“Thanks for everything, Boss!”

“Yeah, thanks, Boss! You sure you’re not coming with us?”

The group of friendly prisoners and guards say their farewells as they all board the elevator together.

After obliterating everything on the sixty-sixth floor and opening up a big breezy hole in the side of the Spire with a single placebo-powered swing of my tree—no longer having to worry about any bunnies or gas—we all made our way to the giant cage that houses the sets of moving platforms leading down. However...

“Yeah, Mei-Mei says we’re not taking these elevators down anymore,” I reply. “We’re gonna go a different way, I guess.”

Mei-Mei decided that taking any more elevators down was probably a bad idea, seeing as Lust completely destroyed the last one we were on. Plus, the elevators on floors sixty-six and below aren’t as fancy as the one above so they’re a lot slower too. And they don’t go down very far. If we took this elevator, we’d have to keep switching over to a new one every few floors. I guess Mei-Mei figured it’d be better if we just kept to the stairs. Or maybe she has a different route planned...

“Damn. Well, we should be able to handle things on our own from here, Boss! I’m from floor eighty-seven after all!”

“Yeah! This’ll take us all the way to fifty-six, and we’ll board the next one to thirty-five, twenty-eight, twelve, and then finally the first floor! I’ve worked here nine years so I know the way! I’ll lead the boys outta here safely, Boss! Don’t worry!”

“Let’s meet again on the outside one day, Boss!”

And then, with a creak and a groan, the chains binding the platform to the ceiling begin to shift. Still waving up at me while shouting their farewells, they all slowly descend into the floor and out of sight.

“Well!” I say, turning back to face Bran and Mei-Mei behind me. “That was fun. Where to now?”

Striding ahead of us with her oddly proportionate legs that she borrowed from the Peeler, Mei-Mei leads us over to a large metal panel in the wall. It clanks and thunks awkwardly as it tries to shut itself back into the wall in vain—too bent and twisted to fit back into place. It’s one of the holes the metal rabbits were spilling out of before.

“In here.” Mei-Mei nods.

Ripping the panel off, we poke our heads into the dark tunnel on the other side. Blinking red lights occasionally light up the wide, metallic route ahead. With the tree slung over my shoulder, I step into the secret passage and lead the way, Bran and Mei-Mei following close behind.

“This can’t be part of the prison, right?” Bran asks as we continue our way through.”What is this place?”

“No idea," Mei-Mei answers. "But I noticed it when I sent my hand through the vent the other day too. It seems there are tunnels like this across the whole Spire and it's how those odd machines have been appearing across each floor. Logic dictates that it'll also lead us to the first floor as well."

“Huh... Wait, couldn’t we have just taken these tunnels from the start then? Without waking Lust? Like, couldn’t we have just busted through the wall back in Curse Ward or something...?”

“Yes, we could have!” Mei-Mei snaps back at him. “I tried everything to get into these panels back on Curse Ward! If I had known Pepper could’ve simply broken them open... If I knew our damn gorilla could simply brute-force her way through solid metal with just a little protein boost, I could have thought up a million different ways to break us out! Hell, I could’ve whipped up a damn glider made from nothing but desk chairs and bed sheets in a few short hours and we could’ve just flown out of the Curse Ward after tearing a hole in the side! We’d already be flying halfway across the continent by now if that were the case!”

“Fair point...”

As the paths start to diverge and split into multiple tunnels, Mei-Mei points us in a direction and we continue along. Eventually, we make our way to a ladder and climb down it. At the bottom, another tunnel continues on much the same, with blinking red lights illuminating the way forward.

“How do you know which way to go?” I ask Mei-Mei as she points us down another splitting path.

“I don’t, but whoever built the Spire had to have been smart, so I’m just picking the most logical route.”

“I see...”

I don’t really get it but I’m sure she knows what she’s doing...

As we drop down another ladder and into another wide tunnel, part of the floor beneath our feet begins to move, emitting a loud grinding hum. We step to the side and the lumpy figure of a metal bunny zooms past us. We watch the floor carry it through the tunnel, before stopping it suddenly in place. From above, a panel slides open in the ceiling and the bunny launches up through the gap. I hear it land on the floor above with a metal thunk, and the panel seals itself shut again. Above us, the sounds of screaming and shouting can be heard, before quickly being snuffed out by the buzzing of a loud drill.

We continue our way onward, down more tunnels and down more ladders. Occasionally, a drill-bunny zooms past us and down a different tunnel, no doubt on its way to mess some people up in another section of the prison.

I wonder what floor of the Spire we’re on now... Hm?

To our side, I notice another bent panel trying in vain to reseal itself against the wall. Pulling it open, we all curiously peek our heads out into one of the floors of the Spire on the other side.

“... pudding, pudding, pudding...”

It’s a kitchen. Piles of corpses—flesh and metal—are scattered around the large cooking room. At one of the counters, a lone woman frantically whisks at a bowl in her scaly green hands. Behind her, a long reptilian tail flicks back and forth, the tip wrapped around the handle of a saucepan. She’s wearing a puffy white hat with two pointed ears poking out from underneath—a focused expression on her smooth, pale face as she continues to whisk while muttering to herself.

“... pudding, pudding, pudding...”

Some kind of half-elf, half-lizard woman, maybe...? What’s she still doing here?

“Let’s go.” Mei-Mei urges us onward, pulling away from the opening and pushing us along.

“Y-yeah, I don’t think we have time to be introducing a crazy new character right now...”

“Fweh? Ah... Right.”

Leaving the kitchen behind, we continue moving on through the hidden passages of the Spire, hopefully on our way to the first floor. Eventually...

Hm? There's another janky panel...

“Just leave me behind! You can escape on your own, I daresay!”

“No way! I ain’t leaving you in this mess by yourself.”

Pulling the panel away, we watch as two familiar-looking guards play out some kind of dramatic scene on the other side. One of them is caught beneath a pile of rubble as the other tries desperately to pull them out.

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

“You wolfmen are so boneheaded, I daresay! Why not just leave me behind?! Go! Quickly!” the one under the rubble cries out.

“I told you...” the other replies, digging through the crumbling stone with his bare hands. “If we get in trouble, we get in trouble together, right? Man, you elves are always makin’ things so awkward, you know? Haha!— Oof.”

As the Spire shakes, a shower of debris rains down around them, burying them even deeper into the rubble.

“Should we... Should we help them or something?” I ask.

“No,” Bran responds without hesitation. “Not these guys.”

“But—”

“Not these guys.”

I guess Bran is still a little upset about the whole pants-pooping thing back in the Curse Ward...

Ignoring the two guards and leaving them to their dramatic display of friendship or whatever, we continue down the wide blinking tunnel in front of us.

“No more diversions!” Mei-Mei complains. “If I’ve been keeping track correctly, we should be coming up on floor fifty-six, but I’m expecting we’ll run into some kind of main pathway at some point. There has to be a way these machines are travelling between floors. A path that connects them all. We just have to find that pathway and follow it down to—”

“[ACTIVATING—ERROR. ACTIVATI—ERROR.]”

From all around us, a hollow voice rumbles out across the tunnel, echoing off of every wall and down every passage. It's accompanied by the uncomfortable hum of grinding metal from somewhere in the distance.

“[ACTIVA—ERORR. ACT—ERROR. A—A—A—A—] Ah...”

The voice suddenly trails off, and the grinding comes to a stop.

...

“O-okay... That was odd,” Mei-Mei comments. “Anyway, like I said, we should be—”

“Surprise. Found you.”

Bursting out from around the corner of a side passage, a large figure stops us in our tracks. Blocking our way forward, it stands in our path, the flickering tunnel lights blinking a red sheen across its metallic surface. Another big metal thing. Unlike the bunnies though, this one is more people-shaped.

“Why?! Why did a mech show up?! This isn’t fantasy at all!” Bran complains at my side, yelling about things I don’t understand. Like usual.

Whatever this mech thing is, it’s big! It’s like a giant metal box with two arms and legs. Weirdly, despite not having any kind of discernable face or head, two rabbit-like ears sprout out above it, bent against the roof of the tunnel as it hunches beneath the ceiling that’s not fully able to contain its full hulking height

“Ah... Intruders... Inside me... Only Master is allowed inside me.” A flat, hollow voice buzzes out from it. A woman’s voice.

Fwah! It can talk! It sounds like a woman too! How can she speak without a mouth though? How am supposed to kiss a woman with no mouth? Not that the metal box is doing anything for me, but her voice is kinda cute and—

“Surstrom Spire.” Mei-Mei speaks up, interrupting my mouth-to-metal daydreaming. "It's you, isn't it? You’re the Spire?”

Fweh? The Spire? What’s she talking about? This thing is the Spire? But we’re in the Spire. How can somebody be the thing that’s inside the thing that they are...? Huh? Ah, I’m confusing myself. It’s probably best if I just leave this stuff to Mei-Mei...

"Don't call me that. It's not cute. Surprise is much cuter, don't you think? My name is Surprise now."

"O-okay...?" Mei-Mei replies, unsure of how to respond to the monotonous machine's bizarre statement. "Well, Surprise, we're trying to leave this place. We're not here to do any harm. If you could just lead us to the main tunnel that will take us to the bottom of the Spire, we'll be able to—"

“Ah... I knew it. You are after my core,” it interrupts, its voice completely devoid of any kind of emotion. “I won't allow it. You can have your way with my body, but my core belongs to Master.”

For having such a deadpan tone, this metal woman is saying some really outrageous things! Did we do something bad? Should we not have come this way? The sudden feeling that I’ve somehow committed sexual harassment on an inanimate object sinks into the pit of my stomach for some reason.

Suddenly, it lifts both of its arms and points them out towards us. At the same time, I notice two little red dots appear on the front of my shirt.

“Fweh? I think my nipples are glowing for some reason. Is that good or bad? Are my nipples powering up or something? Or is this—?”

“Run!” Mei-Mei shouts, pushing us back along the tunnel and around a corner. As the three of us duck out of sight, a loud shower of metal pellets tears up the walls and floor of the space we were just standing in.

With Mei-Mei leading the way, Bran and I follow close behind her as she sprints her weirdly long legs down the labyrinth of tunnels, the sound of heavy footsteps at our back.

“This is your fault!” Bran complains at me for some reason. “Because you introduced a gun into this world, every boss is going to have a gun from now on! You’ve unlocked the gun requirements for this world! Soon, even random mobs are going to be carrying guns too! I don’t want to live in a world where goblins spawn in with already-loaded guns!”

“Bran! Shut the hell up for a second!” Mei-Mei shouts as she continues sprinting ahead. “And Pepper! Can’t you deal with that thing behind us? Just hit it with the tree or something! Do what you did on floor sixty-six!”

“... I don’t want to,” I answer, still following behind.

“Why?!” the other two snap back at me in unison.

“This is sexual harassment!” I complain. “If that thing is the Spire, then we’ve been crawling around inside this woman without her consent and I think hitting her because she’s upset about it isn’t a cool thing to do! She’s right to be upset!”

“It’s just a machine, you idiot! What kind of stupid—?!”

“Surprise. Found you.”

Somehow getting ahead of us, the deadpan machine stretches its arms out again—two little beams of light shining out from each one—preparing to launch another shower of metal hail.

“Ah, dammit...” With another flex of my placebo-powered muscles, I swing the tree at the floor. A cry of screeching metal rings out and the entire length of the tunnel ahead of us snaps and gives away beneath its feet.“... Sorry.”

“Ah... Master...” a hollow voice whines as it plunges down into the collapsing cascade of rubble and debris.

I feel kinda bad about that... Oh well.

Turning back and finding a more-intact tunnel to carry on through, we follow Mei-Mei along another path and down another passage, until eventually...

“Just as I thought,” she says, peering down into the shaft at our feet. “A maintenance ladder. This should lead us all the way to the first floor.”

In front of us, a deep hole runs down into the ground as far as the eye can see. Looking up, it's the same on the ceiling too. Similar to an elevator shaft. Every now and then, a drill-bunny zips up the shaft on a metal railing, occasionally spitting out onto our level and being carried away down the tunnel at our backs by the moving floor.

Against a wall in the very corner—out of the way of all the passing bunnies—is a ladder. From the looks of it, it seems to travel up and down the entire length of the shaft.

“A maintenance ladder. Just as I thought, my ass...” Bran mumbles. “There’s no way you’re not just winging this...”

“...” Mei-Mei doesn’t reply, instead looking awkwardly off to the side.

Fweh? Is she just winging this? I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end...

“A-anyway!” Mei-Mei continues. “Let’s hurry. It’s a long way down but Pepper’s a gorilla and I’ve got these fancy new legs so we should be fine making the climb down fifty-six or so floors. If Bran gets tired, you can always just carry him. Or even leave him if you want to. I don’t care either way.”

“Hey...”

As Mei-Mei grips the ladder with her little hands, a sharp noise pings out, filling the air with an uncomfortable high-pitched ringing. A ringing that continues without pause.

“What the hell is that?!” Bran complains with his hands over his ears, before looking over at Mei-Mei accusingly. “And why is it coming from your pocket?!”

“Huh...” Mei-Mei digs into her coat and pulls out some kind of small device—clearly the source of the sharp noise still ringing in our ears. “It’s an alarm.”

“Why?! Why do you have an alarm set?! What are you late for?! This isn't the time to be worried about the time! Turn it off!”

“It doesn’t tell the time. It’s... a proximity alarm. It means we’re close to something. Something above us, it seems.”

“Close to what?! We need to go down, not up!”

Mei-Mei tilts her head to the side as she scrunches up her face in thought—the device still ringing between her fingers.

“I don’t remember.”