“You say your lifeline is tied to my ship, but how do I know that?” I asked. “The only thing I know is that our cores resonated, and you pushed my Fate core to the Peak Tier. Besides that, everything else appears to be a lie. Why should I take you at face value?”

The skin around her lips wrinkled in a smile. “You are right to question the truth of my words,” she said. “Trust given is trust earned. I will reveal the details of my Quest in so much as I am able, and you may make your decision forewarned and forearmed.”

I nodded. That was good enough for me. All I could ask for, really. She opened her mouth to speak when a notification cut across my vision.

The occupants of this stronghold have all been subdued or killed. This stronghold is available to claim. There are two separate factions within this stronghold. Should you wish to contest ownership, war will be declared.

Factions:

The Kaori

Climbers Dirk Damascus and Lacy Wu

Do you wish to assert claim over this stronghold and declare war against the Kaori?

Yes/No

Hiko’s eyes snapped up to my face, a worried expression in her eyes.

“You got the notification too?” I asked.

She nodded. “Before you decide, might I say something?”

“Sure,” I replied. To be honest, I was kind of thrown off by the entire mechanic. I didn’t know we could claim strongholds.

“It may seem tempting to claim a stronghold, young man,” she said, “and there are some perks that go along with it, but along with those perks come responsibilities,” she hesitated. “…and enemies.”

“More enemies?” I asked with a chuckle. “I thought I was pretty tapped out on that front.”

She gave me a wry smile. “There’s always more enemies. It’s simply a matter of whether or not you garner their attention.”

I waffled my head back and forth. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why shouldn’t I claim this stronghold? Or rather, why should I let you have it?”

In the back of my mind, I knew if we decided to fight, Lacy and I would come out on top. I knew all of Mileen’s tricks, and she knew none of mine. Hiko’s Fate core, as far as I could tell, had been scorched, emptied, and she was about 80 pounds, soaking wet. Now, I didn’t know what that meant in Cultivator terms, but she was a blind old woman, for Christ’s sake. If she was enough to take me and Lacy out, then what were we even doing here?

But I had no intention of fighting the Kaori. In fact, I’d done my damnedest to make sure they survived. All the same, I didn’t want to give away the farm without hearing the price.

“If you were to claim the stronghold, you would start the next Floor with a base of operations to call your own, a powerful advantage, to be sure, but every stronghold is free to be claimed by those more powerful. Having one so early on the next Floor would make you quite a juicy target.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “You’re not afraid of being a juicy target?”

She shrugged. “It’s slightly different for us inhabitants of the Tower. Unlike yourself, the Kaori, as a faction won’t turn any heads possessing a stronghold on the Second Floor. Other than Yuri, the Beasts, and the Champions, no one knows our strength. They’ll be hesitant to invade.”

She chuckled. “And it comes with some powerful rewards that we will leverage in our defense. We can do that because we’re not worried about Climbing. You, on the other hand, will be forced out of the stronghold for days at a time, leaving it ripe to be plucked by some powerful guild or faction.”

I nodded. “Okay, that tracks. And what will you give us in exchange for not putting up a fight?”

“Well, young man,” she started, “I had already intended to offer you a position within our faction. As soon as I gave you my Boon, I marked you as my Champion. Now that we would have a proper stronghold, the Boons and advantages I can give you will increase tenfold. That’s if you decide to join us,” she added with a wry smile.

I looked to Lacy to get her input, but she seemed distracted, off. “Lacy,” I asked. “Any objections?”

She shrugged indifferently. “What are we going to do with this stronghold anyway?” she asked rhetorically. “I say give it to them.”

I studied her face, looking for any insight into what was bothering her, but she stared back at me calmly, giving me no tells. This wasn’t the time to grill her, but as soon as we were alone, I intended to get to the bottom of what was bothering her.

Turning back to Hiko, I replied, “Okay, we have a deal. You can have the stronghold, and we’ll join your faction. Not like I ever intended to join the Beasts or the Champions anyway.”

She gave a knowing nod. “You won’t regret this decision, young man. Even though the Kaori already owe you our lives for saving us from the Beasts, consider this one more chit on top of the pile.”

I chuckled. “Count on it. Now, about your Quest.”

“My Quest,” she paused, glancing up at the ceiling. “You wouldn’t give a nasty restriction to an old cripple like myself, would you?” She was talking to the Integration Guide, I realized. Of course, there was no answer, and she turned back to me.

“I don’t fancy a restriction,” she said, “but I’ll do my best. My Quest is similar to Astrid’s, from what I understand. We’re incentivized to convince Climbers to join our faction. I receive rewards for every Floor you Ascend. If one of the Climbers that joins me makes it to the Fifth Floor, I’ll be given a choice.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“What choice?”

“I’ll be given a choice to claim my freedom from the Tower and be elevated to the next Stage of cultivation.”

“Okay,” I said, “that sounds pretty good. Now why is that a choice?”

She chuckled. “If I were greedy, I could decide to stay on for the Sixth Floor, even the Seventh Floor. If my Climbers were to reach higher heights, my rewards would increase exponentially. The specifics will become clear after the Fourth Floor, but anecdotally, I know they are quite spectacular. Path-changing, even.”

“Path-changing,” I repeated. “Like changing your Affinities, increasing your number of cores?”

She gave a sort of half nod, shrugging her shoulders. “I couldn’t say exactly. I did hear one story about a participant whose chosen Climber ascended the entire Tower. And that participant became,” she paused. “…extremely powerful.”

“Do you intend to bail the moment we hit the Fifth Floor, or are you going to gut it out?” She looked at me with that disarming, pupil-less gaze and hesitated. I chuckled softly. “I think that’s answer enough.”

She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Young man, you have to understand, even though my backstory with the Kaori is fabricated, I have been a servant of the Towers for centuries. I’m more than ready to leave this hellhole. And if I were to gamble on you, stick it out for the Sixth, even the Seventh Floor, and you were to fail, stumble on your Climb, I would have lost my ticket out of here.”

I held up my hand in a calming gesture. “I get it, Hiko, I do. Like you said, I’m a young man. I can’t weigh my life on the scale of centuries—can’t even begin to understand what hundreds of years in a place like this could do to a person.”

She nodded, a sad look on her face. “I joined this Tower,” she said softly, “to undo a massive mistake I made many, many years ago. Parts of this are a facade,” she said, waving around us with her hand. “But what’s real is the connection between our cores. I was a follower of Her. And it led me to nothing but pain and suffering. When I was offered a stint inside the Tower, I was promised that my Fate core could be expunged, replaced with a different Affinity of my choice. That is my purpose for being here and…” She trailed off. “And if they offer me that, I don’t think I’ll be strong enough to turn it down.”

I chewed my inner cheek in thought. For some reason, I hadn’t considered that she actually had a Fate core after learning about her, Astrid, Yuri, and what this Tower really was. But if what I knew about Fate was true, if what Hiko and Lex had told me was true, then I didn’t blame her for wanting to change cores and Affinities. I wasn’t sure if this was a smart choice, tying myself to Hiko and the Kaori. Maybe the Beasts would have offered me better Boons, more power. Maybe the Champions of Order would now, if I went and found them. But regardless of what she had just told me, I didn’t blame her. My experiences with her in the past redos had built a strange sort of kinship that I couldn’t shake.

I nodded once and said, “Okay, Hiko, we’ll join your faction.”

But before I could say more, Lacy’s sharp gaze turned on me. “Oh, you’re making this decision for all of us, then?”

I reared back, stunned. “Uh, well, that’s kind of been...” I cut off as she nodded tersely.

“That’s kind of been your thing?” Before I could reply, she nodded again. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She clapped her hands as if signaling the end of our conversation. “Well, this has been great. Thank you for saving me. I appreciate it, I really do. But I’m going to go back to my real friends. Good luck with your...” She waved her hands mystically. “Whatever this is.” She turned on her heels and started off down the hallway.

I stared at her back in shock, not really believing what I had just heard. “Lacy,” I called. But she waved her hand over her shoulder and ignored me. I looked at Hiko in question, but then realized she couldn’t see my dumbfounded expression. “Um, I’m going to go deal with this,” I said, pointing after Lacy.

Hiko waved me away with a grandmotherly gesture. “Go, boy, go. We’ll talk again soon. You know where to find me.”

I nodded and took off after Lacy. I called her name once more, but she continued to ignore me. When I caught up to her, I grabbed her arm to stop her. She immediately ripped it out of my grip, turning to me with a furious expression. “Get your hands off me,” she said softly.

I held my hands up in surrender. “Lacy, what’s going on? This isn’t like you.”

She pursed her lips, her eyes going wide sarcastically. “Oh, this isn’t like me?” she asked. “And how would you know that, Dirk? We’ve talked all of thirty minutes.”

“Come on, Lacy. You know that’s not true.”

“Oh, I forgot. We usually become really good friends,” she said with a biting tone. For some reason, that really struck deep and I found myself at a loss for words. She must have seen the pain on my expression as her face softened just for a moment, and then she turned to walk away again. “You know what? I just need to get out of here. The whole being kidnapped thing, being imprisoned, it’s just too much for me to process right now.”

I watched her walking away, more torn than I’d felt since the Tower opened. Who was this person? I wondered. This wasn’t the Lacy I had known. That strong, brave, resilient, loyal person that I had, well, I wouldn’t say loved, but there had definitely been a strong attraction. Something flickered in the back of my mind. I had been getting that feeling over and over again in this redo, almost exclusively around Lacy and one other person. And then the realization hit me like a gut punch. Excitement filled me, not because it was good news, but because it meant that I hadn’t screwed this up. There were external factors at play here… I hoped.

I tried to keep my tone cool and calm when I said, “Lacy, hold up one sec.”

She stopped at the end of the hallway, but didn’t turn. She sighed heavily. “What, Dirk?” Her tone was weary. “What is it?”

I approached slowly, trying to keep my heart from pounding out of my chest. “I think there’s something going on here.”

“Yeah, Dirk, no shit. I’m tired. I want to—”

I cut her off. “Hold on, please, just give me a chance to explain.” She turned to look back at me, her face a mix of annoyance and curiosity. “You remember Craig, right?” I asked as I approached.

She squinted in confusion, and I realized that she had only met him the one time in the Hall of Heroes. All the other times he’d shown his true self had been past redos. To her, he was a distant acquaintance, not the absolute piece of shit we knew him to be. I suppressed a sigh. This was going to be harder than I thought.

“Yeah, I remember him,” she said. “He’s Nikki’s new boyfriend, or was, I guess. It all seemed a little murky when we talked to her.”

“Exactly,” I said, pointing at her like she’d nailed it. “You saw how out of it Nikki was when she stumbled from the jungle?”

Lacy nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess.”

I held out my hands, asking for patience. “Okay, in the past redos, I discovered that Craig has some sort of mind control abilities.” Her eyes went wide. “I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that he was mind controlling Nikki and all of his party. In one of the redos, he even started a rebellion among the Co’xatl. Now, I don’t know exactly how that worked, but I’m 99% certain he has the ability to manipulate emotions and unconscious thoughts.”

She crossed her arms, a defiant look forming on her face. “What are you getting at, Dirk?”

“If you’ll allow it, I’d like to cast my [Analysis] ability on you.” This was something that had completely slipped my mind from before. When Red had leveled up, my [Analysis] ability had leveled up as well. It would show me the effects of Charisma and Terror, and I hoped, the effects of Craig’s mind control.

The stormy expression on her face only darkened. “I’m not being mind controlled, Dirk,” she nearly shouted. “I just don’t like you. Is that so hard to believe? No one likes you—I mean,” she sighed, “I don’t mean to be rude, but is that so hard for you to believe?”

My mind went blank for a second. Her words had hurt more than I thought they could. I had spent so many years not caring what people thought, not caring if they liked me. But those words, in this moment, from Lacy’s mouth, cut worse than any dagger. She must have realized how brutal that had been because her face softened slightly. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She looked away. “I think the stress of the moment is getting to me. Let’s just go back to the Personal Spaces and we can talk about this when I’ve cooled down a little bit.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to yell. No, it’s not okay. If Craig is mind controlling you, let’s get to the bottom of it. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I felt myself growing defensive, wondering if the connection we had shared in the past redos had been a fluke. The stress of life and death situations creating some sort of chemical interaction that wasn’t real. This wasn’t the Lacy I had come to respect.

“Okay,” I said simply, crossing my arms.

She pursed her lips, studying my face, and then nodded. “Okay.”