Arvallei would be away for a total of five days: two to reach the nearest Landing City by air, one for him to get at least a little proper rest himself, and two to come back. Of course, we’d brought suitable communication devices to keep in touch with him in spatial storage, so we were reliably updated on his progress.
True to Bruzigan’s word, we completely refrained from replenishing our supplies from the village’s. However, that word purposely did not extend to also refraining from foraging in the surrounding area. Pickings were pretty slim the first day, though we did find a good freshwater source. After that, though, the village boss gave us the location of a relatively close Temple tier dungeon that should, according to him, have plentiful supplies to loot. Every year or so for the five this village had been established, they’d had to choose between sustaining casualties clearing the place out, or sustaining them in the monster surge that took place when it went uncleared for that long. We’d get more in one trip there than we could otherwise scrounge up the whole time waiting for Arvallei, while no longer being in the way of their own normal forage parties—a win-win.
The only problem was, this was a Floor of the Tower. Things were rarely so simple.
When we reached the edge of the clearing where the Temple dungeon was located, we instantly spotted a pair of rough-looking humans. Unfortunately, they spotted us just as fast. The moment they did, one of the pair went inside, while the other continued glaring at us warily.
“They’re native,” I murmured, having Enemy Scanned them, “but I bet they’re challenger-hired. Boss, how are we approaching this?”
“Losing out on treasure from this dungeon isn’t a critical loss,” said Bruzigan, “it shouldn’t be hard to convince them to leave us the provisions.”
Temple dungeons had three levels. Judging by how long it was before the other lookout came back out, the group who followed them had at least reached the second. As I’d expected, there were six of them—all challengers. All humans, too. And they clearly recognized us.
They acted friendly at first, but when the subject of the supply caches inside the dungeon came up, things turned sour. This particular group had been assigned what was widely considered the most difficult Medium difficulty mission—to establish a new settlement in one of the more dangerous, unclaimed regions of Kurz’kos, meaning either this one or the region of the Trial of Calamity. During the opening small talk, I’d discreetly cast the Lie Detector spell on each of them. I hadn’t gotten that one to Level 10 just yet, only Level 7, but that was enough to extend the effect time to ensure it didn’t expire on any of them. So, it was safe to say the need they professed for the supplies as well as the treasure was as genuine as they claimed.
Ri'legh and Anna grumbled as we made our way back to the settlement, but I wasn’t too bothered. It was a seriously unlucky setback, but that only got me suspecting that something good was around the corner. Besides, we were mostly after that Temple so as not to be doing nothing while we waited for Arvallei to come back with the map.
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By the morning after, Anna was getting agitated enough about it that I couldn’t leave it alone any longer. I took her aside to talk. “It’s going to be fine, all right? A few idle days aren’t going to drop our rating below 4.5. I get that you want the best reward possible from this Floor. There isn’t a member of this team who doesn’t want to help you get it, okay? But attacking another Floor team just because they’re the least bit in our way is the wrong thing to do. It’s the kind of thing the Rainbow Mage would do, if you believe the stories floating around about him lately.”
Anna looked hard at me. “Do you believe those stories?”
“Anna, he had his team whale on me for twelve hours straight, without hesitation. And that was his idea of helping me. Yes I do believe them. And I know I don’t wanna be like that, and I don’t think you do either.”
Anna gave a frustrated groan. “I know, I know that this probably won’t make the difference between getting 4.5 or not. Hey, how did you know that’s what I was worried about, anyway?”
“I assumed you’re looking to win an item that will help you break the slave contract you’re under, or something like that. The Tower’s items are almost always calculated to be something a challenger really needs, especially high mission ratings on high difficulties. With your Individual Rating getting a bonus for the next several floors...
The thing is though, I’ve been scouring Grosstin’s database of known items for anything with an effect like that for months. The item you’re looking for...it might not exist.”
Anna shook her head, emphatically. “It exists. There are items that are ‘cheat-like’ enough that no faction would ever risk putting info on them in a database, no matter how secure. But I know exactly what item I need.
It’s called an Oathbreaker. Clatenis hatched a plan with the Rainbow Mage not long after I had my own run-in with him. The plan was for his team to sign on with one of the anti-Federation factions, then use several of them to break the contracts with no penalty, as well as their faction being none the wiser, to spy on them.
I don’t know if the plan worked, or if the plan got cut short and the Rainbow Mage pretended it hadn’t and passed info to Shumba based on his knowledge of the future. Either way, he was why the Federation knew the day the war would start. He didn’t mention the Sanctuaries falling, though.
I had to risk a lot to even find out that much. So yes. I’m aiming for an effective reward rating of 5.0. And yes, technically I have one more shot on the 9th Floor, but this scenario is way easier for me to max out my Contribution Rating too. So if the Tower doesn’t give me what I need...I’ll steal it from Shumba, if I have to. I found out where items kept so secret are kept.”
I chose my next words carefully. “Getting that far can’t have been easy. A place THAT high security probably has stuff that nobody would ever anticipate protecting it.
It strikes me that it’d probably be a good idea for you to bring some hidden cards of your own along. For instance,” and here I hesitated, but decided I’d gone too far into the spiel to back down now, “having someone along as backup with enough firepower to stand up to the most elite security Shumba can bring to the table.”
I expected her to immediately chew me out again. Instead, she was silent for a long while, but when I tried to apologize, she raised her hand to cut me off. “Just tell me why. Why are you so damn determined to stick your neck out for me?”