“What'd you get?” James called out, admittedly a bit curious as to what card Ivy might have gotten. He wanted to see his little sister’s power improve, after all, as a proper proud brother should.

“The experience from the ogre was sweet! I want to fight more of them!” Ivy shouted, pumping her fist with a victory whoop. “The card is Tough Skin. It’s another Augmentation type, so it won’t clash with my class card.” She pressed the card into her chest, then swayed unsteadily. “That one’s got a kick to it,” she slurred, toppling sideways into James.

He caught and steadied her, but didn’t let go. “Ivy! Are you alright?”

“Gimme a bit…” For a long moment she leaned there, breathing hard as though trying to recover from a marathon. Then she abruptly shook herself, straightened, and grinned. “Let’s go again! I want to see how much this helps.”

“Maybe, for the sake of efficiency, Senior Ivy, we should fight easier creatures for a higher rate of experience gain,” Shen Ai suggested quietly.

“But that’s so boring,” Ivy didn’t hesitate to quip back, rolling her eyes. “Have you seen anything in here that could be called ‘easier’? That’s the smallest ogre we’ve seen, and I don’t think we want to mess with those tree-things.”

“This floor is quite expansive, and we’ve not spent much time searching for other adversaries. Surely there are more options than this,” Shen Ai pressed, a look of concern on her face.

James cut into the conversation then. “I don’t think the problem is that what we’re facing is difficult enough to be dangerous. We don’t have the power to make this easier, faster, less of a grind.”

Ivy sighed. “That’s part of the fun though!”

“If you say so,” James said with a shrug. “Pull the next one then.”

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“What was I thinking?”

With a large portion of his day already eaten up by attempting to be charitable and help the overly excited newbies, Merek felt the weight of his heart card bearing down on his chest. Even the aggressive hunger of his common card felt like it would consume him if he didn’t hurry.

But all the parties had already departed, leaving him panting as he hunted for something, anything, he could hope to fight. There were plenty of parties that eyed him as he passed, but luckily for him, they tangled with their foes and couldn’t pursue him for an easy hunt.

Aside from those he’d already developed trust for—and even then, only so much—he didn’t trust a single person in the tower.

So when he saw those same newbies running around like they were about to get themselves crushed by the first surviving monster he’d found, it only made him angry. There was only so far he could justify getting tangled with anyone more than he was already involved with.

The guy was shooting off basic spells over and over, the girl was desperately trying to catch the monster’s attention, and the monster was closing in to crush the idiot.

The thought flicked through Merek’s mind that, if the guy was going to die anyway, perhaps he could steal enough participation to have a chance at his shard. It was a slim chance, but…

Before he could convince himself to engage in such an underhanded scheme, the moment of opportunity was gone. The ogre’s tree—not one of the sentient ones this time—slammed down onto the…

Impenetrable golden light?

Merek blinked and stared. Gold! Legendary? What? How? Who…

The man continued standing, fully relaxed, shooting off his spell as though bored.

The ogre’s tree smashed down again and again, until the weapon fell apart into splinters.

“Aw, come on! At least hit me once!” The girl flailed at the ogre’s feet with her fists, but that wasn’t going to get its attention. “I want to see how well this works!”

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Merek’s throat felt very dry and he was suddenly very thankful for his paralysis of indecision. These were not people he wanted as enemies.

Doing his best to conceal his fear, he jogged over. “I can’t help but notice you’re missing a rapid damage role. I normally wouldn’t offer my services to a group as newly-formed as this, but since we already know each other I’ll make an exception.”

He placed a hand on the ogre’s foot and activated his deck. It’d taken him eight months to save up for his first card, and it was a good one. Common, but one of the better ones. Actually useful, unlike some he was aware of.

Burst.

Nothing too fancy, just a pulse of force that emanated from his hand and aggressively disassembled anything it encountered. At level 18, he was almost too strong to get anything from a basic monster like this, and the power tore through its lower leg like a rock through pudding.

The ogre toppled over, one last magebolt enough to finish it off.

Merek was glad they’d already done so much damage to it, or his demonstration would have been much less impressive-looking. But as it was…

“Oooh! How did you do that? I want one!”

“I’ll tell you all about it while we walk. But we should get going right now. Those guys chasing you will know that you’re new to the tower, so the first floor is the last place you want to be. I can get you to floor 5, and you can exit through a different city there.”

“And pulp a few more monsters on the way?”

Merek grinned. “Of course. I doubt we could avoid another fight if we tried.”

The tiny thread of experience from this monster wasn’t nearly enough, but if he had a Legendary protector type to hold the front line? This was going to be a very good day.

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The addition of Merek, a committed damage dealer capable of truly injuring whatever they crossed, exponentially increased their rate of progress. James noticed quickly that the experience contribution immediately split four ways when Merek attacked. It seemed natural, but how did the energy know to split and to who was owed what when he hadn’t seen anything close to a party system?

It was a curious thought, but he doubted he’d find answers anytime soon, so he kept them to himself and kept following behind, his magebolt firing the second he could the entire time they traveled.

Once, James tried to shoot at a monster to save a random tower-goer from being crushed, but Merek had grabbed his hand and sent the bolt flying upward. Their old guide and new party member did nothing to explain himself and only provided a shake of his head.

Cards dropped by monsters they slew were collected as they progressed, most unusable and highly discouraged by Merek. No matter how many times they asked him to clarify, he never did.

His eyes were focused ahead or locked on their next target on their way to the path to the next floor, always on the lookout for trouble. James thought it interesting, noticing how Merek kept a fixed distance from all of them and would walk on the outside of their group.

The lack of trust reminded James of Iastlan and Aiguo. Very little about the residents changed between worlds.

James’ train of thought was interrupted as Ivy thumbed to the side.

“Are you avoiding everyone else because of the tower factions?” Ivy asked as they took a wide swing around another group of humans battling three ogres and a pair of trees.

“I’m avoiding everyone else because they have every reason to take advantage of your low level and would try to kill you,” he said tightly. “You’ll see as soon as we get to the ascension lobby.”

They took out several more ogres, ran away from a group of five trees, and finally arrived at a nondescript blank vestibule built out of the side of the sky.

James walked all the way around it, waving his hands through the wall where it was connected. “I don’t understand.”

“Pretend it’s an elevator and it’ll mess with your head less.” Merek shoved the door open and disappeared inside… despite the walls being made of glass.

Ivy ran after him, and Shen Ai didn’t seem concerned, so James followed the rest of the group inside.

The ascension lobby was… bright. And a whole lot larger than it seemed it should be. A collection of shop stands crowded around another door immediately to the right of the one they’d emerged from—theirs was labeled 1 and the other with a 2—and the clamor of voices hawking their wares or, in the case of several people clumped by the side of the 1 door, begging for cards.

Straight ahead, there was a full on cantina bar complete with bartender, crowds, and a collection of huge screens on the back wall opposite the two doors. There was almost an invisible line dividing the huge lobby area in half, the near half crowded and loud, the far half free of anyone but those sitting in groups with their drinks.

“The lobby is a null zone, so people think it’s a safe place to hide.” Merek scoffed and shook his head. “They’ll regret that decision sooner or later.”

People immediately started waving and shouting for their attention, but James’s attention was focused only on one thing.

The leaderboard was sorted into three sections. One, on the left, showed the top 100 names. On the right, a list of the bottom 100. The section in the middle scrolled randomly through the middle 873,000 other names.

He half expected to see himself or Ivy on the bottom, but they were not. Neither were they on the currently-visible section of the middle list.

But one familiar name shone in clear white from the dead center of the top list.

Rank 43: Shen Ai

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