“How… how did you do it?”

“I… I don’t know. How do I do any of the other things? How come my attributes go up so fast? I thought you were amazed with some of the other things I’d done. Remember when you were excited about me using BEAM so early in the competition? Or how excited you were by how quickly I adding points to SIGHT and SCENT? You never got all shaky at the knees about those!”

The voice was utterly dismissive of my thoughts, as though disgusted that I could draw a parallel between them. “Yes, all very impressive, exciting things that you did. The difference, my young mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in the lustful, hormonal flesh of a young man, is that I know how you did those things, it was what drew me to you. But now, this double step, going straight from a 1.8 to a 2.0, that’s not something I’d seen before. I don’t even understand how the framework of the system allows something like that to happen…”

There was no time to talk further. The light line was reaching my feet.

I tensed my muscles, feeling the power of the suit surge through me as I summoned my AGILITY. I needed to shortcut the thirty feet ahead of me, and I aimed for a spectacular leap. With a powerful push, I launched myself upward, soaring through the air, minimizing the use of my left hand while still holding my sword. The leap carried me fifteen feet up, the sensation exhilarating yet terrifying, as my body spun the ground looked so far away. I couldn’t dare think about how it would look when I was 300 feet up instead of 60 feet along the journey.

Before my eyes my AGILITY rating appeared, 1.3 became 1.4.

As I reached the apex of my jump, I grabbed onto the net with my right hand. The impact sent a jolt of pain through my shoulder, still hurting from Lance’s earlier BEAM strike. I clambered clumsily, my left hand barely helping, my sword awkwardly weighing me down.

Then I heard the guttural roar of the ape-fiend. It streaked across the net, climbing with ease. Panic surged through me. I tried to fend it off with bursts of BEAM, but the unstable net made my aim wild. The ape-fiend dodged my attacks, drawing closer with every moment.

I swung my sword. I tried to introduce it to the kinetic apocalypse that was the receiving end of CUT. But the net swayed with each of my movements, and each of the heavy fiend's urgent surges. The creature was savage, all raking claws and frenzied violence.

My left hand felt weak, and my shoulder hurt from Lance's beam. Nothing about this was easy, especially with the netting swaying and jerking each time the monster leaped closer. I was in a poor state for this fight. The long-limbed fiend was in its most natural element. I thought maybe it understood the advantage it had. Those little eyes moved and calculated with an intelligence I couldn't credit.

Then it happened, as it always seems to happen to me. I went for the creature, feeling my only hope was kill it and then take the rest of the climb more at my leisure. But I over extended, and missed, the glowing arc of my sword cutting nothing but air molecules. The beast back handed me. The impact to my chest was mostly absorbed by the suit, so it did little by way of physical harm to me. But the suit did nothing to eliminate the change in inertia, physics seemed to conspiring against me as well. I felt the net sway violently as the ape-fiend lunged again, my momentum already causing me to swing away from the solid wall of the tower. I sprawled, half in the air, only one foot and one hand barely holding onto the net. The ground far below seemed to beckon as I dangled precariously, the ape-fiend preparing for another strike.

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Utterly vulnerable, off balance, possibly ready to fall to defeat even without the ape attacking me, time seemed to slow. Moments of reflection flooded my mind. I had come so far, but the bastards had already picked the perfect contest to exploit my weakened hand. Lance’s BEAM strike to my good arm’s shoulder only made my position worse. I closed my eyes as the beast started to swing.

An eruption of light and heat seared through my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see no beast. Glancing around, I saw it writhing and dangling from its chain below me, smoke rising from its body. I glanced up to see Lauren poised on the next level, the glow of BEAM fading from her sword. I tried to hold her gaze for a moment. I knew she was paying me back for helping her, but the very fact that I was worth paying back to her, that I wasn’t just a commoner whose duty was her support, that she would pause in her own pursuit of the Griidsuit—it meant something to me. But then she was gesturing frantically.

I looked back down. The ape-fiend wasn’t dead. Smoke rose from the cooked meat of its muscles as it began to climb again, slower than before, but much faster than me.

I didn't want to expose my AGILITY to depletion. I didn't want to lose access to the attribute by entering that strange fogging fatigue that had clung to my mind as I battled Lance during the contest of the orbs. But the thing was coming, another could come at any moment, and the light line was approaching.

I gave my self over to the attribute. That surrender that had been so difficult and unnerving, that had been so uncomfortable and frightening, was taking on the light of ecstasy like so many aspects of the suit. I became a true fusion of suit and man. My wants became its wants and the muscles of the armor took over. We soared upward, spinning in the air. It was breathless and wonderful, even with the view of the fall below me that awaited any mistake. I felt the thrill of imagining that this was what it felt like to be a bird. Or maybe a squirrel? That seemed a silly comparison, but the effortless lightness with which I moved, the spectacular leaps and the ease of my display dazzled me even as my body streaked up the side of the tower.

1.4 faded again, and 1.5 flashed in to replace it. I could not believe I had gained so much in so short a time. But using AGILITY was exhausting, there was a mental depletion that came with its exertion that I could not understand. Was it surrendering control of my body that caused such taxation? Or was there some actual expenditure of my neurons, of my mental energy, involved? Did the suit utilize some part of my brain to help it make those calculations?

Musing on the mechanisms of how the suit executed AGILITY could definitely wait. What I had to face up to was the reality that I would not be able to continue to employ AGILITY all the way to the top of the tower. As my brain fogged from the last exertion, I had no doubt that another use of the attribute in the next minutes would probably exceed my limits, and I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I experienced a catastrophic failure of AGILITY while trying to leap at a point, 60 or 100 or 200 feet from the ground.

Breathless and exhilarated, I looked at Lauren, who was already moving on. The brief moment of connection was enough. I knew I couldn’t linger..