They had an interesting discussion as the day wore on. Ray learned a lot more than he had expected from Gritty and Ram, Bam, and Lam.

“So you snuck your way through an army of enemies?” Ray asked. “All because they were being annoying about letting you fight actual monsters.”

“That’s right,” Gritty said imperiously. “Those bastards were supposed to be helping us.”

“That is true…”

Ray had made that deal with them for helping all the other Denizens climbing up the Tower of Forging. Clearly, that deal had gone out the window with the latest conflict.

Gritty, upon arriving to the Second Floor, had discovered that the only way forward—via climbing the gigantic, spiralling spire—was blocked. She had rapidly finished gaining all the Essence she could on Cliff Four and had immediately set out for higher Cliffs.

“Wait,” Ray said. “I thought Kredevel said you rushed to Cliff Three as soon as you got out of the Imitator Dungeon.”

Ray wasn’t sure if that was exactly what his Sylvan friend had reported, but it had sounded like that, at least.

Gritty shook her head. “He’s slow and doesn’t keep track of everything. I beat Cliff Four and then tried to climb it.”

“But you couldn’t.”

“Nope.”

Which was when Gritty had proceeded to carry out her typical infiltration powers. He recalled well just how she had been able to get into the Wild Tides. Her infiltration had been a key component in their victory over Derrick Orden’s cultlike Faction.

Of course, the blooming war had helped. Around the same time that Gritty had resolved to get to Cliff Three by hook or by crook, Kredevel had launched his fake Floor Lord offensive.

“So you didn’t actually bother exploring Cliff Three and came straight to Cliff Two?” Ray asked.

“Not straight to Cliff Two,” Gritty said, a bit indignantly. She was probably one step away from yelling at Ray to stop assuming the worst. “I got myself some good Essence first.”

“How much Essence could you have gained in a day or two?”

“Well, killing people does give you a ton of Essence.”

Ray blinked. She was right. If she had fought against the Everstead—or why would she even need to fight when she could have killed them stealthily by pretending to be one of them—then she would have accrued a ton of Essence in a pretty short time. He was also not surprised at all that she was that nonchalant about killing.

“They’re pretty strong, though,” Ray said. “And there’s a lot of them. I can see you not having much trouble killing them, but with how many of them there are out there…”

“There’s actually not that many. Well, there might have been before, but there’s definitely not enough of them now.”

“Not enough? What do you mean?”

“They’ve got this weird epidemic running amok that’s causing them a lot of trouble.” She shrugged. “Medieval society going through their black death phase, I guess.”

Ray’s eyes widened. Black death. Plague. “Oh, I think it’s a lot worse than that.”

“It is,” Ram said. “It is the same plague you were involved with, Ray.”

Ray could picture it already. The affliction that corrupted flesh and caused it to grow cancerously, even worse than what his chaos did, running amok among the soldiers that the Everstead had mustered. He could see it easily laying low their numbers.

“So that was the inexplicable situation that Kredevel had mentioned,” Ray muttered.

“What?” Gritty asked.

“Nothing.” He turned to Ram, Bam, and Lam. “Do you know how they caught it? They were being so careful about it and everything.”

“We do not,” Lam said. “Certainly not a part of our investigation.”

Bam nodded sagely. “Although, many things come down to money, so I assume someone wasn’t paid enough to perform their job correctly and made a mess of things.”

Ram corroborated their suppositions with a simple nod.

Ray wasn’t sure what to make of that, but that line of thinking gave him a small reminder. He hadn’t ever killed the infected. Instead, he had helped them. Had they finally stepped up and retaliated against those who were determined to repress them?

Had they somehow afflicted the rest of Everstead with the plague?

“What is this plague?” Gritty asked. “I heard some of the soldiers talk about it like the end of the world.” She squinted her eyes at him, hands at her hips. “And why were you involved with it, wingman?”

“Uh, long story. Just a deal I made with them on Cliff Three.” He grinned. “You’d have known if you weren’t so bullheadedly avoiding any contact. But the plague,” he went on, raising his voice to cut off Gritty’s words that were no doubt about to scathe him. “Is something that the Floor Lord did by making Growth Mana go haywire in non-Growth-Mana-capable bodies.”

That made Gritty forget about Ray’s call out of her choice. “That’s… wild. And she turned it into an actual plague that’s running crazy through this whole kingdom?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“She’s insane.”

Ray had to bite his lips from saying look who’s talking.

Ray turned his focus on the Holdstar trio for now. “When did you start being targeted by Cory?”

“About the same time that the Sylvans announced their aggressive presence,” Ram said.

Bam made a strange sound in his mouth that sounded a bit like tutting. “You should have told us the Floor Lord would be summoning reinforcements before making a move.”

“As I’ve already explained, it is not the Floor Lord,” Ram said.

“Wait, hold on.” Ray looked between the three Holdstar on the same starfish-like body. “You know it’s not the actual Floor Lord who started all this?”

“We’ve made our own deductions, yes.”

Lam stared pointedly at Ram. “And our deductions suggest—only suggest, mind you—that the Floor Lord isn’t acting against the Everstead directly. Not yet. Not after taking her first direct action, because that’s doing all the work for her. Or would have, eventually, if these new Sylvans hadn’t taken up her cause.”

“Back up a bit,” Ray said. “I know you said your investigations led you here and the financial discrepancies suggest the Floor Lord is the root of the problem.” That alone had been a pretty big revelation for Ray. “But how did that lead you to think she doesn’t even want to fight, especially now that she can fight back?”

Ram, Bam, and Lam went into a little explanation on how they had come to their conclusion. Apparently, it wasn’t just about regaining control over the Second Floor for the Floor Lord.

She also had to recoup all her losses.

It was starting to make sense. On the First Floor, the Sylvans had been harvesting Mana itself, especially in the form of Mana fruits. The Lord of the First Floor had intended to use them to pay back all the money the Tower Lord had spent to get the Floor Lord going on the First Floor.

There was a similar situation for the Lord of the Second Floor. She was charged with not only running the Second Floor, but also returning everything the Tower Lord had spent on her operation. With interest, according to the Holdstar.

“But shouldn’t that mean she’d want to defeat the Everstead and take over everything they’ve got?” Ray asked. “There’s got to be some decent wealth that she can extract from them.”

“From these people?” Bam asked, a little incredulously.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“These fake people?” Lam added.

“Fake people?” Gritty said. “What do you mean?”

Ram stared between the only humans in the dark room. “They aren’t from your world, are they? Then imagine where could they have come from.”

“Some other world…”

Ray understood that seemed implausible but come on. They were in some kind of magic tower with talking aliens and they all had access to this insane System that granted them weird-ass powers and—and Ray could go on.

The point was that humans from a different world, from a different planet, didn’t faze him in the least.

“Are you saying they’re lying about where they’re from?” Ray asked.

“Of course,” Lam said. “Have you not figured out that yet?”

Gritty bared her teeth. “No need to be patronizing, starfish.”

“I figured there was a lot about them that was fishy,” Ray said. “But to lie about their origins.” He shook his head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But if they’re not a human civilization from some other world, then where did they come from? Who are they?”

All three of the Holdstar looked up, but briefly, before looking back at Ray. It gave him the sensation of a shrug.

“We don’t know the truth,” Ram said. “The finances don’t reveal that. What they do reveal is that their idea of wealth is very material. They are a society that sees power in bartering and trading, of exchanging physical goods and services. And these do not need to be anything that relates to Mana.”

That was the key difference. The Sylvans had their entire civilization revolving around Mana. That was why they had been so insistent on gathering all the Mana fruit on the First Floor.

Though, that brought up a different kind of question.

“If the Floor lord wants to recoup the costs of the Floor,” Ray said. “Then what was her original plan to do so? There’s no Mana fruit here or anything like that. Unless there’s some other form of Mana I don’t know about. Also, what could she have given the Everstead to make them work for her at first and run the Second Floor?”

Ray held his breath a little, expecting Ram, Bam, and Lam to refute that the Floor Lord had ever hired the Everstead. That she had ever struck any sort of bargain and granted them anything in exchange for their assistance and cooperation in running the Second Floor.

“The Tower Lord granted her a vast reserve of Mana crystals, shards, and pearls. The vast majority of all that went to essentially hiring the Everstead. In return for a vast amount of the aforementioned Mana, these Everstead have apparently decided to assist the Floor Lord with the Second Floor.”

“Until their relationship soured.”

Gritty butted in physically, standing between them. “Wait, so, if these people aren’t even people from another planet, then where the hell did the Floor Lord hire them from?”

None of them had the answer to that. Ray tried to think of possibilities, but it was impossible. People could only come from Earth. The only people from Earth were Denizens. If these people weren’t Tower-limbing Denizens, then what in the world were they?

“They can’t be people from other Towers, can they?” Gritty asked. “I heard there were people from different Towers entering our Tower.”

“No,” Ray said. “I met people from other Towers.” He tried not to let his face crumple a bit as he recalled Alice Felds. “They were normal people. Not… this medieval Everstead society.”

They couldn’t figure it out. Even after trying to brainstorm possibilities, none of it made any sense.

Rays frustration at the strange mystery subsided when Ram, Bam, and Lam explained how exactly they went about performing their accounting. They apparently had a skill that could catalogue nearly everything in terms of Mana crystals, shards, and pearls.

Of course, this didn’t mean that the Everstead had literally extracted the sum total of their entire existence from the Floor Lord before agreeing to work on the Second Floor. As such, the Holdstar had also documented the presence of Mana forms among the Everstead society. Both their current possession and their historical presence.

It turned out they had indeed received a powerful injection of Mana crystals and shards throughout their whole society. Several normal citizens had received actual stipends of said Mana forms from the government to run all their businesses and other needs.

Ray was a little boggled to receive an economics lesson where people used magical Mana instead of actual money. But it made sense. These three strange aliens were pretty smart.

“But now you can’t go on with your investigations,” Ray said, looking at the door. “Because Cory wants you and he’s not going to be friendly.”

A weird, rhythmic, and wet sound came from Ram. It took a few seconds for Ray to understand that the alien was laughing.

“We will discover what we need to find,” Ram said. “Eventually, if not immediately. But yes, the Everstead are afraid of what I might further uncover.”

“Which means they’ve got something very juicy hidden,” Gritty said with a little smile.

“Exactly!”

“Or, they are simply afraid of us because we’re affiliated with their enemies,” Lam said. “So it is natural for them to want to keep us restricted.”

Bam nodded vigorously in agreement. “Plus, for all they know, we might not even be accountants. We could be assassins in disguise. Saboteurs ruining their war effort. Spies relaying all their vital information to their enemies.”

Ray tried imagining the Holdstar trio attempting subterfuge of the assassin-spy sort, and it made him laugh.

“As much as I’d like to find out what their little secret is, I’ve got more important things to do,” Gritty said.

Ray raised an eyebrow at her. “Like killing them all instead?”

“Of course. But also, I could capture one of them and do a little interrogation. That should reveal everything.”

This time, Ray imagined Gritty using her blood-based abilities on some poor soldier and had to suppress a shudder. His chaos powers were terrifying, but there was something horrific on a completely different scale when considering abilities like the one that allowed Gritty to control other people by controlling their blood.

“So you’re set on leaving soon?” Ram asked, turning to Gritty.

She nodded. “I brought you Ray, didn’t I? Now I can get away in peace.”

Ray looked between the two of them. “You know, you never explained how you two met or how you arranged this hideout.” He looked back at the doorway, with a glare this time. “Or who that guy in the workshop is.”

Gritty laughed. Then explained that part of their story.

Apparently, they had met in much the same way Ray had met the Holdstar trio. Basically, it was a coincidence. After Gritty had infiltrated into one of the Everstead military squads, her squad had been assigned to find and detain Ram, Bam and Lam.

She had actually done her job with due diligence, foregoing killing the others to actually locate wherever the Holdstar trio had been hiding. It hadn’t taken her long to discover them—strange alien beings left a strong impression in people’s minds. But instead of handing them over to her superiors, she had decided to converse and get to know them.

And now they were here.

“The identity I took up within the squad is the friend of that old guy’s daughter,” Gritty said. “So I was able to get in touch with the guy, and with some threats and such, we got all this going.”

“I’m sorry,” Ray said, blinking a little. “The identity you took up?”

“Well, how do you think I managed to get in and remain untroubled so far?”

And all that without something as easy as Mimic Mana, which Ray had access to. Although, she had gone through the Imitator Dungeon. It was likely she had received some sort of reward that allowed her to change her appearance without too much trouble, even if it wasn’t an apparent ability that registered under Primordial Guage.

Come to think of it, Ray had always ended up looking at people’s skills and abilities when related to their classes and nothing else. It was limited that way.

If people possessed True Mana skills from Tower Nodes or other powers that didn’t come through advancing their class and Path, it wouldn’t register on Primordial Gauge.

“Anyway,” Ray said. “I’m not here to stay for long either.” He turned to the Holdstar trio. “I guess I don’t know what you’ve got planned, but I hope it doesn’t count on me.”

“What do we have planned?” Ram mused.

Lam growled. “Why, aren’t we confronting that thieving, stealing, robbing bastard of a lord? The one that calls himself Cory?”

“Confrontation?” Bam sounded like he was being strangled. “Please, we cannot confront anyone. I suggest we leave immediately. Seek out the Floor Lord and report the findings we’ve discovered so far, especially since forging ever farther onwards has now become impossible.”

“I wouldn’t say impossible,” Ram said.

“You know what I mean!”

They bickered among themselves. Ray had always thought the Holdstar were actually pretty united on all fronts, but it seemed they still disagreed on certain things.

“What are we?” Ram eventually asked, his voice raised to quell his two companions’ shouts. “Tell me. What are we?”

“We are… an accountant.”

“Yes. Lest you forget, there are two definitions of accounting. One is the kind we engage in normally. The one where we tinker with finances and economics. The other…” Ram’s expression hardened. “The other is where we hold others accountable for their actions.”

“Ha!” Lam said. “So we are confronting in the end, then!”

“No, we are compromising.”

“Compromising?” both Lam and Bam asked at once.

“Yes. We will wait to find an opportune time to meet Lord Cory. Not yet. But soon, perhaps. There will come a time when we can act. Unless things become truly untenable and we are forced to flee.”

Ray nodded. “I see the compromise now.”

They would essentially bide their time until the right moment came to pass. That was when they would decide whether to carry out this confrontation against Cory or whether to escape to the Floor Lord while they still could.

“Why?” Gritty asked. They all turned to face her, and she just raised an eyebrow. “I mean, why go to the trouble of confronting him? I know you’ve got your own description of accounting, but that’s not what you were hired for, was it?”

Ram answered. “We are doing what is right. That counts for a great deal. I would not be satisfied personally till we reach the bottom of this mystery.”

“There is also a bonus to recouping some of the Tower Lord’s losses!” Lam said. “Or at least, finding a way to do so.”

Bam hissed. “They don’t need to know that part!”

Ray laughed. “I get it.”

“What about you?” Gritty’s eyes glinted as she faced him. “Those three are going to confront Lord Cory. I’m going to go on and fight. But you still haven’t decided what you’re going to do.”

“Simple. I’m going to keep doing what I set out to do. Finish up this Floor and climb higher up the Tower. And to do that, I’ll need a way to get to Cliff One.”

Gritty frowned. “Good luck with that.”

“Oh, don’t worry. This conversation gave me an idea of just how I could do that.”

“How so?”

“Easy. I’m going to help the Everstead and make them take me to Cliff One.”

“Explain.”

Ray smiled at her scowl and told her his plan. He also thanked her. It was her report about the state of the war, and more importantly, the state of the plague, that gave Ray the idea.

“So you’re going to heal them?” Gritty asked. She sounded more sceptical than scandalized, which Ray decided to take as an improvement over scowling. “Can you actually do that?”

“I’ll have to test it out but if the idea I’ve got works, then I’m definitely going to take full advantage of it.”

“You would help the enemy?”

“Not exactly.” Ray had trouble not rubbing his hands like an evil mosquito. “I’m going to help them just carefully enough to help us, actually.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do. That’s good enough.”

Gritty stared at him like she wanted to pry open his skull and read whatever he intended to do straight from his brain.

“I wish you luck on your endeavour,” Ram said.

Lam and Bam nodded along.

“So do I,” Lam said.

“And I,” said Bam. “Because your insanity will need it.”

“Especially if you end up drawing her out.”

“Her?” Gritty looked from the Holdstar trio to Ray. “What—” Her eyes widened. “You’re doing this to flush out the Floor Lord?”

Ray grinned. “Exactly.”