He couldn’t focus. He found it impossible to.

Even with the threat of imminent death or capture dangling over his head, his mind kept spinning around that glowing tube.

Aether. The real deal.

He had no doubt that that was what they had seen, and even though he had been wishing for it, for months now, almost a full year from the time before the Climb, his mind was having trouble with actually accepting what he seen

Aether was real.

And that meant that so was magic.

The System had told them, sure, but how much could one really trust it anyway, giving how much it was still keeping from them? Here, at last, had been definitive proof. The real thing.

To Nar, finding it at last made sense. They were within reach of the Gates after all…

With a mental grunt, Nar snapped out of it, realizing that he had fallen back into his own thoughts.

He pushed his senses out again, to their max, and scanned the area.

Come on. Get it together. Yes, there’s aether. Can you do something about it now? No! Nothing! So focus, before you get us all killed!

Still, it was difficult to chastise himself with much edge.

It was aether. He had been waiting for it since the day his dad had told him that Nar was Climbing, and that that was the end of the discussion. He had been waiting for it ever since he vowed that he would save his dad. Ever since he had started this Climb, in what now felt like a different lifetime altogether.

Still. I need to pay attention.

Around him, everything was cold and lifeless, just as it had been from the very beginning. However, now he knew that those things could be lying in wait right in front of him, and he would never notice it until they attacked him, triggering his [Instinct].

“Thirty openings, all looking the same” Rel said, whispering to him. “From what you guys told us about the rooms, this place has to be able to fit thousands and thousands of people.”

“Maybe a hundred thousand,” Nar said, looking towards the chasm. “Maybe a lot more.”

“But for what?” the archer asked. “There is nothing here except places to live in. Where did they work?”

“Maybe above? Or below?” Nar offered. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

The magnitude of the place was no less mind boggling than that of the orange columns. Thirty openings soon turned to forty, and then into fifty. All of them looked the same, from the quick glimpse they had from the entrances. They didn’t bother going in, to check if all of the living spaces were the same, or if there were any openings hidden within. Kur had decided it wasn’t worth the risk, nor the time. They had come into this place to follow the gray arrows, and that’s what they were going to do.

Around the time Rel announced they were at the 170th door, hours had passed in gray monotony. However, a few steps later, they found stairs.

They were surprisingly small and tight, considering the magnitude of the place, and they went both up, and down.

“It’s pointing up,” Kur said.

“Thank the Crystal,” Tuk said in a hushed voice. “Up is good. Up is always good.”

“Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all, eh?” Mul asked Kur.

Kur grimaced. “It’s too soon to tell.”

“Nar, I think we should swap,” Gad said, looking up the stairs. “You’re much better suited for fighting on these stairs than I am.”

“Sounds good,” Nar said.

“Be careful,” Kur told him, as Nar walked past him.

With Nar now leading them, they carefully climbed the stairs.

After the first flight of stairs, there were only walls, and they climbed in a chilly, oppressive silence.

He had found tight corridors safe before. Even comfortable. But here, within these tight walls and low ceilings, he only felt trapped.

He lost count of how many flights of stairs they climbed. At some point, he was coated in a cool sheen of sweat, and breathing hard.

It occurred to him that he hadn’t checked his stamina in a while. In fact, he wasn’t even worried about it. Same for his HP actually, though he still cared for that one.

Uh…

When he had begun his Climb, stamina had been everything. It had dictated how far they walked in a day, and how many skills he could use. He had been terrified of running out of stamina during a fight. But now, he couldn’t remember the last time he had bothered checking it.

Was it at the last bridge? He wondered.

Maybe. He had a vague recollection of it.

Is that because I have a lot of it now?

But was 250 points of stamina considered a lot?

Or, was there another, much more obvious reason.

I have aura now… It powers all my skills. I don’t need stamina as much.

If he understood his skill, [Aura Senses 2], correctly, he didn’t even need stamina to use his enhanced senses. He used aura for it as well. In fact, he used aura for almost everything. And he had a lot of aura.

That was a bitter sweet realization. Did that mean that [Stamina] was now useless? And would aether skills be the same?

Wait, for sure I’m still using it!

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He pulled his UI up, decided to check on his stamina, but just then, he tripped on something.

He fell, landing on his hand and sword. The sound of his blade hitting the stairs echoed loudly in the enclosed stairwell.

“Crystal! Be careful!” Mul hissed at him.

“Sorry!”

The brawler sighed. “No, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just didn’t look where I was…”

“What? Oh…”

The two of them stared at what Nar had tripped on.

Nar looked away. Some memories had stirred at the back of his mind, provoked by what was there, at his side.

“What’s wrong?” Tuk asked, from behind them.

“Don’t look,” Mul said. “Don't need your vomit to make this even more disgusting.”

“Uh? What are you… Ugh!”

“I told you not to look!” Mul threw at him as Tuk gagged.

“Kur,” Tuk said, with difficulty. “Kur!”

“Coming!”

Kur’s footsteps echoed loudly as he climbed up to them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, panting.

“There’s a body,” Nar explained. “It still has all the…”

“Bits?” Mul offered.

“Yeah, the bits on it.”

Tuk retched and covered his mouth.

“Oh? That’s different,” Kur said.

Kur kneeled next to the body and took a closer look.

“That’s definitely different. He looks like he was melted,” Kur said. “I’ve seen it at the smelters. That was my… My parents’ position. As team leads.”

Kur reached forward, and gently tried to flip the body. However, the melted bits were stuck to the wall.

“Okay. That’s enough for me too,” Mul said, turning around.

“Nar, give me a hand. I think I see something on the other side.”

Swallowing, Nar bent down next to him and pulled.

With a sick, crunching sound, the body came free off the wall.

“Ugh…” Nar said, stepping away.

“Oh Crystal, why did I have to hear that?” Mul muttered.

Below them, Tuk retched again, louder and more urgently. Apparently, he had heard it too.

“Look! I was right!” Kur said.

“About what?”

But it was evident as soon as Nar turned back around. The other half of the body was surprisingly intact. It was a species they had never encountered before, some sort of blue, short, male, looking human except for a very large mouth and large, hairy ears.

The important part however, was what the corpse was wearing...

“Is that a Climber?” Mul asked.

Curiosity had apparently won him over.

“It looks like it,” Kur said. “His clothes are orange instead of purple, but they look the same.”

“What’s a Climber doing here, though?” Nas asked.

“Probably the same as us. His party must’ve found the broken path as well,” Kur said. “Mul, can you pass the message down to the others? Quietly? They’re probably worried and wondering why we’re stopped.”

Mul turned to do as asked, but found Tuk leaning against the wall, hiding his face.

“Ugh,” he said. Instead, he walked down the stairs towards the others, who were hidden around the bend.

“Something did this to him,” Kur said. “Something else, I think. I’m not sure that thing you found is capable of doing this. To be honest, the more I think about it, the more I think that it was trying to capture you. Not kill you.”

“And what was it going to do to me?” Nar asked, shivering at the prospect.

Kur sighed and stood up, still staring at the corpse. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

“What do we do?”

The party leader shrugged.

“Keep Climbing. There’s nothing else we can do. Just be careful, okay?”

Nar nodded and resumed his climb.

A half an hour later, he reached the next floor, and saw that the arrow pointed out, back into the circular chasm they had left behind.

“It’s taking us back out,” he told Mul.

Mul passed the message down, and came back with Kur’s reply.

“Let’s get out,” Mul conveyed.

Nar nodded and stepped outside. The rest of the party filtered out after them, sweaty, tired and breathing hard.

“It’s getting late,” Kur said, once he was out. “We should look for a place to rest.”

“One of the living spaces?” Nar asked.

“But they’re full of bodies!” Tuk said.

“Yes, but out here we’re too exposed. And in those stairs, we’re just trapped if anything attacks us,” Kur said. “For now, let’s follow the arrows until we come across a living space that doesn’t have too many bodies.”

“Gad?” Nar asked.

The tank gave him a nod, and took the front spot again.

As they started walking again, Rel nudged him and pointed at Cen with her chin.

“What?”

“She’s been quiet ever since we found the aetherium tube.”

“Oh.”

Now that Rel mentioned it, Cen did walk with her head hung low, her shoulders looking… Defeated?

“Do you think she’s going to change her mind?” Rel asked.

“It wasn’t much of a choice in the end, was it?” Nar asked her. “We’ll deal with it when the time comes to deal with it.”

“You’re doing better than I expected. You… Need magic, right? To save your dad?”

Nar sighed. “Magic. Power. Luck. Forgiveness. I need a lot of things. But right now, I can’t do any of them except Climb. Like I said, I’ll deal with it when the time comes to deal with it.”

Rel nodded and left it at that.

Nar fought the impulse to bite down on his jaw and tighten his fists.

It was easy to say the words. But it wasn’t as easy to believe them.

He knew that the words were right, but the reality was hard to swallow.

There was no denying that aura was useful. Powerful even. It had saved their lives multiple times, and it would probably do so again, before their Climb was over.

However, magic was magic.

If only aura was as powerful as aether.

For some reason, the thought made him pause.

Why did he think aura was weaker than aether?

Because everyone had always said that it was a curse. Because aether was a requirement to be forgiven. Because everyone hated using it. But everyone also used it wrong…

But what about the priest? He had preached at length about magic, and how much they needed it, and how powerful it was and so on and so forth. And then, there had been the Named Few…

Nar, Who Was One With The Wind.

Romilt Ghroumvar, the Insurmountable Mountain of Thorns.

The Named Few were all supposed to have magic.

But Nar shared a name with that sword wielding Named Few… That meant, or at least it was very likely, that she had been a Climber herself, and before that, a worker! Her name was only three letters long after all, like all the workers. She didn’t have a long name like Romilt Ghroumvar, and all the Climbers they had met so far had only ever had three letters to their names. A consonant, a vowel, and another consonant.

This was knowledge that even the workers had not forgotten. It was part of their punishment as well.

And he also already come to the realization that Nar, Who Was One With The Wind, had to a Climber like him.

But if so… She had to have gone through the exact same challenges as they did. The exact same Pressure! And the only way through that was with… Aura.

And she had to have at least gained a modifier on it too, he thought, as he followed quietly after the others.

But if Nar, Who Was One With The Wind had been a Climber, how had she gained aether? How did she supposedly control the wind?

Wait, does she actually have aether?

The question startled him.

It pushed him towards an entirely new and different kind of hope. For if aura was just as powerful as aether, he didn’t need to make the swap. He had two modifiers in [Aura] already. It would be perfect… Exactly what he had wanted for [Aether].

He took a deep breath and shook his head.

Come on, Nar. You’re just being crazy now. Just focus on what's around us!

But the thought wasn’t so easy to drop.

The workers had been wrong about aura, and while the priest professed to speak for the Crystal, did he actually? He was just a sinner like the rest of them!

What if everything was wrong?

What if they were all incredibly wrong?

Two sources of energy, aura and aether. One from within, and one from the crystal Almighty Itself.

Did that make it more powerful because it came from the Crystal? Yes. But just because it came from the Crystal, who was to say that the Crystal gave a lot of it?

What if it was just a tiny bit? What if he was better served with his own aura, something that was his, and his alone to control? What if he was wasting his opportunity to level it up? To keep stacking it?

He sighed, his mind spinning and churning.

What did he know? What did any of them know? All they had to go were some lines in a drawing and the patchy memory of what had been before the Original Sin. And those lines in the icons could mean anything!

Nar! Come on! Enough!

Crystal Almighty. What insanity was this, trying to take over him?

He shook his head and tried to focus on his senses.

But a door had been opened, and the terrifying possibilities and implications beyond it whispered to him, tempting him from out of sight. After all, he did like his aura. He liked it very much. And he had to confess that he hated the thought of having to give up on it.

If it wasn’t for his dad and his need for power, he would’ve probably just embraced his aura. With a big, massive smile on his face too, and magic be damned!

He passed a hand over his hair.

Maybe the Climb was starting to get to him. Questioning aether and magic like that? And aura? Maybe he was starting to lose his mind.

After all they’d gone through, it wasn’t really much of a surprise if he did.