Ray ran out of potions pretty soon. That was bad, because he wasn’t able to see a ton of difference in the Eternal Guardian’s condition. Some of the wounds looked a little better, but if he was being honest, it was more wishful thinking than any legit proof.
Thankfully, Gritty came to the rescue.
“How much blood can you spare?” she asked.
Ray looked from her surprisingly serious and sincere expression to the Guardian’s sheer size again. “I don’t think giant, bird-creatures are good with B-positive blood.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not about the blood itself, wingman. I’m not doing a fucking transfusion. I just need a lot of blood to do a little ritual that might help our bird friend.” She squinted when Ray looked at all the blood that the Guardian had already spilled on the ground. “As yet un-spilled blood.”
“Drat.”
Gritty sighed. “I can do this with my own blood, but it’s going to put me out of commission for a bit.”
“You sure?” Ray asked.
“We don’t have any other choice. I just don’t know if I can keep it up.”
Ray shook his head a little. It was a bit frustrating that there weren’t a lot of options. He was tempted to ask why Gritty even had a skill that allowed her to perform healing with some kind of blood ritual, though he supposed a smaller-scale version of it was probably helpful for her personal use.
“If you’re looking to heal, I might be able to help,” Marcus said, stepping forward.
He was looking at the Eternal Guardian with no small amount of wonder. Ray had filled him in on what exactly the huge creature was.
“How?” Gritty asked.
Marcus thumped his armour with a dull clang. “My class is Moonlight Paladin. I’ve got a few passives and heal-boosting Skills. Plus, I might be able to heal you. Replenish your blood and all.”
“Huh. I mean, sure, if you think you can do it without moonlight. And I’m not dunking on you, I’m going to need a lot of blood to fix up something as big as the Guardian. Blood is my element. If you need moonlight for your shit, then…”
“Don’t worry, I don’t need a moon hanging over my head to do what I need to.”
“Cool.” Gritty got down on her haunches. “Let’s get started.”
Ray was actually interested in seeing what exactly they got up to. One of the main things missing in his repertoire was some sort of self-healing ability. The weird thing of “fixing” the plague affecting the Everstead mimics had made him see the potential of a powerful healing ability. Now more than ever, he really wished he had some way of actually doing that.
Considering his whole schtick was with living chaos, it made a weird, thematic sense as to why he couldn’t heal. But maybe he could absorb something with Spiritsorb.
Gritty’s healing ability was an actual, blood-based ritual, just as she had said. Crimson liquid glowing like rubies with their own demonic light seeped around to form a strange circle around her. The concentric rings had lots of strange shapes and symbols. Letters Ray couldn’t decipher. A strange, ironlike smell filled the air. The smell of lots and lots of blood.
Then it expanded. In no time at all, it was covering the majority of the Guardian, plus all three humans as well.
“Any time now,” Gritty muttered.
The way her voice came out a bit choked made Ray focus on her a little worriedly. She was covered head to toe in slimy red, like she was a statue carved from solidified blood. If that was all her blood, then she really couldn’t be doing well.
Which was probably why Marcus was so valuable just then. The Moonlight Paladin had raised his hand into the air, activating a skill that made Ray immediately feel a lot fresher.
[Warning!]
Primordial Gauge indicates your health is being regenerated by Soothelight [Tier 5]. Your natural resistances and regeneration have been heightened by 10%.
Oh, nice. So this was an area-of-effect Skill from Marcus. Ray enjoyed it, but he was more thankful that Gritty was taking full advantage of it too. The blood adorning her wasn’t gone at all, but her eyes had sharpened and her body appeared more relaxed than before.
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Ray asked. “Not that I’m trying to rush you or anything, just curious.”
Gritty shrugged. “I’ve never tried this on anything so big before. For me, it takes maybe a minute at most, and that’s if I’m really wounded. But on this Guardian… I just can’t tell. A lot longer is the best I’ve got.”
Ray grunted. Not surprising. “Couldn’t we just use Marcus’s healing ability? On the Guardian directly, I mean.”
Marcus shook his head. “I’m almost out of Mana shards. My heals won’t last long. And as it’s an area-of-effect, it’s not as effective as a single-target Skill, like Gritty’s. Plus, hers is just extra-amped up, from what I can tell.”
His eyes were focused on Gritty critically. Ray wondered if he was using his Sanctuary ability on her.
“Point is,” Gritty said. “I take care of the main healing, which I wouldn’t be able to do for long. But with Mr. Knight Guy keeping me going for a bit, I might just be able to make our feathered friend fly again.”
It was, once again, a little humbling to not be a part of the process. Ray tried to be patient, however. While Gritty and Marcus worked, he made sure their island wasn’t sinking too fast or about to hit another island or something.
He also made sure to figure out what they’d be doing once it was time to enter the tournament for real. The concern that others had a strong head-start over him was, well, concerning. But Ray figured there had to be ways to mitigate that. The easiest option was to find and acquire the most valuable treasures if they hadn’t been taken already.
But another potential solution was finding a way to undercut the other teams in their auction bids.
“That’s it,” Gritty said after a while. “I think I’m done. Can’t go any further.”
Ray looked over to see that she had slumped on the ground, still covered all over in blood. The crimson on the ground was gone, though. He had to assume all the ritual blood had entered the Eternal Guardian instead, whose wounds were significantly healed up now.
Marcus was bent over too, looking like he was about to drop, even though all he’d essentially done was heal up Gritty.
“And it’s still not enough, huh?” Ray asked, turning to eye the Guardian. The giant creature wasn’t moving. Maybe they’d need to find some other means of getting off the island.
“Yeah…” Gritty sighed. “I—” She paused. “You feel that?”
Ray paused. It took a second, but he did feel it. The ground was shaking. It was different from the constant sinking sensation. There was a new, rumbling motion accompanying it, a slight tremor like an engine coming to life.
“Hey!” Marcus said all of a sudden, straightening up. “It’s up. It’s up!”
Ray turned his head just a little because he had begun to see it too. The Eternal Guardian was still lying on the ground, still appearing unconscious. But it wasn’t completely still. Its wings were rising. Extending. Ray held his breath as the huge wings stretched to their full length, before they flapped down hard. Another tremor coursed through the ground.
A beat. A wingbeat. Ray exchanged a growing a smile with Gritty. It had worked. She had done it.
The Guardian’s wings rose and fell again, the motion slowly getting stronger and stronger. Ray trembled as the whole island did, but he held himself steady.
“How are we going to control where we’re headed?” Gritty asked. She turned to Marcus. “You know where to go?”
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Marcus stared at her blankly. “Uh…”
“Gonna take that as a no.”
Ray closed his eyes. He recalled the Guardian dropping him right in the middle of a dungeon the last time he’d had a ride with it. A dungeon that had been the precursor to everything he had to do on the Second Floor.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “Big bird knows where we need to go.”
----------------------------------------
Sridayne activated her transmitter orb to make sure her voice would carry over the various broadcasts to all the right channels. She smiled, her horns tingling. They had been having such a good run with the Tower Lord’s new Immortalizer Tournament Auction.
“And today, good attendees,” she spoke into the transmitter orb. The little ball pulsed and glowed brighter, absorbing her voice to send across the entire Floor. “We will stand witness to a highly sought-after dungeon. A Tier twenty-six dungeon. It’s the one you’ve been waiting for, the one that our top performing contestants have all had their eyes on.”
A couple of the tournament officials were shooting Sridayne dismissive looks, but she did her best to ignore them. Bunch of ignoramuses. They didn’t know what it took to commentate.
There was an art to her profession. A very emotional art. One had to be highly in-tune with what everybody wanted to really do well. The audience wants one thing, and the entertainers were usually looking for something else, and then there was what she—as the commentator—wanted.
Basically, there was a lot of juggling involved. If she hadn’t had such a high Intellect, she probably wouldn’t have been able to do all the mental mapping needed.
“It’s nearly time, good attendees.” She waved a magnanimous hand towards the little mountain jutting on their island. A mound of dark, almost glossy rocks with several openings at its base. “Behold! There lies the Obsidian Halls of Dark Reflection. Can you guess what our brave contestants will face within its dusky halls?”
She gave her audience some time to come up with wild and fanciful theories, to fantasize about whatever madness might be awaiting the competitors.
“It is said that everyone who enters its passages will need to face themselves,” she said, her voice now a conspiratorial whisper. “That they will need to overcome their darkest fear—themselves.” She had to say that last bit just right. “Do any of our participants have what it takes to make it out of the dungeon alive? Will we crown a champion with a new treasure?”
Said competitors were gathering at different entrances to the dungeon. Some alone, some in mish-mashed teams.
Farther back, gaggles of spectators watched on. Sridayne didn’t quite understand the appeal of coming to watch proceedings live. Why not enjoy the comforts the Tower Lord provided and watch on a transmitter veil?
Oh, she knew what the fascination was, of course. One didn’t get to be in the industry as long as her without acknowledging the hunger for the blood, for the despair and defeat and agony, and for the sole triumph, all played out right in front of one’s face.
Plus, there was something morbidly fascinating about watching competitors die right up close.
“You won’t join them?” Vyournel asked. Her assistant was pointing at a few of the other reporters and commentators trying to get some last-minute clips from the contestants.
Sridayne shook her head. Hmm, maybe she ought to be a bit careful about not ruining her hair, though her horns ought to keep her hairdo safe enough. “No. I think I’ve done enough for now. The real fun will happen once they get going. That’s when we’ll…”
Her voice trailed off as she noticed something weird. Something very weird.
One of the islands was heading straight for them.
This wasn’t unusual. With how all the other islands floated around, it was bound to happen that some inevitably ended up crashing together. But that never happened with islands that had active dungeons, especially dungeons that had contestants making runs through them.
The Tower Lord needed the entire system to be stable. It wouldn’t do to let even the prospect of islands crashing together jeopardize active operations. As such, he spared no expense in making sure his followers would prevent islands from colliding while they had people on them.
But it wasn’t working now. Sridayne wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Several spectators and tournament officials were pointing with a mixture of fear and excitement.
Fear because of, well, the obvious prospect of all of them suffering a grievous injury if not outright death. And excitement… Sridayne felt a little thrill run up her spine as she noticed that the island was being propelled forward.
A humongous monster was flapping its massive wings to bring the other island ever closer. A monster she recognized.
That was the Eternal Guardian.
“Vyournel,” Sridayne said. “Get ready. We want to get a good view of this.”
“But that’s…”
“The Guardian, yes. The one Lord Irowel said brought up competitors from lower Floors into this one. You understand what that means, right? It’s bringing a competitor here, straight to this dungeon. So get that transmitter orb ready.”
Vyournel gulped, rubbing the stubby horns on his head nervously. “Give me just a moment.”
Sridayne didn’t have a moment. She was already rushing forward, ignoring the calls from the officials and the guards to stay back. Vyournel would catch up. This was too good to pass up, and she had to be in position.
The new transmitter orb flickered and floated in front of her just as the huge monster arrived with its massive island. Bless Vyournel.
“Are you seeing this, good attendees?” she asked, voice as rushed and excited and tense as the situation called for. Artfully moulded to draw her viewers in. “Are you here with me, witnessing this incredible turn of events? An island, driven by the mythical Eternal Guardian, is about to crash into an active arena island. Has the Tower Lord lost control of the Floor?”
Several other Sylvans were already ahead of her—the guards the Tower Lord had posted to keep the islands apart—and were yelling out and flashing their powers to keep the huge, feathery monster away. Fat load of good that would do any of them.
But Sridayne’s intuition proved correct. At the very last moment, the Eternal Guardian swerved just enough to one side to miss a head-on collision.
The islands did meet. There was a deep, grinding crash, and Sridayne was nearly thrown to the ground. Thankfully, she managed to keep her footing. A fall would have been disgraceful, not least because she would have lost her opportunity.
“This is unbelievable,” she said. She even felt it. “We have just witnessed three human beings leap off the incoming island. Are these—yes! These are competitors. Look how they strut with such confidence, such pure bravado, straight to the tournament officials.”
Nobody dared stop the trio, of course. Not even the guards. Almost everyone was standing shocked at the sheer audacity of the newcomers.
“Come on, Vyournel,” Sridayne said, hurrying towards the humans and the somewhat stupefied officials they were dealing with. “Now that is the interview we don’t want to miss.”
Her assistant huffed a little as he tried to keep up. They reached the new contestants just as they were about to proceed to the last step before heading into the dungeon itself.
“Oh, look at this, good attendees,” Sridayne said, making sure the transmitter orb was picking everything up. “These three are already done with registration, almost as though they’ve done this before. How intriguing. And now—oh wow, and now they’re about to register into the auction too. As bidders! Without even a treasure to their name, or so one assumes. Intriguing.”
She could only guess these three had no treasures. After all, the Eternal Guardian only dealt with Denizens new to the Floor, so it stood to reason this was the trio’s first appearance at the tournament.
The officials were showing the apparent leader of the trio—a human male in a strange cloak with hexagonal patterns—how to establish his collateral.
Generally, contestants didn’t have much direct money to use. A lot were Denizens too busy climbing Towers and overcoming challenges and whatnot. Such adventuring left little time for creating the typical financial portfolio necessary for entry into any prestigious auction.
But since the Tower Lord wanted to spice things up by allowing tournament competitors to also partake in auctions as bidders, the officials would accept valuables in lieu of actual money. For fairness’s sake, a bidder would need to have said valuable evaluated to determine its monetary worth, which was what was happening at the moment.
“Remember, good attendees,” Sridayne said. “We’ve had Hyburne, the leader of the second Ryous party, as the one with the most valuable collateral.” Bidders were allowed to keep their actual valuable a secret, so she was forced to refer to them as just the collateral. “Amounting to a cool, thirty Mana pearls or three thousand Mana shards.”
Sridayne let the suspense build as the official steered the newcomer into the curtained box where he could place his valuable in privacy.
“What are your odds, viewers and listeners?” she asked. “How much will this…?”
Her voice once again trailed to nothing as the numbers started rising. Fast. There was a large transmitter veil in the centre of the arena’s antechamber, the one that would display the goings-on within the dungeon when things were truly underway.
Right now, it was displaying a series of rising numbers in the Sylvan script. Numbers that were changing colours as they crossed the threshold of first the crystals, then the shards.
And then they kept rising.
Sridayne remembered her job, despite the surprise she felt. “This—this is unprecedented! Look! Look at that! Do you see that, viewers? For the listeners out there, we have crossed the threshold of both crystals and shards in merely a few blinks. And—and—”
“Burgeoner’s blistered balls.”
Sridayne would need to have a little chat with Vyournel to remind her younger colleague to not interject during live sessions. But right now, that just sold the situation more.
“It’s still climbing,” she said, breathless as she stared at the rising numbers. “Thirty pearls… fifty pearls… one hundred pearls… oh, my lord, it shows no sign of stopping!”
That was perhaps not quite accurate because the numbers had finally started slowing down. Another dozen breaths, and the numbers stilled.
“There!” Sridayne said. She could hardly believe what she was seeing and that was good, because her disbelief was making it straight into the transmitter orb. “It’s finally stopped! The final count, dear audience, is one hundred and twelve Mana pearls.”
She repeated it again. And again. She had to.
Because she was quite certain that this had to be the most valuable collateral any tournament competitor had entered into the auction.
The man came out of the curtained box with a grin, though he stopped short when he saw basically everyone was staring agog at the transmitter veil. Sridayne, thankfully, kept her cool and hurried towards the competitor, before even his companions could reach him.
“Congratulations on your jaw-dropping entry,” she said. “Your explosive entry just garnered the riveted attention of several hundred thousand attendees. Care to share any words with them before you enter the tournament?”
The man considered for a moment, looking at Sridayne for a while before turning to the transmitter orb. She blinked. Had this human seen orbs like these before, or had he somehow already figured out what they were?
“Getting interviewed for a Sylvan entertainment channel was not on my apocalyptic bingo card,” the man said. “But since I’ve got an audience, I have just one thing I’d like to say. Your Floor Lord tried to stop me from entering the tournament. That’s right, the Third Floor Lord himself. So if you aren’t convinced I’m the real deal yet, you better be now.”
And with that shocking drop of intel, the man turned and headed towards the dungeon. The other two, an unkempt woman and a man in armour, followed close behind. As she passed, the woman left Sridayne a grin. A bloody grin.
For a few moments, even Sridayne was finally shocked by what she had just learned. Not only had the Floor Lord attacked this fellow, but he had failed to stop the human.
She smiled. Oh yes, her own numbers were probably going insane right about now.