“We really have to do this?” I asked as I kicked over yet another giant corpse.

Koren gestured at the town far in the distance as he moved from one corpse to the next. “You could go on foot if you like. For us, there’s no other way out, unless your card can manage to extract all three of us. Which is highly doubtful. Once you’re in a tower the only way out is collecting all the keys and bringing them to the keymaster to get the stairwell key made.”

I swore, remembering something.

The other two stopped their search through bodies—the key could be anywhere, on a monster or in the environment—and looked at me expectantly.

“I think I really do have a concussion from Rilen punching me unconscious.”

“Oh, is that all?” Koren said, looking relieved. “It’s fine. You’ll heal.”

“That’s not the problem. I mean it is, but—” I shook my head. “The keys. I just remembered that the keymaster is missing.”

Koren arched an eyebrow. “Missing?”

I nodded. “When I got into town, the townsfolk were having a meeting about it. I initially thought it was a party. Apparently he’d disappeared not long before I got there.”

“Well,” Koren said, throwing up his arms, “what else can go wrong?”

“He wasn’t back when you left?” Vyrania asked. “That seems reckless on your part. Leaving town.”

“I didn’t actually mean to leave. I was inspecting his portal thing that he uses to get to the stairwell. Since I own the tower, I tried activating it.”

She grimaced. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

I laughed. “I actually died. I guess if you own a tower you get a resurrection token, and that got used up. I wound up basically in the middle of the floor, between the town and the stairwell.” I gestured in the direction of the mountain which held the stairwell.

“That explains the corpse Rilen was after.”

“So tower owners do get one of those,” Koren said thoughtfully. “Good to know.”

“Why?” Vyrania asked jokingly, “planning on owning one?”

“Maybe.”

“How’d you end up owning a tower, anyway?” she asked me.

“Not sure really. At some point while I was sleeping this tower sprouted up from the store I own. The entrance is my bathroom.” I shook my head. “It’s weird.”

She gestured at me as she spoke to Koren. “Maybe you’ll get lucky like him and have one sprout up on land you have a deed to.”

“Maybe I will,” Koren challenged.

“I’ve never known a tower owner,” Vyrania said to me, “so I don’t know what you’ll be able to do. It’s possible you can create an exit, though if you died trying to use the keymaster’s portal, I’m guessing not.”

“Executed,” I said, recalling the message. “It executed me.”

“Hm,” Koren said. “Maybe an exit portal is beyond his reach. Besides, I’d rather gain my fortune in here. Don’t have to deal with all the prospectors that will be crawling all over the new world, trying to take a piece for themselves.”

Vyrania nodded in agreement. “It’s a rare thing to have this kind of access.”

“Prospectors are going to be on my world?”

“They should already be there. The gateway lottery for your civ began a bit before we got here.”

“Gateway, that’s the thing limited to Steel rank and below?”

“Yes. Though most who get access at the beginning will be Iron rank.”

“And it’s a lottery?”

“NewCivs are very desirable. But because of some treaties, The Corporation has to give NewCiv inhabitants a chance to exploit it for themselves. So to limit access there’s a gateway lottery.”

“What are they doing? Mining natural resources?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘mining’ and ‘natural resources’,” Koren said. “They’ll be hunting any monsters that formed.”

“Well, that’s better than strip-mining our world for precious metals. There are monsters outside of the tower?”

He nodded. “When a new world is initiated it’s bombarded with mana. Or, in your case, cards, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Strange way to go about it.” He shrugged. “But what do I know? I’m not a system.”

I thought about my friends, my family. Now I wasn’t only worried about them possibly having become corrupted, but also that monsters might get to them. Or prospectors.

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“Is it like a video game?”

“What?” Vyrania asked with a confused look.

“I mean, does every prospector just go around fighting and killing?”

“Not necessarily. Though the Guild of Prospectors is one of, if not the most prestigious guild, and they do quite a lot of that. But it’s far from all they do.”

“You have to join a guild to be a prospector?”

“You don’t have to, but you want to.”

“If you can manage,” Koren put in.

“What guilds are you two in?”

“None,” he said. “It isn’t easy to get into one.”

“Not the good ones, in any case,” Vyrania added.

He nodded in agreement.

“I feel like I need to get back there and help,” I said.

Koren put a hand on my shoulder. “Noah, my boy, I know how you feel. You want to protect the people you care about. Save them from the treachery of this new world you were all unceremoniously thrust into.”

I slowly nodded.

“But,” he said cheerily, “you’re far too weak. So don’t worry about it. You couldn’t do anything for them even if you were there.”

“Aren’t you the motivational speaker,” I said sarcastically.

“No,” he said lightly, “I was offered that profession, but kindly declined.”

“Once my card is charged we all can leave.”

The two exchanged a look.

“What?” I asked.

Koren sighed. “The opportunity to clear a tower is too good to pass up. We’ll help you inside, but if you want to leave, I’m afraid you’ll be on your own. And to be honest, I don’t think your card is going to work. Especially not on all three of us.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Looted cards tend to be… hmm, weapons? You ejected Rilen because he was an enemy. Maybe if it was higher level, or you were higher rank, that would be different.”

Vyrania nodded. “It’s strange that it worked at all, but given that it did, you might be able to use it on yourself to get out of here if you were Gold, perhaps even Silver. But a level one card and with you unranked? I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Way to cheer a guy up.”

“How about this, then,” she said. “We keep going. Find the keys, hope the keymaster shows up, open the portal to the next floor.” She smiled at me. “And the exit to get you out of here. If that’s still what you want, by that point.”

I of course assumed it would be.

I was wrong a lot in those early days.

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

We searched every single inch of that camp but didn’t come across anything like a key.

“I guess Rilen’s map was wrong,” Vyrania said, giving Koren a look.

“I had a good feeling about this place,” he said morosely, looking around the camp as though he might at any moment lay eyes on the key.

“So what now?” I asked.

“We go back to the cave where we found the first key so you can grab it,” Vyrania said. “That will tell us how many there are. Then we head into town to stock up, and you either stay there or come with us as we keep looking for the rest of the keys.”

“But we don’t know where to go.”

“Welcome to the life of the poor and unknown,” Koren said.

“We’re just going to wander the floor looking for the keys? That seems dangerous.”

“It is my boy,” Koren said in a reassuring manner, though it was anything but.

Vyrania studied me. “You can wait in town if you like. We’d understand. You can wait there while we look for the keys. We’ll come get you once we’ve found them all.”

“And what,” Koren asked her, “take him around to every location to pick up his own copy? Don’t forget that once we get all the keys, this floor will be open to all comers. And where do you think the portal into it leads?”

“Just outside of town,” I said, even though he was speaking to Vyrania.

He pointed at me. “Exactly so.” He held his arms out to the side. “So if you want to wait there, by all means. But Rilen is not the type to let go of a grudge.”

“Even when the object of the grudge has died,” Vyrania added, though I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant.

“The town’s a safe zone,” I pointed out.

“He may not be able to hurt you inside of the town,” she said, “but he might be able to force you out of it.”

“How?”

“He pretty much built his whole deck around making people do things they don’t want to do.”

“Do you think he’ll even be able to get back in after I ejected him?”

“Do you want to risk it?” Koren countered.

“So if I go with you guys and get the keys, I can get out and go home and he won’t be able to follow me?”

“Oh I didn’t say that,” Koren said. “But you’ll at least be able to go home.”

“And you’re sure I need the keys to leave? I can’t just wait in town and go through the portal when it opens?”

“Positive.”

“It’s part of what makes towers so dangerous,” Vyrania added. “Once you enter, there’s no getting out until you gather that floor’s keys.”

“And The Corporation wouldn’t have it any other way,” Koren said with false cheer.

“They do like their life-and-death-stakes entertainment,” Vyrania agreed.

“Would he really follow me back to Earth?” I asked. “My Earth?”

“To the ends of it,” Vyrania confirmed.

“Just for ejecting him? He’s the one who ambushed me.”

“Yes, and I’m sure in his mind, you’re the one who wronged him by doing so.”

“So what do I do? Get stronger? He’s Steel. That’s…” I counted in my head, unranked, Copper, Iron, Steel, “three ranks above me. How long will it take me to reach that? And what rank will he be by that time?”

“Getting past Steel isn’t easy,” Vyrania said. “I wouldn’t be so sure he ever will.”

I thought back to what Torath from town had told me about the ranks, about how to reach Silver, the rank after Steel. “Don’t you just need to find a power that represents you?”

“You know about that?” She seemed surprised.

“Someone from town explained it.”

“It’s true enough, but manifesting your Harmony is no small matter. Rilen doesn’t have that kind of insight, and his family’s charity only goes so far.”

Koren nodded slowly. “Yes. They spoil him, but letting him reach the higher ranks with their help wouldn’t be in their best interests. They’d want him to do it on his own, if at all.”

“At least that part of it,” Vyrania added.

“Right,” Koren agreed. He patted my shoulder. “Sorry to say, but your safest bet is getting strong enough that he’s no longer a threat to you. If you’re the same rank, he’ll leave you be.”

Vyrania gave him a look.

“Maybe. Once you’re the same rank, you could probably trick him into a contract to stay away from you. Even your whole civ.”

Vyrania nodded. “That I could see. He’s not the smartest example of his species.”

“He’s only a kid,” I said. “What if he gets smarter? Kids make dumb choices all the time. I know I did.”

They both stared at me.

“A kid?” Koren asked.

“Isn’t he?”

“No.”

“Like, I mean, his brain isn’t developed.”

“Noah,” Vyrania said, “you need to remember he’s not human. Who he is now is who he will be for the foreseeable future. Trust me, I’ve dealt with many vorians.”

I was torn. I really just wanted to go home, but the longer I was here in the tower, the less likely that seemed.

It appeared the only way it was going to happen was by clearing the floor. Going back to town like I had originally planned wouldn’t do me any good now that I was pretty much convinced I couldn’t leave without the keys.

My only other option was trying to use my card to eject myself like I had done to Rilen.

Which I was definitely planning on doing despite Koren and Vyrania not thinking it would work, but I could feel it’d be a while yet before it was charged again.

In the meantime…

I looked at both of them, coming to a decision.

Turned out all it took to change my mind was the threat of a petulant supervillain with a personal vendetta against me running rampant on my Earth.

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s get those keys. I need to reach Copper. And beyond.”