“What exactly do you want to talk about?” I ask the angry woman who’d approached me. Her less than kind demeanor was definitely off putting, but not a reason to dislike her immediately.

“Come upstairs and find out.” She says, turning to walk towards the staircase. She doesn’t even look behind to check if I am following. Once she makes it about halfway there, she realizes that I hadn’t budged an inch.

“Nope. Not going to go up there until you tell me what it’s about. I already trusted one of your people here, and got interrogated in a dark room.”

She sighs. “Fine. I want to discuss introducing currency to your outpost the the towns around you.”

“Why would you be talking about that with me? I’m not the leader of any of them.”

“Because you are the highest leveled person around there. People will listen to you.”

“No, people will listen to those they trust. They actually trust the leaders of my outpost, so if you really want to discuss anything like that then bring it up with them.”

“I don’t think you quite understand your responsibilities towards your people.” She says. “You are the strongest amongst them, so you help with the major decision. At the very least I am sure you can put in a good word for us once I convince you of the value of having standard currency.”

“Oh I am well aware it would be useful to have.” I say. “It’s just not my job to deal with that stuff. Besides, I don’t like how you just assume I should be in charge just because I am the highest level.”

“Perhaps you’d be more inclined to tell them it's a good idea if-”

“Nope. I am not going to endorse this either. If it is good enough to implement, it shouldn’t be hard to convince anyone to do so.”

She glares at me, taking a moment to think. She pulls out a small pouch from her waistband. “Then how about you just mention the idea of currency to your leaders. You don’t have to endorse it.”

I think that over for a moment, and have to do my best to keep a smirk off my face after a moment. “Sure, I’ll make sure to bring it up next time I see them.”

“Great.” She says, her glare disappearing as she tosses the bag of coins to me. I look inside, seeing a few gold coins within.

She walks away, seeming at least content with the outcome of the conversation. I just stare into the pouch a bit longer.

“I... have no idea how much this is worth.”

Upon exiting the building, Flynn finds me and stops me. “So what’d she want to talk about?”

“She wanted me to implement currency into my outpost. I told her that wasn’t my job, and she kept trying to convince me to at least have me endorse it. In the end, we settled on me at least mentioning it. She gave me this in return.” I open up the pouch for him to see into.

“Wow.” Flynn says, counting the coins. “I never expected you would be the type to accept a bribe, even if it was a pretty good one.”

“Oh relax. I’m not actually gonna say anything useful about the currency. I just wanted the money.”

“If you say so. Anyways, there was something very important I wanted to talk to you about. I really need your input on what to do with this information, as this could very much effect everybody within the tower.”

I suddenly get much more serious, understanding the gravity of what I was about to be told. “What is it?”

“Let's go somewhere a bit less crowded first.” Flynn says, leading me elsewhere. After a bit of walking, we arrived at the staircase within the city. “Floor eleven.” Flynn says before disappearing.

I also head down to floor eleven, soon finding myself standing right next to Flynn on a beach. It only took a moment to realize we were on an island of some kind, surrounded completely by water.

Welcome to floor 11: Diving Deep

Objective: Reach the bottom of the sea.

“Great,” Flynn says, turning to me. “Now that I am sure nobody will hear us, let’s talk about what is so special about getting here.”

I turn to Flynn. “Before that, do you think we would be able to discuss this on our way down to the bottom of the sea?”

Flynn raises an eyebrow. “If you think you can find some way to get down there. Do you happen to have a submarine?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“No, but I got something close to it. Follow me.”

We walk towards the water, and with a lot of concentration I manage to push my mana shield off my skin and make it form a bubble around us. As we get closer to the water, it is pushed back by the shield. I can feel a very, very small amount of mana get drained from pushing the water back, but it is such a small amount that my natural regeneration replaces the mana faster than it is being used up.

A bit more walking, and soon enough we are completely underwater with the bubble of air keeping us safe.

“So, what is this world changing news?”

“Oh, yeah.” Flynn says, taking his attention off of the bubble of mana around us. “Reaching this floor upgraded my pioneer title from D tier to C tier.”

The bubble around us shudders slightly as my concentration wavers. That had caught me totally off guard. “Like, the title upgraded it completely? Did your time in the tutorial extend as well?”

“Yes it did. I now have another 42 days left in the tutorial instead of the nine from before.”

“That is just... wow. People are going to start scrambling to get past floor ten if that is really the case. That would finally encourage some people to start gaining levels too.”

“It would.” Flynn says, nodding his head. “Unfortunately, it would also cause a lot of people to die.”

“What? How come?”

“If people who previously had no confidence to progress through the floors suddenly try to climb through them, there is a good chance many of them will fall to the monsters they encounter. Just think about how many people are going to die to the skeleton sentinel on floor 5.”

“I’m sure there will be some people who chaperone them through the floors though.” I say. “It would be a lot safer.”

“There probably will be, but many will go without them.”

There is a silence for a few minutes as we both think about it. I myself was weighing the pros and cons of telling people about this, and I can tell Flynn was doing the same. He’d had a lot more time to think about this than I did, so he probably had a better idea of how it would affect people.

As we walk further into the sea, the sand beneath us gently slopes down. It is pretty clear that eventually we will reach a bottom, so we keep going. The light around us slowly begins to dim as the water over our heads blocks the sun out slowly.

We spend almost an hour talking about what we should do with this information, until finally the first threat of the floor shows itself. All around us, a school of fish appear. They start slamming against my mana shield, draining a small but not negligible amount of mana with each hit.

I send out a couple of mana blasts to fend them off, and Flynn swipes his sword at them through the mana barrier. I allowed the sword to pass through unimpeded, a neat and convenient function of the spell. By the time the school had thinned out enough for them to retreat, I had a ton of individual kill notifications waiting for me.

You have slain Aquatic Rat (Level 27 - 30) x 138

Bonus experience earned for fighting while outnumbered

Despite the many kills, I hadn’t gotten a level. These enemies were quite a bit below my own level, and even for the level they were they were pretty damn weak. It was likely supposed to be a power by numbers situation, but using concussive mana blasts was akin to dynamite fishing. The shockwave through the water did a lot of damage. Unfortunately, my mana shield had also been affected by the shockwave. It was an indiscriminate attack.

We continued further into the darkness, and eventually I needed to turn some mana into light to allow us to see anything at all. Several more sea monsters attack us, but with the both of us there to fight back they were trivial to deal with.

After a few hours of walking, we reach a drop off in the sand. My mana was starting to run pretty low, and my aura was at just under a quarter of its maximum capacity. I had at least gained a level from some of the stronger enemies we’d faced, so I could at least say that this floor was worth something.

“Ready to jump?” I ask, looking over at Flynn.

“Are we sure that’s the right way to go?”

“I’ll bet you a coin it is.”

“No deal.”

We hop down into the inky blackness, our speed dictated by how fast we could make the mana shield sink. Flynn was sitting on the bottom of it while I just kind of... floated in the center. The shield created resistance as it moved through the water, and the spell always kept me at it’s center. That resulted in me being forced to float in the middle of the bubble of mana while it slowly descended further and further down.

Eventually, the blackness rushed in all around us, and I knew we had made it too the bottom of the floor. Coincidentally, it coincided with us coming to a decision about what to do with the information Flynn had discovered.

You have completed floor 11

Welcome to floor 12: Challengers Ravine

Objective: Reach the staircase at the end of the Ravine

Our feet were once more on solid ground. We now stood in the middle of an air bubble. There was light coming from all around us, so we could at least see. As far as I could tell, this was the only part of the floor that was not under water.

“So, we agree to keep it to ourselves.” Flynn says, looking at me.

“I think that would be for the best. We don’t want anybody needlessly dying in hopes of a stupid title upgrade. At least, we don’t need it to be our fault. I’m sure everyone will find out eventually.”

“Great. So, You wanna continue on through this floor? I’m sure we can handle it well enough.”

“Not right now.” I say, shaking my head. “I need to give my mana a few hours to regenerate, and as much as it pains me, I have some responsibilities to tend to.”

“Then how about meeting here again in a day or so.”

“Sounds good to me.” I say. We both exit the floor and return to the great city. I leave quickly after and make my way back to the outpost. I need to be at the staircase soon to help out my students, but first I have something else I need to do.

I find Ben, walking up to him. He notices me and smiles.

“Hey River, how've you been?”

“Currency.” I say, my face completely serious.

“What?” Ben says, confused.

“Money.”

“I... are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just fulfilling an agreement I made. Anyways, it’s nice to see you too. I’ve been well.”

We talk for a few more minutes after that before I head over to the staircase. I can already see all three groups waiting for me.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news.” I say as I walk up to them. “Which would you all like to hear first?”

They all awkwardly stand there for a moment before one of them in the back calls out. “Bad news first.”

“Well, the bad news is that I am completely unable to go to floor six to assist you all there.”

“What's the good news?” Another one of them asks.

“Well the good news is that I can give you several ways to finish off the next five floors. Now, who here wants to become a slum lord?”