“Banish the brute!” Aurin ordered Shamtile, who hurled a stone spear at the wild Spikruption who was spitting waves of fire down the corridor.

The stone spear soared through the air, breaking through the orange flames and skewered the red dinosaur’s leg. It dropped to the ground as it let out a roar of pain, giving Shamtile a clear path. The little Minakai ran up to it and slammed his stone-coated fist into the side of its head, banishing it from the tower.

“Good job, mate,” said Aurin, slumping to the ground.

The pair were on the thirty-seventh floor of Harmony Tower. Having reached Kyle’s record, Aurin couldn’t wait to rub it in his friend’s face, especially when it came to telling him that he did it with only two Minakai. He didn’t intend to be nasty about it, but he felt that Kyle deserved some payback after constantly mentioning how he defeated Aurin in the Hazelton tournament.

“We’re so close,” Aurin said to Shamtile who was feeling the strain, but had only needed to push through seven floors to get to this point and was much fresher than Aurin. “Food. Why didn’t I bring food?”

Shamtile slapped Aurin in the arm and let out a screech.

“Keep it down,” Aurin scolded him. “Do you want to tell every monster on this floor that we’re here? The less fighting we have to do, the better.”

The tamer grunted as he climbed to his feet and walked along with Shamtile clinging close to him. The pair carefully entered a room and Aurin kneeled to see if there were any obvious traps nearby and was somewhat relieved to not find any. His lingering concern for traps was down to him not being able to detect any, having used an Orb of Traps to get through the last three floors before it crumbled into dust.

“Alright,” he said, walking up to a Water Crystal and picking it up. “Better save this for any earth elementals we come across. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful not to hit you with it.”

Shamtile flexed his thin arms to say that he wasn’t worried by such a measly little object, but Aurin laughed him away and walked on out of the room. The masked lizard grunted and shadowboxed the air before scurrying after his tamer, afraid that Aurin would be struck by a Minakai while out of sight.

The ever-ambitious duo breezed through the rest of the floor, avoiding most of their enemies and knocking out the rest with heavy stones and sharp spikes. The two were grinning from ear to ear—Shamtile’s smile hidden behind his mask—upon reaching the elevator.

On the thirty-eighth floor, Shamtile was fighting a pair of Angree that were doing their best to tear him to shreds, but the battle was ended surprisingly quickly when one of them stepped on a Berserk Trap and turned on its ally, leaving Shamtile to pick off the weakened one.

On the thirty-ninth floor, Aurin found an Orb of Tamers in the second room and used it. He couldn’t see another human on the floor and it gave him a strange sense of isolation to that he was here with only Minakai. The odds of another human this high up on a random Thursday were slim at best. Not a single person would stand in his way on the way to the top, it was just him and the monsters.

“Come to think of it,” said Aurin, checking his watch. “It isn’t Thursday anymore. It’s Friday noon. No wonder I’m so hungry.”

“Grawp?” grunted Shamtile.

“I’ve been in here for over a day,” he laughed, not quite believing it.

On the fortieth floor, Shamtile took his worst injury of the run when he was shoved into an Entanglement Trap by a Guilgon and hit by a pressure cannon that rivalled what Steambot was capable of. If Aurin hadn’t run over to him and shoved a herb in his Minakai’s mouth, another hit would have finished the job. Shamtile turned the battle around by striking the Guilgon with a stalagmite and a stalactite at the same time, banishing it from the tower.

Relieved to have narrowly avoided the end of his run, Shamtile took a moment to catch his breath. Aurin’s star Minakai felt like he had something to prove after Dolissile had carried Aurin up until floor thirty before succumbing to the challenges. No matter how much Aurin assured the shamanistic reptile, he refused to accept that the much higher difficulty of these floors as an excuse. He was steadfast in his desire to carry his tamer to the top and face the tower guardian himself.

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“It would be quite the feat to clear a tower using only two monsters,” muttered Aurin before clearing his throat. “We take it one floor at a time, mate. Just one floor at a time and then we’ll see what comes of it. Obviously, I want to reach the top, but I’m proud of reaching a floor that only one or two percent of tamers will ever reach.”

Pushing through the forty-first floor, Shamtile took on a dozen Minakai, making quick work for the first half and slower work of the second, but the rare Solee Berry that Aurin found and fed to him helped the duo zoom through the forty-second floor before its double-speed effect wore off.

The forty-third floor was the longest grind Aurin had dealt with in a while, taking almost a full hour to clear. It felt exceptionally large, leading him to wonder if it was one of the anomaly floors that occurred, similar to the floors that were covered in ice, filled with water or even the ones that consisted of a single large room. He made a mental note to look into it when he got out, but that thought quickly faded from his mind upon finding the elevator and ascending once more.

On the forty-fourth floor, Aurin made use of an Orb of Monsters that was drained after that single use. It allowed him to identify where monsters were across the floor, seeing them as red silhouettes through the walls. A couple of times, he and Shamtile were backed into a corner, but it made the floor much easier than it would have been otherwise.

“Forty-five,” sighed Aurin while staggering forward. He was now so tired that even the teleportation effect of the elevator was making him feel dizzy. “Shamtile, throw me over your shoulder for a while and carry me, would you?”

Aurin was met with a punch to the knee that knocked him to the ground. Shamtile screeched and leapt up before helping Aurin back to his feet, trying to communicate his apology as best as he could.

“Just be careful next time,” said Aurin, massaging his left wrist. He had used his left hand to break his fall and it hadn’t been the most pleasant of landings, but he knew it was an accident so he wasn’t too harsh on his companion. “Come on,” he said, leading the way along.

Click. Upon entering the third room of the floor, the familiar and horrible sound echoed in Aurin’s ears and he looked on in horror as Shamtile gave him guilty eyes from behind his masks.

Shamtile’s form started vibrating and there was a wispy, ethereal grey that enshrouded him. Whatever trap the lizard had triggered, it was not one that his tamer had ever seen before. The grey separated from Shamtile and scurried away like a ghost before leaping into the air and turning as it landed and solidified. The shadowed creature faced the pair, who were stunned to see that it was an exact duplicate of Shamtile that had been stripped of all colour. Whatever trap the lizard had triggered, Aurin could not name, but it was obvious what it had done.

“Attack!” Aurin ordered as the shadowy clone coated itself in stone armour and charged at the true Shamtile.

The two Shamtile covered their fists in stone and punched, meeting each other with equal force and shattering their rock gloves into dozens of pieces. Shamtile hopped back and conjured a pair of stone spears, thrusting them both forward for the gaps in his opponent’s armour but the shadow Shamtile twisted and the spears broke upon his stone.

The clone hurled a boulder at Shamtile who caught it in his hands and tossed it back, but it was smashed into pieces by a hurled spear that pierced through and narrowly missed Shamtile’s shoulder, startling Aurin’s Minakai.

Shamtile rushed forwards and dove at his clone, but it brought up a stone wall. Shamtile tried climbing to the top of the wall only for it to be extended to the ceiling. The masked lizard used his own elemental powers to break the wall apart and was met with a stone fist to the chest, knocking him towards the far wall and frustrating him greatly.

Aurin’s Minakai threw himself out of the way of a falling stalactite and ran around the room as more followed him, dropping through the air in a domino effect as the masked lizard ran. Shamtile suddenly stopped and held up his arms, forcing the stalactites to retract back into the ceiling.

“It may look like you, but it isn’t you,” said Aurin as Shamtile leapt over boulders and slipped under spears. “You can hit harder!”

Shamtile suddenly had a burst of inspiration as another spear whizzed over his spikes. He hadn’t tried this technique before, but it may just work. All he needed to do was guarantee that he could land the hit on the relentless clone.

“Arrrgh!” he yelled, pointing to Aurin’s bag.

“Eh? The crystal?” asked the tamer, hurriedly pulling out the Water Crystal he had found earlier.

Shamtile let out a decisive screech and Aurin understood what he needed to do. He focused his mind on the blue glass and harnessed its magic, unleashing the spell at the facsimile, forcing it to block his spell and giving Shamtile his opening.

The masked lizard conjured a spear of his own, but this one was not of brown stone; it was of clouded diamond, the same sort of diamond he had used in his battle against Wingbloom. He flung it through the air before the false Shamtile had time to react and it the grey clone through the head, dissipating the anomaly in a puff of smoke.

“You don’t see that every day, do you?” murmured Aurin, curious as to what Kyle would say about the rare trap he had triggered.

Shamtile shook his head in exasperation. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fight against anything remotely resembling himself again as using his diamond powers was draining at a level not even slightly comparable to regular stone. As Aurin led the way, he followed, feeling much more sluggish than he had done mere minutes ago.