“Why do you have a gun?!” Bran complains from underneath my arm.

“So I can shoot people,” Mei-Mei replies. “Obviously.” I can’t see her face from her seat atop my shoulders but I can feel the condescending eye-roll from her voice alone.

“No, but, how—?” Bran begins but then stops himself in realization. “Wait, Pepper, you threw up an actual gun? Leave those things in the other world! This is fantasy! Guns don’t belong here!”

Since I’ve just been handing off everything I throw up to Mei-Mei now, at some point I must have puked up some kind of ‘gun’ thing that she seems to be putting to good use. I don’t know what it is but it seems powerful, judging by the lizardman with the hole in the side of his face lying dead on the floor.

“I’ve only got three shots left so try not to get caught up in too many situations that force me to use them, okay? Three,” Mei-Mei says, pushing three fingers down in front of my face for me to see. “Three means this many, okay?”

I don't know if she's treating me like I'm stupid just to annoy me or because she really does think everybody aside from herself is an idiot. Of course I know how many three is. It's numbers above ten I start to struggle with. That’s when I run out of fingers to count with...

“Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time here,” she says. “Let’s go.”

I nod, and make my way over to the elevator, enjoying the feeling of little bloodied chunks squidging between my toes with every step. Finding a relatively clean spot along the way, I set Bran back down on the floor, freeing up one of my arms. The other is still wrapped around the trunk of the tree.

Standing in front of the broken-open doors of the elevator, I wait... It’s still not here...

“It’s on a different floor, idiot. You have to call it first.”

“Fweh? Call it? Okay...” At Mei-Mei’s words, I poke my head through the opening and shout down into the dark shaft. “Hey! Elevat—! Oh. There’s a guy.”

"H-help..." Clinging desperately to the edge of the floor with both hands is one of the guards who got sent through the open doors.

"Oh, Bran! It's the guy you killed!" I recognize him as the guard who slipped on Bran's vomit and tumbled out the door. "Ah, I guess he's still alive though. Should we help him? Or do you wanna push him back in?"

“I don’t care.” Mei-Mei shrugs. “Just get him out of the way.”

“P-please help me! I won’t attack you, I swear!” cries the guard, his knuckles white from hanging onto the ledge for dear life.

“Bran? You killed him. You decide,” I tell Bran, giving a little shrug of my own.

“Help him up, obviously!” Bran complains in return. “He’s not going to do anything to us after all of that! Here, I’ll grab him and you pull me back...”

“Sure, I guess.” Shrugging again, I grip the back of Bran’s shirt for support as he reaches down and holds the man by his wrists in an attempt to pull him up.

“Thank you, thank you!” the guard cries in relief. “Please listen to him, I won’t do anything to you! I don’t care anymore! I quit being a guard! I’m going to live a quiet life back home with my wife and child from now on!”

“...” Hearing that, Bran’s eye twitches and he immediately stops pulling. “What was that?” he asks with a cold voice.

“I-I said I quit! I have a wife and child waiting for me back home so— Huh!?”

Bran lets go of the man’s wrists abruptly, sending him falling back down into the elevator shaft again. Screaming all the way, the man plunges down into the dark depths, joining the rest of his peers somewhere at the bottom.

“Fweh? That was kinda messed up...” I say, pulling Bran back to his feet. “Why did you do that?”

“He was bragging!” Bran complains. “Who starts bragging when they’re in a position like that?! That guy was definitely some kind of evil scumbag planning on stabbing us in the back later!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure he was just pleading for his life...” Mei-Mei chimes in.

“He was totally bragging! He was totally rubbing in the fact that I’ve never had a girlfriend in my entire life and he’s already married with kids despite looking younger than me! A scumbag like that was definitely gonna push us in after we helped him up, I’m sure of it! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Sure, sure. Whatever. Again, I don’t care, as long as he’s out of the way.” Leaning down, Mei-Mei reaches forward and pushes a small button to the side of the open doors.

“There,” she says. “Called it.”

A second later, a little light flashes above our heads, shaped like an arrow pointing down. I guess that means it’s coming down to our floor.

“Hm? That’s weird...” Mei-Mei murmurs from above me. “Something’s not right...”

“Fweh? What’s not right?”

“It’s broken...” She reaches forward and touches the button again. When she does, it falls from the wall with a flash of sparks, snapped and broken wires trailing behind it. “It must have broken when you kicked the door in.”

“Oh...” I say, and then nod up at the light above the doorway. “But it’s still coming down to us, right? So why does it matter?”

“Because if we didn’t call it to this floor, that means somebody above us must be—”

Ding!

The elevator dings and another set of doors arrives in front of us, descending from above. Stopping in place, the door slowly parts down the middle, revealing the small room inside—a large man standing at its centre.

Wearing an oversized pair of denim pants and a green plaid shirt, he rubs the side of his neck with a large clawed hand. His clothes are torn and the fur on the side of his face is matted with blood.

It’s the Warden.

He blinks when he sees us standing in front of him.

I blink back.

His eyes dart around the room behind us, flicking between the gore-soaked walls and floor, as well as the gaping hole to the outside where the Curse Ward used to be—and then his eyes narrow.

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“Stairs!” Mei-Mei shouts, yanking my hair.

Gripping the collar of Bran’s shirt, I turn on my heel and kick off in the direction Mei-Mei pulls, dragging him behind me. The sound of strained metal rings out at my back as the Warden explodes out of the elevator after us.

Pumping my legs, I sprint towards the open doorway to the side of the room as fast as they’ll take me. Running through the open door, I find a set of stairs leading down. Without a second thought, I leap down them, flying past each step without touching the ground. At the bottom of the stairs is a sharp turn. Not wanting to lose momentum, I slam my foot into the back wall and kick off it in mid-air, launching myself around the corner and down another set of steps without losing much speed. Moments later, I hear something crash into the wall I had just kicked off of. The Warden is hot on our heels and, like usual, probably not very happy with us.

“Why is the— Ow, ow, ow! Why is the Warden here?!” Bran shouts from underneath my grip, flailing his legs out in front of him as he’s jerked and jostled across each bumpy step behind me. “Where the hell is Lust?!”

“I don’t know!” Mei-Mei shouts back, the sound of heavy footsteps over crunching concrete at our backs. “Lust should be making her way down the prison on her own! The Warden should be dealing with her right now! That was the plan, at least!”

“Also, why is he still wearing the clothes we gave him?! Why is he still dressed like some kind of outdated stereotype straight out of Akihabara?!” Bran complains about something I don’t understand but I’m too focused on sprinting down stairs to comment on it.

I fly down several more steps, passing by doors to other floors. Turning one last corner, I find the ceiling caved in, blocking the way further down.

“Tch.” Mei-Mei clicks her tongue and tugs my hair forward. “Through there!” She tugs me towards the open doorway to another floor, the number ‘96’ painted on the wall next to it in white. Doing as she says, I sprint through the doorway and into a new room.

I’m immediately assailed by the heavy scent of death as I cross through the door. Bursting through the thick miasma, my first step is met with the familiar squidging between my toes.

Bodies. Guards and prisoners alike litter the ground around us. Bloodied chunks of people drip from the ceiling and walls. It’s a scene similar to the one we left on the ninety-ninth floor, except with more blood, bodies, and gore. A lot more.

With a layout similar to the one on our old floor, a room for guards leads to a bigger, circular room for the prisoners—connected by a hallway of locked doors in between them. Except... The guard room we’re in now has a direct view of the prison wing. There are no locked doors, and there is no hallway. It’s not that it was designed like this, it’s that the hallway with doors is just gone, replaced by nothing but rubble—as if something had completely blown away the inner walls of this entire floor, connecting them into one gigantic room instead.

My eyes are instantly drawn towards the open view of the prison wing. In the distance, a huge, hulking woman stands atop a mountain of corpses, completely naked, with her face towards the sky. Sunlight beams in from the gaping hole in the ceiling above her, illuminating the glistening red rivers of blood running down her dark skin. Her long, blood-soaked hair clings messily to her naked body, the sun highlighting the patches of a lighter, more natural shade of red underneath the thick gore.

As I take another running step—the Warden still close behind me—her pointed ears twitch slightly. A sudden shiver runs down my spine as she suddenly snaps her head down, our eyes meeting from across the distance.

A wide grin breaks out across her face.

I grin back.

“Nope, nope, nope!” Mei-Mei yells, tugging my head to the opposite side, towards the elevator shaft. Reluctantly, I break eye contact with the naked, bloody woman and continue my sprint towards the elevator instead.

From the corner of my eye, I watch as an unhappy Warden comes tearing around the doorway behind me, wisps of smoke rising off of his body. His claws scrape against the floor as he grinds into the turn, continuing his chase.

“Gyahahaha!” A booming laughter echoes out from behind him. He pauses momentarily, turning his head in the direction of the noise and then— He seems to disappear into the floor, vanishing in a loud explosion of dust and debris that masks the view behind us.

Turning my attention back ahead of me, we make it to the elevator doors. Mei-Mei taps furiously at the button to call the elevator while the sound of intense fighting carries on in the background.

Ding!

The elevator quickly arrives and—still carrying Bran, Mei-Mei, and the tree—we all scramble on board. Mei-Mei instantly hits the lowest button on the wall. ‘66’. That’s as far as these ‘advanced’ elevators will take us, I seem to remember. The doors slide shut and, with a gentle hum, the elevator begins to move. A soft, jazzy tune sings out from the ceiling as the glowing numbers above the door slowly tick down.

95, 94, 93...

“This is kinda nice...” I nod along to the quiet tune.

“Music is childish. I have no interest in it.”

“I prefer kawaiicore and future bass...”

As usual, Mei-Mei pretends to not like things she calls ‘childish’ while Bran comments something incomprehensible that sounds like complete gibberish to me.

92, 91, 90—

Suddenly, the elevator jerks to a stop and begins to violently shake. A set of claws pierces through the middle of the door, quickly followed by a second. Sliding them apart, they pull the doors open, revealing a familiar furry sight on the other side.

“It was you three, wasn’t it? You’re the ones who woke Lust!” an enraged Warden growls as flames lick out across his bare arms. “You have no idea what kind of devastation you’ve unleashed upon—!”

BANG!

A loud noise rings out at my ear, followed by a sharp yelp from the Warden as he pulls away from the elevator. The doors quickly shut and, with a soft hum, the elevator begins to move again.

“... Eh? You shot him?!” Bran shouts out in surprise.

“I shot him,” Mei-Mei replies flatly, stuffing something back in her pocket.

“I-is that okay?! Wasn’t he the last boss or something?! Can we really just shoot the last boss before the climax?! Is that really okay?!”

Apparently Mei-Mei did the same thing to the Warden that she did to the lizardman back on floor ninety-nine. The Warden is strong though. I don’t think that’s the last we’ll be seeing of him just yet...

89, 88, 87...

The elevator carries on in relative silence as we continue to watch the numbers tick down. I break the tension hanging in the air with a question that’s been bothering me for a while now...

“What the hell is kawaiicore?” I ask. “It sounds fun.”

“That’s what you’re worried about right now?!”

86, 85, 84—

Another sudden stop jerks the elevator once more and a huge fist pierces through the doors. “Gyahahaha!” A thunderous laughter booms out from the other side. The screech of twisting metal cries out as the fist retracts, tearing the entire elevator doors away from the wall along with it. A dark, hulking woman stands in the broken doorway, her naked body soaked in blood and gore.

“Truly wonderful!” she bellows, her yellow eyes glowing ecstatically above the wide grin plastered across her face. “’Tis a bloodbath most glorious! To be so warmly welcomed upon my reawakening is truly—!”

BANG!

A second sharp noise rings in my ear as the woman’s sentence is cut off and she takes a step back. With a soft hum, the elevator jerks back into motion again, leaving her behind on the floor above.

“I don’t think this is okay!” Bran cries from my side. “Who was that?! They looked really important but they didn’t even get a chance to introduce themselves before they got shot! Is this really okay?!”

“One bullet left,” Mei-Mei says calmly, stuffing the gun back in her pocket.

83, 82, 81—

My back muscles begin to twitch frantically and that all-too-familiar shiver runs down my spine once again.

“Hmm...” I ponder out loud, looking up at the ceiling. “I think we need to get off.”

“We’re not getting off until we reach the bottom, idiot. We’re only—”

"Yup! We need to get off!" Tightening my hold on the tree beneath my arm, I grab hold of Bran with my other and jump out of the broken-open doors of the elevator as it’s still in motion. Bursting through and skidding to a halt on the new floor, I look behind me into the elevator shaft to see—

“Gyahahaha!”

—A flash of red whips past the broken doors and down into the depths below. An explosion of metal echoes out from somewhere underneath us and the entire Spire shakes a little in the quaking impact, sending dust and debris crumbling down around us and a plume of smoke shooting up the elevator shaft.

I take a look at the number on the floor at my feet—‘80’.