Chapter Twenty-Three

It didn’t take long for the boy to spill his story. Apparently, four other Climbers had grabbed him on a lower Floor, claiming to be law enforcement from his home country of Poland. They’d been using him to rob other Climbers without getting a bad reputation for themselves, as well as to scout and test Dungeons and Spawns for them to Clear. They took his Coins and loot, and recently they’d begun demanding that he rob Will for his Key Piece.

“You say they have a base near the entrance to Zone 4. Are they there now?”

“Um, I think so, they’re probably waiting for me. Listen, please just let me leave the Tower, I’ll run away so they can’t find me on Earth, you shouldn’t try to fight them.”

Will ignored him, drinking a couple more potions and rolling his shoulders. He’d made clear, as had most of the other Climbers who had any kind of respect on the Floor, that this kind of thing wasn’t acceptable. Time to prove that. The fact that he’d be watched by various representatives from Earth Governments, who probably already knew his real identity, was irrelevant. Once he hit Floor 4 he’d be a public face anyway, if not before, and in the Tower he was prepared to fight back.

One of the changes that the safe area had undergone as more Climbers had arrived and it had swelled was the gates shifting from one to multiple, dotted across the wall. You’d arrive through a random one when you left the Zone. This helped Will and his now untied captive to slip past the other Climbers and head for the extortionists’ group of huts. The boy, who used the pseudonym Blanik (after a gymnast he idolised, apparently) to hide his real name of Jan, was clearly worried that Will would be overpowered by the thugs that he was working for. If they’d been robbing other Climbers, they’d have decent gear, but Will would bet his life they had no skill and poor Stats.

“That’s Boss. I mean, that’s what they made me call him, I don’t know his real name. The hut he’s standing in front of is their main one, where they keep all the stuff. Please don’t make me come with you. Please don’t go!”

Again, Will ignored the boy’s pleading and led him around the side, getting a better angle on the man who stood smoking with his helmet and sword leaning on the wall.

“Ssh. Look. I can’t make you stay here, but I promise I’m going to deal with these guys and you won’t have to worry about them any more. If you do stay, I’ll make sure you get home safe, or get set up for whatever you want to do with them off your back, so I’d recommend it. Otherwise, just stay down and don’t get involved.”

He brushed the boy’s grasp away and stepped forwards, drawing his swords and stepping between the buildings. The thugs had obviously cleared a space around their little area, and so aside from the smoking man and the other 3 inside their stash-house he had an empty section of the Floor to work in.

Briefly, he considered using some form of ranged attack. Not Powerful Shout, since he didn’t want to kill the man before he could question him, but maybe a throwing knife or something. He had a few in the ring, just miscellaneous loot he hadn’t yet offloaded, but it wasn’t really his speciality. Plus, the fear that Jan clearly felt for these guys had annoyed him. He strode into the open and shouted in the man’s direction.

“You Boss?”

The man dropped whatever improvised cigarette he was smoking and grabbed his sword, thumping a foot against the shack to alert his friends.

“No talking then, okay.”

Will leapt forwards, Alacrity kicking in and letting him breeze past the man’s hasty swipe. The sword gleamed, and there was some sort of magical energy on the edge, but Will wasn’t worried. He parried with Shout and then stabbed the man twice with Whisper, once in each thigh. He grunted in pain and dropped to one knee briefly, then pushed back up and forced Will to step back. The door to the safe hut swung open and three similarly thuggish men piled out, one of them helping his boss to his feet as the other two attacked Will.

Just as expected, they had decent gear but no skill, and he didn’t even need to use Vigorous Sharpen to cut into the gaps in their armour and score deep gashes across the metal thanks to the mismatch in Stats. One swung a huge axe, but he may as well have held it still for how easily Will moved out of the way and thrust Whisper into the man’s neck. He went down, groping at his throat, and Will stepped out of the way of a thrown knife from the shortest thug, the one that had stopped to help Boss up.

It probably wouldn’t be a fatal wound given that they were in the safe area, but the man wasn’t activating the Store or pulling any healing items out. Will didn’t care, as long as one of them lived, and so just battered away an incoming sword and slashed the back of the knife-throwing thug’s legs. Two were now lying on the floor, out of the fight, and he grinned as he repositioned to face the others.

“Not so fun when you get hit back is it?”

The boss pushed his ally forwards, and they both moved in swinging heavy swords as though they were clubs. Will almost laughed, letting Alacrity drop to not waste his Mana. Shout knocked one aside, Whisper the other, and he whipped the thinner sword up to disarm the boss. His sword hit the ground, and Will turned his attention on the final thug quickly, easily blocking his thrust and delivering two quick cuts that knocked the man to the floor where he didn’t try to rise. The boss thumped into his back, having apparently decided to ignore the sword and tackle him, and it was unexpected enough that he momentarily froze and let himself be taken to the floor.

The man must have been a Barbarian from his Strength and lack of armour, but Will had been training with Tough Conditioning constantly and he easily rolled the man over, letting Whisper and Shout fall from his hands and driving a heavy punch into the sandy-haired man’s face. He grunted and tried to grab at Will’s face, but a silver dart streaked into the clearing towards his eye in the same instant. Will shifted his body so the dart pinged off of his helmet instead of killing the man, and thumped another two punches into his jaw to stop him struggling.

“Don’t kill anyone that’s not already dead. Take their weapons and tie their hands.”

He flung a few lengths of rope from his Spatial Ring behind himself, not turning to look at Blanik. Then, he turned back to the boss of the thugs and fixed him with a glare.

“Let’s go into your little stash house and have a chat.”

With the boy’s semi-reluctant help, he bundled the four wounded, but thankfully not dead, thugs into the hut and closed the door. People probably heard the fight and would be on their way to investigate, but he would deal with that later.

“Right, you three. Drop everything you have, and trade me every Tower Coin you’ve got. I want to see your Sheets to make sure you have. If you do, I’ll give you healing potions and turn you over to the first police officer I find who’s willing to deal with the paperwork. Otherwise, I’ll kill you, because there’s no actual law in this Tower and you’ve done far worse.”

The man whose throat was still healing just nodded and did as instructed, while Will had to nudge the others into doing the same. He gave them each a healing potion and told Blanik to keep an eye on them.

“You. Are you working for anyone, or are you the genius who came up with the idea of robbing and murdering?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The man spat, and Will slapped him on the temple.

“No, I asked a question.”

“Fuck off.”

Will slapped him again.

“So you’re alone, good. That means nobody will miss any of you. Same deal as I gave the others, except instead of handing you over to law enforcement, I’ll take you to your choice of Zone and let you try to run.”

Being this brutal, especially with witnesses and in the safe area, was a calculated move. He didn’t actually plan to kill any of the men now they weren’t trying to kill him, but he needed to make clear that Pioneer was not only a benevolent information source but also wanted to make the Tower safe at any cost. If the soldiers reported to their bosses, good, then when he formed his Clan and they came to negotiate they’d know where he stood. He was strong enough now that he wasn’t playing it careful anymore, and he wanted to increase the pace of things.

“No. We will just leave the Tower.”

The man closed his eyes, and after a moment the others all did as well. Blanik panicked, but Will just laughed.

“You’re all tied up, and I just beat you in a fight. Clearly, you’ve not spared any of your victims or you’d know that you won’t be able to leave just yet.”

Once they’d realised that, and once the knocking on the door had started to annoy Will, he opened the safe hut and let Brunjar and Dane in.

“These guys have been stealing from and attacking Climbers for a while now, and they were forcing this teenager to do it. You guys know who’s from what government right? Help me get these guys handed over to someone who can punish them properly.”

Mercifully, there happened to be members of PETEF, though not Julian’s group, who claimed responsibility for the men. They interrogated them much as Will had, thanked him for turning the men over as they were likely to be criminals on Earth as well as in the Tower, and even handed over the leader’s Spatial Bag, which had been stuffed into his trousers.

“I think we’re going to need to start working together in bigger groups fairly soon, if we want to keep Climbing and not have things like this happen. I’m not a police officer or a soldier, and I’m not interested in politics. I know several of you are connected to important people on Earth, and I hope your bosses, whoever they are, understand that in this Tower we will need to be our own justice and we will need to keep ourselves safe.”

Will hadn’t exactly planned to give this speech yet, but the timing seemed right and there were a few Climbers in the crowd that he knew might be a problem if they saw him as a danger.

“I’m trying to help everyone by sharing what I know, and I know that many of you have been helping each other out as well, which is what I want. You don’t have to follow me or sign up to my army, or anything like that, but if you need any help with anything – including thieves and bandits like those scum, I’ll try to help.”

A chorus of voices agreeing with his words greeted this ending, and as the crowd broke apart, Will extricated himself to speak to Brunjar. Despite his silly persona, the man had been a conduit for so much since he’d initially started trying to meet and talk to every new Climber on the Floor, and Will was planning on making him the first lieutenant in his Clan, as soon as he was ready to actually form it. The Inexorable Advance Guild, if they did form in this timeline, would have to make do without.

“Nice speech, and good work on those guys. You sure you’re not willing to meet with anyone on Earth still? A few of the Americans and Europeans aren’t comfortable with how much information you seem to have about this place.”

Will shook his head.

“I don’t want to be that famous right now. You know I’m going to be making an attempt at reaching Floor 4 soon, and when I do and I open that portal I want you to be there. I want you to pick out anyone you think is both a good person who believes in collaborating to Climb and has potential, and put the word out to them. Once we’ve hit the Floor, I’m going to publicly state that I’m starting a movement. I’m going to call it Towerfall. We’ll promote information and resource sharing as well as mutual respect between Climbers, pushing the idea that we’re all a team trying to find what’s at the top of this thing.”

The man whistled, and they moved even further from the few dozen Climbers who’d stuck around after the initial chaos subsided.

“Me and my guys are happy to team up with you, whatever that means.”

“You’re already basically there. For now, I don’t think we need to start doing Bosses as a 50 person group or anything, though I’d bet my left arm that we will eventually. I just want to get people to agree to work together and see each other as allies. You know as well as I do that there are other people, government, business, and civilian who will be forming bigger groups, I mean I’ve met at least three dozen different guys who are working for PETEF. I don’t want the Tower to become Government property, or for it to be the site of constant wars and conflicts.”

That got a nod from Brunjar, who had opined on the exact same concern privately once before, and he offered a hand to Will, who shook it immediately.

“Okay, I’ll call in whatever favours I have to keep people off your back, and like I say me and my boys are with you. Dane’s lot will probably throw in as well, and that guy Colby I was talking to the other day maybe.”

Colby was an S Ranker in the last Timeline, part of the group that found the first Ascended Clan Token. Will wasn’t exactly that anxious to interfere in that process, but as long as he didn’t stop the group from growing he figured they’d still be able to progress and assist Humanity.

“Well, for now like I say just keep it quiet. Once it’s been made public and the government have announced that Climbing is legal things will be different. Also, I’m not expecting everyone to ‘join’ Towerfall. It’s not like I’m going to have contracts or uniforms anyway, people will be free to Climb and compete as long as they don’t try to steal or kill. Hopefully, the governments will have some sort of policy for dealing with people accused of crimes in-Tower, and we can treat them the same way I did that lot.”

The Canadian gave a reassuring smile, and patted Will on the back.

“You can’t be 30 yet, but you’re a good leader. Is your party back yet?”

He shook his head.

“Not yet, but we arranged to meet in a few more days so we’ll see.”

Thanking Brunjar for everything he’d done so far, he headed back to the shack he’d been using as his own base and sat on the bed. Anxiety was bubbling in his chest at the display he’d just put on. He knew he’d need to found a Clan, knew he’d need to become “famous” to make use of his future knowledge properly, but the prospect of people like the President probably knowing at least his pseudonym was still stressful. Once the Tower was public, and the population and Climbing pace swelled, other Clans would form and he’d be less of a standout which would take some heat off of him. Still, the fact the publication of the Tower was coming earlier than the first timeline suggested his changes were already having wide-ranging effects.

He ended up worrying himself to sleep, and the next morning he woke to a knock on his door. As he opened it, a grin split his face and he stepped out of the shack into a hug.

“I told you we’d be back. Just needed to let Unk find his balls!”

Will laughed, shaking the big man’s hand and nodding to Okembe, who stood with a small smile of his own in the back. Metrodora stepped up for a hug next, and Will chuckled in disbelief.

“I was hoping you’d be back, but this is sooner than I’d said.”

That made Metrodora grin, and she gestured to the others casually.

“Well, you’ve been in the Tower the whole time, so you’ve not been able to check the email thread. After your performance yesterday, we figured it was time to get back here before you found new people to work with.”

He shook his head emphatically.

“Only if you’d all quit, believe me. So, if you’re all ready to come back, that means you can accept your gifts!”