknown guy said.

"We just have to look. We had nearly two thousand survivors in our instance. I doubt the tower will keep running multiple instances as our numbers thin out. Spatial works are mana intensive and we took heavy losses on level one. Which means that there's a lot more people out here," Darren said.

"If you're right about there be fewer or no other instances," the guy countered. Roan tuned them out as they started to argue over it. He walked toward the original woman who had been here and was felt a happy surge through him as he saw her resting against her tree. She looked up toward him and frowned before her eyebrows climbed up her head and she smiled widely, throwing her arms out wide as she shouted.

"It's you! You're the one who saved me!" That drew plenty of looks as Roan sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.

"Darren was the one that saved you. I just provided first-aid," Roan said truthfully. That Darren had left her half-comatose while she bled out to test Roan was left unsaid.

"That guy? He's a dick. He left me when he heard you coming. Left me to bleed out and took my knife too," she said, turning to glare daggers at Darren.

"Have to be careful," Roan said, but his heart wasn't into defending Darren. Didn't even really know why he was trying.

"Regardless, I'm Elena," she said, shoving her hand out for him to grab. Roan shook her hand and crouched down next to her and looked over the groups of milling people.

"Do you know everyone here? Or anyone?"

"A few. Definitely multiple instances. My team was split up when we entered and my temporary team got split up too. This tower isn't a fan of people getting comfortable, are they?" Elena said. She was bubbly and talkative when she wasn't bleeding out. Roan gently questioned her on how her level had gone. For all intents and purposes it had been the same challenge they'd faced. Everything had gone the same except for the teams that had gone to cleanse the corruption.

They'd managed to get about thirty people with the shards as they'd had more cooperation than Roan's teams had. Primarily the majority of people had ended up in a pair of saferooms right next to each other. It was when they'd fought the final hundred anomalies that the first break from Roan's happened. There had been no prisoner. No extra quest at all. They did have the mana stone quest, which worried Roan.

He had hoped he would be the only one who had it, but it seemed at least a few others would be competing with him to get the stones on this floor. Or killing each other to claim them.