“They will be taken with him when he leaves for the higher realms,” Hou Zheng said instantly. “In plain and simple words, as you put it, he will take them out of the forest fire that is this planet and put them in a nice, safe hospital with friendly nurses and a mug of hot cocoa.”

For a moment, Josh imagined the dragon he had seen back in that dungeon, a massive beast that could eat him in a single bite, delicately placing his friends in chairs and handing them tiny porcelain mugs with its huge claws.

He shook his head to clear the image. “That's not nothing, but I'm not sure it's something, either. I don't know these higher realms from a hole in the ground. For all I know, forgive me for expanding the metaphor, he could drop them off at the hospital and then the doctor comes up with a bill charging a thousand dollars for an aspirin.”

Hou Zheng's face scrunched up in confusion. “I follow the analogy, but I must confess, I find it confusing. Why would a hospital ever charge anything?”

Josh rubbed his forehead. “Before we beat the Tower, this country had some... problems, even in the middle of the apocalypse. Actually, I think it got worse in the apocalypse.” He stopped himself and sighed. “Look. It's all ancient history now. You get the point, yeah?”

“You cannot be certain that a guarantee of safety is, in fact, a guarantee of safety. Understandable.” Hou Zheng smiled. “So. What else would you like?”

Josh stared at him. “That easy?”

Hou Zheng shrugged. “That easy.”

Josh crossed his arms over his chest. “What if I want all the old bloodstones back? The ones we lost when the world died? Can your boss make that happen?”

At this, Hou Zheng finally showed an emotion besides fatherly kindness. He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I suppose. There isn't some magic spell to instantly restore all the old bloodstones, but I have a few on me you might find useful, and Lord Wú Huǒyàn can easily obtain many more.”

Josh filed that detail away. “It's a start.”

“I'm not sure why you would bother,” he insisted. “It doesn't matter how many bloodstones your people have. It doesn't matter if a dragon bursts out of a dungeon or the Tower remains sealed forever. This world will burn. That is what the lower realms do, they burn. It is what happened to my world, it is what happened to every other world, and it will happen to this world.”

Josh frowned. “Aren't you supposed to be a Healer? You should be trying to save everyone you can.”

Hou Zheng waved a hand dismissively. “A Healer needs to know when to cut off a diseased limb.”

“I don't know how things work in your higher realms or whatever,” Josh said, struggling to contain his anger. “And sure, maybe the world itself needs to burn. I don't know. No one told us shite. But there are millions of people here who do deserve to live.” He narrowed his eyes. “A Healer should know that.” His sister would know that.

The orc did not scowl. But he had the look of someone making special effort not to scowl. Josh had seen that face often enough.

“Our ethical differences are irrelevant to this discussion,” he said at last. “I offer immediate safety for those closest to you, as well as support for this dying world—as foolish as I believe that attempt to be, I will not interfere with it.” He waved his hand again, and this time it seemed very flippant, as if flicking mud off his finger. “That is why I have made no attempt to exterminate your new town.”

“Ask Mizuno how that worked out for him.”

He didn't rise to the bait. “All I ask is for the way to be cleared. Consider it an evacuation in the face of a natural disaster, if you like. My employer gets what he wants, any damage to your City is repaired, everyone wins.”

“You offer a lot of pretty words, but not much else.” Josh uncrossed his arms and held them behind his back, so that his hands were against the stone wall of the tunnel. “But let's assume that you can deliver everything, shiny and new and wrapped in a crisp red bow. What happens when your boss gets into the Tower?”

Hou Zheng frowned. “You mean you don't...” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “What exactly did Mizuno tell you?”

Josh shrugged. “Dunno. He threatened me, called me a dwarf, used a lot of drowning metaphors, then threw a bomb in my face.”

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“Of course he did,” he muttered, so low that Josh didn't think he was supposed to hear. “You always had to be mysterious, didn't you?” He refocused on Josh. “Once my employer enters the Tower, he will begin clearing the floors. Even considering his power and experience, this will take time. I would estimate as long as forty years. The record, I believe, is four years, in much better circumstances. There is no way he can manage it in less than that.”

Josh nodded, though he filed away the mention of a “record.” Who had records of the Tower? “Then what? When he reaches the top and finishes the Tower? What happens then?”

“The Tower,” Hou Zheng said solemnly, “will disappear.”

Josh had to take a moment to process that bit of information.

“The whole Tower,” he said, when it became clear Hou Zheng wasn't going to elaborate. “Just... poof, gone.”

“Precisely. There will be some alterations to the mana levels in the region, but your Burn Line—an ingenious solution to the problem of the Jungle, I must say—means the effects should be minimal.” He shrugged. “You will suffer more from any buildings that happen to be leaning against the Tower.”

That actually wouldn't be a problem. Except for the defenses, buildings weren't allowed to touch the Tower. Josh didn't know the full details, but he was pretty sure people were worried about, well, the Tower randomly disappearing one day. After all, it had randomly appeared one day. It was nice to see that some paranoia was working out.

“What else?” Josh asked. “Will the Jungle disappear? Will the Eight Heroes lose their immortality?”

Hou Zheng shook his head. “No to both. The Jungle is always hungry. It eats its way through worlds, and it cannot be purged so simply. Likewise, the lives of your Immortals exist independent of the Tower.” Then he paused, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Well, I assume so. It is possible they made a horrendous wish and somehow bound their lives to the Tower.”

“They wished to be free from the turning of the world,” Josh said. There was more to their wish, but that was the important bit.

Hou Zheng smiled. “Ah, they were specifically trying to dodge the reset, weren't they? Yes, then they should be fine.” He shrugged. “Though they didn't need to worry so much. All immortals are automatically immune to the reset. In fact, though we have minimal evidence, my friend Jemma believes that is why the monsters are not reset on the solstice. She thinks that the reset was originally an attempt by the Tower to balance both humans and monsters alike, but the monsters evolved a way around it—” He stopped, looking guilty. It was strange, seeing that expression on a green face with tusks. “Sorry,” he said. “You probably don't want to hear about monster theory while your world is burning.”

It did sound interesting, Josh had to admit, but it also didn't sound like something he wanted to hear just now. “So, Tower disappears, mana goes wild for a span,” Josh summarized. “Anything else? The Jungle won't suddenly be growing ten times as fast or whatever?”

“No, the Jungle will be completely unaffected. Well, I suppose it might be slightly disrupted by the rifts.”

Josh paused. “The rifts? You mean the dungeons?”

Hou Zheng looked at him strangely. “Yes, of course. The dungeons are an outgrowth of the Tower, to contain the rifts. When the Tower disappears, so too will the dungeons. You will have to attempt to contain the rifts manually. I recommend closing them as fast as possible.”

“Uh...” Josh held up a hand. He made sure his other was still behind him, touching the wall. “Just... hold up. Hold up. Those rifts at the heart of every dungeon. They're just going to be... hanging out naked in the air.”

“Not the way I would have worded it, but yes.”

“The rifts that spew out monsters,” Josh clarified.

“Indeed.”

“The monsters are not going to be trapped any more. They can just spill straight out and start killing.”

Hou Zheng nodded somberly. “I will not pretend it is a small problem. Thankfully, it is also far easier to close an open rift than to defeat a dungeon. Since it is, as you said, hanging out naked in the air, all you have to do is touch it, and the System will do the rest. The monsters rarely even see a need to defend the rifts. After all, the monsters are escaping to this world from dying ones. They have no desire to return.”

There was a lot to unpack from that, but Josh had to focus on the important bits. “Where do the rifts appear?”

Hou Zheng blinked in surprise. “Do you not know how dungeons work?”

“Answer the question,” Josh snapped. “Where do new rifts appear? Only around humans?” Lots of magic was affected by human thoughts and human presence. In the old world, the most common theory was that the dungeons appeared in places out of sight, but close to large concentrations of humans. Abandoned warehouses in cities, large forests outside of town. That sort of thing.

But people had found dungeons in the ocean before. Just a few. But was that because they were rare, or because no one was looking?

His hopes were immediately dashed. “Why, everywhere, of course,” Hou Zheng said. “The magic has spread to encompass the entire planet. That means that dungeons can appear anywhere on the planet.”

Josh took a breath. “That's a bit of a sticky wicket, isn't it?”

“It's not as though it's the end of the world,” Hou Zheng said. “No more than it already ended, anyway. Oh, the rifts will destroy this world eventually, but I don't see them accelerating the end particularly.” He let out a huff of breath. “Honestly, I don't think your City will last the forty years it will take my employer to clear the Tower anyway.”