Upon waking up, I wasn’t surprised to find Raiju resting over my legs, but I was surprised to find Ylsa curled up on the other edge of the [Cloud Carpet] from where I was resting. She was a bit too long, so her feet draped over the edge, but she was snoring peacefully, so I carefully slid off the carpet to get breakfast started.

As I cooked, I got my Dominated Skills in order, since most of the ones I had before ended up on my main list already. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what I was supposed to do. Was it just a way for me to figure out what kinds of Skills I wanted to end up using? I sat there, doing nothing but flipping the contents of a pan for almost a minute before I snapped out of it.

No time for that, I’ve got Skills to pick.

[Dominated Skills - Slots Available 1/5

Sun Armor

Arcane Cannon

Sunburst

Raging Torrent]

That should be a good mix of offense and defense, or at least proactive defenses in the case of [Arcane Cannon]. That has to be my next thing I claim, for sure, it’s too versatile not to have access to it all the time. I just hope [Raging Torrent] still gets all my elemental boosts even thought it’s not technically my Skill yet.

Taking a moment to activate [Arcane Armor] and [Sun Armor] for the day, I flipped the contents of the pan once more.

The smell of bacon coated with [Moonsilver Powder] cooking in the skillet alongside some eggs woke my goliath companion a few minutes later. She rolled off the carpet with more grace than most would allot to her kind, but I knew better. While her primary Stats were [Might], [Toughness], and [Perception] she didn’t let her [Agility] fall too far behind.

“Good morning, Storm-Blessed.” She bowed from the waist before pulling up a seat on one of the three camp chairs I’d set up. “Still setting three chairs? I guess Volta could sit if she’d like to? You’d have to move the staff though.”

“It’s Jaegan’s seat until he tells me he doesn’t need it.” I waggled my eyebrows at her as I filled a plate with bacon and eggs and handed it to her.

She seemed almost offended at my comment, though that didn’t stop her from taking a bite of bacon. Wiping her mouth, she frowned at me. “Jaegan’s sacrifice was noble. Do I need to explain how you beli–”

“Analyze the staff before you give me any more shit.” I deftly sliced up my bacon and folded it into the cheesy eggs I made for myself. One huge bite later, I watched as her eyes grew wide at what the description said. “See? It’s his seat still, he just isn’t eating all the bacon anymore.”

I felt a tinge of something from the staff, but it wasn’t anything more than a twinge. Either way, I was happy to see his soul was recovering.

Ylsa’s face went through a gamut of emotions before finally settling on begrudging admiration. “Crazy old man, I hope you like living in a piece of wood.” That seemingly handled, she swiftly polished off the mound of food I’d presented to her before taking my empty plate and tossing the dirty plates in her spatial bag. We still had a dozen sets of clean dishes, so we’d worry about cleaning the dirty ones after we got out of the tower.

Twenty minutes later, I was swearing at the interface for [Elemental Pactlord]. “What the fuck do you mean I can’t summon Voltaire back? This is a bunch of bullshit, I was lying to a demon!”

[The Arcweaver you know of as Voltaire is not available to be summoned by you at this time. The Lightning Elemental Duke has put a ban in place due to a comment he overheard while you were speaking with the Nightfiend, Quadrus.

He has requested ten pieces of fulgurite be delivered to his palace before he will allow you to summon Voltaire again.]

Beside me, Volta stared at the system window with unveiled hatred on her face. She opened her glowing blue lips to speak before snapping her jaw shut. She turned to look at me and bowed deeply.

“I apologize for my Duke’s reaction.” She ground her teeth and, despite them not having any real physical presence I still heard it. “Voltaire will understand what is going on, have no fear.” She faded up into the air over my shoulder where I could have sworn I heard her badmouthing the Duke under her breath.

For a few minutes, I stood there seething before banishing the interface entirely. “I’ll just summon whatever we might need when we get in there. We don’t even know what the boss is, so it’d be a waste of time and Mana to summon anything out here.” I was half trying to convince myself, half explaining my actions to my companions and I knew they knew what I was doing.

Raiju’s full sized head bumped into my back. “It’s OK, we know you’ve got this, Artie.” She moved around and stood with her back nearly level with the top of my head. “Let’s get out of here, I want to run around in the sky again.”

As if summoned by her mentioning the outside, the ornate columned room we stood in shook and cracks began to form along the featureless grey walls of the Tower. The shaking didn’t let up like all the previous Tower-quakes we’d experienced at that point had, and the cracks were far deeper and longer than before.

“I guess it’s time for us to go. Ylsa in front, me in the middle, Volta overhead, and Raiju to cover the rear until we get a grip on what’s in here. Heard?”

A chorus of “heards” met me as I stepped back to let Ylsa push the massive carved bronze doors open with a single hand in the middle. The way they swung open made me think of dwarven craftsmanship, as they didn’t even creak as they swung open effortlessly. A white mist blocked our vision twenty feet inside the next room, but Ylsa strode forward with purpose the moment the doors stopped without any sound.

The moment she passed through the mist, I lost her on my Party Interface, but as soon as I followed her through she reappeared at the same time I could see her dodging a ghostly hand as it tore through the space she’d occupied a moment before.

Now’s as good a time as any to test out that new Skill.

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With a thought, I enabled [Flash Focus] as I widened my eyes as much as I could and the world appeared to slow down all around me. It wasn’t like time stopped, I knew that, but it was the next best thing. Looking around the chamber we found ourselves in, I found a number of interesting and horrifying things.

The chamber we were in was a hundred yards deep and twenty yards wide. The white and black marble walls were covered in carvings of different types of humanoids being tortured in every way imaginable while the floors were patterned like a checkerboard with ten foot tiles of white and black marble. A dozen [Wraiths] floated around the room, one of which was in the middle of attacking the dodging form of Ylsa, but from what I could see she’d dodged with plenty of room to spare.

At the far end of the long chamber stood a throne of carved black marble with white marble inlay. Floating above the throne was probably the worst matchup our team could have run into at that point, a [Wraith King] stood proudly in the air watching us.

A stabbing pain started in the back of my head, telling me my time with [Flash Focus] was nearing its end, but before that happened, I glanced over what [Essence Reading] had to tell me about our foes.

[Wraith - Rank B Monster

Level: 48

Vulnerabilities: Force, Radiant

Resistances: Thunder, Fire

Immunities: All except Fire, Force, Radiant, and Thunder]

[Wraiths are creatures born from the souls of the departed who left the world with vengeance in their hearts. They retain a measure of their intelligence from their previous lives, though none of their memories, save the vengeance they crave, survived the transition. A mere touch of their hands can be enough to drain Stamina and, should the creature struck be out of Stamina their touch drains levels and the Stats gained by those levels instead.]

Holy shit, they can drain LEVELS!? What kind of bullshit is that? It’s a good thing Ylsa and Raiju are tanky, with lots of Stamina to burn, but Volta and I are another story.

[Wraith King - Rank S Tower Boss

Level: 50

Vulnerabilities: Force, Radiant

Immunities: All except Force and Radiant]

[A Wraith King is a Wraith who devoured levels equal to its level and evolved. Their souls are still full of vengeance, but now they don’t hunger for Stamina or levels. No, they feed on the building block of a creature’s personality, the soul. All attacks of a Wraith King drain the targets’ Soul in addition to dealing necrotic damage.

Warning! This subject has nearly met all the requirements to become a Wraith Emperor. Should it drain one more being’s entire soul, the process of its evolution will begin.]

More Soul damage!? That’s it, I’m going to hang out with Gallaway until he gives me two different soul balm Skills, at least. I’m the best fit to fight him, so I’ll have to leave the adds to Raiju and Ylsa.

Another knife to the brain hit and I lost focus on [Flash Focus], nearly sending me sprawling to the ground until I turned it into a front handspring. While I hung in the air, I flicked the pair of Status pages to my party through the Party Interface.

‘I’m on the King.’ I triggered [Haste] and launched myself toward him using [Air Step]. ‘You guys deal with the adds. Be careful, they drain Stamina.]’

As I dashed above the battlefield at incredible speed, [Spatial Sense] told me that none of the [Wraiths] were more than two feet above the ground. Before I could wonder why that was, the Skill screamed at me to fall, so I let it happen. No sooner did I drop below ten feet did a black scythe composed of something even [Essence Reading] couldn’t figure out swept through the space I’d just occupied moments before.

‘Guys, no flying in here.’ I juked a [Wraith] before sending a salvo of [Magic Missiles] into its back, mostly dissipating it. ‘There’s a big old fuck you scythe that rips through and tries to kill you if you do.’

Raiju was the first to complain through chat, though Volta joined in a moment later.

It’s good to hear that she’s feeling close enough to complain along with us. If I have my way, she’ll be around a long time. Panic threatened to overwhelm me as I remembered Arlian’s fate until I centered myself on my current goal. As soon as I can kill the [Wraith King], I’m going to offer her a spot in my employ and to hell with the consequences.

Dancing around on [Air Steps] as I continued blasting my way toward the boss, though this time only a few feet off the ground, I tried dodging the [Wraiths], but they were just too fast. I grimaced as one of their hands impacted my [Sun Armor]. The good news is that it burned them and stopped them from hitting me, but it still burned a six inch hole in the armor where they’d struck. With half a dozen [Wraiths] between me and the [Wraith King], I knew I had to change tacts. There was no way I was going to get through before they could hit me and drain my minimal Stamina.

‘New plan,’ I messaged the party as I backflipped over an extended [Wraith]’s hand. ‘I’ll get back to you guys and we’ll work through these damn [Wraiths] together. My [Agility] isn’t high enough to dodge them, even with [Evasion].’ As I flipped, I spotted my team behind me, only a few yards behind. Landing on the ground, I coiled my legs before launching myself bodily into their midst.

Ylsa’s fists were covered in the crackling grey energy of her [Thunder Knuckles] as she batted away a pair of questing hands that followed me toward them with one hand. With her other fist, she drove a crackling fist straight through a [Wraith]’s head with a satisfying popping sound. She roared as she clapped her fists together a moment later and a sonic boom went out, giving me a moment to catch my breath as I slid to a stop between her and Raiju.

Raiju, to her credit, was doing her best with [Thunderhead], despite it only dealing partial thunder damage. Blasts from the cloud above her didn’t do much damage to our spectral foes, but they sure as hell sent them flying from the concussive portion of the ability. Volta was in a similar situation, but she was making do with a blunderbuss made of lightning that sent thunder buckshot out into the spectral assholes to no small effect.

A quick glance around the room informed me that we still had nine [Wraiths] to deal with and the [Wraith King] had some sort of magic circle forming over his head. [Magic Sight] told me it was some sort of mass damage ability, but nothing more. I gritted my teeth.

“Keep them off me for a sec. I have to stop the boss from killing all of us with whatever it is he’s doing right now.” I leapt to the side to dodge a spectral hand and Raiju somehow got underneath me mid jump.

“I’ll handle the dodging, you handle whatever else you need to do.” She really put her 600 [Agility] to work as we blitzed around the battlefield. Using [Storm’s Embrace], she even kept the wind of our passage from hitting me as I channeled a huge amount of Mana into the head of Jaegan’s staff.

“I hope you appreciate this, you old codger.” I muttered under my breath even as I chuckled. “[Arcane Cannon]!”

Thrusting twenty percent of my Mana into [Arcane Cannon] through the staff, the result wasn’t nearly as spectacular as when Jaegan used [Arcane Battery], but it did its best impression. Half a dozen orbs of blue energy formed and floated above and around my head. A gesture from me was all it took for them to combine their beams to send a big ol’ fuck you beam toward the [Wraith King].

The two foot wide beam of energy sliced through part of the boss’ gathered energy, but it wasn’t enough to stop it from going off. With a sneer, he threw his hands toward us and I felt my doom coming until Raiju howled.

“[Whirlwind Rush]!” Everything became a blur as a blast of blue wind swept over our entire party. A moment later we stood back at the entry to the room as the [Wraith King]’s big attack detonated and killed three of his [Wraiths].

“When did you learn that?” I breathed heavily, the inertia of moving hundreds of feet in a second making me nauseous for a moment.

“Level thirty!” She barked happily. “I wanted something to protect everyone and that’s what the System came up with. Isn’t it cool?” She preened. “Cooldown is thirty seconds, so we should be good as long as I don’t need to use it for anything other than the big booms from jerkface over there.”

Observing the battlefield before us, I spotted the colors of the boss’ throne had inverted. Now it was white with black inlay. Looking at where we’d been standing before being whisked away, I noticed one of the [Wraiths] seemed unharmed. An idea began to form as my [Arcane Cannons] started pouring fire into the nearest [Wraiths].

“We shouldn’t need it if I’m right, but we should test my theory before we rely on it.” I grinned. I switched to mental communication. ‘I think I know how he targets his big blast.’