“He’s still following us.” Ben whispered.

“I know. Don’t acknowledge his presence.” Elise whispered back. “By declaring you our leader, he can’t ‘join’ our party and then immediately act like he’s in charge. At most he could be the lancer, but with you defeating the guy that he couldn’t, you’re better than him and we just all have to loudly agree on that.”

“Right, this guy has to be in the centre of attention. If Ben outshines him, he’ll probably just go away and leave us alone.” I said softly, noticing that I could no longer whisper with this body.

Ben still had that big goofy smile on his face as he nodded to me, clearly very pleased with being showered in praise and approval for his actions despite the ulterior reasons.

Thomas: So, did anyone else notice that Azriel jumped up a level after Ben killed the apostle?

Ben: WHAT!? Bullshit, he barely even did anything! Exp thief!

Miho: One moment.

Miho: Hiu says that’s normal. Azriel is levelling at a ridiculous rate, sometimes jumping up several levels at once for barely impressive feats. Hiu met him about 12h ago, and Azriel was still lvl16 at the time. Some kind of experience multiplier? He probably would’ve gotten several levels after breaking through that shield and killing the Boss singlehandedly.

Miho: Apparently he instantaneously grows stronger, too, no need for a Safe Zone to distribute his stat points.

Livia: Probably auto-attributed stats. Those prevent you from choosing what to pick, but can give 4-5 stat points per level instead of your three. Pretty common for Elites.

Ben: Elites are bullshit.

“So, what now?” Thomas whispered.

“Isn’t that obvious? We get away from this creep.” Elise whispered.

“We’re currently headed for the skyscraper, but that might be a bad idea given what we’ve learned since.” Thomas said.

“Right, Azriel seemed unnaturally interested and easily convinced of our plan to go there.” I realised when Thomas pointed it out. “He probably knows that’s where one of his storyline events is, he just needed to be told this before going there.”

“And we’re headed straight for it.” Elise sighed. “Great.”

“We said we were planning to go there. Will that be a problem?” I wondered.

Livia: With the Oath? Normally not, but with this guy I can’t be sure. Especially now that he’s looking so agitated.

“Great, so we’re going to the skyscraper after all.” Elise said.

“We can split up? We did that before, so we could claim that it’s normal.” I said.

Livia: Risky, and you’ll want everyone present just in case this guy decides to attack you after all.

Elise: We could split up inside the tower, into a flight team and a ground team. Ground can slip out while he follows us, and we just fly away. He can’t follow us.

Miho: Hiu could.

Elise: Good. I don’t think Hiu likes this guy either, and once he actually manages to get far away enough…

Thomas: Good point, and a good plan.

Elise: *Preen*

Elise: What the hell! Damn it, AI! I didn’t want to chat that!

Thomas: Just one problem, though. There is something important in that tower, and I don’t know if half the team will suffice for us to survive it. Especially considering we’ll be without our tank and rogue.

Elise: And our DPS mage.

Thomas: I have a parachute. Only works for arachnoids though, I think.

“Hm… You’re right, only Ben and I can’t fly, everyone else has some means to do it.” I said. “You could carry Ben, but I’m way too heavy and I don’t think I’m that tough that I could survive terminal velocity.”

“Yet.” Ben winked.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Let’s not overplan before we get there.” Miho said. “Maybe there will be a good excuse to leave Darryl behind to guard the entrance or something, and then we can just fly away from this man.”

“He doesn’t seem to care much for Darryl anyway.” She added, looking at Elise. “Good chance he’s only following you.”

“Stop it, you’re making me blush.” Elise deadpanned.

I chuckled and looked up at the skyscraper we were headed towards.

“Elise, you’ve got better eyes than me. Can you see anything?” I asked.

Elise looked up at the tower, and the small dots occasionally circling it. “Not really, we’re still too far away. I think those are birds, but it’s too blurry to tell. Might be bats or halflings on kites for all I know.”

“Something with flight, at least, and a whole side of the building that has been exposed to the outside making for easy swooping grounds. I bet we’re going to have to walk through that area at least once or twice going up.” Thomas said. “Though hopefully they designed it for normal humanoids, while flight and spider climb can circumvent the challenge.”

As we kept walking, we saw a wall of rubble appear before us. The street was suddenly cut off, the weathered but functional pavement suddenly turning into a wall of rubble piled up as tall as a man. And that was at the lowest points, some pieces of large rubble could be several times that height.

I started to climb and wanted to ask the others if anyone needed any help, when I noticed that I was pretty much the only one inconvenienced by this. Ben shadow-leapt up easily, Thomas just walked vertically and the rest could fly. I grimaced but continued climbing without a word.

“I wonder if this is narratively relevant, or just makes for a nice view.” Elise said, floating above me.

I climbed up on a large boulder of crumbling concrete with less rebar sticking out than elsewhere, and looked at the same view that the others had.

The skyscraper wasn’t just the tallest building around; it was a lone survivor. I already had an inkling of an idea as to the nature of all this rubble, but the view clarified it. There had been several other skyscrapers here once upon a time, or at least that’s how Borant designed the place to look like, and one took the others down in a calamitous domino effect when it collapsed.

The scratches on the skyscraper’s exposed side suggested that another building had glanced it during the collapse, tearing off the wall, but the skyscraper survived and endured where the others had not. There must’ve been a dozen buildings just as tall as this one standing here before, but they had all fallen. The tower we were headed for stood amongst the corpses of his fallen brethren, a whole district worth of rubble gathered around the lone giant’s ankles.

Here and there were remnants of the other buildings in large triangular chunks still intact enough for me to recognise the pattern of windows: Pieces of rubble large enough to potentially hide dens of enemies in their innards. But most of the place seemed too packed or too likely to collapse to house any monsters, the terrain difficult but safe enough.

“Shall we check out that obvious monster den over there, or go straight to the tower?” Ben asked.

“I mean, we’re here to grind. Might as well.” Elise said.

Darryl: What about the plan?

Elise: This isn’t exactly against what we said we’d do, and if the Elite passes us to tackle the tower by himself, then good. We can just turn around and leave.

Darryl: Sounds good.

The girls flew ahead while we guys struggled to get through the terrain, and behind us I saw Azriel zipline up a large jutting out piece of rubble to sit on it and enjoy the view. Looks like he had some in-game excuse to wait us out, while he had Hiu scout out the surroundings from above.

Miho: Shall I scout ahead?

Ben: Don’t. While your forms are small and quiet, they’re also so weak you’ll die from a single hit. I’ll scout ahead.

Miho: But I used to- Actually, that’s a good point. Thank you so much for considering my wellbeing. :)

Darryl: Alexa, stay with Elise. We don’t know if these things have range or flight.

I hoped that Alexa listened as I kept climbing over the rubble, making my way over to her. The large piece of rubble rose up before me, the chunk about twenty windows long and seven windows wide at the longest point without counting the parts below the ground. There were a lot of windows for us to go through, but also a lot of windows for the enemy to pour out of.

“Alright, let’s see what’s inside.” Elise said, taking out what seemed to be a crude fishing pole with a chunk of meat on the hook. “No need to risk scouting if this works.”

She threw the bait into one of the windows and waited.

“Troll item making fun of you usually having no patience?” Thomas asked.

“Troll item making fun of me having no patience.” Elise nodded. “The AI is an arse, but at least he gives some good stuff as a joke sometimes.”

I caught up with the rest of the group, and we sat around waiting.

“This seems like as good a time to have lunch as any, wouldn’t you agree?” Thomas said.

Ben immediately took out a king-sized box of fried chicken. “Who wants some?”

I took a wing and smelled it, realised I no longer had that sense, and put it back. “Pretty sure I can no longer eat this.”

I grabbed a nearby chunk of rusted rebar and ripped it out of the concrete. After tapping and rubbing the worst of the rust off of it, I took a tentative bite.

It didn’t taste very good, but I somehow knew there was some cobalt in there. Enough to not spit it out.

Thomas got up and distanced himself from the group, aware enough of basic human appetite and what would affect it to not eat the Vespa in front of the rest of us.

Alexa clearly didn’t take her new size into consideration and quickly claimed one of the biggest chunks of meat for herself, digging in with gusto.

Livia quickly PM’d her with pleas to eat more dignified, but you didn’t give a child a piece of greasy, delectable junk food as big as herself and expect her to use knife and fork.

“So, how long do you think we can stall before that bastard starts some trouble?” Elise asked between bites.

“Let’s hope we can stall long enough for him to leave us alone.” I said, noticing that I had no trouble speaking through my not-nose while the iron was slowly corroding in my mouth. I took another bite when I realised that every bite was going to take a while to digest in my mouth, and sat back to stare at the not-really-a-sky.

Ben laughed as he read through Livia’s ever more desperate pleas asking Alexa to behave like a lady, and Elise kept half an eye on the fishing rod as she ate. Miho seemed to love the fresh and piping hot food, probably not used to stuff like this in the dungeon.

It was good to unwind for a bit, even if it was because of a situation even more tense than usual. We could worry about the Elite and the tower later.