I watched from a safe distance as Vyrania and Koren tore through the giant encampment—though a stray icicle from one of the golems still managed to nearly take my eye out.

The carnage would have been disturbing, if I hadn’t known a crucial piece of information.

Before coming here, as we waited while I recovered my mana after using Contract on Rilen, Vyrania and Koren explained a few things to me, and I found out a lot more about the towers from them that the townsfolk either couldn’t, or didn’t think to, tell me.

For instance, any one of the monsters inside a tower might be controlled by people on the outside, from previously integrated civilizations, and the ones that weren’t were basically drones programmed to kill. Very smart drones in some cases, but still drones.

Which made me feel better about watching Vyrania and Koren lay waste to the entire camp of giants just to see if a floor key was in there.

Though them being able to communicate like I’d seen the giants do with the golems caused Koren and Vyrania to exchange a confused look, as did the fact that the first one I’d seen had detected my inspection—something the drones shouldn’t have been able to do.

Which wasn’t reassuring.

Another oddity was the interpreters not interpreting what the giants were saying. It should know pretty much any language, but especially one of monsters in a tower in a civ it was responsible for.

I didn’t need to participate in the killing in any case, since once an area with a key was cleared, anyone could get it. And though some apparently did have limited numbers of keys, that kind of thing wasn’t likely on the very first floor. The cleared areas would only repopulate if there was a period where there was no one inside the tower or floor; which one depending on the tower.

I also found out that I had upset Rilen when I reduced the loot distribution from 100% to 80%. Though that was not why he’d taken me hostage. He hadn’t even known I was the owner of the tower. He apparently never made the connection.

Given that my name was in the tower’s name, I’m not sure how he missed it.

So much for being smarter than humans.

Vyrania and Koren, on the other hand, had made the connection, but hadn’t mentioned it to him.

Owning the tower was likely the reason, or at least part of it along with dying, that I was number one on the Hero Board in the first place.

When the three of them entered the tower last night through their special ‘prelaunch’ entrance, there had only been one other tower on the entire planet, and whoever owned it had made the split far less fair, with prospectors only keeping ten percent. Though this didn’t apply to all loot collected, only that which was sold within the tower, and fragments, which were the incomplete cards that acted as currency that Torath had mentioned.

As I watched Vyrania and Koren clear the camp, I also watched my fragment count tick up inside my card storage grid whenever Koren paused to loot a slain opponent, since I earned twenty percent of the fragments they looted.

I couldn’t do anything with them yet, but at least I was earning this new world’s currency.

One thing I found surprising was their appearance. From the name, I’d expected torn bits of cards. But these looked exactly like full cards, only smaller, about the size of my thumb, and were uniformly black rather than the varied hues on my Contract card and the ones I’d seen rain down. And instead of many lines forming what looked like circuits, these each had only one line, though the shapes of each line were all different.

The current plan was to hopefully get the key from the giants’ camp—which would let us know how many total keys there were thanks to my map—then head to town through the portal that would appear, wait until my Contract card recharged, and use it to eject myself.

Rilen had obtained a sort of map of the first floor—something which I got the impression he’d procured through illicit means—and it indicated possible key locations, which was how Vyrania and Koren knew one might be in the giants’ encampment.

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Unfortunately, they didn’t have the map now that Rilen was gone, so this camp was their last easy target.

Another icicle nearly took me through the neck and I had to dive out of the way.

I shook my head, picking myself up off the frozen ground. I went to kick at the icicle, only to realize it was a severed arm with its hand missing.

I grimaced and looked away, watching as my new companions moved on to the final remaining foe, a giant who, despite being female, was larger than any of the others had been.

Ice Giant Matriarch

Goliath-class Monster

Level: ???

With two on one, it quickly became clear that the fight wasn’t going to go well for the matriarch. Maybe it would have gone in the giant’s favor if she had joined with the others. But for whatever reason, she’d held off on attacking until all the other giants were dead, and now with both fighting her, she didn’t stand a chance.

The speed with which Koren moved amazed me. He fought with fists and feet, moving like mist, landing devastating blows that reverberated through the chill air, the pendant around his neck thrumming on the rare occasion he was hit, a pendant which I’d later learn stored a portion of physical attacks as mana. The wraps around his fists unraveled as he made his attacks, turning each strike into many as the fabric impacted the giant’s flesh with a sound like gunshots.

Vyrania meanwhile deflected incoming blows, seizing every opportunity to slice at the matriarch with red-tinged summoned blades that appeared liquid and which kept growing and shrinking and twisting, sneaking past the giant’s defenses, always just off of where they seemed like they should have landed, inflicting wounds that leaked a black fluid which gradually tethered the giant in place.

Once the matriarch could no longer move, the fight was over.

“That was incredible,” I said, approaching as the matriarch fell, her corpse beginning to sparkle.

Koren shrugged modestly. “No big deal.”

“It is odd there’s a Goliath class on the first floor already,” Vyrania noted.

“That’s uncommon?” I asked.

She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Just unexpected. And a level thirty-six.”

“That’s the problem with Titan-class towers,” Koren quipped.

Both of them laughed.

“Wouldn’t that be something though,” Koren said wistfully. “Can you imagine? We’d be rich.”

“We’d be dead,” Vyrania corrected. “There’s no telling what’s inside a Titan-class, even on the first floor. A pair of Irons and an unranked wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Though I’d love to see the look on Rilen’s face if it were,” Koren said. “He’s just dumb enough to actually be upset at getting ejected rather than seeing it as escaping the guillotine.”

Vyrania smiled. “He would get quite frustrated at that. He would have a better chance than us, though.”

“Eh,” Koren said, “he may be Steel, but he’s not the sharpest. And there’s two of us.” He glanced at me. “Sorry, three.”

“Oh no it’s fine, feel free to exclude me from your Titan-class death fantasy.”

“I do wonder what class this tower is,” Vyrania said. “If there’s a Goliath-class monster already on the first floor, it has to be, what, at least Colossus?”

“That would seem about right,” Koren agreed. “Given that it’s a new tower. One of those equal-distribution towers. That or there aren’t many floors. Did Rilen mention how many there were?”

“No.”

“Ah well,” Koren said, “we’ll find out in due course.” He looked around. “Though I must say, it feels… different.”

“How so?” she asked.

“More realistic?”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “I see what you mean now. The remnant life is… I don’t know.”

“Different,” he said.

She nodded. “These don’t feel like drones.”

Koren looked at me. “You don’t happen to have ice giants on your Earth, do you?”

“Definitely not. There isn’t even snow where I’m from.”

“It doesn’t snow on your Earth?”

“It does, just not where this tower popped up.”

“The language thing is strange as well,” he mused. “I suppose we might not be meant to be able to understand them.” He looked around at the environment, scanning over the corpses. Finally he shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the mana. Still getting used to this new sight.”

Vyrania shook her head. “Told you not to learn it.”

He waved this off. “It’s fine.”

“You guys didn’t know the tower’s class before coming in?” I asked.

“Can’t know what the class is during the grace period.”

“Grace period?” I frowned. The term felt familiar somehow, like I’d heard it before in reference to the tower.

“When a new civilization is inducted into the corporate civilizations, there’s a grace period during which there’s various limitations put in place upon those from other CorCivs, such as limiting the gateways into the civ to Steel-rank and below. To give the NewCiv a chance to exploit the new world for themselves.”

“Gateways… I think there was a message about that.”

“There should have been,” Vyrania confirmed.

“Can you guys handle a Colossus-class tower?”

“The first floor of one?” Koren looked at Vyrania, nodded. “Absolutely.”

“More than the first floor,” she agreed. “With Koren nearing Steel, we might even be able to clear it if we gear up as we go.”

“We’d make so much money,” Koren said wistfully.

“And what if it’s higher?” I asked. “What if it’s Behemoth?”

They exchanged a look.

“Then we’d stick to the first floor,” Koren answered. “But don’t worry about that.” He looked out at the carnage, several of the corpses sparkling as they’d not been looted yet. He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get looting and find that key.”