16. Back to the Drawing Board

“Alright,” Thwain said, “We’re out in the middle of the floor. I didn’t find much while scouting. Just slimes, rivers and a few trees. If we use the portal to Floor 2 as north and the portal to Floor 0 as south, we’re situated somewhere around the south-southeast,” he explained, placing pieces of rocks onto the makeshift compacted-earth table.

We sat around it, trying to get a better idea of the situation.

“No signs of activity?” Pyro asked.

“None,” Thwain said, shaking his head.

“The portal we were using was only used by the poor and the desperate,” I said. “It was hardly ever in use when we wanted it and nobody who’s worth a damn ever used it. Even that one rich guy caused a stir just by being there and looking rich by being escorted by the Tower Guides.”

“So what?” Pyro asked.

“So, there must be other portals,” I said, gesturing to the table. “Think about it. The gangs fight and posture for territory, fighting over scraps. The lower echelons, at least. Where are the so-called nobles? The ones that gorge themselves on food all day and only come out of their compounds when the peasants get uppity. What if they have access to portals and that’s where they get their gear, money and food?”

“Well, there’s that one guy that can conjure food,” Pyro said without much confidence.

“He conjures stale bread and water for the Church,” Thwain said. “It’s enough for survival, but that can’t be what the majority of the upper crust eats all day. I heard that they have lavish banquets filled with exotic food.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “I always figured they had been buying their supplies from Market Alley, but I never thought of where they were getting their funds, other than through inheritance.”

“Take it further,” I said. “What if they’re the suppliers for the markets? If so, they need to get it from somewhere, and it’s not from their half-functioning orchards.”

“There’s flaws in your arguments. If they’re farming the floors, why are things getting worse instead of better?” Pyro asked. “Shouldn’t it be helping if they’ve been clearing? Maybe the Church of the Tower has a point.”

“Nahhhh, Pyro, don’t even start with that shit,” I said. “Because if they’re right, and this is just one big punishment from above, we’re doomed and anything we do is useless, and life is futile. Nihilism never helped anyone, and it sure isn’t getting us out of this.”

“Kinda seems doomed from here,” Pyro said. “Most days, I ain’t even sure if we’re helping, either. And if there are more people farming the floors than we thought AND it’s still getting worse…” He trailed off.

“I mean, I’m sure it’s been helping. Probably. They probably just farm enough to stay afloat and wealthy, not with the express purpose of clearing slimes. We’ve been making bank, but I’m sure we haven’t made a dent in the floor’s monsters,” I said. “It’s gonna take more than elbow grease to clear the backlog. Sure, we’ve been killing slimes in the hundreds and that’s only been increasing as we go, but we’re just three of us. If we can get more people to help… I’m not saying we start with bombing the Church to starve people out or anything, but a little fire under people’s asses could help a lot.”

Thwain perked up at the mention of bombing the Church, but didn’t comment.

“Ok, fine,” Pyro said. “We assume there’s other portals. Now what?”

“A few thing,” Thwain explained. “One: we find the portals. Once they’re found, we figure out the schedules of whoever is on the other side and go from there. As long as we keep it discreet, we have time. Maybe not years, but we can absolutely afford to wait a few weeks to do this right. Two: while I scout, you both need to focus on figuring out your classes and improving your skills. Théo’s ranked up a skill, but he’s the only one of us that has. Each skill must have some sort of trigger or threshold, we just need to figure out what it is. I’ve ranked up my class, but that’s from cheating by bypassing floors. That isn’t a feasible option for the two of you, for now. Three: we farm gear. We already have a shield and daggers, next we need armor and preferably a wider range of weapons. Four: we need to assess the threat against us. Between the ambushes from and against the Blood Oats, the heat from the Awakening Stones that we stole from what was most either directly or indirectly the Sons of Blades, and our firefight at the portal… We really need to figure out what’s coming for us. It’d be dumb to assume they’ll just forget about us, especially without a confirmed kill.”

Pyro and I sat in stunned silence for a bit.

“You, uhh… You been doin’ a lot of thinkin,' there, friend?” Pyro asked, grinning widely.

Thwain nodded seriously. “Not much to do other than flap and think, up there,” he said, pointing upwards. “And I’ve been doing a whole lot of both, lately.”

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I looked back and forth between Pyro and Thwain. “How do we figure out our skills, then?” I had ranked up my Summoning skill, but that was halfway an accident and simply by having Slimey decimate enemies.

“Pretty sure I need to, errr, absorb rocks, really,” Pyro said, looking half embarrassed. “It should go way faster on this floor because of the higher mana concentration, but, yeah. More I absorb, the stronger I’ll get. That’s what I’d been tryin’ out with the rocks I bought the other day. Figure that’s the road for me.”

“Ok, Pyro,” Thwain said. “You chew some crayons. Théo? Figure out your demon stuff. She’s supposed to be awesome, she can’t suck at everything, can she? And maybe we can work with Pyro on ways to collect loot before Slimey eats it all. Tubes or pitfalls or something.”

“If he doesn’t pass over a spot a second time, he shouldn’t pick up the loot that’s there,” I said. “I'll send him on wider sweeps. He can’t really stop passing over our air holes, but maybe if he goes far enough before doubling back, he can clear the area like a clock and give us time to snag any uncommon drops. It’s not like I do much while he clears. I can pick up and organize loot in the cubbies and shelves Pyro keeps making.”

Pyro shrugged. “Gotta keep organized!”

“What are the chances we find Awakening Stones?” I asked. “Or escort people across the floor behind Slimey?”

“Thinking about raising an army? Probably really low on the stones, I’d wager. Who would we even pick?” Thwain asked.

I grinned at Pyro.

“Nope. Not even a little,” Pyro said, frantically waving his arms in front of himself and crossing them to make an X. “Don’t you dare rope those dumbasses into this. They fuck everything up.”

“Whaaaat?” I asked teasingly. “You don’t want to give your family a chance? Come on! They’re good people.”

“Oh yeah? Fine. You have one stone. Who do you choose? Eh?” Pyro asked, jutting out his chin repeatedly.

“Hero,” Thwain said immediately.

“Tower-God,” I countered.

“See?” Pyro asked exasperatedly. “Y’all just wanna stir the shit pot and prove my parents wrong. Again.”

“Well, I mean… Pyro, you don’t necessarily—”

“I know I don’t hurl fireballs, you shit!” He stared daggers at me. “Dragging my brothers into this will absolutely backfire either way. Ya think TG’s really gonna make ‘sponsible decisions if he gets godlike powers? He’d be dead in a week.”

“Be a fun week,” I hedged.

“It’d certainly be eventful,” Thwain agreed.

“Your uncle?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Uncle’s only been the greatest at being a disappointment, irregardless of his name.”

“Regardless,” Thwain corrected.

“Nah, he’s on my mother’s side. We don’t talk to him.”

Thwain sighed. “Nevermind. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Still, it can’t hurt to keep our options open. A few more people out here would help a lot, actually.”

Over the next few days, we followed the plan. Pyro expanded a few rooms by quite a bit, then created an offshoot tunnel and messed around, trying to dig deeper down. Eventually, after a bit over a hundred feet or so, he started encountering deposits of rocks and crystals that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t manipulate with his skill. He carved around them and kept going for a bit, wanting to see if he noticed any difference in the mana levels at different depths. It was tough to say, as the only way he could figure to estimate mana levels was by absorbing earth slowly through his class and then trying to gauge if he was improving faster or not at different depths.

The Geomancer also spent time trying to absorb the new kinds of rocks and crystals that he had found, but with mixed results. He had been able to break off chunks of rock and bring them to the surface to examine them. The daylight above ground revealed that pieces he brought up were yellow with red striations. That didn’t tell him much, but he found that he was able to slowly absorb the smaller chunks. He determined that the mana concentration in the rocks was much higher than in the regular dirt that was everywhere, but that he absorbed the rocks so slowly that it was less efficient in the short-term to focus on the rocks. As for the crystals, he had no luck. They were too big to carry up to the surface and were too hard to chip, even with his armored hands.

I spent my days on the roof of our hideout with Slimey, collecting loot. Pyro helped me with a few ideas with loot pitfalls between his trips underground, but that just gave too many avenues for slimes to slip into our base. Instead, I just sat on the roof, looking for any loot drops, but especially the ones of uncommon rarity or rarer. Slimey did his darndest to keep moving fast enough that the dying slimes dropped orbs behind him and wouldn’t just stay inside him and get absorbed. I wasn’t sure how much control he really had over it, if he was snagging a few orbs once in a while as payment or if he really couldn’t get them out in time.

When I spotted a green drop, I would call Slimey over, he’d do one more circle around the roof to keep it clear, then he would surround the loot orb with his body, careful not to touch it. Slimes gleefully ignored the drops and jumped into my monster’s body in a vain attempt to take him down. I’d follow in his wake, he would lift up a part of his body, creating a small slime archway, and I’d nestle comfortably within the protective corrosive circle, careful not to touch my summon. I’d gather my loot and then we’d be off to the roof again. Rinse and repeat.

It wasn’t a terribly efficient way to farm, but it gave results. I could also keep Slimey up much longer when I wasn’t summoning my demon, so I stuck with only summoning him for a while until we were better supplied with weapons and armor. I must admit, we were making progress on that front. We looted a short sword, a spear, a few pairs of roughspun pants, a pile of varied meats and water skins, more slime jelly that nobody had dared test, a pile of copper coins and a slime card.

The card was interesting, ish. I had heard about them, but never actually seen any before. It was small, the size of a playing card, with an intricate copper-colored border and the image of a slime on one side, and just solid copper on the other side. I was pretty sure if you combined them with other cards of the same type, a loot orb would spawn based on the card’s rarity. Or was it the monster’s rarity? Maybe the monster’s rarity determined the type of card. Either way, it dropped from a green loot orb, so the chances of getting some more weren’t horrible. I put it aside to show Pyro and Thwain.

I was just about to sit down and go through my bestiary to review Slimey’s gains and my demon’s stats, when a conveniently-timed Thwain landed on the roof behind me.

“Dramatic segue?” I asked, this time not turning around. Cool kids didn’t turn around.

He nodded gravely. “Dramatic segue,” he agreed.