Audrey didn't seem to notice the pain at first, instead he leaped to the side to dodge the beam, or at least he tried. Instead of jumping like Audrey had expected to, he fell, as the wrist wide hole had bored through his bone and flesh, leaving his foot unable to bear his weight. Only then did the pain hit him. Audrey didn't scream, didn't shout, but he tried to. A mix of a gasp and a grunt left his dry throat, only audible because of how quiet everything had become. Everything but the shifting of sand.
The floating clump prepared a second attack, readying to shoot, until a force of wind blasted it to a wall. It didn't destroy the golem, Michelle hadn't expected it to, but it did get it's aim off. At least temporarily. Michelle was sure she could destroy the golem if given enough time, with the same logic as the other golems were destroyed. Use an element that the golem was weak to, only the door of this golem had two runes carved into it. That meant it probably was destroyed by combining two runes.
Problem was, Michelle had no ideas on what two elements she should combine, with five runes, there were at least ten different combinations, each one would take a few seconds to shape, maybe more since Michelle would have to keep the golem from attacking, as Evelyn attacked it. Add in the chance of Evelyn missing her attacks, and in the split second Michelle took to think things through, and the golem gathered itself back to a sphere of sand, she realized what they needed to do.
"Grab Audrey and run!" Michelle shouted, as she prepared to blast the golem with rivers of water. She would delay the golem's attacks until they made it to the moving room.
Michelle's first blast of water struck the golem straight on, throwing it into the curved black wall of the room. Michelle managed to get a quarter of the way to the room before, through her mana, she felt the golem reform behind her. Michelle quickly jumped and rolled to the side, barely getting out of the way of the stream of now wet sand. With relief, she noted that the others were already in the moving room.
Simultaneously as Michelle lifted herself up from the ground, she attacked with a second burst of water, only to miss as the golem shifted to the side. Immediately, Michelle spent the majority of her remaining mana to send a weaker stream of water, wider than the room was so that the bastard of sand couldn't dodge. She had a second at most before the golem reformed from the weak blast, and she wouldn't make it to the room in time. Worse, she was almost out of mana. Michelle decided to risk it, and tried something new. She grabbed her right hand with her left, bracing for an impact, and pushed her mana around her palm, and back towards herself through the tattoo.
It felt as if she'd stopped a falling anvil with her bare hands. Something snapped in her arm moments before Michelle flew backwards, towards the open door of the moving room. Michelle, out of mana, newly enveloped in pain, and with the golem aiming right at her, fell just short of the moving door in a tangle of limbs, at least one of which was broken. With horror, Michelle realized she couldn't get up in time.
Something tugged at her clothes, dragging her into the room, causing the door to close moments before the sand would've carved her worse than it had Audrey. Michelle looked up to see Evelyn expressing clear relief at having saved Michelle with her mana manipulation, even as she was holding Audrey's leg to keep pressure on it. Unfortunately, even with Evelyn's efforts, Audrey was still bleeding rapidly.
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Kerto had been relaxing in his large tent, calmly going through the different runes he'd learned so far, while moving his newly acquired blade in intricate patterns around his body. It was truly proof of what was to come as the cleric of the tower god, or a climber as some had started to call themselves. The blade itself was just as strong and durable as his old one, but this one had a mass of runes etched into it, just barely visible under a thin layer of steel. Ironically, they would make the blade extremely cold, to the point where the air itself condensed into a thin liquid along it's surface.
Not only would the blade survive a clash with the fire golem that had destroyed Kerto's old blade, but whenever the weapon stabbed or sliced anything, a fire would spawn around the blade, and cause the liquid to instantly boil to a gas. Whatever the blade touched would explode with the unnatural combination of ice and fire. It would surely help him in the tower, and already had in the two times he'd gone climbing since he'd received the weapon, but Kerto still needed practice so he could face the fourth floor with confidence.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Kerto tried using four runes simultaneously for the sixth time in the past quarter hour. He could already do it, if he concentrated enough, but Kerto wanted to be able to use four runes simultaneously in the middle of battle.
Someone burst into his tent, and Kerto almost moved his blade to stab whoever had entered out of reflex, but managed to stop in time. The intruder however didn't notice. "Sir, I received news that one of the teams lost one of their members, Gregory."
That... Wasn't entirely unexpected. Kerto had known that someone would eventually be overconfident, and ignore the regulations Kerto had given everyone while in the tower. "Prepare a funeral for him, send his family word and a years salary, if he was a contracted member."
"Apologies sir, but that's already taken care of."
"Then why did you come to me?" Kerto sighed. Sometimes he hated his rank in the guild, just high enough for people to expect him to have answers, and help them, but not enough for them to properly respect him.
"It wasn't the tower that killed them... It was climbers not affiliated with our guild. We have apprehended the guard who let them in, but word is they climbed to the fourth floor and haven't come back."
"Alright... Put the guard on a months cleaning duty, or if he let them in out of malice, or purposefully, then remove him from the guild and let Valessa deal with his punishment." Might as well let the city do some of the work while they had an ongoing agreement, Kerto thought. "I'll gather my team to guard the entrance until they come out." So long for the nice, relaxing, training.
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Oliver was pretty certain of what he saw. A large camp that fit quite a few people, most of whom were carrying weapons of various sorts. There were even a few people patrolling the area, preventing the occasional person from a nearby village from passing through. Worse than what Tim had feared, there was a group of people guarding the entrance to the tower, backed by a large organization. Someone was trying to restrict entrance to the tower to only a select few, when it was meant for everyone. But Oliver wasn't surprised. Though he had hoped for it to be different after the long time since his passing, the world was still full of the same humans who had caused knowledge that once was abundant, to be known only to a few rare sorcerers. Hopefully Tim would one day give his knowledge to everyone, or at least those marked by him.
Oliver set off back towards the tower's peak, where Tim had previously made a small hole so that Oliver could come and go as he pleased.
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Audrey had lost a concerning amount of blood in the time it took for the room to shift down. But he was still conscious, if barely. Evelyn had made a makeshift tourniquet from the broom and one of her sleeves. But she had tightened it too much with the broom, or the fabric wasn't strong enough since it had snapped in two.
Michelle had then squeezed Audrey's leg with everything she could, but without her mana, and one broken limb, it was a worthless endeavor. Evelyn suggested freezing the wound with a rune, but neither of them were sure if it'd do more good than bad, so they decided to leave it as a last resort, for the moment when Audrey would fall unconscious
In her panic, Evelyn finally came up with a possible answer to save Audrey's life. She remembered one of Michelle's students losing their arm, and the tower covering the stump with black dust. They could figure out if there was a better solution later, but for now... Evelyn took one of the vials holding the black dust from her pocket, and poured it in the wound. Evelyn had to spread it with her fingers to cover the entirety of the hole in Audrey's leg, causing him to finally fall unconscious from the sheer pain of it, but the result was that the bleeding stopped. Evelyn could only hope that the god wasn't simply absorbing Audreys blood, and was instead helping him.
Soon after, Michelle did her best to carry Audrey while Evelyn watched out for any attacks while they decended the floors back outside of the tower. The greeting they received the moment they reached the entrance was absolutely not a welcome one, but they definitely should have expected it. Evelyn prepared herself to fight the group of a dozen guild members. If they refused to talk and let her be in peace, no matter how tired she was already, she wouldn't simply let the guild take her friends or herself to anywhere.
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Kerto almost laughed. These simple villagers had gone to the fourth floor, and survived. It was more than his trained group of a dozen had been able to do, though one villager was clearly injured. He was unconscious, and being carried after all. It proved how much the tower could give, and they'd only reached four floors so far. The tower was tall enough to fit a hundred in it. Then Kerto saw the broom one was carrying, and let out a small chuckle, before turning serious. He had a job to do.
"You are accused for the murder of a guild member. You are to do as I say, and be taken for trial in the city of Valessa. Resistance will be taken as a confession of guilt." Kerto said, as he drew his blade to float to his side, dripping dense fog and smoking liquid to the ground.