Shouting came from the entrance, clearly heard by James, Ivy, and Shen Ai.
James grimaced. “Guess our helpful guide wasn’t kidding about needing to go out the back. Maybe we’ll have to thank him for keeping us away from whoever that angry person is.”
“Maybe, but the issue still remains… How are we going to get out of here without the companion block?” Ivy asked.
They all pondered the question for a moment before turning back to the attendant.
She waved her hands in a panic and took a step away from them. “That’s B-Bron Del. H-he’ll kill me if I help.”
“Help us anyway,” Ivy grumbled, but Shen Ai crossed the room and grabbed a hold of both the attendant’s shoulders.
“We’ll be needing your companion block.”
“I-I… can’t…”
“Do it.” James had never seen Shen Ai so aggressive before, but she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. “He might be down there, but we are up here right now. Hand it over.”
The attendant looked like she might faint from stress, but then nodded with tears streaming down her eyes. She pulled a rectangular block from her pocket, a little bigger than a credit card but an inch-thick, silvery smooth with a single diagonal slash sectioning off one corner which was lower than the rest of the block. Shen Ai snatched it up quickly and left the attendant behind.
“Just tell them we forced you to give it over. Surely they’re not merciless enough to hurt you when you’re the victim of theft,” Ivy said, shrugging. “Might be time to find a new occupation, though. Thanks for all the help!”
The shouting got louder as Shen Ai fiddled with the block and transit door, finally getting it to work just as the culprit of all the screaming came into view.
“Wait right there!” he commanded, a flashy pistol pointed toward them.
“Uh… No thanks!” Ivy waved as the transit portaled them away with a hiss, whir, and fwoosh. The floor came up in blocks, forming a sphere around them, and when it dropped, they were somewhere else entirely. “That’s cool.”
“Now what…?” Shen Ai asked, looking around.
“To the tower!”
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The tower was even more bright and obnoxious up close. It was magnetically interesting, with alien shapes and symbols woven into the blue of its unearthly aura, but it was also dazzling to look at.
The gate, at least, was simple gold. Not just gold colored, but solid gold that reflected and shone… just not with its own magical glow, which made it the least annoying thing to look at.
“Name?” said the bored guard standing by the arrival door.
They gave their names.
“Classes?”
“Uh…?”
The guard frowned. “Class. Es. What are yours?”
“Retaliator?” Ivy guessed.
The guard looked her up and down. “Try again.”
“To spare us all some time, we’re not from around here. Only just got our heart cards activated. Was there supposed to be more we needed to do before we were rudely interrupted?” James asked.
“If you don’t want to say it out loud, I can just scan your companion blocks.”
They looked at each other, then at him.
“...Do you even have companion blocks?” the guard asked, crossing his arms and staring at them balefully. “How far away are you from?”
“Is it really that important?” Ivy asked.
Shen Ai held the one they’d stolen from the attendant up. “Do you mean this, by chance?”
The guard’s eyes flashed lightning blue as he looked over Shen Ai, then he recoiled, his hands holding the sides of his heads. “Argh! Why are you with these two if you’re so strong?”
“Am I?” Shen Ai asked, looking at Ivy and James. When they shrugged, she shrugged too.
“Deflecting second tier screening isn’t something so easily done,” the guard grunted a helpful explanation. “Why is someone from above the twenty-fifth floor incognito with these newbies acting so lost… I digress. You can’t enter until your classes are recorded.”
“Gahh!” Ivy growled. She grabbed the companion block from Shen Ai.
“If you’re going to mess around, at least get out of the way while you do it.” Indeed, there were several people impatiently glancing at the guard, waiting their turn to be admitted.
James hastily apologized and herded the group off to the side a bit. Ivy poked and prodded at the rectangular block, trying to get it to activate. “How do I use this stupid thing?!”
Shen Ai tried to grab the block back to show Ivy how to work the object, but Ivy hissed and clutched it to her chest. “Oh… Okay.”
James carefully took it from Ivy and quickly got the grasp on how to connect with it.
James
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Class: Available Level: NA
Deck (1/5)
[Heart] Protective Totem (Tier 5)
It looked basic and told him everything he’d already known about his deck. However, he found he could mentally interact with the “available” option and mentally prodded it. An enormous list appeared full of all sorts of things, ranging from warrior and spearman to gunslinger and mecha to gambler and charlatan.
“Oh, I see.” There were far too many options, and none of them screamed “I’m cool and advanced but also require little effort to make work, pick me”. He immediately discounted all of the running around and fighting classes and kept things simple, going for the humble mage.
A blue light flashed around him after his selection. His status now read:
James
Class: Mage Level: 1
Deck (2/6)
[Heart] Protective Totem (Tier 5)
[Class] Magebolt (Tier 1)
“Nifty.” He handed the companion block over to Ivy and explained how to go about using it, then watched as a light blue beam of light illuminated her. “Congratulations.”
Shen Ai went next, almost instantly selecting her class.
Finished with preparations, James turned to the guard. “Now?”
“Classes?” The guard looked at them dubiously, especially Shen Ai, but did his duties diligently.
Ivy was the first to offer, shouting, “Duelist!”
The guard looked her up and down, then sighed and turned to Shen Ai.
“Scout.”
James provided his.
The guard recorded their information. “Alliance affiliation?”
“None.”
He glanced at Shen Ai again.
“None,” she agreed.
He shrugged, made a note, then had them all sign a waiver that they understood they were risking their lives and would not hold New Tienithport responsible for their untimely demise or anyone looting their corpses.
“You sure you want to go in like that?” the guard asked, frowning as he glanced up from the page, a quick sideways flick at Shen Ai. “What happened to your equipment? Do you need… assistance?”
“Do you have a sword?” Ivy excitedly asked. “A big one?”
“No.”
“Bah, then why’d you even bother offering to help in the first place?” Ivy brushed past him and moved toward the entrance of the tower. “We’re better off figuring things out on our own.”
James watched as Ivy sauntered off and addressed the guard, “Did you need anything else from us—”
“Just go.”
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Just one more. Zibo staggered forward blearily, tired beyond tired but unable to stop. One more shard, then I can rest.
The effects of holding an incomplete deck were deadly if not taken seriously. Everyone said so, but Zibo had stubbornly resisted giving in to any of the faction’s predatory contracts. Until today, there had always been someone willing to team up and take out at least one stray newcomer, but now Zibo found himself alone and powerless.
His class card was worse than useless. Conceal. Not even invisibility, just a cheap knock-off. Useful enough for helping set up an ambush, but no use at all when trapped alone on the third floor.
His heart card only made a mockery of his suffering. Refreshment. A minor restoration card that came off cooldown after six hours. He could sustain himself without food, with minimal rest. But the emptiness in his heart still gnawed at him. Four blank spaces, each burning him alive from inside.
How long had it been since Zibo was abandoned here? Since he became a liability rather than an asset? Days… weeks…? He could no longer remember.
All he needed to do was find one straggler. One injured monster or neglected climber. One kill, one shard, and he could relieve this pain another day.
Just keep going. One more. Just a little longer…
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“Wouldn’t you think the first floor would be something a bit easier?” Ivy ran at top speed, pursued by a twelve-foot-tall ogre wielding a tree for a club. “I don’t think Retaliation is going to be enough for this!”
“I’ve got you,” Shen Ai called out, one hand raised with her Healing card, the other extended toward Ivy and forming a barely-visible glowing thread to connect the two of them.
James continued his consistent barrage of magebolts, shooting the second enough energy coalesced to activate the card again. Compared to his Legendary heart card with no cooldown at all, waiting around between shots on this basic thing was annoying.
The ogre finally decided it had had enough of chasing the tiny thing that kept getting away and spun to smash its club down on James again.
James yawned and fired another magebolt. “That didn’t work last time, you think it’ll do better now?”
The club came down, and James’s golden totem appeared in front of him. The blow slid harmlessly off the shining effect, like a two-dimensional phoenix whose wings spread clear from floor to higher than James's head. Though the attack was deflected, it wasn't negated, slamming into the ground beside him with enough force to send up a spray of grass and dirt.
“Fight me!” Ivy shouted, apparently no longer afraid now that the ogre was targeting her brother, and ran up to kick it in the shin. The fact that her class card, Adversity, only helped against enemies who were attacking her specifically probably contributed to this attitude. Unfortunately, since she’d only get one attack in before she had to start running again, her class was so far not living up to her grand expectations.
The ogre ignored the pest behind it and continued slamming its club against the unyielding force of James’s legendary card. The fact that James kept shooting magebolts up its nose didn’t hurt in keeping its attention on him.
It took another eight minutes, during which Ivy ended up running around twice more after pulling aggro, and Shen Ai had to heal her once when she got her leg crunched into squishy paste, but that was only a minor inconvenience. James jumped in front of the girls long enough for Shen Ai to get Ivy back on her feet, and then Ivy went into a furious barrage that somehow was enough to overwhelm the ogre’s toughness and knock it over. Another three minutes of magebolt after that, and they had themselves their first monster kill.
“That,” James panted, leaning on his totem, “should not have been that hard.”
“I want that sword,” Ivy growled. “I told you we sho—”
The ogre’s body disappeared with an audible pop and a pale blue card appeared hovering where it had fallen. Unlike their cards, which were rectangular, this card was slightly pointed on either side, as if someone had taken a rectangle and stretched it out just a bit into a lopsided hexagon.
“Dibs!” Ivy jumped forward. Neither of the others made a move. Shen Ai already had a full deck, and James was quite satisfied with his ability to sit back safely and shoot magic at their enemies from a distance.
As soon as the card had been claimed, James noticed another strange thing happening around the massive felled ogre. A golden strand of energy formed above the creature, something James was intimate enough with to identify as lifespan, and shot into all of their chests.
He’d been paying attention to it and noticed the moment it impacted them was the same moment he received an experience increase notification and rose from level one to three. A fourth portion, equally as large as the combined they’d received, shot up into the sky and disappeared from sight.
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“Boss, we found them.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Bring them to me!” Bron growled from where he sat, his feet resting atop the unfortunate attendant. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
“P-please… spare m-me!”
He leaned down, grinning as he spun his pistol on one finger. “Now, that request has some… interesting interpretations, don’t you think?”
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