I was woken up by someone hitting the back of my head.

“Don’t use the young master as a pillow.”

I was going to let go of Fluffy, but his hand was already tightly clutching my newly grown arm. I didn’t want to wake him up so I just sat up with him, positioning him in my lap. I rubbed the spot Alcoroth had hit with my other hand and looked at him annoyed.

“You didn’t have to wake me up like that and look he’s even holding onto my arm.”

His eyes narrowed slightly at me before his face relaxed slightly and he sighed.

“Well, we need to discuss the last floor before we continue climbing and its better to do it while he’s still sleeping.”

He waved his hand curtly. I turned my sight on and saw a glow from mana encircling Mezu’s ears. Was this what he did for me before when I was bothered by the noise of fighting?

“Ever considered that I might want to sleep too?”

“I gave you more than enough time.”

I didn’t really feel tired, I don’t know how long I slept for, but I felt more rested than I had for the entirety of the twentieth floor. Well, actually for a while. I don’t think I slept much at all while we climbed. There wasn’t much to measure against to have some sort of a sense of time, except for the daily quests. I think I napped occasionally in the labyrinth but otherwise, I couldn’t really think of a time before the twentieth that I had slept.

Maybe I was just remembering it wrong, I must have slept at some point. I glared at the ground this memory of mine was getting more and more annoying. It's not like thinking about it would fix anything, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it for a bit anyway. If only the fifteenth floor didn’t happen.

Alcoroth interrupted my thoughts by snapping his fingers right in front of my face.

“Now go on speak.”

“About what in particular?”

He sighed, “don’t tell me you didn’t notice what was up with that floor.”

“Oh, that there weren’t any banners, except for the reward calculator, and the people who helped teach me were probably other climbers?”

“Good you managed to use a part of your brain for once. Do you think they know about your healing abilities?”

I shook my head. Especially around the people I knew for sure were climbers I think I hid it well.

“The floor itself had a healing mechanism but it wouldn’t kick in mid fight, so I did my best to not get any serious injuries but if I did, I tried to end the fight as fast as possible. Even then though my biggest injuries were loosing my arm once and taking an axe to my shoulder once, so I think I did a decent job hiding it.”

Alcoroth tilted his head a bit confused.

“Why did you take an axe to your shoulder?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Well, I think it was made of this material that took in the guy’s mana to strengthen it so it was a bit harder for me to break than the other weapons. But it wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to break it, so if I left it there it’d stay still.”

Alcoroth pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily.

“So, you were able to learn aura?”

“Yeah, one guy taught me that and then these other two guys helped me out with fighting, and I learned how to see mana and disrupt someone’s mana pathways.”

There was a slight smile on his face, that he tried to hide with his hand by pushing his glasses up his nose.

“At least you’ve gotten considerably stronger.”

The least he could do is compliment me like Alrick would…. Alrick…

“So… they’re real people?”

“Yes, climbers on the fortieth floor to be exact. Once you get there, you’re given the ability to interfere with the twentieth floor in particular. Essentially, the guilds run that entire floor from the tournament structure to the clear requirements, to the placement into the training halls. Everything is taken care of by them.”

“Does that even matter? We’re in the tower now, the guilds shouldn’t be bothering us anymore… right?”

Was there something I was forgetting again?

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I know he said there’s something actually wrong but…. Whatever, there’s nothing we can do about it just yet.”

He said that more to himself than to me, making me a little bit confused. Alcoroth was being considerate of me?

“Don’t you remember that Chase suggested that you go find Valera once you made it up to the twenty first floor? Other than the twentieth floor, the guilds also have power on the twenty first through the twenty fifth. You don’t need to climb the twenty second through the twenty fifth floors, but you have to go through the twenty first. They are all on that floor waiting to recruit people that were eye catching during the tournament. Letting yourself get hit with an axe is pretty attention grabbing.”

“It was the only thing I thought of,” I looked down and mumbled.

But I thought that we couldn’t talk about the tower on the last floor.

“How do they recruit people if you can’t directly talk about the tower on the last floor?”

“I would assume those that are already affiliated with tower guilds are told about the floors before they enter, but for those that aren’t, a simple explanation of the mechanics and a specific detail on their actions at the training hall will get the point across rather quickly. If you weren’t on someone’s radar at the start, your messy fighting style was sure to gain some attention. In the training halls was it just you and whoever was in charge of it? Or were you with others?”

"It was just me and the person in charge, the second time though there were two.”

“So, you probably weren’t put with one of the larger guilds. Tell me about the people you trained with,”

“In the first one I had a beastkin named Cyrus. He helped me get my aura started. Then there was Thran an earth-kin and Alrick an elf. Thran taught me this fighting style called Akulai-E and Alrick helped me with my sword and seeing mana.”

“You managed to see mana?”

“Yeah, well I was messing around with the pathways in my head and after breaking the ones near my eyes I just started seeing it. Then I messed with the other ones in my head, and I can manage my hearing on my own now.”

Alcoroth looked off to the side slightly and started flipping through things.

“The system isn’t reflecting this development yet. Hopefully it will update once you leave this space.”

He swiped it away.

“What do you want to update though? I mean we know what I can do. Also, I worked hard and got better, the least you could do is acknowledge it a little.”

“When I see how you improved with my own eyes I shall consider it, however being able to see mana so soon is praiseworthy. As for an update what I want to know in particular is your race.”

Mypheryn wanted to know too, I think.

“Elves don’t have aura. So, your non elf parent must’ve been able to use aura, that limits the races they could’ve been but doesn’t narrow it down completely. How two races will mix isn’t something entirely predictable.

“Mainly it's for my own curiosity. Half elves are generally human and elf, however, since you have aura, it is clear that you are not that. Humans and elves have an equally minuscule chance of having aura. If an elf and a beastkin mix, one parent’s traits will dominate over the others. With you, however, you have aura and not mana, the other half must have a considerable chance to have aura instead of mana. Physically it appears that the elf half has-

“Alrick said I was a half-elf, but the announcer in the tournament called me an elf. Do I not look like a half elf?”