Ray and the others internally decided not to discuss too much in front of the merchant. It was the same concern he’d had earlier. Best to give Virko as little information about themselves as possible.

Stepping closer to the merchant, who had maintained a placid expression despite clearly noting away what the group of new Denizens had just said, Ray dangled the other boot. “Alright, time to cough up what you know, rich guy.”

Virko offered an exaggerated flourish of a bow. Ray wondered if that was normal wherever he came from. “Ask and you shall receive.”

“You know about the First Floor’s challenge, right?” Ray said. “Capturing and bringing one of the Brighthorns to the Floor Lord. This Handler. Is it actually possible to complete the challenge, what with the Brighthorns being so… uncooperative?”

“That I cannot answer. It depends entirely on a Denizen’s ingenuity and other personal factors. I can confirm that the System would not allow any challenges to be set that couldn’t be completed by at least some Denizens.”

Well, that was more or less obvious. Someone could just be some sort of Tamer class and tame a Brighthorn to take to the Floor Lord.

“Are there any maps of the First Floor?” Ray asked next.

“A map? The Tower of Forging is far too new for any proper maps. Although, there may be a few cartography expeditions being carried out soon.”

Ray pulled out the Map Fragment of his tutorial zone. “So this must be pretty valuable.”

Virko’s eyes widened a little when he understood what that was. His little fingers twitched. “I can pay a decent sum for that.”

“Sure. But I want some more information. If I wanted to get a specific kind of accessory, is there a way I can find it on the First Floor?”

“Dungeons. All dungeons have a certain theme or goal, and for many, the rewards they grant are also related to that theme. If you’re targeting anything specific, it could help to find a dungeon that has a theme that’s related to what you want.”

“Interesting.” Ray took a moment to consider what he had just learned. “Now, do you know what the average level of people who complete the First Floor’s challenge is?”

“Well, I’m a merchant, not a statistician, but I will say I’ve dealt with Denizens of up to level 16 on the First Floor.”

“So, you’ve done this before?” Maya asked from the back. “In other Towers.”

“Of course! I have honed my business acumen across four different Towers now.”

Four Towers, probably on four other worlds. No wonder he had a Tier 17 ability. That accessory of his had to be really high Tier one too.

Ray was not about to ponder just how expensive something like that would be.

But level 16… Ray kept his smile to himself. That shouldn’t be impossible, provided he could find a good way to gain more Essence. But to do that, he would need to gain a bit more information.

“And what about the dungeons and the monsters?” Ray asked. “How strong do they get in Tiers and levels?”

“Again, I am no connoisseur of clearing dungeons and fighting off the monstrous beasts,” Virko said. “But I have purchased loot from a Tier 7 dungeon once, and Tier 6 dungeons I believe five times? For monsters, I have acquired pieces of up to level 19 once or twice.”

Ray blinked. That was good news. He had been suspecting over the last few days that the First Floor wouldn’t grant him much after his tutorial might have left him a tad overpowered for the challenges present in it. But that assumption might just be false if Virko could be trusted. It sounded like it was more a matter of him finding these stronger monsters and dungeons.

Sure, there was likely going to be differences in the Floors of different Towers. If Virko had received a Tier 7 dungeon’s loot only once in all his four Tower jaunts, it could be that only one of them had possessed a Tier 7 dungeon in the first place.

In other words, different Towers could possess different challenges and difficulties.

“We should get going,” Dory whispered. She was worried that the people they had found would move away, which was valid.

Although Ray suspected they might be far off enough for that to not matter anyway. It had taken over a day for the bird to find the right target and return.

“Alright,” Ray said. “One last thing. How strong are the Sylvans who run the challenge in this Tower?”

Virko’s eyes got a lot more calculating. “Last I heard, the Floor Lord is pushing level 27. That was perhaps two cycles ago? I do know the Sylvans do not intend to remain stagnant in their prowess and will grow stronger in time. Just like any other driven Denizen.”

“What constitutes a cycle?” Randall asked.

“What you would call one complete rotation of your world.”

“Oh okay, so a night and day cycle.”

The strongest new Denizen Virko reported ever seeing was level 16, and apparently, the Floor Lord of this Tower’s First Floor was over ten levels stronger than that. Ray did his best not to grin.

Challenges like that tended to make Ray feel alive like nothing else. They tended to also lead to the chaotic situations his life had been mired with, but this was different. This Tower, this new world and life of his, this would not be the same as his old life. Ray was going to make sure of that.

Ray handed over the other boot of the Golden Ancient Golem Greaves and the Map Fragment, receiving three hundred Mana crystals in return.

A hefty sum indeed.

“Good business,” Virko said, smiling unctuously at them. “Remember, if you ever need me again, all you must do is crush a Mana crystal and focus on summoning me. May we meet again in—”

Ray handed a third of the Mana crystals to Maya. “We’re not done.” He smiled at his companions. “I saw you guys checking some stuff out. I think a hundred Mana crystals should cover everything you need. Consider this a loan and suit yourselves up with better gear.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

A handful of minutes later, well-equipped with some new gear and very thankful to Ray, the trio joined him as they headed off.

They continued their trek towards the people found by Dory’s firebird. Ray was curious how she could keep it up for that long so indefinitely. It felt a tad broken. But her explanation helped put things in perspective.

“My total Mana is like, halved so long as my summons is up,” Dory said.

“Ah.” Ray pursed. “Not great, if you ask me.”

“Yeah…”

“If only it could have transferred my Mark,” Randall said. “I knew I’d fuck something up.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Maya said. “Since the bird didn’t transfer the Mark, it means it couldn’t do so, which also means we should be careful.”

Dory nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, exactly. This just means that there’s something going on, which we wouldn’t have known without the Mark, Randall.”

They were right. Something was going on with those people, and they would do well to be careful once they found their targets.

Ray’s assumption also proved to be correct. They were indeed pretty far away, so much so that they came across other monsters and Mana fruit groves. They even found another Tier 3 dungeon.

While they ignored the last—their priority was finding their target, and a Tier 3 dungeon would take too long while granting minimal rewards—they made short work of the few Brighthorns guarding the dark trees and more Mana fruits.

It was becoming clear the Brighthorns tended to congregate wherever there were Mana fruits, which only seemed to grow from those weird sinuous trees. Ray wondered what exactly was the relationship between the monsters and the Mana fruits. They were yet to come across one of the Brighthorns eating them, so it couldn’t just be food.

Unless, of course, the lack of Mana fruits was only because most had been eaten by the Brighthorns. Perhaps, the few that were left were simply being guarded to serve as food for later.

Who knew.

Ray warned them about the monster deep underground, the one that was easily a lot stronger than any of them. Probably stronger than all of them together.

They looked a little terrified that the dark trees might be connected to some chthonic beast. Rightfully so. The monster sensed them clearly, and if it rose, they could all be annihilated. Ray definitely didn’t say that last part out loud, and with a little reassurance, they continued their excursion against the Brighthorns.

They had considered coming up with some kind of plan to capture a Brighthorn to complete the main Floor Objective, but none of them had come up with a solid suggestion.

Dory had suggested using food as lure, but since it looked like the monster dogs wanted to eat humans more than anything, that plan would be a little hard to execute.

“I can’t make complicated traps, and I don’t even know if they’ll be strong enough to hold those things,” Randall said. “It’s hard to tell what’s going to work since we’ve got no clue how these Brighthorns even function, other than their general viciousness.”

True enough. Even Ray’s Presence of the Primordial didn’t provide the kind of information that would have been handy in determining how to capture them alive.

Ray was glad to see they could handle the monsters by themselves without too much difficulty now. Maya was especially good. Her class was built for fighting, and she was able to take good advantage of her skills combining with each other to deliver heavy, powerful blows to the Brighthorns, downing them in a few hits. She even levelled up as they were travelling.

“You’re pretty good with those,” Ray had said at one point, looking appreciatively at the corpse of the Brighthorn at her feet.

Maya took off her helmet and wiped away some sweat. Her brown skin had darkened with a flush of exertion, and her frizzy hair stuck to her face. “It’s kind of silly, but my husband and I used to go cosplaying before we had our kid. We even did some HEMA sessions. Weird how it fits here, huh?”

Ray nodded, smiling. “It’s not silly. It sounds wholesome.”

She smiled back, though her gaze went unfocused. He wondered how much she was worrying about her family. Could he have continued the way he was doing without driving himself insane with anxiety if he’d had someone to worry about?

Probably not. A blessing in disguise, then, that the most concern Ray could muster was a strong hope that his mother had found a good group she could stick with.

Dory and Randall lagged a little farther behind and weren’t as adept when it came to fighting. At least they got in a few kills each. Better than nothing. Any Essence was a positive at their level.

“What did you used to do?” Dory asked as they got going.

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Ray said. “I worked at this place called Golden Windows—”

“No, I meant like, hobbies.”

“Oh.” Ray scratched the back of his head. “I didn’t do a ton at home. Some reading, some exercising, and uh… lots of Showdown.” He paused, then quickly added, “But I also liked touring some of the buffet places all over the city. I love Maharaja, Fushinami, Jing’s, Casablanca—”

“Hold up, hold up. Showdown as in Pokémon Showdown?”

Ray felt his ears burning. “Look, random battles are spectacularly fun without getting drawn into all the ladders and shit.”

“That’s what everybody who can’t actually climb the ladders say.”

Randall joined in on the teasing with a mischievous smile. “If we had computers and internet in this place, I’d have been happy to give you some pointers.”

Ray smiled and flipped them both off. Maybe it was him, but it felt like they all journeyed a little easier from then on. As though some invisible wall between Ray and the rest of them had been demolished.

“Can’t believe it’s taking us this long to find them,” Dory said after they had been travelling for another hour or so. “I know we’re not the most populated state ever, but geez.”

It was a little surprising. But then, nobody stated the more sobering fact. So many of the trio’s original group members had died in just their tutorial. It wasn’t difficult to believe that the total population of people in the Tower of Forging had fallen by a huge amount. Maybe a half, or even more.

Ray felt his face turning grim. That didn’t bode well for the survival chances of his mom or anyone else he had known. That didn’t bode well at all.

At the end of what felt like that “day”, they finally found more people.

Ray wasn’t the only one who cursed when they made the discovery. It wasn’t a bright, fun reunion with more of their kind. Maya had been right. There was something terribly wrong. But what they found wasn’t a gang of criminal scum or some other heinous group. This was much worse.

The humans Dory’s summon had found were captured.

They noted it from a distance, careful not to get too close. Ray had already warned them that creatures here, including the Sylvans who ran the whole show, possessed strong perception abilities.

“Binoculars would have been so good here,” Randall said as he squinted off into the hazy distance.

Ray had gotten close enough to see just enough of what was going on without giving himself or his position away. The others were doing the same, keeping their profiles low so as not to be detected.

Yes. Those were people. Strange chains with shimmering links kept the captives bound, the Sylvans walking among them like shepherds herding sheep.

“They’ve got some of the monster dogs with them too,” Randall muttered. “I don’t like this.”

Maya made a short sound of distress in her throat. “We need to free them. But…”

“But we don’t know what’s going on,” Ray said. “Or if we even should free them.”

Dory rounded on him. “Why wouldn’t we free—”

“Remember what I said about freeing people you might not want to free?”

She had no further complaints.

“In the end, we need more information about what’s going on,” Maya said. “I suppose we can’t just go up and ask.”

Ray nodded. “We do need to ask, but probably not like that.”

He thought for a moment, trying to figure out how he would address the issue of their lack of information. They would need to be clever. More importantly, they would need to be prepared in case things went south. This whole saving venture would be pointless if they ended up getting captured too.

Something told him those chains were suppressing Mana or something along those lines. Otherwise, why would people capable of powerful skills remain bound like that?

“I wonder where they’re taking them,” Maya said. “They’re not heading in the direction we were going.”

That was true. As the procession of captured humans and their Sylvan captors moved on, Ray and the others kept pace at a distance.

He wished he could have deciphered the directions more easily. Ray knew he had been at the Tower’s edge and had travelled more or less due straight from that point on.

In other words, whichever cardinal direction the Marauder’s Caves had been positioned at, relative to the Tower’s centre, Ray was now headed in the opposite direction. The Sylvans and their captives were travelling essentially perpendicular to him and his group.

So if Ray had been journeying due north, his captives were being led eastwards.

“What are we going to do?” Dory asked.

Ray looked over at the woman, saw the bird summon that was resting on her shoulder. He wasn’t an expert in birds, but it looked somewhat like a falcon. Apart from being on fire, of course. “I think I’ve got an idea. But we need to be careful about how we execute it. Here’s what I’m thinking…”