The entrance greeted them like an angry maw. Wisps of essences snuck through the air as its breath. A cluster of broken spears, made of stone, littered the ground as its teeth.

“Traps and a fight,” he mumbled.

“Got that much,” Ryan said, “but thanks for keeping me informed.”

The others had made it halfway through the corridor, their outlines shaded against the bright daylight, but they didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.

“Anne’s checking for traps,” Lisa said when they got there.

“For no reason at all,” Navid raised his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I could just flood the tunnel with a bunch of short-lived summons,” she explained. “I have the Skills to reclaim a lot of their mana afterward, if they survive, but she wants to do this.”

“Because that would be lazy!” A few meters ahead of them, Anne was poking a line along the wall with her mace. Her backpack sat on the ground next to Navid. “If we always take the easy way out, we won’t learn anything.”

“Sad but true.”

“I mean, I would,” Lisa said. “I’m a [Summoner].”

“Yeah, but I’m not! And you’re super high level and we’re not.”

“That’s on you!” she called back.

Wait, was it?

Anne turned back to her and asked, “Be nice?”

Lisa gave her an awkward, apologetic shrug like she hadn’t been that invested in the option anyway.

“I was wondering why you three didn’t just hire a guide to the ninth floor,” Ryan said conversationally and, when they looked at him, he added a belated, “No offense.”

“That type of training is valid,” Navid told him, “but it has its time and place. It’s not the way to learn the basics or exploit the current circumstances, in my opinion.”

Micah listened, frowned, and squeezed past them go ahead, confused by something else. He thought he knew Anne a little by now, and he knew Lisa a lot more.

He just wasn’t sure how to raise the topic but … he thought of what Ryan had said and how he disagreed.

I just need to not be thoughtless about it.

“And how do you level?” Ryan asked. “At all. Just so I can ‘be nice’. I assume it’s not by standing off to the side.”

There was an odd edge to his voice, somewhere between the tone he used to speak with Kyle, when picking a fight, and the one he used with Lang and Finn, when ribbing them.

Micah didn’t know which side the conversation fell on but he gave him the benefit of a doubt and kept on walking.

“You’d be surprised. I’m a [Squire]. I can level just from luggage duty. Look, I’m doing it right now—”

There was a soft thump and Shala said, “Hey. Don’t kick Anne’s pack.”

“Oh? What are you going to do about it?”

Micah took one careful look around the corridor for traps, then stepped up to Anne’s side.

“Hey, Anne?”

“Hm?”

“Need some help?”

“Uhm, if you want to look for traps, you can help me out.”

But she was good by herself?

“Need a distraction?” he asked instead. “Might make it a challenge.” He didn’t want to be responsible for her missing something, but he trusted her and would keep a silent eye out.

She glanced at him with a squint in her own. “What’s on your mind?”

Micah checked. The others were still bickering. He lowered his voice. “So uhm, I’m a little confused by something and just to preface this, I don’t mean to be rude or pry.”

She held a hand out, signaling him to keep his distance, then poked a pattern on the wall.

Nothing happened.

She did … something to her mace. A flicker of a sheen passed over it. Micah flipped lenses but couldn’t see what it was. She tapped the same pattern again and sent a push into it.

Stone spears shot out of the baseboards ahead of them and targeted the center of the corridor.

If someone taller than them had been walking too close to the walls, it could have been the perfect angle for them to slip beneath their armor and impale them. For them, it would have hit their ribs and left a nasty bruise at the least, if not broken their bones.

Micah had so many questions. He wished he’d brought a pickaxe with him to dig the stone up and get a look at the mechanic, but he shelved that for now, relaxed his guard, and said, “Nice catch. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. It was an educated guess.”

“Oh.”

Somehow, he had expected more.

“Almost done!” she called back and turned to him. “You were conspiring?”

“Not conspiring, just … I know Lisa is level thirteen,” he whispered, “and that she got that far in a year.”

“I know, right?” she hissed back.

“Yeah, she said, uhm, she put in a ton of effort into it? I believe her. And I know her age might have played a part, but she has more knowledge and resources than most, and she is more competent.”

“Mhm?”

“And uhm, I know you put a lot of effort into everything you do. You told me you have been getting extra lessons since you can walk, so …?”

A look of understanding dawned on her face, and Micah forced himself to spit it out before his heart burst out of his throat. “Why are you ‘only’ level seven, Anne?”

Before she could react, he rushed to add, “Which is still awesome! Everyone else our age is level one or two so like— Not that they’re not awesome but still—”

“Micah,” she chuckled. “It’s fine. I know what you mean.”

“I just meant,” he still tried to explain himself, “if it’s a secret or isn’t, but there’s a reason why either way, I thought it might be important to know …?”

“I understand. You thought you might have missed something.”

He nodded eagerly, slowed down as he did, and awkwardly admitted, “Sorry. I have gaps.”

Actually, he was a pretty good example of why climbers shouldn’t dive into the highest floor they could reach without learning what lay below. Gaps.

“Follow me,” Anne said and carefully slipped between the spears in the center of the corridor.

They had broken the previous ones, but he supposed the others could do that when they decided to catch up … which might give them more time to talk.

He watched her ahead of him. Did you do that intentionally?

She kept an eye on the walls as she spoke, “You know how some people have leveling strategies? Well, everyone should have a strategy to some degree, but there are those who overdo it.”

“You have one?”

“It’s more like a guideline, really. My family, we often work in small groups or alone so we have to be able to rely on ourselves. We take things slow to have more control over the Skills we obtain. We prefer quality over quantity.”

“Quality?” He thought of classroom gossip about ‘secret’ Skills, how stupid the idea had always sounded, and now … not.

[Aimed Shot] only worked with ranged attack, while [Aimed Strike] worked with both melee and ranged ones. Differences in quality did exist.

“Uhm, for example, instead of [Basic Legality] and [Lesser Strength], we would rather study law and keep up to date ourselves, without a Skill, to hopefully get only [Enhanced Strength] a little sooner,” she said. “Pause for a moment? See that patch of dirt up there?”

The non-sequitur caught him off-guard and Micah blinked. “Huh?”

“In the corner. Or the other one.” She pointed and explained, “Going by the reports I read, there’s a good chance something or somethings are hiding in the dirt.”

He thought of infestations and said, “We could ask Ryan to incinerate them?”

Anne had another idea. She asked for his ammunition and when he offered up a glue shot, did the same thing to it as she had to her mace.

“Did you enchant it?”

“Technically, yes. Not really, though. I’m giving it a bit of magic. Many monsters can sense us through our magical signatures so in case the shot itself isn’t enough to rouse something, this might.”

“Oh. Smart.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He took aim and asked to the side, “Did you do it with [Bless]?”

“Mana. But it’s the same principle, at least.”

“Can you just … use [Bless] as often as you like?”

“No, I’m copying Lisa a bit right now. But don’t tell.”

He gave her a questioning look and she elaborated, “How she used [Fireballs] right out from the gate?”

“Oh.” He loosed. The glue splashed over the dirt but … nothing happened.

“Other corner.”

When nothing crawled out of that one either, Anne said, “I’m reasonably sure the rest of the corridor isn’t trapped anymore then.”

Micah remembered how Ryan had stolen his chance to show off earlier and decided her guess was good enough for him. He took it in stride, literally, and walked ahead.

The space beyond the corridor was hard to see through the heavy curtain of light, but there was grass and more stone … and he had a sneaking suspicion of where it led.

He’d expected Anne to signal the others to follow, but she appeared by his side. “So where were we?”

“Uhm, you prefer quality over quantity, self-reliance, and want to get [Enhanced Strength] sooner, somehow …?”

“Oh, right. So we study and train topics that are detached or complete in a way that ensures our Class doesn’t pick them up. But if our Class can, if it’s a skill that can become a Skill, we learn until we obtain it ourselves. If we can’t do that in a reasonable time-frame, we learn it in packets or target something smaller instead—assuming it won’t hamper us in the future.

"This many sessions. This level of knowledge. You aced the test? Good. Don’t learn anything more beyond that point because if you do, your next level up might take that bit sticking over the edge and drag it to the next finish line …”

She gestured as she spoke like she was emulating some kind of [Tutor]. It was cute, he thought.

Then she frowned and turned to him. “Am I making any sense?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Huh?” He didn’t ask because he didn’t understand or hadn’t been listening. His brain just needed a second to catch up.

“Absolutely!” Because she was. Or rather, he knew enough to keep up by now. “My last three or four level ups were like that. [Lesser Constitution], [Kinetic Alchemy]—[Dissettle] and [Dissolve] were similar. Things I started in a way that my Class finished. You avoid it?”

Was that a bad thing?

“Not entirely. As I said, I wouldn’t avoid finishing [Enhanced Strength] earlier. We do it on a case-by-case basis, avoiding certain types of Skills we don’t need.”

“Like …?”

“Like …” She considered it. He wasn’t sure she’d ever had to explain this to someone else before.

“Guidance Skills? Because sure, they make life easier and offer us reliability, but our work was never supposed to be easy. That reliability has to come from us. That improved Skill we get earlier might let us do more good than the alternative combination would have.”

“Oh.” So they were the Class-[Cook] without [Basic Cooking]. Their Path didn’t cover it?

“That sounds noble,” he said and meant it in the true, archaic meaning of the word, “but also … rough.”

If he hadn’t had his Skills up until now, would he have gotten as far as he had? He was top of his class in both of his alchemy courses, sharing his spot with a few others in only one of them, and didn’t even have an [Alchemy Path].

[Winter Cleaning], [Personalized Alchemy], [Kinetic Alchemy], his Paths … he relied on them.

“It sounds far worse than it is,” she brushed him off. “You can avoid getting Skills just by wanting it. These gymnastics we do are added insurance. Even if they don’t work, it’s not the end of the world. The rest of the world and my family make do without Skills.”

“Right.” Sometimes, he forgot those people existed. “So you save up levels and hope for the best? But if the point is to get [Enhanced Strength] sooner, why not level?”

“Because there are only so many levels you can reasonably get in a lifetime, Micah.” She smiled. “And it will only get harder further down the line. And because we’re still people. There is no rush for us to get as high a level as possible. We don’t want power for the sake of having power. We want to make the most of what we have, what’s been given to us, to help.”

They walked into the curtain of light. He covered his eyes against the glare. A part of him was glad for the distraction.

It was noble, to put that much effort in to help others, he thought, and it made sense. He felt like a bit of an ass for asking after all, but … it was also so her.

With no idea what else to do, how to react, he stood there and grinned like a dumb idiot.

He had been right, so long ago. Anne is awesome.

Ahead of them, another ruined and overgrown stepwell sprawled. It was only slightly different than the last one. Their entrance was closer to the ground.

She winced when she joined him. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting another level or two. Like you.”

“What? No! I did it wrong, letting my Class finish so many of my Skills, wasting levels on something as stupid as [Kinetic Infusion] that real [Alchemists] can learn in weeks.”

“You’re just driven, Micah. Your Class is trying to keep up. You know the saying, ‘Your Class provides’?”

He squirmed a little, not sure how to take the compliment and not sure if he agreed in the first place.

So he turned it on her, needling her with a smile, “Oh, yeah? So you’re telling me you would rather switch? You don’t see any faults in my history?”

“Well …” She looked away, inspecting the terrain. That spoke volumes. “You probably won’t get a Skill from your next level up. Or the one after that. Or if you do, it won’t be a ‘big’ Skill or even … new. It might finish something you started again?”

“Oh,” he said.

That seemed like a cycle one could get trapped in.

On some level, he’d known that. Their entire conversation had been about it and they learned in school. He only had to apply it to his situation. It was still disappointing … but also oddly reassuring.

He had so many projects of his own, it was nice to know his Class was there to offer a helping hand.

“Sorry,” Anne said.

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Thank you for answering my stupid questions—”

“They’re not—”

To change topics, he gestured and laughed, “Is it all stepwells?” Already, he spotted more grass and glimpses of ruins at the top of the next space that opened up in front of them.

She sighed and squinted up. “Mostly. There are other structures. It plateaus. They’re all interconnected and lead up to the Root like broken cylinders cut out of the mountainside.”

Her voice was tinged with a bit of awe toward the end.

“That doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone need this many wells out in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s called ‘Folly at the Root’ for a reason.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Besides, when has the Tower ever made sense?”

He groused a bit. “I bet it will. Someday, somehow.”

She sounded wistful, “Yeah, I hope so, too.”

“Hey!” Navid grunted behind them. “Are you two done checking for traps? We were waiting.”

Micah turned. His eyebrows shot up. Navid had Shala thrown over his shoulders like a carrying pole and headed toward them with labored steps.

Shala pushed at his head when he saw them staring and said, “Let me down. This is embarrassing.”

He smiled and complied, revealing the corridor and other two behind him. The spears were still intact.

“Did you carry him through the trap?”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. What were you two doing? I thought you were the ones who were excited to go run off all day.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the well.

“Not all of us have stamina Skills,” Anne said. “We just climbed a cliff. A break can be nice.”

“What were you talking about?” Shala asked.

“I wanted to see how long it would take you to catch on. Micah asked about nobles’ leveling strategies.”

“Here,” Ryan said and put Anne’s pack down.

Lisa had summoned Sam. Together, they walked past to the edge. She put one hand on the stone to lean in and inspected the walls.

“Leveling strategies? Did you tell him about our awesome one?” Navid asked with a puffed chest. Almost as an aside, he held a hand out to Ryan and said, “Pay up.”

“What, you mean your, uhm, ‘Ratty Old Quilt’?” Anne asked. He got the sense she was referencing something but didn’t know what.

Everyone was doing something else, Micah didn’t know where to engage, and he asked a blanket, “Huh?”

Anne turned to him with a smile. “Their strategy boils down to: ‘Include whatever works. Copy, buy, marry, or steal if you must.’ They’re like corporate-scale [Witches].”

“Hey, if it works,” Navid said. Ryan slapped a coin into his glove and he flashed him a smile, saying, “Thank you.”

“What was that about?”

“Just a bet.”

“What about the others?” Ryan of all people asked, walking toward the edge. Lisa had jumped off and walked in the grass. “The other families, I mean.”

The first meerkat poked its head out and stared, eyes wide as if it were daunted by the size of their group.

Lisa crouched and petted Sam’s head. It convulsed, colors smearing like paint, and its body elongated. Two more legs tore out of its waist and the torn scales reknit themselves. As it settled, a sheen passed over it that turned them glossy. It gave a cacophonic cry, like a tiny trumpet, and zipped off through the grass.

“I don’t know of that many ones,” Anne said, thinking. “The Bluths favor— flavor consolidations?” She stumbled over the words.

“Whassat?” Micah pulled his slingshot out and searched the rising walls for porous outlines or moving vines.

“They take a few levels in different [Worker] Classes, level one management Class above the others, and consolidate them all to flavor the latter from the ground-up.”

“You know, [Worker], [Harvester], [Miller] and say, [Wagoner], to became … [Trade Master]? Something like that. I don’t know the specifics.”

Anne leaned over. “They also take things a little slower than others.”

“Do all nobles do that?”

“Not all.”

“Do what?” Shala asked as he joined them.

“Level slower to have more control over our Skills.”

“Ah. Most, to some degree or another, yes.”

Micah grumbled a bit and dodged a ball of mud. He traced it back and snapped a shot at the attacker. “Are there any who don’t?”

They took a surprisingly long time to mull it over, and he collected a few pebbles to use as ammunition, thinking the pause had already given him his answer.

“I mean, one of the main benefits of leveling quickly is to get a headstart,” Anne said, “on your peers or your competition. It just so happens that the households who have these types of plans for their children will often enforce a deep-seated sense of identity in them.”

“Like farmers,” Shala said, “or children who work in their parents’ businesses in the city—restaurants, shops, cleaners, bathhouses, et cetera.”

“Or children who attach to movements during times of great strife,” Ryan weighed in from afar, jogging toward the wall. “[Soldiers] and [Revolutionaries] born from patriotism.”

“Exactly. We’re more likely to discover our Path sooner, so we’re more likely to get our Class sooner, so …”

“You can afford to take all the time you need,” he realized.

Sam cried, muffled as it shook a meerkat like a ragdoll in its mouth. It flung it to the side with a spray of boiling blood, glanced at Lisa, and ran off after the next one.

“The Bluths don’t avoid Guidance Skills,” Anne said as if to cheer him up, and Micah frowned.

Did he need cheering up?

No. He didn’t think so. It was just … the others could afford to take their time. He couldn’t, because he didn’t have their resources and he wasn’t trying to keep up with his original peers, the ones he had left behind in classroom, but the friends he had made here.

Everyone was stronger than him despite some being half his level. They only had room to grow and he was already slowing down.

He couldn’t keep on moving forward like this and expect things to work out, but that was his problem, not hers. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Really.”

Anne hesitated, then went back to inspecting the walls. She seemed excited about that.

Navid stepped up. “See, you say that,” he said, “but your face says another thing. Are you doubting your path?”

“No.”

“But—?”

“I’m just a little self-conscious,” he mumbled, “I thought about work but I shoved it aside because—Tower!” He swept his arms out to gesture at the wilds, hoping he would take the bait.

He didn’t.

“You know, we can laud our strategies all we want but at the end of the day, time isn’t the only thing you need to make them work,” Navid said. “We’re defensive. We protect what we have and use it to get more. The have-nots? Self-starters always level to keep up their momentum and make a name for themselves. Just look at the Bluths. Annoying as they are, they rose up from ruin. It’s why they’re experimenting with flavor consolidations in the first place.”

That was … surprisingly kind of him to say. It didn’t change anything about his plans, though.

“Wait, really?” Anne asked, and Micah frowned. She hadn’t known?

“Sure. Bluth senior brought his dying house back from the brink of ruin despite the many different Classes he owed to the Church’s budding Work Ethic system. After it fell, and his betters passed, he took the reins of the business and clawed his way up to the number two spot, to rival a much better family and much better business that has existed for far more generations.”

He’d started in a more historical tone but drifted back to his usual brass by the end of it.

Micah was still impressed. “Lea’s dad did that?”

He frowned. “Lea … Bluth. Ah no, her grandfather.”

“I knew that,” Anne said, the well forgotten. “How does this tie into their consolidation strategy?”

“Well, this is a bit of an open secret so I’m not sure if I should tell you,” Navid said and swayed closer, looking around and lowering his voice as if someone would overhear them in the middle of freaking Tower.

“Navid.”

“Alright, alright! Along the way, Bluth consolidated often and upgraded his final Class. Now, he is one of the highest-level non-combatants in the country, an [Agriculture Magnate].”

“Okay? I knew that, too.”

Micah hadn’t. “He is?” he crowded him and asked, “What level is he? Ooh, what can he do? Did get something super cool from his Class upgrade?”

Anne pushed his face aside and crowded closer. “Answer me first. I asked first?”

He smiled and rubbed his cheek.

“He’s over level sixty, at the least, and he can turn an entire countryside into arable farmland and orchards over a single winter,” Navid brushed them off. “The issue is twofold: One, he is getting on in his years, and two, he was kind to his children.”

“How is that an issue?” Micah’s hand dropped. He thought of his family.

“I see where this is going,” Shala commented.

“Bluth senior grew up struggling so he made sure his children wouldn’t. He gave them every comfort and freedom they could want. Half went off and did their own thing, the other half stayed in the family business riding on his goodwill. Now, he doesn’t have an heir.”

“Oh.”

“His family are rightfully worried that if something were to happen, their wannabe name would fall right back into obscurity.”

“Navid,” Anne admonished him with a push.

“Well, not obscurity,” he admitted as he stumbled back in the grass, “but maybe we could kick their annoying tents off our lawn.”

“So they’re trying to emulate his achievements?” Shala asked.

“They tried—past tense—and failed. We simply don’t have the right conditions for a non-combatant to level that much in a short timeframe anymore. He’s also two generations older than us and thus, more powerful.

"They did get more praxis-oriented management Classes with greater Skills-per-level merit and more leveling opportunities through a hands-on approach out of the experiment, in exchange for some minor tradeoffs, which suits both them and us just fine because they think they can catch the weight of their leader’s absence with many weaker leaders working together”—he interlocked his fingers as if to form a net—”which, even if it does work, puts a hard cap on how high they can grow, dooming their company to only ever sink.” His hands fell, the net crumbling away. “Ah, how tragic.”

Micah’s brain hurt as he tried to keep up.

“If not up, what about expanding outward?” Shala asked.

“Where would they expand outward to? All the other cities have their own powers and different markets and cultures. We have the greatest export.”

“The travel infrastructure is being rebuilt, now that the previous traders’ generations are falling out of power. It follows that other cities will grow.”

“Other cities?”

“Ones without Towers.”

“That’s never going to be a thing, Sy. The Towers are too important. Even if it were, we still have the strongest export. They would have to wrestle that from us.”

“No. Not if the roads are expanded. That’s my point. They could take the chance to cater to growing rural communities.”

“And what’ll they get out of that? Sure, let them have the peanuts.”

“Yeah, but if they grow with our growing population, then they won’t be peanuts forever—”

“Then we’ll adapt—”

Micah shuffled over to Anne. “Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?”

“Some.”

“Dooo you want to listen …? I think Lisa and Ryan are running off on their own.” He nodded in their direction.

Lisa was directing her monsters’ hunt; Ryan climbing. Neither of them seemed to be paying attention to the group that was slacking off.

She smiled and they left the other two to their discussion.