A pinch of disease clung to his muddy boots, and the water sloshed as Micah paced back and forth to keep an eye on either entrance of the corridor he stood in.

His hands scrubbed a cylinder-shaped bowl with a brush and a heavy detergent that smelled like a lovely brain death. Slowly, the grime came off until the material looked like murky glass beneath the foam.

The coast was clear, the bowl clean. He rinsed, dried, disinfected, and set it back on the circular indent inside the alcove.

A small purse with the exact amount of crystals and marbles he needed went into it, three different shades of blue clinking as they tumbled over one another.

Four parts Cavern Prowler crystals, those shaggy grey monkey-wolves infested with freshwater octopus parasite spirits, five parts Purewater Slime marbles, one part Lightning Silkworm marbles, which were somehow as expensive as the other two put together.

As a base liquid to activate the enchantment, he added blood. Cavern Prowler blood, to be exact, because alchemists were hypocrites.

Using your own blood was only allowed in extremely controlled settings, but that of monsters which had appeared only ten months ago? Oh, sure. Knock yourself out.

It splashed over the marbles and sprinkled the edges. He shook the bottle to get the last drops out.

The Tower essence rose up, a silver tongue sown with rows of eyes, and swirled the liquid at such speeds it coated the sides of the bowl like a second skin and left a gap in the center. The crystals dissolved. Every few seconds, a thin perfect crescent of liquid splattered the walls of the alcove—waste elements.

The process would take a minute or so, so he put his tools back in their proper place inside his pack and brought out his journal.

Micah had cut a wide path through the corridors on his way in, reveling a little in the destruction, and stripped the place of everything of value he could find.

He wore the raincoat over his climbing shirt and over his backpack, but … he was alone, and a camouflage toad could always sneak up on him. If not him, they could harm his belongings. So he kept one eye up as he put a pen to the page and began a quick sketch.

The Tower essence licked the bowl as it finished, consuming a few last essences. He hurried to finish up and flipped the journal around, showing his work.

“Any good?”

The eyes stared at their own portrait, blinking.

“Well, I’m no [Artist]. This is as good as you’ll get if you keep hiding from people …” He flipped it back around. It wasn’t that bad. He knew how to use simple lines to suggest color, lighting, and depth.

“I like it.” He nodded at the bowl as he tucked his journal away and smiled. “Thanks for that.”

The Tower essence vanished, and Micah used a large pipette to collect the purified and infused plasma, then turned the bowl upside-down—a common courtesy not everyone used yet. Just finding an unused bowl had been hard enough.

One ingredient down, three more to go.

His smile widened into a grin.

He couldn’t believe how afraid they had been of the bowls back then. Sure, it had made sense to be careful at the time, but these things were like minor treasure chests that let you decide what you wanted.

He’d bought a book at the guild: hundreds of pages of different combinations people had tried and their results, the successes and failures.

It was one of these reasons this floor was popular, the other, larger one being the safe passageway to the eleventh floor Maria’s death had created.

A jar of leather was just the foot of the mountain, refining your own custom magical plasma was a few steps up.

Micah could do that in the workshop, too, but this let him skip those steps while he was in the neighborhood. This floor had three of the ingredients he needed. Or rather, he’d picked a recipe that required three ingredients he knew he could find here.

The Open Sewers.

He’d come back.

Even though he was underground, it was bright. Trace minerals in the walls reflected light or were phosphorescent, tiny organisms in the water were the same. It made the days short.

He remembered a tiny campfire in a hidden room, a bed of flowers, Ryan throwing a stone boar off a cliff. Eyes staring at him through the dark.

They had snuck around like rats then. Wasn’t that what the Hermit had called them?

Micah found himself going still every now and again, listening for the critters in the distance to make sure that man wasn’t clinging to a ceiling two bends away, stalking him.

And that’d been when he’d wanted them to know he was there, to pressure them into running to safety, because he’d thought they would lead him to … who? The Dwarf?

Micah wasn’t sure, but he’d spent too much time breaking his head over the man’s mad ramblings, in the silent moments during study sessions or while waiting for water to boil.

He got the sense the Hermit had thought they were minions, or agents, of whoever had caused the changes, which was ridiculous.

The last anyone had seen, he’d gone beyond the twenty-fifth floor, still chasing. Up. He was gone, leaving Micah behind with a padded sole beneath one boot and unanswered questions.

Fuck him.

Micah marched through the water, intentionally sloshing it as he went, and hummed to himself as he left the alcove behind.

Maria was dead, the Hermit gone. They’d skipped so many interesting places back then, and now he was free to do what he’d wanted to do: explore.

The corridor in front of him was twice as wide as the rest, but its floor space was the same: a bridge of light grey stone led through it and, from the walls, a series of waterfalls fed into a flooded drainage below.

Every free spot was overgrown with green leaves and vines. It all led to a chamber in the distance that he could barely see through the thorny clouds of water sprays.

Trap, Micah thought. Obviously.

Ryan had made the same argument when they’d walked by a similar feature all those months ago, to counter his burning curiosity. This time … Well, maybe Micah wouldn’t go.

He eyed the vines, remembered stone spears shooting out of the baseboards of the tunnel he and Anne had walked through, and skipped a pebble down the bridge.

It splashed through the puddles on the uneven stone and fell off the side, but nothing happened.

If a monster was hiding in there, did it see him? Did it understand him? Did he have to target its hiding spot, or did he need a larger rock?

That was fine. Micah had a lot of rocks. He chucked them at the water, at the plants, at weak spots in the railings to make pieces of it crumble off into the water below. He scattered shots, chucking a whole fistful at once, and even ‘enchanted’ some, layering them in a shell of mana as Anne had shown him in case whatever this was only reacted to magic.

Nothing. And his pile ran out.

Carefully, Micah lowered one boot to the bridge—and froze as if calling someone’s bluff.

Still nothing.

Aww.

He changed his mind, turning straight on his axis, and marched off.

Twenty minutes later, he came back and hucked a rat down the walkway.

It hit the ground, tumbled ass-over-teakettle through a puddle, scrambled up—and sprinted straight off the bridge into a waterfall.

So he hucked another one.

He took them out of a sack and they writhed and squirmed in his grip, trying to flee or twist around to bite him. It had been a pain to chase them all down, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

Since nothing again happened, Micah walked forward with his sack and continued to throw them ahead of himself like confetti.

One tried to bite him as it ran back. He kicked it off and let the others pass. He picked a few of his rocks back up along the way. No sense in wasting good rocks.

Slowly, he made it far enough in to find out why nothing was trying to kill him: a thin, golden screen of light covered the entrance to the guardian’s chamber.

Micah considered it, put his empty sack away, drank a strength potion, and walked through the light.

It shattered on touch, golden fragments crumbling and fading away, and a distant fanfare whispered in his mind.

He entered a larger chamber, bigger than a house, with a wet and slightly overgrown grey stone floor and twin rivers inlaid into hollows left and right. They led from the wall, curved around the central area of the chamber, and led out the opposite wall where the exit was.

Large, broken pipes fed into the room from the sides, close to the ceiling, with trickles of water and moss running down like drool from a mouth.

The center of the room was an island of green around an … altar, he guessed. Stairs led up to it like a tiny pyramid with the top shaved off, and a single lower level to walk on.

A brilliant blue, green, and tan chest rested on its tip, with a nature motif leading up to a carved crystal icon on the front.

Treasure.

Micah took a step forward. A stone wall rose up behind him, and he jumped. The exit rose up as well and frothing whitewater jets shot from the pipes at full blast, reaching a third of the way into the room before they curved down and splashed over the stone like sprays of swords.

“Uhm?”

Micah checked the sealed entrance, checked for monsters, and hurried forward, taking in his surroundings in stride, searching for clues as the water level rapidly rose.

Something long slithered out of the far left jet, a school of somethings out of the right, and they looked like chunks of ice in the water.

As he neared the grass, a stone gauntlet rose from the ground along with the rising water level, pushing the grass and dirt aside like quicksand.

Micah slowed.

An arm and head followed, and a stone golem lifted itself out of the ground. It looked slimmer than the ones that roamed the corridors outside, more angular, but with a thicker chest and rounder head, like a diver. Its stone darkened where it passed through the water.

“Hi,” Micah greeted it as he fiddled with his belongings, rearranging items on his belt, wading a few steps back.

A school of ice piranhas swam toward him through the underwater grass.

The golem glanced at him and reached into the ground, conjuring a stone trident with one hand, and a green—no brown, blue? It picked a net of shifting colors out of the grass.

Ooh, that looks cool.

The piranhas got closer. “Right.” Micah focused. He sprinted right, giving them a wide berth, and dove into the river.

A stream of bubbles consumed his vision. The world cooled down, but it didn’t feel wet. The raincoat kept him dry, let him breathe underwater, and kept his vision clear. It was the first and third things he valued here. The second one … well, Micah could hold his breath for a while now, he’d noticed. He’d made it to six minutes once, but he bet he could train to last longer.

He swam with the current to the far right corner of the chamber and stopped, swimming in place halfway to his destination.

Another stone wall had closed off the river’s exit, meaning the rivers flowing into the room were two more sources of water, and he doubted he could swim against a current that strong back out of here.

Could he dig his way out? Probably. Could he do it with that golem and things in the water?

He turned to face the music.

A teal serpent slithered toward him from the right, with a second skin of icy scales, and a school of ice piranha billowed up from the left. The cold emanated from both like an aura of clarity that brought the world into focus.

Further left and ‘up’ from the perspective of the river Micah was in, the golem waded in his direction.

He swam up. He doubted it could swim, but it could walk across the floor, and this would get him out of its reach.

He wove his own, inner wind essence and mana together and when the fish got close enough, pushed a spell out through his hands.

Like mana, he could control his own wind essence—he really had to come up with a name for it—at will. He didn’t have to breathe it out. It meant, Micah had quickly realized, he could do wind punches and simple wind spells now.

Here, it carried his other spell further and gave it the kinetic charge it needed to work: [Dissolve].

Half of the school cracked and went still, blue essences drifting like dye through the water. Their momentum continued to carry them forward. Some of the errant currents of the whitewater jets caught them, pulling them and their sashes of blue off-course.

The back half of the school navigated through the stunned mass and swam onward, and the serpent—

Too close. The serpent opened its mouth, revealing pink and purple flesh, and sharp fangs within, and rushed at him.

A memory flashed through his mind: another serpent snapping at him in a lake he and Ryan had swum in.

This time, Micah didn’t need to nearly sacrifice an arm to keep it at bay. He used his ultimate skill: he pulled his legs up into the oversized coat, pulled its hood down, and turtled up into a fetal position in the water.

The serpent tried to bite him. The raincoat caught its momentum and threw it around him, a lot like his mantle could do with smaller projectiles when he basked in the wind.

The piranhas were too weak to be caught, but they found no purchase on the smooth material of the raincoat, or the shield that surrounded him, and they couldn’t pierce it even if they tried.

He was safe. For now. Huddled up like this, he sunk toward the bottom of the river, and the golem was getting closer; the water seemed to slow it down.

Micah caught as many fish as he could with another wave of [Dissolve] and kicked up, trying to hit the serpent with his boot and a surge of strength as he swam higher.

Something impacted the water over him with a wet flop, and he looked up to see— a distortion in the water. It took him a moment to realize it was the net of shifting colors.

It must have thrown it a moment before the water consumed it, and it lost its momentum when it hit the water, but it almost seemed to … squirm in his direction.

Micah tried to swim away. It caught up, stretching oddly to envelop him in a hug. The ‘weights’ attached to the tips of the net looked like cone-shaped tentacle tips.

The serpent coiled around him, slipping off the shield of the raincoat, but trying again and again.

Micah tried to get the net off, but it resisted and it felt … glued to him. Its rope moved on its own, stretching and thickening in places like it was breathing.

The raincoat wasn’t helping as it rocked him left and right, forcing him to dodge, and it ran out of places to put him as the serpent looped around him.

Slowly, he was caught in a cage of teal flesh.

The world dimmed as the pressure set in. He knew from experience how much force these serpents could exert, but it didn’t need to crush him to death. If it dragged him to the floor of the chamber, the golem could do it for it, or could keep him trapped there until he starved.

Micah focused on his breathing, keeping it steady, and he found nearly all of his own wind essence— aether? Sure. Let’s give that a try.

He found and took control of nearly all the aether he had left. Coating his spirit with it everywhere he could, he pinched his nose to hold his breath and blew.

His ears popped. A pulse of wind shot out of him that made the raincoat billow and pushed the net off but barely affected the serpent.

The bubble of wind magic shattered into a thousand small pieces, and he timed it for the moment he got his surge of strength back to push off into a spin through a gap he made, out of there.

He basked in the wind, and it coated him like an armor of bubbles. It obscured him a bit, he imagined, but it obscured his vision, too.

Micah turned to where he’d last seen the serpent moving and used a knock-off water shaping spell to get a kinetic charge in the water. He didn’t have enough—

Nope. He did not like ‘aether.’ It reminded him too much of the chemical, which was highly flammable, and he did not want that mental connection to influence his magic.

But he barely had any of that left, so he wanted to save it for something else he could use it for.

The moment the serpent entered his perception, mouth open and ready to bite, he hit it with a [Dissolve]. It wasn’t enough to hurt it, not really, but it cracked its second skin of icy scales and stunned it long enough for him to ram a knife down its throat.

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The serpent struggled, but he shoved his other arm in its mouth, where the raincoat’s barrier would keep it from closing, waited for a new surge of strength, and ripped the knife up.

The serpent spasmed, but it was as good as dead. Getting the knife out was the bigger challenge and it weighed him down. He was too exhausted. Micah let go and swam up.

The water had nearly reached the ceiling. He surfaced into a slim pocket of air, most of him still dry despite the dive.

There was a bit of air essence up here. He could breathe it in to supplement his— his uh …

Gale?

Isn’t that Jason’s last name?

Mana had its own name. It wasn’t just ‘mental essences mixed with Tower essence.’ Micah wanted to find a term for his new magic, too, but it was hard to find something that felt right.

Besides, he was supposed to be looking for clues. There had to be a way to drain the water and/or open the exits without killing the guardian. Otherwise, this chamber would be far too—

A stone trident slammed into the roof next to him and stuck there, cracking the stone.

He’d sensed it but been far too slow to dodge. The raincoat had saved him. Below, the stone golem was already conjuring a new trident from the ground and taking aim.

And a new school of fish shot into the chamber from one of the pipes.

—lethal, Micah finished his thought.

Well, he was on the ninth floor.

He almost chuckled at a stray thought: Ryan was right. If they’d tried to challenge this place back then, they would have been shredded before they had a chance to drown.

Not that he minded Ryan being right.

Micah couldn’t find anything around the center of the ceiling, and there was a chance he had to search further out, but he was willing to bet he was supposed to be able to guess this.

The Tower often had a sort of … loose logic to it.

As an alchemist, when he looked at this floor, he thought of ‘skins.’ Stoneskin golem, aquatic rats, camouflage toads, hypnotic butterflies, Coldlight bats, ice-scale serpents—even Maria with her three faces and glowing flesh.

But that was a theme, not an internal logic, and not a … Many people would laugh at him for thinking this, but Micah thought the Tower sometimes tried to teach them lessons.

Looking at it like that, not as an alchemist who was looking for ingredients, but as one who was studying the floor, a naturalist, or [Scout], he thought it was ‘ecosystem.’

All of the Towers had more of an ecosystem now than they’d had ten months ago, as monsters lived, ate, and grew, but it was more pronounced here in some ways.

There was a day and night cycle, with different monsters that actively preyed on each other.

There were corners where loot accumulated as it was carried by the current.

There were stone golems who maintained the area, repaired the walls, fought with the Coldlight Bats, and protected the plantlife. Insects that pollinated those plants.

And sometimes, when the water built up underground or in certain chambers, and the rain picked up in Maria’s valley, there were flash floods that swept through the entire floor and brought loot and wounded monsters down to the Drains, where weaker climbers could try their luck.

How did that apply to this chamber?

Climbers went into the room toward the treasure chest. The room flooded. They tried to get the loot and get out? Naturally, they would go to the exit and then up.

He’d done all of that, because he was an idiot apparently … or maybe he was just overthinking things.

There was no way to open the exits here and no marble slots at the entrance, but the exit might have some, and a team of stronger climbers could probably force their way out.

If not …

From above, it was easier to see the room’s layout. Where the patch of green was in the center of the room, around the altar and the treasure chest, most of the stone had been stripped off and the dirt laid bare so grass could grow.

It was an uneven splotch, like an off-center oval. He swam to where it was thickest, near where the golem had risen.

Another trident shot at him and this time, he dodged it of his own ability. He’d kept an eye on the golem as it … marched toward where he’d fought the serpent. To retrieve its net?

That gave him a window, but even wearing the raincoat and as a decent swimmer, diving was slow and he—

Micah wondered. Could he …?

He opened his mantle and drew on the water essence, basking in it as he would the wind. Some of it coated him, but it didn’t come nearly as readily as the wind essence.

Micah paused—his body naturally fell so he swam upright—exerted his domain, and tried again.

This time, the water essence rushed in, but it felt odd. Uncomfortable. Maybe it was something spiritual, since he had a wind aspect now, or maybe he just needed to get used to it.

Either way, it did help on his next downward stroke as some of the resistance faded, but it was barely a benefit as he had lost his momentum.

In lieu of a sigh, he puffed a cheek out. What I get for experimenting in the middle of a fight, I guess.

The school of fish swarmed him as he touched down. He only needed a moment to find what he was searching for: a stone, like a tiny obelisk or a crumpled grave, stood out from the grass. He swam over and found three marble slots.

In a hurry, Micah filled them with the first three marbles he could find. The stone lit up in an earthy glow and sent a pulse of light into the ground like roots.

He looked to the exits, but—

Nothing happened.

Actually, no. The grass did look a little more vibrant for a second as it drank in the essences.

Is this— what? A fertilizer stone? Oh. Ohh.

It didn’t open the exit, but it did draw the thought process that had brought him here to a fitting conclusion.

The golems even maintained the walls. If a section of the floor was missing, it might have been for a reason, and Micah knew they liked to take care of plants.

Like Ryan’s parents, this was like its own private lawn the guardian was growing, that it protected.

It also fit with the challenge: climbers would likely avoid the golem as it rose and draw the fight elsewhere, away from the grass. They might not notice the marble slots.

He had two options then: take the grass hostage, as he’d done with the forest treant, or …

Micah juggled fishing through his pouch and fighting off a swarm of ice piranhas that tried to eat his face—the only part of him that was exposed.

Finally, he fitted three new marbles into the stone: earth, flesh, and ice—the closest thing he’d had to water. And he’d had to kill some of the fish and draw their essence in to fill it.

Together, they might fit the criteria to combine into fertilizer? It was his best guess, anyway.

The stone lit up again and this time, as the pulse traveled through the ground, the grass perked up even more and looked vibrant in the water.

The upside-down stone golem in his vision froze, almost like it was surprised, and it raised a hand.

On cue, at a snail’s pace, the stone walls sealing the exits began to lower, and he felt a wave of relief as the water rapidly began to gush out of the chamber.

Micah gave the golem a smile and a thumbs-up.

Trying to wait it out had been an option. The grass here was probably used to a wet environment but he doubted it could stay submerged for long without suffering. It would have to drain the water if it wanted to save its lawn.

But the fish had shown up as reinforcements. It was only a matter of time until more of those serpents found him. Or worse.

As to not step on the lawn, Micah moved over to a patch of stone—

And laid his body flat just in time to watch another massive stone trident sail by below him and tear through the grass.

Clumps of green and billowing clouds of mud shot up as it tore long clefts through the ground, and Micah turned from the damage to stare at the golem in horror.

“DUDE!” His voice warbled. A chain of bubbles rose up in front of his face. “What the hell!?”

Net in one hand, the golem was already conjuring another trident. As the water level sank, it strode back toward him, its intent obvious.

Well, fuck you, too.

Micah touched down and held onto a stone as the water drained. Its current pulled at him and threatened to rip him away.

The moment the water lowered around the golem’s head, it moved its arm to throw—

Micah used a boot and two arms to haul its own thrown trident off the grass, about as tall as him, and spun it around into a javelin thrower’s stance.

The water made lifting it easy enough that he didn’t have to expend his charge of strength, and he was no Anne or Ryan, his javelin throwing grade had barely been good, but that was before he had become a [Scout].

“[Aimed Shot].”

His vision focused, his movements became natural. Drawing on the water to aid him, Micah waited half a second, skipped forward, and threw—

His trident caught the invisible net sailing through the air, just above the surface of the draining water, and carried it back into the golem’s shoulder with a sickening crunch.

Micah followed at a sprint, arms pumping, body swaying as the draining currents tore him left and right.

By the time the golem recovered from its staggered step back, he’d crossed a third of the distance and slipped. The water yanked him a meter back and to the right, forcing him to this hands and knees. It threatened to pull him into the river.

Micah slipped a stone spike out of a pouch, fueled it with a pulse of mana, and drove it into the ground. It sunk through stone like a hot knife into butter. The moment it expended its charge, the stone hardened again.

He held on until the waters ebbed, and another pulse let him yank it back out.

“I don’t get it,” he tried to keep the bite out of his voice. “Can you explain the lesson here? Was I wrong?”

The golem had struggled to get the net off, but it stuck to its shoulder the same as it had to Micah. It barely impeded it and its shoulder was wounded anyway. It had left it there.

If the ‘lesson’ was to run straight into danger to look for the solution, he was going to be … not pissed, but disappointed.

The golem threw its trident at his head, and Micah leaned to the side and slid on the wet stone as if he were in his sister’s bathhouse. It scraped past the raincoat’s shield effect.

It was already conjuring another trident from the ground as it swung a fist at him and he … dodged.

Even without the raincoat, it was easy, in comparison to his training this last month. He had to consciously remind himself that there was danger here.

It’s strong. It could crush my head like a rotten pumpkin … and it would, wouldn’t it? It was trying to kill him.

“Didn’t your lawn matter to you? Can anything matter to you yet? Why are you doing this?”

It tried to stab him, but it was too slow. Micah had too much space to maneuver and he was used to walking around on slick floors. He circled it at a safe distance.

“Why are you here? You can hear me, right? You’re inside of that shell?" He frowned because he suddenly wasn’t sure he wasn’t talking to himself and paused for a second to exert his dominion.

His field of influence expanded into its stone shell—and something pushed back.

He conceded with a nod. “Yep, you’re in there. Do you even understand what you’re doing? Are you sentient? Sapient? Are you ‘awake’ yet? Or are you being used without fully understanding your situation?”

It certainly felt like it knew what it was doing. He completed a full circle and the golem threw another trident at him. It was almost painfully easy to dodge as it sailed by. But then it hounded him and Micah backed up into two massive tridents sticking in the ground. It almost landed a hit as he swung around the shaft and ducked. Its fist broke the weapon and sent a shower of rocks flying overhead.

He peeked out from his hiding place, one hand on the surviving forks of the trident, and continued, “Where do you come from? Who asked you to do this? What is your name?”

He badgered it with questions and stayed out of reach, some small part of him aware that he was running out of steam but not caring. He wanted answers.

The stone spirit never responded, but he thought it understood him on some level. It felt like it was beginning to feel … frustrated.

“My name is Micah,” he tried as he backed up. “I don’t know if I introduced myself properly before? I’m sorry if I didn’t.”

The golem pulled its trident from the stone and knelt to conjure another. Slower than usual. It had used its right arm, its shoulder cracked and covered with the net.

Tridents in both hands, it tilted its head down to … he was pretty sure it glared at him.

“Fine.” If it wanted a fight, or it couldn’t answer him until it fulfilled its duty, he would end this first.

Micah pulled out his second piton and charged. It tried to stab him. He dodged and used the broken fork to jump off. He hit its stone shoulder, grabbed the net, and hauled himself over its back, the tail-end of his backpack awkwardly scraping by its face.

It tried to hit him, but he dropped down between its shoulder blades and it had to turn its arm around to reverse its approach.

Micah took the moment to push his perception into the stone golem. He felt its crystal veins and heart that it used to animate its shell as clearly as he would his own, felt the clusters and … a crack where he had struck it earlier.

He brushed the spirit itself and it pushed back, driving him out. He let it. He had what he needed.

Climbing up and away from its reaching gauntlet, Micah filled a piton with mana and drove it into its cracked shoulder at an angle. It sunk through crystal veins and into its torso like a nail through boards, stopping the rotational motion of its arm. Or it should have.

Instead of sinking into its body like a knife into butter, here, too, the spirit resisted him and pushed the spike back out.

He stained to keep it in. For a moment, only the tip was inside its chest. It strained its arm to reach for him. The piton snapped.

The object he’d been exerting force against suddenly broke away. Micah smacked its back and slipped. Its right arm went limp, swaying like a swing.

It stumbled, turning on the spot with surprising force, and tried to reach with him with its other arm.

Micah cursed, turned his arm in the net to hang on for a moment, and pulled himself up with one arm. He awkwardly crawled further up onto its right shoulder, then immediately slipped back down when it turned its arm around and reached for him across its chest.

A monkey on its back.

An angry monkey. It wasn’t like he needed the pitons—they were going to break soon anyway—but what a waste. And it made things significantly harder if he only got one try.

If he couldn’t slowly dismantle it, should he aim for its heart? Could he get that far through its thick chest against resistance? Maybe he should go back to using the tridents?

Or maybe he didn’t need to dismantle its puppet. A cart couldn’t go anywhere without a horse or driver.

Micah pushed his perception into it again. This time, only for a moment to get a feel for the spirit inside the shell.

It felt … off-balance. Its right ‘arm’ was crammed along with the rest of it inside of the torso and it was probing out, trying to regain control of the useless chunk of rock attached to it.

Until it did, it stood inside the shell like a person on one foot. Imbalanced.

Micah climbed up, eying a spot between its neck and shoulder blade. He filled his last piton with mana and drove in at an angle. It severed a thick vein near its collarbone and the spirit stumbled as it lost that foothold. It rounded on him, trying to shove the spike back out.

It was distracted.

Micah climbed behind its neck, got one foot up in the net, his knee against the stone, and took a deep breath, drawing up his strength and will, almost hounding the potion to refill quicker.

When it reached its peak, he concentrated on one spot, visualized the spirit within the shell, and put himself and his dominion behind the strike: he drove a palm into the stone.

“BEGONE.”

The spirit fled from the golem like a thunderclap, rushing into the floor and shrinking to the size of a pebble.

The chamber shook. The shell beneath his feet went limp and fell, cracking into the stone.

Micah hopped off and stumbled. The shaking didn’t stop. In the distance, at the border of his awareness, the spirit drew itself up again, growing rapidly in size, and he didn’t need his Skills to know it was furious. It rushed back toward him like a reverse landslide.

When it entered the chamber, Micah had put his pack aside and stood bowed at the waist.

It froze.

Micah couldn’t help himself: he peeked.

The spirit looked like a reverse landslide, too. It was a brown so light, it almost looked yellow and transparent like the wind spirits, made of hundreds of pebbles that flowed inward.

It was shaped loosely as a kite, though it was much larger than any one wind spirit, as wide as three stone golems as it covered the ceiling and glared down on him.

Micah smiled. “Are you … off work now? Can you talk?”

Its pebbles quickened, stone cracking against stone, the air rumbled like thunder, and the chamber shook.

The trident it had lodged in the ceiling earlier came loose and shattered on the floor. Micah tried not to jump as the stones skipped his way. It felt like it was going to bring the ceiling down. He remembered another ceiling collapsing on him and grit his teeth but stood his ground.

“Are you upset?” He failed to keep his own agitation out of his voice.

“YOu DaNce,” the spirit spoke; its voice sounded like echoing rocks tumbling down a canyon, “oN a CLiFf, SAVAGE.”

The words alone meant little but similarly to how the wind spirits could understand his words’ meaning, Micah gleamed its.

He had ignored the unwritten rules, acknowledged the spirit in combat, probably even annoyed it, and attacked it instead of its golem.

And now he wanted to use an empty gesture of respect to appease it? It proved only that he had not acted out of ignorance, but that he spat on its values, cherrypicking the rules he liked.

That hadn’t been his intention but he couldn’t say it was wrong. He just … couldn’t he be himself?

Micah sighed. “It was a good match? I mean, I cheated a little by wearing this …” He picked at the raincoat. “If you want a rematch, I would be happy to spar against you without it?”

The quaking lessened, but the spirit didn’t move. It seemed … stuck, hesitating on its own cliff as it was unsure what to make of him? Angry but curious.

Micah chewed on his lip. He wanted to smile, take off his coat, and insist they have a sparring match—guide it off that cliff—but …

“Have you killed anyone before?” he asked.

The spirit went still for a second, then vanished.

Micah sighed and sat next to its broken shell. So much for spirits. Maybe he’d ask the wind spirits when he got home.

For now: he twisted his head to make sure the coast was clear, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

Looking inward, he found that last wisp of … of …

My own wind essence, I guess.

He’d kept it reserve earlier for just this purpose. He wove it together with the cool air essence of the chamber around him and guided it to his aching body. Immediately, it soothed some of his exhaustion and aches.

That was why he’d saved it, the other thing he had found out he could do, and what he loved most about his new Skill: he could use it as a cheap stamina potion.

It was a luxury, because using it like this meant he couldn’t use it in combat when he might need it most, but Micah loved stamina potions.

He kept his eyes closed as his mind wandered, because when all was said and done, that fight just now had been … satisfying on some level.

He wondered if he could have won without the raincoat. He hadn’t taken the danger entirely serious with it on, and he hadn’t been using his dominion to its fullest.

In fact, if he tried now—

He pushed his dominion out and it enveloped half the chamber, one of the rivers, and the lawn. He could feel every bit of natural essences inside it with ease, the crystal veins of the golem, the marbles that had fallen, the wind, and water, and reflected light.

It was easy to do it now especially after he’d won, but he had been winning all along, and even when the spirit had pushed back against him, he’d let it win.

It had been getting easier and easier to do it over the last month. Uncontested, it was easy to say, This is mine.

[Of the Warrior Path explored!]

[Skill — Exert Dominion obtained!]

He huffed out a breath and smiled. And while he was at it, he meditated on another thing that had felt right during the fight: the moment he’d driven a palm into the stone, the moment he had banished the spirit.

That had been more than him exerting his dominion and more than a physical strike. A hand against stone? Even with a strength potion, he was no berserker. No, it had been an extension of something else he’d been training, one focused strike delivered against its spirit by his.

[Essence Path explored!]

[Skill — Spirit-empowered Reach obtained!]

There. His smile widened. It’s about time. He had been training that for months and been able to do it for half as long, but it was nice to have it quantified.

Now he didn’t have to worry when he picked up an air mat Lisa conjured anymore, or concentrate to rip out a monster’s guts.

Sometimes, Micah felt, exploring your Path was about more than repetition. To get a Skill on it, you had to prove that you could do use in your sleep, but you also had to have a certain level of confidence in your ability to use it, to acknowledge that ability in some active way.

Like juggling—he took the example from his failed attempt with the spirits. If you got nervous before or while you juggled and that, instead of your lack of ability, made you fail more times than you succeeded, could you really claim you could juggle?

On the other hand, if you got nervous and you did it anyway?

And what if you could juggle, but you never thought about it too hard because it came as naturally as breathing? Was ‘breathing’ worthy of becoming a Skill?

Well, he did have [Controlled Breathing]—but that was besides his point!

[Exert Dominion]. [Spirit-empowered Reach]. He could do these things, the only thing that was overdue was that he acknowledged that.

It didn’t change too much, but it was a relief and it was nice … and yet, it was hard to enjoy it to its fullest seeing how he had come to this moment.

With a sigh, he opened his eyes and stared at the golem. “Why can’t we be friends?”

Well, not that he would want to be friends with a wanton murderer anyway.

Besides, there were other things to be happy about!

He had an entire golem that was like, ninety percent intact. He could carve its veins and heart out, keep some—one more ingredient down for his potion—and sell the rest.

Except for the hands. He’d cut those off and take them with. Those were for him.

He had an entire guardian chamber to take notes on: make sketches and write down his experiences.

And he had the net! That was loot, if he could find out how to pry it off. It was a magic item.

Last but certainly not least: “Treasure chest!” Micah hopped up onto his feet and speed-walked over to the altar at the center of the room.

He had to force himself to slow down and keep an eye out for traps, but he was giddy with excitement as he remembered what other kinds of things Ryan and he had gotten from chests on this floor.

And those hadn’t even been from guardian chambers.

Carefully, he hummed as he tip-toed over the grass, went up the stairs, poked at the chest with a piece of trident, and finally, opened the lid.

It was empty.

His breath caught. “Motherf—”