Mira was huddled against a wall when Zibo found her. She hadn’t gone far, but she tended to wander when not locked in.
“Mira,” he said, crouching down beside her. “I have something exciting to show you.” He kept his voice soft and coaxing.
She shivered and shook her head, clutching her blanket tighter around herself despite it being the middle of summer.
“It’s not far, promise.” Now that he was no longer on the edge of poverty, he could afford things like casual transit fees. No more three-hour commute for him. “It’ll be an exciting trip too.”
Mira coughed, starting small but building uncontrollably until tears ran down her cheeks and she turned away, still unable to stop.
Zibo’s fists tightened without conscious thought. If anything happens to her…
Then he remembered and almost smacked himself.
His deck.
Of course.
He’d never yet had the opportunity to use his upgraded heart card on someone else, but why shouldn’t it work here?
He scooted closer, talking gently the whole time, then put a hand around Mira’s shoulder. With the other hand, he manifested his deck.
Remedy flowed over her in a wave of green light. Her coughing slowed, then she stopped, almost hesitant.
“You feel better?” Zibo stood, arm still around her shoulder, and helped her to her feet.
Mira took a step, tilted her head, looked at the ground, then at Zibo.
“You’re ready to go?”
Mira shook her head. She dropped the blanket to the ground as she turned around in a circle, searching. “Tem?” she asked, voice raspy. “Tem!”
Zibo walked over and hugged her. “Tem is gone, remember?” Mira’s cat had died over a year ago. Most of the time, she managed to be okay with that.
Sometimes…
She shook her head and pushed him away. She didn’t try to speak again but glared at him as though he were personally standing between them.
“How about you walk with me, and I’ll talk to you about Tem’s adventures. Okay?” He crouched to pick up the blanket and tucked it under his arm, then took her hand. “And maybe we’ll find that he’s reincarnated and ready to come back home with you.”
Mira nodded, and they started walking.
Zibo had always kept his sister away from the tower, but the situation had changed. Now, he wouldn’t be a liability dragging an invalid around. For the first time since he could remember, he could take her wherever she wanted, and he’d be strong enough to protect her.
“One day, when the sky was clear and fortune whispered from the beyonds, a kitten named Tem was born…”
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They stopped back at the tenement to collect their possessions, but Frane must have already thrown them out. The pile on the back dock was gone.
Zibo had rushed off to find Mira without thought for anything else, but now he wished he’d thought to at least grab a backpack of clothing or something. Mira hadn’t been in immediate danger, hadn’t wandered off a skybridge or into a restricted area. But, of course, he couldn’t have known that before.
“I was hoping you’d come back.” Frane’s voice sounded even more smug than usual.
Zibo was not in the mood. “You couldn’t even wait two hours?”
Frane stepped out of the shadow of the stairway. Something about him seemed off, triggering Zibo’s caution.
“Go wait for me over there,” he told Mira, not quite managing to keep his voice light. “I need to take care of this.”
She took two steps, then turned back.
“If you think I’m going to wait to beat the snot out of you until your little sister isn’t watching, you’re wrong.” Frane ran at him, fists glowing with a bronze light.
Zibo wanted to smack the guy. “You didn’t.”
Frane definitely did. The monstrous gleam in his eye brooked no hesitation.
Zibo manifested his deck and tugged the shield off his back. Getting the spear unstrapped would take too long. He didn’t carry it battle-ready outside the tower.
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He’d have to rectify that mistake in the future, but until now, he’d never been anyone worth attacking.
Frane snarled and swung at him. Zibo threw himself backwards and held up the shield. Just in time. One of Frane’s fists clipped the edge, and the metal crumpled as easily as if it were paper.
“You shouldn’t have come back, but I’m glad you did!” Frane didn’t let up. He kept swinging as Zibo backed away and away.
“Aaaaah,” Mira moaned, back pressed against the wall as she watched the two fight for their lives.
Sorry, I wish you didn’t have to see this, but there’s no way I’m letting this guy off with a warning this time.
Zibo threw the broken remnants of his shield at the man. His arms ached from the strength of Frane’s blows. Idiot. Idiot.
He wasn’t sure if he was cursing himself for so casually handing over such powerful cards—not that he’d ever have expected anyone to use them—or at Frane for holding such a pointless grudge over a single day’s delay that he was willing to mutilate his soul to get revenge.
Either way, Frane might have absorbed the cards, but he was no climber. His fists were overly strong.
His body was not.
Forcebolt.
Zibo probably should have started with that, but he had too many months of ingrained something coming at you, use shield immediately, and it’d taken him this long to even remember it was an option.
The bolt took Frane clear through the forehead, burning a hole straight through to the other side. The mutant landlord gave one wordless cry of complaint, then toppled over. Bronze light flashed, and the uncommon Power Fist card appeared, hovering over his body.
Zibo took it without thinking, just like he would any monster’s card. He’d gotten a surprising amount of experience for that. Dazedly, he recognized that this was probably why hunting other card holders was so popular in the tower.
But the bigger problem was the dead body very much not in the tower, staring blankly with a visible wound only a particular kind of card could have made… and Zibo was pretty sure no one else in the tenement had any cards, let alone this specific one. If they got him in front of a reader…
But… no.
No one had to know.
He glanced around. The dock was empty and dark, the alley was abandoned, the neighbors’ windows all blocked up from the inside long ago. They wanted their privacy more than they wanted to spy on an empty alley.
Mira stood against the wall, still staring wide-eyed, but she wouldn’t be saying anything.
No witnesses. No one knew.
All he needed to do was destroy the evidence. Easy enough for a tower climber. The floor of the dock was concrete, so there was no risk of the fire spreading.
He fished the master keyring out of the dead man’s pocket. “I think we’ve just found our new living arrangements.”
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The auction for the epic card would be taking place on floor 52. That meant that in order to reach it, Shen Ai needed to speedrun her way through the tower to unlock the necessary areas. Once unlocked, lobbies could be used to travel between floors within a given sector—floors one through eight were a sector, as were the next eight, then one more set before the first of the keystone floors.
Floor 25 was a law unto itself. It couldn’t be accessed from anywhere but floor 24 and 26. It couldn’t be entered without a class at level 25, and couldn’t be moved past without an Uncommon heart card.
While technically the heart and class cards didn’t have to be aligned, using a more powerful card than your heart was a risky prospect. Most often, it shorted out the rest of your deck to use it. Sometimes it simply failed to activate. Other times—less common, but the main reason people avoided mismatching their power tiers—the stronger card would shatter itself into shards.
Shen Ai had no need to worry. Her entire deck was epic grade. She jogged through floor 25 as easily as the first 24, and by the end of the day had reached floor 50.
The second keystone floor actually provided her a minor, if time-consuming, challenge. It was a maze, and one which breaking through actually increased in size. She’d smashed through a good twenty walls before she figured out what was happening, and resigned herself to solving it normally.
The monsters and traps, designed to test a level 50 climber ready to ascend to Rare, were more afraid of Shen Ai than she was bothered by them.
Still, even with the delays, she arrived at the 52nd floor with almost two days to spare.
It was almost disappointing. She’d heard so many people talking with such awe about the higher floors, and then they were just… more floors. Different challenges, different monsters, people in fancier outfits and with increasingly more of an attitude…
She scouted out the location of the upcoming auction, and found the entire lake cordoned off in advance. She wasn’t the only person out with an epic deck. Which made sense, considering the dangers of using an overpowered card increased significantly the higher you went. While a rare heart might be sometimes able to use an epic card, anyone uncommon or below would be incredibly foolish to try. By placing the auction here, they prevented anyone with more money than sense from carelessly destroying what may be one of the rarest items it was possible to find.
The card itself wasn’t present yet, but they had already erected a full-on plinth in the center of the lake with a holographic replication of the card hovering above it.
Shen Ai had to admit, it looked very pretty. Dominant Vengeance would passively enact a violent backlash against any attack to physically impact its holder, as well as having an active trigger option that burned more energy but increased the power of the reactive attack by orders of magnitude.
‘Dominant’ was right. Shen Ai had a basic survival card in her class slot at the moment, but wouldn’t mind replacing it with this shiny beauty. Senior Shop was intimately connected to them and could read their cards from a distance, so it was even the most efficient way to get the information transferred.
She didn’t expect for anyone to be able to get near her, between all her alertness and perception abilities, so the card would probably go unused. But on the off chance someone did catch her by surprise and land a blow, it would be invaluable to have on hand.
Interestingly enough, the card seemed like an upgraded version of Ivy’s own Retaliation. She’d keep tabs on whoever bought it and tactically acquire it for herself later on, once the hubbub around it calmed down.
It might be time to learn the ritual required to extract cards from others, just in case, of course.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen…”
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